Godclads

Chapter 6-6 Mind Dive (III)

I visited twelve different Necros to remove the contagion after the war. Best of Stormtree, or so they claimed.

Do you know what they told me?

"Can't do it."

Can't do it. Asked them why.

Do you know what they told me?

"It's spread. There's nowhere it isn't."

Nowhere it isn't.

I thought about solving my own equation after that. Finishing things out as myself... well, that's not true. Whatever shadow of myself I was after...

Anyway, do you know what happened next? Do you want to know what it took to get me to stop thinking I had four fathers? Go back to having none?

He removed the damage sequences. Pieced together who I was from the periphery of my life. Did it all in exchange for a memory? One that I was more than happy to give.

I killed a Low Master, you know. Don't remember how anymore. Sold that off to the Necro. Don't remember much about him after either. Think he was using an Incog when he spoke. No name. No address. Just a title.

The Strix.

And a smell. A smell that stays with you.

Citrus.

-Mem-Log of Vincintine Javvers, Leader of the Scalpers Syndicate

6-6

Mind Dive (III)

The first matter to circumvent was the sheer weight of the trauma. He lasted within the confines of the sequence leading up to the apex, but upon reaching the precipice, it was as if stepping above a sun-basked mountain into the first of dawn itself. Perhaps he could have designed wards more asymmetrical to its harm--collected ghosts of colder emotion and make.

Such things, however, would take weeks if not months. Time favored him more than before, but the tides of fortune could shift between seconds and instants. The last two days had ingrained much in him regarding the seizure of opportunity.

Instead, he embarked further into the girl's past, far before the point where her greatest wounds lingered. Still, he could feel the hurt bleeding over. Memories were connected after all. Like chains holding onto chains.

Like a stalker digging through flashing montages of a discarded life, he studied the nature of Lucille's sister, his Metamind set to keep her name from his memories. It would serve nothing for him to claim knowledge of her name and fill her with personhood. Such a task would better be automated for his ghosts.

Alas, for all the strength the sister supposedly displayed before her demise, it simply did not show throughout her life. Much like Lucille, she was a worker in the enclave's hydroponics facility. Unlike Lucille, it appeared the sister was something of a sim-addict, spending much of her time drowning in bootlegged memories and smuggled mem-games--experiences of experiences, mental constructs derived from a secondhand source already experiencing a vicarity themselves, offering a most diluted hit.

Gunmetal Glory was the prime drug to her habit. Taking place during the Age of Pantheons, the game was set in a world much based on Sanctus historicals, with derivatives of the Vuddivistae Pantheon facing mutually off-brand mimicries of the Kosgan Seraphic Choirs. Old wars masked in a new sheen of paint. Lucille herself cared little for the games, more addicted to the historicals herself.

Ultimately, neither sister held true predilections towards violence. This meant that if he need the sister to play the part of the avenger and savior, he would have needed to rewrite the entirety of her identity within Lucille's perspective. Something that he had neither want nor inclination of doing. Nor did he see the need.

A great portion of being a Necro, then, was adaptability. The mind could be rewoven toward a new narrative, but the paths to the promised recreation were myriad. The climax of her new recollective architecture needed to be one of finality, a thing that saw the death of the sister and Aseleri alike, followed by a cleansing of potentially incriminating details.

Thankfully, however, Lucille and her sister need not prevail alone. And sometimes, ignorance was the best armor against suspicion. To this end, Avo made two greater changes. The first was an alteration made to the anomalous sickness that plagued her sister--something that Avo added aspects to, making Lucille believe that her sister had been made more robust as well by the creatures festering beneath her skin.

The second was the presence of outside actors, coming not to save them, but to seek recompense from Aseleri.

Hours drifted and Avo succumbed to the breadth of his work. He worked from the short-term to the long, pruning and copying memories relating to himself, Draus, or Kae. He did not remove the events outright in Lucille's mind. To do so risked the host's outright awakening. Instead, he changed the events of her freedom, using the deluge of despair and near-madness after the death of her sister to shroud her recollections in mist and doubt.

From there, he structured a new tale using the artifacts and actors at his disposal. Bridged by the phantasmal pathway cast by his Ghostjack, Avo wielded his art in dichotomy, building new memories in his and deconstructing memories in hers.

He seeded new assumptions for the sister--minor suggestions toward her being more willing to accept violence in the face of death. More than that, however, he added new lines of dialogue to Aseleri when she spoke to their father, painting her face in sweat and nervousness, hinting at a debt that was coming due; a slaver made by desperation rather than rank greed and cruelty, something much easier to digest for Lucille's mind.

From there, he prepared new actors to enter the scene; debt collectors and outside forces, transplanting her feelings of shock and awe when he slew Aseleri before her to mask any possibility of disbelief. No outside emotion was injected into her equilibrium. Her feelings remained hers. It was but the truth that was disposed of.

By the time he was inching toward the culmination of the resequencing, the day was long faded and midnight greeted him as a chime via his Metamind, his DeepNav announcing the oncoming rainfall.

He had scrubbed himself and the other two from the girl's memories. Nothing would remain of him other than that of a passing feeling should their paths ever cross again. In his place, he introduced the presence of new strangers into her memory. Such was the risk he had to take should he want to bring the memory to a culmination during the grafting.

Melded from all the Scalpers, enforcers, and hunters he left dead over the past week, his ghosts offered him a selection of new and entirely non-existent personas from the forge that was his Ghostjack. They would inherit a mesh of traits and that would leave them just believable enough for the mind to accept as real, yet nondescript enough to never be found should Lucille ever gain the interest to go looking. These new proxies would serve in place of him and Draus, as debt collectors coming to claim that which Aseleri owed them.

Her mind halted a moment. In the real, a slight frown drifted across her face like a passing cloud. Avo froze, steadying himself to jack out as he watched her awareness climb, and stop.

HOST AWARENESS: 12%

Acceptable. He continued.

Taking a moment to review the sequences that he changed, Avo beheld his work, riveted with focus. Like a galaxy of ever-spreading branch-like dendrites of memories that fenced fluid stars of welling emotion, Avo looked upon the simulated map of her mind and made a few final adjustments. Through a single strand--the memory of the steam bun--he twinned his ghosts to her memories and made the changes.

He collapsed a few lesser events into each other, hiding them beneath the sequences of a grander memory. A few more hints were placed to infuse the sister's presence with more strength, more tenacity. He even shrank Aseleri down to afflict her with more vulnerability. Make her death easier for Lucille to accept when the time came.

Then, when all that was done, Avo ran the new sequence through himself as a simulation, with his ghost offering an estimate of how much attention his edits would draw from the host.

ESTIMATED HOST AWARENESS: 17-20%

Twenty ran the edge but was acceptable. Any more than that and he would be looking to reduce his number of changes. He applied the rebuild, letting his ghosts slowly overwrite her memories, the installation taking its time. A brute change would have allowed him much more speed but would've left her little more than a catatonic husk considering the immensity of the traumas she bore.

As another hour passed, the new memories dissolved the old, setting into place as he slowly rebuilt his way over toward the moment of her sister's death--and her implantation.

Mind quiet after hours of work, Avo found himself content to watch his revisions. The act, he could not deny, was one of pure ego: a one-ghoul audience watching his self-directed play in the cinema of another's mind. He would even have considered it voyeuristic if not for his relative lack of interest in the victim, supping amusement instead from a demonstration of personal capabilities.

The memory of her greatest trauma began again. The initial moments were much the same, with the sister and her forced to watch each other's brutalization. Their flesh was splayed open; their minds were joined in the fires of agony; their voices were united in screams.

But this time, the sister did not die immediately. At least, not yet. Not with her supposedly enhanced survivability. He accelerated the completion of the implantation process, truncating the process to not run out of time for this branch and bleed over into the next sequence.

"Well," Aseleri said, scripted to his behest, "seems like I underestimated my new products. Expected at least one of you to die." She sighed in faux disappointment. It helped that he had the slaver's ghost to simulate the part. "Still. Pretty neat vicarities you two made. Going to fetch me some neat imps. Heh. You're gonna be stars for a day in the Warrens. You're welcome--"

The grafting chamber shook then, explosions shaking the structure. Aseleri's holofeed flickered, and through a mind-numbed haze, Lucille found herself drifting in and out of coherence at Avo's suggestion, the room erupting in moments of violence as gauss fire tore through the walls, and gunfire was exchanged.

Hoarsely, she whimpered for her sister, now no more than raw scabs of swaying meat than a person. But breathing. still breathing. Another blast sounded. Another exchange of gunfire. Drones came apart into popping sprays of licking alloy. Screams and curses flowed from the hissing doorway, Aseleri fleeing in.

To add effect to the scene, he had the outlines of her two captains come apart under gunfire. A stale background inspired questions in the mind, after all. Firing back sloppily, the already wounded captain stumbled next to the two girls as struggled to reload her gyrojet pistol, blood welling from three wounds in her abdomen, subdermals punched clean through.

"I got... I got product!" He had made her shout. Silence returned. A shadow of an exo-rig appeared in the doorway, somewhere between Conflux and Scalper in design. Avo's persona said nothing and brought their gun to bear.

Aseleri cursed. She fired back, gun in one hand and weapon implant in the other. Both instruments boomed as she tore chunks through the wall, suppressing the incoming assailants. This lasted for but a second until another shot tore through one of the side walls and sheared through the captain's knee. Like a toppling tree, the giantess fell, her weight crashing down and sending Lucille careening from her grafting station.

By this point, the numbness needling through her skin exiled her from pain. And so, with a moment's urging from Avo, and after a choked beat of hesitation spent staring at the writhing slaver, Lucille stumbled blind into a cloud of gunfire, limping toward the mangled disfigurement that was her sister.

To have Lucille dream that she and her sister could overcome Aseleri alone was a step beyond. As much as Avo tried, the captain had left scars the size of mountains that rose through the waters of the former mod slave's mind. Hence the need for his personas, and outside assistance to help deliver the killing blow that neither Lucille nor her sister could manage. And in place of Avo and Draus, they served as halfway saviors.

But the resolution, then, belonged to her and her kin.

She pried her sister's bloodied form free from the station, a task made easy from the damage it sustained during the gunfight.

"It--it's okay," Lucille muttered, her mind awash of colors and screaming sensations. Terror ruled her nigh-frozen muscles and her heart strained to pump the molasses that occupied the place of blood in her veins. But still, dread did not omit the love she felt for her sister. And so, as she mustered the fragility of her will and tried to make her escape.

And on cue, the newly modified memories that composed the platonic ideal of her sister spoke the words Avo had seeded.

"Luce," the sister said, the blood and phlegm lodged in her throat filling her words. She gripped Lucille tight. "Gun. Get the gun."

Lucille stopped, her fear coming alight as her composure nearly broke. A factor his simulation predicted.

"Killed dad," the sister said. Lucille's fear slammed into a dam--just enough hate to stymie the flood.

Avo grinned, glorying as his work came together.

Awkwardly, the twosome stumbled, making for the discarded gyrojet pistol even as more trailing threads of tungsten sewed new beams of light into the room. Across the ground, Aseleri was groaning, cupping her knee, with the white of her meniscus bubbling around her fingers like mangled paste.

Lucille knelt down, leaning slightly against a fallen drone so she would collapse between her own weight and her sisters. Clenched between shaking fingers, she flicked a glance at Aseleri. A sob broke out from her.

"I can't," Lucille said, almost immediately. The shadow of her father's death hovered over the slaver, even now. Understable. Pitiful. Adjustable.

"I... I just need you to aim," the sister said, reaching down as if blind, her eyelids left flensed by the surgery. Lucille whimpered, but handed the piece over, hating herself for her weakness, averting her eyes from this greater version of her sister like one would turn from the rising sun. "Tell me when... tell me when."

Quietly, Lucille cupped her quivering hands around that her sister's, turning the gun toward the direction of Aseleri's head.

Avo had chosen that moment to make the captain notice them. "Wait," Aseleri screamed, her fear breaking into a grimace of pure terror. He would not lie, there was some pleasure in defiling the memory of the slaver. As much a screamer she was in life, cowardice was a vice too low for her. But Avo owed her nothing, and so he burned her image as an effigy, an offering to draw Lucille from fear to hate. The gulf was always about relative power, and it's hard to respect someone that begged.

Crawling, the captain reached out, imploring them with bloodied limbs.

Lucille sobbed again, terrified even now at her great abuser's approach.

"Luc... she killed dad," he had made the sister say.

And suddenly, he felt the torch of anger spark. Just a flash. Just enough.

Lucille stopped shaking.

"Shoot," she snarled. "Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!"

Her sister obliged. The gun barrel brightened. A micro-missile ejected free with minimal recoil before its afterburners flashed. He had selected the make with consideration to their bodies. The gun was something that two flats could fire without issue. Something that didn't engender disbelief upon a revisit, if she was ever to find herself in the stead of a neuro-therapist or a social memetist at some point.

Aseleri's head burst apart, spattering into jagged fragments of chrome, strips of sinew flapping free like petals. Lucille groaned reflexively and a sickness rose within her. Her sister laughed. Gasped.

And then collapsed.

"No--no," Lucille's cries came, childlike, her voice more confused than anything. "Get... get up. Please... please."

"Luce," the sister said, swallowing. Distantly, the heavy boots of armored figures were approaching, gunfire silenced. "You... you have to make it... Make it for us... Made it into the city. New Vultun."

Avo had drawn the words from some soap opera tragedy that one of his ghosts used to watch. As it went, he thought it was effective enough, but something about it still sounded strange. Alas, he was no narrative director, and Lucille's suspicions did not spike. He let it run. He let the sequence finish.

"Yeah," Lucille said, holding her sister close, "help... help's here. Going to get you well... going to--"

"Have to make this worth it, Lucille," the sister said. "Has to be worth it--for one of us."

"No," Lucille said, shrinking into herself, drawing her sister close even as the shadows of his implanted personas stood over her. "No."

"You have to. You can. Know--know you're scared, but we're with you. We... we slayed the monster." He added a laugh there. Sounded more natural. "Killed the monster."

And at that, Lucille looked at the captain again, and the structure of her mental scars shifted. As the towering heights of her dread crumbled by half, a new range of mountains rose, loathing to rival fear. Short of altering her in totality, the girl would always fear. But this way, he could lean two of her detriments against each other, choking a vice with a vice; an idea inspired by his own Morality Injector.

"Yeah, f-fuck yeah, we did," Lucille said, swallowing back a sob.

"Dad... dad would be proud."

"Yeah."

The memory was running its course to his desired end. He had connected a connective sequence looping back to a prior memory, the one with her family watching the dancing mountains beneath the neon fireworks. From sorrow to joy, he tied her, a link to a link, a spiral of memories and emotions locked in a perpetual wrestle. But it was a match that he ensured joy would win.

He placed it at the end, after all.

"Do you remember the festival," the sister said, serving as the connective tissue to the memory.

"Yes."

"I do too," the sister said. "I do too."

And so, from the transplanted sequence, Lucille was pulled on suggestion back into a true one. A smile twitched across her face in the real. Avo checked her wakefulness.

HOST AWARENESS: 18%

Good. He pulled his field of influence back, shuttling his ghosts back down the shunts of her memory, and dismantling the memory of the steamed bun as a final suture to seal the wound. He kept the memory still in case he needed a key into her mind again. Though she wouldn't remember him, he could still angle it to intrude. It had fit once. He could make it again.

Stepping back, he laid eyes on his work and found his job to be most adequately done. Though he was more often a thief or a nuller, he had pieced her thoughtstuff back together well enough. No longer did the waters of her mind roar and lash at itself. No longer did she collapse inwards.

Still, two crevices ran in a fissuring scar across her accretion. Fear and loathing. Both inflicted by Aseleri. They were there to stay for now. At least the flow of her mind wasn't crashing into them, draining down like open wounds.

With a casual glance outside the door, he noticed Bright-Wealth still there, chains of ghosts stretching through the building, doubtlessly linking her to one of her sisters.

He cast a thought at her with his Ghostjack, drawing on Lucille's mem-data to make a forgery of her voice. +It's done.+

Bright-Wealth's mind popped to full alertness. Her link broke and her ghosts were reeled back in. Without ceremony, the Sang pushed open the door and slithered in.

Her motion stuttered as she came upon Avo gesturing for her to behold his work. Her expression amused him. The way she moved past him without regard for giving him her back made him want to tear into her throat.

"Deal with you soon," Avo said, his words whispered as a taunt to the beast.

"Jaus," Bright-Wealth said. Her eyes were locked on the smiling girl, nestled tight embrace of the lung bed's biocrafted skin, trapped in Avo's pre-coded memory. The Sang shot the ghoul a stunned expression, lip-thinning, her snake tail coiling tight. "I suppose you're a... pretty good Necro, then?"

Avo grunted. "Comparatively."

Her eyes narrowed. "Comparatively? You just made a girl who I had to stop from killing herself smile in her sleep. Smile!" A frown wrapped itself around Bright-Wealth's face. "Although... you're not juking me, are you yao-guai? Didn't just give her a good dream and have her go right back to being miserable after, yes?"

"Miserable? Yes. Too much trauma. Would need to change her entire personality to fix. But functional now. Shouldn't want to die anymore. Vulnerable though. Needs support."

The Sang sneered. "Cost you extra if you want me to be her friend."

"No. You already care. Wouldn't make bet to have her smile otherwise. Playing games right now."

The sneered cracked into a glare of annoyance. "You don't know how I feel."

Avo shrugged. "I could."

"Hey, hey, now, keep your ghosts the fuck away from me." He noticed her wards hardening. A flashing glint beneath the scales on her shoulder told him that her sidearms were getting activated, just in case.

Beneath his helmet, he grinned. It was good to be dreaded.

Glancing at the girl again, Bright-Wealth sighed. "Kind of fucked up too, if you think about it. Changing her memories. Taking her traumas and turning them into weapons. Truth is like clay to your type."

And for once, she regarded him as more Necro than ghoul. It was almost touching. "This was not her dream. But it will be. Better than truth."

Her eyes bulged at his answer. "Jaus," Bright-Wealth said again. But the moment didn't last on her. Bright-Wealth, unlike Lucille, experienced things in bursts and moved on just as fast. A conspiratorial glint shone in the depths of her eyes. "Hey, listen... Every other Tulsady, I play this game of Towers with my sisters..."

He suddenly found himself wondering how Bright-Wealth's skin would feel if he peeled her face off and wore it as a mask. "Not helping you cheat."

A puckering noise came from her then, her tail striking the ground in a faux-tantrum-like rattle. Lucille shuffled, turning in the bed. "Come on. What is the point of being a masterful Necrojack if you can't help your good consang Bright-Wealth angle her way into a few thousand imps from her cheating sow-sisters."

Avo stared. "We're consangs now?"

She held out her hands as if waiting for coins to fill her palms. "With such skill, surely you--"

"No."

"Ah! You're so boring. You're so stiff. I thought you were going to be fun."

That made Avo chuff. "Most ghouls you know are fun?"

A trace of consideration passed through her features in but a moment. "Yes, actually. They are quite fun to bet on when they have them fight in the pits."

He was a fool trying to talk sense with a consummate gambler. Moreso to linger after his task was done and more awaited. "Going to need help," Avo said, gesturing to the still-slumbering Lucille. "Won't remember me or the other two. Might need some direction. So Warrens don't eat her."

Bright-Wealth cocked an eyebrow as she slithered around him in a burst of motion. "Oh. Do I sense caring from you, ghoulie?"

"No," Avo said. "Just feels like a waste of work if she died soon." He looked upon her again and felt little more than pride and hunger. She wasn't his best work but considering her condition and his lack of practice in reassembling minds compared to cracking them, it was a most acceptable outcome. "Be like watching my art burn."

"Ah," Bright-Wealth said, tone flattening to a nasal disappointment. "And here I was thinking you suddenly grew a heart."

"Would like that. Free organ. Free imps," Avo said. "Make sure the grafter doesn't spoof her. That she gets the imps."

Bright-Wealth snorted. "Fine. You want me to get her a job too?"

"Can you?"

The Sang was about to say something sarcastic in retort but then settled back into thoughtfulness. "Maybe. Might need to ask River. Our sister at the front desk solved her own equation yesterday. Too much joy."

One death was a tragedy. And an opportunity.

Avo grunted. "Good." With a thought, Avo casually flicked her a few hundred or so imps, the diamond-like glints of the motes threading out from behind his wards into her accretion. "As thanks. Ask Draus if you want another arrangement. She might have something."

IMPS: [2342]

The Sang grinned and gave Avo a wink. "Have I ever told you that you're my favorite ghoul?"

What fierce competition he must've been up against to claim such a title. "No. Must've been distracted last few times."

"Ah," Bright-Wealth said, waving his words off in a display of false modesty. "We all have flaws. Some of us get forgetful when our accounts get dry."

Greed. Ever reliable. Ever exploitable.

***

Avo made not to loiter, returning to elevator and reascending. Caressing the new traumas swirling within his mind, the designs of new constructs called to him. No more need to use his wards as a blunt instrument. No more need to wield his Whisper like a hammer. The feeling of being properly armed was a comfort he missed, the possibility of being able to build proper phantasmics enticed him further now that the matter of the girl had been solved.

Chambers was to be next. He and the two techs presented unique opportunities for subversion, and he long yearned for the chance to roam in a mind he feared not to break.

As the elevator climbed back up to the tenth floor, he activated his Auto-Seance and cast a thought over to Draus. +Avo here. Dealt with the mod slave. Going to work on our three guests next. Need me to wait for your return? Have ideas on how to turn them to use.+

Silence was his companion for a moment. Then, as if a doorway flung open, Draus greeted him, her cog-feed twined over his, flashing into form in the corner of his mind's eye.

+The girl. How's she gettin' on?+ Draus asked, her question cutting in without greeting.

+Mind's clean of us. Managed to knot the worst of her pain too.+

+Well, color me pleased 'bout that.+ Draus sighed her reluctance and curiosity upon the shores of Avo's mind through the session. +How... uh... how bad is it? Inside her head, I mean?+

+Aseleri mingled her and her sister. Made them face each other during the implantation process. Sister died while the link was still active.+

A dull throb of hate reverberated through Draus. +Well. And here I was thinkin' that me lettin' you work that slaver the way you did was enabling.+

+It was. She also deserved it. Both things can be true.+

The Regular laughed. +Real introspective of you there, ghoul.+

+Just being honest.+

She paused. +You mockin' me there, Avo?+

+Yes.+

+Heh. Half-strand.+ A flood of mem-data from her aero's locus slipped over into their link. +You fine with hangin' around until I get back? Got some things we need to go over. Ideas, more like. Think you can plant some spyware in their minds.+

+Give me desired function. I'll make the phantasmics.+

+Gleam,+ Draus said. +Another thing. Green River cast at me earlier. She got your thaum-chow ready. You fine with killin' your kind, right?+

+Easier than hunting them in the gutters,+ Avo said. +Quieter than hunting gangers. Will need to check if she planted anything in them. You tell her that they're for target practice?+

+Yep,+ Draus replied.

+She believe you?+

The Regular barked a laugh. +Hells no. But I think she's got her eye more on me than she does you. Might be thinkin' I'm about that bio-warfare life now. Use them as super-spreaders or somethin'. Figured that cause she offered me a couple of discounts on their off-the-book product. Virals and plagues. Outdated but still nasty No-Dragon shit.+

Made sense. +Want me to scry her out. See if I can get inside. See what she knows?+

A lull of consideration hovered. +No. No, don't do that. She ain't peeked at us yet, far as I can tell. Might be talking with her seniors, but she's held to our agreement so far.+

Avo didn't know if it was honor or doubt that restricted Draus so. +Can get in. Looked at their wards. Security. A bit less than competent. Good for these parts. Nothing I haven't--+

+Ain't nothin' about your jacking. Just... hold on for now. I gotta think.+ Draus sighed. +She and I, we got stuff on each other. Debts. Deals. The whole suite. It ain't 'bout trust but... she's been reliable. And I'd rather have her to deal with. Near anyone else I know would've sold us back to Highflame or their preferred color the moment they suspected anything.+

+And why hasn't she?+ Avo asked. +Honor?+

+Interest is more my guess,+ Draus said. +I'm sure she wants to climb up. Get into the Tiers. Just don't think she's content about the Undercroft. She might be gunning for the Frame herself, Avo. Trying to see if we're gonna lead her anywhere. If we know anything more than what we told her.+

Ah. So she sought the entirety of the reward rather than just a cut of the prize. But it was already suspect. She knew too much and played a passive game. Unless she was that good of a Necro that not even he could notice. Should that be the case, he and Draus were already dead. If Kae's mind was intact enough, he would have suspected her thoughts of being bugged. As she was now, she was lucky if her thoughts remained for half a second before immolating.

+Decide quickly with her,+ Avo said. +Won't wait for her to move first. Done making that mistake.+