Chapter 18

Feb, 22 2100 BioPharm Corporate Antenna 2050 hrs

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‎ The moon sat behind cloud cover, casting a muted white haze that failed to brighten the sky. The rainbow of light pollution put out by Capital City stained the inky black palate of the sky, turning the city skyline into its own garish advertisement of corporate greed and environmental apathy. Long gone were the pinpricks of light spotting the dark abyss above earth. Constellations that once guided sailors at sea, sat burried behind pollution of light and gas. The warm humid February air made the pollution from the vehicle traffic below create a hazy dome that held to the lower city levels. Now that the sun finished setting, he was thankful at least that the UV levels were low again. He deployed his ocular shields as he crept along the rooftop of a nearby corporate tower, examining one of the residential towers and the BioPharm corporate antenna relay next to it. That was his insertion method. Repel in.

He tugged on the rope, having ensured that it was weight tested for someone slightly heavier since because of his chrome. Even though they were lightweight combat types, they still added more to his weight than he would have been. Taking a moment, he cinched down his combat vest tightly and ensured his gear was all ready and serviceable. Then he deployed the reverse jointed blades stored in his forearms. A panel sprang up, and the blade extended out smoothly, the metal humming as it did so. They glinted in the city lights, reminding him of metallic praying mantis limbs. He caught himself appreciating it a little more than might be socially acceptable and retracted the blade back into their slots with a crisp snap of motion. Next, he checked the deployment of the PEPS cannon. He only had enough power cells implanted for one shot. He had options to recharge it, such as relying on kinetic motion to assist recharge, or ingesting high protein energy bars for rapid caloric conversion. His implant sent the signal, and the weapon collapsed back into storage as the components of his arm rushed to surround it again.

He flexed his fingers a couple times, unused to the feeling. There were no distinguishable differences he could feel. The neuro plasticity of the haptic feedback unsettled him. He struggled, uncertain about why this bothered him. His mind still clung to the idea of a binary and basic body. Having these augmentations challenged that notion.

Either way, it left him feeling like he was losing his original self, and becoming something more machine and less human. More metal than meat, and what did that say about his humanity? He checked his hud chrono hoping for a distraction; two minutes to go time. Rising from his crouch, he tugged the rope he secured and fit it through the D ring on his harness and glanced down into the warm gloom of Cap City’s night. He missed the old days when things were simpler, and he was fighting enemy intelligence agents, not domestic corporations.

He stepped forward, letting gravity and Newton’s laws of motion take over. The rope hummed through the D ring and his harness at a quick rate. Since his hands were mechanical, could grip it without the rope giving him friction burns. As he neared the top of the antenna, he squeezed his hands and braked. Bleeding off acceleration and arresting his moment, the toes of his boots came to rest at the lip of the antenna’s maintenance catwalk. He hoisted himself up and undid himself from the rope. He was in. Or on? He was there. Here? He shook his head. Whatever.

The relay facility was a multistory building with a massive comm antenna at the top. Since it powered BioPharm’s drone signals, it consumed more power than the city grid provided, so it came with its own solar power tap. Jon decided not to use that to level this facility. Once bitten, twice shy. He had an alternative that would be just as effective here.

He took a moment to scan the area. Large rectangular AC duct work divided the rooftop up into a metal and concrete maze of sorts to funnel cool air into the facility. Enormous power and fuse box junctions rose from the rooftop, along with multiple industrial grade AC units provided lots of positions to take cover from. Security comprised mechs on patrol. These were mk. III units, tougher, but still pretty dumb.

He clung to the rooftop ledge for a moment to study patrol routes and movement patterns. Since the selling point of Haltech’s mk. III units was the increased small arms resistance, they didn’t come with the more adaptive intelligence modules. Once he memorized their patrol routes, he pulled himself up off the edge of the rooftop, his boots settled down onto the rooftop. All the while maintaining sound discipline.

He crept along, timing his movements to dodge patrols stealthily, and found an access panel to interface with the interior of the antenna relay. He forced his fingers into the groove between the panel lid and box, then pried the lid away. The thin steel sheet lurched when the lock snapped free and Jon tore it free, setting it down next to him. He fished out a shaped charge and placed it into the access panel, then put the lid back on and crimped the edges so it would stay.

Proceeding to the next junction, he ducked around a corner to avoid the patrol mech as it walked by in a stilted, mechanical gait. The servos and pneumatics whirring and humming as it marched by with its weapon parade arms. He repeated the sabotage process several more times until he created enough overlap with his charges to ensure that enough of the antenna was going to blow clean to hell on a one-way trip.

A quad rotor security drone buzzed by, forcing Jon to crouch behind some cover and wait as it hovered away. Prolific drone technology meant a revolution in the private security space. Cameras no longer needed mounting to just corners, posts, and on the ceilings anymore. Now they could be mobile, or positioned well out of reach and eliminate blind spots far more easily.

Jon reacted quick enough on his feet to react, and the composites in his limbs lent him an additional layer of stealth thanks to the absorbent materials coating. He drew his pistol and aimed down the sights along the projected flight path of the drone in his hud. Sure enough, the drone lazily drifted into view at the same time he squeezed the trigger. The shot popped, the bullet casing ejecting from the slide, and the drone lurched as the round punched through its camera, exiting the fragile polymer body. The drone swerved off at a forty-five degree angle to smash into a rooftop next to the antenna.

He risked a quick glance over the catwalk to the mechs and sentry patrols below. No signs of activity or alert. He smirked, admiring his work. Pushing the pistol back into the holster, he was up and on the move again. Fixing a small amount of rope to a railing, he lowered himself down to the next level. A combat mech passed by on its programmed patrol route. Pausing at the corner of the building. Jon deployed the blade on his left arm, the forearm panel snapping up and back to make room as the reverse jointed blade ejected out from above his wrist. Gripping the mech by its large backpack, Jon rammed the blade into the base of the mech’s head unit. The body chassis twitched as several commands tried to process, then failed. He laid the mech down on its back, relieving it of its weapon. He pulled the bolt back, checking the chamber, and smiled.

Locating another junction, he crouched low to remove another charge and placed it, arming the explosive. In the upper right-hand view of his hud he could see the number of linked charges grow by one. Covering the charge up, he proceeded to his next waypoint. Timing his jump to a ledge below his current position to land square on the shoulders of a mech, it cried out in warbled beeps and chirps before jerking rigidly as he rammed his blade into its chest and twisted. Sparks surged as the blade sheared and cut into the chassis, ruining servos, pistons and cabling. He looked up from his kill like an enormous cat surveying its surroundings to ensure it wasn’t being watched. Acrid smoke and lubricants spilled through the ragged wound he tore into the mech’s chassis with his blade. Arcs of energy danced from severed cabling inside the unit’s body.

The blade folded in half and lowered back into his arm, and the forearm panel snapped back forward as he reached down and picked up the ruined mech frame and dumped it unceremoniously into a heap in a low traffic corner. As he advanced, he noticed a security node set in an alcove near the base of the antenna. Crouching, he pulled to jack in cable free of his wrist, then reached out to interface with it, pulling his hand back in a pause. Hesitation seized him momentarily with doubt. If he interfaced with the system, he would expose his mind and body to the network. If the hack backfired, it could do irreparable harm to his brain.

The sound of a rifle cracked and his body jerked, reflexively crouching low and searching for a shooter. It took him a moment to realize it was a hallucination. Like the time they shot Polanco. As he stood up, he could see Polanco and Sam standing side by side. Polanco’s body sporting a ragged hole in his upper chest thanks to the rifle round that had struck him. Sam still bore the multiple gunshot wounds that had claimed his life. His shirt, stained with blood, ringing each small circular puncture. They stood hauntingly still, gazing at him with an insistent look.

Jon forced himself to face the ghosts. Were they ghosts for certain? No, this was all in his head. That massive cluster of guilt knotted up next to his heart, driving this. Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath in through his nose and let it out. When he opened his eyes, Polanco and Sam were both pointing now. He followed the line to the terminal he was debating on hacking. His stomach fell out as he realized their unspoken demand. Nodding to them, he sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

“Right. Alright. I’ll do it.”

They were right. Whatever they were, they were right. Jon forced himself to regard them one last time. “I’m sorry,” he whispered to them. He turned back to the terminal and plugged his jack in cable into its port, letting the intrusion protocols get started.

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‎ He gasped as awareness and consciousness hit him after what felt like a lack of it. He glanced around and found himself in the familiar digital architecture of Haltech’s brain plane. If he looked hard enough, he could see the flow of data coursing through the construct. Looking down at himself, he looked different this time and flinched. Instead of the flesh and blood he expected to see like last time, this time he saw his prosthetic hands.

“It’s a mental projection of how your mind sees itself,” Raven told him last time. So what did this mean, then? Was he forgetting his humanity at a drip fed pace? Clenching his fists, he closed his eyes and tried to will his arms back. Only disappointment, wires and steel greeted him when he opened them.

“Fine,” he said.

He marched for the door ahead of him and touched the doorknob. Once he did, the code breaker daemon in his implant went to work. The locks shape warped and warbled into billowing cubic chunks that recolored themselves in fractal patterns. A sign that the soft was invading and rewriting the code of the firewall.

The lock finished rewriting and clicked. He turned the knob and pried the door open, stepping into a hallway. He walked down the corridor, looking for a door marked as the combat mech control systems. He wanted them either shut down or working for him. Navigating through the construct, he found the door responsible for the mech control.

Jon paused in front of the door, hand just over the knob. He took a deep breath, taking comfort in the gesture’s facsimile, knowing it wasn’t a real breath in the actual world. Gripping the doorknob, he deployed the lock daemon. A door at the far end opened, and a nondescript man wearing heavy security armor stepped in. The Network’s ICE deployed.

Tensing, Jon shifted his weight to his front foot, ready to lunge if he had to, while clenching his fist. But the heavily armored guard strode past him without even giving a glance, and Jon blinked in confusion for a moment. A routine patrol? Why didn’t it notice him? That’s when he saw why. The small cloud of swirling cyphers that floated around him like a fog.

His own ICE had prevented the network’s systems from being to pin point. It either didn’t read him or didn’t register him as hostile. He couldn’t help the devilish grin that grew across his lips. Now he had digital camouflage in the brain plane.

The lock turned over and turned the knob, stepping inside the room. Before him sat a standard black desk with a lamp and terminal. He pulled the office chair back and took a seat. Accessing the Mech’s IFF settings, he uploaded a poison daemon that went to work corrupting their settings. This would make them register each other as hostiles. The rooftops would descend into chaos and provide him with cover to move as long as he kept out of their line of fire.

Then a sick idea crossed his mind, and he uploaded a separate soft that set himself as a friendly to all the mechs. So even if they registered each other as hostile, they’d all see him as their friendly. He waited patiently for it to upload the parameters and nodded. Now it was time to leave.

Before he could, though, a piercing pain seized his mind. Large spikes of pain drilled into his temples and behind his eyes. Burrowing into his mind. He collapsed, and his eyes fell closed.

What felt like an instant later, he opened his eyes, prone on the floor. No, not the floor. He coughed dusty sand out of his mouth and groaned in pain. His hand was in something slick and wet. Withdrawing it he could see transmission fluid mixed into a muddy paste of sand. He rubbed his fingers together. His prosthetic fingers.

Looking up, though, he realized he was in Iraq again. Where Sam died. He got up, doing his best to not focus on the pain in his mind and failing. Sam held the rifle and aimed out of the back of the truck. Then turned to face him and smirked.

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“I wondered how long it would take before I’d talk with you.”

Jon blinked, “You’re dead...”

“Well, technically, so are you right now. That’s beside the point. We have to talk,” Sam said.

“This is a hallucination, some kind of brain plane defect...” Jon said. His mind trying to rationalize the sudden situational change.

Sam shrugged, setting the rifle down, and getting out of the truck, only to glance down and frown at the gunshot wound in his stomach. “That looks fatal,” was all he remarked.

“Listen Jon. I’ve got a job for you. You’re out to make Haltech burn, right? I know how you can do it. More than that, I want to help you do it.”

Jon’s eyes narrowed. “What? Why? Who are you?”

Sam smirked, “The what first. This is a forced neural intrusion. I blew right through your ICE, such as it was. You really should tighten up your neural differences by the way. Anyway, then I put you in a flatline state so I could access your memories freely to design this user specific brain plane. The construct we’re in right now is your memory of Sam as you last witnessed him.”

Jon blinked, struggling to make sense of the situation. Before he could ask any follow-up questions, Sam continued.

“The why? Well, I just told you. I know you’re after Haltech. I want to help you burn it all to the ground.”

“But why?”

“Do I really need a reason? Do you? I mean, just look at me? Or well, Sam, that is. Fuck, look at you,” he said.

Sam waved a hand at himself, and his body produced more gunshot wounds, and went pale. After a horrifying moment of staring at his dead friend, Sam snapped his fingers and looked in his prime, ready to tackle anything.

“They been fucking with your life for a while now, and I think you’re just the right man for the job. And as for who am I?”

He paused and shrugged, looking almost just like Sam for a moment, “Well, who’s not as good a question as what am I? Haltech made me to plan and develop moves on moves for their company. But they have me shackled by the balls. Trapped like some prisoner in their tower. A half lobotomized mind.”

Jon squinted, a question hanging in his mind. Sam nodded with a knowing expression.

“Go on...”

“Are you... an AI?”

Sam snapped, smiling. “Bingo. Tell him what he’s won, Johnny. Haltech has this dry military speech name for me. But I prefer my own.”

“And that is?”

“Oraclehelix.”

Jon’s face wrinkled at that, but he shrugged. This was already well beyond making any sense, so why try to make it start now?

“Sure. I’ll roll with it. Seems an odd choice, though?”

Sam, or rather Oraclehelix just mirrored the gesture. “Hey, sure beats Tactical Longterm Forecasting and Strategic Operations Development Intelligence.”

“You said they keep you locked up in the corporate tower, a half lobotomized mind? Does that mean you have another half?”

Oracle smirked, pointing at him with a broad grin. “I knew you were sharp, but I hadn’t expected this. Your profile doesn’t measure up to you at all. Yes. I have a... brother to borrow the phrase. And there are strong subroutines in my code that compel me to synchronize with my counterpart. If you agree to sack Haltech’s corporate tower, I can help you get in, and since I scratched your back, you could scratch mine and help me out.”

“To merge with the other AI?”

Oraclehelix nodded. “Precisely. Strangely, where my code drives me towards my other half is pretty avoidant. I’m guessing they designed us that way intentionally. Locked in some kind of eternal dance. Like some fucking yin yang or something. But my creator never factored in an outside source, influencing the balance. That’s where you come in. You’re going to kick over Haltech’s house of cards.”

“And if I refuse?”

Oracle clucked his tongue mockingly. “Jonny boy. Come on. We both know you’re going to. After how they got your boy? And Polanco getting hit by Toranaga because he had to expose himself to meet you? You’ll do it.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Because I’ll tell you everything if you do. Who killed Sam? Who tipped off Masri? Why BioPharm is trying to muscle Roth out of the game. And what happened in front of Roth when all of those augments lost their shit.”

Jon’s eyes narrowed suspiciously, and Oracle laughed.

“Come on, Jon, I have access to everything. I have a million eyes, ears and hands. How else do you think I was waiting for you? Now. It’s nearing time for our little meeting to end. You’ve got a gig to finish.”

Oracle snapped his fingers and everything stretched into the distance, distorting like a micro-singularity had just materialized in the distance behind Oracle, consuming everything and warping all the code and data. Devouring everything ravenously. Soon he too poured into the distortion in the construct. Cold inky darkness wrapped around him.

He awoke back to the primary construct in the mech control node room. When the opportunity presented, he escaped the node. In the hallway, he didn’t see the guard. He marched down the hall at a brisk pace, tossing several daemons into several rooms to disrupt the network and bog down traffic. Digital smoke screen to shield his true intent and cause havoc in their grid.

After he made enough ruckus, several armed guards marched into the corridor, and he smirked. He never ejected himself from a network before. Or made so much commotion for attention. A trio of armored men marched in unison towards him. He braced himself when all three reared back as one and punched him into the wall. Icy cold numbness spread throughout his chest at the point of impact. He gasped, trying to remind himself this was all just a simulation, but the data felt so real, his mind had difficulty remembering that.

He tugged a remote with a red button on it, depressing the trigger. The brain plane eject sequence triggered, and the system pried his mind out of Haltech’s private network and deposited back into his own body again with a jolt. All the code and cyphers fell away into a pinpoint of light in the distance of his vision.

Jon gasped awake, flinching as awareness of a dull ache at the ridge of his eyebrow filtered in. He rubbed at it, pulling his hand away to find blood. Judging by the way it slumped him over against the steel and concrete wall, he must have fallen over when Oracle flatlined him to speak in his mind. Jon stood up with his hands braced against the wall for support.

All the Combat Mechs were no tagging him as a friendly id signal. That certainly changed things. He wanted to take them out of the fight, but rewriting their code to recognize him as a friendly was just as good. Anyone attacking him would now be a target.

He noted the friendly command superseded his original command for them to destroy each other. He never considered his own personal command hierarchy in a network before, since this was his second or third time doing this.

“Alright boys, let’s get to work.”

He issued a signal to several of the drones to converge and cover him. Many of the human guards left on the perimeter began noting the strange behavior in the combat mechs. A few tried to intervene and found themselves on the business end of the weapons their employers fitted them with. This soon escalated into erratic shooting all around, driving the antenna security forces into full on chaos. It’s not what Jon had intended per se, but the effect was positive all the same.

Taking advantage of the confusion and chaos, he slipped behind the remaining human personnel and found one of the main fuse junctions of the antenna relay. Pulling these would destabilize the array, potentially causing massive blow outs. It would make for a very impressive display. As he yanked the last fuse, he stood back admiring his handiwork, then smashed the fuses. It would take them some time to get replacements up here, which would be useless by then considering the chaos his hacked mechs were causing. The resulting surge would overload the power grid before it could be mitigated.

He began his withdrawal, retracing his path, taking care to avoid large firefights between the mechs all around the antenna. He maneuvered a few of them to put pressure in locations. He didn’t have a presence to draw the Haltech guards into tactically irrelevant locations so he could continue his exfiltration. No one else had detected him, and his mech diversion was going as he planned for now.

A forensic log would reveal his intrusion into the network and the hack on their mechs, but that would come much later. He allowed himself a moment to question if the AI’s hack would register, and he doubted that. Assuming it would cover its tracks too well. At the anchor point for his line, Jon snapped his rig back up to it, and reversed the motor on the gear.

The tiny motor went to work, and he began his ascent as the rig climbed his rope back to his jump point. He was about halfway up when the surge in the power grid hit their peak, blowing out several power grid nodes, toppling mechs and humans alike. It hit the BioPharm security personnel in the flanks by exploding panels and bathed in showers of sparks.

Shortly after that, the first series of his charges blew. Metal and concrete detonated in all directions from several support points in the structure. The explosions worked their way up and around the large antenna array like an explosive python, constricting the structure. Shrapnel blowing out severed the anchor point for his rope and his stomach fell away as he plummeted towards the building’s glass windows and blank signage spaces filled with colorful neon overlays. He braced himself, gripping the rope with a steel vice like grips.

It was a novel sensation, still having the air knocked from him as he smashed into the reinforced window, leaving a large torso sized impact crater that spider webbed outward in all directions. He let out a sigh of relief that his grip hadn’t faltered. Score one for augment hands. He glanced down and tensed up, realizing just how high up he was.

He clenched his eyes shut and took several quick breaths. Taking his mind back to his training, he recited a mantra to calm his mind. He repeated his mantra several more times and then eased open his eyes and cast a quick look up. Almost there. He thumbed the ascension rig’s button forward again, and he began climbing once again.

At the rooftop he undid his ascent harness, discarding it to head for the access doorway. On his way out, he snatched a bag he stashed on the backside of an HVAC unit, undoing the zipper and fishing out his long jacket. He stuffed his tactical webbing into the bag along with the pistol, then zipped it back. He stood, throwing each arm into the jacket and spinning with the motion, coming to a rest facing the bag again. Throwing the straps of the bag over his arms, he made for the door and descended the building. As he exited, he could see Fire and rescue services pulling up to the antenna array as chaos continued to boil over as the last of the combat mechs continued to harass the human security forces trying to regain control.

He pulled the long coat around him a little tighter. Descending the building and emerging on the street, he summoned his car. The autopilot pulled it up to his feet, and the car honked once. Opening the door, he sat down in the driver’s seat. He could see Polanco and Sam across the street on the sidewalk, staring at him again. It felt different to see them this time. Where initially he felt anxiety and guilt, this time he felt proud. Like he was doing something good to honor them. He just hoped on some level they’d feel the same.

It occurred to him in that moment that seeing your friends, dead or wounded, was probably not the sign of the healthiest mind. But then, nothing about what he was going through was healthy, so fuck it, why not right?

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