“No. Wrong. Do it again, 042.”

Ark could hardly hear the command through the ringing in his head. Worse yet, he could not feel his legs. Or his arms. He did feel the floor though—cool and soft to his frayed senses. He tried to speak, but he could only manage to open his mouth. There was no air in his lungs to speak with.

“Did you hear me, 042?”

“Y-Yes sir,” he finally managed to squeeze out of his damaged throat.

“Then why are you just lying there? Get up on your feet?” The instructor’s voice was clearly indifferent to the obvious pain that Ark was in.

Regardless of how he felt, Ark knew better than to object. Instead he fought the pain, soreness, and overall dizziness to sit up. He then managed his knees, and finally, he got up on wobbly feet.

Instructor Artis looked down at him, an eyebrow arched, and a general look of disapproval edged into his thin features. “Well?” He said.

“One moment, sir,” Ark said, closing his eyes, desperate for this torture to end. He tried to focus on his netlink, delving into the administrative form. Instead, he received a jolt to the back of his head, a searing headache that felt like a spike had been inserted at the base of his neck and driven upward. Gasping, he collapsed down onto all fours once again.

“I thought as much,” said Artis, voice dripping with contempt, “No matter. You can tell me why you failed this time, instead.”

Ark took a moment to gather himself, then stood back up and straightened his back, looking into the instructor’s eyes without flinching. “I attempted to take on your attack head on. You overwhelmed me through several channels of attack, and I was not fast enough to respond with a solid wall.”

Instructor Artis screwed up his face, then said, “Close enough. I’ve told you several times that, when faced with a superior opponent, it is foolish to use simple firewalls to protect your netlink.”

“Yes sir,” Ark admitted.

“What should you have done instead?”

“Divide and conquer,” Ark recited, “Isolate the weakest attacks with dummy access protocols, while taking down the stronger avenues of attack one at a time. If possible, I should construct a virtual netlink and let the attack inside, giving them the impression that they’ve succeded, then cut them off—or backtrack and counter attack.”

“So you have read the manual,” the instructor noted with a sigh, “Why didn’t you do any of that?”

“I don’t know how, sir,” Ark answered honestly. The instructor had thrown a manual at him two weeks ago, then assaulted his netlink continuously over the past hour. Now, his instructor closed his eyes and mouthed something; Ark was pretty sure it was a very imaginative curse.

“You’re not supposed to ‘know how to do it’,” the instructor finally said when he opened his eyes again, “Those defensive measures are already installed in your administrative form—you simply call upon the defensive protocol you wish to use, and your netlink takes care of the rest.”

Ark furrowed his brow. He knew that, of course, but he had not thought he could use those in this training. “I’m sorry sir, I was under the impression I was going to learn how to be a mindweaver—don’t they construct their own defenses?”

“You think you know how mindweavers work?” Instructor Artis raised his brow again, a dangerous gleam in his eyes.

“No, sir, but that was what I was told.”

“Then you’re a fucking moron for believing what you were told,” the instructor said as he took a seat, but made no gesture to allow Ark to take a rest as well. “Mindweavers don’t build protocols like that while under fire. They create their tools before getting into a fight, then they use them. You’re lucky that military-grade netlink already comes with some pretty nasty defensive protocols, so there’s no need for me to teach you how to build them yourself.”

Ark tightened his lips to a line. Knowing how to use pre-built protocols was not what he wanted, but he kept his mouth shut. It had been two weeks since Sylvia Leen had introduced his new training regiment to him, and what Ark had been most excited about was his mindweaving training—until he met his instructor.

“Sir, permission to ask a question.” Ark said, keeping his temper under tight control. He felt a pressure in his chest building, and he needed to divert his own and his instructors attention.

“Sure,” Artis said, waving his hand dismissively, “Out with it.”

“In what situations would this training be useful? As I understand it, enemies within rifts rely on psionic or physical attacks. Wouldn’t it be more useful to focus on linking and communications operations?”

Instructor Artis tapped the arm of his chair, pursing his mouth as if weighing whether he could be bothered to answer the question, but in the end shrugged and said, “Again, you’re close enough to the right answer, but you’re forgetting something very important.” He held up a finger, as if it held the secrets of the universe. “Can you think of what that might be?”

Ark pondered the question, but there were many things he could be forgetting, and worst of those were the things he had forgot he had forgotten. Instead of giving a half-hearted answer, he shook his head and said, “I don’t know, sir.”

“No, of course not. Someone your age hasn’t been burned by it often enough…yet,” the instructor said, sighing, “It is human nature kid—probably your worst enemy.”

“Human nature, sir?”

“That’s what I said. If you ever achieve a sufficient rank to enter a proper rift, it isn’t always the monsters on the other side you should be most careful of. For a mindweaver, it is the other humans you might encounter that are the greater danger.”

“There are humans living in the other realms?” Ark said, his mouth slightly agape. His instructor’s raised eyebrow made him belatedly add, “—Sir.”

“There are… but it’s rare. They’re not the dangerous ones, though. Rarely have we entered a realm with humans who were just as technologically advanced as us. No, the really dangerous ones are those who also come through the rift from Vanguard—those are the ones you’ll have to protect your team from.”

“Other riftwalkers, sir?” Ark said, confused, “Why would they…?”

“Human nature,” the instructor said, waving his hand dismissively, “We like to stick together when we are on the verge of extinction, but when there are the possibilities for treasure, wealth and power? People have killed each other for less.”

The instructor tapped the arm of the chair again, looking like he was tempted to say more. Ark shut his mouth and waited, knowing it was rarely a good idea to disrupt an instructor’s train of thought.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Finally, after a short while, Artis spoke. “There are a few other dangers though. Aside from other humans—or those few dwellers who have similar tech as we do—there are a few creatures that have an innate ability to touch upon the netlink’s connection to the neural network, which gives them a backdoor into our system.”

Ark’s eyes widened in shock. That seemed impossible, from what he knew of the massive network that connected every human with a netlink to the vast cognitive resources of Vanguard.

“Yes, it sounds unimaginable, doesn’t it,” said the instructor, smiling at Ark’s response, “They won’t be able to infiltrate the host side of the system, so don’t worry—Vanguard’s defenses are like nothing you could ever fathom—however, the client side is more vulnerable. That’s you.”

“But that means… they can attack our cognition, sir?” Ark said, his voice unsteady.

“That’s right. Visions are usually the first symptom of such an infiltration, if it was not done out in the open. Visions and auditory hallucinations, to be exact. From there, the enemy will slowly overtake the vital parts of your neo-cortex that is responsible for operating the netlink. After that—you’re toast.”

“But a mindweaver can fight it, right?”

“They can,” the instructor admitted, “But only if the mindweaver is not compromised already.”

“What happens then? Have you ever fought one? …sir?” Ark could feel excitement growing. This was what he wanted, a way to fight that he was capable of.

Artis closed his eyes for a moment before responding. “Not me personally, no. But I’ve seen it happen.” He opened his eyes again and looked at Ark, eyes boring into his skull like javelins. “I’ve seen men bleed from their eyes, screaming for a ghost, only they can see, to get out of their head. Because that is where you must do battle, 042, if it ever happens to you. Inside your head, with your very sense of self as a weapon. If you fail, it’s not just death that awaits you, but a hollow existence of broken memories and ideas of who you once were, wrapped up in what’s left of your flesh; living, but not alive.”

Ark swallowed, cold sweat running down his back as he met his instructor’s gaze. Wetting his lips, he carefully said, “You said there were a few creatures like that. What are they called?”

Artis smiled, and Ark was sure the man’s goal had been to scare him when he saw the cold glare in the man’s eye. “Indeed there are a few, but the ones you should pay the most attention to are the dangerous ones. The ones that won’t negotiate or even flinch before they attack. The ones who the riftwalkers were originally trained to fight against, and the ones responsible for our exile into the void.” His smile grew colder as he leaned forward, making Ark’s hair stand on end.

“Beware the daemons, 042.”

----------------------------------------

Returning to virtual space was stomach-churning. Lights spun around, as his vision settled into the vast cylinder that was his visualization of the netlink’s inner structure. In the back of his head, Ark could almost hear instructor Artis scolding him for his lacking training, as the disorientation continued to linger, even as he strained to acclimatize himself. It took a toll on his concentration. He did not have much time.

He was back upon the central plateau of blue glass; green and yellow symbols floating beneath the surface, forming the perceived physicality of the structure. Around him, the red slime was still covering everything, having even spread its influence to the four central pillars—his primary authorities—even though there was no way for the entity to access them. Nonetheless, if he could not reach the powers, they were useless, anyway.

Although the influence had spread further, it also looked like it had thinned, and—looking up—Ark saw the shriveled remains of the giant slug that had perched there. Whatever it was doing with the stone outside, it demanded all of its attention.

Without further delay, Ark studied the four pillars around him. The entity obviously knew that they were the only way for him to fight back, and thus the influence around them were still thick with intent. One of the pillars were the power of his administrative form, which did not require virtual proximity to activate—a yellow pillar with a scepter carved into its surface. Ark therefore ignored it, in favor of another with a distinct, green hue to it—the image of an open eye edged into it. Found it, he thought, using his intent to move forward. As he did so, the influence around the pillar reacted; thick tentacles of intent rose from the slimy substance in warning, not attacking immediately.

Regardless of how real it seemed, Ark understood that it was nothing of the sort. Everything around him was a mental construct, built to allow him to intuitively understand the virtual world that was so alien from his human mind. While there was a risk of his mind confusing reality and virtual space, the benefits far outweighed the dangers, normally. In this situation, though, Ark understood his instructor’s warning, all those years back. The administrative form was an expression of Ark’s own sense of self, the very idea of who he was. That had a lot of power, as well as the potential to leave Ark mentally crippled if anything went wrong,

With a mere thought, he activated the built-in defenses of his administrative form, forging a shimmering, blue blade as an extension of each of his hands. These blades took the form most useful to Ark, in accordance with his intent, and as long as he wielded them with a clear goal in mind, the defensive programs would move as he willed—attacking any threat he struck.

He moved faster, straining his concentration. In this place he was not constrained by his physical shackles, but merely by his concentration and will—and Ark’s will was hard as steel. In a blur, he was before the pillar, assaulting the influence. His blades struck the slime and left blue marks behind that ate into the influence, like glowing cinders spreading through wood.

The tentacles reacted swiftly, moving like whips through the air. Ark dodged the first, slashed the second into pieces, before a third hammered him back with a blow to the chest. Looking down, Ark saw the slimy influence corroding his form, eating away at the polygons that made up his virtual awareness. Gritting his teeth, Ark moved back into the fight, splitting his focus between movement and attack, as he weaved in an out of reach as fast as thought. There were no laws of motion or inertia in this place, and thus his speed was only limited by imagination.

The tentacles rose out of the influence as fast as Ark struck them down, but as he cut through another three in fast succession, he noticed the influence thinning—it’s running out of steam!

There was no mistaking it, and Ark redoubled his efforts. One tentacle attempted to take out his leg, but Ark stepped down on it, hard, splattering it across the glassy floor, just as another speared toward his chest. Ark threw himself underneath it, coming back onto his feet in time to quickly slash two others into mincemeat. He felt, more than he saw, an attack to his back, and swung around, finding himself surrounded by a pool of influence that had crept around him during the fight. From it, three new tentacles had formed and attacked with blinding speed.

Unable to counter in time, Ark placed a bladed hand in front of him and reformed his intent, shaping the blade into a rectangular shield. The tentacles hammered into the shield, pushing Ark back, but unable to penetrate it. With his other hand, Ark attacked in a wide arc, cutting off all three limbs, before spinning around and splicing another that had attempted to spear him through the back.

The pool of influence was a mere sheen on the floor now, and the tentacles were visibly weaker; thin and shuddering limbs. Ark decided it was time to push the attack, forcing the influence back as he approached the green pillar. The red slime quivered and feebly attempted to resist him, but it was entirely spent now. The entity had overextended itself—and underestimated Ark. It was a mistake that many had made in the past, and paid dearly for it.

With a triumphant, final slash of his blades, Ark reached the pillar, standing before it and looking up at the shimmering, green surface, and the eye that was carved so life-like that it appeared to look straight back at him.

While none of the primary authorities were necessarily powerful, their function allowed for extreme solutions to unsolvable problems, such as being infiltrated by a much stronger foe. For this purpose, the ‘reset’ authority was a staple of military-grade netlink tech. It forcefully connected the netlink to Vanguard’s backup systems, copying whatever version of the netlink was stored there and overwrote the current version with the older one. In case this version also was corrupted, a full factory-reset was also available, although that was an extreme measure.

Ark knew his stored version of his netlink was uncorrupted, as he had not updated it for two years. That also meant he could perform the action quicker, as there would be more assent forms he’d have to go through with a full factory-reset.

As he touched the pillar, his options blinked into existence before him, taking the form of circular buttons that hovered in the air—the text on their surface explaining their function.

Backup restore

Full factory reset

Without hesitation, Ark hit the backup restore, and was greeted by a single confirmation choice. A ‘confirm’ would immediately restore his link to vanguard and purge the invader, while a ‘decline’ would be an incredibly stupid choice to make, given the circumstances. He was about to hit the ‘confirm’ button, when a red tentacle lashed out from the remains of influence. Ark waved his hand at the weak attack, shattering with his intent, but instead of shimmering out of existence, the red flakes reformed before him. It was no attack, Ark could sense the intent was more conciliatory, as it took the form of a rectangular box with a single word edged into its virtual face.

“Wait!”