Brent Stinebaker
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13-12 The Silent War (I)
🕑 Added 2023-06-26 19:29:16 +0000 UTC+ATTENTION+
PRIORITY 0 ALERT INBOUND:
Incubus,
You are to suspend all other ongoing operations and preparations immediately. A situation of paramount priority has transpired.
As of thirty seconds ago, Council Elder Mwaba D’Rongo’s mindguards have been entirely neutralized. The cause behind their deaths is pending investigation, but details remain unclear.
Presently, however, the elder’s mind is undefended.
You have been chosen for your valor and skill in Deep-Nether operations, along with further distinguishments as a member of high-priority flash-response strike cells. With the urgency presented by the situation at hand, we ask that you devote your efforts once more and ensure the elder’s security.
Your next proxy is being dead-dropped as we speak. The full briefing will be included within its sequences–all phantasmics are green for this operation.
It is preferable that you do not alert the Paladins or Exorcists to your presence, but the elder is priority 0. Repeat: Elder Mwaba D’Rongo is priority 0.
We cannot stress the severity and risk presented to a compromise on such a level. The elder’s mental sanctity must be preserved, but should you find confirmation of memory-based tampering of any nature, then engage based on the guidelines of Code Winter.
Burn everything. Let nothing of the leakage escape. Redact all details of your presence thereafter.
Your proxy has arrived.
We place our confidence in you and your fellow Incubi.
Form your cells. Ascertain the situation. Respond accordingly. You have in-dive command.
Unity is Destiny.
-Incubi Priority Alert
13-12
The Silent War (I)
The succulence of D’Rongo’s ego-rending pain was made ever-sweeter when paired with the imbibement of her deepest memories and the sequences to her phylactery. Her pain was a delight to feel, and her secrets offered new fathoms to delve into.
And then came the matter of her phantasmics…
Though most of what she had to offer was meant to support administrative work and disappointing as the traumas chambered in her Ghostjack were, there was a singular construct that clutched the totality of Avo’s attention.
Its design was that of a smashed mirror frame, but through the opening once occupied by a pane of glass was a murky pathway into what appeared to be a reflected palace. He had found it hidden between two larger-capacity phantasmics, and it took him more than an instant to understand what he had discovered.
Phylacteries were strange things. Avo had interacted with them before–or at least the contents within the memories that Walton granted him recalled such affairs. Regardless, their functionality went beyond the merely cognitive and into thaumaturgic. Though there were sequences involved in its creation, the phantasmal end was merely an anchor to another vessel.
If D’Rongo were to be murdered, the phantasmic would activate in an instant and inject her being over through to the other side.
It was due to that very reason Avo didn’t manipulate the construct overmuch. It wouldn’t do to have her be shunted over along with him. There had been a few cases of Necros being caught within the minds of Regulars as they shunted out from their present bodies. What followed could be described as two minds being put through a metaphysical blender as their cognitive selves were mangled into each other, leaving their Essence spilling out adrift where they were.
Such was also a common Incubi tactic to ensure the final deaths of each Regular they killed during the war.
Still, it was a useful structure, and he would find the time to siphon the fullness of its nature.
With his Frame, he wouldn’t be able to use it himself, but that didn’t mean there weren’t other uses it could be applied to. Hence, he buried his own ghosts around its base sequences, hiding them deep in the soil of D’Rongo’s subconscious functions to form his Auto-Seance when the time came. Perhaps the Incubi would be able to uncover his machinations if they were through enough, but in such a case, he would simply choke off the pathway of her escape to ensure her final demise.
Skill was a constant endeavor if one wished to be a Necro, but preparation was an absolute necessity.
Cast a master into an unfamiliar mind without time nor reference and watch them fall to an opponent that would typically be regarded as far lesser.
With his final adjustments made, he stopped invoking his Haemokinesis and the dilation of time settled back to normalcy.
Shifting back out to the borders of her thoughtstuff, he studied the elder’s mindscape as her consciousness inched back from the torpor and incoherence he infused within her.
She would remember the beginning of their conversation. She would suspect Walton of having breached the walls of her mind again. Sowing such a seed of deception would grant a logical track for her ire to progress while keeping him an unknown.
The amusing matter of Chambers being an acolyte was unsalvagable. Ori-Thaum had clearly been misled by misattributions and ostensible details without fully grasping what was moving behind the scenes. It would serve him better anyway–the more eyes he could shift over to Chambers in engagements, the less would be on him.
That keep his window of attack wide and the threats he needed to manage low.
This also meant that he probably needed to get Chambers a second cycler at some point.
If the man was going to be bait, his reusability might as well be ensured.
Thoughtstuff rife with murky confusion brushed against Avo like surf crashing upon a beach. The veil of psychosis lifted from D’Rongo slowly, and she arose from her pseudo-slumber with feelings of hatred already primed.
Her disgust with his father was pure and immediate, and when her mind called out for him with insults and taunts demanding that he show himself, Avo knew his task here to be done.
Now, it was time for a shift in mindset. Things were about the get dynamic, and the beast chuffed inside him as his predatory urges filled his being.
There were unknown Necros infesting Oversec C1. He wasn’t sure who they were, but freeing D’Rongo from his direct presence would soon let him confirm if the Incubi were involved.
Without his suppression, it likely wouldn’t take long before a new cell shifted over into her thoughts to secure her sequences. If such a situation came to be, he thought it best that he make himself sparse. No sense in undoing all his circumspect preparations for a bout of amusement.
Besides, he had another mind to secure–other theaters of thought to fight and engage across Oversec C1.
So far, the lobby of Oversec C1 remained quiet, and the Exorcists and Paladins rode the circuitry of memories ignorant to infiltrators roaming between the details and beneath the surging currents of thougthstuff.
This was to be a silent war. An engagement of utmost secrecy for the ones that groped through the shadows of recollection seeking to fulfill objectives unknown and bound for destinations unseen.
Such ignorance offended Avo, and so he would seek his initial remedy by returning to the compromised mind of Abrel Greatling.
If nothing else, there would be nothing connecting a potential engagement in her shattered palace to the missing pieces within D’Rongo’s memories.
***
+Shard-1, what’s her condition?+
Shard-1 let out a low sigh as she wondered the best way to express how shattered the Godclad’s mind was. +She’s completely cracked. The Paladins kept her from resurrecting, and the kill switch inside her heart isn’t firing. Judging from her biometrics, something managed to inflict enough internal damage on her to pulp some of her organs but not kill her completely.+
+Sounds like whoever hit her did it deliberately. I’m gonna take a peek at her short-terms again. See if I missed anything there.+
Shard-2 was proving to be a bit of a conspiracy theorist. She’d put up with that type for priority-zero emergency dive like these, but even with a proxy separating them from their private thoughts, she could tell that the other Incubus wasn’t very neat in the way she did things.
More than once she caught the other woman casting her ghosts where they didn’t need to go. A perverse voyeurism seemed to bleed over from her personal habits into the proxy, and she had a habit of jumping from one sequence to another.
There was little rhythm or order to her method, which made her extreme competence all the more baffling.
Shard-2 proved herself capable of reassembling fragmented pieces of cognition with extreme ease. It was also as if she was the one who inflicted the damage herself.
They were very different, but the priority alert system likely selected and assigned the two of them to serve in this dive because of it.
Still, Shard-1 wasn’t sure if she wanted this partnership to become a long-term thing. She’d make her feedback known after this was over, and tell the Concaves that–
+Wh-oa! Shard-1, I think I found something,+ With the sing-song way Shard-2 sang those words, she must’ve found something juicy.
+Summary,+ Shard-1 replied, not wanting to break from her own review. She checked her cog-feed to see the condition of the Awareness Pylons she imprinted into the surrounding sequences to warn her about encroaching Exorcists. So far, they were situated in the girl’s accretion.
Getting past them was a chore and a half. It begrudged her to admit it, but these Exorcists were quality enough that they couldn’t be underestimated. They still had too many flaws–were affected by too much empathic pull to be the best divers, but as a unit, they were more than sufficient against most in the city.
Most.
It was a respectable achievement. No one was really better than the Incubi.
+Shard-1… come on,+ Shard-2 said. +You just gotta see this… whoever sequenced it is… well, they got gleam, I’ll tell you that.+
Shard-1 just repeated what she said earlier. +Summary.+
+You’re going to want to see–+
+You’re very unprofessional, you know that?+
She could practically sense the smirk on Shard-2’s face when she said that. +Well. Only one of us found something so far. You act professional, but hey, one of us as got to get results.+
Shard-1 stopped what she was doing. This sow–this bitch–wanted to go there? Fine. Very well. She would see just what kind of “results” she managed to find. And if she was disappointed, she would let Shard-2 know about it. In exquisite detail. As a post-dive report.
Arriving at the specific memory instance Shard-2 occupied, she settled her thoughts and cast her ghosts into the sequence, preparing herself for disappointment and a waste of time. Injecting herself into the memory, she found herself as a loose collection of mem-data alongside Shard-2, who was busy examining some kind of flying drone.
The rest of the scene was pure chaos. A hypertube had Ruptured, cracking existence in a spread of fissuring brightness. Uncountable quantities of drones occupied the sky while prismatic pyramids scarred the horizon with geometric exhaust.
She approached the memory artifact that Shard-2 was examining and found herself unable to tell what had fascinated her fellow Incubi so.
+What’s wrong with it?+
+Nothing!+ Shard-2 cheered.
Shard-1 looked through her inventory of traumas and wondered if she could concoct an in-depth enough story to mask a deliberate Silver-on-Silver nulling. +Explain. Now.+
+It’s really, really well done,+ Shard-2 said. +I almost missed it. Me! Whoever hid this is pure fucking nova. I’d love to meet–+
+Shard-2, I’m out of patience. Tell me what I’m looking for.+
She caught a whiff of wry amusement coming from her temporary partner. +Oh. You still don’t see it, do you?+
Shard-1’s annoyance deepened. +See what?+
+Abrel Greatling didn’t notice this drone. This modification was added later. Whoever built this had all the details right. All of them, but something about the emotional wavelengths recorded in the sequence is… off a bit. Too much surprise.+
+She could have been surprised by a drone–+
+Look at the mem-data. It’s too much. Now–+
The sequence of memories they dwelled in suddenly shuddered. Shard-2 went silent. Shard-1 checked her pylons again but found the Exorcists even further away than before.
It wasn’t them.
Beside them, the drone flickered and smeared into a collage of mem-data, stretching out to encompass both future and past developments within the sequence–and beyond.
+It’s connecting to other artifacts and sequences,+ Shard-2 said, sounding almost breathless. +Oh, that’s sneaky. Tricky bastard built an Auto-Seance access point across a bunch of interconnected memories.+
Shard-1 loaded a trauma into her Ghostjack. Standard fatality pattern–this one taken from the mind of someone forced to shoot themselves after their new transplanted arm was jacked by a rival Necro. A bitter tang preceded final oblivion, and despair went just before nothingness.
It held enough hurt to fracture even a Phalanx–though getting through all the layers would take some time.
Whoever was about to enter Abrel’s mind wasn’t going to be intact for very long. She just needed to make this quiet so the Exoricsts–
+Wait!+ For the first time, Shard-2 sounded alarmed. +I have them. They just spawned it–oh, fuck me they’re moving fas–shit, Shard-1 get ready–+
The thought-carrying ghosts of the other Incubi barely reached her when she felt it.
Someone had accessed their sequence from another. The mem-data was being altered–small changes and specific artifacts–additions. Someone was spoofing beneath existing structures within the scenes, someone was–
An ocean of trauma struck and burrowed through her wards in a coruscating barrage. A spike of pain flashed through her mind and suddenly, her thoughts grew slippery. In the periphery of her fading awareness, she sensed Shard-2 cast out her own traumas before she herself was struck dozen times in return.
Thoughtstuff and severed memories spurted free from her like intestines tumbling out of an opened stomach, but against all odds, Shard-2 managed to jack out.
Shard-1 laughed.
She was wrong. Shard-2 really was something.
Her damage was severe, though. She hoped her partner would make it. She hoped–
Something reached into her mind, invasive ghosts licking down the rents of her damaged cognition. She was supposed to do something if her mind was compromised. She was supposed to… she was supposed…
She could remember. It was hard to think. Getting harder to–
The intruder spoke then, his voice a deep sibilant whisper tinged with hunger and brutality. +Good Necro. Found it. Going to have to move the phantasmic now.+
+I…I…+ she tried to respond.
+Command can’t hear you. I removed the connection. Don’t think your companion will survive either. Tasted some of her damage. Inner memories. Pieces of her ego are missing.+
An unwilling sadness filled Shard-1. She didn’t know Shard-2 before this day. She didn’t even like her. But in these last moments, she wanted the other Incubus to live, for someone to make it out.
+Yes,+ the intruder spoke. +Good hurt. Still human. Too human.+
+Wha–what–+
+Not going to kill you,+ he said. She could feel a burning excitement build inside of him.
+Why… why?+
+Have another use for you. Another means of… damage.+
She felt his ghosts twist the fabric of her memories then. In the real, her body twitched and spasmed. The world was cold on one end but hot on the other. Something was like… a frozen flame in her skull, and it was… familiar to her somehow? She couldn’t remember–her thoughts weren’t even hers anymore.
+Another one of yours will come soon. They will extract you. Need you to make this deliver for me. Want to see how they react.+ He released a slow chuffing laugh. +Want to see if they start thinking Highflame has your weapon.+
More of her mental interior was remolded. She let out a sigh and stopped trying to think.
She just needed to do what he wanted. That was good. She wanted to do what he wanted.
This was her choice.
***
It would not be the Incubus’ choice to set off the Conflagration when she arrived back with her cell, but his instead.
He had to admit–their awareness impressed and intimidated him. To find his Auto-Seance from such minutiae meant he needed to take more extreme means to hide his intrusions. If he didn’t have a secondary entry point via Geunne the Exorcist, it would have been an ugly encroach.
The Attention Pylons, meanwhile, were less than a joke with their limited detection capabilities. He didn’t even bother downloading any of their sequences.
Across his Auto-Seance, D’Rongo’s mind still seemed silent of any other cognitions but her own. How odd they were proceeding with more caution accessing their own elder than dealing a Highflame Godclad.
With Shard-1 subverted, he looked through the memories stored on her proxy and found himself more than a little annoyed.
Proxies were like wearing another mind with specific built-in blinders. He wasn’t going to find out where she lived or other private accounts, but she would serve as a poisoned piece of bait all the same.
A strike cell would come for her soon, and when they extracted her from Abrel’s mind, he fully intended to set off the Conflagration he had connected.
If nothing else, this would spike paranoia within Ori-Thaum.
They were the only ones with such a weapon. But for it to be used against them… and after some of their Incubi accessed a Gold’s mind no less.
Well, that would create the most interesting theories.
Avo was tired of other people creating problems for him. He wanted to start doing things the other way.
After remodifying the sequences and artifacts he was using in Abrel’s mind, waited a moment to ensure the placidity of her broken palace.
+Thanks for being useful,+ Avo whispered.
Abrel moaned something animalistic.
Jumping down into Oversec C1 thereafter, he found himself dancing from mind to mind, seeking disturbances in the undertow as he made his way closer and closer to where he sensed the Low Masters.
He approached methodically and carefully, using his Whisper while hiding between memories.
And just as well.
As he slipped through a logistical phantasmic, he found the first signs of another engagement in the form of six broken Incubi lingering near the high-capacity thoughtwave trap he left behind earlier while passing through.
With how they drifted through the Nether, mostly hollow of memories and thoughtstuff, Avo studied the nulled being as their dissolution continued.
And with how neat and thorough their eradication was, there existed only one set of suspects exceeding his–and the Incubis’--skill set.
The Low Masters were in the muck now too.
Avo hardened his will.
He cast his Whisper out across the sequence, charging Secondhand Fatality to the forefront as he prepared himself to face his “fathers” properly for the first time.
And as he drew closer to the mental husks left behind, he could see threads of thoughtstuff flowing between the leaking ghosts, carrying whispered thoughts between them.
Comments
Brent Stinebaker
New chapter will be out in a little while (10-15 Hr)
Wanderingforworks
Can’t wait to see the low masters again! Thanks for the chap!
