Chapter 9-18 The Quiet War

Chapter 9-18 The Quiet War

Dagger-1: Hostile assets nulled. Mem-cons suppressed. Dagger-3, any trace of the target?

Dagger-3: Not yet, Dagger-1. Not yet. Found some stray memories from Shard-3 though. The incompetent half-strand spilled part of his short-term memories into the proxy. Godsdamned sloppy.

Dagger-1: Target first; report after. Dagger-2, what you got?

Dagger-2: Target is skilled.

Dagger-3: No shit? And here I was thinking Shard-2 got nulled by an amateur.

Dagger-2: Very skilled. Shard-2 didnt even see it coming, unraveled in seconds. She got a cast off and didnt seem to inflict any damage.

Dagger-1: Affirmative. Does her conduit remember anything?

Dagger-2: No. He only has a headache and a few pieces of missing memory. Doesnt even know there was a skirmish in his mind.

Dagger-3: Sounds blissful.

Dagger-1: Dagger-3, pipe down unless you have something conducive to add; I prefer the lag to the sound of your voice. Dagger-2, what about the other two in the elevator?

Dagger-2: Nothing in Rantula. Just trauma and nightmares. That Chambers though

Dagger-1: What?

Dagger-2: His mind is a cesspit. He had over a dozen pornographic vicarities playing in tandem. Lustaways going wild inside him. I tried diving in earlier but its going to take some time to establish protective measures against any leakage.

Dagger-3: Jaus, the half-strands a rash risk. Null em Dagger-2. Its the right thing

[Dagger-3 has been muted]

Dagger-1: Acknowledged. Keep searching. Keep me posted. Im going to rig the grid up.

-Incubi Strike Cell Swordfisher

9-18

The Quiet War

+Incubi?+ Mirrorhead asked, mind a stasis of disbelief. +My sister?+

The yawning of time between each cast was long. Still, it took Avo more than a beat to reorient himself within the wavering memory shielding him. There was a burgeoning rage rising from the depths of Mirrorheads ego. He didnt like the benefactor accusing his sister of treason. Not at all.

Avo, for his part, found himself puzzling why someone he suspected to be an Incubior at least an Ori-Thaum aligned individualwas consorting with the likes of Mirrorhead, exposing the operations of their allies to Mirrorhead, and then claiming his sister was working withor at least underOri-Thaum.

Unless he wanted Mirrorhead to be paranoid. Unless he wanted to force the Syndicate boss into doing something foolish.

Flicking a peek at the remaining wards blockading him from accessing the innermost portions of Mirrorheads mind, Avo found himself considering his next steps. Attempting to dive deeper held risks if done in haste and without a clear mind. However, after Abrels earlier entrance, Avo felt he had good odds of avoiding Mirrorheads notice entirely.

His bigger concern was presently the other individual not in the room. The benefactor. Such was how Mirrorhead regarded them. Perhaps there was more knowledge deeper down, but between the locus and the remaining wards within the Guilder, the more vulnerable target was obvious.

Swimming out with the flow of thoughtstuff was a slow-going process. To accelerate risked drawing the notice of the minds host, and Avo had no desire to betray himself. By the time he was out and skimming the waters of thought beneath the surface of Mirrorheads boiling rage, another thought had lanced out from the benefactor in a slither of threading ghosts.

+Who else am I to assume has infiltrated your house today?+ the benefactor asked, defensiveness high. Their voice continued to be scrubbed of distinctiveness, but something smelled of insincerity to Avos instincts. +She visits you on the same day your missing employees are returned, and suddenly there are intrusions and hostile mem-cons staining the sequences of your loci. Coincidence is not a thing so neat, Higher Greatling.+

Avo waited, preparing to mask his transit using Mirrorheads response. Anger built behind bubbling ghosts. Unlike the benefactor, Mirrorheads reply whipped out, lashing at the Nether as if trying hurt without edging the ghosts with the sting of trauma. +She is no traitor! You still your tongue! She has served with honor! Distinction! Is she a fool? Yes, but+

+But who else?+ the benefactor asked. +It cant be from the ones you brought back. They dont have the skillthey came back subverted. You think the Scalpers have the capability to slip past you? No. Dont bullshit yourself, Greatling. Not them, and not whatever gutter-Necro they can afford. You would have noticed.+

Unbeknownst to either, Avo had leaped into the locus, his path running beneath a bridge of ghosts sawing between the two.

As much as the benefactor was buttering Mirrorheads ego, the truth was the Syndicate boss did have a substantial quantity of ghosts to wield, and the complexity of his wards would send wise Necros into a retreat until they could prepare enough for such a dive.

Perhaps a good enough cell could overcome it on their first try like Avo did. Or another Godclad with similar Necrotheurgic expertise.

A coldness filled him as he considered if the Low Masters had any nodes imbued with such powers. The coldness kindled into low arousal as he wondered what it would feel like to kill such a person, to sup victory from their flesh and mind.

Plucking the final few pieces from the session, Avo turned his gaze on the Incubus wards one last time and turned away. He would collect and replay whatever Mirrorhead was saying to the benefactor later. There was little else he could do here at the moment without forcing harm on the Incubus and alteringMirrorhead. If he lingered, he was going to lose another asset down in Conflux.

Jacking out from Mirrorheads session, Avo dove into Chambers and immediately transferred himself out into the disturbed sequence. He moved without care, unheeding caution as Chambers reactivity could barely match his pace.

There was prey to catch, and he had one last reliable asset in the area.

The quietest war was back on.

The vicarity in question was relatively tame by Chambers standards but it did involve excrement, a funnel, three bleeding ghouls, and an open wound. Following the trickle of disgust lingering in the mem-data, Avo jumped from simulation to simulation, shifting between bodies as he closed on his target.

He found them moving at a languorous pace. They had two Specters running with them as well, the phantasmics running parallel with them, peering at simulations bearing odd signatures of mem-data. Careful. Methodical. Efficient.

And seemingly just as unprepared as the last Necro Avo nulled.

He struck them the same way he did the first. His traumas flew out, alternating traumas impacting their wards as the water of their Quicksand flashed and flickered. He saw Lucilles weeping visage turned back against him in crackling flames. He whipped out with the Secondhand Fatality and Lucilles sister screamed one final mournful note. The fire cracked. Avo chambered another trauma

Something flashed from within the Incubus Metamind. Three synaptic bolts fused with memories of people dying in a conflagration came back at him. The vicarity playing in the background broke apart, as a vicarity star moaned and crooned in pain. Avos Ghostjack thundered. From its blade tip, he slashed back, Fatality meeting oncoming assault.

His blow crashed and rang against all three of theirs. In that frozen instant, they were as if knights of a bygone age, dueling with ego-rending memories in places of spear and blade.

Yet, the metaphor died when Avo felt his wards ring under a series of dotting impacts. Flashes of damage filtered through his cog-feed. He only understood when he cycled his short-term memory for review.

The Incubi had loaded traumas within traumas. The minds that died in a conflagration offered a common enough sequence for most wards to resist, but inside was a work of art.

Speckles of drownings, tortures, mutilation, torture via animal, via primal fear, castration, and forcible implantation all speared into his defenses in a fragmenting shower.

COG-CAP: 46%

Another layer of Quicksand wardings swelled from inside his target. Another flash of a session activated. More Incubi were arriving to help their ally. They were ready this time. Wary of his presence.

No longer was he facing a single Incubus. Now, there were at least three. The newcomers were faster toolikely had some cognition or reflex-boosting implant running.

But that was only a relative thing. None of them had a canon, and so, again the initiative shifted back to

The Incubi reeled out from Chambers mind. All presence of them was lost for an instant. Wasting no time, Avo latched his senses into Chambers perception, he found the enforcer clutching his head and staring at the blurring lights on the ceiling. The man ground his jaw as he tried not to retch, unaware of the battle that had just taken place inside his skull.

His cell was a barren place with a bowl of filth-crusted waste disposal unit and a cot laid on the ground. It looked like it was meant to store packages or crates rather than people.

Just outside was a passing enforcer, the footsteps of their exo-rig thumping down the walkway. Within their mind, the shine of the Incubi flared, scintillating amidst all the other signatures present.

Familiar accretions dotted the area around himand the floors below him. The taste of bloodlust and hunger stained the air. Conflux was storing their ghouls here as wellghouls that the Incubi were using to hide.

Casting himself out, Avo tore through the Nether at blinding speed. The local locus was also no longer hisnone of them were by this point. He needed to review just how many Conflux Necros he managed to infect. They seemed to be the only things the Incubi didnt really touch.

Plunging into the mind of his enforcer, he shrugged past paltry wards and dove in seeking the Incubi.

A thought came to him.

He wondered why they hadnt just jacked

The mind of the enforcer burst apart, and every last sequence within them detonated in a chain of mind-breaking explosions.

Avo felt his wards shatter. He felt the spill of mind-death, flashing bouts of agony grinding all his sense out from his mind like an avalanche.

He felt detached from his body as he watched himself snarling and shaking in the real. Draus was rushing over to him. Draus. Kae wasblood. He bit something.

Did he just bite his own tongue in half?

COG-CAPACITY OVERCLOCKING - 142%

WARNING: [ERRORNULLNULLERROR]

DISABLING PHANTASMI[ERROR]...

INITIALIZING RESURRECTION - 1%