Laughter echoed down the darkness filled street as V sparked into the Piketown underground—a designation for areas of cities that often had no slide or bubble lines available to the public, resulting in them being only accessible to people with permission or the backbone enough to risk walking or sparking in without it. Landing almost in the exact spot he had moved himself and Emilia within the raid dream, V let his mind fall back to that moment for the barest moment. The feel of her giggling and drunk, clinging to him while simultaneously knowing and not that something about her virtual existence wasn’t quite right, still lingered with him, winding through him just as badly as the reality that he had no idea if the him of now was the one who had existed before the raid began.
So much of his brain was currently dedicated to not letting itself go down that route. He was himself—the same person he had been after happening across Emilia, after entering that raid, after spending a decade hiding from his past so he could figure out who he was meant to actually be. The person he was… he still wasn’t happy with it. It was someone he had forced himself to become, this antithesis of the creature his parents had demanded he become. He was lazy, filthy, and yet so motivated it was often painful for the brain he struggled to shut down. Some of his personality was the result of his own preferences, but he knew well enough that other parts were simply the result of forcing himself to break free from the prison of his youth so he could figure out who he actually wanted to be—he hadn’t been lying when he’d told Emilia that he really had better things to do than bathe, most of the time, but now that he’d had her scrub him clean so she could fall to her knees for him in the raid… Well, his shower before coming to the underground had been filled with images of her, and now clean, he could definitely appreciate that while he still had too many things on his plate, being clean was preferable, mostly. It would have been better had Emilia been there, or had he been confident enough to send her teasing messages and images during the process.
Until running into Emilia, he really hadn’t seen much point in pushing himself into becoming the person he was meant to be. So much of his youth had been a push to go faster, do better, be everything his parents demanded, and in the spirit of fucking over their attempts to control him, he had been content to take his time finding himself. Now… now, he wanted to find himself more fully. Three months; that was how long he had to figure it out—and to try really hard not to let what he thought Emilia would like effect how he shaped himself—all so he could show up to their meeting not as a fragmented version of himself, but as someone closer to who he wanted to be. Then, maybe something would blossom between them? Maybe?
First, he had to figure out how to deal with the itch of
wrongness
in his brain—that phantom ache of strangeness and anxiety. Did it really matter if the person he had been before running into the corruption of the heartcores had been erased—overridden by the raid system’s records of his mind, potentially?
It shouldn’t, yet it did. The him of now existed, and if the raid system had overridden the corrupted version created through contact with the heartcores, that was the only reason
he
existed. If not for that—
No. No—he shouldn’t be thinking of this. It was too terrifying, too horrific. It was also just plain old sad because V fucking loved raids! Now… well, until this was all sorted out, he couldn’t say he was inclined to enter any more raids because fucking stars. Even if the damage from the heartcores had just been temporary, that shit was terrifying and wrong.
What the everlasting fuck was Hail doing?
Annoyingly, Helix had quit, and while V had a few other contacts who worked for Hail… No, he couldn’t risk contacting them; they weren’t people he trusted enough to not be involved in whatever the fuck that had been. Intentional; accidental. It wasn’t a secret that Hail was already pushing laws and ethics hard—their unit had been doing that in Division 30 during the war as well. Sparking. Skills that nothing could stop—not junk skills, not skill blockers, not even a coding lavender code. They’d all pushed the boundaries too far, but for good reason; even the few members who brought up concerns had quieted down because they all knew how close the world was to ending.
That had been war, though. Hackers might have an equally bad reputation for pushing things—The Ridge Rind as well—but they were also good at holding shit back when the world wasn’t ready for it. The ones who didn’t hold back unstoppable skills and functions that did the unspeakable didn’t last long; even organized crime hadn’t been willing to entertain such dangerous hackers before the war.
Ironic that now it was the Baalphorian government protecting Hail’s programmers as they pushed everything too far, because accidental or intentional, there had been too much going on inside that raid for
something
to not be amiss in the company.
“Oh, if only Halen could see his baby now,”
V thought as he made his way through the street, letting his Censor search for Alex through the function he’d only just reactivated—the one that would let his former teammates find him in return, if any of them bothered to look. In the back of his mind, something itched, scaping over his thoughts of Halen. A step, another, an itch in his mind telling him
something
regarding his thought about Halen wasn’t quite right—some soft reminder that it was an incomplete or incorrect thought. The etchings of a clone’s tampering pressed over the memory of that
something
, along with a message from himself telling him that the contents within were something the raid system couldn’t know.
Odd, and thorough—despite the note and memory lock seemingly only a few months old, it also seemed… scarred? As though it had been pulled apart and revealed to the safety of his mind dozens of times over, only to be locked back up by a clone once he was done with it. When was the last time he even remembered seeing a clone? Usually, he made sure to keep clear of them. Sure, they definitely knew where he was—he wasn’t stupid enough to think he’d escape their or the OIC’s notice—but they were nice enough to not tell anyone about it. They also weren’t rude enough to
not
come talk to him if they mutually knew they’d seen each other.
In other words, whatever clone had locked up his memories had also removed their own meeting, not to mention his memories of last knowing the lock was there. That was fine—he trusted the clones—and also rather hilarious, given he’d just been considering how off-putting it was to be unsure if his brain had been completely—or even just partially—rewritten by the raid system, as it tried to undo the damage of the heartcore.
It was normal, V supposed, to trust the clone’s mind meddling. They were virtually the only ones who could do it, and as previously noted, he trusted them. If they deemed that his memories needed to be locked, or even outright erased, it must have been for a good reason. Plus, not only could he pull the memory lock free himself, but considering the note from himself, clearly he agreed it was better off locked, right? Consent was important, and, it wasn’t even the same as completely erasing his mind or non-consensually meddling with it, which was definitely what the raid had done through the heartcore!
Was he just arguing with his own brain over whether one form of mind manipulation was worse than another? Totally, and he needed to stop; this conversation wasn’t going to do his already shaky mental state any good.
Still, fucking weird that he had a memory that neither he nor the clones thought the raid system—maybe the OIC as well—could know about? Keeping
anything
from either was virtually impossible, especially in the case of the OIC System, although at least it kept things to itself if it thought it important or meaningless enough. It had, rather shockingly, sent him a message around the time he disappeared, informing him that it saw no reason to let the people who were searching for him know where he was; rather, it just regularly let them know that he was doing okay, which was… nice? He guessed?
The raid system, on the other hand, was a cannibal, eating up all the memories and facts that it could, even when Hail said it wouldn’t touch certain things. Unfortunately, due to his distance from his former teammates, V couldn’t confirm some of the rumours he had heard, but apparently the Dionese Inner Court had been ordered to stay out of virtual raids due to it taking government secrets out of heroes’ heads. As far as V knew, those secrets had only ever been used as inspiration in the minds of AIs in worlds with court drama, but still: clearly, Hail and its raids were taking far more than they were legally or contractually allowed to, and no one was stopping them.
Curious as to what his own secret memory contained, he was tempted to let the memory loose—it wasn’t like he was going to be joining any virtual raids in the near future… or ever—but Alex, who had been wandering through a nearby building, finally seemed to be turning to exit, probably heading back to the convenience store they ran as a front for the criminal empire they effectively ran.
So fascinating. Potentially even more fascinating than whatever was hiding inside his own head… maybe. Alex had always been some strange mixture of soft and dangerous—everyone’s snuggle buddy and yet screaming the energy of someone who had killed before and wouldn’t hesitate to do so again. Running a criminal empire out of Piketown’s underground wasn’t exactly where V had imagined Alex would end up, but he wasn’t surprised by it either.
Stuffing his hands in his pockets, V tilted his head up to glare into the darkness above. The lights of the city were blotting out the stars, the silence of the night broken by the laughter of people who had picked up bottles of the pink tide. A group of young adults, heavily marked up with aether enhanced tattoos that only criminals and the occasional veteran tended to wear so openly—Free Coloniers with any usually kept them covered, lest purists or SecOps, always so rife with corruption, decide to make an issue of it—brushed past him. A few looked his way, assessing if they knew him, if they should get him out of there before someone above them made a fuss. One flick of his eyes their way, and they were scurrying off; V might not be known here, but he’d spent enough time contracting for criminals in the last decade that he knew how to make them back off, and on the rare occasion someone tried to start something…
“Hey! You! I dunno who the fuck you are, but scram!”
The group of younger criminals, who had been content to pass by and not deal with him, froze as the voice of someone coming out of the building Alex was slowly exiting boomed towards them. It was one thing to ignore V while they were high on pink tide and unsure if he belonged there, it was a whole other thing to ignore him when he’d just been targeted by a superior—
Or… maybe not a superior?
Turning his gaze towards the newcomer and letting his Censor and core analyze the guy… No, there was no way this guy was a superior, assigned to keep Alex safe—or, more likely, make it clear that Alex had a lot of muscle behind them. People like this beefy guy, in his experience, were often related to someone actually competent and had been allowed the opportunity to be part of an entourage due to that connection alone. Unfortunately for the man, he was obviously young and new to his position, throwing his weight around while he marched towards V—could he not even spark? Sparking in front of someone was always more effective at scaring most civilians, yet this man was behaving as though he were a pre-war, pre-even-microsparking thug.
Maybe he had learned how to act from outdated media? A lot of the media that came out after the war had still relied on old stereotypes, everyone unsure of how the continent would reshape itself as it rebuilt—unsure whether it would return to the pre-war norms or become something new entirely.
For the most part, it was the latter; not entirely, but mostly. Out of all the places where the continent’s various populations had found a middle ground, sparking was perhaps the most notable: even those with low enough D-Levels to spark with some practice still tended to hate sparking, too lazy to put in the effort to overcome the physiological effects, instead preferring sliding or microsparks. Usually, however, criminals were the exception—sparking was just too effective for escaping everyone save The Black Knot, high ranking SecOps agents, veterans, and the occasional sub-30.
Not this guy. This guy was stomping towards him, shoulders shifting as though he really was about to beat V up like in the old days. V almost felt bad when he stepped into a spark, landing beside the man and staring straight past him to where the rest of Alex’s group were just exiting the building. The man shifted, irate—short fuse, much? All he’d done was move a little fast.
“You!” the man yelled, bringing his fist back in preparation for a punch. The guy didn’t even bother reenforcing his body with a skill, and were he a more terrible person, V wouldn’t have bothered sparking to the guy’s other side, avoiding the hit as the man stumbled forward, even his footing and lack of weight management an embarrassing affair.
“Jay!” one of Alex’s newly appeared entourage yelled, a spark rustling through the aether only to be blasted out of existence by V—the last thing they needed was another person in this mess.
“You know, without your own reinforcement skill active, if you hit someone with a defensive skill active, you’ll shatter your hand,” V noted as he blasted both Alex’s entourage and the younger criminals—not that any of them had seemed inclined to join the fight—with junk skills, effectively blocking their ability to spark or even throw skills his way. It was willbrands only while covered in junk skills, but only two of the near dozen people seemed to realize that.
Willbrands screamed as they rushed forward, sparking the moment they were out of his junk skill’s range, but V was already gone, sparking in front of Alex and smiling at his old teammate.
“Hey, Alex. Been a while.” A barrier exploded out of him, pushing the closer members of Alex’s entourage further away, a few of them swearing or yelling for their boss. V was going to have to point out they could have done this the easy way, if
Jay
hadn’t immediately antagonized him.
Alex’s smile was bright as they gazed up at him, their height difference just enough to require them to raise their head. “Fuck. Good to know the OIC wasn’t lying its digital ass off, when it said you were alive!” They laughed, closing the distance to wrap their arms around V and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. “It’s good to see you, Seven.”
.
!
Arc X.1 | Chapter 340: Interlude | Project Piketown Infiltration 5
Comments