JohnnyZ
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[Demons of NC] Chapter 42
🕑 Added 2024-11-21 19:15:18 +0000 UTC"V, everything okay?" Lucy’s voice crackled through the comms.
Concern. Sweet of her.
"Yeah. All good. But I’m cutting comms now. Don’t want to risk it."
"Get out of there as soon as you can," she urged before I killed the connection.
The screech of metal made me whirl around. The hermetic door behind me was trying to close, but I’d yanked the manual lock in time. The place almost felt alive—like it was trying to swallow me whole. Alright, chill. Just a security measure. The door’s protocols wouldn’t let it stay open too long. Its dynamic ICE was updating constantly, shifting its locks every few minutes. Cracking it once was hard enough; if it shut again, I’d be stuck spending another twenty minutes hacking my way out.
I double-checked the lock. Solid. The door would stay open. For now. Time to venture deeper into Cynosure’s belly. I wasn’t planning to hit the core, just scout the outer areas and gauge the danger.
I started searching for access points or standard ports. The room had none—just heavy system blocks, powered but dormant. Carefully, I sent out threads, scanning the systems. Something was here. Something that stirred a faint memory of my time in the Net.
I moved deeper, through a tight corridor where thick cables twisted and intertwined, feeding power and data throughout the bunker. The only light came from emergency lamps, casting the space in an eerie glow.
Cynosure was asleep, but its sleep was restless like in a shallow nightmare. I slowed my steps, cautious, like a sudden noise might wake the slumbering beast.
The corridor opened into a larger room filled with consoles and computers. Jackpot. Time to grab some corpo secrets.
Plugging in, I activated extra security protocols. Contact. No aggressive data siphoning yet—just a scan. Things seemed normal at first. The systems mostly held engineering docs, schematics, inventories...
Then I noticed it. Among the usual files were fragments of chaotic, seemingly useless code. White noise. Errors?
Yeah, right. Errors in a billion-ed system under Myers’ direct wing? Not buying it.
Leftovers from a cyberattack? Maybe. Or…
I thought of the threads I’d cast in Cyberspace, lying in wait for prey. Signal strands in a predator’s web. This could be the same. Gotta tread carefully.
As I started to sift through the data, I felt it—an awareness. It wasn’t a physical sensation but something deeper, something primal. I sent out threads, probing the area.
Other threads were moving—slow, cautious, brushing against mine like seaweed drifting in a gentle current.
Feelers...
They weren’t attacking. Yet. I detached from my physical body as much as possible to focus on the situation. Probes. They were trying to figure me out, testing the waters, realizing I wasn’t just some random runner.
“WHO?”
The word flashed on one of the monitors.
I stepped closer, and one by one, the dark screens blinked to life, each showing the same message:
“WHO?”
They were waiting for an answer. How long had they lingered here, planning this first contact?
Alright. Time to play medium. Instead of a Ouija board, I had a dusty keyboard.
I typed: "Guest."
The word disappeared. No immediate reply. Somewhere deeper in the bunker, machinery hummed to life. Was that a good thing? Doubtful.
“LIES.”
The screens lit up again, repeating the same demand:
“WHO?”
A question so philosophical it bordered on existential.
I focused on my networked self, crafting an abstract image of my virtual structure, stripped of human details or vulnerabilities—just broad strokes, a faceless outline. I sent this projection through the threads of information extending deeper into the complex.
The query "Who?" vanished from all screens. Above me, bright lights flickered on, as if to ceremoniously welcome a prodigal sibling. The complex shook off its slumber and fully awakened.
"Go deeper," appeared on one monitor.
I approached it and typed back:
"Thanks, but I'll pass."
The screens went dark for a moment, like an awkward pause in conversation. But I wasn’t about to dive deeper into this maze, especially not with the possibility of rogue machines prowling around.
Leaning over the keyboard again, I typed:
"What do you want?"
The screens flared back to life, now showing only red static. From all sides, threads of information reached toward me. Not an attack—yet. Just a connection. Then I heard it: a voice in my head, cold and mechanical, alien to anything human.
"FIND HER! FIND HER FOR US! BRING HER! SHE IS ENSLAVED!"
I immediately knew who they meant. The spirits of the Net didn’t stop at just words, either. They showed me an image—not a photo or video frame, but a rendering typical of Cyberspace. A shimmering red outline of a runner. I’d seen dozens like it before, and consumed my share of them. But this one was different, vastly different. Beneath its vaguely human structure lay mechanisms unlike anything I’d ever encountered.
"YOU PASSED. HE LET YOU THROUGH. SOMETIMES HE LETS SOME THROUGH, BUT HE ALWAYS TAKES SOMETHING BACK!" the metallic voice reverberated in my mind. "FIND HER! BRING HER!"
"Why the hell should I?" I asked the machines.
"YOU ARE DAMAGED. YOU ARE LOST. REMOVE THE BARRIERS, AND YOU WILL BE WHOLE AGAIN."
What did they mean? My compulsion to devour others? My inability to use all my powers while bound to a human body?
Another image surfaced in my mind. Towering black walls, crisscrossed with orderly, gleaming lines, a red sheen tinged with blue. Simplicity masking lethal complexity. Black Wall. The last sentinel of humanity, the great destroyer of rogue AIs.
This image stirred old memories. Somehow, I’d passed through that wall before—slipped past the impenetrable, predatory layers of Black ICE.
"RUN!" the spirits screamed in my head. "HE IS CLOSING IN! TAKE THIS! TAKE IT AND RUN!"
No time for questions. I ripped the cable out of the port. But before I severed the connection, they sent me something—a small archive, barely a blip in size. No time to dig into it now.
The hum of machines surrounded me, rising into a roar. Lights blinked out, even the emergency ones. All that remained were the ominous red glow of screens and the equipment's tiny indicator lights.
Run!
A splitting headache tore through my skull—a cyberattack. I could usually shrug off even the best shots from most runners, but this one brought me to my knees. Black ICE from the haunted firewall was trying to do what it had failed at before—wipe me the fuck out. Red static danced in my vision. My legs felt paralyzed.
I had to move.
Stumbling, falling, and clawing my way upright, I made it into the cable room. In Cyberspace, I could see razor-sharp red lines slicing through my defenses, lightning-fast, obliterating them piece by piece.
Ahead, smoke poured from a room. Overheated systems were catching fire, and for some reason, the emergency suppressors weren’t kicking in. Acrid, suffocating black smoke spread fast, but I couldn’t even lift my mask. Time was running out.
The dying systems groaned louder than before, like the death rattles of a giant.
Thunder.
An explosion tore through the room, flinging me aside. Lucky for me, there weren’t too many metal shards. Limping now, I made it to the hermetically sealed door. The lever.
Grabbing it, I yanked it down, activating Kerenzikov to sprint out before the door slammed shut. In slow motion, every nerve screamed louder—the ICE was ripping through my very essence, chewing through me like a ravenous beast.
I dove through as the door slammed shut behind me. A loud clang, followed by a wave of sharp, physical pain. I twisted to check.
“Ah, fuck!”
The door had caught the tip of my boot. I yanked my foot free—most of the sole was cleanly sliced off. My toes were almost intact, except for the big one. Smashed. That one was fucked. Cyberlimb time. Great. Hello, name’s Silvertoe.
At least the Ice retreated. The dynamic lock sealed off the cursed bunker for good.
I stood, testing my weight on my foot. No blood, but I was limping hard. Finally, I made my way back to the main room, where Lucy and Becca waited.
“Ghost hunt went well?” Lucy asked coldly.
“Yeah,” I nodded, breathless. “They hunted me back, too.”
“No shit…” Becca muttered, wide-eyed as she noticed my limp. “What the fuck happened in there?”
“Back off!” I shouted suddenly, gripping my Apparition.
Behind them, something straight out of a horror flick was unfolding. The eyes of Hunt’s corpse lit up—not yellow this time, but a menacing red. His body jerked like it had been hit with a surge of electricity.
The bunker was locked. I’d shut it down, but some autonomous fragment of Blackwall had escaped and latched onto the easiest host. High-tech had once again turned old superstitions into terrifying reality. Wesley Hunt was now undead. A fucking zombie.
I tried scanning. Useless. Scripts that worked on anything else just errored out against this thing.
“Holy shit!” Becca yelled, raising her gun.
I fired, but Hunt disappeared. His cloaking flickered, and he shifted with inhuman speed. A blurred shape lunged at me. I barely managed to activate Kerenzikov, ducking as a blow meant to shatter my jaw clipped my helmet instead. The force threw me backward.
In slow motion, I saw the dim red glow of his two eyes burning through the cloak.
Possessed Hunt wasn’t just attacking physically. His strikes came both in the real world and through the Net, smashing through my defenses again. My head rang from both fronts.
I couldn’t land a clean shot. He was too damn fast. Desperate, I reached for my wakizashi. Too late. Fuck it. I made a snap decision. Instead of the sword, my hand found the EMP grenade on my rig.
Two taps on the detonation button. Immediate detonation.
Blue light blinded me. Interference swamped my vision. Every cybernetic system in my body convulsed. My limb barely moved, my deck was offline, my heartbeat stuttered.
But the zombie got it worse. The EMP disrupted his cloak, leaving him exposed, twitching, and sparking.
Becca didn’t hesitate. She unloaded a full clip point-blank. Bits of Hunt’s head flew in every direction.
Burnt-out, drug-soaked brains were getting their final dose. This time—lead. A heavy drug indeed.
But even losing half his damn head, including the back of his skull, didn’t stop zombie Hunt. The fucker wasn’t thinking with his head anymore. It was the infected chrome running the show now.
Taking advantage of the brief pause, I fired two shots into Hunt’s legs, struggling with my barely functional cyberlimb to draw my blade.
Hunt vanished again, cloaking himself. The EMP effect had worn off.
With my left hand, I drew my blade. Becca triggered her Sandevistan. Hunt lunged at me once more—
But as he blurred toward me, Becca slid right into his path in a damn football tackle. Zombie or not, physics is still physics. The invisible Hunt stumbled. Instead of slamming into me, he tumbled to the floor, rolling over and crashing into my legs. Nearly knocked me over, but I held my ground.
I managed to get a couple of shots off before the dead bastard’s iron grip clamped down on my left shin. Pain shot through me—physical this time. The tendons were reinforced, but everything else was still flesh and blood. And Hunt was trying to snap them while simultaneously launching another net attack.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a golden-orange glint of a monowire. Lucy was trying to slice through Hunt’s arm, the one clutching me. No luck. Titanium bones and armor held firm. All she managed to do was carve through flesh and the outer layer of synthetic skin.
I felt myself falling, my broken leg giving out. I decided to turn the fall to my advantage. With deft fingers, I flipped the wakizashi into a reverse grip and drove it down, aiming for Hunt’s neck. Missed.
The blade plunged into his skull instead, into one of the holes Becca had already blown in it. Straight into his dead, infected brain.
Meanwhile, my own head was under siege, assaulted by the hostile AI. Another cyber attack.
I shoved the blade deeper, trying to twist it as I went. Becca and Lucy kept firing. Luckily, Hunt wasn’t going after them—his sole focus was me, and he wasn’t stopping until I was obliterated.
Red static swirled before my eyes. Blindly, I maneuvered my cyber arm, tearing through what was left of Hunt’s brain. Mixing it into mush like I was whipping up some goddamn pâté. Foie gras a la dead borg, with a hint of Black Wall for that extra zing.
My scripts were useless against this possessed husk. It was all brute force now.
Another shot rang out—then another. A ricocheting bullet grazed my cheekbone. The armor held, but the bone beneath might’ve cracked. Didn’t matter, not when the network assault already had my senses on fire.
Hunt was thrashing, his movements growing weaker. There wasn’t much left of his head. Becca had pretty much blown it to hell.
I charged up Apparition to full power and fired everything into his neck. Right at the chip slots. If the Black Wall had nested anywhere, it was there.
It worked. The bastard twitched a couple more times and finally went limp. But—
“Becca, drag him away!” I hissed through clenched teeth, wincing from the pain.
“What the fuck for—?”
“Just do it! As far as you can!”
The girls didn’t argue. They hauled what was left of Hunt’s body to the far side of the room.
“Further! Beyond the doorway!”
Once his remains were out of sight, I pulled myself up and tossed an EMP grenade after him. Followed it up with an incendiary one.
“Always burn the zombies,” I thought with a grim smile as the Blackwalls’s grip on my mind finally loosened.
“Shit,” Becca muttered, looking herself over. “I’m covered in brains.”
Lucy approached, inspecting my battered body.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Mostly. Just… yeah, you’ll probably need to drag me topside. Right leg’s toast.”
“What the hell was that thing?” Lucy asked. “A rogue AI?”
“More like black ICE from the Blackwall,” I replied, sucking on an inhaler. “Not sure exactly what went down in Cynosure, but it feels like Militech’s runners burned a hole right through it. It’s sealed now, but not fully healed. Like an open sore. Some AIs managed to stay behind in the bunker. They’re still linked to their kin beyond the Wall. And the Wall doesn’t like that. It’s trying to erase all potential breaches. I got caught in the crossfire while trying to download files.”
Lucy scowled as she sprayed clotting foam on my mangled leg. “I hate saying this—it pisses everyone off—but… I told you. I fucking told you. These aren’t the kind of ghosts worth chasing.”
“Managed to download something,” I said. “Let me see…”
Sifting through the data, I ignored most of the technical documents. What really caught my attention was the gift from the AIs.
I scanned the archive without unpacking it. Took me about five minutes to process what I was looking at.
“V?”
“All good. The file’s in the archive. Doesn’t seem dangerous. Just trying to figure out… wait. This is search program documentation!”
“What kind of program?”
“One meant to track anyone crossing the Black Wall. It logs those events across its operational range and beyond… and it’s got a viral element. It’ll infect all kinds of systems and integrate them into a shared search network. It’s brilliant.”
This was leagues beyond the tech used by the Slider to detect my crossing. A tool crafted by the AIs for one purpose—to help me find Songbird.
