List of Net Articles on the recent MAL-terrorist attack on the First Precinct.

SurfaceNet Articles:

'Silvereye saves the day! With the unexpected help of… Dreadwire? MALterrorist defeated in twin Golden Counterattack!' By New California Insight.

'Criminal and Police join forces, two Golds upon a common enemy!' By Westbrook Daily.

'Dreadwire, hidden paramour of Silvereye? Read more, with the latest!' By Westbrook Undercover.

'Golden Child of the New California: Silvereye takes on MAL-terrorist! New California's latest!' By Synchronous Technology International.

'Two Terrorists apprehended by Gold Investigator Silvereye in New California!' By Yuzhou News.

'Dreadwire and Silvereye? MALfighting by the day, ??? by night?' By Holowood Gossip.

'Is New California's Silvereye harboring love for a terrorist?' By Eastern Rising.

Abyssnet Articles:

'MALterrorist, or manufactured terrorist? Truth behind the conspiracy, now!' By Vortex News.

'Who is Dreadwire? Mystery uncovered.' By Blacklist Daily.

'Silvereye! Ten things you didn't know about her! You'll never believe number 5!' By Nightfeed.

'Dreadwire's secret affair unveiled! Mirage, or Silvereye?' By Bloodlust.

'Who is the MAL-terrorist? More to be revealed.' By Holowood Underdark.

'Dreadwire and Silvereye? More like #Dreadeye/#Silverwire!' By Western Frontier.

'Two Golds… One heart. The secret affair of crime and law." By WBfiction.

November 7th1:24 PM

Ripley

We were currently at the safest place I knew… Mirage's apartment. It didn't mean she was happy. We had a fucking Aerodyne chasing us down for pictures, but thankfully the last place they expected me to take Diana after that stint at the Pleasure Lanes was right back to it. We had to find a hidden alleyway to take our suits off so she could become Lilian Rose while I packed my stuff into my jacket.

As memories flooded from Starlight's end into me, I blinked.

The ASK Task Force. A dumb name made with a dad joke attached to it, but with very real promises made by a very dangerous man. Mr. Skeleton. And another revelation that irked me, the true identity of the Crimson Queen, my therapist. She was part of Soul Killer… but separated, just as Anabelle Grazhe. And I had let her into my mind about six times.

Founders, what was I getting into?

Not even a week had passed since we got news of Skeleton crusading towards those three 'much-better-than-me' Shard Operators that Missy had employed. Speaking of, I really quickly recapped Diana on that. Her face was blank, before she slapped her hands onto her face.

"Haithama's ballsack, we are so fucked! So wait, you're in charge of the anti-Dogwhistler operations, now?" She groaned.

"Unofficially, technically… I'm sort of like a supervising manager while the boss is on holiday. Former Metal Heavens members tend to be very good at taking steel off people, I just sort of have to make sure no one bullies them." I sipped some tea, letting it calm my nerves as all of this news hit me.

Mirage grumbled to my side, holding me extra tight after video evidence of Dreadwire very publicly holding onto Silvereye was broadcast onto every frame in New California. "You just need to make like a weekly visit… but… uh… when is she going to leave?"

"Soon." I said to my beautiful girlfriend. "You'll have all the time you want with me as soon as I'm done talking to her."

"Right, uh… actually, there's something I need you to do for me." Diana stammered, her nerves jittery for some reason. "Strike while the anvil's hot, that's what they say. I need you to look into a BUG's memory for me. Juliet Grazhe's."

I put things together with what Starlight had shown me. "To get the anti-Soul Killer vaccine… where is it?"

"Remember that geneticist I told you about. Dr. Moira… she's got it on her, Dryder sent it to her for safe-keeping, it's got a Unique Feature on it."

"Fuuuck. Wait… Juliet Grazhe?" Mirage opened her mouth. "Uh… do you know what Source-Shard Fragment made it?"

"None, but Skeleton gave it to her. He has his from…"

"The Shard of Understanding." I said. "And some other Shard that let him slip his mind into technology. Connection?"

"Actually… about the Source-Shards, I have a confusion with ours. I know our Shards are about Change, but doesn't it sometimes feel like we extend beyond that?" Diana thought aloud, sipping her tea.

"You make a good point." I sighed. "Quartz said only one Fragment can make a single Unique Feature. I'll assume it's the same for Deviant Mutations. He also said… that should be the case, unless our quality is very high. But I feel like he's talking out of his ass half the time."

"Yeah, but what I mean is… I certainly would say that originally, my Mutation was about change." Diana gulped the tea down. "It synergized my Mutations, and was unstable at first… but being able to feel… Souls? To resonate?"

Elsa sighed. "You took Mutagen from Soul Killer, must have added some Division or Release into it."

"Release, I can understand that for my most recent Deviant Mutation…" Diana whispered. "But… how does Division affect me? I'm not splitting my 'Soul' you know."

"The terms the Source-Shards take…" Elsa quieted. "They're umbrella terms. You have to think broader than just Division equals splitting. Division, as a word, means the separation between two things. It could create a Mutation that severs the molecules between objects, maybe in a high-tiered Adapter, it could let them create a duplicate of themselves, or maybe in Shard Adapters… create parallel minds, sever consciousness, muddle the barrier between dream and reality. Anything separated is its domain, anything together is also its domain. The Source-Shards are weird like that. But I won't deny it… both you and Ripley have odd Source-touched Development."

"Like Data Mimicry." I nodded. "It certainly Changes me, but… it also lets me understand Implants better. Read them, all in service of that change… I think… I think it's related to The Twelfth Shard."

"The Twelfth Shard?" Both women said at the same time.

"Six Founders. Five MALtitans… every Shard should have an antithetical counter. One's missing." I stated my theory.

"They do, " Elsa confirmed, before agitation etched onto her face. "Just how much did you two end up looking through when you were with Topaz and Quartz?"

"A lot." Diana said.

I continued. "Elsa… do you know the identities of all the Source-Shards?"

"I…" She took a deep breath. "Yeah, I do. From my time with Neo... Not that they'd help you all too much, unless you plan to hunt Founders and Titans down."

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

I sent her the list I made. "Can you complete this?"

I could see the reluctance in her face, the impending thoughts of 'this is a rabbit hole that will end with a bag on your head and a hole between your eyebrows' but she gave in anyway. "Maybe… just maybe… I'm glad they're gone for a few months."

She sent it back over, my heart singing since I got some of them right.

Source-Shard Pairs:

Known Pairs:

Containment [Haithama] X Release [The Typhoon]

Stability [Yuzhou] X Change [The Infinite]

Ideation [Imperium] X Oblivion [The Terror]

The Past [NeoCore] X The Future [The Allseeing]

Connection [SynTec] X Division [The Mother]

Unknown Pairs

Understanding [Mazhyr] X ??? [Likely Sixth MALtitan]

Passing the view over to Diana via Starlight, I let her absorb the thoughts. "Only one pair remains hidden. A sixth MALtitan… five were already bad enough, doesn't help we're going to go to war with one of them."

"War?" Elsa poked her head in.

"The Typhoon, or The Infinite." Diana said, before shaking her head. "Did I… never tell you that New California is going to be the staging ground of a MALtitan assassination?"

"Is it?" I guffawed. "Huh, makes a lot more sense why my grandfather got the idea to hunt another MALtitan, then, to kill The Infinite."

"Wait, what?!" Both women said at the same time again.

"Oh right, Diana… I never told you about my grandfather. And I never told you, Mirage, about why he went to Africa…" So I filled them in with what Maiden had told me. He was hunting down Oblivion to kill Change.

"And here I thought everything you built was made by your hand, instead it's quite literally your grandfather's hand." Diana said with a teasing smile.

Elsa jumped to my defense. "Hey, Ripley does build everything he needs."

"Yeah, I- it was just a joke." Diana said with a confused look, but my girlfriend just scowled.

I put a calming hand on her, even subconsciously cycled my Warp Energy the same way I did for Diana… only to realize that it didn't work on Elsa like that. Not unless we entered a Proxy together. "I've heard worse from Diamante, Mirage. It's okay."

She grumbled, mouthed something but then just held onto me. Diana rubbed her eyes, before looking down on the list again. "Twelfth Source Shard… Sixth MALtitan, are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Regrettably." Elsa sighed. "Mr. R… The Sin. He's even following the naming convention. Is it a MALtitan that snuck around our kind?"

"Or worse, a human who joined their side? Degenerated into a MAL?" I said. "Only reason I can think of for why he wants us to be invaded by them."

"Doesn't make sense for why The Uncaged does any of this, besides Soul Killer." Diana grabbed her temples, massaging them. "And it's antithetical to Understanding, the last Shard. Forgetting? Loss? Confusion?"

Starlight hummed in mine and Diana's heads. "No… I… I think I know."

"You do?" I said aloud, much to Elsa's confusion, I mouthed 'Starlight' to her.

"Yeah, I've actually been thinking about it for a while. I think a Source-Shard Fragment was used in my creation when Amaterasu was absorbed by you, dad."

"Oh, which one?"

"The Future."

I paused. "You mean… The Allseeing's Shard?"

"Kinda makes sense, I mean. You know I'm good at predicting your actions, all sorts of chemical reactions too, good at beating you guys in video games!"

Diana poked Starlight. "Yeah, but… those are things an AI should be good at anyway?"

"Well I'm extra good at them! It's why I can synchronize with you all so well! Anyway… so uh… based on my understanding of the Shards, I ran a quick look through a dictionary, used some of my future-predicting goodiness to-"

"Hold up… it sort of makes sense." I pointed to Starlight. "Himiko says The Allseeing is her enemy, presumably because it's the biggest threat to her as an Emulect poking around the VoidNet for Yuzhou — maybe she stole part of its Shard and handed it over to me? She wants me to raise Starlight in secret to be used as a countermeasure to the Allseeing, thus giving us an edge to whatever The Uncaged have planned?"

"That… does make sense." Diana nodded.

Mirage shook me. "What are you two talking about?"

Right, she couldn't hear Starlight since she refused to let my cute little daughter poke into her skull. "Starlight, she has the-"

"The Twelfth Shard is likely the Source-Shard of Becoming!" She yelled.

Diana looked confused. "Becoming… isn't that the same thing as changing?"

"Sort of…? It's like… becoming, as in 'impending'? 'The Becoming of a Calamity' refers to a prophetic unstoppable force that brings ruin, for example. It could also refer to the finalized thing or outcome needed, whereas change refers to the process of achieving that. You can change without becoming the thing you need to be, but you can't become a specific thing if you never change. Becoming and Understanding are antithetical in a roundabout kinda way, from a certain angle. One's about awareness of the world, and the other is about the physical state of it."

I rubbed my knuckle to my nose. "That would… explain Data Mimicry, a little bit. Me reading Warpcode is a process of change while my actual mimicry is a facet of becoming it. Likely, since Mr. R or The Sin had our MALseed under his control, he put a Fragment of the Shard of Becoming into it for some… reason we don't understand."

"That would explain mine too, in a way." Diana sighed. "Soul Trigger, at least… probably has been touched by Fragments of three Shards. Becoming, Change, and Release. While Soul Resonance is touched by Change and... Division?"

"As for me…" I thought it through. "Becoming and Change on Data Mimicry's end. With Change more prominent in Shardweave, and The Future residing in Starlight rather than me? I guess the way these Fragments mix up isn't exactly one-to-one in ratio."

Mirage blinked. "Starlight has… the Shard of The Future? As in… The Allseeing's Sh-"

"Yes." I happily patted her shoulders. "Perfect weapon against-"

"No, no, no!" Mirage held her breath. "The Allseeing is Warpcode Ripley, it means… that Starlight is a living fucking extension of its eyes! She can be turned into a MALware at any moment! The worst kind! A Breacher!"

"Hey… that's mean. I'm no eldritch manifestation of digital paranoia (not yet)." She hummed. "Besides, I'm pretty sure Himiko dealt with any intrusive powers imbued in my Fragment."

I calmed Elsa down, but she was very much against this. "Oh fuck… oh shit-fuck!"

"What?"

"Juliet Grazhe." Elsa turned to Diana, a crazed look in her eye. "When Ripley went over to your apartment in September, you said that Juliet spouted a lot of crazy shit, right? Something about the MALtitan being there… it makes sense now, her Unique Feature… it was from The Allseeing. She was driven crazy by its Shard."

"Then…" I kept my weight solid on her. "I have an idea. We'll synchronize together using Starlight as a DataShield, look into her BUG… and see if everything's as bad as it seems."

"Oh fuck no, Ripley!" Elsa breathed into my shirt, her voice harrowing down. "I spent… years of cyberthought at its footsteps, just the sound was enough to make your mind raw. I'm not going back."

"Don't worry, I'm sure I can just eat that spaghetti monster right up!"

I… wasn't sure about that. Letting Elsa slowly off me, I gave a conflicted look to Diana. "I… I don't know if I can-"

"Ripley…" Diana looked at me, her eyes open and honest. "I… I'm not enough to beat Soul Killer. I'm not smart the way you are, I won't ask you to make a cure. I just need what's on that Implant. That's… the last time you'll ever hear me request something from you again. If you need a mind to connect to, I'm ready. I'm not just a wildfire anymore, I'm… I need you… to help me fix things. Please."

Hearing that… something within me called to do it. Looking at Elsa, I kissed her forehead. "If what I'm hearing is right, on Juliet's Implant is state-of-the-art research into Implants, Mutations… and so much more. It could help me save my mother. It could be the key I need. Let me do this one stupid thing, and the next time… I'll listen to you and not do another stupid thing."

Sniffling unwept tears away, Elsa nodded, but her hands still shook on my shirt. "Another Shard Adapter, not just Diana… someone who knew Juliet. It'll keep a barrier from who she was prior to the Unique Feature stabilizing the Warpcode. The Past grounds The Future."

I took that advice to heart, and Diana was already on it. "I'll call Dryder."

———

Later that night, I was at an orphanage, Dryder was deeper in and down below. I saw a sight that confused me, a caged child, a flower's stalk running below her eye. The doctor here, named Moira frowned. "Suppressants won't keep her stable for long…"

"Lucy…" Diana put her hand on the glass, the child looked neutered, like a part of them was missing. Hitting her forehead loudly on the glass as the only response. "I'm almost there, I can almost cure Soul Nexus."

Moira nodded to her, before Dryder stood up and stretched, alcohol yawning off his mouth. "Sooooo, the shit're we doin'?"

"Creating a bridge between our minds, to dive into a BUG." I said, as Moira pulled it out. Silver… and I could feel it belonged to a Tier II Adapter.

Source-touched Implant recognized…

Source-Shard Fragment confirmed: The Future

It was just as Elsa thought, I reached wires from my hand into Dyrder's Frame, he jolted at the moment of thought and so did I as… a wary grogginess spilled over me. Starlight groaned. "Oh, I do not like being in his head. I do not like being drunk."

"I can feel it too," Diana belched. "We're not even synced, right?"

Not yet. Starlight began, three minds forming into one cohesive pattern of thoughts, painful and uncomfortable sensations of… pain, loss and a need to forget stemmed from Dryder. Starlight pulled everything together, and thankfully Diana's new Spark Tendency, even if it was at the Iron Grade, blew an erasing light over Dryder's thoughts.

And soon, I felt her brilliance all throughout me. "Oh, that's nice."

"Been using this over fire since I got it." She sighed in relief. "Feels so much…"

Brighter. We thought in unison.

Dryder just sleepily nodded. I grabbed the Implant, Juliet Grazhe's memories were all on this, secrets that would push both me and Diana towards success.

And so, I began to read the Implant. Its barriers crumbled easily, it was long since looking for a new wielder, and with only one former Adapter, I found it easy to look within.

Features: [Unique Feature] Foresight; Technician; Sustain

And deeper in, I felt the memories begin to open up, like I'd always pulled them towards me. My eyes opening up to them.

Except this time, I also felt eyes open up to me. The pull I'd managed so easily, now drew me, Diana… and Dyrder in.

Like a whirlpool, our consciousness left our bodies.

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