Ramirez and I jogged down the hallways, passing doorways and a few random fake plants, our boots squeaking on the cement floor. It was unnervingly quiet. I imagined the other floors were bustling, but this top floor was meant to be empty. It was for drones and mechs alone.
Finally I had to say something. “Where are-”
“Yun!” Layla shouted, turning a corner and smiling. “Hey!”
A little bit of relief filled me as she moved up to hug me. Then pain. Lots of pain.
“Gaaaaah!” I clutched at my arm, wincing as the feeling of knives flaying my muscles filled the limb.
“Oh shi-Sorry,” Layla backed off, dismayed while I grabbed at my arm. “What happened?”
“Broke my arm,” Cherie and Poy joined us. “The mech kicked it all to hell.”
“Let me see,” Cherie moved up to me.
I took my jacket off to let her look over my arm. I saw her eyes spin and shine a bright green for a moment as she analyzed it. Her X-Ray mod then. After a moment, she looked away while her eyes shifted to normal and reached into one of the pouches of her armor. She pulled out a wrap of black bandages.
“Do we really have time for this?” Ramirez asked.
“Plenty,” Poy said, glancing around. “Our contact is going to be here in a sec. We need to wait anyways.”
“Waiting…” Ramirez scoffed.
“How bad is it?” Layla asked Cherie.
“Not bad. It’s not shattered thankfully. Clean break.” Cherie wrapped my upper arm up. As she went around and around, each layer of bandage began to harden, the chemical mixture doing it’s work when the underside of the bandages got exposed to skin. Soon a hard black cast was around my upper left arm. “Should hold as long as you don’t go doing any big punches.”
“I was hired to do big punches.”
“You have two hands,” Layla poked my forehead with a sigh. “Plus, you have your knees and legs don’t you?”
I smiled at her, poking her forehead. As she pouted in annoyance and I put my jacket back on, a question came to mind. “You guys run into mechs too?”
“A few,” Cherie said. “Low level, like the ones you fought. Basic security,” she patted her sword with a smile. “Easy to deal with together though.”
“And no one knows we’re here?”
“We took the stairs,” Poy said. What did that matter? Seeing my confusion, he continued. “Our contact shut off the cameras in there for regular maintenance. So we just entered a hallway, turned into the stairwell, and ran up here. Only had to knock out a guy who was taking a smoke break in there.”
“I still feel kind of bad for that,” Layla said guiltily.
“I’m sure he felt worse,” Poy chuckled. “You kicked him in the chest.”
As Layla continued looking guilty, I tested my arm. It still hurt. But that was fine. I did an old mental exercise. It was something I’d learned a while back. Take the pain and the weariness, and feel its place in your body. Then slowly flow it into your hands and feet. Let it flow out of you, through your heart, out of your palms and bottoms of your feet. Let it enter the earth, the air. Then keep it up.
It was an enforced delusion at most, but it was a variant of similar meditative exercises. Just hold the pain back for now. Focus on the job.
Cherie poked my forehead. I kept my focus but looked over at her. She smirked. “That pain-flowing thing? Claire loves that kind of exercise.”
“It works.”
“Sure. Still, you wouldn’t think she’d be the meditation kind of gal.”
“They’re here,” Poy said, looking at the door. It was one of a few doors, all labeled with various things. This one was labeled ‘maintenance corridor’. The door opened up.
A very tall and thin person entered. They were very androgynous, with long black and red hair hanging long, piercing features, and long eyelashes. They glanced around at us, stopping at Layla, who waved at them.
“This way,” was all they said, turning and moving, their black and red flowing behind them.
Ramirez began moving after them. Cherie shared a glance with Poy, the two following him, leaving Layla and me in the back.
The maintenance corridor was dark except for the blinking lights of dozens of server towers around us. I wasn’t a techhead, but even I could recognize how much computational power was buzzing in those things.
Hundreds of thousands of terabytes, maybe even more. In a maintenance corridor. My mind boggled at the thought.
“Which of you is the one without chrome?” the person leading us asked.
“It’s traditional to introduce yourself before asking questions like that,” Cherie said politely.
“I’m risking my life as it is, I don’t have time to waste,” they snapped. “Who is it?”
“Me,” I said.
They glanced back at me. “Huh. Guy big as you, I thought you’d be full of enhancers or something.” Before I could respond, they continued. “Poy can shut down the electronic stuff. I assume you all can handle the physical security.”
“Easily,” Ramirez said with a smirk.
“The last defense is meant to shut down anyone with chrome. If all goes well, the most you should feel is a tingle,” they said to me.
“A tingle?”
“Hopefully.”
How reassuring. We passed by a couple of doors, but they ignored it, guiding us through. As we walked I couldn’t help a bit of curiosity about this person. Why were they doing this? Money, probably, but they were risking a lot for it. Enough that they were terrified about us knowing anything about them, even a name.
My questions went unasked. The maintenance corridor ended in a large steel door. Poy sat down in front of it as the person leading us stepped aside for him. “What should I look out for?”
They hummed at his question. “The usual stuff. I can give you some of my coworkers passwords, but Redfield puts a lot into dummy AI and firewalls.”
“Cake,” he grinned and raised his tablet. His eyes flashed and soon the battle was on.
On the outside, it was extremely boring to watch. Just a man on a chair, staring at a steel door, eyes flickering about as a tablet shone on his lap.
I’d heard what it was like in cyberspace though. Over the years, cybersecurity had become closer to a straight up mental battlefield than anything else. People could now directly put their minds up against computer systems. The human mind was one of the most powerful computers in existence, and hackers like Poy made a living out of putting it up against the best security systems in the world.
It was also more dangerous than ever. No more safely sitting at home sending and receiving data, using hours of research and hard work to carefully suss out answers. Failing could end in brain death, seizures, reverse hacking. There were stories about worse. About rogue AI taking over minds. Possession by demon they called it.
I had respect for the art, even if I had no real aptitude for it.
Poy grunted. His eye twitched, and some blood began to drip from his nose.
“Poy?” Layla said, moving forward.
“I’m all right,” he grinned fiercely, some blood sliding down to stain his teeth. “This thing is mean. Military-issue. And not the stuff they sell cheap either.”
“Can you handle it?” Ramirez asked.
“Nope.”
Ramirez blinked. He clearly hadn’t been expecting that. “Uh…”
“I can hold it off. If Yun hadn’t put in the SD I wouldn’t have a backdoor to keep the alarm from going off. But I need to stay here and fight it. I can buy you guys time, okay?”
The door slid open, moving upward into the ceiling with a ‘hissss’ sound. Poy grit his teeth. “Go!”
“This way!” the unnamed Redfield worker moved around him, heading into a large dark room.
We all followed, Layla and I patting Poy on opposite shoulders. Still dripping blood from his nose, the weasel-faced man gave us a warriors smile, then focused once more. We left him in that hallway to fight his battle and moved on to our own.
----------------------------------------
The dark room was large enough to hold several cars inside, but it was empty. The floor was made of thick metal, but there were a few sections of clear glass, letting us see below. The floor had dozens of vials of various types. As we ran, I could see flashes of what was inside those vials. Seeds, red liquid that I soon realized was blood, dirt of various shades. A cold white mist flowed in those sections, turning to droplets of a liquid I wasn’t sure was water as it landed on the floor, walls, and us. The room was colder than a freezer, with frost all over everything.
“What is this place?” Cherie asked, eyeing a vial full of what looked like small fruit.
“Does it matter?” Ramirez said. Instead he focused on the person leading us, their black and red hair bouncing. “Where’s the security?”
They laughed, sounding just a bit manic, and stopped in the center of the room. They pointed ahead. “There.”
A wall, with another door set into it. The door slid open. Poy, doing his work.
Then panels opened in the wall. Over and over, until sixteen panels had opened. And out of them, stepped out mechs.
Unlike the one I’d fought, they had much more generic designs, like the police bots that sometimes backed up the cops, with large boxy heads and shiny black armor. But they still had those batons. And they still had those chilling blue eyes.
But the room was larger than the last one I’d fought the mechs in. Layla and I raised our hands. Our magnet line attached to the ceiling and pulled us up and into the air. Cherie unsheathed her sword and sped forward with beyond human sped. Ramirez leaped up in a burst of blue.
We struck at the same time.
Layla released her line and reattached it to the floor behind the mechs, zipping forward to land her boots in one and send it flying into the panel it had come from. Another mech swung its baton at her, but she was up in the air again, spinning around to land a roundhouse to its head.
I tried to join in, but the mech I rushed dodged, letting me land on the floor instead. A steel fist aimed to take my head off. I leaned my head back, set my stance, and kicked it in the knee with everything I had. Its leg crunched backwards. The mech grabbed my shirt as it fell.
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A blade swung through its arm. Cherie was there.
She came in like a storm, all kindness gone from her expression, determination replacing it. Her sword hummed as she stepped in front of me and swung her sword again, the blade slicing through the head of the mech.
Another one swung at her. I grabbed its arm and pulled hard, bringing it off balance. My magnet line attached to the floor behind it. The line whirred. My knee snapped forward as I was pulled in. My strength and the line’s momentum combined to let me smash into the mech’s stomach. My knee immediately felt sore, but I was gratified to see the mech bounce backwards.
It wasn’t dead, but Cherie ended it soon enough by stabbing it in the chest.
A loud crash drew my attention. Ramirez had destroyed a mech that Layla had tripped up, and his blue armored fist was reaching for the next.
Layla and I couldn’t really finish off the mechs. But we could trip them up, pull them over, distract them. And Cherie and Ramirez could finish them. Perfect.
“Fuck!” the person who had been leading us shouted. I looked over at them. They were staring at the door we’d entered through. I looked at it.
Two men and two women in security uniforms were staring at us. One was shouting frantically into his radio.
I snapped my line up at the ceiling, shooting into the air towards them.
“Incoming!” One guy raised his baton to swing at me. My elbow crashed into his chest, his baton bouncing uselessly on my shoulder. My other elbow cracked into the older man’s jaw and sent him to sleep.
Another one shot at me with a taser. I let the prongs land in my jacket, uselessly releasing electricity into my makeshift armor, grabbed the wire, and pulled as I jumped, bringing her into a knee smashing into her face. Blood flew from her nose and she dropped immediately.
The third guard had enhancements. She moved with impossible speed as her legs glowed under his blue security uniform, her arm opening itself up to reveal a long blade within. I had enough time to raise my arm to block.
The blade stabbed through the plastic-carbon hide of my jacket forearm and into the scrap metal beneath. My eyes met hers. She had enhancements. But her face looked very normal. Cybernetic eyes only. So I stepped into her with my head first, my skull impacting hers. I’d guessed right. Normal skull. Since I’d been ready for the hit and she wasn’t, she reeled back. I kicked her leg out from under her, sending her to a knee.
Before I could finish her off, a baton slammed into my arm. My broken arm.
“Agh!” I screamed in pain, stepping to the side. The baton was raised, the security guard looking crazed. I kicked him in between his legs in desperation. My steel boot hit him hard enough to lift him. I felt soft pressure give in before something hard stopped it.
“...ah.”
His eyes crossed and he dropped to his knees. I felt bad as I roundhouse kicked him. The last woman rose up and slashed at me.
A sword blocked her attack. Cherie smashed her in the jaw, knocking her back, leaving me to finish her with an elbow in the other side of her jaw that knocked her out. We shared a nod and looked back at Ramirez and Layla.
Ramirez had his fist in the chest of one bot. He tossed it aside and looked over at Layla, whose boots were resting in the remains of another, then at us. The androgonous employee looked nervous, but joined him when Ramirez waved them over.
“Enough. We’re running out of time.”
Cherie and I gave each other a glance, walking over to him as we looked around. The mist filled room was quiet now. Almost eerily so.
Ramirez and the employee lead the three of us into the next area. A tunnel of sorts sat there. Layla and Cherie were about to step into it, but Ramirez stopped them.
“No. This is why we needed him,” Ramirez pointed at me. “The EMF.”
“They blocked this thing with an EMF? Indoors?” Cherie sounded unnerved. “God, the amount of energy that must cost.”
“Yeah, well, my boss can afford it,” the employee said nervously. “Come on, we need to hurry the hell up.”
EMF. Electromagnetic field. In a world where every had cybernetics of some kind, they were basically a death sentence. People used to say that nuclear weapons were the greatest weapon.
A pulse from a nuke would cause just as much damage now. People ran their brains, hearts, limbs, their entire livelihoods, on chrome. Shut that down, and even if they didn’t die, they might as well have.
I took out my phone, took off my smart watch, and passed both to Layla. She took a hold of it nervously, staring forward.
“Don’t worry, he only gets hurt if he’s lying about not having any chrome,” Ramirez said cheerily to her. The he nodded at me. “Now go. Should be a switch on the other side of that tunnel.”
“It’ll be on the right,” the employee added. They flicked back their multicolor hair after finishing, biting their lip nervously. Didn’t help me feel better about my own nerves.
“...” I stepped forward before I could think too much about it.
And felt the change. Or maybe the change was in my head?
I knew the science. That on an organic human body, there were no real signs that the field would cause any harm. But I still felt strange, walking through an area filled with invisible energy.
It was probably akin to walking through an X-Ray machine a few decades ago. You knew internally that the radiation wouldn’t hurt you too much with such limited exposure. But knowing it was there still made it strange.
I walked through the tunnel. It was made of thick transparent material, allowing me to see the violet energy swirling through it, flecks of white flickering in that energy. With that surrounding me, I walked the full thirty feet down the tunnel.
At the end, as promised, was a simple switch. A large lever, really. Made sense. If you were going to block something with an EMF field, it shouldn’t be a hackable panel. Removes the point of keeping people with chrome or tech out.
I pulled the lever. Seeing the swirl of power in that tunnel fade away was a little unnerving. Enough energy to power all the technology in my block for a few years probably. All to make one hallway harder to enter.
Once the energy faded, the employee walked into the tunnel tentatively, then with more confidence once their implants didn’t explode. Ramirez followed after, then Layla and Cherie.
“What a chore that must have been,” Ramirez said to me.
“I can turn it back on and shove you in there.”
“I’d like to see you try that.”
I glared at him as Layla passed me my phone and watch. She whispered to me. “You okay?”
“That guy. Something’s off.”
She nodded. “Come on. We need to finish. Then we’ll never see him again.”
My sister gave me a smile, then led me forward.
We walked into the next room. The employee gestured to the center of the room, but they really didn’t have too.
It was at the back, with computers surrounding it in parallel. Atop a round podium made of white material, with a red glass blocking us from it, like a museum piece. There were two vents in the floor, and another set in the ceiling.
Inside was something that I just… didn’t have any reference for beyond the sun.
In dozens of vials set into a shelf was liquid fire. It blazed with an unnatural yellow-orange light. It seemed to explode eternally within the vials. I checked my watches geiger counter. Nothing radioactive. Though maybe that was what the red glass was blocking.
That theory was disproved when the employee pressed something and the red glass slid up into the ceiling. Still, they were very nervous looking as they grabbed three of the vials.
“What is it?” Layla asked.
“Cherie,” Ramirez said instead of answering. “Clear our exit.”
“What?” she looked confused. “That wasn’t the plan.”
“We weren’t supposed to be found out by actual guards at this stage in the plan. Head out and make sure no one else comes.”
Cherie paused. Then she nodded, walking back the way we came.
“You two, grab as many of those as you can,” Ramirez ordered Layla and I.
Still feeling unnerved by all of this, Layla and I joined the employee. We took a few of the vials as they passed them to us, Ramirez grabbing four and slotting them in somewhere in his power armor.
I took a hold of one and stared at it.
The vial was warm. The energy within stopped swirling and pooled at the points where my fingers held it.
“You asked what it is?” Ramirez sounded far away. I looked around. He and the employee stood just outside the room. “It’s power.”
A metal door was sliding down. I panicked, dropping the vial and rushing towards him. His face was grim as he watched me run towards him.
“Sorry.”
The vial smashed against the floor. It exploded in a burst of lightning and fire. The metal door shut.
And felt the energy in the vial fill the room. It smashed into me, lifting me and throwing me against the door. And then I felt like my skin was lit aflame.
“RAAAAAAGH!” I screamed, shaking as the energy flowed through the fire.
“Yun!” Layla shouted. I felt her grab my arm, pulling me up.
“BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!”
“Warning. Aether Containment Breached. Warning. Aether Containment Breached. Warnin-”
Red lights shone in the room, and a blaring alarm rang. A feminine voice spoke just under the alarm.
The fire in my body felt like it was attacking my muscles, forcing them to clench and unclench over and over. My eyes rolled without control. I felt like something grabbed a hold of my brain, pain exploding in my forehead.
Then my heart felt like it popped before something inside me broke. I couldn’t understand it. It was like an organ I didn’t know I had filled up with that yellow-orange energy until it shattered apart. I felt like I was dying.
That’s when everything went black.