Chapter 510

"Being around humanity is like having that friend. You know the one, that one, who starts every vid-call with 'guess what happened last weekend!' and you just know it's going to be something insanely stupidly amazing." - Dreams of Something More

She was an anomaly in the year 8538.

Her parents had been pair bonded since they married, in a heady ceremony, exactly at the stroke of Midnight on Old Terra, on the first of January, the year 7900 PG. Some preferred CE, or Current Era, but her parents were traditionalists and preferred Post-Glassing.

She was born exactly one hundred years later. The first baby of 8000 PG despite the doctor's warnings and protests. She had been raised by both parents, not a creche, educated in an actual real world school.

Her parents had hopes she would be a doctor or an architect or something like that.

But on her sixteenth birthday she fell in love with The Last Daydream XLIV, an enhanced virtual reality game. From there, when she was legally an adult on her eighteenth birthday, she moved to one of the LARP worlds, with her parents begrudging well wishes.

The first LARP world was a standard one owned by an interstellar hypercorp. Not one of the pre-Glassing ones, but one that had emerged in the eight millennia since. It had been eVR enhanced real life live action role playing.

Like a lot of newcomers, she had wanted to be a magic using class.

But, she was an anomaly.

Where others were happy to stand around and talk all day, and were perfectly happy with the flashy eVR special effects when they cast 'magic', she found herself bored of it and quickly looked for ways to min-max and break the game.

Two years later she was 'permanently exiled' and told not to come back when she discovered a small glitch in the system that allowed her to pickpocket the ruler of the largest empire, take his ring that made him immune to PvP, and blow him apart in front of everyone during a speech.

She drifted from LARP world to LARP world, always with an eye on how to shatter the rules and run amuck. It wasn't about the ancient art of trolling, or ruining everyone's fun, it was about domination, about overcoming even the very system that ruled 'reality' of the LARP world.

Upon her ejection from one of the Electronic Artistic Studios worlds, she was summoned to private audience with Empress, who gave her a secret astrogation course and a sealed scroll. Of course, she bypassed the scroll's security and read it quickly during the trip on a privately chartered passenger ship.

The scroll contained a list of every rule she had broken, even how she had broken them, how she had discovered security flaws, duplication glitches, PvP Flag exploits, and even spawn point overrides. It contained information of how she had worked to hone her skills, worked on her body and mind.

The system she arrived in was guarded by pretty heavy duty civilian grade warships, in the System Defense class. The passenger ship dropped her off, telling her it would wait two weeks to see if she needed a ride out.

On the ship, she had been informed that she was orbiting a 'hardcore mode' LARP world. A single respawn world, pain feedback, genetically designed monsters with fully functional ecosystems.

It had also been running nearly a thousand years.

She was warned that 84% of new players, no matter how 'elite' they were in the other LARP worlds, washed out in the first year.

She eagerly accepted it. Accepted the mandatory reskin, and was dropped into the world in the tutorial area.

Four years later she was escorted out of the system by one of the Planetary Defense ships with another scroll in her hand.

She had manage to shatter a thousand year old empire into two dozen warring states, carve out her own kingdom on the border of its neighbor, invade its neighbor, and seize control of the World Engine that produced the world's 'mana', AKA nanites, and elevate herself to what was basically a god.

There was hard feelings, sure, but she saw and felt the grudging respect even from those she crucified.

By the time the Mar-gite was happened, she had been exiled from over a dozen elite hardcore mode worlds. She had multiple 'character classes' under her belt, but unlike her detractors, she knew that it was not whatever class she chose, it wasn't just exploiting the system.

She was an anomaly.

A hundred years before the Mar-gite war, she was approached, and accepted the shadowy deal with slight boredom, by another 'hardcore mode' world.

She fought with her baby brother, that she loved dearly, over his decision to go into Space Force.

Angry, she accepted the 'hardcore mode' world invite.

This one was different. No classes. Mandatory reskin. Additional organ implants. There was no 'world engine' producing nanites, every living creature had a bioware organ that produced them, as well as the ability to control nanites.

You reskinned into a young adult in a tutorial/training area. If you were daring enough, after a few years, you could reskin into a fetus and have your memories slowly unlock as you grew. It wasn't a single death world, the SUDS was incorporated as 'reincarnation' where you risked being reborn as something you didn't want to be.

Interestingly enough, the SUDS system did not count death in this LARP world as a death.

She checked closer. Once entered, you had to voluntarily leave the system to have your SUDS record moved from the local servers.

That made her smile as a plan formed.

She was an anomaly, with a burning desire to prove her dominance over everything around her.

She accepted the agreement, reskinned, finished the tutorial. She discovered the 'haunting' system, where death could leave behind an imprint that could eventually gain enough power to threaten people.

And hung herself in a wedding dress after writing really bad poetry.

She was in the system.

She was reborn. She lived those lives. Always hard lives. Each time, her memories slowly unfolded.

She ravaged human settlements as a monster. She killed monsters as a human. She burned human farms as an elf. She chopped down elven forests as a dwarf. As a goblin she despoiled dwarven mines. As a human she slew hordes of screaming goblins.

She lived. She died. She lived again.

She loved every second of it.

The Mar-gite war was in full swing, it had claimed nine of her siblings, and that damnable genetic quirk, that little anomaly, kept her from joining the Confederate Armed Services to protect everything she cared about. So she sunk herself into the game, pushing the limits of everything, even the reincarnation system.

The Mar-gite War ended and she felt some kind of darkness lift from her soul.

She had been reborn, an infant that grew up slowly knowing who and what she was.

She took all her knowledge and helped a player with a vision found a kingdom.

She was Lady Khoonkeenade and the world shook beneath her boot heels.

Her 'King' was not afraid of her betraying him. One thing that was well known was her absolute loyalty to her oaths. She was a legend, someone who had been in the 'system' for over a century.

Then the Unified Council had gone to war the Confederacy, the Confederacy that had watched and argued as the world she had been born on had burned with the actinic white fire of anti-matter, but she did not care.

The Atrekna had joined the fight and she had not cared, laughing as she forced the soldiers of Lord Twenzelk into the river and slaughtered them there for having the temerity to try to invade her vineyards.

Then her beloved baby brother had fallen sick and was brought to her by the Lady Nakteti.

Her hatred for the Confederacy burned deeper as she knew it was the Confederacy's bungling that led her precious baby brother falling into a coma.

Then the Digital Omnimessiah had arrived, and she had seen him with her own eyes.

Where others had thrown down their weapons, forswore violence, she felt that burning in her soul.

She was an anomaly to the point her mother had been advised to abort her. Her mother had refused when it was explained that it was not a lethal mutation, just a dangerous one.

Her parents had believed the universe was a dangerous place.

There were no genetic therapies to fix her. No reskinning her into a repaired body, her DNA would mutate and shift and twist until she was an anomaly again.

Even as a goblin her birth defect reared its head. As an elf she had relished combat as the birth defect warped her DNA.

For a second she had been afraid that the Digital Omnimessiah would 'heal' her, like so many others had tried to. She had passed on her birth defect to her children.

It didn't matter on the world she had reskinned on so many times.

There, she was Lady Khoonkeenade, She Who Had Birthed a Hundred.

When Lady Nakteti had left the world with her baby brother, she had been sent to expand the kingdom, push its borders deep into wild and untamed lands full of monstrous creatures.

She would often ride alone to face them.

At first she had thought she had found a spawning point, a spawning pool, and had rejoiced in the fight. Then she understood.

They weren't out to kill her.

They were out to capture her.

That part of her. That anomaly. That little birth defect. That little twist of her DNA, related to her beloved baby brother but not the same one, gave her a mad idea, an insane idea.

Let them.

She didn't make it easy for them.

And now, she was here.

A joke of cosmic proportions that made the malevolent universe howl with laughter.

She was here. All of her. Pure human with no cybernetics, just a simple pair of added organs and a small addition to her brain to control the organs and what they produced. Over five hundred years of experience, skills, and ingenuity wielded powers gained through implacable will.

She was naked, but she was not defenseless.

But that wasn't the joke.

It was what she was missing that was the joke.

It was a joke of cosmic proportions.

She had no neighborhood.

She had no streetlights.

And she was not trapped in the research facility with them.

They were trapped in there with her.

While the Universe laughed until giggling stars spun into existence.

-----------------

i taste nipplegloss and blood

The Atrekna turned around at the cold whisper, looking around with its psychic senses as well as its eyes.

The biological examination lab was empty. Just a dozen corpses of the feral lemurs, all but two of them in mid-examination. The two were new, brought by physical spacecraft, from a planet where an invasion had been utterly destroyed. They were part of some new weapon of the lemurs, something that allowed the lemurs to get back up after suffering horrific wounds.

The two corpses had been temporally copied at great effort, having been in the best condition, and brought to the research facility that orbited a neutron star that had once contained hundreds of harvest class slavespawn slowly growing to maturity.

GOOD MORNING SUNSHINE

System Power at 58.38%

Self Test

Bootstrap 3.14 (c) Syntex Cybernetics Division

Warning, severe chassis damage

Warning, severe neural damage

Shutting down

WAKEY WAKEY EGGS AND BACEY OVERRIDE

Continuing bootstrap

The Atrekna frowned, turning back to the corpses and looking over them again. Once again, he detected nothing. It moved over to the two new acquisitions. The male was in rigor mortis, muscles stiff as chemicals locked the muscles into tension. The female was perfectly still, looking as if she was asleep, not a single wound marring her skin.

The Atrekna frowned and reached out to the shared consciousness. It was sure that the female had suffered a kinetic impact to the forehead that had severely damaged the cerebral tissue and compromised the skull on the opposite side.

Long Term Memory damage

Shutting down

OH HONEY THERE IS MORE TO DO OVERRIDE

Continuing bootstrap

Before the Atrekna could fully mesh with the shared conciousness there was creaking sound. The Atrekna turned around just as the lights flickered several times. It stopped, slowly bringing up defenses, suspecting a possible attack from a rival.

For the last three centuries before the Atrekna had reached the New Universe, cannibalism had been a viable method of survival.

The lights steadied, but they were dim, flickering in spots. Rather than the slow comforting glow of psychic lighting that came from everywhere and nowhere, there was only a handful of blotches of light on the ceiling that cast pools of light in the dark room.

As the Atrekna watched, one of the lemurs sat up and the Atrekna realized that the power flicker must have shut off the restraints. It made a low moaning noise as it reached toward the Atrekna.

Its internal organs slid from the surgical incision in the abdomen, sliding out in greasy black, red, and purple mass that fell to the floor with a wet splat that splattered clotted cold blood across the floor. Its mouth opened and it gave a mournful sounding moan as it reached out toward the Atrekna.

Cortex reflex damage

Locking out wired reflexes

YOU'LL HAVE A NEED FOR SPEED BABY OVERRIDE

Wired reflexes unlocked

Locking out bioreflexes

GOTTA FLEX ON THE HATERS BABY OVERRIDE

Bioreflexes unlocked

Warning. Severe damage to biological component

Aborting startup

WE HAVE SUCH GAMES TO PLAY OVERRIDE

Continuing startup

The Atrekna connected to the shared consciousness, crying out an alert as it shared the vision of the lemur corpse slowly rolling off the table, landing on the floor, and beginning to pull itself toward the Atrekna. It could feel the others horror and consternation at the impossibility of the dead lemur reanimating.

There was one Atrekna who reacted with primal fear at the sight of the chattering jaws of the dead lemur. A lemur had grabbed two of his feeding tentacles and ripped them from his face the planetary assault prior, and had narrowly escaped the disaster that the newest deceased subjects had been recovered from.

That Atrekna pulled itself from the shared consciousness with a scream of fear.

FWOOP!

The blast rippled out, washing over two bodies, flipping them off the tables. The skin of the dead lemur rippled, like a pond with a pebble thrown in it, but it still pulled itself forward, moaning.

The two that had fallen from the table slowly stood up. Their internal organs falling though the surgical incision that they been replaced through, landing on the floor. Both moaned, their eyes white with cataracts, their skin dead and waxy looking.

Nanite repair systems online

142% available

WARNING! UNKNOWN NANITE SYSTEMS!

Shutting down

OH HONEY THAT'S JUST HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU OVERRIDE

Nanite systems deployed

System repairs engaged

The Atrekna floated backwards, making a low keening noise as it tried twice more, the very air rippling with the psychic power it deployed in a conical blast that could crack warsteel.

The crawling corpse kept coming. The two others moved around the tables, staggering and slipping on their own internal organs. Other corpses were moving, trying to get up, rolling off the tables.

The Atrekna began screaming over the shared conciousness as its back hit the wall, primal terror filling it for the first time in its tens of thousands of years of life.

System Recovery at 64.92% Total

Warning: Biological degradation

Aborting

ITS OK YOUR STILL BEAUTIFUL BABY OVERRIDE

Continuing System Recovery

The dead lemur with the pink enamel on its claws suddenly trembled, its back bowing as it arced and trembled, hands clenching and feet drumming. Whatever was causing it stopped and the corpse collapsed back on the table with a thud.

The crawling dead one was hung up on a table leg, frustrated it growled and snapped, its jaws gnashing as black blood ran down its chin.

The lights flickered again.

System damage exceeds threshold

Shutting Down

WAKE UP BABY ITS PLAYTIME OVERRIDE

Attempting system startup

The Atrekna turned in place and started pounding on the wall, desperately trying to get the flawless wall to iris open, forgetting completely how to do it, just filled with terror that wiped out all thought.

It felt itself get dumped from the shared consciousness and screamed.

Bootstrap personality loading successful!

Warning! Neural Damage Outside Recommended Levels

Warning! Black Cauldron Protocol Shutdown Detected!

Shutting down

TEACH THEM WHAT FEAR TASTES LIKE OVERRIDE

System startup successful!

30 Seconds to Motor Control release!

WELCOME BACK BABY

THIS IS GOING TO BE FUN

--map update loaded

The wall rippled and the door opened like liquid parting. The researcher, still screaming, used its feet to run screaming down the hallway. The eight Atrekna could see the dead bodies, somehow animated, staggering toward them, the one on the floor crawling forward, its guts strung out behind it.

They opened fire with their weapons, curved chunks of phasite crystals and phasonium alloy. Purple bolts snapped out, hitting the corpses.

The bolts exploded into sparks.

They activated their psychic blades and moved in, using feet rather than disks of phasic power. The four feeding tentacled Ancient One had warned only a head wound would kill the dead lemurs again.

They set about their grisly task, chopping at them, avoiding their snapping jaws. Knocking them down and hacking at them.

Only three of them were injured.

The others dispatched them quickly.

As they watched, the dead bodies started to steam, black mist rising off of them, and dissolved in front of them within seconds. They left nothing behind, not even ash.

One of the Atrekna reached down and touched the spot the dead lemur had been. Even the blood was gone.

The lights flashed, then sullenly came back, white bubbled of light placed far apart.

Each bubble illuminated a single table.

There was a white cloth, obviously draped over a lemur corpse.

The tables had been empty.

The surviving Atrekna ignored the urging of the shared consciousness to pull aside the sheet, running for the door and pushing at each other to get out. They fought and pushed until they were all through. Two stood in the opening, staring inside.

There were two dozen tables in the room. Ten of them, scattered, each in a pool of light, had a cloth covered lemur corpse.

In the middle were two other corpses.

They were wearing the clothing of the lemur military. Both looked asleep.

Asleep, not dead.

One noted to the other that they were both breathing.

The shared consciousness insisted they go inside and check.

The two closed the wall and fled, disconnecting from the shared consciousness.

The male groaned, slowly sitting up.

I've been hurt worse but I really can't remember when, he thought.

The female coughed, a delicate sound, and sat up. She reached up for her datalink and touched it with pink enameled nails.

"Anyone read me?" she asked.

"I read you," the male said.

She turned and looked at him.

"Where are we?" he asked.

She looked around. "Morgue. Walking Dead Protocol must have kicked in. We aren't laying on some battlefield or at a MedCom unit."

"Which means we're in enemy hands," the male said. He hopped off the table.

The woman smiled.

"And the enemy only exists to be destroyed."

-----------

The Atrekna researchers ignored the cries of alarm over the shared consciousness, concentrating on the subject.

It still had not moved.

It was only smiling.

It suddenly moved, standing up. It faced them, somehow knowing what angle to stand so each of the Atrekna felt as if she was staring directly into their eyes. She held up one hand, the fingers straight out, the palm flat. She lifted up her other hand, only her index finger sticking out. As the Atrekna watched, she pressed her fingernail into the flesh, pulling it down, opening a gash on her hand that began bleeding. She lowered the hand that had caused the wound and made a fist with her wounded hand.

As the Atrekna watched, she clenched her fist, squeezing blood from her hand and onto the floor.

The blood sizzled, bubbling, as she spoke.

The Atrekna had enough data to understand her words, but they frowned, trying to decipher the meaning. She spoke four words as the blood sizzled, steamed, and was absorbed without a trace by the phasonium alloy floor.

"I am the land."