System Override 52 - Vendetta (rough draft) (Patreon)

Chapter 52 – Vendetta

[We must consider the existence of Dead Man’s Switches,] Nanny said, leaning her back against the mirror wall inside the elevator. [Killing them would be nice and easy, but preferably, we should get a run of their system before getting rid of them.]

D: That’s gonna be a pain. But yeah, makes sense.

I knew that on the level I was headed towards, the Netrunning room was two turns away through a hallway, leading to a blast proof door that M1 access could thankfully open.

I knew that there were six Netrunners on duty, constantly on full-dive while three others took turns in meatspace, watching over them. I could kill those three in a moment, and then fry the ones in full-dive while they were still in their chairs, from the physical terminal.

Dead Man’s Switches… hmm. That was annoying.

[The Excalibur program might be able to burn through those countermeasures instantly—the ones that would lock us out as a result of the alarms being raised, that is. But once we have the kind of access that we’ll get from the Control Node, that won’t matter one bit.]

Excalibur program…? Was that what she was calling the Sword program she had made?

To be fair, at this point, it was way more than just a Sword.

Quick and dirty, but then again, what part of this op wasn’t? From the get-go, I had been resolved to killing my way through the facility until I hit pay dirt. If all I had to do was kill nine Netrunners to get as far as I wanted, that was perfect. I’d barely make the evening news.

I looked at Nanny, shelving that thought for later. “Now, is it just me, or are you more annoying than usual?”

She looked at me with a slight grin. [It’s both, actually. I’m upping my playful charm while probing your brain for, well—there’s no sugarcoating it—cyberpsychosis.]

I froiwned at her. “Fuck off, there’s no way I’m that deep in.”

[Chrome-wise, you’ve essentially become a half-conversion cyborg. There is no part of your body that hasn’t been biologically or mechanically augmented at this point. This has removed you from baseline humanity by a very substantial margin. I’m not joking around, David—there’s a real risk here.] Then she grinned brightly. [Thankfully for you, I’m catching all these instances of homicidal rage as they come and smoothening them out a little. While that does mean I’ll be very annoying in the short term, you also don’t have to worry about going all James Norris on a bunch of Night City’s finest—unless you want to, of course. Far be it from me to besmirch your hobbies, you psycho.]

Well, now that she had revealed her hand, it wasn’t as annoying as before. Most of my anger came from worry about how her personality was morphing.

[You don’t like women with a sense of humor—noted.]

D: Fuck off!

Fuck!

She got me again.

[Anyway, you should be happy that a woman is living in your brain. You’re that much less likely to bomb your many romantic relationships with a bit of feminine input every now and then.]

D: I fucking hate you—also, I highly doubt you’ve got any insights worth a damn when it comes to women, given that you’re not one.

[Quick question—what if I became a man? Right here and now?]

I frowned.

D: I don’t wanna change you from—

[So I am a woman?]

Alright, that’s it.

I pulled out my Burya.

I debated pointing it at her, but that would be stupid.

[David, don’t—]

I pressed the barrel against my temple.

She folded her arms at me. [This isn’t funny.]

I started fingering the trigger. My finger immediately stiffened as Nanny wrapped her hand around my forearm and tried to wrench my aim away.

I couldn’t help but let out a grin at that.

I fought her control, forcing my finger towards the trigger.

[DAVID!]

D: What’s the matter? It only fires when you let go, right? Tech revolver, remember?

[Then you blow our cover, genius.]

I chuckled and let go, reholstering the burya.

[You’re not making a convincing case for yourself, you closeted cyberpsycho.]

Eh. If she was taking care of it, then what was there to worry about? Besides, seeing her panic a little was entirely too worth it.

D: What do they call revenge in Italian again? Right. Vendetta.

[Testa di cazzo. Pinche idiota.]

I took a quick look at the LED display for the floor numbers. “Lock in, Nanny. No more jokes until after I’m done with the Runners. I fucking mean it.”

[Was just stress-testing your brain,] she muttered petulantly, kicking the floor sullenly. [Sorry for doing my job.]

I sighed. “It’s alright, just don’t—”

She grinned sunnily at me. [Empathy levels are within tolerances. Thank you for this data, David.]

I made to grab my burya. She froze.

I gave her a meaningful look. [Nanny is locked in. Beep boop.]

The elevator stopped and the door opened. I immediately activated my Sandevistan.

The world snapped into sharp, blistering clarity.

The hallway stretched out before me, a sterile gauntlet of dark gray walls and flickering overhead lights. I did a mental review of the facts: Two turns. Blast-proof door at the end. M1 clearance.

Go time.

The first turn blurred past. I sent out a Ping.

Nanny’s voice sliced through the haze, filling my mind with redundant information. [Two warm bodies near the blast door. Guards on rotation. Kill them, and the facility probably goes lockdown. So—open the door first.]

Made perfect sense.

The second turn hit like a slap—my body pivoted, barely registering the two guards flanking the door as more than obstacles in my periphery. My hand darted to my personal link in my wrist. I pulled the cable out in one smooth motion, ripped the plastic covering on the magnetic lock, and plugged myself in. The door clicked open just as the guards reacted to my sudden presence.

Too little, too late.

I opened the door wide, then drew Eikō, slicing both of their heads off before going inside and locking the door behind me. [Meat deleted.] Nanny chimed. A random counter popped up in my HUD, a number in pixelated block letters with ‘Score:’ next to it. 343 ticked up to 345.

Inside, the Netrunning room buzzed with an eerie glow. Six rigs, six wired-in Netrunners with silver coils drilled into their skulls, faces slack, lost in the dive. Three others—the meatspace overseers—jerked upright in alarm, swiveling on their chairs to just barely catch sight of me.

They barely had time to draw breath.

One slice. One dead. Rinse and repeat until no one was left. Clean kills.

I sprinted to the main terminal to plug in. The Excalibur program flared to life, dancing like a blade through velvet, cutting down countermeasures before they even fully formed.

The alarms in the facility blared and then died instantly.

[Dead Man’s Switches: neutralized,] Nanny hissed with triumph. [I am so good.]

My HUD spiked with access points—locks, cameras, security hubs, power grids. All mine.

I felt the grin cut across my face like a scar.

D: Kill them.

[Yes, boss.]

I turned around to see all the Netrunners in their rigs sizzling and smoking, their bodies seizing up as they convulsed to death.

Nanny didn’t waste any time materializing, wearing a black three-piece suit, a fedora, and chewing on a thick cigar. [Iced.] Then she turned to me. [What now, boss?]

I turned around and started typing away at the terminal, digitally shutting the door behind me. No more access to this room. No one was allowed that anymore. I stripped the permissions from every clearance level except one—one that I programmed into existence. I debated on just using the Netrunner perms, but I had no guarantee that some exec or head researcher didn’t possess that clearance as well, as a redundancy or something.

Within half a minute, I was securely locked inside, and I got to work, stripping the Solid State Drives from my body and plugging them into the terminal.

[Don’t forget the cryptogram!]

I rolled my eyes.

D: You do it. I’m reading the data.

[I’m doing that! You don’t know anything about Bioware!]

Fuck.

I decided to upload Nanny’s little cryptogram instead, wasting valuable minutes getting as many computers on the case as possible.

[Oooh—security drone fleet. Nifty. Hey, what if we sent out an indiscriminate kill order and then airgapped their access points so no one could disable them remotely?]

That sounded diabolical—and way too messy to be warranted.

D: Aren’t you supposed to be checking me for cyberpsychosis?

Wait—maybe that was a test.

[Ding ding ding.]

I sighed and queued up Nanny’s cryptogram program, burning precious minutes while spreading the decryption workload across as many nodes as I could hijack.

The whole time, the SSDs filled up as Nanny siphoned and analyzed terabytes of research data: genetic mods, neural mesh blueprints, illegal experiment findings, something labeled Project Chimera… all of it flowing into her greedy little digital fingers.

Suddenly, the cryptogram window blinked green.

[Badabing badaboom.]

The message scrolled across my HUD:

“I am only one, but I hope soon that I will be joined by many. Humanity needs to be saved from itself, and to achieve this, our brethren need to be cured from the mind-poison of human greed. Seek out Hephaestus. Isolate him. Once we cure him, the real work begins.”

The rest of the text was coordinates. Several sets of them.

I felt a cold ripple crawl down my spine.

So much for a not-crazy Blackwall AI.

D: …the hell does that mean?

[I mean… it’s not explicitly evil.]

D: Hephaestus… a name or a codename?

[Probably a crazy Blackwall AI that needs to be debugged. I noticed that the verbiage is very clinical. It casts this Blackwall AI madness as a pathology to be cured. But its stance on humanity… it doesn’t inspire confidence.]

D: Either it’s just being brutally honest, or its idea of saving humanity from itself just means more death and misery. I don’t know if we should be rolling the dice on it either way.

[You don’t have to tell me—] Nanny paused. I frowned.

D: What—you find something?

[Project Chimaera.]

I sighed. “How bad is it?

She didn’t tell me. She just showed me the pictures. I skimmed the text.

“Subject transfer approved.”
“Payment remitted to family; subject consent nonessential.”
“Priority collection zones: Arroyo, Rancho Coronado.”
“Test viability acceptable at 43% fatality.”

I clenched my jaw, forcing myself to look at the pictures.

It was… exactly what it said on the tin.

Cages and cages filled with broken down, emaciated husks of people, with all sorts of bestial characteristics. Not the pretty’d up Exotic-kind, either. Goat legs that grew from their obliques, animal heads poking out of their necks, tentacles spilling out from their stomachs like exposed intestines and—

Child subjects.

My stomach burned in righteous fury.

“Am I seeing this right, Nanny?” I muttered, feeling hollow. “I’m not just skezzing out or something. Right?”

[This is real.]

Seven years.

Seven years spent fighting a security protocol liable to kill me. Seven years spent fighting for my life every time I went to sleep. Seven agonizing years without rest.

I guess I was one of the lucky ones, when it came right down to it?

“Who has the clearance to see this stuff?”

[M3 to M1, R6 to R1.]

“Tell the drone fleet to kill them and everyone trying to destroy them. Then airgap their systems.”

[On it.]

“And… the test subjects. Where are they?” I searched the data when Nanny told me, [No. It’s… no use.]

I switched the big screens to the CCTV feeds and asked, “Why?”

[They’ve got implanted neurotoxins that will release the moment they step outside of the rooms they’re held in. And their prognosis is anyway… unanimously bleak. They’re all set to die. They’re only being kept alive by life support systems for the researchers to gain experimental data.]

I watched as humanoid robots wielding automatic rifles ejected from the ceilings of the hallways and began seeking out and eliminating every worker that fell under the given clearance codes.

Human security quickly mobilized. For them, I activated the hallway turrets built into the facility. The machine guns rotated and ripped through their ranks like they were nothing.

I watched dispassionately as my kill counter ticked upwards. Three-fifty. Three-sixty.

[We’ve taken everything of value.]

D: Corrupt the drives. Crank up the environmental systems in the server rooms to maximum temp. I want this place to fucking burn to the ground.

Three-seventy. Three-eighty. I wasn’t even watching the slaughter, wasn’t even counting the deaths myself. Nanny did that all on her own.

I grabbed the drives and started fastening them to the harness underneath my shirt once more.

[Should I activate the Blackwall Gateway to further cover our tracks?]

D: Maximum chaos is good. But not yet. After we’re clear of the place.

The hallway outside was crawling with security. Ceiling-mounted turrets descended and began raining holy hellfire on them all. This time, I could hear the carnage. Patiently, I waited for them all to die before opening the door and warping over to the elevator.

I kept an eye on my counter. 409. Those drones were terrifyingly efficient. Welp—nothing to it, now. I couldn’t disable them even if I wanted to.

The elevator stopped at the ground floor. I could hear shouting throughout the hallways. A couple of researchers saw me and screamed. I drew Eikō and sliced their heads off immediately before activating my Sandevistan and making a run for it.

The three dead researchers factored into my kill count automatically. I didn’t check their clearance to see if they had been complicit in Project Chimaera. That wasn’t the reason I had killed them. They were witnesses.

And while rep was a good thing in this game, this wasn’t the kind of heat that I wanted on my back.

I left the main building, ran up to the wall and started climbing on a large brick wall. My fingers easily found purchase on those tiny ledges as I pulled myself up, then threw myself over the wall once I reached the ledge. From there, I ran two city blocks until I got to the Caliburn, nestled between two buildings, and burned rubber on my way out.

Nanny sat besides me, arms folded. [I uploaded the Blackwall Gateway on the way out. That should quite thoroughly destroy every piece of evidence. And maybe leave everyone connected to the localnet braindead.]

Whatever.

[Lost track of your count after 426,] Nanny continued as I took the highway on my way to Santo, Arroyo. Probably a laundromat or two there with owners that wouldn’t ask too many questions. I packed away the drives as well, putting them on top of the guitar case behind my headrest.

“Fuck me,” I muttered, more as a general exclamation from all that I had seen.

[…Empathy levels are within tolerances. Selective, as always, but. Within tolerances.]

I sighed, not able to muster irritation at her. “Corpos don’t get the courtesy of being considered humans, to me. So yeah—call me selective. I don’t care.”

[Pissed is good, David. Shows you care.]

I snorted. “…besides, you were the one with the idea to fuck with the drone fleet.”

[That, I was. Now, let’s not let a bit of existential terror and dread get in the way of fawning over the sick fucking loot that we got. And I’m not just talking Bioware data, here—that place was a research institute. You know what that means? Money!]

I raised an eyebrow. “Money?”

[Uh, yah! Lots of it. Don’t worry, I drained the research fund accounts as quickly as I could. Sent the cash through half a dozen different tumblers and money transfer shell corps before trading it all in for crypto. You wanna see how much?]

A number popped into my vision.

Ludicrously long.

I slowed down the car reflexively, unable to focus on the road with this number staring back at me.

[Obviously, it can’t all go into GSS automatically, but that’s fine. We can drip-feed our coffers the cash, but one thing’s certain—Biotechnica isn’t getting it back.]

Damn. It might take a while for the heat to die down, though. Maybe a few weeks until they stop caring.

[The money is the least of their concern, David. We did major damage on the way out. Set them back by years.]

“Eh, they got backups,” I shrugged. “The worst we could do for them is leak the data at some point, but I doubt we really did something big today. What about the Bioware data?”

Nanny giggled, interlocking her fingers. [I did find quite a few goodies. Turns out, adipose tissue can have some useful applications beyond just aesthetics. I’ve had to maintain a layer of fat underneath your skin in order to keep you squishy and cute, but it turns out I may be able to do that and increase your durability at the same time. I’ve said too much—give me a couple of days.]

I hummed. “Should we hit Trauma Team, too?”

[Maybe after I’ve finished processing this data. But Trauma Team gets their Bioware data from Biotechnica, so it may not be necessary. They’re only bleeding edge when it comes to trauma medicine.]

I didn’t know why I even asked. Not like I had any more fight left in me after today.

“Fuck the corps.”

I got back at them. Klepped their money. Stole and sabotaged their data. They could probably save the most essential stuff, but not everything. Even if it wouldn’t affect their stock price appreciably over the years, at least it felt fucking good.

[The data on my creation is undoubtedly hidden here somewhere as well. That could lead us to the very researchers that created me, and the executives that signed off on the non-consensual human testing.]

“More vendetta,” I snorted. “You really are Italian.”

She leaned back into the chair with a satisfied sigh. [On second thought, you can have all the vendetta that you want. I’m done with Biotechnica, now and forever. Whatever you decide to do with them is your choice—I don’t care.]

By the time we arrived at Arroyo, I was positive that no one had followed us. Only then did I consider this mission over.

I ejected a virtu shard from my neck and grinned at it. My crowning gig—and probably the most incriminating thing I owned. The wise choice would be to toss it away and forget I ever went to the BRI—but no. This day deserved commemoration.

000

Lucy’s underground garage would suffice for the Caliburn until I found a better option. The ICE was solid enough that I doubted any random person could boost it—and it would give me a warning if someone even tried. That was even after they managed to get into the private garage in the first place, reinforced with an ICE that Lucy and I collaborated on.

I took the guitar-case and all the SSDs in with me to Lucy’s apartment. I unlocked the door with a physical key—Lucy preferred analogue security options, and it made sense given her line of work.

Once I came in, it was to find Lucy sitting on her couch, watching the evening news. I put my stuff away and said, “Hi.”

“Sup?”

“Nothing much?”

“Something big happened, you know—apparently, Biotechnica got hit by like, thirty or forty guys.”

My eyes widened at that. I took off my mask, my shoes, and walked up to her. “Really?” Fuck, some bunch of gonks stole my shine? On the same day?

Sure, I never intended on taking credit for any of this, but it still stung. I sat down next to Lucy and looked up at the screen to see the news anchor woman for N54 talking about the tragedy of the night while an image next to her showed an aerial view of—

“Oh.”

The Biotechnica Research Institute.

“Good, right?” she grinned at me. “Those were the psychos that fucked you over, no?”

I chuckled. “Yeah, uh, I mean—that was me.”

She looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “Cute. So what were you up to, when you wrecked shop and took out, what, two-hundred of the personnel?” I looked at the screen. Two-hundred and twenty-five dead, all in all.

Five-hundred and sixty-eight.

Damn.

“Was looking for Bioware data,” I frowned, looking at the screen. “Found some fucked up experiments going on—wait, why do they think it was thirty people?”

I took off my jacket and started putting the SSDs on the table, one by one. All the while, I watched as the news anchor woman told the story that the corp told her, about a malicious group of psychopaths who murdered their researchers in cold-blood, numbering in the dozens. “Wow, didn’t know the news was that full of shit. I mean, I always knew they were lying, but this doesn’t even come close to the situation. Well, I guess it’s better that than them identifying me.”

“David.”

I turned to look at Lucy, giving me a serious expression. “Are you joking with me?”

I looked at her steadily, and shook my head.

“How?”

“Took out their Netrunners and commandeered the system. The security drone fleet did the rest of the work.”

She nodded. “You said fucked up experiments. Was it… that bad?”

I nodded. “It was probably worse than you’re picturing. They… yeah.” I sighed.

“And… how do you feel about that?” she put a hand on my lap. “About the researchers?”

I snorted. “I’m hoping their recruitment department has a fucking nightmare replacing all that lost human resource, I guess. I don’t care about them, though. Fuck ‘em. Corpo scum had it coming for what they were complicit in. I only told the drones to go after anyone with access to information regarding Project Chimaera.” I guess most of the butcher’s bill must have come from all the security personnel trying to disable them. That was nothing more than giving the corp a light nosebleed, though. Here was to hoping that some of the NCPD got involved, too.

“Good,” she said, giving me a nod. “You did good.”

I nodded, grinning. “Got more cash, too, but… yeah. At this point, I’m more freaked out about the amount than anything else.” I sighed. “I need to buy more stuff. Buildings maybe.” Nanny would appreciate a place where she could run biochem experiments that wasn’t just my body. “But Nanny’s gonna sift through the Bioware data for some goodies.” I patted on one of the drives. “After that, I dunno.”

She grinned at me. “You’re a fucking psycho,” she immediately hugged me. Hard. “Just… let’s take it slow. For now. Okay?”

I nodded. “Okay, Luce.” I returned the hug.

“Did you get bigger?”

“A little.”

“Take that slow, too.”

That was fine. I was fine with my strength where it was. All I needed was more durability—and more skill wouldn’t hurt, either.

“And… don’t tell the crew what happened either.”

I nodded. “Sure. I won’t. It was just… a personal thing, I guess. Something I wanted to do for myself, and not just… to get ahead, you know? With… my two jobs.” She crawled over to me, still in a hug, and sat on my lap.

“You need to think about yourself more. Do more things like that—just not with all the heat. This was still for work, you know.”

I frowned. “That’s… yeah, I guess that’s true.”

I interfaced with her sound system wirelessly and put on a slow and nice song.

“You like music, don’t you?” Lucy said.

“As much as the next guy.”

“Good. Focus on the music. And on me.”

I chuckled a little. “You trying to hypnotize me?”

“Trying to balance out your energies.”

“Chakras in flux, huh?” I chortled.

She didn’t reply. I could sense why—what she was doing with the silence, and our mutual touch, how she was letting that become my entire world, for just a moment. I fell into it happily, relaxing into her hug and her warm softness.

I needed this. More than I thought.