Chapter 368
We splintered. I dove to the side and didn’t stop moving until I was well and truly clear of the rest of the squad. The entire time I moved, I opened fire into the robots with mixed results. Most of my shots went off target, though it hardly mattered with the quantity of enemies. Blaze rounds sparked across the chamber and blew sizzling holes into several robotic chassis. Their industrial armor wasn’t designed to stand up to any level of actual firepower.
Instead of retreating like a sane person, Hope charged forward and bounced off of an IF. She used it like a trampoline and vaulted up to the catwalk above. From there, she stabbed her dagger into an IF dangling from the catwalk, and easily flipped up to the Purifiers all while dodging rogue acid jets. It was a crazy feat of agility and pure confidence that I doubted I’d be able to pull off even with 40 levels in Melee Weapons.
On the other hand, Garrick was likewise insane. There truly were no sane people left in the Crusade. His speedware flared and he charged forward without any hesitation. His sword vibrated sharply and bit deep into the FELLOW’s torso… to no effect. The heavy duty bot had thick armor, and this one was turtled up without exposing its joints like the last had.
The FELLOW’s hand snapped down in a brutal backhand that Garrick barely managed to dodge. The metal fingers extended at the last moment, and a trail of acid followed the lethal swipe. Garrick threw a slash back toward the bot and flared his speedware once more to get away from the trails. Jets erupted along the FELLOW’s back and fired randomly—
“Argh!” Garrick attempted to dodge with his speedware once more and ended up flying right into one of the acid lances. He pulled back last second, but the damage was done. It clipped his chrome arm and burned through before he could even react. His silver longsword clattered to the ground.
“Garrick!” Hope shouted from above. She shanked the last Purifiers and parried an IndustryFriend’s attack from behind. She lunged at it and knocked it over the side of the railing to ride it down to the ground level. Just as it slammed into the ground, she rolled off it and forced the bot to take all of their momentum.
“Fuck, you guys got here quicker than I expected.” A voice called from the server room, and a man stepped out with a sharp clap of his hands.. The bots slowed to a stop instead of pushing the attack while we were staggered.
I eyed the man. He was fully covered in a heavy duty suit—the fire-free prototype that they were working on in Phyxaflame’s lab. It supposedly could keep a person alive in the strongest flames for up to five hours. It looked less like a prototype now, though, and the fabric was dyed a mesh of purple and red like some kind of knock off supervillain. The tinted face mask had two pinpricks of lavender light glowing through it.
”Lavender,” Hope growled out.
“In the flesh.” He bowed theatrically. A barrel-like jet flared brightly, and launched the man into the air. He hovered there with the—what did he call it back then? The AeroJet? This one was likewise modified, though, and had large tanks on it that wrapped around to his wrists. “Congratulations! You found me.”
”So we played hide and seek. What now? Dress up?” Hope laughed sarcastically at the man. I could see what she was trying to do, though. Garrick shakily got to his feet once more.
“As if.” He checked his wrist and stretched out mid air. “I have an important meeting to attend, though, so I’m afraid I’ll have to leave first. Ah, and Zuku? It was a pleasure to see you again!”
He twisted his arm, and a bolt of purple plasma launched from his wrist. It slammed back into the server room, and a fire erupted. It was small at first, but it flared to life as if being fed by something—did this guy repurpose the suppressing nano drones too? The fire flared out unnaturally and encircled that entire side of the room.
”Ta ta!” The AeroJet thrummed with power, and light pulsed across it. Just before he could flee, though, I flung a knife in a perfect interception route. It slammed into the back of the device, and cut through one of the chords attached to his rear tanks. A spray of purple liquid flowed out, and he staggered midair.
“Stick around, bastard!” No one makes a fool of me twice. I sprayed up at him with wild abandon, and fire sparked across his body. Unfortunately, I had the wrong element for this situation. It sparked off his purple and red suit without causing any significant damage.
“Bitch!” He raised his arms like a king declaring his domain. “Did you really think your paltry fire could stop me?!”
The bots around the room started to move again. Several moved for me, but I simply shifted around and they lost track of me. My Blinder module was still up and running, obscuring from the sensors of everything but Lavender. It was the man himself that was the issue though.
A cold bolt of ice speared through me. I tossed myself to the side with Burst Step just intime to dodge a barrage of purple plasma. Where they hit, the nanodrones spurred the fire and made it flare to life far more than the plasma bolt had a right to. Although I dodged the shots, the fire stayed and burned away the area I had to move around.
”GRAH!” Garrick shouted and flung half a bot at Lavender. His chrome arm flexed heavily, and the top half of the bot careened into the flying gnat’s side. He took another acid bolt from the FELLOW for his efforts, and a blood-curdling scream ripped out of his throat.
“Garrick!”
Garrick’s sacrifice wasn’t for nothing. Lavender took the hit and was momentarily knocked onto of the sky. I took the chance to fling another knife while I could track his movement easily. It sailed cleaned through the air and caught the other tube of his suit just before he could get free from the falling bot.
Lavender shoved the bot away and thrust his arm out toward me—only for a half-formed plasma bolt to fizzle out before it could even reach me. He tapped his wrist, and then shook his head. “This isn’t the last you’ve seen of me!”
Unfortunately, the bots pushed their attack much more fiercely. All three of us were bogged down, and could do nothing but watch as the crazy pyromaniac fled down the tunnels of the purification plant. Hope slashed forward with her daggers, splitting an IF into three chunks. “Fuck! Deal with this first—!”
“INTRUDER!” The FELLOW slammed into her, and launched her back several steps. She caught the blow with her daggers just before impact, but still took the heavy blow with a groan.
I opened fire into the bots to buy her space, but these things were getting better and better about tracking me based off my bullet’s trajectory. I bent over into a bridge just as a lethal cleave from an IF passed over me. I followed it into a back handstand, and kicked away from the IF before it could chase me. My decision not to use Burst Step again proved to be a correct one as four IF’s attacked the areas I was likely to Burst Step into.
We needed to end this quickly—or, at least, end it before any more injuries could add up. Garrick was already starting to slow down, and acid damage rapidly accumulated around the edges of his armor. Jade Dagger? No—I didn’t want to risk getting close to the thing, and my dagger definitely couldn’t punch through the armor to infest anything important.
I pulled the sentry turrets from my bag and slapped on my mask. I hadn’t wanted to use them with a potential AI on the prowl since it could infest their targeting algorithms. If there was even an AI around her in the first place. It could all just be Lavender’s controls. He likely wanted to destroy the server room for a reason, though. There was still a work around.
Back after I had to rip out my own eye, I became just a bit paranoid about my tech being turned against me. Almost everything I made these days had manual kill switches or overrides. The turrets had both. They’d lose the targeting capabilities and only shoot forward at a predetermined fire rate, but that was exactly what I needed at the moment. If the AI was already used to tracking my shots, then there was a good chance it’d assume the turret was me and loose track just long enough for me to make my move.
The turret immediately shot a round right into an IF’s torso and exploded into a small ball of fire. “Buy me some time, Hope!”
”Got it!” Hope dodged a lethal punch from the FELLOW, then used her daggers like grappling claws to clamber up its arm.
Garrick finally seemed to snap out of his daze from his injuries and moved for his sword. He kicked it up without even pausing and caught it with his other hand. His expression twisted into one equal parts fury and vengeance.
With the distraction set, I shifted my approach and moved around the chamber toward the server doors. I got halfway there before my turret ate an acid blast and melted into nothing. Rest in peace.
Hope and Garrick moved around the FELLOW like ants. Hope stayed on its back to keep it from attacking her without risking harming itself, though her daggers didn’t do much damage. The armor plating was thicker than her blades, so it didn’t matter if she could easily cut through it with whatever vibration tech the Crusade used in their melee weapons.
Garrick had definitely seen better days. He kept up with the fight, but his strikes were weaker and less coordinated with his off hand. Not to mention he constantly had to adjust his style and patterns to keep up with the AI’s predictive algorithms.
I finally reached the doors into the blazing server room on the far side of the space. There was no need to keep killing all the bots if we could kill the intelligence behind them. Flashstep carried me safely through the fire and into the other side. Smoke filled my eyes, though, and tears gathered. “Ready, Luna?”
”A-are you about to link me in?” Her voice came across our connection in a rush.
”Chek.” Insight cut deep into my shoulder and trailed down through my stomach. I threw myself to the side just as an IF slashed at me with brutal force. Insight surged even more violently midair, but I was already flying to the side in a dodge—or so the AI thought.
I shifted into Flash Step once more, and my body flicked into a beam of pure electricity. I appeared behind the bot that’d just attacked me, cleanly dodging a dozen acid lances shot through the door by the FELLOW. It seemed this thing had been waiting for me to attempt to sneak around afterall, but it definitely couldn’t have predicted everything I had in my toolset.
Fully charged with electricity, I slammed my fist forward into the IF and dumped everything into it. Without any hesitation, I used Flash Step again and immediately regained the entirety of my charge as I sailed through the server facility.
The first thing that hit me was the intense heat radiating throughout the entire place. The second thing that hit me was a bullet—
A turret fired in my general direction just as I shifted back from lightning to human. Only a couple shots managed to hit me before I pulled to the side and evaded the AI’s sensors once more. They slammed into my chest and sent a sharp jolt through my ribs, though the bullets were entirely blocked by the Crusade ballistic armor.
I staggered behind a server bank and took a ragged breath of air. Note to self—Insight didn’t work if I didn’t have a physical body for it to work on. I shifted and moved down a few separate rows to get away from a surge of half-melted IFs entering the facility through the purple flames burning at the front of the server room.
Once I was far enough, I dropped my bag off my shoulder and pulled out Luna’s pyramid. I easily hooked it up to the server. A second passed and nothing happened. “Uh, Luna?”
I glanced out of the reinforced glass that separated the servers from the space outside. Hope and Garrick were still—
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
An alarm violently tore through the space, sounding loud even through my earbuds. They were designed for gunshots, so the actual volume level of the alarm must’ve been insane. Water burst from above and rained down on the hot server room. It immedietly doused me, though brought some relief to my watering eyes.
The server bank I hooked the pyramid up to flared red and the lights across it abruptly blinked out. Then, as if nothing happened, they shifted to a soft blue glow. The server banks right next to the first repeated the pattern, and the shifting lights rapidly spread throughout the entire place like a virus. “I’m i-in.”
Outside the window, the FELLOW abruptly went still. Garrick didn’t hesitate and went for the killing blow. It took several slashes, but he managed to hack off the thing’s head. The massive robot collapsed… though it was probably thanks to Luna more than anything. The core processors for the FELLOW were in its chest; the head was just full of sensors.
I let out a breath and leaned against the server. “How, uh, are we looking?”
“Nova. I-I just sent a kill code to a-all bots. Y-you should be safe.” Luna said it was no big deal, but I couldn’t even imagine how difficult it would be to wrench away control. Not to mention how quickly she did it too.
”The AI?” I rubbed at my chest where the shots hit and glanced toward the still raging fire. That was definitely going to leave a bruise. Good thing I could sleep it off… or this could be a perfect chance to test Perfect Donor some more. “There is one, right?”
”Yeah, w-working on it.” Several minutes passed while I let the runner work. The sirens abruptly shut off, and I could envision Luna hunched over her deck in the middle of Medtech as she worked at the code. Eventually, she killed the silence. “D-do you need a chemical expert f-for Cold Moon?”
“Maybe.” I wasn’t planning on getting into anything related to chemicals, but I had no doubt I’d need a chemist at some point. I understood the basics. There was so much to that field, though.” Why?”
She went quiet again. It wasn’t the distracted silence of someone multitasking, but more so the careful kind. “U-um… w-would you consider a, uh, a b-bound AI?”
“Are you insane?!” I pushed myself upright too fast and the room tilted weirdly. I habitually shot a glare at one of the cameras. Not that it’d matter with my Blinder active.
“I-it’ll be a hundred percent safe! Y-you can trust me.” She brought up a bunch of data into my HUD that didn’t mean anything to me. “Look! It still fought for Lavender even after he set it on fire. It’ll totally be safe.”
”I—“ There was no such thing as a safe AI. Only fools that deluded themselves into thinking so, and the headlines of people dying to monsters they thought liked them. “It’s not that I don’t trust you…”
”I-I g-get it.” Her voice dropped downcast. “P-Polar Moon didn’t let me keep any either.”
“Keep?” That word hit me weirdly. My head spun at the implication behind it. “Luna, you can’t keep AIs. They’re either contained or deleted.”
”I-it doesn’t have to be like that.”
A wave of vertigo rolled through me. Probably an adrenaline crash, though it made my confusion at her words even more prominent. She was talking about it like a stray she’d brought home from an alley. “You’re talking about a murderous, self-evolving intelligence that doesn’t care for anything but itself like it's some kind of pet.”
“I-it doesn’t have to be self-evolving.” Her voice steadied like it usually did when she got to something technical. “We’ll box it in. Air-gap it, ‘c-course. Set up a bunch of cages a-and a deadman switch just in case. It won’t have net access. I-it won’t matter anyway. It’ll be a hundred percent on our side.”
”Those are some nice words.” I ran a hand down my face. “People smarter than both of us have said those countless times before things went sideways. Even this one would’ve turned on Lavender before too long.”
There was a reason AI were outlaws and BosSpace enforced the ban. The world had barely recovered from the last AI incident, and it likely wouldn't survive again. Tech had progressed so much and was so involved in everyday life that if it turned against humanity, our odds weren’t high.
”I’m s-smarter than the people who let theirs go sideways. And more capable.”
I almost laughed at her sudden surge of confidence. It was closer to a miffed one than actual amusement. “I can just hire a chemist, Luna. No need to risk ourselves.”
”A human chemist will take weeks to vet, a-and years to test loyalty. They can betray, skim, and leak. They’ll p-panic under pressure.” She took a shaky breath. “T-this one can model compounds in seconds and simulate reactions without even touching a lab. It won’t get tired. It won’t get greedy. And it won’t—“
”Have a conscience either.” Just one wrong line of code could see it turning on us, and then me being hunted down by the full force of BosSpace. I doubted I could outlast a mega-corp, let alone the mega-corp.
”I-I can fix that.” She rushed her words before I could interrupt again. “I-it’ll be narrow, and purpose built. Purely for chemical analysis and synthesis. I-I’ll burn out the rest of the modules.”
”Why are you so dead set on keeping this one alive?” I stared at the server banks. I could just end the conversation here and now with a dozen grenades.
”I—“ Her voice broke. “I-it’ll give me something to work on. T-to keep my mind off of things.”
Right… the search for Kaynis definitely hadn’t been going well. She was probably feeling lonely. I sighed and shook my head. The promise of an absolute expert that couldn’t betray me was incredibly tempting, though. I could see why corps ran AI black sites.
“Look—how about you build an SAI first?” They were much safer—and not illegal. The more limited versions wouldn’t raise any brows. “Or—here. Copy this.”
I pulled out CJ29’s core and plugged it into the server. It blinked weakly as it was powered back up, and then the light turned a pale blue. “A jaeger?”
“Work with that for now. If you can take care of it, we’ll talk about getting an AI in the future.” I rubbed at my forehead. Why did I feel like a parent getting their child a virtual pet to see if she could handle the responsibility? “Can we hurry his up? The fire’s getting closer.”
“R-right.” Luna sighed and thankfully dropped it. I’d rather not get struck by a BosSpace strike squad. “U-um… I won’t have body for it.”
“I’ll make you something.” Maybe a puppy that could bounce around and cheer her up. I glanced back toward the sizzling purple flames. They were slow moving, but had already consumed an eight of the server room. The water—or whatever the fire suppressant systems used—was working, but way too slowly for my liking. “Any sign of Lavender?”
“No. He’ll probably lay low for a while, though. It looked like you did quite a bit of damage to that suit of his.”
It felt incredibly bitter that he got away from us. There was just too much going on, though, and it would’ve been impossible to keep track with him flying around like that. At least, not while trying to dodge psycho killer bots. Hopefully we’d get a hit on the traitor at least. Lavender would live to see another day, but I had a feeling I’d hear about him again before too long. He didn’t seem like the type to keep a low profile.
Luna briefly walked me through killing the AI entirely, and got to work sorting through the documents and files stored on the server banks for anything that might clue us in on our arsonist. I had hope there was at least some stuff. He’d probably been trying to delete data when we interrupted him, and then decided burning down the server banks would be quicker.
She managed to pull out some chemical compounds from the servers and wipe the originals. It was something, at least. The compounds were apparently decades ahead of modern research… that was what made AI terrifying. They could research stuff so much quicker than a human could. It was also what made them valuable. If a runner dove into the DarkNet and pulled out an AI’s research into, say, medicine, they could sell it to a corp and be set for life.
By the time I was finishing up with her, Hope and Garrick started to poke around the server room behind me.
— — —
AN: The next chapter will probably also be delayed quite a bit. There’s maybe one or two more I need to rewrite?