Chapter Text
“Do you think our sister would ever come back?”
Hemera’s response is a snarl. There are many reasons why she prefers to work with Jack on assignments, but Helena’s incessant chattering annoys her like nothing else in existence.
Currently, they’re flushing out an Old Guard cell in Dharma City’s lower districts. These neighborhoods are on the same level as Amida Station, and at one point they served as the transitional stage between the Upper and Lower levels. Base-level citizens that passed the now defunct promotional exam used to be sequestered to these areas. Now, the decrepit buildings serve as hideouts and safehouses for the Keymaster loyalists that lack the courage to scurry amongst the Base’s shadows.
“I think Zoe would let our sister back,” Helena continues, unfazed by the glowing red Rage going down her arms. “Would you?”
“Only to remove her head.”
“Hemera.”
Something shifts behind a large metal bin against the wall. She kicks it hard enough to crack the concrete of an adjacent building.
The noise came from a nest of rats. Muller’s smarmy face glitches across her visual processers, and she debates finding the derelict shaft they threw his corpse down to mutilate it all over again.
As the panicked creatures squeal, Helena coos reassurances and gathers them into her arms. It’s times like this she really wonders if Zoe crossed one too many wires when rebuilding Helena.
“They’ll be eaten if you take them.”
Helena moves them off the main street and deposit them in a side alleyway. “Our sister is misguided—”
“That bitch is no ‘sister’ of mine,” she hisses. “She chose to be our enemy. Her only purpose is to be killed.”
“Then why hasn’t she tried to kill us yet?”
“There is no sentiment in her inaction.”
“Sentiment is the only thing that makes sense of her inaction. She stands with an Asura. The Hammers have the numbers to overrun the Climbers.”
Hemera brings her sword behind her back to block a series of shots from the building behind them. Screams follow the deflected bolts, and several bodies wetly splatter against the ground.
“Their attack is dependent on the weapon they’re searching for. When it comes, be ready to eliminate them all. Mercy is a fool’s delusion.”
They go through dozens of loyalists, but none know of or are willing to give up Sasamori’s location. Still, Hemera doesn’t think they’re chasing a ghost. Someone is organizing the cells. If it’s not Sasomori, then it’s another high-ranking Key that managed to escape death or arrest after Mara was deposed.
When they return to HQ, they find it filled with unfamiliar faces. The Church of the Architect had made another attack on the Icemen’s territory, and Zoe allowed their medical facilities to be used as overflow. Fontaneros, Icemen, and Climbers alike are piled outside Saul’s lab. Though the Climbers are used to their presence, the space noticeably quietens as she and Helena pass the injured to reach Zoe’s office.
Hemera tosses a severed limb onto her desk. A data drive is still clutched within the fingertips.
Zoe sends a tired look at her, swallowing harshly as she unwraps the fingers to get the drive. “Hang on, Jack,” she mutters, tapping the screen imbedded on the table to mute the comm. “You could’ve left the arm.”
Helena glares at her. “I said the same thing,” she rubs at a small dent on the side of her neck. “She beat me with it.”
Zoe stares at her for several seconds, her exasperation as clear as blood on her blade. When Hemera says nothing, she sighs heavily and shakes her head.
“…Good work regardless,” she forces out. “The sooner we get rid of the Old Guard, the better.”
“They don’t appear to be our most dangerous enemy right now,” Helena flicks her eyes back towards the door. “Maybe we should assist with the defense against the Church. Or go on the offense.”
Zoe plugs the drive into the table. To no one’s surprise, it’s heavily encrypted.
“As soon as we let up on them, they’ll regroup and come back even stronger,” Zoe mutters, fingers flying across the keys. “What even makes someone want to join the Guard of all people?”
The table begins to chime, and Zoe patches the call through. It comes from one of the Climbers stationed near the last operational reactor.
“Zoe, we’ve got big problems up here,” pained screams briefly drown out his voice. Shots are fired. “Hammers are making a push! I think they’ve got the—AHHHH!”
Zoe attempts to contact the other members of the reactor team and gets no response. As she begins to hack into the Tower’s security cameras, Nym Jacobs calls in and reports she lost contact with the Icemen and Fontanero units stationed near the reactor too. It’s a full-scale attack.
“I know you two just got back—”
Hemera turns for the door. She does not tire and that traitorous bitch must be with the Hammers.
“We will go to the reactor.”
“I’ll do my best to secure it from here, but I can’t make any promise. I’ll get Jack to rendezvous with you before the elevator. Be careful. Good luck.”
From his rooftop perch, Jack can see Icemen and Climbers pushing through a wave of Hammers. He cleans his sword against his arm and flicks the remaining blood off, watching as it spatters next to the grunts he had sliced through.
“The attack started 20 minutes ago. Our reactor teams managed to contact us before they went down, but there’s no way reinforcements can beat the Hammers to the central chamber. Except for you and the Hels. Contact me when you’re in position.”
He jumps onto a railing as Nym’s picture fades from his HUD display. It’s a quick slide down, and it’s not long before he gets within a few clicks of the elevator that would take him to the central chamber.
“I’m in position.”
“Copy. I know you’d prefer Zoe, but she asked me to handle you three while she works on hacking the reactor’s sub-systems.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“I agree. But you know how she worries. If you have any questions, feel free to ask ‘em while we’re still on a private line. Her favorite floods, holo-flowers, and what not.”
The…suggestiveness in the woman’s tone can’t be missed. It causes that strange, burning feeling to bubble up in his chest again. He’s no stranger annoyance, he lived with Connor for months, but this is different. Deeper and more visceral.
“I want to concentrate on the mission,” he slices through a trio of Hammers in a Blink, then uses Gap Jammer to bring down a display board on another seven. “And she prefers shoyu ramen. Her holo-displays cycle between sunflowers, daisies, and willow trees.”
Nym’s ensuing laughter is rich and surprisingly warm. “Touché, Tin-Man. I just wanted to see if you were good enough for her. Based on the interferences, the twisted sisters should be—”
There’s the tell-tale sound of plasma buzzing through the air. A window above him breaks and glass rains down, glittering technicolor in the neon lights of Dharma. The pair of Hels land in front of him.
“In position,” Hemera says. “Has the bitch breached the central chamber?”
“I can’t confirm. Our guys dropped like flies, but I didn’t pick up any interference from the cameras. Stay alert regardless. You’re a kilometer out.”
“Copy.”
Reunited, the trio make quick work of the combatants standing in the way of them and the elevator. One Ghostrunner is enough to handle a small army. The three of them could probably bring the entire Tower down if they wanted.
“The timing of the attacks was convenient,” Jack says when they enter the elevator. “Is it possible the Hammers and the Church are working together?”
“I mean…in theory, yeah. Makes sense to create a diversion in my territory while sending the real power to the reactor, but I wouldn’t call the Hammers a pious people.”
“It wouldn’t matter if the Architect really is back. He can control anything with an ATMA chip.”
“I’ll believe that rumor when I see a functional Cybervoid terminal.”
The glowing, orange, exposed core of the reactor sits just past the entrance to the central chamber. Ahriman and Hela stand near a platform that juts out from a control panel. Two red holograms accompany them, and Ahriman holds a…corpse?
Hemera snarls lowly, and Rage bleeds down her arms. Jack grabs her wrist before she can rush in.
“Wait.”
“Let us begin,” the hulking Asura rasps as he approaches the platform. “May blades reach what hands failed to grasp. May mind pierce the darkness where eyes failed.”
One of the holograms shakes its head, its voice cold and mechanically monotone. Even more so than Hemera.
“So unnecessary.”
“Let him,” the other cloaked figure says. “He made it happen.”
Ahriman places the corpse on the platform. “May will overcome where flesh and steel stumbled.”
“Fuck,” Nym mutters. “Let him monologue. I’ve got fifty guys on the way, but they’re ten minutes out. I’ll tell them to push. If Asura try to leave, you’re free to engage. Be careful.”
The floating hologram uses…a code? Whatever it is, it works on the ‘network unfriendly’ reactor without any resistance. The beam of plasma is imbued into Ahriman’s blade, and he plunges it into the ground next to the corpse. Red lightning crawls forth and into the body.
Slowly and unsteadily, it rises from death.
“Master,” Ahriman bows. “The Asura are here to serve you.”
The other floating hologram rematerializes at his shoulder. “The tyrant is long gone, Mitra,” he casts a look at Hela. “That…deformed thing is all that remains of Mara. A Hel unit.”
Hemera jumps straight for Hela, firing a X-wave at her from mid-air. Hela dodges and jumps to meet her enraged clone, both snarling as they come together.
Jack motions for Helena to follow him. So much for giving them the chance to surrender.
“Allow me to put down the Number and the other Hels,” Ahriman tells Mitra, drawing his sword.
“Will Bushido allow it?”
The floating hologram puts his hands together, and the surge of energy that comes off him temporarily scrambles his visual display.
“It will now.”
“We’ll meet by the gate.”
Mitra cloaks himself and the other two holograms disappear. Ahriman crosses the huge space that separates the reactor from the elevator platform in a single bound. He and Helena bring their swords up in tandem to parry his vicious strike. Ahriman is fast for his size, even faster than the killing machines he’s been training with for months, and he appears as a blur to his enhanced senses.
Like the Hels, Ahriman can fire plasma projectiles with his sword. They seem to be innate abilities because unlike Jack, it doesn’t take him the extra half second to access and prime said projectiles.
“I’d close my eyes, but I wouldn’t be able to feel you hitting me! You cannot defeat us!”
The Asura is also capable of periodically throwing off energy in a towering, circular wave, and his sword can extend into monstrous proportions. Him and Helena can’t stay close enough to make a killing blow.
“Hemera—”
The eldest Hel unit grabs ahold of Hela’s ponytail as she tries to spin away and hurls her several hundred meters across the chamber. She slams into an opposite wall with enough force to go through it. Hemera recovers her sword from where Hela had disarmed her and takes a running leap after her.
“I’M OCCUPIED!”
A long-suffering sigh falls out of his mouth, and he raises his sword to block another strike from the gargantuan Asura. This time, Ahriman channels his power through his weapon and blasts him off the platform in an instant.
“Pathetic.”
He’s sent flying across the chamber. Helena yells his name and jumps after him, but she’s .3 seconds too late. He’ll hit the floor before she can get close enough for him to use Gap Jammer to grab her arm.
A flash of movement comes from below, and a heavily augmented human male flies into his field of vision with a jetpack. He offers him a hand, and Jack quickly latches onto it with Gap Jammer.
“On your feet Runner! Fight’s not over yet!”
He uses the momentum to slingshot himself onto a wide, steel beam. Helena’s powerful leg implants mean she can forgo wall running all together. He uses Gap Jammer to hold onto her as she jumps back to the platform Ahriman is on. The stranger stays in the air to fire taser beams at the Asura.
“Who are you?”
“An ally.”
“Good.”
Hemera reappears from the hole she created and jumps onto the platform to join the fight. Her left shoulder is sparking and leaking blood, but her movements remain precise and lethal.
“He is Guard Commander Adrian Bakunin,” she snarls, slicing her sword through the Asura’s leg armor while keeping her vengeful gaze fixated on the Key above them. Jack notes his spike in heartrate. “Proficient in failed coups and mediocre swordplay.”
“I survived you, didn’t I?”
Hela hurls a projectile at him with one hand and rips a section of Ahriman’s faceplate off with her other free one. “If I could have gotten away with it, I would’ve taken your head.”
Ahriman is strong, but he stands no chance in a four against one. Even if two in the four are not-so-subtly trying to maim the other while battling against their common enemy. Helena strips him of his chest plate while he’s incapacitated by Bakunin’s laser, Hemera robs him of the power cells that store the energy needed to form his projectiles, and Jack slices through the reinforced metal that protects his vulnerable spine implants. Metal is flying off the Asura, and he’s forced onto his knees after Jack’s repeated strikes finally reduces his sword to pieces.
“It’s over.”
Ahriman grabs what’s left of the hilt and places it over his stomach. “Master. Forgive this one’s weakness, for he is not worthy,” he mutters with a bowed head. “But through this sacrifice carry forth the vengeance of the Asura. May we be free.”
He plunges the blade through his vulnerable mix of flesh and exposed metal. Blood, oil, and coolant form an inky ocean beneath his prone corpse.
Bakunin lands to the left of him. His hand is still on his weapon, and he flicks his gaze between the dead Asura and Hemera. Jack shifts to stand slightly in front of the eldest Hel, and the youngest keeps a hand on her arm.
“Threat neutralized?”
“He’s dead.”
“Good. Our next move should be to—”
Dozens of clad-in-black figures enter the chamber. Looks like the rest of the Zoe and Nym’s men finally caught up.
“Adrian Bakunin! Lay down your weapon and come with us.”
The Guard Commander does so without any fuss and puts his hands up. “Understood.”
Jack knows the answer based on Hemera’s bright red arms, but he asks anyways. “Did you fail to secure Hela?”
She hurls a venomous glare his way. “The bitch ran.”
“You didn’t chase her.”
Hemera scoffs, heading for the elevator back down. “I enjoy you two more than I hate her. Hurry up. If they order for Bakunin’s execution, I want to be the one who kills him.”
Saul ushers them into his lab as soon as they step through the doors of HQ. Hemera needs repairs, and the elderly man wants to provide some tune ups for all of them with the tech they’ve harvested off Ahriman.
“I heard you knew the Key back in the day,” Saul is screwing a plate over Hemera’s repaired sinew and wiring. Helena curiously examines the fallen Asura while Jack sits next to the eldest Hel. “What’s your take on him?”
“He has never shown barbarous traits towards humans.”
Saul's tone becomes velvet soft. “What about genetically modified trans-humans?”
A mechanical growl rumbles out of Hemera. She rolls her neck, staring straight into the wall.
“There is nothing about me that is human. It was made clear during augmentations.”
“…Augmentations? You got more of ‘em?”
“Affirmative. I underwent periodic upgrades. I was not shut down for them. Mara and the others found it necessary to monitor activity in my artificial cortex.”
Saul exhales roughly and continues torquing the screw. “Shit, kid.”
“Indeed.”
Anxious footsteps echo off the walls. Jack doesn’t need to look up to know its Zoe. Still, he does it because he likes looking at her.
“Bakunin claims he can get more data on the Asura. Maybe even reconnect with some contacts that had a part in building them,” she glances towards Hemera. “Nym and Sol want to use him for now. How do you feel about that?”
Hemera blinks once, twice. Even after all these months, she’s still not used to having a voice in these matters.
“I would prefer to kill him slowly,” she casts a long look at the dead Asura in the formaldehyde tank. “But we have a new set of ‘most dangerous’ enemies to neutralize first. He claims he can track them. The elder twins are correct.”
Zoe grabs a spare laptop and calls for Helena to take a seat at the table. She jacks all three of them into the device with their arm implants, briefly halting to squeeze his hand. Saul is too busy with Hemera’s injured shoulder to notice, but the Hel units pin him down with equal looks of bemusement.
“I’ll put him the storage space,” Zoe says, fingers flying across the keys. “We’ve isolated the code that should bring your shuriken system back online. In the girls’ case, it’ll activate it. Nym was also working on upgrading your spectral field, and I think those lines should be ready for integration too.”
She presses ‘enter’ and his visual display scrambles for a moment. Rebooting brings a shuriken into his palm. He spins it through his fingers while the reactivated systems begin to optimize. Beside him, the two sisters curiously mirror his movements with their own throwing stars.
“Thank you, Zoe.”
She blushes deeply, tucking a short strand of dark hair behind her ear. “Don’t mention it.”
Zoe clears her throat and stands up to search the lab. Once she finds an old security camera, she turns it on and points it towards the Hels before going back to her laptop. The Hels never show up in the footage displayed on the screen, but every few seconds, two humanoid shapes of static briefly appear.
“Needs some more tuning,” she mutters, typing rapidly. “Hela must’ve gotten some upgrades if we can’t track her through the cameras anymore. I want your spectral fields as good as Jack’s before we send you out again. Last thing we need is for the Hammers to start tracking you guys that way. It might take a little time.”
Another set of footsteps echo down from the doorway. Unlike Zoe’s, the steps are heavier, slower, and heeled.
“I sent Christian and my boys out on a scouting mission. We might have a lead on the Church’s HQ.”
Nym carries one of her children, Sybil, in her arms. The other, Seth, clings to her leg. Unfortunately, it’s not the first time the little twins had to be rushed to safety after the Icemen’s HQ was attacked.
“I know the Asura are priority on our ‘most wanted’ list, but your man brought up a good point about the timing of the attacks,” Nym continues. “They’re worth a look.”
Zoe starts sputtering like a misfiring drone. “Jack isn’t—he’s not—I mean…”
She looks at him for help, but he’s far too ‘occupied’ with his reactivated shuriken system to notice. Saul chuckles good-naturedly as he begins to solder Hemera’s panels. The Hel sisters wear matching smirks, and the younger of them leans onto her hands, cocking her head as she stares at Zoe.
“I’m not what?” Zoe flounders for a couple more seconds before he finally takes mercy on her. “Right?”
“No! No, you definitely have a point,” she practically screeches. Nym winks at Zoe, and she makes a half-hearted attempt to kick her. “Can you help me with this already?”
Sybil whines loudly, reaching for him as she tries to twist out of her mother’s arms. Nym chides her, but the girl won’t have it.
“You mind? My brother has fucked—”
The girl frowns. “Bad word mommy."
“Fricked off for the time being.”
“Not at all.”
She gently deposits Sybil into his lap. The way she snuggles into him makes him feel...well, he's not entirely sure how to put it into words. All he knows is that her innocence crowns him an infallible hero in her eyes. He hopes he never has to watch that part of her die.
With her child now placated, Nym pulls up a chair and places it next to Zoe. “You’re the computer geek out of us. If anyone can optimize the spectral algorithm, it would be you. My thing is fusion.”
Zoe passes the laptop off regardless, huffing when Seth blows straight past her open arms to greet Helena with a giggle. The young Hel is just as giddy as the child, and they settle into their favorite game as of late: ‘booping’ each other’s noses. Sybil is already nodding off in his arms.
“Defective,” Hemera sneers, stroking Sybil's hair with the utmost care. “Both of you.”
Zoe pouts in her seat, clearly upset by not being one of the favorites of the day. “Computer ‘geek’ is a stretch. How’s the Reactor 2 project going by the way?”
“Would be going faster if I could spend more than five minutes in the chamber without every other gang in Dharma losing their fuckin’ mind," Nym scoffs. "I can see how I’m not the most trustworthy person—”
Saul huffs. “Understatement."
“—but our power problem will be the death of us all if we don’t get the other reactors running again,” Nym finishes with a glare. “Mind if I borrow one or all of ‘em when all of this blows over?”
“Only if you don’t tell them to kill Saul,” Zoe says. “And ask them yourself.”
Nym looks at Jack, raising her eyebrows in question. He nods.
“I can escort you.”
The Ice Queen flashes him a smile that shines like the jewels on her fingers. “Thank you kindly,” she stands up, squeezing his shoulder as she walks around him. She drops a quick kiss onto her children’s foreheads. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna make sure the boys remember they’re running recon and not infiltration. Overwork the old man, will you? It’ll make him more likely to miss the pipe bomb I’m planning to leave underneath his pillow.”
“Your mouth will get you killed one day, Nemesis,” Saul mutters, still working Hemera’s paneling. “It’s a miracle it hasn’t already. Even your baby girl knows.”
“Your arthritic ass won’t be the one to do it though,” she calls out, her back to them as she jogs up the steps. “I’ll let you know if we find this ‘Cathedral’ those morons keep going on about.”
Saul puts down the soldering iron and pats Hemera’s arm. The Hel unit works her shoulder out while he shuffles over to the counter and puts the iron away.
“I don’t know what you saw in her, Zo.”
“You did start it that time,” she points out, grabbing the laptop once again. Her eyes shine with adoration when she glances at him. “But I’m onto better things now.”
Several hours later, the Icemen come back with news about the Cathedral. Bakunin hasn’t made any progress with tracking down the Asura, so he and Hels make their way to the lower floors of Dharma. The primary entrance isn’t flashy, just a yellow vault door, and an easy shuriken toss shorts out the lock over the vent system.
“I’ve dug up some blueprints,” Zoe informs them over comms. “This place must be huge.”
It appears that way. Once they get past the vents, the area opens to a large moat. The trio encounter several guards stationed along the platforms equipped with firearms and breathing gear, but the push down is easy.
“I like these,” Helena twirls a throwing star between her fingers while he activates the mechanism to drain more water from the moat. “They make the D-SEC mechs easy to deal with.”
Hemera rolls her eyes, pacing the room like a caged tiger. She’s more patient than Hela ever was, but that’s not saying much.
“They’re not difficult to begin with. You can’t dodge.”
“And you can’t admit I’m better with them that you.”
The water finishes draining. Hemera strides out of the room.
“Prove it,” she yells before jumping to the next platform below. “Keep up, little sister!”
The Church’s HQ is a dark grey industrial space filled with glowing stained glass and soft, echoing hymns. It’s a place of brutal beauty, and he can’t help but notice how it compliments the aesthetics of the Hels. He commits a picture of the sisters standing over a drop into the deepest caverns of the site to memory.
“Pretty.”
Nym’s face pops up in his HUD. “Impressive for some zealots. Can you think of something prettier?”
“Zoe.”
His chest warms as he hears Zoe squawk over the line. There’s a muffled thump followed by badly hidden laughter. He’d bet all his swords that she and Nym are sitting next to each other in the main office. Zoe must’ve swatted her for that comment.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have let you guys work together,” Zoe grumbles. “I don’t like this.”
The outmost sections of the Cathedral are heavily guarded. Most of the fanatics they encounter have weapons they’ve never dealt with before, and their implants are different than the ones Mara’s Keys were given. Though they’re not as stable as Key implants, they’re closer to what he and the Hels have.
“Ugh, these guys give me the creeps.”
“What is this tech?”
“Looks like a homemade version of GR hardware.”
He and the sisters move onto the next area, each riding a gridline that takes them past more glowing stain glass. Several well-placed shurikens short out another gateway, and they blow through a gang of enemies. It’s only when they’ve all fallen that he realizes three of them were Hammers.
“Alright,” Nym sighs. “I’m starting to believe the Architect really is back.”
“He isn’t.”
“Give me another explanation for this then.”
“I killed him.”
“Did you double-check?”
They find more and more fanatics as they travel deeper into the Cathedral. Plenty of Hammers are interwoven into their squadrons, and he gets the feeling they’re all guarding something. The blueprints suggest the massive space they’ve been traversing isn’t even the main section of the Cathedral.
They find a huge set of doors an hour into their infiltration mission. He and the sisters are swarmed as soon as they hit the platform, which only further confirms his theory about the real prize being much further inside. This must be the last gate between them and it.
“See those big doors ahead?” Nym asks when all the enemies have been felled.
“No.”
Zoe’s laugh is joyous, carrying enough life to restart the desolate world Outside. Sadly, his pride twists into disbelief when he lays eyes on what sits just in front of the doors.
“Wait…” Zoe’s voice quakes for all the wrong reasons now. “That’s a Cybervoid terminal.”
He rips off the paneling and finds a wire to jack into. The Hels grab wires of their own.
“We’re going in.”
The real world falls away, and his vision is overtaken by the bright, digital landscape of Cybervoid. It’s changed since the Keymaster fell, more intricate and vibrant than it once was.
“It’s beautiful,” Helena breathes out, wonder softening her cadence. “And it feels…right. It makes me feel right. Can you hear it? It's speaking to us."
Jack pauses, turning back to look at them. Hemera isn’t condescendingly snapping at her sister, rather, she’s just as awestruck.
“Have either of you been here before?”
Hemera snaps back with a rapid series of blinks. She quicky strides past him.
“We were never allowed to fully interface. Mara did not trust us.”
Hacking the terminal doesn’t go to plan. Even though the Hels haven’t interfaced with Cybervoid before, navigating the digital plane is still in their instincts. Despite that, the three of them combined can’t break past the firewall that keeps the doors shut. They’re forced to make the long journey back to HQ and regroup.
After an emergency meeting, the best plan they can come up with is to brute force their way through the doors. It’s risky, and he doesn’t like it one bit, but they should have the firepower to make it through. With it being so late in the night cycle, everyone agrees to leave the next infiltration attempt for the morning.
It gives him time to visit Bakunin. Predictably, he hadn’t done much with Connor’s old storage space. They’d be able to use it as a firing range if they had the ammo to spare, but for now, all it holds are old ghosts, several hundred pounds worth of tracking equipment, and a cheap cot.
“Any updates?”
“Yeah. But not about the Asura. Your failed Church infiltration.”
Bakunin had been cleaning his weapon. Both of his arms are cybernetics, one of which was taken by Hemera. His face is littered with scars, and Jack gets the distinct impression that he’s nowhere near comfortable in HQ. All of Mara’s former soldiers are stiff, but what he’s carrying runs deeper than military training. He moves like he’s dirty. Stained. Even if he peeled all his skin off and dunked in the Icemen’s endless water reserves, he still wouldn’t feel clean when it came time to sew it back on.
“What about it?”
“I think I might know someone who might help you break through.”
“I thought you were focused on the Ghostrunners.”
“I was. It just so happens that the same person is our best bet of digging up intel on them. They’re an old…colleague. You’ll have to scout out a particularly nasty part of Dharma City to find them. I don’t recommend taking the Hels.”
What Bakunin insinuates isn’t rocket science. Any old ‘colleague’ of his has a 99.7% probability of being a Key. Factor in that they’re a ‘Ghostrunner expert’ and that it jumps to 99.999%.
Still, he asks for the sisters’ sake. “Why not?”
“Kira…helped design them. The one you call Helena may not have met her, but the other certainly did.”
“We’re a team.”
“They’re killing machines, Jack. It’d be best to go on your own and shut them down until Kira is secure.”
Hemera and Bakunin have…a lot to work through, but surely, he must know Mara denied them the most basic of rights. Hemera didn’t have access to her own brain until he found her.
“The Climbers view you the same way you view the Hels.”
“I’m…aware,” the ex-Key grits out, unable to meet his eyes. “But I was there for their introduction into our Black Ops division. Mara stripped out everything human about them. They can’t be trusted.”
Sensing they’re getting nowhere, Jack turns for the exit. “Follow me.”
Bakunin stares at him with a quizzical expression, but he follows him to the top of the stairs. Jack quietly opens the door and tilts his head towards the far side of the computer lab that sits in the center of HQ.
Despite his insistence on her getting some rest, Zoe drug the Hels into the lab for some ‘quick’ software updates that would allow them to support the Tempest function. She roped Nym into helping, and the other woman was already dozing at her computer when he walked by earlier. Now, both are slumped over with their heads covered by their arms.
The little twins are still up and unaffected by the late hour. Seth and Helena are on the floor and engrossed in a ‘heated’ battle between their miniature dinosaur figures. The youngest Hel can mimic the roars, snarls and hisses of the carnivores she’s in charge of with scary precision, and she relentlessly ‘chases’ after Seth’s herd of herbivores. No matter how close she gets, her prey is always able to escape. Seth never stops giggling.
Hemera scowls in a chair a few lengths down, all her attention on Sybil. The girl had wandered away from the pretend chase, her curiosity captured by the arcade machines in the corner. She’s far too short to reach any of the buttons, and after a few moments of struggling, she turns around to run straight for Hemera. Her tiny, uncoordinated foot gets caught in a cable running across the ground, but the eldest Hel is there to catch her in a blink.
“Watch it, child.”
Sybil tugs Hemera towards the bright machines. “Up, ‘Mera! I wanna play!”
“Your mother is an inattentive fool,” she mumbles while picking up the child. “And quiet.”
The young girl pays no mind to the peeved snarl, innocently blinking at the Hel unit while she holds her in outstretched arms. After a moment, Hemera sighs roughly and places the girl on her hip.
“There. Entertain yourself.”
Sybil coos happily as she’s finally able to reach the controls of the arcade game. Hemera’s scowl never wavers, but as soon as Sybil runs into trouble on a level, her deft fingers and heightened reflexes are there to help her push past it.
“What about them suggests that they’re so inhuman they must be robbed of choice?”
If he weren’t a Runner, Bakunin’s flinch would be imperceptible. “How did you do this?”
“We gave them their biological brains back. The rest was them.”
“And the other? How do you explain her?”
“Hela may stand with the Asura, but she does so as an individual. Not a simple machine. We’ve always been more than machines.”
“I know you are.”
“Do you?”
The soldier swallows roughly. “…Inform the Hels if you really find it necessary. Talk to me when you’re ready to make the trip.”
Bakunin heads back down into the storage space. Jack shakes his head, mentally preparing for the mess he’s about to wade into.
How the hell is he going to convince Hemera to not kill Kira?
“You want to do what.”
Jack is exceptionally light on his feet. Unlike her and her sister, he was made with stealth in mind. The humans rarely hear him coming, and even she struggles to pick him up on occasion.
To combat this, Jack has developed a shuffle. His ‘don’t be scared’ gait has him drag his feet against the floor like an overconfident drunkard. She’s not sure if he’s aware of it, but he does a similar shuffle when he’s about to share bad news. Instead of his steps being swift and heavy, they become unsure, irregular, and a bit quieter.
So when Jack used his ‘bad news’ shuffle to approach her, Hemera knew she was in for some ‘bullfuckery’ as Saul would say.
“We won’t get through the doors without heavy casualties,” Jack calmly reiterates. “It’s not ideal, but Kira is—"
“Don’t presume to know what she is, GR-74. I know what she is. I survived her tests, her augmentations, and every failed experiment she threw at me!”
Jack’s guilty as she’s ever seen him, making himself small in the corner of his room. She still wants to kick his face in. Holding herself back with Bakunin was one thing, but she’ll be damned if she lets that sociopathic bitch come into HQ alive.
“I don’t like this either,” Zoe sits on Jack’s bed blearily rubbing her eyes. “But we don’t have any other options, and we need to find out if the Architect really is back. I don’t want to lose either of you to him.”
Her arms are bright red, casting the dimly lit space in crimson. She works her hands out, clenching and unclenching them.
“Fine,” she spits out. She’s no stranger to playing the long game. As soon as Kira’s skills become obsolete, she’ll kill her. “Get Bakunin on comms. I want Helena to stay and monitor him.”
Zoe tries to perk up. Keyword: tries.
“I can run comms.”
“You cannot keep your eyes open.”
“Whatever,” she retorts, losing the battle to stay upright. She flops down, and her voice is muffled by the pillow she’s buried in. “Tell Helena to wake me up if she needs me.”
“Of course,” Jack responds, obviously planning to ignore that idea. He helps Zoe get her shoes off and pulls the covers over her. “We’ll be back before morning.”
Zoe’s heartrate slows with every beat, and she rolls over to face the wall. “Thanks, Hemera. ‘M sorry.”
The admission makes something twinge in her chest. She ignores it and heads for the exit.
They run into a few squads approaching the district, but it’s nothing compared to what they had to push through on the outskirts of the Cathedral. The Hammers are aggressive, but they certainly aren’t loyal to Kira. Just in the way.
Once they breach, Jack dashes over the safehouse’s entrance and presses the mechanism that’s supposed to open it. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t move.
“It’s locked.”
“There should be three terminals nearby. Find them, and you should be able to open it.”
She and Jack move deeper into the brightly colored district. Holographic trees and flowers line the streets, and most of the structures are newly built. Jack makes a remark about the area’s beauty. She just shakes her head.
Defective, that one. No wonder he’s fallen for a human.
“How well do you know Kira?”
“Quite well. She’s…one of a kind.”
Jack spares a look at her as they vault onto the higher floor. “Sounds bad.”
“No, no. She’s alright. Just a little detached.”
Hemera scoffs, firing a Surge projectile to short out a locked door. “She is responsible for every Creep that skitters around and Outside the Tower. She brings madness with glee.”
“She left well before Precipice. That’s why the other Hel never met her.”
Is it possible to strangle someone through Cybervoid? Perhaps she needs to rediscover the lost ‘Overlord’ method Jack once gained from the Architect.
“As any coward would. And we have names. Use them.”
Both she and Jack dodge a slugger in sync. He lets her have the kill.
“How many safehouses are there?”
“A couple. They’re scattered throughout the city, but that’s the only one big enough for Kira’s equipment.”
“Did you ever use them?”
There’s a hesitancy in Jack’s voice that makes her want to slap him. Him, Helena, and Zoe’s bleeding hearts will get her deactivated one day.
“I lived in one for a year. Hiding from you.”
She slices through three more Hammers. “I should’ve looked harder.”
Cybervoid appears differently to them through Kira’s terminals. Instead of a digital maze, it renders as a historic town from Japan’s Edo period. It’s darker than the Cathedral’s projection of Cybervoid as well, using its shadows to hide the bytes of information they’re after.
“Who are you?”
Bakunin was not incorrect. Kira had left Mara’s service well before she ordered for the Base to be purged. It has been a long time since she’s heard her voice, and yet, it’s still as infuriating as ever.
“Kira?”
“Don’t think I can’t see you.”
“I’m…with the Climbers. We need—”
“Not gonna talk? Have it your way.”
“She can’t hear us.”
Hemera hurls a shuriken into the last orb, preparing to exit. “Good.”
They move onto the next terminal, cutting down the next wave of Hammers on the way. Jack questions Bakunin about the Tower’s flaws and his motivations behind joining Mara. She tunes them out, channeling her anger into destroying whatever stands in her way.
Once all three terminals have been hacked, her and Jack breach the safehouse. Kira is still connected to her CV interface, looking more weathered than she remembered. She cut her hair shorter, her wrinkles are more pronounced, and she’s integrated more gold-plated cybernetics into her body.
“Oh shit,” she jerks up in her seat, hand creeping for her gun. “You’re here to arrest me?”
“No,” Hemera replies.
“Then you’re here to kill me,” she points the gun towards them. “Well sorry. Ain’t happening!”
Jack dashes over and twits the weapon out of her hand before she can squeeze the trigger. “We need your help with Cybervoid.”
“Why didn’t you say that? I’m all about helping people!”
Hemera scoffs, scanning the room for that infernal drone Kira employs. She can hear it.
“Pack up. We need you to come with us.”
Kira slides out of her chair, looking around. “You heard the man, Kevin…Kev? Come on, we’re going on an adventure! There’s nothing to be scared of,” she side eyes her. “…Right?”
A sharp, shrill mechanical sound comes from above her. Hemera reaches up to backhand where she thinks Kevin is hiding, but Jack’s firm voice stops her.
“Leave it.”
She doesn’t stick around to help the scientist with her equipment. The run back to HQ doesn’t calm her down as much as it should, and seeing Bakunin’s face erases the bit of peace she managed to find. At least Kira and Zoe’s fractious relationship vindicates her feelings.
“You hacked our network?”
“I wouldn’t call it that, Zoe. The word ‘hacking’ usually implies the presence of security.”
Because Helena is a defective idiot, she gave up her room for Kira. She’s temporarily housing her sister until they can clear out another storage space.
Since she’s also a defective idiot, she’s helping Helena move her stuff. Zoe and Jack are helping too, though Jack is the only one assisting Kira with moving her stuff in.
Zoe is fuming, and she nearly drops a box. “Just who the heck do you think you are?!”
“I’m someone who’d like to politely point out that CLIMB123 is not a secure password. And that NLT 3.0 was obsolete by the time you were born.”
“Is that why back in the day you set the Keys’ comms to run on 2.5? To make that easier to hack? Oh! Sorry. Not fair for me to call that hacking, right?”
“Ouch,” Kira's mouth flattens, and she turns around to fiddle with her CV rig. “Touché.”
A tiny hand tugs at her pant leg. “Wha’s happening, ‘Mera?”
Sybil had wandered into the room. Neither her brother nor mother are anywhere to be found. Her twists had frizzed up in her sleep, and there are crusts in the corners of her eye.
Unable to think about anything but getting the child as far away from Kira as possible, she picks her up and heads for their borrowed room.
“Nothing. You’re going back to bed.”
“But you’re louddddd. I can’t sleep.”
“Try harder.”
When she returns to Kira’s room, only the scientist remains. She doesn’t acknowledge her and begins to carefully remove posters from the wall.
“What was that?”
She nearly rips one. “What?”
“The thing with the kid. Zoe wouldn’t give me the code she used. Or did they not tell you either?”
There’s no superiority laced within her questions. This time, at least.
“Do you think Helena was ordered to give you this room?”
“Uhh…duh. Altruism was like the first trait taken out of your genomes.”
“Question four of the Hanson-Hamada motoric test states: What will happen when you die. Answer 1a is ‘I will not die’. When asked to clarify, answer 1b is ‘I am not alive.’ Over, and over again I said this. In every waking moment, I was remined that I was a tool. A simple, non-sentient machine. And I believed it. I don’t need to breathe. I have no lungs, no excretory system. I don’t eat or sleep,” she turns around to face her maker, her undoer, and tugs at her chin-length hair. “But when I cut this short, it began to grow back. Blood runs alongside the oil and coolant in my veins, all of it pumped by a central processor that looks exactly like a human heart. I may have been brainless but only because you denied me the ability to use it. Zoe’s repairs erased the protocols and restraining modules put in place to control us, but that does not negate the fact that we were always alive. You suppressed our individuality and told us it was never there in the first place. Like fools we believed you, and even more foolishly, you believed yourself.”
Kira’s eyes are glossy in the fluorescents. She swallows roughly, mouth slightly opening and closing.
Hemera has no time for her guilt. She takes the posters and walks out of the room, resisting the urge to pull on her too-tight clothes.
The collar of her shirt can’t choke her. She doesn’t breathe.
Pain and discomfort are foreign things to begin with. Machines don’t feel them. They don’t feel at all.
Right?
Liar.
Helena immediately knows something is wrong when she walks into the room. “What—”
She starts to put up the posters. Her hands are shaking. Why are they shaking? Is she malfunctioning?
“I’m going to kill her. If you stop me, I’ll kill you.”
Liar.
“Sister, slow down—”
“Every time I hear her voice, I go back there. I can’t make it stop. Where’s Saul? I need—”
Helena grabs her face, forcing her to look away from the wall. “Easy. You need to feel this. It’ll pass, but only if you don’t burry it.”
She bows her head, shame blooming in her heart. She hates how this…maelstrom within her is trying to eat her alive. She hates how her eyes burn like she wants to cry. She hates that she can’t because she has no tear ducts. It sits behind her head and beats her down from within, reminding her that no matter what she does with her hair, or what clothes she puts on to hide the Keymaster insignias Zoe couldn’t laser off, she’ll never be rid of what happened to her.
“Leave me.”
“What? No.”
“Leave. Me.”
Helena’s heartbroken expression almost pulls an apology out of her. Her sister slowly releases her and exits the room. She drags herself to the bed she can’t sleep in, closing her eyes as if her mind could truly shut down.
“You ok?”
She almost laughs. Helena had returned with Jack. They both stand in the doorway, and her sister uses the other Ghostrunner as a shield. She doesn’t tire, yet she doesn’t have the energy to throw something at her.
“No.”
Jack sighs, and he finds a spot on her left. Closest to the doorway, of course. Since she doesn’t take his head off, Helena carefully approaches and settles into the space on her right.
They say nothing, only offering their presence. It’s enough. She’d rip out their modulators if they tried to give her a noble speech anyways. Killing would be a much more efficient catharsis, but slowly, the quiet company grounds her.
She hears Zoe long before she knocks on the open doorway. Her and Jack’s ‘bad news’ shuffles are nearly identical.
“Hey. We’re ready to go when you guys are. If it’s alright with Jack, I was thinking he’d deal with Kira. Me and Sol will run comms unless you want me to wake Nym up.”
“I’m fine with that,” Jack replies. “Are you ready to move out?”
Her sword sings her name. She’s antsy and eager to kill.
Liar.
“Let Nemesis sleep. We’ll head to the Cathedral.”
Jack gets…twitchy as they progress through the Church’s territory. Her sister hasn’t settled down in the slightest, but as they make their push, the ‘true’ Ghostrunner out of the group begins to exhibit abnormal behavior.
His kills are messy and angry. Anyone that makes the mistake of charging him head on is rewarded with a sword shoved through their skull. The strike is an instant kill, but he gives his sword a ferocious twist through the minced brain matter regardless.
Helena knows they’re both running ragged. Jack is pretending that having his body taken over by the Architect didn’t affect his mental state, and Hemera…well…yeah. Instead of splitting to fight her own battles, Helena hangs back and supports the others with the squads they take on. Her inexperience is blamed for her ‘lack of initiative’ with scouting ahead, and she doesn’t bother correcting anyone.
Her sister’s ego is as fragile as glass. She wouldn’t want to shatter it. Not after the day she’s had.
“There’s no need to hold onto what weights you down.”
Jack bisects one of the whip-wielding fanatics with a low grunt. It’s an instant kill, but he flicks his sword behind him and beheads the corpse as it falls to the ground. The brutality finally catches her sister’s attention, and she silently consults her with a perplexed squint.
Helena points towards the ceiling.
“Shit,” Hemera quietly groans. “Watch him.”
“Have been.”
“The Old Word is gone. The Keymaster is gone. And so are the shackles that bound you. The only thing standing between you and transcendence are your attachments. Let go. Become one with Dharma. Leave behind greed and the need for control. Leave behind your ego.”
She sprints after Jack, noting that he’s outpacing them. Did Zoe enhance his speed when they weren’t looking? It’s like he’s moving faster with every kill.
“Is that him?”
“Leaving behind your ego? Doesn’t sound right.”
Hemera snarls, shaking her head as if she could throw Kira’s voice out of the comms. They tried to keep her on a private, encrypted channel with Jack, but she had got bored.
“The Pariah has sullied the Basilica with its presence.”
The area they had entered is crawling with cultists. If she was looking from two miles away and squinting, it would probably look like a Basilica too. The ‘stain glass’ that fades in and out of existence at periodic intervals is fun to slide on though.
A cultist yells from the top of a large structure. “THE FALLEN ONE! THE FORSAKEN! YIELD, APOSTATE! GIVE UP YOUR BODY!”
She can’t call Jack’s onslaught surgical. That would imply cold, clean precision. He paints the room red with a savagery that rival’s Hemera, moving as a blur to her enhanced eyes.
“I’d rather not,” he snaps back, slicing the cultist to thin ribbons.
“Stop the fallen one before he desecrates the altar! Rip off the Pariah’s head so it unto my light! So it can be purified!”
They finally reach the central chamber of the Cathedral, and Zoe guides them to a large structure at the top of a large set of stairs. It’s the source of the broadcast, pinging on her radar as a massive Cybervoid terminal.
“If anything happens, I should be able to join you,” Kira says.
“It would be better if you didn’t,” Hemera tersely fires back.
Jack’s face plate can’t change, but the look he gives them feels like a warning glare. “We’re going in.”
A red, humanoid hologram projects itself from the terminal as they approach. The Cathedral trembles, and a high, mechanical hum cuts through the air. Its servers are priming.
“Welcome back, number 74. Hel-02. Hel-12.”
Jack points his sword at him. “Who are you?”
“I am your maker, and you are my creation. Have you forgotten what we’ve been through?”
“I know you’re not him. Who are you.”
“I am the man behind the curtain,” her vision begins to short out. The hologram’s voice becomes distorted. “And you shouldn’t have peeked.”
Her vision clears in Cybervoid. The digital frontier is furious, pouring liquid fire into her nerves. Jack and Hemera aren’t with her, and she’s being attacked on all sides by…angels? What are these things?
“Jack! Hemera!”
Her comms buzz. She yells for them again, but the static won’t clear. Groaning to herself, she relies on instinct to push deeper into the Void. Time flows oddly in the Void, and she’s not sure if it takes several seconds or years to find a dark, circular portal at the end of a platform. Her instincts tell her to jump thought it—
“Watch it!”
—and she nearly crashes into her sister when she exits. They’re surrounded by platforms and portals, all of them revolving around a giant one in the middle. The angels are firing viruses energy waves at them.
Hemera pulls her behind cover, placing her hands on her shoulders. “Are you ok?”
She nods. “I’m fine. Where’s—”
The portal she had jumped out of begins to warp. Jack is spit out of it, and Kira’s voice finally comes through on the comms.
“…hear me? It’s an antivirus! Use the portals!”
They split up to tackle the antivirus. Each of them goes through different portals to clear the flyers, jumping through largest central portal to reset themselves on the platforms. As the waves thin out, the illusion begins to fade. One final push dissolves the cylindrical loop they had been stuck in, and their target is finally revealed to them.
The creature in the distance is massive, towering over them like all of Dharma. Like its minions it’s many-armed and floating, crisscrossed with scars. Spikes crawl out of the left side of its face, and it only has one blue eye.
The trio sprints for him, jumping from platform to platform. Jack leads the charge.
“There you are. Who the hell are you?”
“I am Rahu the Avatar. This is the new Cybervoid. A new world. My world.”
He conjures projectiles out of thin air, firing them at breakneck speed. Keeping up is harder than it should be. Cybervoid is their home as much as it is his, yet it seems hellbent on tearing them to pieces.
“What are you trying to do?!” She yells. “We don’t have to fight!”
“Don’t be naïve, mongrel. We’ve been fighting since you interrupted us in the reactor. You came here uninvited, broke in like a mere brute. You killed Ahriman. You are on obstacle of our path to freedom.”
Rahu conjures lasers. They slide underneath the pair, jump over another projectile, and leap for the next series of platforms. At least they can still hack those.
“You attacked first,” Jack argues. “You’re a threat.”
“So are you.”
Kira’s voice crackles in over comms. “Guys. Listen to me. He’s definitely a Ghostrunner, but not a regular one. He’s not just a user here. He’s got complete control over the network.”
“Any ideas?”
“Get to his eyes. I’ll take it from there.”
Right now, they’re at least several hundred meters below Rahu’s feet. It will take them ages to reach his eyes. The empty space at the end of the platform would look much better with a portal in front of it—
Huh?
Did she malfunction? She could’ve sworn there wasn’t a dark, bubbling sphere there a millisecond ago.
Instinct tells her the portal will lead to his waist. They exit into another deadly maze, but sure enough, Rahu’s waist is in sight.
“I think ‘complete control’ is a fallacy,” she tells the others, dodging lasers on the gridline. “He knows it well enough to mimic total dominion, but he’s not integral to its structure.”
“And that helps us how,” her sister dryly asks.
If stakes weren’t so high, she’d stop and get revenge for the new dent on her neck. She puts her frustration towards opening another portal. This one bypasses the maze all together, spitting them out on a gridline that wasn’t there when they went through.
“Instead of barreling through the environment, use it for once!”
Rahu fires another massive projectile straight at her. She lifts her hand and sends Tempest to meet it. In the real world, it wouldn’t have a chance of working, but they’re not in the real world. Cybervoid is their world, and they all have a hand in deciding the rules.
The airwave shoves the blast right back into Avatar’s face. His groan rocks the Void, flushing it bright red with his shocked rage.
“You may have instincts. But you lack knowledge. This effort will be in vain.”
She can’t Tempest the laser grid that rushes at them, so she conjures another portal to avoid it. They jump in height again, rematerializing at Rahu’s shoulders. Jack and Hemera fall back, letting her take point on the charge. It’s the first time they’ve ever done it.
“I’ve been watching you,” she hacks the Void to summon several platforms, leading the team up the final push to the eyes. “And I’m a quick learner.”
Rahu manages to pin them down when they reach his head. He summons the flying copies to restrain them. Their swords dissolve into the Void.
“Almost there.”
“You know what you need to do,” her sword appears in Rahu’s hand. He lifts it above his head, preparing to cut them down. “But you have no clue how.”
“Got access!”
“You’re right,” Jack goads. “We don’t.”
“May you be free at last—”
“Got him!”
Rahu convulses, and his body splits into hundreds of pieces. His copies do the same. Finally free, the team jacks out and locates his head in the server room.
The find is…chilling. She’s empathetic to Rahu, of course. Those ‘scars’ must’ve been the points where he was dismembered by Adam or Mara. Maybe even both.
But her heart aches for her sister and Jack the most. They experienced the brunt of such cruelty, and she never found the strength to look through the detailed notes in their files. She can only imagine what they went through over the decades.
Mara was not a kind woman to her, but she only dealt with her a handful of times. She never met Kira or Bakunin either. Her worst days were on the testing course, a ‘tame’ place according to her elder sister.
She takes the solemn responsibility of carrying Rahu back to HQ. Neither of her teammates offer any objections when she asks to lead.