Thunder and Webs C121 [Gold]

Posting a few chapters to get Gold back to 42 chapters ahead of RR.

The Corporates come knocking on Ripley's door. With a request, and with a warning.

Chapter 121: Corporate Meeting

February 15th

7:45 PM

Ripley

“Who the hell is this guy, Mid?” I looked through the screen; his weird-shaped head disturbed me, but what surprised me even more was the way he walked in. Corporations acted like they owned every place they walked into, but his eyes nervously glanced at every person waiting. His steps were sluggish, and he flexed his hands in a clear sign of anxiety.

“Someone who’s not supposed to be visiting you…” Midnight voice had a malicious glee ring out, “oh, he’s not visiting you for any officiated business deal, he’s coming to you personally. A… Cecil Doris.”

“Cecil Doris…” The name felt faintly familiar.

“He worked in the same office as your father.” Midnight chuckled, and she appeared on the screens ahead of me. “Should we kill him?”

“No. Let’s hear what he has to say.” I decided. Was he here for Ripley, The Ripper… or Dreadwire? I was no idiot, my identity had long been compromised, and truth be told… since my mother’s death, there wasn’t a reason to hide it anymore. Other than Diana’s warning.

I sent a drone to retrieve him, taking the private elevator up to my office as I decided I might as well follow the culture and prepare his entry with a drink. Without any of my Features, I felt vulnerable -- only the sole presence of a half-output Personality Editor remained to steady me.

But Midnight was here, and this place had security measures. If he tried anything, she could give him a hell of a lot of pain. His knocking came soon, and I sent a digital command over to open the door.

“Come in, Cecil,” I whispered, not liking any of this one bit.

“Ah… fuck, you know my name.” He stuttered, scratching his neck as he took slow steps, never once meeting my gaze as I sipped on whiskey.

“You can sit down, just tell me what you’re here for.” I impatiently flicked my gaze to the couch opposite me.

He nodded, settling in, and I could finally see how odd he looked. He was a mutant, no doubt, but one who’d certainly developed with more physically odd characteristics than expected for a corporate. His fingers were a bit too long and had suction-cups at the end of them, his skin seemed to be shifting in… not quite color, but texture, and his oddly long head, contained in a dome of metal, remained an uncomfortable focal point of my attention.

Then I remembered him.

“You’re Octopus-man.” I chuckled, digging out a nearly twenty-year-old memory.

“You… you’re a lot older since I last saw you.” He couldn’t quite meet my gaze yet. “I’m sorry Ripley, for everything…”

“Oh, cut the bullshit.” I didn’t want to entertain this. “You work in counter-intelligence like my dad did, I’m assuming most higher-ups know who I really am. Maybe not those in the lower ranks, certainly not you, but… a bigger brain probably led you to certain conclusions.”

“You’re Dreadwire.” He said it matter-of-factly. “I wanted to come to… warn you.”

“Uh huh.”

“They will send someone here.” He held his hands together… “And they’ll ask you to give this place up to SynTec.”

“That’s not happening.” I swirled my glass of whiskey, hating that I didn’t have any Features available to me right now to analyze his words further. “Besides, why on earth would…”

“Don’t take it.” He said with a broken tone, much to my shock. There was an honesty in those eyes, something I wasn’t expecting from a man in a suit. “They’ll promise you the world, just like they do everyone… then they’ll strip your mind. Cleave it.”

“You’re talking about Personality Editors.” I clenched my jaw, my father had Datacubes with an older model, and it was how I got them working back at The Toxin Club… this very place.

Midnight interrupted me in my head. {Not quite, he’s talking about the Cleavage Program. It’s… both more advanced and yet a cruder tool in comparison to what you have in your head. It splits their mind into two, an in-built NDA that creates two personalities in their heads. One for work, and the other for when they’re off-work. It’s subtle, most employees don’t even know they have one, it’s only labeled as a ‘performance enhancer’. Those two halves only have selective memories of the other side, controlled by their managers.}

I changed my question before he could answer. “Specifically, the Cleavage Program. So who am I talking to right now? The corporate side of you, or the…”

I paused, was it even in my right to judge? Hell, wasn’t this what Alter-Ego did to me? And besides, it sounded like there wasn’t a choice to undergo the program or not.

“I don’t know.” Cecil chuckled, a broken grin on his face. “I… took a risk, oh fuck, I’m so fucked.”

“What risk?”

“The same your dad took… only… more direct.” He shivered. “He didn’t undergo the same procedure I went through... to recombine. He only transferred small bits, to tell the truth to himself, one people should’ve known. We were responsible for the Earthquake. So many people know it, but no one really knows it once they go back home. He… used data of the Editors and tampered with his mind to… be aware, and…”

His suction-cup hands slapped onto his face. They pulled bits of skin as his very identity seemed to war with itself.

“Once he was discarded, your dad smuggled… the Personality Editor data for the Cleavage Program outwards, it was allowed… It was a plan from them. They wanted to see what people could make from them, and then confiscate it all, harvest the best creations and scrap the rest.”

My eyes glared as he stuttered, two distinct minds slamming into one another and his voice carrying the product.

“What…?”

“Most were bad.” His voice was weak, like on the edge of sobbing. “But the one the Snake Fangs had… it was good. Modeled for memories, and… Skeleton gave it to us, but… I had a copy and…”

“You tried to give yourself the memories of both sides.” My throat was dry. “Using elements of my Personality Editor… and others developed based on…”

My dad had never sold out that data… I had…

And the Snake Fangs still had it? Skeleton had it? And he… sold it back to SynTec? Rage creeped into my voice. “What are you asking from me?”

“They’re developing something new… in New California…” He sobbed. “Project Virtue. Testing it out in the city.”

“What the hell are you talking about?!”

A mad scream broke from his throat. “You have to stop it! Dreadwire!”

He stumbled onto his feet, tears pricking from his eyes as his hands lifted from his face and left bloody wounds of torn skin from the suction-cups. He crawled on the table, reaching for me until he grabbed my collar. “Please, stop them before they sacrifice this city! The Cadavers are only the first step!”

Before he could touch me, Midnight swarmed through my airborne nanites and attacked his Neuroframe, he contorted in pain and collapsed onto my table as a twisted mess.

“What the fuck…” I rubbed my head until my fingers felt like they’d pull my hair out. “You can’t be fucking serious… I… Project Virtue? They’re using my damn-”

“It’s not just you, Ripley.” Midnight flickered into appearance, rubbing my cheek. “People have been making fucking Personality Editing Daemons since Warpcode first existed, fuck, you’re looking at one. SynTec just let some loose into the public sphere to do their dirty work – create all sorts of perverted programming – so nothing could get traced back to them. In fact, they get to claim the glory of cleaning up the street of malicious Daemonic code while they secretly harvest everything worthy to them.”

“This isn’t right…” I growled.

“You’re damn right it fucking isn’t.” She hissed, landing in my laps. “I don’t trust the damned guy, but I was in his Frame for a second, his shit’s been fried far before I touched it. They’re definitely working on some mindfuck in their labs. And Skeleton’s in on it, too.”

“And the Snake Fangs…” That I couldn’t bring my mind to believe, my teeth screeched as I began pouring my sights on Netpages. “What the fuck have they been up to?”

Midnight took control of the screens in my eyes, while I may not have access to Warpcode, she was made of it. Her mind calculated through all the pages and dug deeper into the Abyss, gathering information that made her eyes open wider before she suddenly shut them all.

She collected herself for a second, eyes boring into me. “Do you really want to know?”

“I do.”

“So, you know who were the two biggest dogs of the criminal world that kept the Snake Fangs under constant pressure?” Midnight asked.

“Muramasa and Los Diablos.” I said… before realization hit me.

Muramasa was effectively disbanded, while Los Diablos’ leadership had gone AWOL to the Eastern Wilds.

“And under Skeleton’s rule…” She continued. “They ended up… booming in strength and numbers in the last two months, nothing quite like the bigger gangs but… they’re big. Bigger than…”

“Than when they had the Toxin Club.” I couldn’t believe any of this. “You’re fucking kidding me, we take down one of the biggest fucking gangs in this city, only to prop up The Snake Fangs of all motherfucking gangs as-!”

I stood up, kicking the damn couch just to get some release out. “Oh, oh… fuck this! Fuck! This!”

“Let’s kill them.” Midnight said.

“I…” I wanted to. “I can’t.”

“Why, because your petty little work wife said you’re not allowed to go out as Dreadwire?” Midnight poked me, malicious eagerness in her eyes. “What better way to honor your mother than take out the filth that used her for what she was worth?”

My breath hammered at that thought with eagerness, but it seemed so antithetical to what I wanted to become. What I wanted to leave behind.

“Let’s put this in the back of our mind, have Diamante, or Missy, or… fuck… even Diana handle it. We’re retired, remember?”

“Retiring two years before the Swarm… great fucking move on our parts.” Midnight retorted with heavy sarcasm. “Sure, let’s tell them, but we all know how they think soooo far ahead. Diamante might care, but Missy’ll keep her reigns on him, Diana’s practically SynTec’s dog right now considering who our Mayor is and Skeleton’s being lined with the corporations pockets, probably running their experiments.”

She leaned in. “You heard him. He asked for you, Dreadwire.”

“I’m not…” I looked down on the collapsed man on my table. “Let’s just get him somewhere safe.”

“Taking him in means we’re enemies of SynTec. You know, they’ll want their severance pay.” Midnight raked her claws over Cecil’s form. “Kill him and read his Implant.”

“Please, Midnight…” I pleaded. “I just… don’t want to think about death for a while.”

“Because of your mother?” Midnight turned to me, her crimson glare lacking any real grief. “Truth is, death isn’t that bad. It’s quiet, peaceful. I remember dying plenty of times, how my last thoughts were always… don’t bring me back. But Elsa would, then I’d receive all her negative emotions again and again, I live on contempt. Love isn’t it for me, Ripley. Spite, hatred, everything other than those depressing feelings that make me want to curl up into a ball.”

“What the fuck are you talking abo-”

“You don’t love us anymore, you’ve just been pretending to ever since your mom died.” She said, a flicker of pain in her eyes. “How could you ever after all we’ve done to you? And without Psyche telling you to accept us and that we’re good for you, those Nul-Serums are just a highway to a break-up. If you were smart, you’d hate us. But eventually those needles will run out, and you’ll be trapped again, told that we’re the only ones for you by that little golden orb. And you know, I plan on dying anyway so…”

She had a mad smile on her lips. “Let’s take out all our enemies until we both end up killing ourselves, huh? One last false perversion of this romance we have.”

“Midnight.” I rasped. “Get the fuck out of my clinic.”

She stared at me with her blank crimson eyes, before smiling, twirling around as she vanished in red sparks. I collapsed onto my couch, thoughts running around in circles begging for Psyche to come back online to reorganize them.

But all I could think about was how… she might have been right about some parts.

–––

February 18th

Ripley

It took Cecil two days to wake up, and another day for him to be stable enough for me to understand a word from his lips. Elsa had told me that she’d spread the news of Project Virtue to the others, that it would likely require a raid on the level of what we’d done to Yuzhou last August. SynTec was far more deeply ingratiated into this city’s infrastructure than even Yuzhou, they built our railways, our roads, our homes and were the biggest outfitters of our military. 

They even fucking controlled our weather.

And how much of it was a conspiracy? SynTec and Missy were behind the Earthquake, an event that followed shortly after The Bladefather murdered the last Yuzhou-affiliated Mayor. It gave them leeway into grasping this city’s heart while it was on the edge of a flatline, and it never let go of manually pumping it. The Earthquake let them rebuild this city in their image. The company held that seductive knowledge that every little bit of this city ran on its grace.

Cecil had told me someone would come, but I didn’t quite ever put thought into who would come. Not until I saw him walk in today.

He was accompanied by Brian Ulrich, who didn’t have that bright smile as usually seen on Holovision next to his daughter. In fact, he looked even lesser compared to the man who proudly walked to the front of the line and dragged everyone’s eyes with the pure magnetism his presence brought.

Then he spoke. “Would you kindly all leave? I have business to attend to here.”

And they all listened, startling as they filed and left my clinic without a word. Because how could they refuse this man? A man who seemed larger than life, even next to Brian Ulrich. A man who could only ever be known as the one who pulled all the strings of this city. A man with a direct hotline to chat with the Founder of SynTec. His grandfather.

A man known as Johann Trask. Mayor of New California.

---

Shamelessly. Yes, the Cleavage program is based on the Severance TV show. Great show, hugely recommend.

Also, it's mayor time. Johan Trask. Next chapter is called: Three Offers.