Chapter 6-13 Vulnerabilities (II)
...That can't be possible. No one else has the memories to tap into our inception of the Highflame thoughtcast...
Unless...
Engram Protocol is in full effect. Wipe your short-term memories. Douse your thoughtstuff. See them eradicated entirely. I will do the same after encrypting what we have. Redact what you know of me as well. We're burning this circle. Let Cipher-Three know. Liquidate all non-essential assets. Schedule a memory restoration a month from now.
Go dark in the meantime. Use a Sleeper if you need to.
No. I don't know if Highflame has achieved counter-penetration. Seeing as we haven't died in a mass causality accident, I'd say we're not looking at the work of our esteemed competition. Voidwatch perhaps. Maybe Sanctus.
It matters little now. We move on. Stay stationary. Regroup in a month.
If we're still alive then, that is.
-Ori-Thaum Incubi "Cipher-01" to "Cipher-02" regarding a possible compromise of their interception of Highflame's planar security breach
6-13
Vulnerabilities (II)
The midnight rain bled down in columns through cracks left upon the face of holographic midnight. As the moisture loosened, an oscillating crown of neon bright spread throughout the heights of Nu-Scarrowbur. This district was a different beast from Xin Yunsha, for rather than being hewn by modular tissue, its edifices rose in stacked rondels--domed fortresses of painted metal that sprouted upward like ever-shrinking mushroom caps. Each block rose bristled with serried pylons fused across their hulls as if the flashing scales of a leviathan granted shine by pulses of electricity.
Beyond the steel, the winds flowing free from the interior Nu-Scarrowbur caressed pedestrians and aerovecs alike with a breath most primal. Each current of flow moved as if slaved to the whims of another as if all of air was but fabric, and needles were tugging upon its totality in different places. From height to height, shrieking from alley to alley, hidden presences encased themselves beneath the breeze: steeds skimming within in the veins of the breeze itself.
It was after one such Galeslither knot that Avo and Draus followed. It, and two additional Sangeists. Their Heavens were to be essential digest for Avo's Soul, while their Rendsinks would serve to aid his efforts to balance the Fallen Heaven out in Burner's Way.
The deeper details as to how the process would follow were best left to Kae. Though an echo of her former self, her understanding of thaumaturgy still thundered loud in the postmortem of her constrained brilliance.
Within an aerovan Draus managed to "borrow" from a former enforcer employed by Conflux, the mem-locked positions of all the presently operating knots glowed as radiant vertices across the DeepNav district simulation. Through preparation and subversion, Avo had managed to tag six different knots. Today, though, they only remained on the trail of one, the dual engines of their aged vehicle grunting as they passed through a dilapidated skytunnel that ran hollow through the guts of a megablock.
Their desired Galeslither was ahead by a mile and a half. In another five minutes, it would dive down a one-way lane that ran through both blocks two and three of the Aldendractht Quadplex as it had made a habit of every Ursday. Such a habit was the main reason Draus had designated it as an easy target, after all.
"Knot's gonna be turnin' any time now," Draus said. At her mental command, external sensory feeds crackled into shape from a merging of ghosts via the aerovec's locus. Breadth existed between and within the lanes. Five across and ten vertical, the skylanes of the tunnel ran porous while the holo-lanes were walled with stripped static--crossing allowed. "You got eyes on the others? They stickin' to their routes."
Avo checked before he replied. Certainty served one better than assumption. "Yes. No deviation. Continuing their patrols. Two breaking over Burner's Way outer perimeter. Other three delving down into the gutters."
The Regular chuckled. "Wonder wh--" Their aerovec dipped. Just in time to greet a speeding blur cleaving diagonally across traffic. Their aerovec twisted. Turbulence gripped and rattled the interior, with but their gimbals holding them in place. The familiar roar of an explosion sounded as raindrops of shrapnel sang their chiming tones upon the external hull above Avo.
Casting his Whisper out, Avo watched as a trailing wreck spiraled downward to meet the ground below. Clasped within the cage of flames, the shine of thoughtstuff spun like a drill. A survivor remained. One whose mind was rushing into overdrive, desperate to discover a way out. Too late now.
He watched as it struck, then skidded, off the edge of a passing truck. The following momentum pitched the burning husk into the opposite lanes. It struck a small aerovec first, both vehicles pancaking in a marriage of force as aeros behind collided.
Strangely, their horns remained silent throughout, as if neither vehicle nor rider noticed chaos unfolding before them.
"Good dodge," Avo said.
The Regular frowned. "Should've seen it comin'. Fact I had to jock us out of the way don't light my awareness in a good gleam." She sighed. "That kind of fuck-up would've seen me pullin' latrine duty back when I was still--"
"Street squires," Avo said, interrupting her self-criticism. He didn't notice either, which was odd enough. Nor did any other aero seem to grant the blazing wreckage with any regard. That sparked more than a few suspicions within Avo. "No one noticed. Probably had a Necro with them. Running Incogs."
"You reckon so?" Draus asked.
He grunted. "Likely. We can get careless." He cast out his Whisper to peek at the surrounding traffic. Still nothing. Aside from those that had suffered collisions, most others remained nigh-ignorant of all that had just transpired. "But everyone in the lanes doesn't react? Not Scalper response knot? Probably Incog. And a well-made one."
The Regular shook her head. "Well, there's a rough run. What'd you think they had on 'em?"
"Nothing anymore," Avo replied.
Draus drew up damage diagnostics and watched as flashes of orange painted the uppermost parts of their egg-shaped aerovec. "We're fine for now. But some of the internal hydraulics are shot. You're gonna have to step out from my side later when we disembark. Think a piece of shrapnel still lodged deep in your door."
He grunted. So long as their Zephyr could keep flying, it wouldn't be a problem. He could tear through the door if the need called for it.
The two of them had spent six nights away from the Second Fortune, returning only to rest and review the tasks which lay ahead. Kae remained in the company of Bright-Wealth and was protected by five or so drones that trailed her person. Draus had left her with a few other items. Items that went unmentioned to Avo. Normally, letting oneself be kept in the dark was a fatal mistake in his profession.
With him being potentially compromised, however, ignorance proved to be a double-edged blade, while the crackling pit that was Kae's mind prevented her from being outright subverted by phantasmal means.
Meanwhile, Draus had assured Green River that their nightly trips wouldn't bring any unwanted attention back to the casino via thoughtcast. Their "benefactor" brooked no complaint or argument about the sudden change in their behavior, merely wishing them fortune and favor for whatever task they pursued.
She held to her silence regarding Ninth Column as well. As far as she acted, it was as if the conversation she had with Avo was but a false memory on his part. Likewise, her mention of providing additional aid to the cause of destroying Conflux remained just talk as well.
Avo wished Green River would've revealed more opposition. At least questioned Draus indirectly to see what he might have revealed. With that, at least he would've known she was watching. By staying quiet, the mists of mystery remained, blurring her role as an ally, adversary, or something else entirely.
In the meantime, He and Draus had wasted little time in shaping the district to their advantage. The Regular made a few messy killings across the district via bombings and open gunfights using Conflux kit. Her targets were mostly gutter-level gangs and other subsidiaries that worked under the Scalpers as extensions of their power base. It didn't take long for her to provoke a reaction in the form of Scalper patrols.
The reported gunfights between Conflux and Scalper enforcers on the periphery of their respective territories were also welcome news.
Concurrent with Draus provocations, Avo worked at a more circumspect stance. From unprotected thoughtcasts between the Syndicate's street-walking FATE-donors and their accompanying enforcers, Avo snatched and copied sequences of memories. Memories that he had his Metamind scan and filter for information concerning the Scalpers and their security.
Specifically, however, he was targeting a certain weak link to their organization. He remembered the capabilities of their Necros when he faced them. And again, he struck at them as vulnerable prey rather than worthy opposition.
Warded though some of the enforcers were, he invaded their minds with relative ease, installing backdoors for intrusion by planting mem-cons in the loci of their vehicles or twinned memories taken from the minds of the FATE-donors they were attached to. Much of this didn't even require extensive use of his Ghostjack; so far, the minds he touched remained unbroken, with his subversions coming like infections: secondhand or more.
With a dozen or so enforcers compromised, he took the information from their minds as they slept. His targeted information was a narrow avenue, and so he stole with comparative ease, risking little and seizing what he needed to narrow down the location of the local Necros.
From there, he simply found the weakest amongst the weak and worked his trade. The Necros servicing the Scalpers were of matching quality as their counterparts from Conflux. What this meant was that he dug his mind into the Necro much the same way as he did most of the enforcers. The only major difference was that instead of infesting his newest quarry via a vehicle's loci, he twisted the cashier of a nearby fast food restaurant the Necro frequented.
As such, his virus slid through without suspicion as they let the mem-data that ran through the link between them and the cashier without review.
Wards were useful, but only when you left them up. It was part of the reason why he kept his imps externally with his thoughtstuff. Did it make it easier for other Necros to steal from him? Yes, though they did so at their peril. Did it ensure he didn't need to drop wards and expose his palace to intrusion every time he wanted to make a purchase? Also yes.
Through the Necro, his hidden influence spread like a plague into the Scalpers' internal loci and memory palaces. Whereupon Avo identified and tagged the loci of all the district operational golems with external memory fragments, ensuring mem-locks.
And potentially more, should the need to go loud ever arise.
A static wall of red flashed before their aero as they came to a halt. Trickling numbers counted down from a minute. Looking up, Avo watched as a flow of traffic darted forward out from the jaws of the tunnel. Above, the materials encasing the outer hull of the megablock dissolved into transparency. An enormous eye stared down upon them, light dashing off its surface at an angle. It resembled a glass-carved obsidian opal the size of a truck. Leaning back, the creature revealed more of its face as soft, suckling teeth lined the unzipped canals that ran beneath the stretch of its body which stretched out into thread-like tendrils a near-mile back down from where the tunnel began.
Lines of mem-data played across the display of his cog-feed as he looked upon the creature. It moaned with weariness but its words didn't flow as sound. Instead, a tide of ghosts splashed out from its mind and enveloped much of the local Nether. A deluge repeating the same ad roared its pitch like a downpour of information, striking against Avo's outer consciousness repeatedly.
+Afraid your wards aren't enough? Present security not doing it for you? Then you need KRAKEN! Contact the No-Dragons today and get your mind installed with something truly inhuman and asymmetrical! With just a simple procure that costs you twelve--+
With a thought, he tuned his Metamind and filtered the ad out from his awareness. Surprising that the Scalpers were letting the No-Dragons peddle their products so heavily, but he supposed business was business.
Some say imps affect one's morals like a lubricant. Perhaps. But Avo thought the saying too pithy and limited. Imps were like a wedge against self-interest as well. Some would trade future satisfaction tomorrow for pleasure ttoday.
And Syndicates were a mixed bag when it came to playing the long game in this city. Didn't take much for a Guild to see their puppets replaced.
A flash of green pulled Avo back into focus. The Zephyr turned hard and dove low and turned hard. Out from the jaws of the tunnel, they went. Basked in a waterfall of leaking rain, the inner rung of Nu-Scarrowbur greeted them as they circled block two. Perpendicular to them, a vast roundabout torqued upward in a display of dancing light, screaming sound, and shifting metal.
A dozen new points of interested littered Avo's cog-feed with miscellaneous mem-data. Beyond that, however, what truly clutched his attention was that which stood rooted at the heart of the district.
Its presence was ethereal, manifesting in bursts and increments upon the tapestry of existence. Flashes of incomprehensible lightning lashed at his eyes and wards both, the ghosts of his wards quailing as the fissuring cracks of a storm widened into a chasm, which in turn fused to become the eldritch bark of what looked to be an impossible tree.
Clad with layers of liquid electricity bade to stillness by the grasp of time, where most trees would rustle when the wind blew, this grumbled and growled with bygone voices. Its looping branches, meanwhile, were like small eddies amidst swirls of the raging wind. Stable portals for traffic to pass through or dock.
The outer lanes of traffic ran down holographic tubes. They ran four in an arc before a blockade of Scalper drones formed a partition between the FATELESS rabble and more esteemed customers. Past the separation, portals stretched out like nine constellations. Each shimmered as if a mirage, the faintness of what lay through the veil by a steady flow of traffic.
"Stormtree," Draus said. "A Stormtree anyhow. It's where the Guild got their name. Suppose to be fixtures on the flesh of time. First you've ever seen?"
"Up close," Avo answered. "Wasn't in a Stormtree Sovereignty when I was in the Tiers."
Draus nodded. "The ones up there are a hell of a lot bigger though." A flash of an expression passed across her face. "Can't tell you how much I hated tryin' to cut those suckers down during the war." She chuckled. "Made gettin' around easier a few times though. Let us push behind Stormtree's lines directly."
"Thought Highflame had a ceasefire agreement with them during the Fourth."
She tilted her head. "Yeah. We did. But accidents happen and... somedays you wear the wrong colors to work is all I'm sayin'."
False flag operations. Avo wasn't sure why he couldn't picture Draus doing something so underhanded. Might be because she was the closest thing to a "good" person he knew in these depths beyond Kae or Essus. It didn't make much for anyone to cast another in the mold of their perception. The totality of a person was so easily ignored in exchange for an ideal, especially considering they were about to commit another false flag themselves.
Avo frowned. How easily these things slipped him.
"Do you miss being a Regular?"
Draus turned and, uncharacteristically, her gaze dipped, eyes fleeing from contact. "Do I miss it?" She breathed out and rolled her shoulders. "I miss... feelin' like what I was doin' had purpose. Like I was fightin' for shit that mattered instead of just... the pest control I've been doin', I suppose. But... being Reg is about knowing that your life can be spent on anything and everything. And doin' what you're told anyway."
"For the dream?"
An embittered smile swelled over her face. Their aerovan passed into the darkness of the alley, the distance between them and the knot closing by the second. "For the dream." She licked her lips. "Might be a bit near-blasphemous but... after my discharge, I got to feelin' someway close to Jaus, I think. Before he got sent to the Big Nothin'."
"You said expendable," Avo said. He chuffed, his amusement dry. "Like me. Like ghouls."
Draus shook her head. "No. Ain't nothin' like your kind." Her lip twitched. Her thoughtstuff swelled. Anger. Rage. He knew that look by now. "Weren't supposed to be, anyhow." She met him eye to eye, her stare rough and hard. "You were made to be wasted. Seen the way your masters used you. Nothin' but mass and brutality there."
"Suppose your kind was better at the killing. Better supported. More ground gained per death."
"Ain't even about that," Draus said. "It's about spending, Avo. Spending our lives. You spend to get somethin' that matters in exchange. You understand? What you fought for? No sensible person in the world wanted to go back to livin' that way. Bein' slaves to some god they don't understand worth a damn. But I suppose that's how the folks down here see the Guilds anymore. Hells. I started the war just treatin' your kin like target practice. Ended it thinkin' I understood you all."
"Understood?" Avo asked. She was hinting at something more. Larger ideas were hiding between the silence of her words. "Your honesty is missing today. Want to say something. Won't."
And she didn't. Instead of carrying on their conversation, her eyes were narrowed, affixed to the visual feeds cast across the insides of the vehicle as drifting screens. "We're closin'. Half-mile and counting. Your dives are reliable, yeah? They disembark behind these blocks?"
"Yeah. Think they're smuggling something. Don't want the broader Syndicate to know. Necro I compromised is in on it. Helps them scrub their golem's loci. Installed backdoors into them. Backdoors now mine."
Draus chuckled and shook her head. "Shit, Avo, you make a good argument for dual systems, you know that? Half coldtech, half thaumic. Keeps everything from topplin' one way or the other."
He grunted. "Wouldn't help. Just opens more angles of attack. Ghosts can dive into technology too. Just need to harvest them from someone who knows code. Technology. Diversifying cost more and offers nothing. Better to go with ghosts."
The Regular snorted. "You know Voidwatch got them self-dreaming machines right? That they're ages beyond us in all that technical know-how and stable-reality wonders? Heard they got some ways to choke off the Nether. Blockade the Heavens."
"Are they going to start sharing?" Avo asked, already knowing the answer.
"Maybe," Draus said. "Most the city could catch a new mem-con tomorrow. Decide to give up on Souls and Heavens and thaumaturgy in general. Return to the old ways."
Yeah. That was what the Guilds wanted: to capitulate absolute power for an elevation to their standard of living and a permanent vulnerability to all the strange and anomalous monsters that still festered within the metaphysical scars that stretched throughout the void.
No. Avo knew the pull, same as any Guilder Godclad. Same as any Fallwalker. To be a Godclad was to be able to make your own choices. To be spared from final death by way of folly, failure, or weakness.
Even now, he was stalking the golems to water the soil of his Soul, to feed upon their Heavens and cultivate new canons or build the foundation for a new Hell. If he, but a neophyte of the divine, was half-besotted on the potential for new power, what then did the addiction of the true ancients amongst the Guilders resemble?
The scream of their engines wailed outward through the valley of chrome. Descending streetward, Draus gave orders for the aerovec to park in an available spot. Holographic squares of green and red littered the street as aeros found their halt upon open slots.
Landing in the corner of a lot, Avo watched as an attendant drone began interfacing with the locus of their vehicle. It wouldn't be long till Scalpers dispatched another patrol to check. Openly broadcasting Conflux mem-data would do that.
"One-minute window?" Avo asked.
"About," Draus said. "Probably won't be that quick though. I got some other distractions prepared for them. Won't be that quick. But we should be. Keep this clean and fast. I'll be in place as overwatch. You move on me, got it. No jumpin' in and killin' everybody before I got eyes on the scene."
"Already been over this," Avo replied.
"Well, we're goin' over it again," Draus said. "Can't hurt to be on the same page."
"I won't just attack them. Have injector. More controlled now."
She eyed him once more. "I trust you. But remember this: there ain't no absolute crutch for anythin', Avo."
"Heaven."
Draus opened her mouth and paused. "That--look, let's just get this shit done with. Tired of your godsdamned sophistry."
Avo grinned. "Don't teach argumentation at Regular academy?"
"Just shut the fuck up and sync me, rotlick."
Avo chuffed and triggered the session he shared with Draus in his Auto-Seance. +Coming through?+
+Loud and clear.+ She responded. Through the link, her glee bled over into his impatience. They've both been looking forward to this. For different reasons, perhaps, but all the same. There just might be something to say about the mental symmetry between ghoul and Regular. +Alright. Let's go bag ourselves a couple o' golems. And frame Conflux in the process.+
+Try to make this sloppy,+ Avo said. +Be suspicious if Conflux is too competent.+
Draus smiled. +Yeah. Sure. Don't forget to pick up our friend before you go.+
Avo looked at the back of their aerovan. +He's in the trunk?+
+Kept all neat-like for you. Just the neck's broken.+
He grunted. What was an ambush without some casualties on both sides, after all?
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