September 22nd

Diana

Standing inside the bathroom of this crappy old office Dryder lived in, I stared at my face as it began to pull and mold like clay. My eyes darkened to a shade of dark red as my hair blackened, losing it's wavy texture to become fine and flat. Cheekbones sunk, fat redistributed and even the finer details like my eyebrows and the shape of my ears and eyes altered under Limited Morphology Manipulation.

It took a lot of testing and practice to go through with it without creating an uncanny feeling, but even then I felt wrong as I wore the face of someone who didn't exist.

Lillian Rose. The fake identity Dryder had built for me to investigate Soul Killer and their corruption within the police. The background to the identity went deep, a former SynTec security guard turned private investigator. Dad's dead, mother's back in New Port City along the east coast; two younger brothers, four cousins, an aunt from my dad's side and an uncle from my mom's.

It was everything I never had, now I was forced into the identity of something I longed for.

I released the Mutation, cringing in discomfort as my face shifted to turn back into Diana. I just didn't know if it was Diana Jones or Diana Ulrich…

At this point, the latter would serve me more. A year ago I would have hated the idea, but these days that hate paled in comparison to my emotions towards Soul Killer. Ripley had been in contact with me, confirming he was laying low for the meanwhile until heat died down on Dreadwire.

A Gold Mercenary, the type thing I'd be looking into as part of the Special Investigation Operations. Ironic. Starting tomorrow, I'd meet new faces at the SIO, Investigators with unique skill and permission to dig out the dirtiest cases this city has to offer.

"You done moping around? Or should I leave without you?" Dryder kicked the door to the bathroom.

"I'm coming, you alcoholic jackass." I slipped back into the face of Lillian Rose, exiting to the raised eyebrows of Dryder.

"You could have made yourself uglier you know, we want less eyes on you, not-"

My glare cut his speech in half. "Is your intel right?"

He sighed, taking a swig from his bottle. "A Crimson Souls informant sighted a Kaisel Clone — or what I call K-Clone, around the river bay at a warehouse. Only choice is to go and confirm it ourselves."

"Then why are you holding your gun?" I stared at him, he hoisted the heavy modulated weapon up against his shoulders.

"The K-Clone was spotted meeting 'Masa forces."

"Great." I reached into my pockets and armed myself. Lillian Rose after all, was a trained boxer who preferred spiked knuckles to reinforce her strength and kinetic-and-heat based Mutations. Nothing electric, I had to hide that. The gloves fit comfortably, and weighed practically nothing on my hands, but the Bronze Grade Warp-Materials used to construct it were anything but fragile.

"How's the Revenant Vial looking?" I said as I tightened the cloth over my hands.

"What about it?" He gulped from a beer bottle. "I look like a geneticist to you? I have someone who's helping, but her credentials might not be enough. She runs an orphanage — you'll like her, Dr. Moira."

I mused it over, Dr. Faltest could help me… but that was too much of a risk, for now at least. My thoughts were getting nowhere, I pulled the door open as my steps found determination in my actions.

Tomorrow would be the start of my new life as an Associate Special Investigator, as Silvereye. That star-striking heroine my father was so damned insistent on promoting to the public. Truth be told, I could live a life better than a NeoCore Inquisitor if I just played along, I might even be contributing by riling up recruitment to the police force in all the wrong ways. I should have taken this time to research into my new profession and relax, but Soul Killer wasn't the type to stick around in one place for too long. And I couldn't let them make an inch of progress.

Not with the type of experiments they were doing. Not with the wanton death and careless alterations they performed. It was funny, what should have been an honor in my job was now a liability. I'd need to focus all of me into this battle with Soul Killer. I didn't care if Anabelle Grazhe was in my way, I'd burn my enemies down if I had to.

After all, this was a war. And I had accepted my fate, what I'd ended up becoming ever since I got this Implant. Not Diana Jones, nor Ulrich… not even Silvereye. I was simply an embryo, growing through the terrors of this city and those who built it, evolving from the yolk of their manipulation.

What I was had… led to the death of Yvette, to Anthony's coma, to the death of innocents touched by Soul Killer. I was becoming a monster; I burned everyone I touched.

And yet, that was exactly what I needed to be. I'd hunt them down.

Each and every monster of blood and steel.

Gene Overview:

Tier II Mutations:

[G] Soul Resonance [Energy/Alteration/Metabolism]: 5% [1 GC]

[G] Electrosomatic Organism [Metabolism/Cognition]: 4% [16(15) GC]

[G] Limited Morphology Manipulation [Alteration]: 4% [18 GC]

[G] Electromagnetic Domain [Energy/Cognition]: 3% [15(14) GC]

[G] Kinetic-Thermal Catalyst [Energy/Metabolism]: 2% [14(13) GC]

[G] Inorganic Metabolism [Alteration/Integrity]: 2% [16 GC]

Gene Capacitance: 81/86

Tier I Mutations:

[G] Electrical Neurogenesis [Cognition]

[G] Compact Tissues [Integrity]

[G] Mineral Assimilation [Alteration/Integrity]

[G] Bioelectrogenesis [Energy/Metabolism]

[G] Electromagnetic Vision [Cognition]

[G] Mutational Synergy [Alteration]

[G] Mutagenic Drain [Alteration/Metabolism]

[G] Kinetic Catalyst [Metabolism]

[G] Electrical Flash-Freeze [Energy]

Tier 0 Mutations:

[G] Pacemaker [Metabolism]

[I] Mental-Fatigue Resilience [Cognition]

[I] Elastic Muscles [Integrity]

[G] Electrical Conduction [Energy]

[I] Electrical Lipids [Metabolism]

[I] Reactive Sight [Cognition]

[I] Increased Keratin Stability [Integrity]

[G] Electromagnetic Sense [Cognition]

[G] Unstable Biology [Alteration]

Tier II: Mutagenesis

Development: 2%

Integrity: Bronze IV

Energy: Bronze VI

Capacity: Bronze III

Grade: Gold IV

Tendency (Fire): Bronze III

———

September 22nd

Ripley

I'd kept up with the news, the police conference from yesterday came with shocking news. NeoCore was investing into our military in preparation for the Fifth Swarm. What should have been hopeful was turned sour by one message from Diana.

[The Police are… complacent with The Uncaged's activities.]

There had been other news snippets that were of interest to me, most surprising was that there was a whole section dedicated to Diana as her reveal of Brian Ulrich's daughter.

As well as her promotion into a First-Rank Investigator, the news papers even took to calling her Silvereye. She now had real power in the police force, the kind of respect that would make half of New California's underworld beg for mercy.

As for me…

"Are you slacking off… again?" Harold Anderson boomed from behind me. "Remember, you only had August off. You missed half of September that you need to make up for."

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

I got back to work. The old gym was as busy as ever, if not more so considering half of these goons were hopeful that Diamante or Missy would be here. I'd also heard chatter about me, or I was being precise, about Dreadwire.

"Pssht? A fucking Gold? I doubt it, just a ploy from Yuzhou to get us to gut that son of a bitch."

"I heard he single handedly took out three Silvers."

"Apparently R0N1N was using him as a technician, but did you see how fast he could move? Think he was meant as their secret weapon?"

"Plus those arms, they're freaky."

"An Arachne right? I had Anderson op' me using them, they're wicked machines in the right hands."

"Well to think the guy's using Shard Op' tech, I want to see what he could do

with a real weapon!"

"Hey, wasn't Harold's new assistant brought in by Missy and the others? You think he knows where they went?"

It was true, for the first few days here, too many people ganged up on me trying to dig into Missy and Diamante's whereabouts, not particularly out of bad intentions though. They're curiosity got the better of them, and what was a guy like me with a Bronze gonna do?

Harold eventually got most of them off my back, saying that I wasn't even talking to them now. Shoved off some bogus story about me selling counterfeit weapons that Diamante traced back to me, the real surprising thing was that… Some of the gym members even collaborated on this story.

As Harold explained it. "That's another week of your salary I used up."

A good old bribe for a good old lie.

It was near closing time, the evening light shielded off by thick windows that darkened as Harold activated their privacy feature. Then he smiled at me. "Go crazy, kid."

I took off my jacket, the tight bodysuit of the stealth suit splitting four holes off my back so that sprawling Arachnid limbs could reveal themselves to the world. The suit's engineering was a marvel, otherwise I'd have to showcase my glowing nipple everytime I used the Arachnodyne. I really needed to figure it out, hell, I'd actually lost 120,000 Shardyne off my payment already since we were supposed to return them back to Missy.

But mine was damaged beyond repair, so the debt was already there.

With four extra limbs buzzing to life, my workspeed tripled as I split three different iterations of Scrapyard across my vision, feeding terabytes of data into the holographic structures through Database as my limbs worked to bring them to life.

Harold Anderson, for as stoic as he could be, stared at me as though it was a meditative practice to watch me work with the limbs. My body twisted as I turned upside down to get a better angle, my Livewire claw tips hoisting heavy machinery up as my Arachne curved underneath it.

"There. Good as new, if not better." A week-long project had just come to an end as I let the machine slip back to the ground. I used the Arachne… to upgrade an Arachne. Harold had supplied all the parts that I listed out, half of them already in store for general repairs to the machine, but it was undeniable that I had a keen understanding of this tech that few others shared.

It wasn't anything major, after all, Harold owned a first-generation of the tool while I was hoisting around a variant of which there was only one off. I wasn't going to just share out my secrets, so I limited it down to a few general improvements here and there compounded into the Arachne that had its performance improved by approximately 63%.

"There. Deal's done. Now I get to renegotiate."

"Yes." Harold settled near me, observing the new machine. "I'll offer you 30,000 Shardyne a month. Six Bronze."

"No can do. I'm Tier II now and able to make pretty damn good Bronze-Grade stuff, you know for a fact that just one good Shardware piece of that grade could pay off my entire month's salary. I'll take 9 Shards and another 5 in weightage of parts every month. Alongside a 30% discount on any purchases I'll make here. For overtime, Half-a Bronze for any Shardware of the grade per its grade stat, and 10 Iron similarly."

He turned his head to me. "Now what makes you think you can demand something like that from me?"

"I already have a contract with The R0N1N for an experimental piece." I let my hidden ace loose. "I can walk away."

Harold smirked. "This experimental piece of yours need help?"

It did. Desperately. I was still deciphering the Shandian records of Shardware schematics, but nothing in there could withstand the torture R0N1N put on his body. "What are you offering?"

"40% of what you're getting paid, for my insight."

"25."

"40."

"30?"

"40."

"31…"

"Last call. 40."

"…36?"

"Deal." He clapped my back. "Pleasure doing business."

I sighed, conflicted between the amazing business deal I'd just gotten myself and the harrowing loss of potentially a million or two off R0N1N's wallets. I was now earning more than half a million Shardyne a year in pure spending power. An astounding amount compared to what I used to make… especially since I was still technically just an assistant. That was close to what private custom Operators of Bronze Grade could earn if they had the right connections, but Harold hadn't batted an eye with it.

It spoke to the volume and complexity Harold worked within as a black-market custom Operator.

Harold left me to my own devices for the overtime, my Arachne passively working in the background to build shit while I honed in on my goals.

Obviously, my mom's Implant was first on the list. But it required one thing that could be spent in two ways to achieve that. Shardyne.

I could either devote it into acquiring more Implants, practicing my ability to modify their coded data to eventually make one my own. That would be more spendful, but it wouldn't rely on the risk of not finding a suitable Silver on time.

The other was to build up my funds past the safety net of 3.5 Million, which I was halfway to already. And pray that I'd find something.

Either I take the risk and make my own Implant for her vs. hope that an Implant pops up and I could pay it out. That was the conundrum here.

Either way, for that, I'd need to hone my skills as both a mercenary and a Shardware Operator. R0N1N was right, the key way to make money in both was through direct deals that only I could perform.

As a merc, I'd need to build a reputation and manage relationships with fixers who needed my expertise. As an Operator, I needed to somehow market my niche without risking my identity as Dreadwire and taking away customers from Harold if I didn't want to risk getting fired. That meant finding someone who Harold would normally turn away, the more… sour folk in the criminal world.

Maybe even Mr. Skeleton… his contracts were still open to me. Though I couldn't say I was eager to take it now that I knew more about him, his money was good but as one of the ringleaders of The Uncaged… he was a threat.

It was likely that he knew about my identity as Dreadwire too.

Another basket to bury somehow, he'd taken his bounty off me once Yuzhou upped their price on my Arachnodyne and body. Body, being the key word. It was likely they planned to get Goliath back from me.

Which meant I needed to improve my combat specs too. That meant Shardware modification, which meant more money going somewhere other than to my mom's Implant. I could take the other route and directly sell counterfeit Yuzhou tech, but that was also a risk — one to Ripley Donovick.

Growing in both aspects required me to learn more about the new Features I'd acquired. Shardweave and Database, alongside them were the Protocols that spammed their way through three weeks ago.

Psyche's Alter-Ego.

Shardweave's Meta-Manipulation and Retrofit.

Database's Information Seed, Defragmentation and Consciousness Link.

And Data Mimicry's Frequency Sync.

I'd been too busy to really delve into them wholeheartedly, but what I'd managed to uncover was fascinating.

Alter-Ego's abilities was only discovered after browsing the Abyssnet for a few hours, and paying a hefty sum of 20,000 Shardyne to get the info. In summary, it allowed people to build multiple identities within themselves, switching between them using a trigger. It wasn't quite a Persona, but rather… a way to focus certain aspects of your personality during specific scenarios.

Meta-Manipulation was the weirdest, but so far it attuned me to the material aspect of Shardware more than the digital. In contrast, Retrofit was all about the practical formation of Shardware structure with a focus on combining multiple different technologies into one piece. Defragmentation helped me make sense of some of the scattered data I'd stolen from Shandian, and Consciousness Link… was strange.

The Information Seed strangely refused Warpcode from the various BUGs I'd pilfered, claiming they weren't compatible — which I thought wouldn't be an issue with my Implant. Nanomachine Repgramming was definitely for repurposing the Goliath nanites, while Frequency Sync allowed me to mimic the Bioshard signature through my analysis of Implant-coded data, as well as vaguely sense other Adapters.

Though I suspected there was more to it than that.

In summary, more experimentation, more operating and…

I don't know what made me so sombre after the Shandian raid, maybe it was the fact that I now possessed a foreign government's top-secret weapon within my body. Something else I needed to figure out. My mom's health had also certainly affected me, as did…

Twilight.

I tried not to think about it too much, it was easier that way… but I hadn't forgotten my promise to Diamante about the Personality Editor. I'd turn it off soon, and Diamante had even given me permission not to deactivate it right now given recent events, but promised to find me a way to gradually ease into it. Something about a therapist.

What else, what else? Ah right, Water Tendency. The fact that my Warp Energy actually flowed through me much like blood did now was unsettling but also comforting to a degree.

It seemed like this list kept on piling more and more, no wonder I was getting overwhelmed. But, knowing I was alone, I slipped on the Dreadwire mask from two taps on my nape. The comforting hold of alloy worked wonders, instantly surging confidence through me and fastening my Arachne under a firm grip.

That's right, how could I forget?

I had won. And I would keep on winning.

Until I became the master of blood and steel.

Features:

[G] Psyche V.3.00: Preservation Matrix; Thought Multiplier; Alter-Ego

[G] Shardweave V.1.01: Meta-Manipulation; Retrofit

[G] Database V.4.00: Consciousness Link; Defragmentation; Nanomachine Reprogramming; Information Seed

[G] Data Mimicry V.3.00: Focused Consumption; Rewrite; Frequency Sync

Development: 11%

Integrity: Bronze V

Energy: Bronze V

Capacity: Bronze VII (Effective: Bronze X)

Grade: Gold VI

Tendency (Water): Bronze III

Ripley's Shardware Breakdown According to Grade and Feature Links:

RipTech Neuroframe [Bronze II]: Personality Editor [Psyche]; Info-loader [Database]

Right RipTech Claw (Livewire) [Bronze IV]: Breakdown [Technician]; Warp Threads [Energized]; Procedure Repetition [Database]

Left RipTech Claw (Slicer) [Bronze III]: Datajammer [Jailbreak]

Left Mantis Leg [Bronze I]: Environmental Coordination [Analyze]

Right Mantis Leg [Bronze I]: Environmental Coordination [Analyze]

Riptech Soulbranch Spine [Bronze II]: Reactive Autonomy [Psyche]

Riptech Arachnodyne [Bronze VII]: Breakdown [Technician]; Capacitance Limiter [Accomodation]

RipTech Liver [Iron V]

RipTech Shardvision Optics [Bronze X]: Shardware Scanner [Technician]; Structure Analysis [Analyze]

External Shardware Breakdown:

Dreadwire Mask [Bronze III]: Target-Lock [Analyze]; Drone Communication [Network]

Mazhyr Stealth Suit [Bronze VIII]: Warp Constriction [Energized]; Bioshard Inhibitor [Network]

Mazhyr Interloper [Bronze II]: Target-Aim [Sustain]; Target-Lock [Analyze]

Riptech Scrap Gun [Bronze VIII]

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.