H. Henry Henrikson's, Head of The Daily Westbrook News, thoughts on Dreadwire in a recent interview done by Western Frontier NetStar, Abraham Parez (Recorded while they were drunk).

Dreadwire: Public Mercenary? H.H.H says more like Public Menace!

I know, I know! We're a Free City! Which means none of us want the damn Corporates ruling over us! But that doesn't mean Dreadwire's recent showing of mass murder and city damage is a good thing! He might limit his kills so far to bunch of suits and criminals, but hear me out today. Dreadwire is one payment away from killing cops! Dirty or not! Besides, he's a walking liability to our taxes! Do you know how much damage he's caused just by swinging those hooks into buildings! That's my tax money being used to pay for his negligence!

Wait? Are you recording me? Good! Get this shit out there!

7:14 AM

Ripley

I'd reviewed the footage of my house on the way there. My mom left the house on her own, but I wasn't sure why. I'd kept supplies stocked for her, so there was no need for her to buy anything. Did someone call her up? Trick her? Threaten her?

My endoskeleton left me unburdened, Livewire pulsing thick as the top two arms of my Arachne snapped around, reeled and launched me through alleys, above buildings, and around corners. I was sure the last thing anyone expected to see early in the morning was Dreadwire.

Well, goes to show that I was always a threat.

Right, left, up and around, down, through, and between. Wind battered my steel suit as momentum curved corners and split across streets in a seemingly random form. The early morning passerbys would only catch a glimpse of streaking black and gold moving at breakneck speeds, a shadowy rumor manifested to their eyes.

Mine had trouble staying open as my artificial muscles squeezed accordingly to keep blood flowing to my brain. The Soulbranch Endoskeleton's Feature-Link, G-Force Control, made sure of that. Derived from Sustain, it was the lynchpin I needed to move as quickly as a car. With verticality and the ability to skip traffic and metro queues in my favor, I'd reached home in just under twenty minutes down from an hour by public transport.

Of course, I didn't land on my building directly, I landed a few blocks away in a quiet alleyway where no one was there. My Shardware began to reconfigure as my arms shrunk down and digested hardened plating while my Arachnodyne compacted beneath the reactive shirt I was wearing. Quickly, I wore the jacket I'd been holding while my mask slid back and Ripley Donovick consumed-

"Oh shit!" I heard someone chittering from behind me, it was a lonely man with roughened hair and dirt clamming his face taking cover under a cardboard box from the October rains. He'd seen my face, fuck. The man raised his hands up and I didn't see any dog tag tattoo on him.

My gun was already raised.

His hands shot into the air as he violently shook his head. "I didn't see anything! I didn't see noth-"

A piercing noise whistled as my Preservation Matrix flared to life.

———

My steps hurried across the floors of my building, wait, when did I get here? And my head was hurting. My hands landed in my jacket, and I felt the steel of my gun, it was warm. What just happened?

My mother. I needed to find her. My Frame was washed over by Warp Energy, instinct rising into action when I needed it most. Thoughts slimmed and my body moved, as I found my way to my floor of the building. Then, I found the elevator, there was a camera inside.

Module selected: [2B (Dataweave/Jailbreak)] Databreak

The weak shield broke easily under a tidal wave of my Gold Warpcode, in moments I was reviewing footage from over thirty cameras and building together a timeline of my mother's movement. She entered the elevator, then… rewired its circuitry which bypassed her floor clearance and took her all the way to the private gardens at the top?

Annoyed, I snapped the camera off and surged my Arachnodyne op-

Something tore.

I forgot to tear off my hoodie. Now it had four holes in it. Great.

Moving past the thought, I opened the hatch at the top of the elevator and climbed on upwards. All the way to the top of our Megabuilding.

———

It was freezing up here. The thermal regulators that warmed up the streets below against the October air weren't installed this far up on a Megabuilding with relatively little wealth attached to it. Still, it was… the one place I could deem myself able to call beautiful in this building.

Apple trees. Me and Hoaqin snuck up once, the first time I ate a fresh fruit in years. They grew in neat rows up here, around six of them for one of the richer people living in the penthouses of the Megabuilding. Of course, now the season made it so that their leaves were beginning to wilt, and a lonely robot was busy sucking their brown residue.

Other than that robot, my mom was seated on a bench. Her cane rested by her side as she watched the late Autumn sunrise, pink and golden light filtering through the faded leaves to create a mosaic of that colorful spectrum across her wrinkled face.

She had never looked so old in her life. Never looked so weak.

She gave an annoyed 'hmph' when her one-eye caught me as the culprit of the sudden noise. "You know, I was fine. I've been getting better, it's okay for me if I-"

"You know they'd arrest you if they found you, right?" I couldn't hide my anger.

"The same way you were arrested for a week, when I was…" She chewed her words back into her mouth. "I was just… lonely. Tired. Sick of that room."

"Do you want to move out?" I offered. "I can arrange an apartment much bigger than-"

"Wouldn't change the fact that I only have mindless robots for company. I would still be a prisoner, hell, if we were to move… I'd only be a prisoner in some new castle where everything is unfamiliar."

"…yeah, maybe you're right about that." I sat down beside her, and took a deep breath. My hand rested on hers, comfort bleeding into the steel. "Why'd you come up here?"

"Just felt like it." Her eye lazily wandered off to the horizon, towards the silhouetted towers drawn against a background of wandering light. "When the sun rises, it's when the generators for the city's nightscape turn off. If you're lucky, for a moment you can see the stars."

"The stars?"

"Too much light pollution." She sighed. "Once, when I was a child. My dad took me away from the city for a month. Said he was meeting up with Nomad friends who helped him get here after Florida's destruction. The ride was shit, we had barely any food besides hardtack, tinned beans and synthetic protein. Not to mention, it was freezing. Snow, ice, glaciers - it was all that we saw. Except at night. For a moment, all of that white was covered in black… and up there, in the sky, was a beautiful circuit unlike any we've ever built. One that humans could only ever look at. Stars, millions of them. He told me during the old days, the old-old days. The stars were our guides, if you wanted to navigate the seas, predict the changing seasons, or have your greatest wish come true… then the starlight was were where you looked to."

"Did you get to see any stars now?"

"No." She chuckled. "The whole generator turning off thing was more of a rumor."

"For me…" I said quietly. "It's the sea."

"The sea?" She held my hand with all of her effort. "You want to head to New Angeles?"

"That's what I used to think…" I let my head rest on her shoulder. "Now, I think there's a way we can get both of our wishes to come true."

"Let me guess, you'll take us on a boat ride past the West Coast?"

"And be swallowed up by a MALtitan? No thank you." I instead pulled up a map of the good old States of America, almost all of the central states were in ruins with too many zones noted off as MAL-infected, stretching all the way down where Mexico used to be. The only other region in all of North America where humanity lived was in the SynTec controlled New Port City, also called the Silver City. It was said that whoever was chosen to live there would be freely bumped up to Silver.

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Yet, I had my sights below Newer New York.

"East." I declared brazenly. "Florida."

"Florida?" She laughed.

"Hey, granddad were born there. I thought you might as well get to see it one day!" I tried to make her see it wasn't just some pipe-dream.

"And fight through thousands of MAL as the Swarm begins?"

"You'd be surprised, according to Missy, the MALswarm's levels of activity sharply drop before a new Swarm begins. These next three years are a buffer period where the City can take their stand and make preparations… I just think it would be a nice vacation before it all goes to hell."

She decided to entertain my idea, at the very least. "Who would we be going with?"

"Well, Mirage is pretty high on that list. And Missy would be a nice tour guide…"

"No Diamante?" She said with a bit of disappointment.

"He'd be too grumpy, and heavy, and a liability. Cargo space will be limited and he'd stuff half of it with ammunition. Who else would you invite?"

She thought about it for a moment. "Probably… Diana."

"Diana?" I questioned. "Why?"

"It would be a good bonding exercise for you and her." My mom stretched, like there was no insinuation behind her words. She stood up and gripped her cane.

"I have a girlfriend!" I shouted back. "Four!"

"I only ever meant as allies wielding the same MAL-sourced Implants." She walked off towards the elevator. Begrudgingly, I followed her.

———

Setting several Bio-monitors onto my mother, I stayed by her side as she slowly drifted to sleep. Then, I moved to the small table in the corner of the room, upon it was no Shardware but mostly Implant containers and various Datacubes. The Iron Implants ranged from fresh, to even ten previous owners.

I had to admit, there was another reason why I needed to get the Goliath Nanites working up to my favor. They were the only machinery I knew could structurally alter Implants, while I had the ability to digitally alter them. Now, structurally altering Implants was… relatively unknown territory. Any research done on that topic was in no way getting close to New California, and if it was, it would require a raid on the level we'd done to Shandian just a month ago.

Then there was putting that research into practicality.

All to reach into one question.

What was Implant compatibility? One could say it was how attuned you were to the Warp Energy of your Implant, which was true in parts. Yet, there was evidence contrary to it. The MAL.

The MAL were Warp Energy incarnated into the organic and inorganic. They were the very essence of Warped reality. If you were to be wholly attuned to Warp Energy, that fabled 100%, would you be a MAL?

Instead, it was reaching 0% that turned you into a MAL. It was the incompatibility to Warp Energy that caused an Adapter to become a Parasyte or Fractured.

Or was it a full circle, was there no difference between 0% and 100%? Whatever way I thought about it, I couldn't find any sense or logic.

Then, there were other avenues of Warp Energy to go over. What was Warp Energy? A pseudo-scientific middle-finger to the laws of physics was a simple answer. Under a BUG Adapter, it should affect the mind. Under a SIM Adapter, it should affect the body.

Yet, even that had paradoxes. Rare, but evident paradoxes.

Soul Killer, I don't know much about them, or it. But, as far as I knew, was a psychic organism. A hivemind, a mental being unconstrained to a single physical body despite being the crux of SIMs. Psychic Mutations were beyond rare, to the point that out of tens of millions in Westbrook, only three known 'Psykers' had been in the public sphere. All in one family.

Anthony Grazhe, Anabelle Grazhe, and Jacob Grazhe.

Then, on the hidden criminal side. We had the Crimson Heart and Soul Killer.

The Grazhe's power was related to sound, verbal communication. Off the Abyssnet, I discovered that their Implants were sourced from a species of MALs that had attacked Siege Capitals near Texas. A MALignant variant of MALware known as Banshees who produced devastating sonic waves, those MALignants Psychic Mutations were dubbed Sirens for their ability to mute a person's mind if they heard the MAL's cry.

As for Soul Killer, Diana never told me exactly what powers were extended to them, but the fact was they could sink into your mind and hide there; replace who you were entirely; maybe even become you. She made it sound like several of his infected Soulless didn't even know they were infected.

The difference between both Soul Killer's and the Grazhe's methods of psychic manipulation were through their physical components. Their modes of transport. One allowed minor control through sound waves, another allowed greater control through Mutagenic injections. As for Crimson Heart, my guess was… light. Red light, I'd read up on some old research papers that sensory deprivation and a specific spectrum of light could cause hallucinations. Mirage found some deeper files in the Net that in the old days… they called it the Gazfeld effect.

A SIM could affect the mind, through a physical mode of transport. Likely through a Deviant Mutation.

Then could a BUG affect the physical, through a mental mode of transport using a Unique Feature?

That was the point of this inner rant.

The truth was, I had evidence of this. Again, with the MAL. The creation of Shards was the result of them infecting machinery with their Warpcode and then dying. Unstable and without a directive, the altered machinery broke apart into inert Shards of the associated metal, only acting as vessels for an Energy without purpose.

BUGs were made of near identical materials as Shards were, yet they weren't entirely inorganic. They had some organic matter inside of them. They had… DNA.

DNA was, of course, the wrong thing to call it. Deoxyribonucleic acid was far from what their genetic structure was made of which was instead made of heavy metals, but they had a genetic programming within them that Beauregard Mazhyr had understood and then registered into the creation of Neuroframes; allowing a basic level of deciphering for the public to use Implants.

I also then had a second evidence for the BUGs affecting the physical, and just like I'd suspected, through a Unique Feature. Shardweave.

Specifically, it's Protocol, Meta-manipulation. Compared to Retrofit, I hadn't a single idea what this one was capable of not doing. If I understood it correctly, I was capable of modifying Warp Materials beyond their basic functionality. Materials that already broke past reality's laws. With a thought of Warpcode, I could alter their properties.

As for how… I had a theory.

Warpcode was, after all, a series of instructions created by Warp Energy modifying electrons — and electrons were an integral part of all chemistry in the structure of atoms. There was some basis, therefore, for thought being able to affect physical matter.

Regardless of the mechanism, I could infer the end result. Physical constants existed, bound to the laws that governed reality. Mazhyr's First law of gasses has the Ideal Constant of 8.3145 Joules per mole-kelvin to detail how pressure, volume, temperature and the number of atoms in gasses were related to each other. Warp Energy warped that constant… therefore allowing the Silver Graded gas known as Vaporsteel to become almost solid during high temperatures, while Holo-Weave was an electrically conductive gas that could be used to create tangible holograms with precise electromagnetic waves.

Both of those were key components in Holo-Shields. An instantaneous form of defense, and barely scratching the surface of what Warp Materials could do.

The more Warp Energy you have, the higher your Grade, the more you could change the laws of physics… and then your Compatibility played a subconscious input to ensure everything worked to your vision. Meta-Manipulation allowed me to reach into these constants and… take it a step further. It was a headache and a half, but I had managed simple shifts. Livewire was ultra-dense and extremely hard to cut thanks to the stability of its intermolecular forces at play. Meta-Manipulation allowed me to alter its resistivity just a little bit.

But just a little bit made Livewire quickly became unstable, which meant it would destabilize and disassemble. Fantastic in one part, because now I could just pinch Livewire to snip it, but also proved to be one of the very first signs that Meta-Manipulation was a Protocol far above what I was understanding.

Because I didn't have a mode to transport my mental understanding into inorganic material. It was almost instinctual with Shardware I'd linked to, I could harden it or even temporarily lower its weight through EM-field stabilizing but for external material like these Implants…

I didn't have a vessel to bind it to my mind. Goliath was certainly one method, but it was currently unknown whether Meta-Manipulation could extend through the nanites. Maybe with a mimicked Network Feature but…

God I was getting a headache. Shardware was complicated, Implants even more so.

Every month passing was a risk to my mother, every day was. I had to be quicker, smarter, more everything. I needed multiple Silver Implants, hell, maybe I would even have to hunt some vagrant MALs down — either unfound hives deep in the city's underground or out in the eastern wilds. I needed Irons, hundreds of them, Bronzes too. Fresh, used, abused… it didn't matter.

I sunk my Warp Energy into the first Implant, it never had an owner and was a simple Iron Analyze Implant… and a Tier I developed Database BUG in another.

Analyze. To decipher information.

Database. To store and revise information.

They were similar enough, could I change one to another? Could I create Unique Feature through them? That seemed like the next step after my creation of Modules but-

They both snapped to life, tiny wiry insects. One was a dragonfly without wings while the other was a worm. Were Implants even living creatures? If so, were they symbiotic or parasitic?

In the end, both of them began to crack with unstable golden light and so I absorbed them before they destabilized any further. No update ringing through.

Slapping my head on my desk, I took my head away from research as numerous texts flooded through once I removed the do-not-disturb function of my Frame. In fact, I was planning a full Frame change too. Just another step on the list of Ripley Donovick's growing schedule.

And then in between all of that… was this thing.

Information Seed:

Tier 0: 52%

Current Focus: Data Mimicry [28%]; Persona (Twilight) [24%]

A seed of Warpcode built into my Datashield. I wasn't an idiot… this came from when Himiko struck me with the entire weight of a slice of the Firewall into my head. She'd sent a Platinum Grade ember into my skull, before she was torn apart by… How was she torn apart again?

The end result was that there was some subset of rules Himiko programmed in Warpcode that found refuge inside Database and formed this Protocol, Information Seed.

That included the remnants of Amaterasu. And there was a piece of Twilight absorbed in it too, I was all but sure this Seed was an embryo from which a conscious AI would be born. My Datashield, utterly stable and stubborn, would be given a personality.

Himiko and Twilight, I wasn't sure what would be born of those two.

Would it be like the Allseeing? Freakishly aware, unknown and dangerous… or would it be more like Mirage's Personas. Powerful, but also kinda… unstable.

I was willing to admit that about my girlfriends.

It refused Warpcode from Implants, which left it with only one final source.

This picky eater would have to eat from me, from my Features.

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