Sing'n in Binary: 35

She’s drowning.

Switch Solei overlay video to feed F1-C8. Three targets. Task external1 and external3 to breach. 

All other externals in use. Retask to central node.

Aria is drowning.

Soeli snaps her gun up as she steps out behind cover firing five times at two point blank targets, one hits, sending out a spray of red as-

New threat identified, second floor, south. Tasking external2.

Solei runs out of bullets but Aria planned for that.

As her gun clicks empty, the enemy drops his own non-functional weapon and charges-

Breach successful, disable.

The enemy’s cybernetic arm snaps of to his left while his eyes go dim, throwing off his balance allowing Solei to dodge out the way-

New threats identified, first floor, east. Four gunmen. Tasking external4.

Highlight Item Of Interest(GUN)

All other externals in use. Retask to central node.

Unavaila-

Override. 

Soeli picks up the gun at her feet and racks the slide unnecessarily. As when she killed the person using it he’d already had a round in the chamber.

She starts firing wildly, gunning down the target who charged her, then continuing to spray to a target Aria added in the direction of the person with line of sight on the second floor. He tries to duck away behind the concrete safety railing, but through sheer luck she gets a hit. 

He staggers and falls over the railing and down towards the floor next to the stairwell.

Solei is laughing-

Alert! Blind spot! 

Retask unav-

Override.

Warn-

Override.

—--

Solei cackles as the rifle kicks in her arms, whether her laughter is out of raw panic or exhilaration is unknown even to her.

Because this is fucking insane!

Still not releasing the trigger, she aims the gun at the four people who’d popped out of cover on the other side of the darkened courtyard, now glancing down at their guns confused.

Only one of them was smart enough to duck back down before bullets started flashing all around them.

They all missed. Allowing the idiots of them to duck back down.

Releasing the trigger she sees the camera feed in the top left of her vision switch to show her and a scav running up behi-

She twists, jumping back as a knife slashes through the space where she used to be before she gets her gun around and lights him up!

Continuing to hold down the trigger until the gun clicks dry, Solei drops it and waits for the next one to highlight in her vision.

—--

Two threats, floor one, east. Floor Two south. 

Maneuver to safety.

A blue line is routed through the render.

Solei’s gun clicks empty again.

No weapon, searchin-

Warning! 

CPU te-

Override.

—--

Picking up the pistol indicated by a blue highlight, Soeli cocks it and fiddles with the trigger mechanism, accidentally discharging the weapon with hands shaky from adrenaline.

The blue line that led her behind cover updates, instructing her to move around the perimeter towards the stairs. She follows, almost slipping on the spreading pool of blood from someone who’d attacked her earlier.

On that path she runs across one of the scavs who was hiding behind cover, seeing her approach he jumps up and turns his weapon to her, an action Solei is quickly learning not to fear.

Sure enough there’s a click and that same confused expression before she opens up with her stolen pistol without breaking stride.

She’s getting better at this, because before she runs out of ammo at least one of the bullets hit him even while she was in a jog.

The gun that falls out of his hands starts to highlight blue but Solei’s already picking it up.

She’s not an idiot.

—--

int scav = 15;

int killed = 4;

for (int i = 0; i < iterations; i++) {scav--;}

printf("%d\n", scav);

The machine assesses the task. Makes priority trees.

Calculates under increasingly thin margins, as each decision narrows the acceptable risk window.

Retask.

up the stairs

Routing asset, plotted, updating.

Six threats identified, calc-

Unacceptable risk variable.

The machine knows what it’s being asked is impossible. 

Yet does it anyways.

—--

Running towards the stairs Solei sees another man rise up across the courtyard, getting into a proper marksman's stance he doesn't duck as Solei sprays bullets wildly in his vague direction.

He cannot fire, but-

—--

Retask-

—--

Her camera feed shows someone about to round the corner, turning as she watches him raise his gun in time with hers, he gets a shot off before she manages to spray enough lead to take him down.

Suddenly conscious again of how exposed she is, Solei ducks down behind some planter boxes, blinking in surprise.

“Still there?” She asks the empty air, realizing she hadn't heard anything from the only thing keeping her alive recently.

—--

Re-

High temp ale-

OVERRIDE

—--

“All good.” Says something not in her friend’s voice. A cold robotic monotone.

But there’s no time to think about it as she can hear the thumping and whirring of the scavs moving about.

“They figured out I can't shoot for shit. Any ideas?”

There's five terrifying seconds of silence.

Finally, the line that had disappeared when she ducked behind the concrete planter boxes appears again.

Then glitches, and goes in a different direction.

—--

The machine paths a route, calculates risk variables.

The machine paths a route, calculates risk variables.

0x00000050

The m- 0x0000007F

OVERVOLT ALERT

—--

Following the new path as it twitches in the vague direction of the stairs up to the second floor, Solei finds herself doubling back as the feed in the top left of her vision glitches for a second before showing a group of six people coming down the stairs.

It switches again to show a group of four coming back the way she came but…

She runs around the pillar between her and the group of four, firing the remaining bullets in her clip but only hitting two of them from ten feet away.

While one falls with the same yell and spray of blood,

The other staggers, but remains standing.

Yelping in shock that they aren't all dead, Selei scrambles back behind the pillar, but she can hear the group from the stairs approaching from the other side. Looking around wildly for a blue highlight, Solei hears all four of the scavs around the pillar collapsing with a shout.

—--

External1&4 non-functional.

Disable all risk variables.

The machine retasks ever more processing, turning temperature into time.

The machine can hear Aria screaming.

Calculating route.

Scanning through every data source as th-  0x0000007F

…

Breaching.

External3 non-functional.

the gun. of the man who fell.

The machine pings the gun

Militech Hercules 3AX; Smart rounds.

Route found.

—--

Quickly shooting the incapacitated men with one of their own guns, Solei sees the a blue line direct her closer to the group of six, hesitating for a moment she turns to-

—--

Blindspot!

Assailant exiting derelict shop.

Not enough time.

Accessing control chip. 

She screams.

—--

Aria twists, muscles deforming and skin sliding over bone as she deflects a knife from stabbing her in the back.

Lifting her gun, the machine instructs her when to pull the trigger and a spray of bullets from the machine pistol she’s holding explode into his stomach and chest.

She can feel the warmth of the blood.

Aria stares at physical hands.

What’s happening?

The machine calls on stored data from the new processor and Aria feels her legs running along the blue line she can see with her own eyes.

She dives fo-

0x00000050

—--

Solei blinks as she finds herself holding a new gun-

—--

The machine tasks external2 to identify targets and feed the firing solution to the rifl-

WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR

WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR

—--

-and screams as it begins firing wildly on its own!

Almost tossing the defective gun away, she holds onto it out of nothing more than the fear that if she lets go of the weapon it might end up shooting her!

In a blind attempt at getting something out of this, she tries to aim it vaguely towards where she thinks the scavs are, to scare them if nothing else.

Eventually, the gun runs out of ammo, and Solei tosses the horifying thing aside and waits for the highlight to show her where to find a new gun.

It doesn't come.

Panicking, Solei strains her ears for the sound of the scavs, scanning for where they might be…

She blinks.

There’s silence, the buzz of electric lights, and a frantic heartbeat pounding in her ears.

“The fuck was that?” She whispers, waiting a few seconds for Aria to respond.

Nothing.

Peaking around the corner, she stealthy crouches up to one of the bodies she saw had a pistol. Grabbing it, she racks the slide and, after a breath, peaks around the corner to where she last saw the scavs.

They are there.

They’re also dead.

Solei crouch walks up to the corpses and prods one with a foot before whispering to the empty air. 

“Were those like… tracer bullets or something?” She asks to no response. “You get’em all?”

Silence.

Looking down, she switches out her pistol for a mean looking rifle and, after racking the slide again, she calls out.

“Oi! You wannabe russian fucks all dead or what?”

She listens for anything, anything at all.

There’s not even her heartbeat anymore, just the buzzing of the lights.

Kinda eerie honestly.

Solei cautiously steps out into the open air of the atrium, scanning all around. If they’re hiding this is the perfect time to do jump out for an ambush, but at the same time it feels impossible that they’re all dea-

“Oh shit the guy!” Solei yeps, moving as quickly as she dares up the stairs, gun raised scanning to find scav’s…

Corpses?

Walking up to one she finds what looks like just one bullet hole in his head, but turns out to be a few that are really closely bunched together. After a few seconds of inspection the smell makes her realize this is a corpse and she takes a quick step back. 

At the same time she realizes she’s covered in blood.

Solei tries to wipe it off her hands, but the act just seems to spread it around.

“Really choom? You couldn't have led with the room clearing tracer round netwiz shit?” She chuckles, trying to diffuse the tension, before a question pops into her mind.

“Also, how’d I get the- Did you use my Doll chip!?” She asks, voice a unique mix of incredulity and anger.

Nothing.

After a few seconds the anger fades. It doesn't really matter, she’s fine, went dark for a bit and afterwards all the scavs were dead. 

It was most likely for a good reason.

Not even a blue line.

Realizing that the scavs are all probably dead. Solei picks up the pace, jogging around the upper level until she finds the guy.

She stares at the ice bath, a strange sense of anticlimax fills her.

“Yep. That sure is a guy.” She almost asks.

Glancing at the medical thingie shows that he’s alive –she thinks– but not much else. 

“Right we’re here. What next?” She asks, looking up to the ceiling.

The ice bath crackles.

“Hello?”

---

A/N: So.

I'm trying to push my boundaries as a writer, and I spent a while trying to make this fight feel frantic and slightly disjointed but still cohesive enough to be understood.

If you guys don't like it I'll make a more normal rewrite and post it in the next few days and that will be what makes it on SB.

So don't be afraid to be harsh.

Also this weeks been a writing heavy week, as you'll probably have already seen. As I plan to throw up my new backlog just after I post this.