Carvedinstone's Saga - 25 / 05 / 2120

Carvedinstone's Saga - 25 / 05 / 2120

At the dragon's growl, I instinctively switched our audio-channels, moving to an encrypted backup.

My body lay in Daleman's apartment, linked into multiple Matrix outlets. I wish Vanessë could have been here to watch over me, but Daleman hadn't wanted her to do anything that might trigger the Crown Players. Instead, I was alone, splayed out on the bed, eyes closed. One of my avatars hung outside the Drake Industries ziggurat, monitoring their traffic.

The other was in the Black Labs system, next to Looseleaf. The Hobbit was a better researcher, not as good at cracking systems. While she delved through research data, I accessed the security systems. Not looking for authorization to change much, just to monitor.

The ex-Ranger was good. I couldn't even see her on the cameras. I wouldn't have known she was there at all except for a few little inconsistencies in the logs. Doors that opened to a security access card when the cameras said there was no-one there. Legere could see the same data that I was seeing. Above us, the dragon's avatar froze as it concentrated on its meat-body.

As quietly as possible, I installed the viral code-bomb into the core systems. The bizarre cube sank slowly into the floor, all those hacker's exploits seeping into the flaws in the system. A viral load that would replicate and spread, until finally things would start to be deleted, overridden, equipment and subsystems would destroy itself. The more subtle program that Daleman had uploaded was already moving through the system, but this one would take longer to dig deep before it would activate and cause the kind of shitshow that would cover Daleman and Rowethadottir's escape.

Before that, I needed to find Bob.

My avatar froze as I accessed the lapel camera and microphones on Daleman's coat, separate from the Black Lab system and Legere's influence. There were Orcs and Men down there, before the cold-drake. Uruk-Hai in tubes, prepared for transport. Then, off to the side, a dark tank, colder than the rest...and a pale, delicate four-fingered hand pressed against the thick glass. Pale body pressed against the wall, and I saw the smooth metal plates on what had once been soft, pliable skin.

"Bob," I whispered in Daleman's apartment. "What have you become?"

Looseleaf heard me over our open audio link. Files opened to me. The implant surgery footage was painful to see. My lover opened up, slayed out, alien hardware wired into its brain. There were notes about the next part of the project—control using targeted narcotics, MDMA, sexual gratification. I could feel my meat-face twist into a grimace...and then burst into a feral grin.

Well. Bob had always been a horny little bastard. I could work with that.

The tank was isolated from the rest of the system, specifically shielded against Matrix access. We needed to break Bob out...

Then the situation in Legere's lair got out of control. The lead Orc attacked something next to Bob's tank. I couldn't see anything but Rowethadottir's voice came over the link:

"Could use a distraction."

The dragon's roar echoed across all channels. I switched rapidly through my different access points. Daleman's camera caught the rush of security personnel, Orcs drawing weapons, the dragon's head shaking. At the Drake Industries ziggurat, the whole shape flickered and then blinked out of existence, the entire megacorporate presence suddenly severed from the grid. Back in the Black Lab Matrix presence, a wave of noise washed over us and our stealth program flared and died.

Looseleaf and I stared up at the avatar of the cold-drake that loomed above us, caught in its search-beam eyes.

In the meat-world, Legere would not breathe fire. Here? That maw opened and a cascade of pixelated flame vomited forth. Looseleaf and I dodged out of the way, felt the sensory impression not of heat, but of tremendous cold. Automatically, the Hobbit and I activated all our little tricks—the ones we had developed on our own from years of running the Matrix, and the ones we'd picked up from those imprisoned hackers.

They said there was no way to attack another avatar in the Matrix. That just meant the folks who coded the first palantir network hadn't been creative enough. Optic lines ran through the central processing orbs, and those gave access to mind as much as the neural jacks gave access to body. As impressive as Legere might be in the physical world, here he was just another avatar—albeit one with some very impressive equipment, no signal lag, and the home-system advantage of the highest root access.

I spoofed dozens of false users, phantom images that cluttered the room around us. As the dragon's claws slammed through them, using its admin rights to boot them from the system, Looseleaf unleashed her own gambit:

Weaponized porn.

Legere's sensorium was flooded with pulses of data dredged from the dankest depths of the darknets. Augmented dicks grown from extinct equine DNA plunged into chrome-plated pussies custom-built for size queens that wanted to feel a cock pound between their lungs and bottom out against their heart. Goblin whores writhed with were-worms in the sands of the Great Western Dessert. Dwarf maidens were splayed out on racks as their pubic hairs were plucked out, one at a time, their quivering cunnies slowly denuded in an exquisite **** that could last for days, their squeals of pleasure and pain recorded in ultra-hi fidelity and replayed in a maddening loop.

The dragon's roar penetrated all channels, a scream that left my meat ears bleeding. Yet it was a losing battle. Already, my spoofed users were vanishing, security levels had been elevated, rights restricted across the board, normal users locked out of a system under attack from within.

We had seconds. I switched back to the radio line.

"The tank! Break the tank!" I shouted above the cold-drake's painful roar as, for the first time in existence, it experienced strange and unfamiliar sensations in its cloaca. The alien sensation of mammalian tits being tortured burned into the reptilian monster's brain. Ten seconds of receiving spray after spray of Hobbit jizz for a very white second breakfast **** itself into a mind of cold calculation.

Daleman head me. I could see the big arm go up, the buck of the Tolc Mearas. I saw the spider-web cracks. Bob's hands against the glass, surprisingly strong despite his size. The glass burst...

...and suddenly we weren't alone.

I switched back to the Black Labs to see tentacles erupt from the floor. The whole foundation of the system shuddered as a strange, familiar song echoed through the dark pit. Below my feet, I saw the weird, rainbow-colored metallic veins of the virus bomb. Legere turned his attention to the immense tentacles that grappled him, Bob's familiar keening mingling oddly with the dragon's roar.

Switched back to the lair. Legere thrashed. Orcs died. Daleman stood beside the tank, Bob's form so small and strange. Rowethadottir's form flickered in and out of visibility, but I could see blood pool at her feet. The ex-Ranger was wounded. Bob flopped on the floor, strange eyes shrinking against the bright lights.

"Bob! Grab her!" I screamed, not sure what channel I was talking on but Bob heard me. I saw the tentacle-like arms shoot out and grab the half-visible, flickering figure, draw up to hug her close. For a moment, the invisibility stabilized, then flickered again.

Then they were moving. Daleman covered for Bob and the wounded Ranger. I followed them as they made it out of the lair...

Dragonfire swept across my avatar, and my body and mind bucked uncontrollably as Legere's own attack programs overwhelmed my defenses. For a second my mind went blank, pain pierced me, as if it was a switch in my brain that could be flipped on and would eradicate all thought.

Then I felt Looseleaf trigger my log-off. With a sudden gulf of sensation, my perspective detached from the Black Labs, my last sight the bismuth veins of the viral load eating through the walls and floors like cancer, Legere engulfed in tentacles that seemed to be trying to do something I had thought physiologically impossible for a dragon. The last sound seemed to be the dragon's roar hitting an impossibly high note as one of the massive tentacles, silver Elf-script running along its edge like the blade of a sword, plunged into the backside of the cold-drake's own avatar.

In Daleman's bed, I came to myself gasping, drenched in sweat, nipples hard, body spasming uncontrollably. Dizzy and nauseous...and unable, at that moment, to know whether we had really succeeded or not.