Chapter 115: [115]: Church of the Code, Iron Fanatics
For thirty minutes the reinforced bunker of the rogue code-smith was filled with the chaotic and rhythmic sounds of absolute manic productivity.
Corbin was a blur of motion. The man practically vibrated with energy as he darted between massive server banks and a heavily modified arcane soldering station. Sparks flew as he violently fused precious high-tier mana crystals to a jagged piece of black iron. He was muttering rapidly to himself in a language that was half code and half Ethereal incantation.
Sebastian sat on the ruined leather couch with his eyes closed. He was utilizing the downtime to let his physical synchronization stabilize. The premium Server Filter he had consumed earlier had halted the terrifying Void Toxicity but his body still felt like it had been run over by a fleet of dump trucks.
He focused on his breathing. In. Out. He regulated his heart rate and ignored the sharp phantom aches that occasionally flared in his left arm where the code had nearly un-rendered.
Gwen was pacing near the ruined blast doors. The smuggler was clearly anxious. She kept checking the loaded magazines of her heavy kinetic pistols by snapping them in and out of the grips.
CLACK.
"You’re making me nervous Seattle," Sebastian muttered without opening his eyes. "Stop playing with your toys and sit down."
"I don’t like sitting in a box with a broken door," Gwen shot back and glared out into the dark tunnel. "Especially not in this sector. Outpost Rust is divided into territories Sebastian. And we are currently squatting in the worst one."
Sebastian slowly opened his silver eyes. He looked at her with an expression radiating absolute boredom.
"Worse than the Onyx Syndicate? I just compressed their top mages into a meat cube. I think I can handle the local neighborhood watch."
"The Syndicate are just mobsters. They want money. They want power," Gwen explained as her voice dropped into a harsh and serious tone. She walked over to the tactical table and leaned against it. "The guys who run the lower depths don’t care about credits. They are a religious cult. They call themselves the Iron Disciples."
Sebastian sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Great. Another cult. The apocalypse really brings out the weirdos. What is their gimmick? Do they worship a giant spider?"
"They worship the System," Gwen said flatly. "They worship the raw unadulterated source code. They believe that biological flesh is a sin. A weakness. A glitch that needs to be purged to achieve true harmony with the Ethereal Plane."
Sebastian raised an eyebrow. That was actually a new one. In his past life the cults on Earth worshipped the massive monsters that brought the apocalypse. They wanted to be eaten.
But worshipping the System itself? Worshipping the mathematical engine that ran the simulation? That was a terrifying level of fanaticism.
"So what?" Sebastian asked. "They preach at you until you log out?"
"No. They augment themselves," Gwen grimaced and looked genuinely disturbed. "They actively cut off their own arms and legs and replace them with iron. They strip away their pain receptors and their emotional subroutines. They want to be machines Sebastian. And they enforce their religion on everyone who wanders into their territory."
Before Sebastian could offer a sarcastic reply a shrill piercing alarm shattered the relative quiet of the bunker.
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
The emergency lights lining the ceiling instantly flashed a harsh red.
Corbin shrieked and dropped his soldering iron. It clattered loudly against the floor. He spun around and his bloodshot eyes were wide with fresh panic. He scrambled toward a bank of security monitors on the far wall.
"Proximity sensors!" Corbin yelled as his fingers flew across the keyboard to bring up the external camera feeds. "Something tripped the outer perimeter alarms in the tunnels!"
Gwen instantly raised her pistols and took a defensive stance behind a stack of metal crates. "I told you. We stayed too long."
Sebastian didn’t panic. He slowly pushed himself off the couch and his heavy boots thudded against the floor. He walked over to the monitors and looked over Corbin’s trembling shoulder.
The footage from the external cameras showed the sprawling river of the lower tunnels.
It wasn’t just a few scavengers. It was an army.
Dozens of figures were marching through the muck and completely ignoring the corrosive damage of the environment.
They looked horrifying. They were humanoid but barely. Most of them had amputated their organic limbs and replaced them with crude jagged iron prosthetics. Their faces were hidden behind welded iron masks. They carried heavy brutal maces and thick rusted broadswords.
"The Iron Disciples," Gwen cursed while looking at the feed. "They found us."
"How?" Sebastian asked with a clinical voice. "I killed the Syndicate guards cleanly. There was no distress signal sent."
"It wasn’t the guards Boss!" Corbin stammered and pulled up a secondary data log. He pointed a shaking finger at a graph showing a massive spike in localized magical frequencies. "It was the collar! When you deleted my ID from the System Tracker it didn’t just turn off. It registered as a catastrophic data anomaly! The Disciples monitor the local network for code violations. They think an unholy glitch just manifested in their backyard!"
"Well," Sebastian deadpanned and cracked his neck. "They aren’t entirely wrong."
"We need to run," Gwen stated and already moved toward the back of the bunker. "There’s an old ventilation shaft behind the servers. It leads up to the mid-levels. We can slip out before they breach the door."
"I can’t run!" Corbin yelled. He frantically grabbed the half-finished Spoofing Drive from his workbench. "The drive isn’t compiled! If I disconnect it from the mana-forge now the code will corrupt! I need twenty more minutes!"
Gwen stopped. She looked at the frantic engineer and then looked at the monitor showing the advancing army of iron fanatics. She cursed loudly.
"Seattle we can’t hold this room for twenty minutes against fifty armored zealots! We have to ditch the drive."
Sebastian looked at the camera feed. He saw the march of the cultists. He saw the heavy iron weapons they dragged.
If they ran Corbin would lose the drive. If they lost the drive Sebastian couldn’t get back to Earth. If he couldn’t get back to Earth Sanctuary would fall and Valerie would be permanently deleted.
The math was incredibly simple.
"You aren’t ditching anything," Sebastian said. His voice dropped the tired sarcastic tone. It shifted into the heavy and terrifying hum of a Sovereign preparing for an execution.
He turned away from the monitors and walked toward the ruined blast doors.
"Boss what are you doing?" Corbin squeaked.
"I hate preventative maintenance," Sebastian muttered. His silver eyes glowed brightly in the red emergency lights of the bunker. "Keep coding Corbin. Gwen watch the door. Don’t let anything interrupt him."
"Sebastian you can’t take them all in a narrow tunnel!" Gwen yelled with genuine concern in her voice. "They don’t feel pain! They don’t rout! They will just keep coming until they crush you!"
Sebastian stepped over the twisted metal of the doorway and walked out into the dark cavern.
He didn’t draw a weapon. He didn’t cast a protective shield. He just rolled his shoulders and felt the immense crushing density of his thirty percent physical synchronization coil in his muscles.
"I don’t need them to feel pain," Sebastian called back over his shoulder. A ruthless smirk carved itself onto his face. "I just need them to break."