3:22 PM

December 19th

Silvereye

Archangel flew up to the surface with Sabrina, while the rest of us were a bit slower. My limbs had just healed and were still… adjusting. The fight with Bladedaughter hadn't quite felt real, from the beginning with Ripley's self-serving synchronization, to the end where she swapped out with Heart Seeker.

I looked down at Heart Seeker's head in my hands, resisting the urge to crush it. Dryder steadied me, keeping me focused as we climbed up through the ruins… and into what could only be described as the aftermath of a war. Everywhere around us was death, and its leftovers.

Ruined buildings, smoke piling into the air, dazed people walking around as they hadn't quite adjusted to reality. The Bladefather was dead. That much had been echoed to us by Anomoly's contact with Omen. The culprit… none other than the Bladedaughter.

What surprised me was the result of that. She had walked out of the compound and... was gone.

She had become… a Dual Adapter, Starlight caught me up on some of Ripley's thoughts. But I was worried for the little AI girl, she appeared both tired and nervous in her appearance… and… something wasn't right.

When we arrived at the Southern Ward, there were remnants of red-mist in the air, along with dozens of bodies all over the place. How many had died? I couldn't count. I couldn't bear to think of that number going higher than it already had been. Everything was ruined, and when I was at the medical bay… it was the worst thing I could have imagined.

Because there was none. It was all destroyed, only bodies remained. Some doctors and Shard Operators were still alive. To my surprise, it was Crimson Souls who were helping us here, as the Queen was out of her Exosuit, her hair mostly shaved except for a blood-shaded mohawk and a majority of her face and body carved with crimson steel. Her eyes met mine, and she nudged the woman on her side.

The Crimson Heart, whose face was entirely hidden in red veils. She was a Kaisel Clone, one broken out of Soul Killer's hold, but that didn't mean I could trust her. Far from it. Her gaze settled on me, then Dryder, before she rose and floated towards us. "It's a pleasure to see you all alive. I see Dreadwire is not with you. I feared the worst when The Bladedaughter appeared."

"He's busy fixing himself up, and keeping watch for The Dogwhistler." Dryder huffed, looking a bit uneasy.

Crimson Heart turned to me. "Your allies were injured. I'm healing them as we speak. Including the one Archangel brought to us… we must move, Muramasa still prowls even with their heads cut off. The First Son is hunting any whom he comes across."

"Show me." I begged, and she nodded. With a turn of her hand, rubble and stone merely dissolved into red mist. I hoped it was only an illusion as she took us to a part of the building that hadn't been split apart.

There were bodies everywhere, many covered with cloth to hide their dead faces. Others were busy being healed by… more Crimson Hearts. Each of them identical to the other. Walking amidst the aching bodies, I spotted my team.

Belle was missing his legs as Trixe and a Crimson Heart worked to stop the bleeding, Alex was fine… but a blank horror was etched on her face as she rubbed cloth — part of a police uniform — in her hands. Archangel stood next to Sabrina, who was lying on the floor as another Heart worked on the wound in her chest, red wisps stringing to tie flesh back together.

The Crimson Heart's steel hands clasped my shoulder, a gentleness in her action. "Her regenerative Mutations are… unable to act with how much Energy she has spent today. I'd suggest you make peace with her while you can."

I stepped slowly, each thud an echo to the past. I had regrets, confusion, hate… and a reluctant acceptance to the fate of everything. People would die today, I knew they would. But how could you accept loss so easily?

I couldn't.

In the middle of my stride, Alex shifted up, her face of blank dread carving with a multitude of emotions that rose like water being brought to a boil. "Why is she here?"

"Who?" I took a glance at who she was looking at. It was the Lieutenant.

"She's the reason why Rick is dead!" Alex's voice thrashed out, her eyes shutting tight. "She's… I've seen it, she has the same eyes as-!"

Anomaly spoke from behind her visor. "Huh? What, I never showed you shit?!"

That set Alex off, and she did something I never would expected her typically calm and rational self to do. Gripping her pistol, she shot out in a rage-induced flurry. Each bullet landed on Anomaly's head, breaking through her visor and plunging deeper through her head till she splatted on the floor.

By the time I'd wrestled the gun out of her hand, the Heart had taken to holding her face. A red light shone out from her eyes, sending Alex into a trance as she muttered. "Same eyes… soulless eyes… she's one of them."

"Her memories have been tampered." The Heart's red wisps wove into Alex's mind, her eyes rolling backwards. "It was The Dogwhistler… at the very least, the death of that one is largely unimportant… my apologies. I understand she was someone important to you, Derrick."

Dryder looked down on Anabelle's body, a mask of rigidity on his face as though he hadn't yet processed what had happened. His fingers trembled, his throat choked, until he spoke. "I need something to drink."

He took a step back, grabbing his head as he paced away. I was the only one in motion. Ripley had… was this his plan? Why had the Dogwhistler...? Things didn't make sense, they refused to…

I grabbed Anabelle's slack body, the way it refused to resist my rough handling only spoke more fear into me. But there was a way, there was a way… right, Starlight?

"Ripley… didn't take into account brain damage, Diana."

Kim was the only other one who helped me, clearing space as I took Anabelle to lie next to Sabrina. My eyes were torn between them, confused and hateful at the circumstances that led to this. "Come on… both of you…"

Then the worst happened, as out of Anabelle's torn face… and Sabrina's neck emerged two Silver insects. One carrying red veins.

Looking at them, I remembered Yvette. My helplessness back then, and my helplessness now. Sabrina's eyes were glazed over, and the Lieutenant was a broken body with an even more fractured mind contained within her Implant. I really wanted things to be different.

Things were different, but only if I made them that way. I held both of the Implants up, Kim looking at me warily. "Diana, Sabrina's SIM…"

"Let me help them." To any other person I looked desperate and stupid. Because I was. Starlight, can I try using what Ripley devised on… Sabrina?

"I- I don't… maybe? She took some of Soul Killer's Mutation back down with Shadow Son but…" Starlight looked at all the other Crimson Hearts around us, an idea in her head. Just as stupid and desperate as I was. "Connect me to the Crimson Heart. She has a BUG."

I gritted, looking up at the Crimson Heart. "I need your help."

"You do?" She looked confused. "They're dead."

"And you can change that. Dreadwire's research says so." I took a deep breath.

Hearing that, she flicked her finger as a red veil appeared over our skin. She whispered. "We're now invisible to them. Tell me what you mean."

"It's better if I connect with your Frame." I pulled out wires from my suit… before letting them drop. Something had changed… and I was sure of it. Looking at the Crimson Heart, I watched as she exposed a red block on the nape of her neck. And I touched it.

Running under that metal, I could sense the Warpcode. Whatever ability this was hadn't yet been explained by my own Neuroframe, something out of it's bounds… an ability not present on the SIM it was reading. A part of me had irrevocably shifted into expressing qualities of a BUG Adapter due to Ripley's actions. Starlight… can you?

"I can feel it. Uh… I think your electricity is sort of… capable of transmitting me?" She said, not sure of it, but I felt her run up my fingers and settle a pleasant warmth in them.

With a single shock, Crimson Heart twitched, as my mind briefly blinked into the stirring flame of her mind. Her gaze looked at me, then down onto the floating fairy between us who was hyperventilating. "Oh… okay… uh, Crimson Heart's mind is very weird."

"How peculiar. Both of you have ever more surprises." Crimson Heart said, looking more intently into Starlight. "Ah… now I see your plan."

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"Are you… reading my mind?" Starlight gulped.

"I thought I sensed something off last I met your father." Crimson Heart mused. "And… let's just say that Diana's recent condition isn't entirely unheard of. As for this idea of yours, it's possible, but would require a deeper look into their Implants. And… if you want to try it with Sabrina, then…"

She brought a flower out into existence. It shimmered into reality. A red rose. "…you'll need to infect her."

"And we need regenerative Mutagen." Starlight said, looking deeper into the Crimson Heart's veil. "And Warpcode… more of it. I'm drained and I'm going to need some spaghetti for all of this."

Crimson Heart nodded, turning around as with a flick of her fingers she pulled Implants of all types and shades out for us. Starlight prodded at my head, and I let her melt into my Energy as she felt things I never would have through Soul Resonance. Deep inside the SIMs, there was a flow to their Mutations… an integrated aspect of intelligent design so that they could be assimilated into our genome.

That aspect came from light amounts of Warpcode inside of them. And BUGs too had aspects of Mutagen to modify the human brain to be compatible with machinery… in a sense, whatever had happened to me and Ripley was a mirror of this phenomenon. I wasn't the scientist here, I barely knew what I was doing.

But I knew why I was doing it. This was a city built on suffering, on the idea that you could never have enough. Either by taking from you, or by showing that there was always something you didn't have. We were deeply scarred beings, torn apart by our desire and given supernatural abilities we didn't understand.

And I was tired of being hurt, I was tired of hurting. I just needed to… fix something. The way Ripley could.

"I'm ready. I'll need you to feel the Warpcode across these Implants so I can feed on them, otherwise I doubt I'll have the computational capacity to do any of this." Starlight whispered, her eyes deciphering each Implant as my Energy began to stretch amidst them. Gripping this new Warpcode sensitivity of mine, I let sparks flow between the orbs as her whispers guided me, floating my power amidst their confusing jumbles of information.

Then I was pulling them closer, it wasn't slow and steady like how I'd seen Ripley melt Shards away. It was a jolt, breaking a BUG apart as it flashed it's contents into my finger and sent a gasp through Starlight. And it repeated, I was unable to control any of this… but doing it regardless.

Starlight took the pain, feeding her while at the same time causing some sort of reaction with me. It was growing clearer, Warpcode. Some of it was inside of me, coursing through my body… imperceptible until now.

Nanites. Ripley's nanites, I realized. Again.

"I can… explai-"

Later, Starlight. Connect to the Heart.

Starlight, guilt in her eyes, nodded. The feeling of… myself stretched into vastness as a true psionic Esper's mind reached me. I twisted, my own body feeling like foreign flesh with how the Heart's mind consumed mine, and so many others.

Was this what Soul Killer felt like? The Heart was her own hivemind, parts of her severed into those illusory clones who were healing everyone else. I blinked, and their veils were off, each of them a Crimson Soul woman with clouded eyes of red and white.

She was the exact same as The Revenant.

And right now, she was the only thing I could hope in helping me. Gripping the red rose, I innately detected the Mutation of Soul-Death within them… but slightly different. I couldn't put my words on it, but I felt a balance to it not found in the original strain — one of the Heart's making and not the Revenant's.

A voice spoke in my head.

'It'll make her a part of me, but retain her individuality… she won't ever fear me entering her mind without permission.'

Grasping the flower, I crushed it… drawing red wisps out and directing them to the SIMs in front of me. Each of them possessed a regenerative Mutation of some kind but… all the rest, I'd burn away for fuel. With the Heart's additive increase to my own mind, touching the SIM with my energy was akin to witnessing the secrets of the universe open its book.

The words were twisted, gnarled… but there was sense to be made in their patterns. I could feel which Mutations were bonded to an aspect of Metabolism and which were designed for Integrity or Alteration. Slowly, my Gold crept into them and burned out those unneeded elements. I was rough, the Implants cracking and dying as I invited a corruptive red into them.

Before letting it all melt down into a mass of broken flesh, I took it and slathered it over Sabrina's SIM. Kim reacted behind me, her words failing to pierce the barrier of my mind's focus, but through the Heart… I could feel her need for the Implant. She was saying about Sabrina wanting this, about needing to pass it on to someone.

I didn't care. Sabrina was the one who needed it most.

"Stay away." I said those words, my eyes meeting hers. And in the reflection of her suit, I saw what I looked like. My eyes were red with silver dots in the middle. My own hair falling down without the lustrous shade of metal and now a deeper blood-red.

Gripping Sabrina's Implant, I forced the biomass inside, commanding it to harmonize through the sheer weight of a Gold's command. It slithered in, red veins corrupting over the Silver scales of her writhing Implant. It even tried to dig into me, but I refused it.

She wouldn't be like Yvette.

Then, holding both hers and the Lieutenant's SIMs, I floated the vial Ripley had given me into the air. I stabbed both of them in turn, draining half the contents — a mix of Soul-Nexus with Mutagenic traces from me and Quartz — into each, before holding them against their flesh.

Enter. The SIMs detected the blood and writhed to life… but as they prodded… they refused to enter dead flesh.

Enter. I commanded again, but they failed to comply.

Soul Killer could do it… infect the dead, why couldn't I? The Heart waited and watched, a smile under that veil telling me she was capable of commanding them to do so. In our connection, memories flashed, of her standing next to Skeleton and easily commanding a MAL. Deeper in, I saw her looking at me the day Anomaly put me on that auction stage. Now I was trying to save her life.

Reaching into my Mutations, into Soul Resoance… I knew its origin. It always was a branch-off from Soul-Nexus, to be able to sense and manipulate the Warp Energy of others. But my Mutation's foundation wasn't built on commanding… it was in finding the harmony between two different forces.

The Lieutenant… she was like me, fighting off the demons her father had unleashed. But beyond that, she was troubled by duty, by a need to survive and better a city plagued with corruption. We easily resonated with that.

But for Sabrina, I sought for what I knew of her. But it was all shallow, she was kind? Always there for me at my lowest? It all came off as false.

"She wanted someone to die today. Rachfeld… he killed her brother."

Starlight's voice was like a ripple in a sea, that liquid of reality morphing with the Heart's strange power. Through that diffracting sea, I saw Sabrina down in the depths of darkness of her own heart. She was trapped in stone. That happy smile she wore was only a coffin of the despair beneath.

I sensed the way she moved through life, giving others what she only pretended to have. Each time, chipping away at the mountain-grave her smile was built upon.

The Implant reacted, digging into her heart. The Lieutenant's had as well, slipping into the flesh of her neck.

"Good job…" the Crimson Heart mirthed. "Now keep doing that as long as it takes for them to live."

———

Ripley

Looking at this youthful image of The Bladefather, in a memory I wasn't sure of the origins of… I questioned everything I knew about Implants. "How is this… if you're a memory, you shouldn't be able to speak to me."

"My daughter killed me." The Bladefather explained as though that made for a good reason. "Implants… I spent years harnessing them to make weapons, yet you believe in your few months you've broken into their hearts. Child, you've only scraped skin."

"Well, then… dissect the topic for me." I shifted in my chair. It felt real, and reacted as well to my meddling. This wasn't just a memory, it was a simulation-like… recreation of past events, that hadn't been a feature of the Bladefather's BUG.

"An Implant… is like a pen." The Bladefather lifted up a fork, gently pushing it into a pastry that he cut with a knife. "One wielded by the Author we call the Source, it's Shards making fingers and the pen being the Implant. With every Fragment of a Shard, your grip grows firmer… but that text written down is forever invisible. We call them the laws of reality."

He took a bite. "Regardless, Founder Beauregard Mazhyr discovered how to read that text, transform that language into one capable of being read by the masses through their Neuroframes. But tell me, can one learn of a horse from a painting? How to tend to it, how to ride one? No, they only learn of its image, of its anatomy if they're truly studious…"

Horses weren't real anyway.

"And how does that correlate to this phenomenon?" I poked my own pastry, and then licked it. I could taste the sweet flavor of it, something… sweeter than I'd ever had. I hated it.

"Consider this text. You wield the power to read into it truly. And like all who can, you glimpse into their foundations. Into the actual form they are as written down. I never told you what the ink was, did I?"

"No, you didn't," I responded, slowly understanding.

"It is us. It's our blood, our steel." The Bladefather said in between bites, always making sure to swallow before speaking. "Features and Mutations are mere chapters, but the ink used to write upon them is our existence, our lives are taken from us by these Implants to be turned into… power. Experience evolves into adaptation. Now tell me, what happens when one takes an Implant once owned by another?"

"The pen switches, but the… pages of the book… they can't be taken out or else I wouldn't be seeing you here. Instead, they're… erased?"

"And an eraser often leaves faded remnants." The Bladefather cleaned his face with a napkin. "Sometimes, the writing of an Implant remains unclear because it is superimposed on another set of rules, following patterns of a previous story."

It began to rain outside. Gentle pattering of rain muffled by the Bladefather's speaking. "I gifted my daughter half of my power, in the hopes that she would be something I could not. In doing so, she inherited half of my book… the other half resides within me. Of course, I've just begun to die. My daughter severed me with that blade I bestowed her sister… but for a moment, you are reading a chapter of a book with two characters. And I… well, I inherit a steady hand with the Fragment of Stability. For a moment… I can control the text you see."

He looked outside the rain. "This relies on the power of The Revenant, of course, but it is a fortunate coincidence. I have longed to talk to you, but I could not. I made a promise to an old friend."

"Let me guess, Missy?" I looked outside. People began to run for shelter as the rain intensified. The coast grew heavier, retreating and advancing with waves crashing over one another like they were unable to decide.

"You're right about that. But no, to your grandfather." He took a deep breath.

The building next to us crashed down. The sound and suddenness of it took me off my seat, as a fibrous limb of black and gray, the width of the building, lifted up and pulled broken corpses out of it. There were many eyes all over that limb, blinking and shifting as though it took from the bodies it had just absorbed.

In an instant, the eyes dropped down and swelled like eggs growing through the phases of life in seconds. One grew into the appearance of a giant mangled bird that turned to our building. Its wings expanded, lightning breathing from the see-through membranes as an orb swelled above its horn. The Bladefather grabbed me, and I blinked.

I now stood within a centre filled with ruined bodies, a camp of sorts filled with mourning, shouting, and hurried footsteps of soldiers. They wore advanced tech, armor I'd only dreamt of seeing now seen en masse as they strapped weapons onto themselves. They were preparing for combat... for survival. Against MALs?

The Bladefather nudged me with an arm. We were sitting underneath a tent, but that did little to stop the rain from drenching me. With a sad smile on his face, he smiled. "Welcome to Florida. 2423. The day The Infinite attacked."

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