Deployment [Scarlett POV]

“Alright, I’ll head back before I get stuck here,” Lee said. “Good luck.”

“Be well,” Nightingale said, pressing a kiss on the cheek of the youngest member of the harem. Scarlett could not muster such an emotional response. She was too busy scanning the perimeter.

They had arrived in Boston’s main barrier. The IBMA there had been installed recently and by Lee herself. An advantageous development, as that had allowed her to drop them right into the warzone.

And it was a warzone. The inner city of Boston was in the process of being consumed the same way the Hudson Barrier had been. Entire blocks were winding, tendrils crawling up concrete walls, squirming through open windows, and pushing their mycelial veins through gaps in the materials. In some places, the bodies of corrupted humans were still distinct from the broader mass of flesh. A woman melted down to her upper body caught Scarlett’s attention in particular. Everything below the ribcage had been dissolved into red entrails and black goop. One of her arms dangled uselessly, the other was fused to an illegible store sign, the human form perverted into a fleshy network of dark slime mould. The terror of her new form was eternally carved onto her wide-eyed face.

Scarlett calmly raised a hand and blew the head off the woman. From all she knew about the Lorylim, that action had no consequence. Either her soul had been consumed for its energy already or, if she had been powerful enough, she had been dragged into the hivemind, to eternally join that cacophony of voices.

There was no good fate for those that got caught up in all of this.

Mild vibrations on the sides of her skull betrayed the physical processes within her ear implants. They had been upgraded from the slapdash creation she had made from AM’s non-visual sensory systems. These new neural implants had the benefit of a day of additional work. All of her mechanized parts did.

A day for so many pieces of high-quality tech was not a lot. The arms had received minor structural adjustments and an improved arsenal of elemental outlets. The legs had their grip strength improved. The exospine’s computing and conductive capabilities had been optimized. All of the adjustments made had been based on the feedback recorded by the combat analysis software.

While the speed at which they had been made was nothing short of astonishing in the broader terms of technological development, they were ultimately just that: adjustments. Besides the exospine, which was as good as it could be, nothing Scarlett currently had equipped herself with was truly up to her standards. She was certain she could increase her combat efficiency by at least 30% by just using better materials. Then there was another 12% from form optimization and code getting streamlined. Lastly, there was an 8% increase in efficiency she considered to be tickled out by growing accustomed to her new equipment.

This was only day 2 of being augmented.

Of the upgrades, the neural implants had been the biggest change. The ear replacements had been remade from scratch to harmonize with Scarlett’s human biology. It was easier to draw intel out of it now that the data presented was meant for her specifically, rather than a machine learning protocol. They had been bloated somewhat in size to install additional hardware into them, giving them a pointy appearance. Brass antenna that jutted out of her long, red hair, like some kind of cyber elf.

The mechanisms stopped working. “Lorylim air infestation is at 7%,” she reported.

“How bad is that?” Claire asked.

“It exceeds my expectations for the air quality,” Scarlett responded and gestured for the vampire and the night goddess to follow her. They had not discussed who the leader of the operation would be. It would have been an unnecessary talk to have. “I’ve consolidated the data we have on when Lorylim spores in the air overwhelm the immune systems of Abyssals and designed a scale based on it. 1% to 10%, even the average Abyssal can breathe. Their oxygen flow will be hampered, but no permanent consequences will come of it. 11% to 25%, infestation occurs but does not progress to immediate takeover, curing is possible even by regular Apothecary methods. 26% to 44%, average Abyssals in the area are infected and will progress to takeover within hours and can only be treated with special methods. 45% to 61%, takeover of the host body will occur within minutes.”

Claire sniffed at the air, as if her nostrils could do the same analytical work as the precision instruments. “What about the remaining 39%? No data?”

“Spore concentration from that point onwards only has an influence on the power of the person that is affected. We do not have enough to be certain, but by my models the highest levelled people that should be affected by spores alone is level 75. Above that, it requires physical injection or other vectors.”

“7% is a positive development, then?” Nightingale asked.

“I don’t know.” Scarlett extended a hand to the side and shot an energy lance through the length of another Lorylim beast. The quadrupedal design of the creature suggested it had been a dog before it had gotten corrupted and covered in carapace plates and tentacles. “I got plenty of data for the effect of Lorylim spores on the human body from the Gestalt expedition. I have no fucking clue on what the standard shed rate is.”

The sounds of gunshots turned from distant to close with every step they took towards the harbour. From the day that the Amacat guilds had folded into Fusion, John and Scarlett had prepared battleplans for the eventuality of a Lorylim attack. It had been predictable that this would happen one day, even if the scale and suddenness of it had overwhelmed even their most pessimistic calculations.

The Lorylim had operated with their plans in mind. It was fortunate then that it hardly mattered. There were, in the broadest sense, two ways to plan around intel leaking to the enemy. One was to have a grand battleplan so layered, so separated into its constituent parts, that learning about segments and even the whole of it did not matter if it took too long to get the whole picture together. They had not employed this strategy against the Lorylim for several reasons, chief among which was that plans of this scale were only really usable for elite formations that could lock into each other by drill alone.

The second way to get around plans being subverted was to make plans that were so simple that them being messed with changed little to nothing about their execution. Such was the case here and in most cities around Fusion.

Every city had designated key defensible locations. In some cases those were simply emergent pieces of the urban sprawl, in most cases they were deliberately engineered to be easily defended. Those locations were where the Fusion army was supposed to make its stand, where the civilians were supposed to go, and thus where the Lorylim would attack past initial infection.

That their enemies were aware of this made some difference. Several locations had been infected ahead of time, turned into ambush points. However, even with perfect intel and vast coordination, the Lorylim suffered the same limitation as Fusion’s troops did: space and time. Lorylim could spread rapidly, but they could not spontaneously appear in every single location that they wanted to. Even if they knew where to be, they could not get there before the regular plans had entrenched the soldiers according to protocol.

Even perfectly laid plans had their limitations.

The primary defended area was the harbour. Even before Fusion had arrived, that particular area of the Abyssal side of Boston had been carpeted in Protected Spaces, each containing their own building that betrayed the wealth the area had generated by taking advantage of Natural Barriers.

The same buildings, with all of their layered security, were now fortresses. Scarlett had overhauled the local infrastructure after buying all of it. Every street was a marvel of engineering. Pavement had parted to reveal tall walls that now segmented the harbour properties according to old lines.

Steel was cheap, courtesy of the Mine, and getting her wires under everyone’s feet was always advantageous. The security contract had allowed her to increase her reach. A relay was at every corner. Even now, they allowed her to connect with every standard issue earpiece of the Fusion military.

The defensive perimeter spanned the length of the harbour. Hotels dedicated to VIP clientele were now filled with civilians. Abyssals were different from mundanes. Even faced with hordes of eldritch monstrosities, all those capable of doing so leaned out of the windows and loosened offensive magic into the crowd. A supportive action that had some benefit for the soldiers that were defending the walls from scores upon scores of Lorylim.

“Should I blot out the sun?” Nightingale asked. As goddess of night, she had that power, which was half the reason why she had been sent alongside Claire.

“No need,” Scarlett answered. “December is working to our advantage.”

Bullets slammed into Lorylim matter. The incendiary ammunition set the black goo alight. Flames only lasted for a few moments at a time, before the regeneration of the creatures swallowed it up again. Bullets were not as effective as spells, but they had the advantage of taking little to no toll on a person’s stamina. What direct power the soldiers did have, they brought to bear whenever one of the Lorylim monstrosities made it through one of the various breaches carved into the steel barriers.

“Relieve them,” Scarlett ordered.

Nightingale and Claire deployed swiftly. Neither of them excelled in direct combat, but against cannon fodder of this calibre, that hardly mattered. Chains of deep purple came flying from pockets of night beneath the afternoon sun. Claire’s conjured spears pierced the carapaces of creatures of liquified flesh.

While they took care of the flanks, Scarlett moved up to the centre. The Lorylim began to turn her way. In that instant, the redhead stopped her casual pace and fired up the transistors. The Voidmarrow’s energy harmonized with her own mana, turning into a stream of mana that elevated her senses beyond superhuman.

Everything slowed to a crawl and even in that space she moved fast. Her claws ripped the spinal column out of a corrupted humanoid. It wasn’t even fully out of the body yet, when she was already by the next monstrosity, ripping the exposed guts out of a bloated midriff. A third creature became the cudgel with which she splattered a fourth. Bullets rippled through the air around her, one of few things around still moving at a respectable speed. Even they were easily dodged.

Scarlett grabbed the back of the skull of a Lorylim about to bite the face off a soldier. She ripped the creature back, then exploded its head with a well-measured energy lance. Time returned to a regular speed to her perception, the active systems getting shut down. Behind her the trail of carnage she had created collapsed.

A surprised civilian pointed their gun at Scarlett. She regarded them with a plain stare and the weapon was dropped back down in an instant. “I see you have taken the measure to arm the population,” she analysed calmly.

“Yes, Sir!” the soldier that she had saved answered. A nice and crisp answer, with a title that was essentially unisex these days. Scarlett descended from the pile of corpses that filled the breach. Nightingale and Claire were soon by her side. “May I report?”

“No need, I have already gathered all required battlefield data,” Scarlett answered simply, then tapped into the local communication network. A synthesized version of her voice went via signal into every receptive device and left every speaker. “Here speaks Scarlett Evelith Thorne,” she announced herself, using her old fake name just in case someone had not caught up on the news. “I come with Claire and Nightingale. We are here as reinforcements. Hold your positions. The orders remain unchanged: the harbour must be held.”

Energized cries echoed through the nearby buildings. Scarlett never had cared for motivational speeches, but she did know that hope was a powerful incentive. Having provided that much, she turned to her fellow haremettes. Between the three of them, they had more firepower than the entirety of the present soldiers combined.

“Claire, scour the sewer system. Gale, keep watch from above, relieve high pressure areas,” Scarlett gave her orders, then suddenly snapped eastwards. “I will take care of the enemy leadership.”

Scarlett had meant to wait until her orders were confirmed. She still was not used to being the fastest in a group. When she zapped away, she moved too quickly for the responses to catch up with her. Her movements left behind little discharges of electricity. A minor loss of energy that Hailey had assured her was necessary. Scarlett would spend years on understanding that calculation, but she would eventually understand it all the same.

Weaving through friendly soldiers, Scarlett charged several hundred metres within less than a minute, then lunged at her target. The woman with the shaved head drew a sword, blocking a series of strikes from the Bloodsoaked Technomancer. The short-bladed, Japanese weapon blocked each swing of her metal limbs expertly, no matter how unorthodox the angle was.

Still, Scarlett came to the simple conclusion that she was fast. She kept on the pressure, bit by bit putting the blindfolded woman on the backfoot, until she **** an opening. Scarlett’s fist slammed into the bare stomach of her enemy and sent her flying out into the evacuated city. She gave chase, following the calculated trajectory, and only halted her **** when a teeth-encrusted tendril slammed down on her pathway.

Once paused, Scarlett remained where she stood. Her eyes remained locked on her target, while integrated cameras in her neural implants fed her a 360 degree vision of the environment.

The woman before Scarlett was around her own age and all around looked quite attractive. She had a mild tan to her. The outfit of brown leathers revealed much of her skin and the tribal markings on it. However, the nubile beauty of a woman was thoroughly compromised by the rapidly expanding coils of black Lorylim matter that wrapped around her. When she smiled, her lips cracked, revealing teeth that shifted in their sockets.

[AI Image: https://imgur.com/zLlsjYe ]

Scarlett knew this woman. She had competed in the Small Lake Tournament. That an individual at her level (371, according to John) had been corrupted opened up a multitude of alarming questions. It also was a potential answer as to why the spore concentration was so low. The Lorylim had other avenues that they were focusing their power on.

“What gave me away?” Mindpierce asked, her voice no longer fully her own.

“The fact that you are here,” Scarlett responded.

“You will-“

Mindpierce stopped before Scarlett started to move. The blindfolded woman had the gift of foresight, potently concentrated on the next few seconds. It let her get ready for the attack despite their difference in speed.

Scarlett did not care. She did not care for the outgrowths of corruption interrupting the fight either. Charged lances of electric energy ripped the tendrils apart while she confronted Mindpierce. Fluid motions on rotating joints removed her from harm with calculated closeness.

Mindpierce never swung at Scarlett. The foresight must have given away that there was no opening to do so. There was only the storm of attacks, driving Mindpierce through building wall after building wall. Something like panic appeared on the woman’s face. Members of the Lorylim at her level did retain a degree of individuality, enthralled as it was to the greater hivemind. Had she taken this fate deliberately? In other times, Scarlett would have liked to press her enemy for additional intel.

She did not have that luxury today.

The speed difference between them manifested in a final flurry of blows. Scarlett caught the blade in her hand, shattered it with her limb of superior make, then grabbed Mindpierce by the wrist. She only needed that one second of a solid grip to ram her hand through the chest of her enemy, driving the blackened heart out through the back. She crushed it between her fingers, sending gore and foul ichor splattering in all directions.

Mindpierce let loose an impossible scream, hurling goo covered fists at Scarlett’s face. Before the motions could be finished, a brutal swipe of Scarlett’s tail separated the skull from the neck of the infected Abyssal.

The body slumped, collapsing to the floor. Tendrils from within her connected to tendrils in the environment. The Lorylim were repurposing as much of her flesh as they could as quickly as they could. Scarlett heated up her metal pieces, until any gunk stuck to them evaporated into steam and ash.

‘Where there’s one, there’s more,’ she thought.