by T5, The Eurostar and Chewy Walrus
The Tower of Cuccubao, Brazil:
Crasher used the gleaming armor's Gaia unit to teleport to the side of Raptor, who currently had started a fight with four regular thugs with guns, and he was doing well.
Oh well, she thought, no problem here, then. She shot one in the leg and told him to surrender, which he did without any further hassle.
She was just about to rejoice in the victory when a voice behind her said, "Surrender or be killed! Step away from that man!"
Behind her and Raptor, three figures emerged from the jungle, apparently metas.
"We are Project Omicron, and we have been authorized to use any means to secure this facility. You will comply or face the consequences!"
Crasher, being rather cocky and young, thought she had an opening and was just about to fire when she felt her armor stiffen.
Warning! System error! Intrusion in shell program!
A voice was heard with her earplugs: "Xyber at your service. This system will be deleted. Do not attempt counter measures. It will be punished by the destruction of your armor and probably your life."
Panic rode through Crasher's mind, temporarily confusing her, and that was enough for Xyber to slip in and start the deletion process. But Crasher realized this and set about to do just the opposite of the advisement she just had received.
> del <
> undelete <
> install secondary and tertiary proxy <
> send DoS worm thru PPTP tunnel <
> engaging backup <
> su root <
> password: Knight <
> incorrect password <
> system lockout engaging <
> password knght4 <
> welcome root <
> root@t4:~# rm -rf /* <
> root@t4:~# halt -n -f -p <
> Shutting down... <
> Unmounting HDDs <
> Unmounting /dev/proc <
> System is halted <
Crasher felt the armor shutting down, and the presence within sent her a last message on the e-link on her helmet's right-side display: "Now surrender your armor to us, and don't take any hostile action. Doing so will be..."
"I know!" Crasher yelled furiously. "It will be punished by the destruction of me and yadda yadda. Just shut the fuck up!"
She was crying. Her teammate was on the verge of losing this battle as the other two members of Project Omicron engaged him in furious battle, and there was nothing she could do.
Within Ameristar's mind, there was only dark, a seemingly infinite space of calm and soothing muffled noises. She saw no reason to emerge from this calm, as it was the first time in years she had known a harmony as this.
But suddenly within her a light flickered, a small speck of light not much more than a point of a needle.
"Hello? Anyone home? ... No? Good, then."
"Intruding digiprescence... you will now leave this unit or be destroyed!"
Crasher was as much surprised as Xyber was. Something within her system was attempting to re-start the armor's defenses and shell programs.
Xyber, who had felt this had been a rather easy task so far, swore.
"Defiance will be met with lethal force. Comply or die! Send ID detect."
Xyber felt something touching her own systems, something very sophisticated, almost as if... No, that couldn't be possible... could it?
"Leave this system or be assimilated!"
The armor was now threataning her as if it was alive! That couldn't be possible. No such technology had ever been invented here.
Xyber's own abilities were based on tantric mind walking, a ritual done by many in the past, but not into the virtual environment. Xyber had proven to be the best at accomplishing this task, and so she had been uploaded into a permanent virtual environment.
She attempted to block the intruder within her mind, but felt it strengthening by the nanosecond.
And then Drax entered the scene. Mayhem was inevitable, as he had managed to take them by surprise and given Raptor the opportunity to defend himself.
Xyber gave up against the now-almost-burning onslaught on her nervous system and felt the worms and probes she had installed within the opponent's armor being thrown out and the system rebooting. She had to disengage before that happened, or the new system would fry her neurons.
Much to Crasher's surprise, she had won. She looked at her friends, and smilingly she joined the fray.
Edulcore Cicciotto:
I was ready to fly up back inside the tower, when four guards jumped out of nowhere firing at me. Ladnikia took care of many of them, when Crasher materialized near me, wearing Ameristar's armor. There was no time to talk, and although I was hoping she would have kept searching for the map, I was glad she was helping me with those men.
It was when we had taken care of them, when out of the jungle came three figures, babbling some words I didn't understand. One of them, the tallest one, was the cyclops I had fought just before. He looked furious at me. The other two were normal men, one dressed with a simple jumpsuit, and with two guns in two holsters crossing on his chest. The other, slightly taller, was wearing what seemed a kevlar form-fitting suit, with strange tech-goggles shadowing his eyes. The latter just whispered, "X-Acute, go!" pointing his index finger to the tower, and the second man ran toward it and began climbing it with the agility of a squirrel.
Meanwhile, the man who gave the order, and who looked as if he was the leader of the group, darted something from one of his gauntlets to Crasher, who froze, and it looked as it was kept prisoner by her same armor.
I moved toward her to help, but the man shot a sonic blast from one of his gauntlets right in front of my feet. The grass exploded with a shhhh. I stopped.
The man is now smiling. Arges, behind him, looks furious and roars at me.
"Be patient, my friend," says the man to the monster behind. "In a few minutes, I will leave the winged man to you. If..." And he turns toward me. "...if, I was saying, you don't leave the place immediately... by foot, obviously, since we have taken your hovercraft. I am very curious to study it. I have never seen a hovercraft taking flight vertically."
"Who are you? The one in Florence, at the museum?"
The man smiles. "You are in better shape than you were then, mister...?"
"You can call me Raptor. And how should I call you?"
"Johnny Omicron. It seems we have collided in a lot of different places in the world. Florence... Berlin... here. Different places, but same resolution. We win, and you remain with the proverbial hand of flies, like you say in your land, Cicciotto!"
So this is Omicron, the leader. Seems tough.
"What do you want?" I ask.
"Not for you to know, although I believe you know what we seek, after our frequent meetings."
"The Liber Vitae?"
The man smiles. "You have ten minutes to pack and leave. I'm sure you'll have means to contact your base and ask for rescue. If you choose not to agree, be aware that the armor has been infected by a computer virus that is seizing control of the cybernetics and will kill the girl."
Damn.
The cyclops laughs. Omicron frowns. He is listening to his earplug radio device. A moment, then he smiles again.
"Map found," he says. "Cicciotto, have you made your decision?"
I look at Crasher. And then, for an instant, the sun is obscured. It's time for me to smile.
"I don't surrender, Omicron," I say.
He seems surprised. "This doesn't make sense, Cicciotto. Why...?" But his words die in his mouth as the cyclops throws himself at me.
Only, he is caught in mid-air by Drax.
In the same moment, Crasher seems to be back to life. She jumps back on her feet, smiling and saying something wise-cracking that I have not time to understand.
Omicron looks at her, amazed, saying, "No... it's impossible... Xyber would not..."
I shout to Crasher: "Teleport to Jackie, and don't leave her unprotected." But she doesn't disappear.
"It's an order!" I shout
But she opens her arms and says, "The armor has been damaged! The Gaia unit doesn't work."
"Run to her, then. Quick!"
The girl leaves. If the map has been found, that means it was Chance who has found it. And that X-Acute is menacing him. I need to go to his rescue.
But as I take flight, a blast is shot near me. I turn. It's Omicron, firing at me. "I will not let you destroy my enterprise, Cicciotto!" he shouts, taking flight.
Inside Crasher's armor:
Xyber was completely disoriented. Last thing she knew, she was being invaded in the system of the armor that little punk girl with the bad hairstyle was wearing. There was obviously a boomerang program factored in that Xyber hadn't noticed: a rookie mistake.
Fortunately for her, however, she had managed to save her memory into the armor's hard drive, making her able to attack again if necessary. The armor was already sufficiently weakened, that she knew for sure. However, she had no idea as to the extent of its weakened state. That was what she would test now.
Working her way through the system was an easy enough task, really. Knowing now what the system was looking for, it was easier to avoid detection by changing small points in her own programming. By the time she had neared the power source, Xyber had taken the form of a random piece of binary data, rather than the complex invading force she had taken upon her first inception.
There it is, she thought to herself as she took in the sight of the power system. The main source of power. From there, I'll be able to take control of any and all functions... carefully, this time.
"All right..." the female computer program said to herself as she entered the suit's core. "This is easily enough done. First... take out all emergency systems, including manual override and virus scans."
No sooner had she said the words than all of the suit's emergency warning functions were shut down. In the suit itself, Crahser was given no warnings at all, due to a little rerouting of main control by Xyber. The only thing that concerned the blonde was getting to her friend Jackie.
"Next on tonight's program," Xyber whispered, sinking her digital fingers into the suit's main motherboard, "a little experiment in density..."
Suddenly, Crasher felt very fat. Or maybe not so much fat as... heavy. Like she was sinking. Like...
Before she knew it, Crasher was plummeting toward the earth like a brick, the density of her suit having been increased beyond what it was normally set at.
"Suit: reconfigure density parameters for subject Crasher-gamma-927! NOW!" Crasher yelled as she fell from the sky.
"Unable to comply," the suit responded monotonously.
"Suit: activate virus scan and locate any foreign elements, authorization Ameristar-219-zulu!"
"That authorization code is no longer recognized by this unit," the suit responded. "All emergency warnings and protocals are offline."
"Impossible..." Crasher said, as her boot thrusters kicked in without warning, causing her to hover in the air just a few feet from the ground.
"Hi!" came a new, effeminate voice from the armor. "Remember me?"
"I -- I thought you'd been gotten rid of!" Crasher stammered in disbelief.
"Nope. I'm afraid not. It's a little tougher than that to get rid of Xyber."
"Xyber?" Crasher asked. "Is that what they call you?"
"That's what I am," Xyber replied, her tone obviously not one of someone amused by the situation. "And as of right now, your armor belongs to me. All your viral defense programs are offline, while other programs are being rewritten currently to remove your usefulness from the equation altogether."
"How are you doing this?" Crasher asked.
"I'm a living computer program," Xyber said dryly. "It's what I do..."
A pause.
"What now?" Crasher asked nervously.
"Now?" Xyber asked. "Now we go back and pay a little visit to your friends..."
Crasher stood helplessly in the suit as the armor turned around of its own will and rocketed back toward the Tower of Cuccubao. The only thing going through her mind was Jackie and how sorry she was that she couldn't help her friend.
And suddenly the suit stopped, surprising both Crasher and Xyber. Crasher thought Xyber had stopped on purpose, and Xyber thought she had missed something... something important.
So she double-checked the system at lightning speed, careful this time to not trip any surprise traps or undetected back-up systems, but she found neither... except...
What was that? A microscopic chip that seemed to be glowing with a pale blue light. She looked closer and found four cooling systems within and a very small glowing crystal. It pulsed like a heart beat.
Could that be the sentient part of the computer? She just had to take a closer look by trying to interface with it. And the crystal increased its glow and let her in.
Far away, in a huge room full of wall screens and computer terminals, a flashing light was blinking. A wrinkled, pale hand switched it off with a deep sigh.
"Marc, could you come to the monitor room, please?" a tired and angry voice said to a close microphone.
"Coming, air."
The one called Marc ran out of his private quarters into a long corridor with ancient paintings on the walls. His now-long gray hair was still wet after a long, well-deserved shower. Damn, it was hot in here.
He arrived only a minute after he had been summoned and walked to the ancient pale man in front of him. "What's the problem, sir?"
"My little girls are in trouble. Could you help them... please?"
"Uh... Sure. What's the story?"
"They are located at the Tower of Cuccubao. You know the one I warned you about?
"Yes..."
"It seems incredible, but someone has managed to compromise the Ameristar suit... and her life signs are flat."
"Okay, sir. Don't panic. I know how much you love them both. I will do my best to retrieve them, sir."
"Thank you, Marc. You have proven to be an enormous asset to this team. I will be in your debt." The old man patted Marc on the shoulder, then sat down in a chair and continued his monitoring duties.
"I must not let this distract me from my task. The project is at a critical stage, and nothing, not even the ones I love most, must distract me from success. Please be swift, Marc. Come home in one piece."
"No problem, sir. With this equipment and my abilities, they won't even know I was there."
And with that, the former adult mentor of the PSI-Unit ran to the storage to get his field uniform and equipment.
Xyber fell.
A seemingly bottomless well opened beneath her, and deep down, something stirred -- something that was angry. And it rose from the deep toward her. She could feel its raw power, and knew at that instant what it was, the one thing that she had feared most in this battle: the living presence within the armor.
Once again, she found herself thrown out of the armor, and worse -- she had been transferred to somewhere else. She snooped around. This wasn't the armor; it was...
...a public school computer. And someone was running a program: Visual Basic.
Oh, no. She was inside a kid's school computer. Angrily, she swore that she would take revenge on that entity someday, whatever it was. Then she realized the impossible in what had happened. The armor had a communications device, but not for sending raw data. How on Earth could she have sent her here? The two systems weren't even connected!
It must have been that mysterious force within the armor. What was it that lived inside that crystal? She would know, and soon, as fast as she could find a way out of here.