Thunder and Webs C132 [Gold]

Souls Corrupted. Is that the only fate for those who live in this city? The First Prince wields massacre, and Ri

Chapter 132: Relapse - Corrupted Souls

Ripley

Psyche V.4.00 has updated to V.4.03

Effects:

• Increased confidence of bladed weapon usage.

• Increased comfort with killing.

Database V.4.15 has updated to V.4.17

Effects:

• Codex-read Implants can transfer minor amounts of their knowledge and experience to the Adapter.

• Minor transfer of conscious and subconscious understanding of Muramasa-Style Bladed Weapon Usage.

Crouching Dagger stood in a low stance with their blade poised for a lunge, but a civilian was not trained nor designed for his use. My eyes dissected the flaws in footwork as an ankle cracked and their clavicle dislocated from the blur of movement. My body, on the other hand, while not designed as per his requirements, wielded the knowledge of his Black Dragons as though I’d spent years mastering the art of massacre.

His dagger skirted along the first katana I twisted, while the second flashed into a crimson streak as momentum led two halves of a corpse to collapse around me. The dagger shamelessly escaped to find a new host. Another patron, but I put an end to that quickly as an Arachnodyne blade slashed down their clavicle and into their hip.

Starlight shrieked. “Dad! What are you…!”

“Shut it!” Midnight growled. “They need to die.”

Starlight, if you can figure out a way to prevent his Isolation Feature from affecting us, then we’ll use that. But for now… this is the only way.

“Dad, that’s the Matrix talking!” She started, but followed my orders anyhow as she ran simulations with Warpweb to build a countermeasure from my brief interaction with Crouching Dagger.

This time, when I sought to capture the weapon, it turned invisible. I already couldn’t sense it via Frequency Sync, but now I lost sight of who would become the next host.

A Black Dragon spoke in turn, this one a Tier III Bronze SIM Adapter — an Esper at that.

A shimmering light coalesced around their blade, and they swung it at me. But I already knew this Dragon’s purpose to an intimate degree. Codex unravelled decades of servitude and fighting for The Prince. I anticipated the sharpened air that sliced through coffee mugs, tables and chairs in its blinking approach to me.

A simple leap from my arachnid arms shot me over the cleaving strip of wind, then another criss-cross of invisible arcs of sharpness followed — a web of thin fractures in the air that unraveled as I pierced through each gap. Like a thread through the eye of a dozen needles. Twin blades were held in my arms, and four more from my back crashed through the frail defense of this Dragon as blood, warm and vital, drenched me. Spines ripped in two and intestines spilled out, but I sent a surge of Neolymph into the organic structure of this Esper.

Transmuting mutated flesh would result in a new Warp Material, and the lungs of this man held the secret of solidifying air. But I could not afford extraction, I simply charged them to convert and to activate as I tore the lungs out and tossed them towards another Black Dragon.

Their blade instinctively swept up to cleave the soft flesh, but Gold from my nanites activated the newly-formed Warp Material. An expansion of air, sharp and solid, acted as a grenade of pure force to create a cavity in both shoulders that staggered them. They were too staggered to react to an Arachnodyne spear digging through their mask and impaling the underlying face, before cleaving downwards.

Eight Dragons remain. The dagger had slipped through to a new wielder, a Tier II BUG Adapter. Silver.

The difference was astonishing as they met my six blades with four. Two extra arms, lithe yet forged for power, unsheathed katanas and engaged in a blurring tapestry of cybernetic swordplay. Every strike drew from my Energy, but was quickly restored through the heartbeats of the remaining twelve patrons. By now, half of them failed to breathe or stay standing as my nanites ruined their bodies for The Prince’s usage, but I did not stop devouring from them.

“Dad, you’re gonna kill them!” Starlight urged.

What choice do we have? I remained focused in combat with the Dragon, Gold gushing forth to let my mind retain this expertise of swordplay. I had truly never mastered the art of fighting with four dorsal limbs, not until now. Each Arachnodyne limb, sharp and perfect, acted in cohesive methodology to parry, skirt and rend against steel honed for this purpose. I was no longer simply bashing metal against metal — that had been so crude of me.

This instantaneous mastery was the gift of Codex: Bladework.

“Have you ever known defeat?” I asked as I scored their chest while evading a seamless dance of four katanas.

“Never. I have never targeted one whom I could not kill.” Crouching Dagger impaled through my stomach — only because I let them. In turn, the Arachnodyne’s limbs were free to pin down the three free-hands of his — the remaining limb struck through their skull and punched down into their neck, but that did not yet eliminate the threat of this multi-armed vessel of Crouching Dagger. It was the two blades I wielded with my arms that minced through the steel and flesh until their shattered body lay in pieces by my feet.

“Still believe that? Jackass?” I muttered as I pulled the blade that had impaled itself on me out, the wound sealing in seconds. Meanwhile, Crouching Dagger inevitably curved into the hands of another Dragon. This one was different.

“Oh, Ripley, it has truly been ages since I have sparred like this.” The Dragon laughed. “It’s nice, for once, to train with a Gold other than my sister.”

The dagger shifted, elongated, as veins of red pulsed on its surface. It was reminiscent to The Bladefather, yet somehow made worse. There was nuance to Zero, simplistic as he was, but the heart of his son beat for death. Of the infliction of a destined demise. And now, for something far worse.

I felt it before I saw it. That sight which I’d dug into the back of my head. Vine-like growths of pulsing steel-flesh broke through the skin of the Adapter as their Implant shattered and soulless eyes bubbled under robes, torn by an expansion of flesh. Soul-Death invoked upon this Dragon rebirth as a monster, yet it comfortably held the elongated blade that was Crouching Dagger.

A blade that wielded not just humans. But MALs.

A hundred overlapping voices spoke from the MAL. “You understand now. Whose side I’m on?”

“Skeleton.” My heart stuttered at the sight of the Cadaver. Technology shifted perfectly to blend into the grotesque flesh, order aligning on a creature of entropy. A predator of humanity weaponized, cultivated, and wielded.

“I fucking knew it.” Another voice spoke, dark and menacing, through the bodies of the patrons around me. “Bastard couldn’t let us have a damn thing.”

Black-and-white eyes rippled through those with BUGs, but those with SIMs froze as black sparks emanated from their Frames.

“Elsa!” Starlight yelled. “Whatever you’re doing, you’re going to-”

Titanium blazed through each of those civilians, infecting their minds with subordinate echoes of the woman I accepted as my girlfriend. Each of her echoes pulsed through the nanites I’d infected them with, reaching into their Implants.

For a second, I was confused. Then, realization dawned on me. A blend of fear, guilt, and fascination that The Dogwhistlwer beckoned me towards.

Skeleton and her had been looking for a way to corrupt Implants under a methodology that would give them control of MALs. They used Soul Killer’s Revenant Serum to do so, but to drop compatibility was easy. I’d done it plenty of times.

I had the capacity to do something terrible. With less hesitance than there should have been, I spoke. “Synchronize with her, Starlight.”

“Dad… no.” Starlight stammered. But she didn’t have a choice.

The Dogwhistler dove into my skull, I saw a flash of her, a monochrome painting of Elsa with a wolf mask latched upon her jaws, her eyes beautiful and mesmerizing in their black-and-white. It made me move past the grotesque nature of what our actions would do. Hands gripped for Starlight, too many, and Titanium sought my daughter.

For a moment, I was Synchronized with twelve innocent civilians whose minds my girlfriend tortured. Then my Nanites dove deeper than blood and steel, and I stopped being the man to fix things. Instead, I broke them with Shardweave and Data Mimicry digging into their Implants.

For a second, everything broke into chaos in my skull as I Synchronized to Twelve MALs.

Starlight yelled, her pink form fizzling and glitching before The Dogwhistler let go and disappeared from my Frame. Crouching Dagger, in the body of a grotesque multi-limbed MAL of his own, watched in what I assumed to be a blend of curiosity and anticipation as the twelve civilians melted into black sludge and bone that drew towards one another. Utensils, wires, Shardware, blood, bone, eyes… utterly everything human and inorganic piled up and forged into a creature leashed by The Dogwhistler.

Formed from 140 kilograms of Goliath nanites, a black wolf-like MALignant with rabid eyes snarled at me, glitching sparks forming a collar around. They tugged its attention to the Cadaver. And that Silver-Grade MAL, infected by the mind of my girlfriend, attacked Crouching Dagger.

Or attack was the wrong word. The pulse of a Titanium drew both MAL together, as they didn’t fight for dominance in physicality — but in who would reign supreme once they combined. Two Silvers burned against one another, tendrils of flesh and steel fighting for supremacy.

But Crouching Dagger was only Gold, and The Dogwhistler, even this small fraction of her, was Titanium. She may not wield control the way The First Prince had, but she didn’t need to.

A terrible lash of a bladed black limb tore through all remaining Black Dragons as though an after-thought in their swirling flesh and metal. The resounding creature dwarfed me, howling as it looked down upon the blade tethered to it. Like an umbilical cord, the MAL gushed forth the miasmic contents of its body to devour the Prince who had once tamed this beast.

A beast of… Gold. Tier II. It had to be close in strength to the MAL that had devastated the Toxin Club.

And Crouching Dagger wasn’t willing to fight that, the Prince cut himself free and dove through the shattered window. The MAL turned its sights on me. Dozens of emotionless eyes, black sclera with white pupils, saw me as an inevitable prey.

“El… tell me you’re in control of that thing.”

“I’m not. Unlike The Revenant, I cannot control MALs. All I could do was reorganize its priorities for a brief second.” A woman draped in twisted shadows and light appeared in front of me like she’d always been there. She turned her head, the side-glance of her eyes revealing little emotion. “But you don’t need to worry.”

She snapped her fingers, and a piercing pain lanced through my skull. But whatever the Gold MAL was going through had to be worse. Its first step caused its body to quiver like an earthquake was running through this city, but it was the only thing that shook.

The Dogwhistler’s left arm bulged with a cancerous outgrowth that metastasized into a duplicate of Elsa, eyes wide with fear, but The Dogwhistler didn’t even bother with a glance of pity as her right arm tore the head off her fearful echo and forged a spear from it.

The Titanium DataCleaver smited down upon the Gold MALignant like judgment. It didn’t even make a sound as light faded from its eyes and it collapsed, flesh molting and steel degrading. But the nanites remained, or at least… the Midas Steel that made them did. It condensed down into a solid chunk the size of my torso.

And then two Golden insects crawled out, one metallic and the other organic. They curled up into balls, but for a second, they stared at the reverent form of The Dogwhistler.

“That…” I was speechless.

“That was so cool, El!” Daylight tiredly groaned, but gave a thumbs up. “Wow, that was such a creative way to defeat Crouching Dagger!”

Midnight, looking worse for the wear, growled. “You manifested from the Core without us? El… that’s bad.”

“I’m fine.” Her eyes betrayed no annoyance, only an empty void. “I made sure that the changes would remain reversible so I could return to my body, but… I will be incapacitated for a while.”

“I feel like…” Starlight choked. “I feel like none of us are talking about… how cruel that was. El… you… Dad… you turned them, those civilians, into…”

“I know.” My breath hitched, a shadow of grief penetrating the Personality Editor. “Fuck, we need to get out of here.”

The Dogwhistler nodded. “Crouching Dagger removed his concealment protocols. Police are on their way to investigate the car crash. I preemptively called one of your gliders for us.”

“Thank you, El.” I felt a strangle in my chest as the wounds I suffered finally realized themselves. Neolymph fused to all my impalements and cuts into working order, but my fucking heart had been speared through. It drew from me deeply.

Grade has been reduced to Gold I.

“Lucky for you, there’s an Implant to restore that.” The Dogwhistler pointed with a hollow smile. “And a few Gold Shards. Those are worth 20 Million a piece.”

I stared in disbelief at the three Gold Shards that had formed in the lump of Midas Steel, guilt followed my every move as I plucked them from the ground. I couldn’t avoid the fact that all of this was the result of…

“Wow, you’re now rich-rich. Ripley!” Daylight hugged me.

“All of this… it was so easy for you.” I muttered, staring up at The Dogwhistler.

“My Core is made of Titanium, Ripley. I was Tier IV. 60 Million Shardyne? The Warpcode of my Core has the monetary value of 4 Billion. Although, I would not suggest this as a method… of extracting my worth.” She said aimlessly. “Your glider is here, take my body and Alice to this location.”

She slid a location in the outskirts of the Precinct to me. “What about you?”

“I have to cover this up.” She muttered without any frustration or bite. “I’ll rewrite a few memories of witnesses, alter a few headlines, create a few distractions that will matter more to the police. And set this place to blow-up. All the bodies were absorbed into the MAL, there would be no evidence a human was ever here so I’ll make it appear as though the diner was closed today.”

“El… are you okay?” I felt like I had to answer that.

“No. She’s not. She entered this form without us.” Midnight growled. “She doesn’t have any particular emotion right now, the damn Core mutes her.”

“As said before, I’ve left this process reversible.” The Dogwhistler responded. “Now go.”

I didn’t wait any longer, I turned around and found Alice under some rubble. Her bleeding had stopped but the pain of losing a hand had knocked her unconscious… I was glad. She didn’t have to see any of that.

Swallowing everything rising up into my mouth, including spinal fluid, I heaved Elsa’s… corpse. Her Implant still hadn’t left her head, which was good, but the feel of her so dead in my arms unnerved me. I hurried to the backside exit of the diner, where a large Yuzhou glider drone waited for us.

As I got on and secured the two of them close to me, the drone cast a field of invisibility, but as we rose I only grew more unnerved. On the streets, all the civilians were frozen and had… black-and-white eyes. How many memories was she rewriting?

How was she going to conceal all of this?

As I flew to the location she sent, I heard the distant sound of an explosion — covering up everything that had happened.

———

We landed on a ruined, half-submerged building untouched ever since the earthquake. Strangely, it wasn’t colonized by anybody, not until we dove deeper into a network of underground maintenance tunnels and saw hooded, gnarled figures waiting for us inside the ruined walls. They were messy and disheveled, but their black-and-white eyes met mine.

“Took you long enough.” There was no humor in the voices of these homeless thralls, one's Elsa and I hadn’t rehabilitated.

“You had a place like this set up? You had… people ready?”

“For emergencies.” Three of the thralls shrugged, guiding me deeper. Alice shuddered against me, her eyes closed in pain, but she breathed. I focused on that.

“Were you ever planning on telling me about it?”

“No. This subgroup of mine was always meant to remain in reserve for situations such as this. I had no intention of decommissioning them despite our promise.”

“Decommission.” I said the word distastefully. “You actually managed to keep the city quiet, no reports other than an explosion caused by a car crash.”

“Information is my true form.” She said, with no pride evident, only a matter of the fact. She led me to a room where I saw an advanced Net-Delving chair. Her enslaved homeless took grasp of her comatose body from me, hooking her Dreamframe into the port before The Dogwhistler turned to me.

“What you will witness might be considered… disturbing.” She declared, as her face split into two. A screaming Silver shade of her peeled off — a mirror image to the Elsa I knew — and fell to her knees shuddering, with eyes pleading to me. “Please, Ripley, end me. I don’t deserve you. All I've ever done is make your life miserable... like I knew I would. You'd be better off without me.”

A DataCleaver manifested in the original’s hand, a flat blade. It pierced through the scared shade’s heart, whose eyes widened in what had to be pain and acceptance. Her trembling hand reached for me, eyes harrowing. “Please… just fucking kill me. God, I… I hurt so many people. I always do. And I’ve been lying to you again. Just kill me so you don’t have to deal with my bullshit anymo-”

The blade flicked up, passing from her chest and going through her head as she fell limp. I gripped my head, not sure what to think about what I had just seen. The Dogwhistler weaved the dissolving Warpcode of the dead Echo’s body into an orb. With a glance, she summoned Midnight and passed the orb over to her. “Heal yourself.”

Midnight grunted, but took the orb and digested it. “Fuck… this always feels weird.”

“What is this?” I shivered.

“I’m removing all parts of myself that might not want to return to the Core, or might impede my recovery.” She explained before a third Silver arm sprouted from her stomach. This Elsa was excited, eyes beaming and her hand grasping for mine as she tore herself out like digging out from a hole. “Holy shit! That was so fucking badass of me! Oh, god… I fucking love this! Let’s do it again, Ripley! Infinite money glitch-!”

Her head came off in a clean swipe, and I could do nothing but watch as the Dogwhistler weaved the copy of herself into another orb and this time fed Daylight.

“Negative… positive… next is the balance?” I looked away. Twilight wasn’t here.

“Correct. In this case, its manifested as… a resistance of sorts.” The Dogwhistler said, as a final set of hands crawled from her mouth and birthed a trembling Elsa who raised a Silver DataClaver of her own back at The Dogwhistler. “Fuck you! I don’t want to go back there! I don’t want to die! Please, Rip, you have to understand… she’s actually killing a part of herself every time she-“

Her silver blade might as well have been air as The Dogwhistler struck through it — and her — without mercy.

I choked as I saw my girlfriend’s head fall off and dissolve into motes of light. “Is that… true? Is this how you operate as…”

“Do not worry. With my Personas, they generate new emotions for me. In time, I will recover the lost parts of my personality.” She said placatingly as she weaved Warpcode.

“But you don’t have Twilight anymore.” I responded.

“True. That will likely result in complications.” She nodded, before offering the orb to me.

I shook my head. “I don’t want it. Psyche’s probably got a few fucked up Updates from everything today… I can’t take any Warpcode until I process everything without the Personality Matrix.”

She nodded, before glancing at a corner. There, Starlight appeared. She’d stayed silent the entire ride, and I didn’t blame her. “Starlight?”

“I don’t know if…” She shook her head.

“I neutralized the Warpcode to not possess any remnants of Emulect Data. It’s raw with no purpose.” The Dogwhistler explained, and almost reluctantly, Starlight drew the orb towards herself before disappearing into the recesses of my mind again.

“What now?” I looked at her.

“Now… I separate.” She took a deep breath. Before a mirage of herself appeared. Silver over black Titanium, the two distortions pulled off one another, until Elsa pulled off the darkness in her usual Avatar attire of a gown and a mask shifting between night and day. She didn’t look back at the now-see-through visage of The Dogwhistler, as she gave an order. “Go back to the Core.”

“Understood.” Came the blank response from the harrowing shade.

In a blink, the Dogwhistler vanished. And I felt relieved at the absence. “Elsa…”

“Yeah, I know… it was a bit much.” She looked at her corpse. “I’m comatose, my brain’s basically on the ropes. Even with your nanites… they’re not going to be a perfect replacement for lost brain-matter.”

“Fuck,” I massaged my temples, “what happened?”

“Skeleton did, Rip.” She said, a sigh of acceptance coming from her. “Him, and, I guess, SynTec. But they didn’t come for you. They were trying to isolate and capture my Avatar, if I had to guess. Crouching Dagger just wanted a duel with Dreadwire, but… he’s the reason we can’t go out for the time being.”

“He escaped before you could kill him.” I said. “I can’t detect him, but I’m not… imagining it, right? That dagger is an Adapter?”

“Likely, The Bladefather and Soul Killer converted brain-matter into the form of a blade and sought to see if a Dual Adapter could be born from it.” She said despondently. “Crouching Dagger was always their hidden weapon. I… never knew they were a Dual Adapter. And… they have whatever tech Skeleton is using to control MALs integrated into their structure.”

“Yeah,” I said, my expression blank as it drifted over to Alice and the stump on her forearm — sealed with a black scab of Neolymph. “Fuck, she didn’t deserve this.”

“She didn’t.” Elsa agreed, her expression grim but not quite… grieving the way I was. It seemed almost like she only realized it as an afterthought. “But… what could we do?”

“I don’t… was there any other way?!” I shuddered at what I’d done in that moment, but the Matrices tried to keep my mind off the memory. Instead, I reached for a Nul-Serum in my arm and stabbed it into my neck, a dosage to keep me numbed for at least twelve hours. As my Implant’s Gold faded, I spoke freely while turning the Personality Editor on lower settings.

My voice cracked as the memory of it all came crashing down. “Elsa, we turned people into MALs.”

“I know. I feel… bad about it too. But it was the only way to-”

“Was it?!” I questioned. “Couldn’t you have… I don’t know, installed yourself into the Cadaver instead?”

“That Cadaver was a MALformed. No Warpcode.” She answered, eyes not meeting mine. “So I turned it into a MALignant, that way it was both mutated and compatible with Warpcode. That way I could… kill it with a DataCleaver.”

“I still can’t believe you… did it so easily.” It had consumed every remaining Black Dragon and civilian, resulting in Gold. “It was child’s play for you.”

“I was part of NeoCore, Rip. And Titanium.” Her gaze grew a little more distant. “I’ve killed more Gold MALware than I can count with a dozen hands.”

“I know. I’m just struggling to wrap my head around all of this.” I knew she was powerful, but seeing it in action… “How much of your Core did you use?”

“About… well, if we’re counting it from after the Raid. I used about 0.8% of my Titanium.” She answered honestly. “The Raid cost me about 2% of what I currently have. I created a lot of echoes.”

“So you’ve only used… 2.8% of your power so far?” My gaze drifted to her collar as she nodded.

“If I were Gold or Titanium… I could use a lot more of the Core at once. A Tier IV Core is a lot to manage in my current state.” She added.

“That’s not what I’m-” I cut myself off, forcing words through clenched teeth. “What happens next?”

“We deal with Skeleton, one way or another.” She said bitterly. “I’ll talk to him once I’m healed.”

“No. It’s okay. I’ll handle it, better sooner than later.” I tapped against my chest. “And now we have 60 Million Shardyne to our name… plus two Gold Implants.”

“And that Midas Steel from the MAL, I’ve already organized a transfer for it to get here. It’ll be here by the morning.” She said before her eyes narrowed. “But Rip, are you sure?”

“Yeah, fuck this.” I said with clenched teeth. “We can’t wait around, especially while you’re vulnerable.”

“Just be careful,” she urged, “I’ll be offline for a few days. This place is safe.”

“I know, you wouldn’t have brought me here if it wasn’t.” I smirked tiredly, before contemplating my next choice. “Fuck…”

“What?”

“I think we should take his deal. Whatever deal he’s offering. I’ll negotiate fair terms for us. I promise. He’ll likely want Livewire, my Arachnodyne… some other bullshit, but I’ll give him what he needs if it means getting his ass of us.”

She looked at me like I was insane. “Rip, I don’t think that’s a… that’s not a good idea.”

“I know.” I looked down. “But I’m tired, El. We have more money than we ever need, let’s just get out of this city. It’s not worth it. Suffering when we could just… escape.”

“Rip…” Her Avatar neared me, putting her forehead on mine. I couldn’t feel anything as she spoke. “I love you. I trust you. So… alright, but if he double-crosses you, promise me that you’ll contact Twilight. Tell her to get to my Core.”

“I will… I trust her more than…” I couldn’t finish that sentence. “I trust her.”

“Alright.” She pulled away. “I’m going to start reintegrating my Avatar into my body now, I don’t know how much longer I can wait.”

“Take care.” I said, as she nodded and vanished from me.

Alone, I still knew Daylight and Midnight were in my head, but I couldn’t face them right now. Every day, I realized how little I truly knew who Elsa was. I thought I did. I thought I loved her. I thought…

Falling in love was something simple. But how the hell would I ever know what to think when an algorithm did it for me! So, I squeezed my head tight and scrolled with my eyes.

I couldn’t bring myself to rely on it.

Personality Matrix Output: 0%

I shuddered with guilt. At everything I’d done and how easily I let it happen. Once again, I took the easy way out for some ends-justify-the-means bullshit. How the hell was I ever going to be the man my mother wanted me to be?

My gaze settled on Alice, on her black-covered stump.

Swallowing those doubts, I decided that putting myself to work would be the first step.

------

Next chapter is titled Relapse - Truth Hurts

It probably has one of the most intense scenes in the entire series so far.