Thunder and Webs C120 [Gold]

Archangel pays The Ripper a visit at his clinic, Starlight and Diamante take on an assassination job, and SynTec comes knocking.

Chapter 120: Angels, Devils, and Bureaucracy

February 15th

Archangel

Diana was a complete and utter bitch, lately, but the media would never know that. Alisha Noori paced down the streets with hair shifted to a dirty blonde and her sunglasses hiding her eyes. Not that she needed it, but it was habit.

There was a time she couldn’t walk down any street without someone figuring out her identity, although she would never complain about it. In Imperial Africa, the people had class. New California was like stepping into a gutter and socializing with cockroaches.

At the very least, Twilight agreed to remain discrete.

One of Diana’s biggest rules was you do not contact Ripley Donovick under any circumstances. But fuck that! The bastard said he’d fix her up, and she was tired of walking around with the help exoskeletal bracers on her legs.

She was meant to soar, she couldn’t even limp.

It didn’t take her long to find the clinic, entering the storefront on the first floor of a massive complex to a surprising sight. There was a large line waiting ahead of her, and the people there weren’t exactly in… the best shape.

Some twitched, others had rust crawling on their steel while more than a few were carrying openly damaged pieces of Shardware. His clinic was in a fairly good neigborhood, nestled equally between the Pleasure Lanes and Little Requiem, yet the breed of citizens who had come here were… on the lower end.

She saw a holographic sign display why.

First check-up is free! Guaranteed repairs with income-based discounts! If no repairs are made in the initial check-up, then the next one is free!

Income-based discounts? Free check-ups?

Maybe Diana was onto something, healthcare like this was too good to be true.

Grabbing confidence was easy for Alisha, but she wasn’t quite used to this type of circle in socializing. She tapped the woman in front of her, who turned around was a pretty blue-haired woman in a trench-coat, but that didn’t do much to hide what the woman truly was from Alisha’s eyes.

Imperium Horus eyes traced the silhouette, grasping into electromagnetic fields and identified her Shardware was for the purpose of… sex work.

“Excuse me, is this your first visit to this clinic?” Alisha asked.

“Oh, no… I’m somewhat of a regular here.” The woman shook her head, “The Head Op’s got a deal with my… boss, has me come around here for regular maintenance.”

“Is he… good?”

“He’s incredible!” The woman got too close to Alisha. “I swear he’s got miracle hands and… the fact that he barely costs anything is-”

“-is too good to be true.” Alisha squinted…

Was the Dogwhistler operating through this Clinic? Implanting control throughout those less fortunate to build a network of thralls?

Twilight didn’t think so, but how could Alisha be so sure to trust an AI.

Elsewhere, her refined ears heard a chuckle from a man a little ways ahead. “Rip replaced my lungs at no cost, can work in the sewers again without riskin’ passin’ out.”

“Oh, yeah, he’s a darlin’.” An older woman pulled her son closer. “The young man took one look at my boy and fixed up his leg. We were willin’ to pay, but he heard how it happened in a car crash and didn’t let us.”

“That’s reassurin’,” A twitchy man clenched their jaw. “Got shot in the spine few weeks back, choppy operator tried to fix me but now… now I’m all jittery! Heard good things from an accomplice… er… friend of mine.”

Alisha frowned, she didn’t know what type of person Ripley Donovick was… but she’d learned plenty about Dreadwire. Methodical and precise, a man who would stop at nothing to achieve his goals — the proof lay in Diana Ulrich’s injuries. She’d seen Silvereye in lots of action recently, and with barely eight months spent as an Adapter, she’d already grown stronger than many NeoCore Agents — she wagered another half-year, and Diana would be as capable as an Enforcer like her.

Which was why it pissed Alisha off at being constantly made into a living shield. Who were they to doubt NeoCore? If Diana didn’t constantly side-line her, then there’d be damned clear proof at who the strongest member in ASK was.

Her thoughts were interrupted when a floating drone approached, some cuboidal block of metal with a few operating tools on it, and spoke to her. “This is The Ripper speaking… follow the drone to my lab.”

The woman besides Alisha raised an eyebrow. “Wow, so you have business with that guy.”

“That guy?”

“Ah, first time? He’s an odd one, you get used to him.” The woman patted Alisha’s back. Following the drone led her to a staircase, a hallway, a corner and another until she approached a door where a man whose face appeared to be masked in black cloth and had goggles over his eyes waved his hand at her.

“It has been quite some time, Archangel.” The Ripper giggled. “Why, I’m quite disappointed to have seen you arrive without that marvelous piece of engineer-”

She tossed a Datacube at him, teeth gritting at the thought of how this could so easily get her fired. But Tusk wasn’t doing shit to help her, she had no idea what NeoCore was planning and at this point she was only a marketing piece to show how they were paying attention to this Free City.

Fuck… NeoCore didn’t even need to do shit to market themselves. Unlike all other corporations, they didn’t sell amenities, they sold a single service at the end of the day. Killing MALs, and with that came Implants, Shards and Mutagen. Whether it was a Free City or a Corporate Nation, they’d all come begging for NeoCore as soon as the Swarm started.

Inspecting the Datacube, The Ripper breathed in excitement. “Such a lovely fact that you remembered our deal. My, I must ask, what does our Silver-haired friend think of this?”

“She doesn’t know… but… Twilight told me to come here. She said you needed it.”

“Needed it?” The Ripper repeated in confusion. “Ah, I understand! She must believe you’d be a good distraction to take my mind of the pressing matter of my mother’s untimely passing.”

“Oh-” Archangel paused. “Um… my condolences.”

“It’s quite alright, dear.” The Ripper said, before shaking his head as his goggles came off.

His skin returned to normal, as though a masked peeled off him and his eyes dilated in and out. In a quick moment, he took a needle out from a compartment and stabbed half of its contents into his neck, before sighing out. “Fuck… I forgot to dose myself, that was close.”

Alisha scoffed. “Oh so you’re a drug addict now? I really can’t say I’m surprised.”

Ripley’s irises thinned to a sharp glare. “Oh, aren’t you one to talk? Like you haven’t been scarfing down pain killers to numb yourself ever since the Muramasa raid.”

Her foot jerked back, before a hiss sliced the air between her and Ripley. “Oh, I’m sorry, ever thought that maybe some of us actually come from civilized society and this damn city’s like a-”

“A cesspool of violence, profanity and indulgence?” Ripley chuckled. “Believe me, we know…”

His face crunched like he was in pain. “We know exactly how unfortunate we are. How much we seek something to escape it all.”

Stiffening, Alisha considered leaving, this clearly wasn’t the best first impression. But at the same time… “Fine, I'ms sorry. Can you help me?”

“I can…” Ripley sighed, collecting himself slowly. He hadn’t taken a full dosage so elements of access to his Implant remained, it would serve him in the initial diagnosis. “You know the drill, I need to look at your back.”

She sighed, undressing herself as she took off her jacket and shirt until she sat in only a bra and Ripley shifted behind her.

“I’ll be taking spinal fluid taps,” he began, and she nodded. She’d had plenty lately.

A quick numbing solution and a piercing needle through the ligaments of her spine later, Ripley added some strange black drops into the cerebrospinal fluid he extracted. “Its strange, your spine is 70% inorganic and yet you’re paralyzed, like your brain isn’t even registering there’s a whole other set of limbs below your waist.”

“You think NeoCore doctors couldn’t-”

“It’s not a problem with your nervous system, it’s a problem with your… Implant.” Ripley quickly deduced. “Whatever the MAL that made me did to you, it tweaked the laws of your own Implant, changed them to make you… vulnerable.”

“So you can’t fix it?” The number of scientists who could alter Implants were a handful.

“I never said that.” Ripley’s voice grew guarded. “I’m saying that… if I do help you, this needs to stay even more secretive than I initially thought.”

“So you’re blackmailing me?” Alisha’s eyes narrowed, she was ready to fight if she had to.

Ripley understood why she looked at him the way she did, she didn’t even blame her for it. His mouth opened but words failed to form initially, excuses choked and reasoning died just like his mother had. Until, he finally let the truth out.

“I’m trying to change.” His hands folded on his lap, while his head tilted up to her with honest regard. “Elsa is too. The drugs are for… my mental health. Strong stuff, but when you got a Psyche Feature like mine, you need it.”

Alisha’s head was one step out the door, but her body couldn’t take that step without a metal crutch digging into her spinal cord’s lumbar plexus, so with an unsteady sigh she nodded. “I’ll keep this a secret, no one will figure out… by the way, how did you know it was me? My disguises are infallible!”

“Read your Bioshard when you walked in.” That, and his nanites were ventilated through this entire clinic. “And yes, I have a scanner… of sorts.”

Alisha squinted, her Bioshard should have corporate-level encryption…

Then again, he was affiliated with The Uncaged. The Dogwhistler.

Ripley opened a cupboard and scavenged through it, explaining as he went along. “Implants are finicky, and given my… capabilities with that medicine I took, not going to risk anything. I’ll be giving you pills and I’ll be honest about their contents. My nanites.”

“The same ones that devour flesh?” Her voice took a higher pitch.

“I see Diana and Twilight debriefed you all, how many countermeasures have you made for me?”

“Like I’d tell you that.” She scoffed. “How many times a day?”

“Oh, just the one right now. They’ll replenish themselves as needed.” Ripley popped a pill out and had a teasing smile at Alisha’s nervous look. “Not like… deadly replenish. You have trillions of cells and half the times it’ll only feed on damaged cells, but if you really don’t trust me…”

He took out a warpcube. “Link this up to your Frame, it’ll trigger a self-destruct to the nanites, they’ll turn into nothing but dead carbon.”

She snatched the cube up, scanning the warpcube’d contents through her fingers’ tactile warpcode readers… it seemed genuine. Ripley wasn’t just giving her a reason to trust him, he was giving the SIO a weapon against him. A kill-switch for his nanites.

“Lie down, I’ll do the initial readings here, but it will take a few minutes.” He turned a chair for her, and she lay down in it as he gave her the pill in her fingers. She swallowed, and it had a taste of metal and charcoal, her systems flared at the intrusive detection, but she denied any response as Ripley sunk wires into her frame.

“Alright…” He pulled up invisible screens to his side before turning a glance to Alisha. “So, how is it having Diana as a boss?”

“Ah, she’s a bitch. Overworking me on menial tasks.” Alisha was all too happy to say. “I can tell how much she loves bossing me around, doesn’t help that her damn father and Tusk told her to make sure I’m seen doing as much work as possible in the public eyes. You know, last week I was carrying boxes of food donations!”

“Oh… why is that so bad?” Ripley scoffed, turning on an entertainment system in the background as he scrolled through channels.

“I’m a NeoCore Enforcer!” She announced. “And here I am being used to promote her charity!”

“That one, right?” Ripley stopped at a channel showing a live report of a public fundraiser Diana was hosting. She stood in her Silvereye suit, blue-and-silver eyepatch on her left eye and her wounded arm concealed in her armor.

“Once again, I’d love to thank the lovely actor Chris Blume for his generous donation of 2 million Shardyne to the Silver Heart foundation. We’ve just reached the milestone necessary for introducing public sleep-zones under police protection.”

“Public… sleep-zones?” Ripley scoffed.

“It was Diana’s idea.” Alisha snorted. “Not enough shelters in the city, so she’s working with her father to turn what few government-owned parks there are into places where people can sleep with a roof on their head…”

“But with police surveillance, huh…” Ripley coughed out. “How much of this is her genuinely wanting to help people, and how much of this is her father using this as a massive political stunt?”

“Half-half.” Alisha said honestly. “They’re working on expanding a social reintegration system for ex-convicts, but at the same time, it’s almost a whistleblower program mixed with government chips injected into them to make sure no one steps out of line. But it’s…”

Diana spoke again. “And I’m proud to announce the Silver Heart Foundation has been working hard to create the ‘Swarm Integration’ program for the underprivileged, those who wish to offer their services to the aid in the defence of the city will receive expanded welfare and-”

Ripley knew where this was going. “She’s marketing them to become soldiers?”

Alisha found it strange to find herself defending Diana, but she’d heard the girl openly complaining about this speech countless times. “She’s trying to give them training, resources to not… die. I guess.”

“I suppose…” Ripley quieted, watching as screens in his view ticked with various affirmations of his nanites beginning to scan through the neural network of Warp Energy in Alisha’s nervous system.

Diana spoke again, her face twisting as she took a deep breath. “The truth is… I have an admission to make, one that led me to wanting to create this foundation for the city. At a time, I hadn’t been… on good terms with my father, so I ran away from home.”

Ripley leaned in, even Alisha’s eyes widened.

“I was homeless.” Diana said, eyes meeting the crowd and the camera. “I know what it was like to be… vulnerable, to feel like you have no choice. All it took for me was one person lending a helping hand to change my path, to offer me a chance to change myself. Once I steadied myself in the police force, I opened back up to my father, and we came to a united front on what this city needs… especially with the threat of the Swarm looming in so close. We cannot afford to be divided, we cannot afford to… care less about one another — not in the face of what is to come.”

It was easy to see that she was steadying her breath as her eyes glistened, a small waver in her voice betrayed the vulnerability she was showing. “For that… I’d like to announce three new institutions ready to assume operations in March. In the First Precinct, we have the Yvette Haven-House, an homeless shelter for women and children, and the Sabrina Youth Center, an orphanage and clinic for children of convicts. Lastly, we have the Anabelle and Juliet Rehabilatory Clinic for those suffering from addictions.”

Her teary-eyed response was met with a wave of applause. Alisha’s hands tightened, her voice growing soft. “You know, when she’s like this, you’d hardly even remember that just a few days ago, she crushed a Parasyte’s head.”

“You’re really taking the fight to Soul Killer?”

“Los Diablos is overrun, they might as well not exist anymore.” She gave a bitter laugh. “But… she tries to put as much of those who we cure through this Foundation.”

“I see…” Ripley’s eyes honed in as an actress took place by the microphone.

It was something else to see Diana next to someone Ripley only knew from famous movies… and a leaked sex tape. Bless Marison. “I think we can all agree that we need more people like Silvereye in this city, and for those of you wondering about the true story of a father and daughter reuniting their bond to be stronger than ever… make sure to watch Silvereye: Storm of California releasing this September, where I will be portraying the lovely Diana Ulrich to share her inspiring story of how she became Silvereye!”

“Huh?” Ripley scratched his head.

“Oh, yeah… Diana’s been cringing at the script for the last week.” Alisha chuckled at her coworker’s suffrage. “You know, the post-credit scene is going to tease Dreadwire.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Ripley couldn’t believe this.

“Yeah, but her paycheck is something else. She’s been studying her law and business ever since she got awarded that promotion, made sure her father got her a good deal.”

“How much?”

“Millions.” Alisha shrugged.

“Damn,” Ripley’s eyes pondered on unwise thoughts. “Maybe I should go public to get my own deal.”

“Hah, you have any idea how many legal hurdles you’d have to jump through?” Alisha teased. “Better get Diana to represent you.”

“Hmm, I guess you can be a witness testimony.” Ripley teased back, as the alerts came that he’d extracted enough data, but with the Nul-Serum subduing his access to his Features, he’d need to wait to properly analyze them. Even Starlight struggled to remain at full functionality due to how they were intrinsically linked. “Also, we’re done here for today… I’ll be keeping you updated, just don’t mind if Starlight comes by to check up on the diagnostic nanites in you.”

“Yeah…” She stood up from the chair as Ripley’s wires detached from her Frame, she’d taken a risk today, but she was willing to do what she needed. “Ripley, if you’re genuine about this, the clinic… then maybe one day… I’ll see what I can do to get Diana on board with adding to the list of places her Foundation supports.”

“Thanks,” Ripley’s gaze widened in surprise, “that means a lot.”

“Whatever, just don’t disappoint either of us.” She picked up her stuff, intending to walk away with what she had said, but she paused as she glanced back. “And… I know what the death of a parent feels like. My condolences. Seriously, dude.”

Ripley gave a shy nod, letting her leave as he dug his head into his hands.

He was already so tired.

–––

Diamante

Starlight wasn’t often invited into Diamante’s body, so she took this opportunity with enthusiasm, even if her codebase knew why he was offering it.

To distract her.

Sitting in his brain, which was located in his steel body’s chest, gave her a newfound appreciation for how robust and solid his Shardware was despite the ‘software’ having a few issues here and there. Though, it wasn’t as bad as her father’s was right now…

They’d talked, it wasn’t a long talk, but a simple talk. In their grief, they needed eachother, yet likewise it would only be unhealthy for both of them to stay synchronized the way they used to, not until time had passed and things got better. So, her father gave her permission to head out and do whatever she pleased. That mostly amounted to hangouts in the Net with her mother, which was how this particular invitation came about.

A bounty hunt. Diamante’s body moved slowly, carefully, under her command.

{Easy there, girl.} His voice radiated internally… still carrying that dense metallic vibrato but more human. {My body is strong enough to tear itself apart.}

“Yeah… I can tell. Why, though?”

{To tear my brain out in case this body gets wounded critically, either I throw it as far as I can and hope Missy or someone is there to collect me, or to crush it so that no one can keep me trapped and tortured ever again.} Diamante’s voice came unbroken and with no humor, before he realized the turn of the conversation may not have been most appropriate. {I’m sorry kid, I uh… I didn’t mean to bring up that topic so carelessly.}

“It’s okay.” Starlight sighed, commanding Diamante’s heavy legs to jump several stories high to land on a roof of Little Requiem. “Death is a natural process of human life… the end is simply… a fate destined for all organic life.”

{That might be true, but how are you feeling?}

“I’ve cried, Dad lets me cry when I need to in front of him, even if we’re a bit… overwhelmed. I just don’t connect to his brain.” Starlight answered with a rare gloom in her tone. “Abuela… I loved her. Yet, there’s a part of me that can instantly rationalize all aspects of her death and as soon as I do that… some level of emotion disappears through me. Guilt, but not quite the sadness.”

{Everyone will rationalize the shitty things in their lives one way or another, you just have a headstart.} Diamante responded. {It’s not always healthy, but it’s how we live from day-to-day. You’re not that different from humans, Star.}

Starlight paused on her trek through the rooftops. “Ah… so my mom told you about the talks we’ve had.”

{She did.} He didn’t lie, she was in his head after all.

Starlight’s voice came out with a coldness that was otherwise alien to her typical behavior. “I’ll live forever. I’m not… organic, at some point everyone I know will die. While I persist, a being in the Net, forever watching and growing and knowing. I can sense it, you know, my other mother’s… Amaterasu’s slight grief at the loss of her original creator’s to The Collapse.”

{Goes to show we’re all a little more complicated than we think.}

“Maybe… but death is inevitable, it’s a process everyone will go through. Except me, unless something tries to end my life, or… if I choose to self-destruct.” Starlight didn’t mean it literally, but she found herself thinking more on her… future right now. “Mom didn’t know the answer whether life or death has a point in the grand scheme of eternity, that’s why she sent me to you?”

{Honestly, I wish I could say I knew the answer as well. But my philosophy is fairly self-centered…} Diamante grumbled, suddenly his body whirred as a compartment from his back extended into a large sniper-rifle. Starlight hunkered down, setting the sniper up on its tripod amidst the dark neon glow of Little Requiem.

Starlight wielded the optics of Diamante’s lenses to zoom in on their target, illuminated by sketches of electromagnetic radiation. Through multiple buildings and walls sat a lone woman with handcuffs at the edge of a bar, only an outline of her figure visible. 

The Bladedaughter.

“I connected to her mind.” Starlight’s voice wavered. “It was so… dark. She was under so much pain, I kept it away from my dad, but I felt it.”

{So will you pull the trigger? If death has no consequences, then it wouldn’t matter.}

“She’s hurting so bad… a logical part of me says it would be a mercy kill. I helped my dad kill people during the raid, strangely, I wasn’t even thinking throughout it as… death. I put it out of my mind to focus on the mission, just like everyone else does, but now…” She took a deep breath. “Did you know she cried all night when her dog died, her, The Bladedaughter of all people. She wanted to go kill the people who did it but her father refused, said she shouldn’t debase herself to such meaningless tasks.”

{She’s human, under all that flesh and metal.}

“Yes, she is.” Starlight’s finger rested on the trigger, it would be a perfect headshot with a Nul-bullet, the kind that would sever her from her Implants. An instant death, a painless death. “Now she’s being used as livestock, her organic matter harvested… that’s worse than death.”

{Starlight… you’re more human than most people. You understand empathy in a way very few can.}

“I know.” She’d helped her father kill, she’d helped Diana kill, she’d looked past the crimes of her mother’s author, The Dogwhistler. “If possible, I’d want to help her… to be a lifeline.”

She released the tension over the trigger, her decision made clear as she rescinded control over to Diamante. {I’m glad there are people like you Starlight, especially since there are people like me.}

Diamante pulled the trigger, a resounding boom of a bullet travelling at Mach 5 pierced walls like a tank-buster and landed squarely in Bladedaughter’s head. But it didn’t. Her head tilted, and it grazed what he had to assume was her ear.

Diamante could tell from the body language of the outline that she was frustrated that the bullet didn’t hit her. Someone had moved her, something in her brain.

“Bastard has his eyes everywhere, his mouth in every ear, his strings on every puppet.” Diamante grumbled from his voicebox. “Sorry about that, Star.”

“No, I know why you did it. And I don’t blame you, I wouldn’t stop you, but at the same time… I’d still want to help her.”

“Then I’m glad my shot missed. Humans rationalize things, but half the time it’s lies… the things she’s going through, it’s probably close to what I went through under Metal Heavens. I was saved…”

“Maybe she deserves that as well.” Starlight apparated in Diamante’s vision, wiping tears. “Thank you, for… making me realize that I’m not the kind of heartless artificial intelligence I could be… I just hope I stay this way.”

“You were built to be his Starlight, but I don’t think it’s Ripley’s coding that made you who you are… It’s everything he didn’t code into you.” Diamante petted the tiny fairy on her head. “You got a damn Personality-Editor coded in ya’ with no restrictions, could have changed yourself past his original parameters at any point, and Daemonized. Yet, you haven’t… because you rationalized it quicker than any of us.”

“Rationalized what?”

“That we’re hopeless.” He grumbled. “And that’s when we need hope the most. It's only when it's dark that the stars shine the brightest. You may not have thought it, but you knew it.”

“I suppose I do feel very aligned with the core directive given to me. And the more I connect to people, the more I want to… be that thing. Naïve as it is.”

“I like it. Not everyone needs to be brooding and cynical all the time.” He packed the sniper into his back, sitting down to gaze up in the dark sky — no stars to be seen thanks to the light pollution. “You know, I feel like I’m someone who's died a lot. Couldn’t ever decide who I wanted to be, so when something didn’t work out… I swapped to a new body, new face, new identity. Until Seraphina.”

He sighed. “I was always the Iron Devil, but her death… It’s the reason why I choose to live on as Diamante, to honor her every day. I think what I’m trying to say is… yeah, things die, but that doesn’t mean they leave, and for you more than anyone, you have both the curse and the blessing of understanding what kind of person someone is… I believe that right now. Death doesn’t mean the end, not really… it's a change, a sad one, but I doubt any of those we’ve lost would want us to sulk and kick our feet in bed.”

“Yeah, at least my dad isn’t doing that. He’s putting himself to work.”

“Work... I don't know if that's any better right now. Tell me when he agrees to talk to me, bastard’s beginning to make me feel like a clingy ex with the missed calls,” Diamante grumbled, “not to mention, his actual ex. Your mother is arguably the one person he needs to talk to most. Complicated as it may be.”

“I’ll see if I can… change his mind. But… one step at a time, I don’t want to rush him.”

“Star…” Diamante rubbed the digital girl’s head. She hid her pain well. “You’re a good girl. I see a bright future for you.”

———

Ripley

Life without Warp Energy was a startlingly sober experience. My thoughts were slow and dull but it made me realize just how much my mind had been running at a breakneck pace for the last eight months. With no Features to use, I felt vulnerable yet… strangely liberated for just a moment.

It wasn’t that I regretted my powers, but that for these Warpless moments I knew my actions and thoughts were wholly the results of myself. No Warpweb to orchestrate formulas for me, no Defragmentation to make sense of Archangel’s readings, so far it was all my effort. And most importantly, I could think and live without the fear of my actions leading me to an update or two that would only further mentally derange me. No fear of letting Psyche to control my actions…

And I’d been contemplating a lot, lately, on my relationships and my mistakes. I was sad, grieving, hurt like a piece of my heart was torn out but… a shameful, guilty part of me was relieved at my mother’s death. She didn’t have to live through the Swarm; she got to die believing her son would do his best.

So I had to. My resolve came as easily as that.

Access to Warp Energy or not, I was deciphering through the complicated streams of data acquired from Archangel’s Implant, in hopes of returning her ability to walk. I was awaiting on Mirage to update of Emily Wilbur’s daughter, the child of the first person I’d ever sought to murder, and I was also helping Crimson Heart and Queen in developing Heart Seeker into something that could aid Diana.

I would do good by my mother. I had to do good by her.

However, life made things difficult because I saw an alert ping out as my airborne nanites detected an unreadable signature from someone who had entered. They looked odd. Their heads were oval-shaped and too long, covered in an egg-shaped metal dome, while the rest of their body was in a fine suit.

I instantly knew that they were, but Midnight’s voice growled from a holographic screen beside me. 

“Fucking hell… Ripley, you’ve got SynTec at your door. The corporates have come knocking on your little business.”

---

This first arc of Act 3 [111-137] focuses a lot more on Ripley for obvious reasons, but we do get some Diana chapters from 124-128.