Freezing Shadows, Chapter 39

Chapter 39: Extracted

As we headed back towards the above-ground section of the site, Twilight’s voice came on over our comms. “Hey guys, glad to see you’re all headed back up. Lost your signal for a bit, there. All that dirt makes for a bit of interference. Anyways, things are still clear, up here.”

“Glad to hear it, Twilight. Our main kill targets are down. Haven’t seen anyone trying to escape, have you?”

“No, if any of the bugs are left, they’re either doing some magic thing to escape, or are trying to get out underground. Either way, drones don’t show anything, and they haven’t come up through any of the buildings.”

“Any movement from people in town?”

“Haven’t seen any cars coming. No calls were made, either. Some people might have heard all the gunshots, but Babydoll’s cannon on that drone is rigged so that it is a lot quieter than a weapon like that ought to be, and there weren’t any huge explosions, and nothing is on fire. Probably be good until someone notices the mess by the gate, but that shouldn’t be until the sun is up.”

I nodded, even though I knew she couldn’t see me. “Good to hear. We’re going to check on our target, now. Got directions for us?”

“Directions showing up in your HUD. Tyler is in room 204. He hasn’t moved since this all started, so shouldn’t be a problem.”

I frowned as we followed the blinking yellow arrow that appeared in our HUDs, giving us directions. Hitting the stairs two at a time, I asked, “Hasn’t moved? With all this ‘excitement’? You sure he’s ok?”

“Yeah, he’s got a biomonitor on him, same as the other suckers. He’s drugged up and knocked out, but alive, and stable. There’s tripwires in the system to send out alerts if any of the biomonitors show someone having a bad reaction. Guess they wanted to make sure all their new hosts were alive to the end.”

“Can’t hollow them out and shove a bug in them if they’re dead. If they could use nonliving vessels, then they wouldn’t need to go through something like this.”

“Boss, this is the door,” Berzerker said, pausing by a door with a simple red 204 on it.

“Unlocking now.”

Iceblade’s Assensing Test: 4d6 = 2 hits, 0 miss

There was an audible click as the electric lock slid back, unlocking the door. I opened myself to the astral as I walked in, hoping to get any information on the boy that I could. What I saw was not good, at all. Whatever they’d been doing to him had hollowed out a lot of what made him, him already. His ‘aura’, for lack of a better word, was pale, and thin, like butter spread over too much bread.

Sexkitten picked up on my frown, and said, “What is it, boss?”

“He’s in bad shape. Whatever they’ve been doing has been wearing away at his Essence. Same as how putting ware in your body disrupts your connection between body and soul, or however you want to put it. Probably doing it to make it easier for the spirit to take over. Less of ‘him’ to fight against. Fortunately, he isn’t Awakened. If he had been, he’d probably be nearly burned out at this point.”

“Is there anything that can be done for him?” Berzerker asked.

“In the beta, people heard about some new gene treatment that helped restore Essence, but it was supposed to be incredibly rare, and even more expensive. Other than that, there’s no filling in that hole, once its dug. Can put something else in it, though. Cyberware or bioware would take up the ‘hole’ first, before digging into him any more. But the best thing for him is probably going and getting a bunch of therapy.”

“There are another six people on this floor, and records show ten more in what they’re calling the ‘induction room’. Probably somewhere down below, back near where they brought the queen in.”

I sighed, and nodded. “Most likely. But they aren’t our problem. Our job is Tyler, and getting him back to Seattle. Let the Angels or the locals deal with the rest.”

I brought my vision back to the material. Tyler looked like a normal teenage elf. Well, a normal drug-addicted teenage elf, which wasn’t’ far off from what a drug-addicted teenage human would look like. According to the game lore, elves hit a wall somewhere in their early or mid-twenties. Before that, they aged normally. After that, they just stopped visibly aging. If they aged at all, it was so slow that no one could really tell. Thinking was that, barring violence, accident, or disease, an elf could live centuries, and be in the prime of life the whole length of it.

“Berzerker, you’re the heavy lifter. Grab our guy. We’ll make him as comfortable as possible in the van, or maybe just keep him out until we can hand him off to Alisha. Either way, we’re done here.”

Berzerker nodded, and picked up the scrawny elf boy, tossing him over her shoulder like it was nothing. To be fair, it probably was nothing for her. As we headed back downstairs, I spoke into our comm channel, “Twilight, we’re heading out now. Target secure, and alive. Let Alisha know, with an ETA of our arrival in Seattle. Make sure to include that he’s not really in the best shape, so we should meet somewhere discrete.”

“Got it. You want me to mention the essence thing?”

“No, I’ll go into it when we see her. For now, let her know he’s going to need drug treatment, and therapy. Don’t know if he’s been brainwashed or not, but I wouldn’t count it out.”

“Is magical brainwashing really a thing?” Sexkitten asked.

“Yes, and no,” I shrugged, as we hit the first floor. “There’s magic to rewrite memories, sure, but that can wear off over time. Not reliable. However, you can use magic to play with someone’s emotions, making them trust you implicitly, or to sap their will, making them more gullible and trusting. None of that is straight up brainwashing, but combined with drugs, someone with charisma, and all the normal tricks? Yeah, it can work.”

“Sounds like a lot of trouble, though. Seems like they would have found some better way to do something like that, in-game.,” Shadowgirl frowned.

I chuckled at that. “Of course they have. But it is tech-based, not magic, and it is still experimental in nature. The tech is supposed to help ‘edit out’ psychological addictions or other nastiness like that, but obviously people figured out how it can do more than that. Pretty sure that Meta wants to keep it rare, too, so people don’t ask too much about the real-world implications.”

Berzerker bit back a curse. “The stuff they do with qualities like Addiction, right? And our ‘memories’ of our character’s lives before we logged on, or what we did while logged out, right?”

“Bingo,” I nodded. “They say there’s safeguards against that, but I’m no coder, and I definitely don’t have access to any of that stuff, so I can’t say how real or not it is. There’s a reason they have therapists on call, like I told you. They’re trying to make sure nothing happens along those lines, or, if something does happen, that they can catch it and quash it before it becomes a problem.”

Sexkitten shook her head. “So, we don’t have to worry about anyone getting programmed to be a sleeper agent, or anything like that?”

“Not quite. There four ways I know of, in the game, that someone could override a person and pilot them around. The first is one you have experience with. A lot of personafix chips are simple things, giving you a ‘naughty schoolgirl’ persona, or something similar. But there are full identity versions, too, and if you combine that with a data filter? They won’t even know that those times they’ve ‘gone under’ even happened.”

“Aw, fuck,” Sexkitten grumbled. “I hate the sound of that. What are the other three?”

“The second is what we’ve just been dealing with. Spirit comes in, scoops out your soul, and rides your meat suit around. Obviously, that’s a permanent change, so it could be considered basically like killing them, rather than taking them over.

“Third method is possession. Two forms of that. The first is what I can do, summoning a spirit and allowing it to possess a vessel temporarily. The second is basically the same thing, but through different forms of spirit pacts, and are… less often involving willing participants.”

“For the record, count me out for that kind of thing. Sounds horrible.” Twilight said in the link.

“Yes, but you’ll like the last method even less. Basically, there are things called ‘biodrones’, which are animals that are set up for riggers to jump in and pilot. There’s some indication that some of the more advanced types could turn people into drones. Just living their life, until someone jumps in and takes them for a joyride. Or uses them as expendable body doubles.”

“As… interesting as that sounds, I’m going to have to pass on getting any people as drones,” Babydoll said, and I could hear the disgust in her voice. “That has to be some corporate bullshit, right?”

“Of course,” I chuckled. “Who do you think makes those kinds of specialized cyberware?”

An uncomfortable silence fell over the girls at that thought, as we made our way out of the building, to the vehicles. I saw DeeDee and the other Angels there, several of them looking worse for the wear. DeeDee nodded as we approached, and glanced at Tyler’s unconscious form. “Got your guy?”

“Drugged to hell and back, but alive, yes. I saw bodies on the way to the Queen’s chamber. How many did you lose?”

She grimaced. “Six hybrids, ten of the true forms. Fighting was intense on the astral, before they pulled back for their last stand. Would have lost more, and probably had to run, if you hadn’t been here to help, especially with the Queen.”

“Just disrupted, not destroyed, right?”

“Right. But they’ll need new shells to come back. Not something we can do in a hurry.”

“Like I said before, I’m not about to watch you scoop out someone’s soul to bring them back. But me and mine have to be back to Seattle, to get Tyler here to his family. Way my eyes in the sky tells it, we probably shouldn’t have anyone from town getting curious until someone drives close enough to see the state of the front gate. Still a few hours until dawn. Probably a few more hours after that until anyone starts getting curious. If a mysterious fire takes out the buildings and something collapses the tunnels, likely that no one will look too closely at what happened here.”

DeeDee nodded slowly, understanding what I was saying, and what I was definitely not saying. “Sounds good. Safe trip back to Seattle, then. I’ll get in touch with Honeypot, who runs the local girls, there. Maybe if some of the same kind of work comes up, we’ll call you, or you’ll call us.”

“So long as we get the same understanding with them as we had with you, I see no problems. I look after me and mine, and then any target of the job. We don’t go seeking trouble with people who haven’t done anything to us. And if there’s ants, or termites, or any other kind of infestation to go cleaning out, maybe we can get in on that. Fighting alongside Angels battling monsters is poetic, yeah?”

DeeDee snorted, and then burst out laughing, which I had expected, since I’d laid it on a bit thick with that last part. “Damn, wizboy, I see how you’ve got all those ladies attached to you at the hips. Not even into men like that, and that still got to me. Get on out of here, before we decide to keep you as a breeder.”

I just gave an off-hand salute as we made our way to our rides. It was time to leave this wrecked hive, and get back to something somewhat normal.