I walked for hours, sometimes stopping to look about me as the countryside rolled on by. Jogging along at a brisk 10kilometre-an-hour pace, I managed to cover a surprisingly substantial distance as I took various back-roads, fields and pathways, watching for signs pointing me to the various towns and cities I knew were on the road to Buckinghamshire. Knowing that motorway links were not only incredibly indirect, but that the road-ways themselves were likely abandoned since the outbreak, I steered clear of those. It was rather a good decision, I realised, as between each town and city, the roads were almost unrecognisable, with huge rents in the concrete often going far down into the ground beneath. Vegetation often grew out of these cracks and holes.

The towns and cities themselves were somewhat haphazard. Sometimes, and more often than not, the roads would also be in such a state of disrepair that they could hardly be called such. Far more rare were occasions where the roads had been maintained and were in a passable condition.

I stopped in Abingdon, sustaining myself with dried meat rations that I'd prepared the day before, before going to sleep. I then immediately set off again at the same brisk pace as the day before, intent on getting to Milton Keynes by the evening.

I'd just hoped that the Synergy building was still intact, because there literally was almost nothing else left to go on.

As I arrived in Milton Keynes, I realised that this place had suffered far more than the city of Bristol had. The landscape was just as pristine as ever, but the signs of habitation by human beings were all crumbling around me. Very few buildings appeared to be standing still, the roads had deteriorated and were almost completely untouched, and as I approached the district where my old flat used to be, I had to find a place to hide, having been alerted many times over the course of the evening that there were possible threats in the area.

A few times, I got a good look at those threats.

Roving gangs of thugs were out in force, either scavenging for supplies or killing anyone they came across to steal either their own possessions, or to harvest their nanoclouds. I watched once, when one of these street gangs pinned a woman to the ground and stabbed her through the temple to kill her. It was an ignominious end for a tense fight that she might have won if she were facing one of these fuckers alone, I thought bitterly. She had been fast and furious, but they had overwhelmed her with sheer numbers.

One member of this gang then placed his hand right next to the site of the wound he had caused. I then watched in fascinated horror as my overlay processed what was happening.

As the nanocloud was being extracted from the dead woman's body, the outline changed around her. It had started off as a muted yellow, a sign that she had a less dense nanocloud than some people I'd met recently. Over the next few moments, that outline began to distort, then fade, until it had vanished. At the same time, my own nanocloud popped up an additional overlay showing the flow of these nanodrones in the form of bright firefly-like dots, as they flowed out of the woman's temple and into the attacker's hand, gradually mixing in with the nanodrones floating around in his own bloodstream. His outline glowed a yellow-orange and thickened as his nanocloud absorbed the additional units.

It was terrifying, yet almost impossible to look away from this scene before me.

What just happened? I asked my nanocloud.

The deceased victim's nanocloud was harvested. Estimate of approximately fifty million nanocloud drones were removed from the victim into the attacker's own bloodstream. The new units will act as an invasive organism for a while, now that its own host is deceased, until the attacker's own nanocloud can force capitulation and convert the units to operate according to its' own directive.

You were able to deduce all of this from what we are witnessing below? I'd asked, and then frowned as I realised I'd just treated the AI of my own nanocloud like a distinct entity of its own.

This conclusion has been reached based on current observations and recent host interactions with the environment.

That was weird, I thought, then directed my next query at my nanocloud. I hadn't felt like I was fighting off any illness or infection the last time I'd taken the nanocloud of an attacker.

The nanocloud is in control of the fight. Nanocloud units can engage in combat and isolate foreign invasive units without any ill effect on the host provided no surrounding cellular damage is caused in the attempt. Host has yet to experience any such occurrence.

That's interesting, I thought to myself. If an invasive nanocloud is able to overcome the host's own nanocloud regardless of the invader's own host's death, what happens then?

Unknown.

I supposed I couldn't expect any different an answer. How long does it take for either outcome?

Current estimates based on past events predict an invasive nanocloud can be stopped and defeated or converted at a rate of between 1500-2500 units/second, depending on factors such as local concentration and surrounding host tissues. During the last occurrence when fighting a human assailant, the invasive nanocloud was defeated after approximately thirty-seven minutes.

So I'd absorbed between 3.33 and 5.55 million units from the amazonian attacker I'd faced down two days before?

I didn't even have to think to work out those numbers. My nanocloud had obviously performed the calculations and inserted them at the relevant points in my thought process. I was astonished. This would have been a boon in the old world to have such computational resources at the speed of thought.

The approximate number was 4.96 million.

Now, I remembered. When the Amazonian had died at my blade, she'd bled all over me. Her nanocloud was still trying to keep her alive, and it came into contact with my skin, invading immediately to fight off my own nanocloud. I'd been far more capable of fighting off her nanocloud, having far more units in my bloodstream, but my nanocloud had kept me alert anyway, and kept me updated on its progress.

This was a subject for exploration later. It was possible to defeat one's enemies through your own bloodstream if your back was to the wall, I thought to myself, but it would no doubt be an extreme move and require a highly-dense nanocloud with units that were highly-advanced.

Host assertion is correct.

Thank you, nanocloud, I thought to myself.

I'd reached the region of my old block-of-flats almost an hour after that incident, having needed to avoid the far-too-frequent occurrences of roving thugs that seemed to be a feature of this once peaceful city. They were somewhat intact, with some disrepair on the walls, and at least half of the flats had fallen into some state, windows blown out or in, masonry starting to fall away, cladding missing from the walls, and in some extreme cases, walls starting to crumble. This was going to be risky, as I looked up at the approximate location that I knew my old flat to be in. From the outside, the walls looked intact, but for all I knew, the floors and the ceilings might have collapsed years ago. Still, I needed to get in there and see if there was anything salvageable.

After climbing for several minutes, carefully navigating unstable piles of brick and stone, I finally reached my front door. It was gone, of course, and the place looked like it had been looted, but the floors were intact, my nanocloud overlaid a structural assessment of the place, and only some portions of the ceiling looked like they would be a risk. If I was careful, I could be through this place in a matter of moments without disturbing anything.

Almost everything that wasn't fixed to the floor or the walls had been stolen. Furniture that wasn't worth anything had been either abandoned for the elements to get at, or smashed and broken apart for the raw materials. It was a sad state, this place, and I couldn't help but feel violated and saddened at the loss of my old home.

I'd expected it, of course, but I couldn't help but feel a lump in my throat. Still, I needed to move on, so I kept looking. There had to be something I could examine?

Eventually, I came across a bunch of discarded letters that had spilled out when someone had ransacked the place looking for useful materials, and my nanocloud had processed the visible portions for me without my having to pick them up, able to read their faded content despite the amount of time they had all been exposed to sunlight and what little weather was able to reach inside this apartment through the cracks in the walls.

One of those letters was precisely what I was looking for, so I grabbed it.

Synergy Nanotechnology Solutions, Limited.

Registered offices in Milton Keynes, Bristol, London, Brisbane, New York City and San Jose.

This particular letter was addressed to their nearby office in this city. I memorised the address with the help of my nanocloud, and set out to find it, leaving my old flat, and my old life, behind for the final time.

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Finding the Synergy offices was tedious, but only a matter of time. I still had the roving gangs to contend with, as well as a few outliers, almost-feral human beings who were out to try and capitalise on the atmosphere of fear that seemed to permeate the place. I was hardly the stealthiest of people, and discovered that when one of these feral creatures had spotted me and started stalking me. Despite my lack of combat experience, I found that my increased strength and speed was far more than a match for this weakened waif. His attack had been a pointless waste of his life, and his nanocloud drones had been far weaker than my own, granting me only a small increase in resources from what little I'd allowed to come into contact with me during the fight.

I snuck into the offices and started to look around, finding the same scene I'd found many times before in my recent travels. Pretty much everything had been stripped, stolen, abandoned, or destroyed for their raw materials. I did manage to come across a lucky find, though. A safe was left unopened, and while the locking mechanism had long ago lost power, the safe itself was sufficiently weak that I had been able to, with some considerable effort and my newly-enhanced strength, been able to force open the door. Inside were some documents in decent condition, as well as a portable solid state drive.

The only problem was, I didn't have a computer system to plug it into, I thought in annoyance.

A suitable interface to the device can be fashioned by the nanocloud.

I was surprised at this, so I asked. How is this possible?

Host fingernail material is extraneous to host medical needs and can be repurposed to allow an electrical connection to suitable devices within reach. Nanocloud can be tasked with reinforcing the material and converting some of it to fashion a short-range electrical and data connection to any interface small enough to reach with host's index finger.

As I received this explanation from my nanocloud, I also saw an image in my mind of my right index finger, the fingernail slightly shiny and silvered along some very narrow channels leading into my skin, and the tip of the finger extending with silver contacts that appeared to be flexible. The visual then demonstrated this with a USB-C connection, as the tendrils that extended from my fingertip all connected to the connection points in the port itself.

Solid-state devices provisioned before the nanocloud was deployed can be accessed in this manner so long as their power requirements do not exceed twenty-five watts.

I didn't need to think too deeply about that. Living beings expended energy through burning fuel, just like any machinery. The fuel source was different, as was the method by which he body burned that energy, but the principles were the same. Understanding this, I was able to see how the nanocloud could use that energy to power an external device by diverting excess energy through the drones in my blood, through the connections it would generate in my fingertip, to the storage device I now held in my hand.

Do it.

Provisioning interface through matter reconstruction. Time to completion is 30 minutes.

I had no choice but to wait. As I did, I could see the slow, painstaking process of my fingernail thinning ever-so-slightly, silver channels appearing under the surface and recessing into the skin beneath the nail, and then extending out to the tip of the nail, where a series of tendrils extended like the tips of fine hair. There were twelve in total, and I was sure this was to access all of the electrical contacts in a standard USB-C port

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Conversion complete. Interface ready.

I grabbed the portable storage device, and without any hesitation, tapped into it using the new fingertip interface my nanocloud had made for me. Within a second, my nanocloud popped up a storage interface with details on the device.

Western Digital MyTraveler 8TB SSD m.2-USB Interface

7,948GiB used, 42GiB available.

Well, shit, I thought to myself. I wouldn't be able to grab all of the data off of the drive, because I didn't have enough space provisioned in my head for that amount of data.

The storage provisioned for this drive appears to be more densely-packed than the nanocloud has given me, I observed.

Correct. Solid-state storage in host cranium is designed for very long term storage, retrieval and frequent modification when needed. Storage density has been kept lower than specified in consumer devices to accommodate redundancies and error correction.

Is there any way to increase available storage? I didn't want to carry around a device like this for others to steal or for it to break, but I needed to get a good look at all of the data on board.

Estimated time to provision 8TiB additional storage is 36 days, 3 hours, 43 minutes, not accounting for variables that may slow down modification. This procedure will also use all available safe access within the cranium. This procedure is not recommended.

I decided not to ignore my nanoclouds advice. I was sure I'd need to override its recommendations in the future, and this particular scenario was frustrating, but provisioning the entire surface of my skull for 8 terabytes of storage was not only risky, but inefficient. I'd need to look for a storage upgrade, and in the meantime, I'd need to keep this drive on my person. I dismissed the upgrade from consideration and sent a command to the storage device for a directory listing, spending several minutes looking for information.

Eventually, I secured access to a list of volunteers and their last known location as well as current known addresses. I was also fortunate to find an off-line map for most of mainland Europe on the device, so I instructed my nanocloud to retrieve both the data on the test subjects and the offline map. It should come in useful when planning my journey to each of these people.

Most of the remaining data was video footage of test subjects, company employees in archived meetings, audio of conferences and phone conversations, and a ton of database and spreadsheet data regarding not only the company's fortunes at the time I lived in the old world, as well as-

There was an experimental blueprint for a new type of 3D storage. It wasn't patented by Synergy, and it must have just come about after I'd been put under, but it was for a known documented working prototype. I grabbed this information as well, and even though it wouldn't help me in time to make a full copy of this drive, it was good for future storage considerations, so I grabbed the files and downloaded them all into my internal storage.

Now to get out of here. Some instinct told me that if anyone were to get a hold of this information and attempt to use it to track down the original volunteers, there'd be a lot of potential murders. I wouldn't be able to live with this, so all of the data that it could have provided me had to be let go.

Destroy the content of the drive once the current operation is complete.

Operation is already complete. Sending nanocloud drones through interface.

Task is to scramble drive data and self-destruct.

I was satisfied with that, and after a moment, I knew I was free to take my finger out of the interface, at which moment the small hair-like tendrils retracted back into my fingernail, and aside from the slight glint of the silver channels, it didn't look out of place. A few seconds later, the drive casing started to sizzle as the nanodrones got to work inside of it.

Data on the drive will be unrecoverable in approximately 2 minutes.

That was good enough for me, so I re-shouldered my backpack and set off to depart from the office.

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

I was maybe half an hour outside of the office complex where Synergy kept its' headquarters, before I was attacked. This time, despite the advanced warning from my nanocloud, the assailants were better equipped, meaner, more disciplined, and far stronger. These were not novices, and as they easily outpaced, outclassed and outmanoeuvred me, I realised that they'd been looking for me in particular, as they bundled me into the back of a trailer and then drove off toward the city centre.

My life was now in the hands of brigands and murderers.

I bounced around like a sack of rubber shit in the back of the vehicle they'd stuffed me into, as we clearly drove along uneven surfaces, through streets, over fuck knows what detritus on the roads and other terrain. Whoever was driving this thing didn't give a single fuck for anyone that might be in their way, nor for the passengers who were trussed up like a turkey and therefore unable to get a good grip to steady themselves. It also didn't help that I could see fuck all.

I banged my head sixteen times in the back of the fucking thing, every one of those times when the driver decided to lead-foot it over pot-holes, kerbs, rubble, and possibly even bodies, round a corner at too fast a speed, or even both at the same time.

Despite the blindfold and gag, my nanocloud kept itself busy, registering every jolt, change in velocity, change in the local environment that it could read through my nervous system and directly through contact with my skin, and through all of this, it generated a map in my mind. I ignored its' progress, confident the nanocloud would continue working on it in the background, and while a notification appeared to remind me it was still working on the task, it didn't bother me further with the task.

I was surprised the nanocloud could read me that easily.

We eventually came to a stop.

I listened as metal shutters screeched, electrical motors droned to life, and then all went silent after a few minutes. The vehicle moved again, taking us down a slight gradient. I was betting this would be an underground car park in the old world.

We stopped again, and nothing happened for a half a minute, until the doors to where I was being held slammed open and fresh air circulated about the cabin. Rough hands took hold of me, dragging me out, and I stumbled a bit before I got a hold of my footing. We walked along a concrete walkway from what I could tell, and eventually, I ended up walking into a much smaller space. They stopped me in the middle of this space, I heard a scrape as something was shoved into the back of my shins, and I was forced to sit. My arms were then tied behind my back, then to the back of the chair that I realised I was sitting in.

Then they finally ripped the hood off of my face.

I was right. This was indeed a small room, the walls all exposed brick and concrete blocks, whatever remains of the plastering on the walls had deteriorated long ago, and little was left of the original room, that I couldn't tell what it might once have been used for.

They pulled the disgusting sock out of my mouth, and I wanted to puke on their feet, just to piss them off. My nanocloud had overridden my emetic reflex, however, so I was left just glaring at them, and I received a whack to the face for my trouble.

They both then left the room, leaving me to stew for a few minutes, I guessed.

Well, I wasn't going to do that.

We are captured, and need to plan escape. What options do we have?

There is insufficient data to plan an escape at this time. Recommend obtaining more information about host predicament and kidnapper's intentions. Nanocloud will retain all knowledge for future evaluation and formulate recommendations when it is appropriate.

I had no clue why I was here, only that I'd been grabbed by four very strong assailants who operated without hesitation, said nothing, and gave away no hint as to their intentions. they'd clearly targeted, monitored and then taken me when it suited them, and now I needed to find out why.

I waited.

I also realised that this room had very poor ventilation, the ducts that once provided it were long cut away and the holes leading to ventilation shafts elsewhere in the building had been sealed. I had no idea what they'd used, and I wasn't in the mood to guess. It would no doubt get really hot and stuffy in here, very quickly. I've no doubt my nanocloud would manage it for me if it became too much.

This was possibly one of the tactics my captors were going to use to soften me up. I did the only thing I could. I stilled my mind, asked my nanocloud to keep alert for any changes and to encourage somnolence in my brain chemistry, and then I willed myself to sleep.

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

I was rudely awakened by a door slamming open, and my nanocloud immediately flooded my brain with compounds intended to bring me alert as quickly as possible.

It worked... Really fucking well. I felt like I'd downed five cups of espresso.

So I was fully awake and alert by the time I was grabbed, dragged out of the room and into another one in the adjacent doorway, one that had a metal chair, a table, and three other goons all on their feet. They quickly chained me to the chair using some of those really thick chains they used to operate massive shutter doors when the power went out. They also made sure those fuckers were nice and tight, with very little flexing or manoeuvring room for my arms or legs. My captors then stood guard, as if I could break out of these chains any time soon.

"Well, what do we have here?" The tallest of the three let out in an amused drawl.

Tall Lanky Dickhead. That was my personal nickname for the wiry man in a sharp suit that had a carefully-maintained hairstyle completely at odds with everything I'd seen since waking up in this fucked up world. If it weren't for the ugly pattern of scars across his nose and forehead and the tattoos inked across his neck and fists, I might have mistaken him for someone who had been woken up out of a cryogenic chamber a few minutes before with a clean change of clothing.

He carried on, like a fucking Bond villain who loved the sound of his own voice. "A test subject from the company that caused all of the world's problems in the first place!"

Yeah, and you can go fuck yourself, buddy, I thought to myself as I glared at him. In spite of my internalised bravado, this was an alarming situation. If these people knew about the Synergy test programme, and they were going to interrogate me about it, my life and the lives of those in the programme still alive, were all now in danger.

Maybe they always were, with these people, and they just didn't know it. I certainly didn't have a clue before these fucks grabbed me out of nowhere.

"What do you want?" I demanded. Assess escape possibilities out of this room under current conditions, I instructed my nanocloud.

Stand by for assessment.

"Wipe that look off of his face," TLD jerked his head to one side, toward the largest, bulkiest motherfucker I had ever seen. My nanocloud didn't waste any time, as it popped an alert into my mind.

Combat mode engaged.

Moderating negative emotional impulses.

Securing inter-organism transfer against intrusion.

I had no idea what that last statement meant.

This Brett Azar wannabe stepped forward with a glint in his eye and a mean looking grimace on his face, no doubt looking to intimidate me into compliance, maybe give me a frisson of fear. My nanocloud began working to dampen all of my emotional responses save for my fight instincts, calming the panic I might have otherwise felt at this situation.

It didn't do anything for my fury, though, and that was just fucking fine by me.

It also did absolutely nothing for my bones or other bodily organs, as I soon discovered when a large fist connected with my jaw, fracturing it and causing agony to radiate through my entire head. The pain was very quickly muted though, and my nanocloud popped up an alert.

WARNING: Detected hairline fractures throughout cranial region.

Deploying nanocloud as reinforcement.

I'd worry about that later. For now, I glared even harder back at the tall lanky dickhead. He wasn't going to cow me like this, I thought with grim determination.

"You're going to tell us what you know about this project you were involved in, then you're going to help us find the participants in this programme so we can harvest them for their nanites," the arsehole told me. "You'll do it, because there's a lot of untapped nanite potential in their bodies, and it's not fair to anyone else that they're keeping it to themselves."

Yeah, like you're fucking concerned about fairness or anyone outside of your group, you sadistic fuck.

"Why the interest?" I asked, feeling my jaw and the fractures as I moved to speak.

TLD turned to a short, stocky man on his left, a brute of a man with rippling muscle that looked like a young Franco Colombu back in his bodybuilding prime. "Lesson one," he spoke softly.

"Fuck your lessons," I sneered.

Short stacks came striding right up to me, and without hesitation or preamble, swung his fist right at my left temple. It was so powerful, that my head bounced off of my right shoulder from the impact, and the pain made me blank out for a moment. Another warning about fracturing of my bones popped up. I then saw a visual of my skull. While the bone was far denser than it used to be, it was still able to be broken if enough force was applied, and that fist felt like a fucking lump hammer.

TLD spoke again. "You will speak only when you are asked a question, and you will only do so to answer that question."

I said nothing, adhering to the request in fact, if not in spirit, as I glared even harder at him.

"Lesson two," he said gently.

"Go fuck yourself," I said as the same brute drove his fist like a sledge hammer into my stomach, the pain radiating out all across my core. I probably would have puked my fucking guts out all over the guy, and wished I could, except my nanocloud was keeping a very tight leash on my bodily responses right then.

"You will not act in defiance, either with your eyes, hands, voice or anything else," TLD said.

"Just ask your quest-" I started when the brute interrupted with a sharp jab to the nose, breaking it for me.

That was just fucking great, I thought to myself. I got almost sixty years of my life without a single broken bone, and now this fucker comes along and breaks it for me. "I don't think you were paying attention," the brute sneered. "Speak only when spoken to."

I turned my glare to him instead, and held it there.

Fuck all of you guys if you think I'll act the way you want me to.

"Maybe we should harvest him?" The Brett Azar wannabe spoke softly.

"You'd have done it already," I spat, earning another thump to the side of the head from the Colombu wannabe. "Whatever dominance game you are trying to play here isn't going to work."

This time, the short little wanker looked to TLD, as if unsure how to proceed. TLD shook his head as I turned my glare back to him.

"Maybe you have a death wish?" he sounded amused. "Whatever. All we want is to find the others. They've got a lot of valuable nanite functions and harvesting it will benefit my associates and I greatly. If you don't help us find them, it'll only slow us down, but it will cost you your own life in the process. I'll give you some time to think it over."

"I don't need time to think it over, you sick fuck," I spat at him. "If I die, at least you won't get what you want, and they'll be safe for a little bit longer-"

The Brett Azar wannabe whacked me across the back of the head. Surprisingly, I didn't register any further breakage. I'd have to puzzle that one out later.

TLD snickered, gesturing for the two thugs by my side to follow him out. "I'll still give you some time. Don't waste it."

They then all stepped out of the room, leaving me with the only remaining guard, who no doubt would be watching me closely.