Aleksey Savchenko - Cyberside

Matilda starts humming a melody in the still, warm air that is nearly as tuneless as the uneasiness creeping into his thoughts. If what she says is true, the loss of a few low-level traffic operators hardly warrants the credits spent trying to eliminate her. Pondering the number of hunters she has consumed leaves a cold void in his gut. Their skills now belong to her.

When Matilda reins in her steed, Taciturn quickly does the same.

“What’s wrong?”

Matilda slowly slides off her horse and strokes the animal’s sleek black fur.

“We’re close. It’s better if we continue on foot.”

She gestures toward and beyond the hilly landscape ahead.

“The processing camp should be right over there.”

Leaving the horses tethered to a scrawny sapling to graze, Taciturn and Matilda carefully crawl their way up a crest overlooking the slavers’ encampment. With each cautious, elbowing push forward, James senses his indexation watch continuing its silent countdown. He pauses to pull up his map. As a display of the surrounding area manifests above his watch, James judges the distance to the bordering Locale. He’ll be cutting it close. They’ll need to take out this band of slavers and be quick about it.

Prone at the top of the rise, James pulls out his binoculars and scans the area below. Armed guards patrol the outpost, and it doesn’t take long to deduce where the captives are being held. Sentries protect the gate to a chain-linked barrier that partitions the holding-pens from the rest of the camp. James surveys the ramshackle sprawl of the outpost and marks the location of the slavers. He notices a separate squad of soldiers guarding a wooden platform at the encampment’s center that supports a hulking, asymmetrical apparatus. Zooming in, James recognizes the equipment.

“Bastards.”

It’s a crude re-indexation mechanism known in the Cyberside as a brainshredder – a machine designed exclusively for the purpose of completely eradicating a victim’s memories and essential information. What remains is little more than an ambulatory husk, a receptacle ready to be filled with whatever task mandates are desired. Taciturn finds himself clenching his teeth.

A sudden commotion pulls James’ attention back to the holding paddock. A handful of slavers are charge-prodding an elderly captive out of the pen. The man’s ragged flannel shirt and torn, soiled jeans alone bear witness to the probable duration of his captivity.

Once outside the holding area, other guards shove, batter and shock the prisoner toward the brainshredder. The old man screams and twists, but his attempts at escape are as futile as they are painful to witness. A vicious rifle-butt to the back of his skull ends any further attempts at resistance.

The captive only begins to regain his senses as his captors strap the rusty, helmet-like device onto his head. His screams, curses, and cries for mercy go unheeded. The man weakly sobs as the last strap is tightened around his chin. A nearby slaver slams the brainshredder’s facemask shut and gives a thumb up to someone outside James’ view. Within moments, the old man’s body thrashes as thin, blinding bursts of violet lightning arc from and around the device. James is thankful that he’s too distant to catch the scorching reek of seared flesh and ozone.

It takes only a few seconds to complete the gruesome process, to irretrievably delete a lifetime’s worth of memories. When the helmet is removed, the tear streaks remain but a subservient emptiness lies beneath the man’s glazed eyes. The mortal husk is pulled from the chair. James zooms out but continues to track the slavers’ movements to the other side of the platform. Several slavers drag their docile, silent prisoner towards a gateway-like aperture and an awaiting technician. The technician makes a few adjustments on the command console, and a transportation portal flickers to life within the gateway. What remains of the old man is shoved through and vanishes instantly.

James does not need to see the rest to know the fate of the old man. After being transported through a series of locations, the new slave will be treated as merchandise – one of many marginally sentient drones used to maintain traffic levels in some other, far-flung quarter of the Cyberside. As he gradually reacquires his faculties, he will be taught when and how to make low-level requests of the System, and to perform a routine checklist of menial tasks. For this, he will receive food and credits. If he deemed to be “premium” stock, he will be groomed for the purposes of a higher clientele, or perhaps registered for the global entertainment services.

Taciturn puts down the binoculars and turns to Matilda. He is already formulating a plan of attack – but stops when he notices the dangerous glow around the Scry’s eyes. Dropping her pack, Matilda unbuttons her jacket and repositions her large arsenal of knives.

James doesn’t need to individually scan the blades to know they hold power. Imbued with deadly viruses, such weapons are doubtless designed to cut off access links between a potential victim and the System. As a Taciturn, he’s seen similar blades in the hands of ruthless killers – but he has never seen such an array in the hands of a single user. Task-specific and lethal, these weapons can only be the implements of a seasoned specialist – or a high-functioning psychopath. They require a master’s skill to be wielded effectively, and can lead to an incredibly fast death – or an excruciatingly long one.

Matilda rolls her shoulders and cracks her neck with a cold determination. Following suit, Taciturn loosens his arms and pulls his gun from its holster. He checks the revolver’s cylinders and sees the same exotic, high-velocity rounds he’d intended to use on the Scry, secure and gleaming in their oiled chambers. James wrote the code for these bullets himself and has been prudent enough to leave caches of them stashed throughout the Cyberside. Each bullet is a nasty cocktail of malicious intrusion and corruption routines, expressly designed to penetrate the defenses of even the toughest hostiles with a simple yet caustic virus. Upon impact, it spams a target’s defenses until it bores through and switches off the target’s mind. A quick and quiet death – in stark contrast to that offered by his companion’s arsenal.

Content with his weapon’s condition and ready to formulate a plan with Matilda, he looks up – and is struck momentarily speechless. The Scry is already making her way down the slope, on a blatant, straight-line bearing for the slave camp.

“Dammit, you’ve got to be kidding me—”

Hurriedly holstering his weapon, James lunges after her – but she is already setting foot on the camp’s perimeter before he can cover even half the distance. Even factoring in his best estimate of her potential Scry skills doesn’t offset the fact that she has just put both of their lives in danger.

Twenty paces short of the camp’s reinforced gate, the Scry brazenly approaches a squad of sentries. They are so taken aback by her casual demeanor that she has closed to within six paces before even one of them thinks to start unshouldering his weapon, a shabby-looking field carbine.

Still trying to close the gap between them, James clearly hears Matilda say, “’Sup, dudes?”

To his credit, the sentry with the shabby-looking carbine does manage to raise one hand in an authoritative, palm-outward halt gesture. It doesn’t do a thing to stop the first of Matilda’s blades from opening his throat in a spray of blood and data. Even as he dies , his expression looks more bewildered than frightened – and in the next moment he keels over. Matilda has surgically opened up a second member of the now-shouting patrol before James finally clears his holster.