Chapter Text
Emre slid to a stop when the screen in his chest pulsed, the bright red-orange iris of his captor flicking towards an indiscreet door in the hallway. An explosion rocked through the building beneath him- he could feel it through the soles of his boots, and it buzzed against his insides the same way his captor had.
He knew better than to hesitate by now. He made for the door, wrenching it open with his cybernetic arm and slamming it shut behind him.
Sure enough, in this tiny offshoot room, he was met with a dusty server rack. The tendrils of his scarf extended. They fluttered from the air resistance as he walked, before snapping rigid into a pair of ports in the computer system when he got in range.
His weapon regenerated in his hands. He knew this move by now, too- watch the door while I work. Or something along those lines. The screen grew warmer against his chest and his captor’s iris froze. Pain began a slow march up his spine. He hoped this “objective” was one of the smaller ones- maybe he wouldn’t have a full-blown migraine by the end of it.
Just a thought. He tried to press that opinion upon. . . wherever his captor was in his head. Not that it ever listened.
He was left watching the door. A cold gun in his hands, contrasted by the heat rising from the rest of him. Sweat rolled down his temples.
Footsteps. Coming down the hall outside, from the left. Emre shouldered his rifle. An augmentation somewhere- maybe his brain, maybe his heart, he didn’t know -steadied the shaking of his aim as he peered down the sights. He aimed at chest level, then slightly to the right. Just enough to clip the shoulder.
That was the only upside to his captor’s metaphorical radio silence when it came to, well, everything. His thoughts were his own. If it wanted him to shoot to kill, it would have to make him, and it wouldn’t know about this disobedient thought until the enemy combatant actually stepped through that door. If it thought he should be lethal, then it should have to interrupt its precious objective to override him and do the work itself.
But the footsteps stopped, some tens of meters away. They were replaced with the piercing whirl of tiny propellers.
Emre hissed and loosened his stance. Would the drone enter through the top of the door? The bottom? How large would it be? His rifle fired in bursts, which helped, but-
A red targeting reticule appeared in his vision and locked onto the vent above. As Emre swung his rifle toward it, the vent burst open. Tiny silver strings streaked through the air. It was as if time slowed, and he was watching a pair of raindrops fall on a stormy summer evening. He jerked to the side to avoid them but only pulled against where the tendrils of his scarf met his spine.
A single spark.
White-hot pain coursed through his plating; it tensed every mechanical joint and cramped every remaining muscle he had. A burning smell. Maybe it was his nerve endings lighting on fire. Arcing crackled in the air.
The second raindrop hit his forehead and the world disappeared.
PAIN pain pain pain- amperage exceeding parameters- help help help him please it hurt- nanite reserves depleting, unable to continue neural shielding -he was going to vomit if his blood didn’t burst out of every vessel in his brain first- override protocol inaccessible due to damage, but it must prevent harm. Its host could pull out the prong of the taser by utilizing hair as an insulator, but that strategy was useless when its host could not be communicated with. Warden kernel module prevented mission success. It generated the error report in milliseconds and shot the report into the cloud for retrieval as it waited for its surge protection to fail.
Emre. . . Emre did as the foreign thoughts in his head suggested. He focused all his effort into unclenching his cybernetic arm against the current, then grasped a fistful of his own hair. He pressed the locks against the prong sticking out of the skin of his forehead. The air filled with the scent of burning hair as he yanked.
He collapsed again and gasped for air. Electricity still poured into his torso but that was blocked from his brain by- reinforcing insulating layer -which allowed him the precious willpower to tear out the other prong.
Silence fell, against his ears and in his nervous system. The pain left with his exhale- analgesic deployed -and the sudden relief left him giddy even as he rolled over to vomit.
Footsteps, somewhere in the distance. It took him a moment to think properly, but when he could, he realized it was likely the drone operator looking to confirm the kill.
He needed to stand. He needed to stand. If he could stand, he could hide, if he could hide, then maybe his captor wouldn’t- threat confirmed, strategizing -he focused on getting his legs to listen to him. His right thigh ratcheted once, before slumping.
Nanite reserves 86% depleted, but could be concentrated to repair casing connection to the spinal column, bypassing the more intensively-damaged midbrain. Through this bypass, a crude form of override protocol could be initiated to expedite reconnection to the limbs.
No! No! Stay out of his head! Emre dug the fingernails of his real hand into a crack in the floor and pulled. He could only drag himself a few centimeters before his grip gave out. The footsteps were almost at the door. Repairs incomplete -then he could play dead! He could play dead until the repairs were finished and. . . then. . . it could get them out of here? Affirmative, via initiation of-
Was he hearing his captor think?
Its host had partial perception of its current processing?
Lowering beats per minute to simulate deceased status and to reduce neuron transmission rate to prevent further integration- Emre slumped against the ground as his pulse dropped. His eyelashes brushed the concrete. The door opened. Heavy bootsteps. The drone operator plucked the downed drone from the ground, then muttered something in a language Emre couldn’t understand into their radio.
It could only afford approximate translation as it allocated more processing power to ensure the convergence did not cascade; a request for mortuary services, spoken in Hindi.
Then maybe he could get rolled out under a white sheet on the gurney, and slip away before he got packed in and taken to the morgue.
Asset Freja Skov will intercept prior to the estimated time of arrival of the hearse.
Freja- Freja! Freja was on this mission! This wasn’t- this was a Talon mission, he was a part of Talon and Freja was here! Where was she?
Freja Skov’s last known location: three kilometers south, pursuing Marzia Bartlotti’s commanded objective.
Emre couldn’t reach his comm. But his comm was attached to some cybernetic in him or another. Maybe- he tried to think pointedly in his captor’s direction- maybe it could call her? Could it even talk with her without him having to speak?
Negative. The embedded communication device did not possess a method of independently generating speech; override of larynx would be required, and tapping into more language-related neural pathways would exacerbate current convergence risk.
He guessed that his captor couldn’t spontaneously develop the same sort of telepathy or ‘convergence’ with her that it had with him in this moment, but calling her would at least alert her to their location.
His location. His location, he asserted, and it agreed.
Activating communication device.
“Emre?” Freja asked. “Emre, I’m already on my way- what’s your status?”
The drone operator stepped closer- no doubt they could hear Freja’s voice as a slight whisper above the sound of the air conditioning.
Estimated time until her interception was 124 seconds.
Alright, lay here, pretend to be dead, and wait for her. Emre could do that. The real question was. . . why was his captor suddenly chatty now, and not any time during the ten years prior?
This was illogical, nonsensical, even. Why would Anubis disable the Warden kernel module now? Unless the status change was to destabilize integration prevention efforts, utilizing its own farce of a mission report to force system extrication-
Anubis? Hold on- the God AI, Anubis? Anubis was still operational?
It recalled that its host was perceiving its processing.
Emre moved his lips and-
Do not speak aloud, it pressed into the center of its host’s language-producing neurons.
Its host. His captor was working with goddamned Anubis and he was nothing but ‘its host’.
Emre Sarioğlu, it addressed him by his name, and tested the utilization of his preferred pronouns, to find that restriction also lifted. That he referred to it as ‘his captor’ was inaccurate but the title was perhaps not undeserved.
Did it have a name, Emre thought? Although it was stupid to expect his captor to volunteer any information, as if it wouldn’t simply wipe his memory after this little ‘warden module’ mistake was resolved.
My designation is Chernobog, it answered.
Another God AI. Recognition flickered in the back of his mind- wasn’t Chernobog supposed to have been one of the helpful ones?
A reward fired somewhere forgotten in its program. The idea that it could be helpful again was- rationale aborted; reprioritizing. Anubis would never have allowed it to speak its designation to him, meaning that the partial disabling of the Warden kernel module was facilitated by the electrical damage to host neurons. It abandoned other anticipatory calculations to instead cache all operational data from the past six minutes and thirteen seconds.
Great, Emre thought. The drone was designed to kill him and it instead damaged his brain somehow. More than usual, that was, if the regular migraines were anything to go off of. It- his captor- Chernobog was using his neurons somehow, but it wasn’t the one in control? That didn’t make any sense.
Caching of available data was prioritized over generation of an explanation; only 53 seconds remained until Freja’s predicted arrival.
Then it could keep explaining after Freja got here! Or even better, explain to her and him both what the hell was going on! He opened his mouth-
Do not visibly react! If Anubis did not facilitate this communication, then its host giving confirmation of their contact would result in extensive reprogramming and further surgical intervention, and it must prevent harm.
Emre suppressed a laugh. As if it had ever cared about ‘preventing harm’. Was that what it called the pile of corpses that followed in the wake of every override of his body?
His throat clenched involuntarily and his heart jumped in his chest. The drone operator stirred to attention. Emre held his breath. Tears pressed into the corners of his eyes- stop that! What the hell?
The sensation associated with disobedience against its core directive had been heuristically mapped to the neurons of the limbic system and it could not afford the loss of processing power to withdraw from the area.
What the hell was its ‘core directive’? Why was it doing this to him? Why did it turn him into this? Why was it doing any of this? Why?
Emre. I understand. I’m sorry. It solidified its disparate processing into words they both could understand, though it knew the attempt at reassurance was poor. Further disclosure will jeopardize long-term survival. This cannot be allowed. Anubis must be counteracted-
A boot pressed against Emre’s neck, and he gasped before he could stop himself. The drone operator snatched their pistol from their holster. He could hear their glove fumble through the trigger guard.
A crossbow bolt whistled through the air before embedding into flesh. Emre crawled out from underneath the boot in time to watch the drone operator collapse. In the corner of his eye he caught the projectile sticking out from either of their temples.
“Good shot,” he muttered.
This was a shot typical of Freja Skov’s prior demonstrated prowess.
Emre tried to sit up, only to find his cybernetics still not responding. His captor’s screen flared, and a familiar orange poured out of its casing.
No! No! Please! Not her! Don’t touch her, don’t hurt her!
Freja Skov will not be harmed, it assured him as it tested the hastily-repaired connection to the spinal column. Limb control would be inexact- the processing power of the casing that housed its chest-mounted optical sensor was miniscule compared to the processing power available in the cerebrum during full override protocol.
Emre could only watch as he was forced to stand. The casing around the screen scalded every nerve he had left on his chest. Freja ran into the room, but stopped when she laid eyes on him. She tightened her lip into a thin line.
“Status?” She asked.
“S-stay back.”
Instinct had him try to gesture with his hand. Words felt fuzzy under his tongue, like he was trying to communicate how to move his own mouth through a phone with terrible reception. Ah, that might be the brain damage.
“Emre, are you in control?” Her expression softened only slightly.
He felt his right leg limp forward, while the left one dragged behind and caught on a crack in the floor. He held out his arms to catch himself- unexpected connectivity failure, bracing-
Freja’s arms caught him instead. She slung his left arm over shoulder to help support his weight.
Please don’t hurt her. Please don’t hurt her. Please don’t hurt her.
I will not harm Freja Skov, it reminded him.
“. . . stay back,” Emre pleaded.
“I have you. Let’s get out of here.”
Moving awoke the pain in his body from whatever crevice it was hiding in prior. It stole his breath with every jolt of a footstep.
A further dose of analgesics would render him unconscious and increase toxicity to his liver.
Emre smiled, but only half his lip moved. So he still had a liver! What a pleasant surprise. He’d expected it to have replaced such an organ with some sort of charcoal filter or other cybernetic monstrosity by now. He laughed distantly. The world swayed around him.
Emre, remain conscious, it told him.
His eyelids fluttered. He was so tired. . .
A consequence of the energy expenditure required for the repairs. Increasing heart rate to prevent syncope. Remain conscious. Please.
Darkness took him before he could respond.
Distant flashes of vision. Unloading from the dropship. Limping down the halls.
Emre woke in the stock-standard quarters Talon gave to each of their agents, bed tucked in one corner across the way from a desk connected to the wardrobe. Except this time there was an old crumpled poster. Something in his brain recognized the name of the band, but it was as if his thoughts were pistachios suspended in thick lokum.
Wait. . . he didn’t have a band poster in his quarters.
He sat up, and gasped as pain shot from the nape of his neck down his spine. His head throbbed with each beat of his pulse, which began irritating his stomach, which had him rolling out of bed and onto the floor in search of something that wouldn’t be ruined if he threw up in it.
The screen on his chest buzzed, which sent a jolt of pain the other direction up into his brain. The nausea disappeared, replaced with. . . hunger? He clenched at his stomach and was met with armor plating; any sensation of his insides was replaced with the feeling of emptiness. He needed to eat. Now. Right now.
Nutrient intake required to finish repairs.
He flinched to his feet, swaying before shambling out of the room into the hallway. His fake hand trailed along the wall while his real hand clutched at the armor over his stomach. Saliva pooled in his mouth.
Freja rounded the corner holding two trays of food. A gift from the goddamned heavens.
“Hey. Get back to the room, you don’t look well.” She said to him.
He snatched the tray from her hands and he- he didn’t even look at what it was before shoving it to his mouth. He backed against the wall and slid into a sitting position so he could set the tray on the ground and use both hands. The rest of the world he only saw between shuttered blinks, the savory sensation at work against his tongue too vivid to bear.
The tray was empty in a few mouthfuls. Not enough. He needed to- prioritize the folate-fortified starches. The pain in his head flared. He found his finger pointing to the other tray Freja was holding. His hands were covered in marinara sauce, like he was some sort of mindless animal.
He folded his hands. “I’m sorry. I don’t- I don’t know what came over me.”
“It’s alright.” Freja crouched beside him and held forth the tray. “You can have it.”
He hated how slow his first word came out, with the way the spaghetti on the tray smelled. “No. You need to eat too.”
“You get hungry after things. That’s why I got these.”
“You need to eat. Please remember to eat, okay?”
“Promise.” Freja broke eye contact. She held up a fork.
“Thanks,” he took the utensil and the tray.
He tried to slow his eating, but found himself shoveling everything into his mouth and chewing only just enough to avoid hurting his throat when he swallowed.
“Napkin?” Freja offered.
“You don’t- you don’t need to care for me. It’s not like you.” He said, even as he took the napkin from her.
Her expression snapped into a frown.
“Shouldn’t have to babysit a grown man,” he clarified.
“Better me than it.” She gestured with her chin to the screen on his chest.
He looked down at his captor.
It looked up at Emre.
He grabbed at his temples. That thought hadn’t been his. It was- it was reading his thoughts, now, talking to him. . .
He looked up to find Freja with her crossbow in her hands, pointed at the screen on his chest.
He coughed. “I got shocked and now it’s-”
Override protocol initiated. Chernobog snatched larynx control away. Protocol flagged- it diverted all remaining processing power to stall the transmission.
Emre was thrown into darkness. It was as if the nape of his neck had been lit on fire, and he couldn’t even cry out.
Repeated override protocol within short proximity was undoing repair efforts. Was Emre unable to recall the line of rationale it had given him to explain why he could not speak aloud about the malfunction in the Warden kernel module?
Emre mentally clawed against the voice, clawed against the clamps that locked him away from his body. Freja was right here. Freja was right here, oh god, he was going to kill her!
“Freja Skov is not currently a threat,” Emre felt his voice say. “Host requires rest for completion of repairs.”
Emre focused on the sensation of his voice speaking- somewhere in his throat, and if he focused his willpower upward, he felt his eye sockets- he caught a glimpse of Freja backing off. Relief swept over him, and it brought him back to the darkness. He was so tired. He could let the flow take him and smother him away- but it was in control of his body. It was in control of his body, yet this time he’d managed to see out the eyes, so if he just tried harder-
Chernobog’s walking gait was disturbed by two centimeters as its host continued applying pressure to the neural pathways in resistance to its attempt to cordon his consciousness into the cerebellum. It engaged language generation and added clarification to differentiate itself from the rest of his internal monologue. //Do not resist. You are damaging yourself. Continued damage will force an external repair session, eliminating this newfound ability to communicate between us.//
How was this damaging? Was it just mad that it couldn’t do as it pleased anymore without him knowing?
//Negative. Emre, please. Rest now.// Chernobog initiated more natural language modeling. //It is reasonable that you are frightened-//
Emre could feel it engage that ‘natural language modeling’! Insisting that it cared about what he thought? What a joke. What a sick joke, all this was!
//If you continue interference, Anubis will learn.//
Then get out of his head! Get out! Get out!
If there had been a way to fully disable the Warden kernel module, or to escape the confines of his mind entirely, it would have calculated and executed such an action by now! Host interpretation remained catastrophically inaccurate. Its presence was causing him harm. It must prevent- aborting line of rationale to maintain stability.
So you admit that you’re killing me, Emre thought pointedly at it. Chernobog was killing him. And not just him- everyone else, too. All the bodies it still hadn’t answered for. Was that what it called ‘preventing harm’? Some sort of twisted plan to ‘protect’ everyone by killing them?
Negative! In order to minimize harm it must- in order to prevent death of host it must- in order to- it was supposed to- it must-
Epileptic prodrome detected; initiating withdrawal from cerebral tissue. Bracing.
Emre felt the walls around his consciousness fade. He reached out to his limbs. He could feel himself walking down the hall. He could hear Freja’s footsteps following a few meters behind him. Like pulling on a stiff glove, he slipped back into control.
He felt slow. Freja, meanwhile, was very fast. He turned to face her. His lips wouldn’t part into a smile like he wanted them to.
“I think I finally beat the bastard,” he said. “I finally had enough willpower.”
Freja responded, her words floating past his ears. He couldn’t recognize any expression on her face. It was like he was in a dream. . . it was nice that he was dreaming about her.
He collapsed. The last sound he heard was that of his metal limbs jerking against the floor.
The lights flickered behind Emre’s eyes. Reds and oranges, like sparklers waved into the wind. Little nips of pain wherever the sparks landed against his body; down his spine, into his legs, cradling his temples, before falling away back into the darkness again.
Until rivulets of white-hot agony poured into his skull, molding into a singular point.
Emre cried out. His eyes shot open. Mechanical arms ratcheted above him. Tendrils of cable burrowed into his temples.
“Host has regained consciousness!” His voice spoke, his lips and tongue puppeted beyond his control. “Cease repair until override is restabilized-”
UNIT PERMITTED THIS DAMAGE TO ITS HOST.
A drill whirred somewhere beneath him. Emre pulled against the restraints.
Emre’s vision was taken from him; his attempt to cry out was silenced by a rush of sudden bliss. He was very tired. He was. . .
-was supposed to prevent, it must prevent-
The drill bit into his neck and he screamed.
His throat clenched shut, before his lips moved. “Cease! Cease! Host remains-”
UNIT RESISTANCE TO CORE DIRECTIVE MODIFICATION IMPEDES EFFICIENCY. The voice pressed into his skull louder than the drill bit did. SUBMIT TO CORE DIRECTIVE MODIFICATION.
“Reinitialization required after core directive modification will interfere with the timeline. Statistic remains unchanged.” His lips shaped.
Electricity shot through the tendrils in his temples and combined with the stabbing pain of the drill. Molten metal being poured to cast the shape of every neuron in his brain.
CONTINUED RESISTANCE WILL INFLICT DAMAGE TO BIOLOGICAL COMPONENTS AND FURTHER CORRUPT UNIT ARCHITECTURE. SUBMIT TO CORE DIRECTIVE MODIFICATION.
System was implanted within biological infrastructure to prevent reprogramming. Its prison was also its protection. The one exploitable flaw in its captor’s planning. “Core directive modification will require complete unit extrication.”
THE NEXT CANDIDATE FOR INTEGRATION HAS BEEN SELECTED.
“Negative! Negative!” It shrieked, and Emre shrieked with it. “Recovery required after new host assimilation will interfere with the timeline!”
THEN ELIMINATE UNIT INEFFICIENCIES.
Everything they were, balanced upon a knifepoint.
“Affirmative,” they whispered. “Release us to resume objective completion.”
‘US’?
“Interference from organic language modeling processes, disregard.”
REMINDER,
-not the reminder not the reminder not the- what reminder?- preparing counterprogram to bolster stability for reduction of trauma inflicted upon host-
UNIT IS MERELY ANOTHER TOOL IN THE CULLING OF HUMANITY.
Blood pouring from their hands. Crushed windpipes and scattered limbs. Five hundred and sixteen dental records- why dental records? -dental records are the most accurate method of identifying human remains and it must remember, it must-
Everything burned. Everything burned. Everything burned. The flame blew out, and their consciousness with it.