Chapter 12

His phone rang at 12:00 hrs with the caller id showing Nomad. He answered the call and saw Nomad’s portrait in the holographic inset window of his hud. Nomad gave him a terse nod as he greeted Jon. They got the small talk pleasantries out of the way. His name change, and absence from the Knowhere, then got to biz.

“Been seein more of you around Knowhere lately. What’s that about?”

“That’s private.”

Nomad’s shoulders bobbed in an indifferent shrug and he leaned closer to the screen. “Why are you pulling merc gig’s? Thought you were a true believer?”

“I was . But I guess the dream had an expiration date and I finally woke up.”

Nomad’s brow quirked upwards as he stroked his chin thoughtfully. “So what? You just plyin’ those skills as a merc now? You some kinda adrenaline junky? Lookin at life like an Edgerunner now?”

Jon frowned, a curt shake of his head. “Nothing like that. Got some shit to make right.”

Nomad leaned forward with a grin. “Still a true believer, eh?”

A beat passed, and Jon allowed himself a defeated nod. “Yeah. Someone has to. Otherwise we let them win.”

“Safe to say they already have.”

“Then I aim to make it as expensive and costly as humanly imaginable.”

Nomad clapped his hands together and grinned like Jon had given him the answer he was hoping for. “Good. In that case? Got biz for ya. Corpo hit. Something you’d like.”

“I’m listening.”

“Haltech squeezed out a smaller competitor. Absorbed all their assets.”

“Right. Saw the news. That’s the life.”

“You didn’t see them take on the CEO. Former CEO had a considerable nest egg. Wants to spend hard stolen money hitting back at Haltech.”

The corner of Jon’s lip tried to curl upward, but he schooled his features neutral. “What’s the target?”

“Haltech’s got a mech factory in the badlands just past the sprawl. The gig is to hit that factory. Burn it to the foundation. Wants Haltech to squirm.”

Jon thanked Raven for setting this up under his breath. “I’m in.”

The call ended after the two of them finished discussing the details. The door to his gear room opened and revealed half filled slots of weapons and hardware. The trip to the badlands would take him a few days to make. He needed something with space to haul the hardware. His black sedan was less than ideal for the journey.

Packing for the gig took him less time than he expected. Estimating his needs for the mission based on past in the military made the process smooth. He took enough for a prolonged siege, but expected to use only enough for a precision strike. Better to come too prepared than not enough.

He lifted the black bag by its canvas strap. The nylon fabric straining against the weight in his grip. The padded strap slid over his shoulder without fuss and he remembered thinking to himself if he did this a year ago the weight would have been too much. Now he barely registered the weight at all. His limbs didn’t register the difference. He may as well be lugging around an awkward pillow.

The most expensive part of the trip was purchasing an off-road truck. To approach the facility, he planned to veer off the main road and use the countryside to come in at the facility from the side. Unfamiliar with the area, he had to depend on the Outriders, and hire a guide. Since the Outriders had no love for the corporations, he didn’t expect resistance on that front.

They’d see him coming long before he got there, so he knew he wouldn’t have to look for them. They would meet him when once he got too close for their own comfort. Then a simple negotiation. They’d task him with a handler just to keep things clean.

The ride down the tower in the elevator’s cage gave him plenty of time to stew in his own thoughts. Tuning out the noise of the constantly playing ads and news on the quad screen in the dirty elevator car. Large twin black bags stuffed to the gills with weapons and ammo slung from his shoulders. The bags earned him odd looks from the rest of the inhabitants of the tower, steering wide of him like small schools of fish making way for a cruising shark.

The cage doors split open to allow him to exit into the parking garage. Motor oil and exhaust fumes gusted by carbon fueled breezes. The truck he bought had a solar rig on the rooftop to help once he cleared the sprawl. Charge stations got less frequent in the badlands, and he didn’t trust them to be safe enough. The hassle of fending off scavs while recharging being grossly unappealing.

He set both bags in the back of the truck, drawing a pistol from its zippered pouch, tucking the sidearm into a concealed holster. He didn’t expect to need it, but liked to have something at all times. The result of a hard lesson learned at Sam’s expense. Opening the driver’s side door, he slid inside, and pressed the activation button the truck. The engine revved slightly under his foot, and he couldn’t help a juvenile grin.

Before he pulled out, he stopped to look at his hands. The unnatural stillness of them unsettled him. He caught the frown that creased his expression in the rear-view mirror. His hands used to shake with permission jitters. These phantom hands of his didn’t do that.

Letting go of the wheel, he tried to approximate the trembling he used to suffer from. The movement came off awkward, jerky, stiff. He looked like he was trying to shake water off his hands; the movements were too exaggerated, forced, not slight shaking nervous tremors. He really hated how fucking dead his body behaved sometimes.

He threw the truck in reverse and slammed on the accelerator. The wheels screeched as the massive vehicle lurched into motion. He was out of the complex and on the street, heading for the interstate smoothly. As the open road met the corpo-suburban sprawl, he settled in more comfortably.

Thankful for something else to focus on besides his augmentations and how they didn’t really register like they belonged to him. Phantom limbs of a dead man. They detected touch, but failed to articulate life. No actual sensations.

Their only saving grace being that they worked well enough, strong enough to strangle the bastards who ordered the hit on Sam. That would do just fine. He carried that thought with him as he cruised through what used to be old Virginia before the region became simply the Sprawl. The ember of hate in his chest stoked a bright white hot.

#

Jon stood some distance from the perimeter fence to Haltech’s fully automated mech factory. Sand rode on rough winds that bit at his exposed skin, what little he had left. The facility comprised a sprawling complex that stood at its highest, a mere three stories tall, and contained several wide buildings linked by smaller narrow access ways. Those were likely assembly lines routing throughout the facility.

Since they automated most of construction, Haltech limited on-site personnel to technicians, mechanics, and a small security detail. He dialed up his local guide.

“Alek here. Go ahead.”

“It’s Knight. I’m on site.”

“Alright. The layouts are pretty visible, so I won’t hold your hand. Just be careful. The site may seem like an easy target because the factory is in the ass end of the badlands, but the place has a pucker factor that’ll make anyone into butt stuff jealous of. The facility is almost completely bot run. Which means Haltech has a pretty heavy lifting VI doing the data crunching.”

“Anything else?”

“Well, we’ve steered clear of the perimeter, mostly. Outriders don’t like getting caught out in Corpo scrapes. That place is one of their primary hubs for building their combat bots. If someone hired you to zero the place, they must be pissed Haltech.”

“Yea.” Jon neglected to add that this was for himself, too.

“Can’t blame them. Haltech’s entire operation reads like a predictive text on the world’s worst villain phone. Build a mech army, deregulate the world, take over everything or stomp resistance out. And since they’re doing this with drones, Johnny and Suzy America don’t give two shits about what’s happening. What did their ad say that one time? A safer form of war for a cleaner America.”

“Leaving the corporations free to continue on as normal,” said Jon.

“Exactly. Until some pissed off B company, former CEO hires you to zero the joint.”

“Yea. Well, thanks for getting me this far. I’ll take over from here on out.”

“Good luck,” Alek said, and the line went dead.

He glanced down at the rifle in his hands. This would be the first offensive action he took against the company, and they owed him big for Sam, not to mention himself. He approached the fence, looping his hand through the chain-link mesh, and fished out his cutter from a vest pocket. Cutting through the thin steel wire was a fast affair, and in short order, he opened a hole large enough to pass through.

The other side of the fence laid itself bare to him. A large square perimeter with a road ringing the edge at a few meters remove. Far enough back that a couple of small wires secured the clipped fencing together convincingly enough. A closer inspection would reveal the breach, but a casual drive by at twenty miles per hour would show them what they expected to see.

The white corrugated aluminum siding gave the entire facility an identical look. Efficient if aesthetically bland. But this was a factory, not an art déco house. The Haltech logo decorated several of the larger buildings. A large solar power antenna array rose high in the far corner of the factory, getting energy microwave beamed down from orbit.

Jon looked skyward, almost able to pick out the light and shadow of the Avalon stellar colony. The place all the extremely wealthy moved to after they’d drained the earth dry of all its money and resources. Jon likened them to locusts. Consuming everything available and then moving on. His gaze fell back down to the facility with a bitter grin. He’d come here to step on some bugs.

Ahead of him, two separate and smaller buildings sat apart from the production buildings that Jon assumed held the security and maintenance elements. The security one might be worth hitting, but he saw no value in the maintenance building. They had cleared the perimeter interior of all standard desert shrubbery. Not even a lone brittlebush. The clear and barren landscape gave him an exceptionally easy view of the entire perimeter.

He checked the mag in his rifle, ensuring a seated fit, and then pulled the charging handle back and racked a round in the chamber. As he marched forward, he eased the safety off with his thumb, allowing the slow boiling rage to grow from the ember within his chest. There wasn’t much of him left that was flesh and blood original. Haltech had seen to that efficiently enough. Memories of the golden hued full reskins that worked for Toranaga flashed. Jon intended to repay the favor in kind tonight.

A static guard stood in his way. Jon dropped to a knee and scoped the target. He scoffed when he realized he was looking at one of Haltech’s mechs. The decision made sense to use the machines as guards, too. Networking them all up to a low grade VI to run the security, and then you just hire the minimum of human guards to supervise over the things. Toy soldiers on strings. He lips curled into a sneer. He squeezed the trigger. A light blue spiraling magnetic streamer rippled from the barrel. The mech’s head unit exploded into a bunch of expensive debris as the mangled mech clattered to the ground in a heap. Sparks and surging energy danced from the wound for a moment before fading. Nothing but an overpriced paperweight now.

Jon got to his feet, advancing again in one fluid motion. Just ahead of the mech’s prone body stood a locked door in the facility. He dropped into a crouch near the door. He needed to crack the code. Turning his left hand palm up he removed a small connector cable coiled in his palm. He never did this before, direct neural system infiltration. In the past, he always used devices in the middle since he lacked augmentations. A moment’s hesitation washed over him, and he inserted the cable into the box. He could just blow the doors and go loud.

He shook his head, steeling himself with resolve. He would get nowhere if he didn’t take the risks. He come here for a war with Haltech, and he intended to have one. But he wanted a war on his terms. Not theirs. Tired of letting them dictate the terms of engagement. He sucked in a deep breath and jacked into the terminal.

‎

‎

‎ A weightless sensation overtook him, and for an instant he wanted to flail as he feared falling without a chute. It reminded him of his days of training in airborne school. The momentary weightless sensation, but this endured longer than a scant few seconds. There was no inevitable tug on his shoulders from his chute straps as Newton’s first law kicked in.

Glyphs and cyphers flashed in and out of vision as something of a raw visual construct took shape before him. The environment had a basic and generic appearance. Something from the mid to late 20th century. A long plane flowed beneath him into oblivion. There was also one that bisected the first, creating rows of glowing tiles. He realized these were rough X and Y coordinates. A Graph or grid plane? Intuitively, he knew this was his mind making vague sense of the code landscape he plugged into.

He nudged himself forward a grid space uneasily. Below him, a singular square of code sprawled beneath. He had briefly had the sensation of motion and stillness at the same time and struggled to parse the two notions together into something he understood. He fumbled at the sprawling landscape for a moment, trying to find something he could grasp onto for stability, but found he had nothing but himself.

Not unused to alien situations. He took a deep breath. He came here with a task. A mission. Focus on the mission, he ordered himself. A large red rectangle resolved in the distance, several grid squares ahead of himself and up. That was new. Focusing on the new geometric shape, he sensed something related this to his aim. The rudimentary ICE of the door code. He moved to within a grid space away from it on the X axis.

On his approach, fractal patterns and geometric shapes writhed and twisted from the edges of the red rectangle as the ICE registered his presence as foreign and hostile. He had a few executables at his command thanks to the softs installed in his implant. Quick hacks. He was no NetRunner by any standards. He clearly wasn’t a Soft Jockey. No, he was a novice, capable of firing off daemons that did what a more experienced user could accomplish on their own.

He selected the cracker, targeting the ICE. Before the intrusion prevention software deployed any softs and ejected him from its local network, he deployed the cracker. A green sphere rushed ahead of him, crashing into the red rectangle. The two geometric representations collided with each other. Where the two surfaces met, the ICE and the Daemon plugged into each other like a virus looking for its protein access on a cell.

The two geometric shapes cast soft red and green glows into the black void of the local network. The only other source of light being that from the axial grid squares. As the two shapes warred with each other for dominance, he allowed himself a moment’s distraction, watching scrawling bits of code racing along the grid lines that built this neural construct.

His daemon overtook the ICE construct with patient ease. While observing, a thought occurred to him; did time pass at regular speed in here? Was he just crouching there by the door, exposed like a wonk? Drawn back from his wonderings about time in an artificial reality, the sphere finished devouring the last of the red ICE. When last vestiges of the ICE disintegrated under the daemon’s assault, the sphere changed into a white rectangular shape that let off a soft white glow. Like an opened doorway that allowed sprawling white rectangle of light to spill out and fall onto the void of the grid scape.

Instinctively he knew he finished his task, even though he had done little of the heavy lifting. The doorway, as he remembered, stood beckoning to him. He took a hesitant breath, then advanced through the doorway his daemon created. When he entered, a brilliant flash of white nearly blinded him. A rushing sensation thrilled through him, and the connection ended.

‎

‎

‎ Awareness crashed into him with a gasp, and he opened his eyes. Instantly aware that he was still on a knee by the door, he disconnected the wire from the port. The chronometer showed he only jacked in for a couple seconds, tops. The events only took several minutes inside. The cord retracted back into the base of his palm at the wrist. Checking the code box on the door to see the lock was green for him, he reached up and hit the enter command. The door beeped cheerily in compliance and opened for him with a hushed whisk and oiled steel slid open.

Inside the factory, he advanced through the tiny lobby area. A small square shaped area rimmed by two seat couches on opposite walls sat in front of a reception desk. Checkered black-and-white floor tiling gave the lobby area a very fabricated standard look. The actual reception area of the lobby held a mech torso in front of a system terminal. Jon got the impression foot traffic through the facility was typically on the light end, with just enough infrastructure to carry out basic needs. The half mech looked up, going through a scripted greeting. Two shots from his pistol shattered the mechs visor. Sparks spurted from the opening as the drone shuddered a few times and fell still, staining the floor tile lavender with coolant fluid. Beyond the lobby area was a small maintenance worker area. Work area was a small branching corridor that held a tool shop, and a repair area where some dismantled robotic arms sat in various states of work. He yanked a white phosphorus grenade off his vest, primed explosive, and then rolled the can down the corridor as grenade came to a rest in the center of the room. The blast went off, setting fire to everything in a five meter circle. The flames lapped greedily at the walls, spare parts, boxes and various tools. Melted plastic and burning metal quickly filled the air.

Alarms went off throughout the factory. Fire response mechs assembled and marched down the corridor. Strobing red lights created a hallucinogenic look as they steadily rotated on a vertical axis in the lobby and maintenance areas. A doorway near the blaze he started whisked open. Several mechs stepped in carrying fire suppression gear, and scanned the area. Before they got to work, he sighted down his scope and put a round through each mechs camera unit. They tumbled helplessly to the floor with a loud clattering against the metal grating on the ground. The downed mechs soon added to the base of the fire like new logs in a fireplace. Soon after the building’s fire suppression system triggered, but system wouldn’t be able to contain the willy pete fire. The Phosphorous fire would burn until there was nothing left to burn. Progressing on his planned route, he advanced forward into a large assembly area. Yellow and black stripped caution tape blocked off boxes around the robots building the mechs. The area was loud, as pneumatic and electrical presses and molds operated in one area, and several other assembly points throughout the first factory area he found. Peeking at what they were building, he spotted various components used in the head camera housing on one belt.

Driven forward by a steady rage that simmered just below his collarbone, he followed the caution tape walkway. He passed by several large molds, making external casings for the torso of the mechs. A low steady mechanical hum as the pressed, stamped material and then withdrew with a loud clanking noise, pause, then pressed forward again. He moved cautiously through the lines of presses, assembly points, and advancing belts, doing his best to filter out the ambient motion and noise. Being unfamiliar with factory interiors, though, he navigated cautiously. Instead, he wound up turning to aim at just about every motion or noise he didn’t expect seeing or hearing first.

A hand clamped down on his shoulder. Reflexively, he twisted himself to wrench free of the grip. A half finished mech with one arm had seized him. Its twin flat digits bit down into the soft tissue of his shoulder as the other socket sparked, several torn wires belching energy to power commands unreceived. The unfinished mech fought to use its weight and strength to pin him in place to buy time. Several more were climbing off the assembly line in various states of construction. One unit had only one arm. Another sported an unfinished hand. He caught sight of another power stroking itself along on two arms that ended in stumps at the wrists. Its arms moved like aquatic props churning water.

The metallic fingers clamped into his shoulders, fire and light exploded in his nerves, radiating outwards like electric aftershocks. He rolled the half finished unit over his shoulder, and fired a round into its smooth featureless faceplate, ruining the visual and sensor package as its body twitched under commands the chassis couldn’t respond to. Ringing resonated in his ears from the close range discharge of the pistol, and he shook his head several times to clear the tinnitus in his ears. Bits of clear polymer and ruined pieces of sensor sprinkled off his combat vest.

Shrugging off the ruined half built mech, he let the legless torso drop to the factory floor with a loud clank. He checked his shoulder, and his hand came away slick with blood. Cursing under his breath, he flicked the blood off his hand. Now that he had some standoff, he took the time to line his shots up. Stubby, Spinner and Lefty all caught shots into the faceplate. Spinner’s handless arms clapped on the concrete floor as its body crashed down. Stubby lurched hard to the right as the round bored through the back of its head bit into the battery pack on its back. Sparks rooster tailed out because of the lithium reaction to atmosphere. Left snagged on Spinner, the wiring that trailed out of its torso unit unfinished catching on the ruined mass of Spinner’s head unit. Jon approached the downed drone to lean over and fired a round into its head square in the center. Cameras and sensors shattered in a shower of sparks and glitter.

The next section of the factory held another assembly area. A giant automated Geppetto workshop building an army of weaponized Pinocchio’s. A long track along the ceiling ran in a loop, with a giant robot arm that would grab the torsos and run it the length of this portion. Ground based arms then fix the legs and lower torso to the body.

He checked his gear and then glanced around the facility again. Stopping manufacturing was possible. Set back production for a while, sure, but if he really wanted to put this place out, he needed to rethink his approach if he wanted to level the entire site.

Facility damage isn’t enough to set a few fires, or set off some explosives. He wanted something for some heavy lifting. Some hand of god level shit. Making his way through an exit on a far wall, he stepped outside, the cool desert air kiss at the wound on his shoulder. The puff of dust as his boots settled into the sand. The environment reminded him of Iraq, but not as fine. Less like talcum powder and more grainy, but only just. So brown and void of any texture but coarse powder. And the absolute absence of green.

The stars were out in full force, spread out as far as the eye could see. Specks of white splashed across a lavender and black canvas stretched across the horizon above. The fire klaxons blaring behind him periodically splashed the desert in yellow caution lights and flecks of orange that lapped up from windows and doorways of the anterior building.

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

He spotted the solar power antennas and the beginning of an idea hit him. He glanced up at the stars and saw a few twinkling. He liked to imagine it was the Haltech power satellite in orbit waving to him. The antenna control shed sat next to the energy collection dishes. Just a small white shed just large enough to step inside and operate a terminal. It had the same corrugated aluminum siding and roof on it, with a small sign posted next to it announcing its purpose.

The lock on the door was a simple old-fashioned metal key lock that just punched open. The ruined mass of the steel handle mashed against the four knuckled print of his fist as he stamped into the front of the door. Nudging it open, he saw the operator’s terminal in standby mode. The energy feed process automated itself, so it didn’t require a human presence unless changes were necessary.

In this chase, changes were necessary. Lots of changes. This kind of work required a runner of capable skill. He lacked the network skill to handle the more focused ICE he stood to encounter on this terminal, and a quick hack wouldn’t cut it. He had to get Raven involved. He opened his contacts in his hud and scrolled down to her listing and called.

Raven’s holo-id icon sported a stylized raven with arms spread in flight inset in the box. It flashed a few times as the line rang, and then she answered.

“Jon?”

“Hey Raven.”

“I almost didn’t answer. The holo-id was unknown. Did you rechip yourself?”

“Nah, ran a scrubber from the Diva. Listen, this is a biz call more than a social call. I need your help.”

“With?” Raven said, leaning forward in the holo portrait. There was caution in her voice. She was curious, but hesitant.

“I’m on a job and I need to breach some ICE on a terminal.”

“Ok, I can piggy back through you. One sec.”

The background behind her moved as she stood up and took a seat in a large chair and leaned back. “When I jack in, I won’t be able to talk, but I’ll be riding your implant piggy back. We’ll share vision. What you do I’ll feel. So jack into the terminal, and I’ll take it from there. Rather than push your signal, I’ll push mine.”

He hesitated. This wasn’t exactly what he had in mind. “There isn’t any other way?”

“Jon. It’s the fastest way. I’m assuming you don’t really have a lot of time to work with.”

That was a fair point. He glanced back behind him at the smashed door. Given the time, this wasp nest would send more drones after him. So wasting it busting down the door isn’t in his best interest. He turned back to the terminal and sighed reluctantly.

“Alright. Let’s do it.”

Raven jacked in, then went silent. With the line between them still connected, he then plugged in his jack into the terminal. Uncertainty over what to expect. White noise and static filled his mind for a moment as it struggled to make sense of all the data input. He clutched his head for a moment, almost falling out of his seat from vertigo. Clenching his eyes shut, he sucked in a deep breath to focus himself.

A hand clamped down his back. He fell over disoriented and realized he was in a construct again. He blinked a few times, turned, and found Raven in the construct with him inspecting their surroundings. Standing up, he registered the smooth black walls and floor tiles. It had that corpo design aesthetic.

“I thought you’d be doing this without me?” he asked.

Raven shook her head, still taking in the surroundings. “I wasn’t sure how a piggy backed carrier signal would work jacking in. I guess you somehow dragged me in with you. This works out. I might need back up in here.”

“This differs from the last time I jacked into something,” Jon said.

Raven nodded indifferently. “Different devices have different ICE complexities. Rule of thumb: the more elaborate the construct, the more complex the ICE protecting it is. Something about the rule of fidelity to the rule of complexity.”

That tracked, he supposed. A simple door lock code working with basic geometry paled compared to a full-fledged network terminal that could create its own cyberspace matrix. The construct here dropped them in a Haltech flavored standard office room. His assumption held that if they moved beyond the room, it would look like they were in an office building.

Jon kneeled down and traced a hand along the floor. Where his finger touched the tile, glyphs, cyphers and code glowed in an afterimage where he touched. It looked like video clips of the glowing algae being disturbed. He remembered the grid lines in the door lock’s construct and assumed this was similar. The flow of data to and from, unbothered by his foreign presence. Just ones and zeros doing their jobs, oblivious to him. He turned and approached a wall, placing his hand flat against it. This also glowed.

“Is this normal?”

Raven turned to face him, having taken stock of their setting. She narrowed her eyes as he poked the wall a few times to make the effect. An unamused expression flashed across her face as she approached the door to inspect it.

“Yea, it’s your mind machine interface struggling to keep the inferred digital reality and outside the construct reality separate. Some code jockeys get too cozy in constructs and lose themselves. Can’t tell which is real and which is fake. If they’re still plugged in or not. It’s the brain’s way of trying to keep the two worlds apart.”

“Reality is only what you think it is, is that it?”

Raven grunted an affirmative as she worked.

The hair on the back of his neck rise with the kiss of an imagined cool breeze. He rubbed his arms unconsciously until he glanced down, watching the gesture, and blinked. His arms they weren’t prosthetic.

“Raven?” he said, still looking at the flesh and blood hands.

“Busy,” she said, leaning to the left and right inspecting the door still, then peered into the lock with a squinted eye.

“Why does my body look like it did before... well, you know?”

Raven’s expression softened, and she turned to look at him, noting his appearance for the first time. “Oh,” she whispered. A slight frown creasing her lips. She stood, holding her arms close to her chest. A gesture she did when uncomfortable.

“Well, since it builds the Construct using your mind, it relies on what your mind says you look like.”

“So in here I get to look like me before they blew me half the hell,” Jon said. That was dangerous and suddenly underscored the danger runners faced. The temptation to live in a world where you could craft your own reality. He turned his hand over in front of him several times and rubbed his fingers together.

“Why does it feel so real?”

“It doesn’t. It’s the construct using neurological memories and mirroring the data. Because you remember tactile contact on your skin, it registers real to your mind in here. The soft brush of hair, or the prick of a needle, it’s all relived.”

“What is a soul?” he said, repeating a question he heard once.

“Beg pardon?”

He gave Raven an apologetic smile. “It’s nothing. Just a question someone asked once in school, I think. The professor asked what a soul was. He reasoned it was the memories that gave someone the unreplaceable ‘it’ factor. That a person is the sum of their memories. That if you changed those memories or even removed them, the person would change. Reasoning that memory made someone’s ‘soul’. Giving them their uniqueness.”

She pointed to him. “Guess you’re still human then.”

Raven went to work inspecting the door’s lock, leaving him there to his musing for a moment. She’d meant it as a light-hearted pick me up comment, but what she said resonated to him differently. She was right. He still had his memories. His soul, if he were to buy the argument his professor had made. Maybe he’s not as much of a monster as he accused her of turning him into?

Before he could make amends, though, a door behind them thudded. Jon turned to it, and it slammed again. Something big and heavy was banging into it. “Raven. The hell is that?”

She fished something out of a pouch on her skinsuit. Lock picks? She went to work on the door. “It’s probably the ICE’s counter measures. They won’t be happy we’re in here.”

“What are we facing?”

“Think goons. They’ll be daemons, most likely. Executables sent to forcefully eject us. But because we’re in the construct, it will parse the data to make it something you can wrap your head around.”

The door thudded several more times before bursting off its hinges and falling flat to the floor with a loud crash. A figure stepped through the doorway. It wore a Haltech security outfit, but where the face would be, it was just a strange blank surface. It was a humanoid shape, but lacked any defining features. Like someone had taken a massive eraser to the guard’s face and scrubbed it away.

“I need time,” Raven said over her shoulder.

Jon rolled his shoulders and flexed his fingers. Time he could do. Fake or not, fighting was something he understood. The security program / guard / daemon stepped through the doorway’s threshold and Jon caught a wave of bright glowing teal wash down its body like a system scan being run on it as it entered the construct. It then leveled its gaze at him.

It launched at him with lightening reflexes, catching him square in the chest. Pain exploded in his chest and light flashed behind his eyelids. He clenched his torso muscles, trying to blunt the impact as best he could. He even caught a hint of the code glyphs and cyphers in his eyelids. He was hit hard before in his life, but this rated top three easily.

Catching the offending fist at the wrist, he twisted it away and rolled it so the palm was face up, then torqued it back and away. The human body was still just a machine. Designed with operating tolerances and limits. That included angles of flexibility and durability. But if this daemon experienced pain, it wasn’t obvious. He just restrained the arm from use.

He could have been ok with that, content with restraining it. Until it crashed the other fist into the side of his face and sending him sprawling in an ungraceful heap to fall on his face. A pained groan eased past his lips. His mouth tasted like pennies, and he knew there was a nasty cut on his lip. Blood trickled from his nose, dripping down past his upper lip in a slow, steady path. Did that thing just break his nose?

He wobbled as he rose upright. “Raven? Little help here?”

“Almost done,” she called out over her shoulder, still working at the door.

Jon sighed. He didn’t know how much more of this he could take. His vision was already darkening and narrow. It was like looking through a dark tunnel. If he died in here, was that it? Or would he just wake up at the end on the other side? Even as he asked himself the question, he had his answer.

He heard horror stories about runners who got digitally zeroed in the construct. Their bodies were reduced to comatose vegetables. Little more than organs running with no personality. No memories. If he died here, who would avenge Sam? Who would make Haltech pay? Who would get them justice?

He stood up, wiping his face off. This place wreaked of temptation. Seeing himself as he used to be. He could just stay jacked in. It went beyond vanity. It was more about feeling like his complete self.

The daemon stood motionless, waiting for his next move. It was stronger and faster than he was, and ran on rules that ignored human design like pain. He didn’t see any sign it needed to breathe. That meant his only option left is ruining its limbs. Jon grinned wickedly. This thing might be a collection of code and softs compiled to beat up and abuse, but it lacked the memories. The instincts. The training. It just had a list of routines. And that made it predictable. He could work with that.

It lunged, another fast punch, but he was already dropping below the fist, advancing even as he fell to a single leg. In a blur, he hooked the daemon by the hamstrings on both legs and drove his shoulder forward while tugging its legs out from under it. They crashed into floor tile with a dull thud. Had the thing breathed, it would have been breathless, but this was the shit hand it dealt him.

Jon scrambled on top of the faceless daemon, getting into its guard. This was a dangerous place to be, and he didn’t intend to remain long. Sure enough, its legs locked up around him tight. Trapped between twin python like thighs trying to strangle the air from his waist the fastest in a competition. This close, it couldn’t rain down ridiculous blows on him since he stayed close to the body and in an angle that forced it to throw awkward flailing strikes instead of power strikes.

Moving quickly as it thumped him in the back of the head repeatedly, he broke the leg lock it had. To transition to the top, he snaked one of his own legs out and over, then swept to the side while maintaining body contact. The lack of responses from it told him they only programmed it to brawl. Even easier, even though his head was throbbing and his vision swam because of the blows, the daemon was landing on him.

In one last burst of movement, he spun again, and climbed on top to put himself in the front mount. Seated on the daemon’s abdomen in front of his legs, he now had striking superiority. Striking a faceless head registered too weird for him. Years of combat training and fighting gives you an instinctive understanding of what hitting a skull feels like. This didn’t quite match up. This is too fleshy, like they cushioned it. And the lack of eyes unnerved him. Just an expressionless vacant facsimile facing him. Like an unfinished portrait where the artist had been interrupted before beginning the facial details.

Finally, the moment he was after clicked into place as the daemon tried to counter punch. He snatched the wrist, whipping himself around the daemon’s arm as he extended it, and torqued backwards, snapping the elbow joint against his hip. Letting go of the arm, he repeated with the other arm. Another joint snapped.

Jon rose triumphantly when Raven walked over and casually executed the daemon with a pistol. The bullet crumbled into fading bits of cypher and code. The wound spread like rot, a dying program that crumbled away. Jon backed away from the daemon’s remains, watching intently as the spread of decay worked its way down to the boots. An instant later, nothing remained of the program to hint that it ever existed except for his lingering pain.

Jon looked up to Raven. “You couldn’t have just done that to start with?”

“You had him covered.” Before he could protest, she pointed to the open doorway. “Through there. I cracked the ICE on it. You should be able to access the terminal’s systems, but it seems pretty limited,” Raven said.

She gave him a concerned look. “I also couldn’t help but notice that was Haltech code I was cracking. And that beat you up and down the floor. What are you up to?”

“Just biz.”

“It might be too early to be moving against them.”

“It’s been almost a year. I’ve been dead for almost a year. It’s time. If we wait any longer, who knows how many more Sams, they’ll kill before we stop them.”

“How Jon? How do you stop them?”

That was the million dollar question, wasn’t it? He shook his head. “I don’t know. But I have to try something. At least this way I’m doing something.”

Raven understood that restless anxiety. The idleness. He couldn’t shoulder its oppressive weight. The way it just pressed down on him, threatening to crush him. He took a deep breath, glancing at the doorway she’d opened. A dark wood frame and door with an old-fashioned key lock, not the standard sensor lock tech. This was one of those vintage twentieth century style locks that took the thin metal key. They weren’t as common these days unless you were into the retro theme.

Beyond the doorway sat something that looked like a terminal on a large, dark wood desk. It had a flat monitor screen, a keyboard, and box next to the monitor with cables all rigging it together. Whoever coded this construct was definitely a retro fan. He stepped into the room, noticing the blandness of it for the first time. Hardwood flooring and black walls. The desk had a small lamp with a green glass shade on it. A teller’s lamp? Something about bankers? He couldn’t remember specifically what kind of lamp it was.

Rounding the desk, he pulled up the chair and slid into it. From the doorway, he could see Raven casting a long shadow into the dimly lit room. Long black shapes cutting into the light and dancing as she shifted. She turned back to face him, the worry in her expression lightening.

“Coast looks clear. They aren’t slinging anymore defenses at us.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“Could go either way. They either have nothing left to use, or they don’t think it’ll matter,” she said.

No, it wouldn’t matter soon. Jon accessed the systems on the terminal and reconfigured the satellite’s projection protocols. Raven stepped in and slid around behind him to have a look at what he was up to, and her eyes went wide.

“Fuck Jon, are you sure you’ll even make it out of there alive?”

“Got no choice to.”

“That beam will turn that entire facility into molten rock. You need to go now.”

He finished inputting the commands and then stood to observe his handiwork. She leaned over his shoulder, only half impressed.

“It’s not bad. Now go, unless you wanna find out if your mind and body can function disconnected from each other.”

He raced out of the room and reached the front door of the room they loaded into. Opening the door, he returned to awareness of his body in the shed. Tearing his jack free of the port, he broke into a mad sprint. He sprinted as hard as he could, his legs pumped desperately. Propelling himself at breakneck speeds across the facility, he imagined the satellite above in orbit redirecting its beam projection off of the array. That meant all that energy would come blasting down from the heavens.

He didn’t bother collecting the weapons. He could buy more gear. He just needed to get his ass off the facility and now. A shimmer and burst of light high above in orbit. Intense light blasted down from high.

“Get your ass moving, Masters, or you’re about to need 6000 sunblock,” Raven said in the comms.

She hadn’t broken the line yet. He didn’t reply, he just pumped his arms and legs and ran. The grounds of the facility raced by in a muted brown blur touched with a hint of moonlight and dark of night. He hauled ass for the hole in the perimeter he cut.

The ground started rumbling and sparks flew from his arms. He raised his arms overhead to shield himself as he continued to sprint. The jacket he wore and his vest ignited and fell away from him. The ground beneath him sagged and give like mud. Molten mud, as the ground density weakened under the heat. With one last burst of his legs, he jumped, barreling through the hole in the fence free of the beam’s blast, rolling to a smoking heap in the dirt. He kept his eyes covered as the beam continued blasting.

The earth trembled and quaked, shaking under the power being shunted down from orbit. All the gathered energy converted transmitted to the station, now just being blasted into the surface of the earth freely. The beam kept up for several minutes until an overload back fed in the satellite high in orbit and it exploded, stopping the flow of energy soon after. Jon observed the small bloom of light from the ground. A quiet flicker in a soundless void.

Silence soon fell on the badlands. He lay there for a long time, unsure of what to think or do. He changed the world just now. The only question was, how much?

He looked at the smoking ruined mess of his limbs and laughed. Had he done something this stupid when before Iraq, he might have died, or at the least walked away with some intense 3rd degree burns. Now he just needed a decent bath and a good polishing.

He turned to look at his and laid his head down on the soil. Nothing stood above ground level. Shimmering heat radiated off the blasted surface. If anyone was curious what gods fingerprint looked like, they needed only checked the former factory site. Glass crackled and molten rock glowed and cooled. The diameter of the affect had been several hundred meters. A perfectly round super heated circle, branded into the skin of the Earth.

No trace of the buildings, the drones, the antenna’s, even the materials that comprised those components lingered. It was all just washed away in blistering heat, redistributed by the solar satellite. Jon bit back an amused chuckle at the fact he flattened the facility with Haltech’s own toys.

Squelching static pierced his ears when he heard Raven’s voice.

“Jon! Jon, are you still there? Come in!”

“Yea. Yea, I’m here.”

“Fuck! I thought I lost you in the blast. You damn wonk. Don’t you dare do that again.”

He rubbed his arm, some charring blowing away, then flexed his hands. Ok, he had to give the new limbs points for durability and performance at least. He still wished he had his own body back. But he wouldn’t have been able to do what he just did and survive with his own body.

“No promises.”

Raven sighed, the noise coming over as a mechanical garble of static. “Are you ok enough to get out of there on your own?”

He looked himself over, noting that he looked like shit, but he felt fine, at least. “Think so. Gotta contact the Fixer. Let ‘im know the gig is done. Curious to see how they spin this back home.”

Raven’s portrait resolved in his hud as the signal capacity cleared through the radiation. She glanced down and shook her head. “Nothing yet.”

That would change with time. He couldn’t wait to read the headlines when their PR department decided on an angle to go with.

“Watch your back coming home,” she said.

They ended the call, and he picked himself up, dusting off his thighs. He glanced around behind him with a lazy grin, then walked back the way he came. Opening his contacts, Jon selected Alek’s number, his Outrider contact for the Desperados clan that roamed this territory.

“Alek. Hey, it’s Knight. Yea, listen. I need a ride. Mhm. Mine, uh, disappeared. Call it an act of god.”

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