Thunder and Webs C139 [Gold]

Chapter 139: The Disappearance of Dreadwire

March 2nd

7:34 PM

Lilian Rose

After quickly stopping at my place to drop my suit off, Starlight was busy piloting me through the air in this invisible Dreadwire drone — a terrifying feeling of both captivity and freedom as we soared through the air faster than my flight could ever manage — while Twilight was in simultaneous stages of relief and worry. She was beyond happy to see Starlight back and safe, but anxious that her daughter was currently partially unwoven by The Dogwhistler, and deathly horrified that Elsa was temporarily brain-dead and still had some level of Dogwhistler-activity running around.

I mean… I wasn’t surprised, but what I was shocked to hear was…

“Ripley was… raising an orphan?”

“Alice… was the daughter of someone he killed when he first used Data Mimicry. It hadn’t updated back then to create an… emotive barrier between himself and the memories of the person he’d been mimicking, so it made him make a mistake. He was trying to make amends.”

“And then… Skeleton…” I tensed within the suit. “And Crouching Dagger? So Muramasa, or what’s left of it… is working for that bastard?”

“No.” Twilight’s voice was dour and entirely serious. “If they were working for him, then they wouldn’t have attacked SynTec. Likely, some factions have aligned with him, while others are… rogue. Shadow-Son; his Sect was filled with rejects, those whose mutations were deemed unsightly and inhuman, or Shard Adapters who wanted to modify themselves in ways that would often be ridiculed but didn’t vibe with Metal Heavens. Likely, without their Prince’s support, they were looking for something to… regulate their Mutations. Maybe they got a tip? Or… did a job for someone else to hit SynTec.”

“The two we arrested.” I knew they were after something SynTec had made. “They knew about… some sort of vial and said they had to deliver it to someone, it made the rhino-guy’s eyes glow red. It was like having the Titanium strength of a Soul Killer thrall without any of the repercussions… you don’t think…”

“That SynTec is making a drug from Soul Killer's mutations?” Twilight scoffed. “Or worse? That they’re using Ripley’s Soul Anchor to develop it? Yeah, they’re doing exactly that.”

And I’d been the one to give SynTec the formula. But what… what choice did I have? Soul Killer had already begun developing immunity; we needed support to find ways to counteract them constantly.

When we reached the safehouse, Elsa was supposed to be staying in… it was barren. No sign of homeless thralls; nothing left to suggest that she or Ripley had ever been here.

“I should have stayed with him.” Starlight spoke, thin waves of regret burrowing out of her. “I should have come to you after we were attacked, but…”

I didn’t want to say it.

“Yeah, you should have.” Twilight agreed with her daughter before appearing in front of me with an angry flash. “You, Diana, knew he was at-risk. And yet, you left him with no choice but to remain idle.”

“Are you seriously blaming me?” I folded my arms. “Are you forgetting what he did to me?!”

“I know exactly what he did to you!” Twilight floated between both me and Starlight. “But can’t you see that he was alone through all of this! He dealt with the death of his mother alone, through the loss of Alice alone, through…”

“He had Diamanté. He had Starlight.” I argued. “He had… Elsa.”

“Diamanté? Who’s busy in his own war and tied to Missy who has been manipulating him? And Starlight was grieving too! And she- just because she’s a fucking AI doesn’t mean she knows it all!” Twilight argued while Starlight remained unable to hear her. “She’s a child! And yet she’s here trying to be strong, stronger than any of us fucking are! She’s the one who has no fucking clue what’s happened to her dad! He’s missing. Elsa’s missing… and that’s bad. I can’t tell you how bad that is!”

“And don’t get me started on… Elsa.” She gripped her arms, looking at the complex chair where Elsa was supposed to be recovering. “I shouldn’t have trusted her with him, but I wanted to believe. I should have… I should have lied to you, made visits to him, talk things out and just… be there for him. You seem to forget that Elsa didn’t know emotions were a thing until she created Personas like me, Midnight and Daylight. So how the hell could we have left her to care for another person’s feelings!”

“Stop fucking infantilizing him!” I screamed, noticing Starlight flinch. I pulled my voice back into a quieter tone. “Ripley’s an adult. And adults don’t go on murdering sprees just because…”

“Yeah, finish that sentence before I remind you about Yvette.” Twilight scoffed.

My eyes twitched with thunder. “They were Metal Heavens. They were criminals.”

“And so were the Snake Fangs.” She hissed. “And no, I was going to mention Indra Harmony. Who you bitch-slapped to death.”

I growled, fangs threatening to poke out through my cheeks. “You…”

Starlight spoke up, her voice weak and laced in despair. “I don’t blame you, Diana. I just wish you’d… that my dad had… I just wished we could have gotten along. That you both could have still gone to each other whenever things got bad.”

“But how could he?” Twilight let out a humorless laugh. Starlight still couldn’t see or hear her. “As long as we’re with the police, we’re accomplices to Skeleton.”

“Hey, we are working to take him down.”

“Are we?” Twilight questioned. “Because when was the last time we gave Maiden a Dreamframe shipment?! Instead, we’re being taken on wild goose-hunt’s against Soul Killer, who hasn’t even done half as much damage as-”

“Tell that to Dryder, to Anabelle and Anthony, to me!” I yelled, fangs breaking loose and jaw unhinging as Overtrigger reached 200% for Lilian Rose. “I’m not going to debate which of the damn Uncaged is the worst! They’re all bad, Elsa included! Fuck, you’re right! I should have just arrested her and Ripley both!”

“Oh, really!” Twilight neared me. “You think either of them would have let you-”

“Please stop fighting.” Starlight’s broken voice filled the air between me and Twilight. “I know you and my mom have a lot to talk about… but I can’t handle this. Please, please, please-please-please-”

I put a hand on the drone’s shoulder, the single act creating a spark that lent a passage of Warpcode between us. An AI’s mind was vastly different compared to a human’s, I’d learnt that after months of hosting Twilight… but it still carried some level of resemblance to what humans felt. I could feel the resonance between them both, of love and the fear that came with it. The hope that somewhere, Ripley was still able to be saved.

Deep down, I felt that light too, but as it met the solid memories of what had happened it cast a shadow of pain and hatred. “Star, I-”

“We’re going to find them.” Twilight settled her arm around Starlight’s inhabitance of the Dreadwire drone, reaching deeper than I could. “And we’re going to find a way through this. You’ve gone through so much, Pixie, I… you’ve been so strong. I promise you, we’ll find a way to… help them both. And Diana, or Lilian, or Silvereye will…”

She looked up at me, eyes teetering between hope and anger, but she remained unwilling to put words into my mouth. I spoke softly. “I’ll do what I can do.”

“That’s good enough.” Starlight said. “Thank you.”

“First, we need to find a place to park your Dreadwire drone. I think… Crimson Heart could give us some space and subtelty.”

“I can compact down.” She confirmed.

“You can stay with me… I don’t… I don’t know if I can inhabit both of you at once, but…” I sighed. “We need to organize ourselves. Star, do you think we could track Ripley down based on his nanites? Alisha has some in her.”

“It’s worth a try.” Starlight said.

“Alright,” I said, raising my hand to my temple.

———

Alisha Noori

A body moved against Alisha, hot and breathy as they supported her legs while she wrapped her arms around his neck and let her tongue mingle with his.

Then she got a call. She scoffed, making the man she was with suddenly flinch. “Oh, shit, sorry, did I do something…”

“No, it’s not you. It’s our glamorous princess Silvereye calling me.” She tapped her knuckles against his clavicle, debating on whether to answer the call or not. She chose not to, and promptly got back to making out.

Then a message flashed over her eyes.

Bitch-Boss #2: [Seriously. Need to talk to you. It’s about your treatment from Ripley.]

“Alright, babe, sorry, just… give me a sec.” She tapped the hands supporting her legs, and he gently set her down on bed. But a mischevious smile crawled on her. “Or maybe you’d want to have some fun while I’m talking to her. If you can stay quiet, of course.”

“I… don’t want to risk that. Considering her whole… feeling emotions, kind of thing.” He then snuck in a little closer. “Besides, how can I stay quiet when you love how I talk dirty.”

“Oh, fuck off.” She smiled and pushed against his shoulder. “Damn, right, I do.”

She then tapped her temple, her mental voice appearing as inert and annoyed as possible. {What is it. I’m off duty.}

{Alisha, you still have Ripley’s nanites in you, right?}

{Yup. Been waiting on him to call me back.}

{He’s gone missing.}

{Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me!} Genuine frustration crawled into her, and some lingering hope that she’d ever walk again left. {Is that it? Bad news?}

{No. But I think they could help us track him down. Just have that cube he gave you on standby, don’t know how this thing could go, but we might… look, just a worst-case scenario.}

{Fine, fine… got it.} She cut the call after that, instead turning to her boyfriend. “Anthony, I’m in a shit mood. Make it better.”

Anthony blinked, a smile crawling on his face as he reached for her legs and pulled her to sit on his lap. He leaned in close, nearly licking her ear as he talked. “Gladly-”

“—Archangel”

She shivered as she felt herself return to the proud woman she knew herself as. Digging into his shoulders, she engaged the wings on her back — the only part of her suit she wore right now — and licked his neck. “Who says you need legs to ride?”

———

March 3rd

12:18 AM

Diana

“You got to be fucking kidding me.” I banged my desk as I read the latest news article that didn’t mention Dreadwire in some capacity. “I’m getting sued for collateral damage?!”

Starlight floated from her smaller drone off the net-port, whirring by. “Can’t it just be covered by insurance?”

“Apparently a car being used by Espers as ammunition isn’t covered according to their insurance policies.” I scoffed. “Dammit, this isn’t even what I should be focusing on.”

“Yeah, it isn’t.” Twilight agreed. “But there’s nothing. Either… Elsa’s doing a good job scrubbing the net of everything or… I don’t know. There’s nothing left at the Snake Fang’s bathhouse, no footage and no eye-witnesses to the scene, there’s…”

“And I don’t know why he would… leave this with me.” I looked at the crimson vial, not unlike the Revenant Serum but still something wholly different. “Or… whoever extracted Reptilia.”

“Meta-data in the serum calls it… Bloom.” Starlight said. “Little else is written on the vial. We don’t have the tools for chemical analysis here, but we could gather some equipment from our clinic or at Maiden’s and figure it out.”

I scratched my head. So much was happening all at once, from trying to eliminate Soul Killer, to Skeleton’s schemes, to Ripley and Elsa’s disappearances, to now this… Adapter-enhancing drug. And SynTec was involved in each of them.

And now, just as I’d damn shouted for an hour ago, Leopold Hackridge strolled into my office despite being past midnight. He didn’t have a dark circle around his eyes to complain about, but did so regardless. “Couldn’t have waited until-”

I firmly tapped the vial on my desk, glaring with lightning in my eyes. “Bloom. Huh? Real fucking clever, Hackridge. So, developing drugs based on Soul Killer?”

“Well, I can see how you’d believe that, given the red sclera, but that’s a side-effect we’re working to mitigate.” He explained with a calm smile.

“Fuck off with that bullshit.” I mouthed. “You and Skeleton are doing this together, aren’t you? And let me guess? Going to distribute this to addicts so you can observe its other side-effects? As if Soul Killer’s birth wasn’t already your company’s biggest mistake — now you want to develop a drug based on something you grafted the powers of a MALtitan in?!”

“It’s a tried and tested method.” He didn’t bother defending himself. “Look, you can have your problems with it, but complaining to me will not stop it. Soul Killer, or Project Rebirth, was stable until Yuzhou sabotaged us during the Fourth Swarm to release the entity. We’re reclaiming what was once ours. Besides, utterly nothing exists like The Revenant’s Mutations, imagine the scientific prosperity to be gained by-”

“Hell. No.” I was not taking a single second more of this. “I am at the end of my limits with people taking things this far for so-called prosperity that the people who need it — really need it — will never even see a glimpse of!”

“You want the truth, then?” He scoffed as he stepped closer to my desk, putting his hands down on my desk as he met my silver with his blue eyes. “Truth is... You can’t do a thing about it. The Mayor has already agreed to the circulation of Bloom, and he’s who you answer to. And relax. Soul Killer’s been playing shy, so Bloom is an opportunity to increase public awareness and really dig into the threat posed by those with crimson eyes. All of this will get you what you really want.”

“And what is that?” I stood up from my chair, refusing to let this bastard look down on me.

“Simple. The right to be answered, and not to answer.” He smirked. “But keep this up, and you’ll see that it doesn’t matter how much Gold runs in your SIM, or your Tier, or your reputation, or your paltry affair with Donovick… none of it will ever save you.”

“Likewise.” I said.

“Hm, is that a threat?”

“Who’s to say?” I shrugged.

He folded his arms, looking at me as if I were some bratty child. But, for the slightest bit, I felt a quiver of fear in his heart that satisfied me. Of these corporate types, very few of them had truly adapted the way that Implants were intended to. For all the strength of his BUG, I doubted he had the same intensity of Change I had gone through, even if he was Gold and a Tier higher than me.

Besides, at this point, I didn’t mind if people like him thought of me as a loose fuse.

Leopold smacked his lips, sitting on my desk as he waved his finger. “But… there is another reason I agreed to a meeting this late. The two you arrested instead of killing were on transport to a SynTec holding facility… but that transport was — an hour ago — ironically, interrupted.”

“Interrupted?” I questioned.

He snapped his fingers, and an image appeared in the air. It showed the burning wreckage of several police vehicles and too many dead SynTec guards. I studied them, questions growing in my head. “Who did it?”

“That’s the curious thing.” Leopold rasped. “Attack was done and over in less than two minutes. All vehicles were suddenly frozen en route to the Ninth Precinct, cameras disabled and virtually no evidence left for us to know who really did it… except for one SynTec guard. No one really important, but that’s the very reason why it's unclear that his systems were the only ones to remain unaffected by this Delver. Unless you account for the fact that the perpetrator wanted us to know something.”

I watched as the video played, seen from the guard’s perspective. He was climbing out of a burning vehicle that had been tipped over. All around him were yells that abruptly cut out with a wet crunch or slash. One body fell, and some strange black blood seeped through the wounds, flowing on the ground towards a set of legs.

I recognized that Shardware. Another pair of legs stepped into frame, each thin and arachnid, reaching for the video recorder’s helmet and pulling it off.

There, I saw him, Ripley Donovick. But his appearance was different.

His hair was white, and so were his pupils while they remained suspended in metallic pools of inky black. A mask was fitted to the lower half of his face, and it didn’t move as he spoke.

“You can leave the rest to me, Silvereye. Just take care of them.”