Punish the System - 12

"I'm going to need you to carefully run me through what happened here," the Dane said, selecting the least blood-smeared of the barbershop’s remaining furniture and lowering himself onto it with the resignation of a man already drafting his apology to Oversight. "I don’t need what you say to be the unvarnished truth. I don’t even need it to be especially credible. But as my next phone call is going to be with a very annoyed Second Desk, I need it not to sound like a fairy tale. Thus, within those parameters, please do begin."

Connor didn't speak right away. His eyes remained fixed on the bloodied hole in the floor. The one through which a coding Jaz had been dragged by frantic paramedics just minutes earlier. The smell of scorched clothes and sweat still hung in the air, trying to smother the stink of blood. 

It wasn’t working.

"What do you want from me here, boss?"

"An explanation would be nice. One that doesn’t begin with 'Once upon a time two of my agents declared open war on Geraldo’s OCG' would be even nicer."

"Best I can do is that Jaz got shot. And I got shot. And those that did it got dead."

"Oh, good. I was worried this was going to sound like we were suddenly living in a Wild West Revenge Fantasy. Thank you so much for disproving that. Come, come, Connor. You’re going to need to do much better than that. Help me help you, here."

"Your spleen is bruised, but no longer ruptured, Mr Connor," Izzy said, her normal chirpiness somewhat muted. "Also, you have a hairline rib fracture that has knitted itself together at frankly record pace. There’s also been another +1 to your Resilience added, which is just lovely.” She paused and looked back at him mournfully. “Although, considering all the other context, I suspect a celebratory confetti burst would not be appropriate, would it?"

Connor ignored her. His head still felt like it had been passed through a blender set to 'emulsify'. Plus the Dane was still staring hard at him. If there were a few developing worries about his ‘on the job’ performance right now, agreeing it was a ‘no’ on a confetti cannon would properly not soothe them.

"Look," Connor said, forcing himself to focus. "We had intel which Jaz and I followed up on. It was meant to be a quiet, low risk chat. You know the drill. Observe, record, report. But the moment I stepped through that door, it all went sideways."

The Dane gestured to the scorched curtains and the still-sparking remains of the barbershop counter. 

"Sideways? Connor, this place looks like someone filmed an apocalypse in it and forgot to call ‘cut.’"

"That came later. After I’d cleared this place out and we had a suspect in custody. That was when the hit team rolled in. There were five of them on foot. Plus whoever was in the car doing the drive-by." Connor said. "We dropped two before they breached, but then the second wave came in all at once and things became too hot. These guys were strapped for a fight."

“Custom rigs?”

“Repurposed gear. Looked military and patched with... something else. Sure someone will get more off the bodies. I took one to the chest…”

“A fact you seem remarkably unfazed by.”

"For absolute clarity, the first bullet actually succeeded in grazing your sternum. Fun fact: human bone conducts energy remarkably well. You may experience phantom chest pain for up to three weeks, though. I recommend drinking. A lot."

Connor flexed the fingers of his right hand. They cracked and settled like nothing had ever been wrong. Except it had. He knew he’d bled out for at least twenty seconds back there. He’d felt the curtain fall. And then…

“What can I say, boss? I appear to be bullet-resistant this week.”

“Excuse me?”

“Look, let’s just say I got lucky and leave it at that.”

The Dane raised an eyebrow. 

“Lucky is the best you have for me?”

“Technically, your survival was, once more, due to me activating an emergency metabolic override just in the very nick of time. Also, this was a good example of the heavy lifting those extra points in Resilience are capable of doing. You now have the minimum Resilience required to survive a double thoracic trauma with shock onset. But yes! Let’s just call it luck for the uninitiated, shall we?.”

“Izzy!” Connor said aloud.

“Izzy?”

“Sorry boss, I thought I heard something. Where was I? Yes, I’d dropped the first two, but then I caught a stray. Jaz popped up to distract the shooter, but then she got hit too. At which point, I took care of business.” 

“Your heart rate is elevated. Would you like a soothing whale soundscape?”

“No.”

“No, what?” the Dane asked.

Connor tried to stand, swayed, and sat back down again. “What I’m saying, boss, is that what went down here wasn’t clean. But it was necessary. And we didn’t start it. Someone didn’t want news of Gerlado’s new supplier getting out.”

“And this war zone?”

“Collateral,” Connor said. “And most of it happened once they started firing.”

The Dane stood and brushed down his trousers. 

“Okay. I can work with that. Most of it, anyway. For your information, Joyful’s pulled all sorts of chatter,” he said. “This scuffle set off four flagged alerts across backchannel arrays we didn’t even think were still running. Dark Net pings. Dead forums waking up. A bunch of important someones have heard what happened here, and they certainly didn’t like it.”

“Didn’t like it how?”

“Remains to be seen. Our friends in Cheltenham think you’ve ruptured an arrangement they hadn’t even documented yet. Seems we were right and Geraldo’s crew is looking to get into bed with something new. Something powerful. Personally, I agree with you that our best guess is that the determination was made that keeping that deal quiet mattered more than keeping the peace on the street. Or wiping a few agents.”

Connor nodded absent-mindedly.

“The only good thing to come out of this,” the Dane continued, “Is that the guy you had stashed under the floorboards can’t stop talking. He’s willing. Nay…” he raised his brows, “... positively evangelical to share all he knows.”

“Jaz was very persuasive as to why he should do that.”

“Yes,” the Dane said quietly. “She was.”

“Any news, boss?”

The Dane’s eyes flicked sideways, toward nothing in particular.

“Not yet. But the words 'critical' and 'unresponsive' have been used by those who usually traffic in euphemism. It is a shame,” he said, “That only one of you turned out to be bulletproof.”

They had a little more conversation Connor only barely acknowledged. The words landed, but without taking root. The Dane said something about a psych evaluation and reminded him to submit a post-op debrief. He might even have asked if Connor was eating. 

Then he stood and left him to it.

Izzy sat hunched in the corner of Connor’ vision, legs tucked up under her, a glitchy blur clinging to her outline. Gone was the workout gear and she was now wearing oversized boots and a hoodie that read 404: SANITY NOT FOUND. For the very first time since she’d appeared, Connor thought she looked sad.

He let his gaze drift. At first, he wasn’t really looking at anything in particular. Just unseeing the walls. Then something caught his eye near the base of a discarded IV bag. A fly had landed in one of the not-yet dried blood spatters on the floor.

It moved with twitchy, frantic energy, zigzagging through the congealing stain. Its legs slipped, for a moment in the clotting edge of the splash, and then it righted itself with the clumsy arrogance only insects can manage.

“Can you heal her?” he asked, suddenly.

Izzy’s head tilted. 

“I’m sorry?”

“Jaz,” Connor said. “Can you heal her? Like you healed me?”

Izzy’s hoodie literally deflated around her shoulders. “No, Mr Connor. I cannot. Jaz is not my Candidate. You are.”

Connor thumb tapped a slow, silent rhythm against Jaz’s knife. The one she’d slipped inside her boot just before they left base. She’d done everything she could to be ready for what was coming, and it still hadn’t done her much good. “Right. So how about this for size. How about I get her one of her own? A Sprite.”

Izzy’s smile didn’t get within a country mile of her eyes. 

“It doesn’t work like that, Mr Connor. I was activated because I misinterpreted a massive mana surge from an Ability - Leather Jacket’s Ability - and made the assumption the System had become active on Earth. It wasn’t, obviously, which is why we’re in this rather unusual position. Despite your subsequent increase in capability, your use of Anticipate Path was nowhere near powerful enough to recreate that same effect for your colleague. No beacon. No trigger. Ergo No Sprite.”

“So, what? I’m just supposed to let her die?”

“I’m not saying that, Mr Connor. I’m simply stating the limitations of my access. Without a functional System Core or a triggering Event Threshold, I cannot simply initiate Integration on another subject. You cannot ‘grant’ someone a Sprite. We’re not… transferable like that.”

The fly had moved closer to his boot now. It rubbed its forelegs together like it was scheming. Or praying.

“Then there’s absolutely no way I can help her? I have access to all this weird power and someone who saved my life just gets to die?”

Izzy hesitated. 

“Well,” she said, with the practiced guilt of someone lining up a morally ambiguous suggestion, “To be scrupulously accurate, you can’t activate one for her.”

He sat upright and focused on her.

“Go on.”

“In theory,” she continued, voice becoming increasingly sing-song light, “I suppose you could loot a Sprite and then choose to give it to her before it bonds with you.”

“Loot a Sprite?”

“Indeed. As your Integration Sprite, I’m not supposed to mention this, but considering everything else that I’m not supposed to do, I think that ship has both sailed and hit the iceberg. And then had a massive Oscar-hit with an annoying theme song. And then…”

“Izzy!”

“My apologies, Mr Connor. What I’m seeking to suggest is that there’s a whole quest chain in my code that you are supposed to be offered before you should be able to do this, but… well, no System, no quest chain. Thus, it may well be that you will be able to take matters into your own hands, though.”

“Are you suggesting I go out there and steal Jaz a Sprite?”

“Not steal,” Izzy said. “Liberate! Rehome! Collect as part of your ongoing Integration journey! Words are such flexible things, Mr Connor. Especially when the System’s asleep.”

He rubbed his eyes. The fly took off, circled once, then landed on the edge of the curtain. 

“Would that even work?” he said. “Giving Jaz a looted Sprite?”

“No idea, Mr Connor!” Izzy said, suddenly transforming back into her workout gear. “I imagine that the success rate would likely be… very low. Catastrophically low. Possibly even fatal for all concerned. But not zero, which in my experience of our schemes thus far is actually quite promising!”

“You really are quite hard to work with at times, you know?”

“I’ve been told I’m an acquired taste,” she said, cartwheeling across his eye-line.

Connor leaned back and stared at the ceiling. Paint flaked around the air vent and he could make out faint rust where condensation had gathered. 

“Loot a Sprite for Jaz…” he said. “Okay, I’m game. So, where do we look?”

Izzy kicked her legs and hummed the default ringtone of a brand of phone that hadn’t existed since 2006. 

“I know. It’s quite a conundrum isn't it? Where to look? Where to look? If only, for example, you knew of an existing, uncleared Dungeon…”

Somewhere beyond the barbershop, a car honked its horn. A man laughed. A bike wheel squeaked like a mouse caught in a trap. 

And the fly, undisturbed, cleaned its wings.

*

"Oi, no! Not you again. You're banned!"

Moustache planted a meaty hand in Connor’s path, full playground monitor mode. He didn’t, though, get to finish the rest of whatever puffed-up speech he’d clearly prepared for this eventuality. Connor reached out and grabbed the man’s outstretched hand, twisting his little finger up and back at a 90-degree angle.

The pain compliance hold was a standard escort technique: ulnar pressure, rotation through the knuckle, and just enough torque to bypass muscle resistance. Most instructors wouldn’t have recommended applying it mid-walk like this or in Connor subsequently dragging the security guard behind him like a reluctant, agony-racked trolley. But different strokes for different folks.

"What the hell! Ow! Let me go! Let me go!"

Connor didn’t answer. His eyes were fixed on the wall ahead. On a very particular patch of air that continued to shimmer like oil under a heat lamp. As he drew close he, once again, could feel the Dungeon pulling him towards it like it had its own gravity.

"Just for your information, Mr Connor," Izzy said, "I thought you’d like to know that dragging a non-Candidate into a Dungeon will cause their immediate vaporising. Not saying that’s a deal-breaker where this particular human is concerned, but, you know. It’s good to share."

At the last moment, Connor let go of Moustache’s finger, drew his gun, and stepped through the portal in one smooth movement.

The security guard dropped like a sack of hurt, howling and cradling his bent hand just as Connor’s HUD blinked to life.

DUNGEON CONDITIONS: Optimal
SENSORY LAG: Compensated
INTEGRATION SCORE: +18%

SHIELD STRENGTH: 100%

The shimmer on the wall swallowed him mid-step. Connor had one boot still on the tarmac of the carpark, the other already ghosting through into someplace entirely other. The Dungeon took him before Moustache finished hitting the pavement.

Connor hit the ground running, gun already up, eyes scanning the fog-washed stadium. The silence immediately shattered as six shadows bled loose from the marble floor like thoughts too angry to stay buried. They moved fast towards him, clattering feet, glinting jawbones, and hunger painted across their broken postures.

He opened fire at them before they could properly finish uncoiling, saturating the shields of the first two with a burst of twisted velocity. One fell apart like wet scaffolding. The other jittered, stumbled, and evaporated in place with a hiss like boiling ink.

MAG-SPOOLER: Saturated Bullets

REMAINING ROUNDS: 2

The others came on quick. Two were Carsenils again, with stitched torsos and dragging chair legs. One looked like it had a broken megaphone for a jaw. Another was something new with long arms and no legs, pulling itself forward on blades of chipped ceramic, its body flickering in and out like a buffering video. Not knowing what it was, Connor chose that one first and took careful aim.

One shot. The third creature burst like a filled bin bag, shadowy chunks spinning away into fog.

MAG-SPOOLER: Saturated Bullets

REMAINING ROUNDS: 1

Speed running was good and all, but it wasn’t giving enough time for his bullets to reform. Cursing, he pulled Jaz’s knife from his coat, noticing that his HUD pinged with modifiers for it: +1 Edge, +2 Against Stitched. 

Nice.

But then the fourth creature was too close and lunged for him. He drove the blade through the side of its makeshift skull and its body spasmed, fell, tried to reform, and then glitched out, screaming soundlessly as it collapsed into ash.

MONSTERS REMAINING : 2/6

The final two came for him in unison and, annoyingly, from either side. Connor ducked, kicked out the knee of the megaphone-jawed one, and vaulted it with all the ease his Dungeon body granted him. He landed behind it, shoved the blade into its exposed spine, and twisted. It shrieked in stereo, his HUD lighting up with a cascade of notifications that he dismissed with a blink.

The last monster caught him off-guard, landing a glancing blow across his back that felt like someone had gone to town on him with a shovel. He spun around and shot his final bullet into it point blank.

MAG-SPOOLER: Saturated Bullets

REMAINING ROUNDS: 0

Six down. Dungeon cleared. The first of his bullets refreshed just then, ten seconds having passed since he entered. Nice.

Silence reclaimed the fog.

Connor stood panting for a moment, sweatless but wired. His HUD blinked again.

SYSTEM ALERT!

YOU HAVE COMPLETED A DUNGEON RUN

MONSTERS ELIMINATED: 6

CORE STATUS: Active

LOOT COLLECTED: Bone Circuitry (x2), Shard of Unstable Glyph (x1), Burnt Scrip Fragment (x1), Mask of the Known Stranger (x1)

XP EARNED: None

He frowned and scrolled through the drops, already knowing what wasn’t there.

“Izzy, there’s no Sprite. Why is there no Sprite?”

“Of course there’s no Sprite,” she said, hovering lazily near one of the fading corpse-embers. “Surely you were not expecting to get one on the first run through?”

“In the absence of you telling me otherwise, of course I was! What do you mean ‘first run through’? How many times am I going to need to do this to get a Sprite?”

“Well,” Izzy said, jiggling her pom-poms and vaulting onto the edge of a cracked pillar, “that’s very much not clear at this stage. Loot tables are fickle, Connor. Sprites, particularly unbound ones, have a 0.6% drop chance in solo-clear Dungeons, unless otherwise specified.”

“That’s… that’s absurd.”

“Tell it to the meta,” she said. “But if you want a Sprite for Jaz, you’ll likely need to run this Dungeon at least another... seventy, maybe even eighty times. Maybe you’ll get lucky and it’ll drop quicker. Maybe not. Maths sucks like that, Mr Connor.”

“Seventy or eighty times!”

“Loot rotation on Sprites in Dungeons are conditional on: one, full mob wipe; two, no assistance; three, saturation use of at least one artefact-level item or Skill; four, total survival. You’re ticking the boxes, but RNGesus is a cruel god.”

Connor stared at the pulsating fog roof. His breath left him in a sharp, humourless laugh. “So I run it again.”

Izzy gave a theatrical bow. 

“And again. And again. Welcome to the grind, Mr Connor.”