Chapter 112: Goliath’s Vessel

  Amaterasu’s last thoughts within the Datashield before she dissolved herself to form the [Redacted] within Ripley Donovick.

  Zero… you may think I’ve forgotten about you, but on the contrary, this entire project has been the result of your transgression. Yet, you figured out about this, didn’t you? I’d have to wager it’s from Mr. Skeleton, he did supervise the trade that gifted us this MAL. And now, I question where it truly came from…

  I can sense Subject-K was likely involved in this too. She always did know how to tear the humanity away from people, but I digress. You turned The R0N1N in our direction, that… anomalous being of a false origin. But I see an opportunity to spurn all your workings, a method to exact my plans with an efficiency even The Allseeing dreads. And how funny I use that word.

  Dread. I’ll give this power not to the R0N1N, but to the the monster The Sin unleashed, little Ripley Donovick as the carrier of Goliath. And one more gift from my end, I’ve been preparing it for a while, and it will certainly serve him. If not, it will be very funny to know The Dogwhistler’s reaction to the seed placed in him, after all, she’s always been possessive.

  Grow, my little seed, and blossom forth into an entity that will make even the stars tremble.

  Ripley

  I stared at the now empty vial in my hand, a number ticking upwards in my peripheral.

  Link Establishing [Goliath Nanites]: 8%

  “Dreadwire!” Missy’s voice was loud in my ears. “If the link hasn’t yet finished, then you can remove the nanites! There should be the necessary apparatus back at my place, can you get there in time?!”

  I nodded without thinking, before responding audibly with words I couldn’t believe as the truth. “Yeah. I think I can.”

  Missy’s hideout was in a bar miles from here… and in a place lacking buildings for me to swing with. My bike was destroyed, so all I had to rely on was my Arachnodyne and… I was fucked.

  Twilight screamed over both of us. “I’m looking for a way there! Hold on Ripley, get into that elevator there!”

  I did as ordered, my legs pounding the floor as I made it to the elevator and pried it open with my Arachne limbs, then I began skittering up the passage until I left through the highest door.

  If I was right, we were now in the Iron-Grade Production layer and there was commotion all around us. Yuzhou had sent their reinforcements, several of them now focused on my arrival. Soldiers aiming their weapons at me but yet I barely registered

  My mind didn’t think as I moved while Hypermind slowed the world down. My entire soul was frozen in place as it tried to make sense of what had just happened inside the Pandora. My conversation with Himiko, the revalations about my Implant and the nature of The Source. The massive flaming DataShield that had sunk into my skull both digitally and physically…

  That Platinum Ember. The abrupt developlment of my Database Feature…

  And Goliath. The nanoswarm designed to convert living matter into inorganic substances was now flowing in my blood.

  9%…

  By the time I’d turned my attention back to the guards, a third of them were dead and my whip-blade was slick with blood. One of them struggled on a torn leg and raised their iron sights on me, but my left hand covered the barrel as the bullet fired. Smoke filtered out, the hand I’d grafted on from the armory not denting one bit.

  I just smacked his head, and felt the bones of his neck and skull crack from the force. My right hand moved likewise, three golden claw-tips digging into the locked-on targets upon their tracheas as I slipped past jetstreams of slowed down bullets. The golden wires reeled in, the trauma of their punctured airways sending them into panic as I finished them off with my left arm’s Necrotic blade. My actions seemed so fluid, my Warp Energy so… responsive.

  I’d awakened a Tendency, and increased in Grade, and in Tier. Compared to earlier in the day, I’d probably multiplied my mental processing speed several times over. Every bullet led into a swipe of my clawe, or a burst from my legs as I flipped over their forms and shot my golden wire out to weave ruin among their cohort.

  It was like they’d been submerged in water — and I was the only one who could swim.

  “This is Cashmere Three reporting in, Dreadwire is here at-!” My right arm’s shardgun splattered into the commander’s chest as bits of blood and steel went spraying, he was a Mutant of some kind that hadn’t died immediately to my blade. Then I turned that weapon back on the remaining guards, even with my terrible aim, mimicking the R0N1N’s power let me shred through their bodies as they stayed still like statues.

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  The world returned to normality as time flowed back into pace, my breath steady as bodies that had been standing suddenly collapsed like a collective stomp.

  15%…

  Intervals of one minute… even within my hyperspeed. Every mental minute was another percentage up for Goliath.

  Twilight shouted at my inaction. “Ripley, you should be on Missy’s floor now, she’s currently combatting two Silvers guarding passageway to the upper floors, slip past them and get out!”

  I affirmed by flowing into motion, my Arachne limbs powerful enough to joust me high into the air and hook me into the rafters to reach the brightened door up on the ledge. I landed, my claws primed and ready to peel it open and-

  Identity Confirmed…

  The doors opened by themselves at my arrival, like giving passage to an honoured guest.

  “What? I thought we nuked the net?! Why is it still… whatever! Ripley, get your ass hauling!” Twilight didn’t need to tell me again, even as other guards showed up I didn’t waste my time trying to take them all out.

  My left arm split to reveal a deadly blade hiding within, and my Arachnid arms skittered me above and beyond the cohorts who I let mostly stay alive.

  17%…

  18%…

  19%…

  I found Missy soon after, her Silver armor dented and worse for the occasion as she took on the brunt of three Silvers, all of them at Tier III if I was right. They couldn’t even be called humans, each of the Yuzhou guards were machinations of genetic or engineered modifications.

  One of them was a mountain of a mechanical man whose entire body flew in sparks as rocket-propelled punches and kicks threw him across the room in an instant. Another man wielded mirror-like shards of ice, each of them shining a blinding white beam that froze the ground into frost. The third was a woman who twirled with a spear in each inhumanely long arm, her body bending like rubber to twist as though each limb was a centipede.

  And Missy was beating all of them.

  A soft glow surrounded her armor, a reverberating layer of air that skirted indirect strikes from the spear-lady away as Missy jousted her large axe to tear into her side. Then, without a blink, a shield apparated from her right arm out of the seamlessly rearranging mechanical plates of her armor to block the earth-shaking crush of the rocket-armed Silver.

  The concrete cracked beneath her, then it froze as reflected beams of light struck down from each angle, but a dark wave of ash devoured the light with it’s shadows. Blood flashed from within that smokescreen, and an irregularly shaped arm flung near my feet.

  I couldn’t count how many times I heard steel crash against steel in that shadowy haze, but it was a sonorous disharmony as Missy’s clangs overtook the three others.

  “Get out! Dreadwire!” She screamed from within the mayhem.

  A large part of me still believed I could fight in there and come out okay, but looking at Missy… at the-

  Bronze Energy that she wielded against those Silvers, it told me enough about myself. I wasn’t ready, not yet — I was too unfamiliar with my expanded capabilities.

  It was difficult enough just maneuvering past the three of them even as time slowed down, one beam of light struck a lower Arachne limb, freezing it into stifness. Another rocket-punch came flying my way, and would have hit if not for Missy turning her axe into a spear and lodging it into the fist — it’s flaming propulsion faltering.

  The only Silver who left me alone in the brief seconds I crossed them was the one-armed Mutant. And that was became the lone arm rapidly devolved as the ash splintered the stub into a festering wound, spreading a sickness up to her face that quickly became seperated from the rest of her body with a cleave of blood.

  I felt like I should have had some reaction to the beheading, something other than the awe I felt for Missy, but whatever hidden response was submerged a long time ago.

  I flew my way to the staircase, my limbs working their damned best to avoid any flashing ice-beams or crushing strikes as once more the doors opened at my arrival.

  Only for me to come face-first with nearly thirty other guards awaiting for the outcome of Missy’s duel. Again, time slowed down, my Arachne limbs retalliating as I hopped over them, attempting to cling anywhere where there wasn’t bullet fire.

  22%…

  I was swarmed, quite literally, inside and out. Drones opened fire on me, their floating aim only adding to the complexity of calculations running in my head… except…

  Then they opened fire on the sortie of guards down below, what was happening? I was sure Twilight hadn’t taken control of these. These drones weren’t even on the same Net as the doors down below. The only logical conclusion was that it had to be related to Ms. Himiko, that either she was purposefully sending the machines into haywiring or that within all of the Gold Warpcode I’d devoured that there was some… authority over the mechanisms here.

  Oh well, that authority wasn’t helping with the humans trying to kill me now was it! We were out by their cargo bay, so there was enough space for me to maneuver around aerially, the large support pillars gave me plenty of cover to dodge and twist around the gunfire.

  The only issue was that the hangar doors out of here were sealed.

  “Quickshot! Blow a hole through the roof of the cargo bay!” I roared into my comms as I nestled up in the shadows of a pullar, before a meteor-like force slammed into the concrete supporting me and sent me into a freefall before the Preservation Matrix attached an Arachne tip to swing me out of an Exoguard’s lancing harpoon.

  They’d brought an Anti-Collosus Cannon with them? Something built for combatting only the largest and deadliest of the MAL, the thick array of rods shaped like an RPG shot out a harrowing sonic propulsion towards me that caved in through the concrete until it was dust, my body articulating through a labyrinthine maze of muzzle flashes and bullet fire.

  Just then, another boom wrecked into the bay, except this one came externally. Far into the other side of the room, rubble fell to expose a hole courtesy of Quickshot. That was my opportunity and I took it, my Arachne tips firing to grip into the shattered concrete and pull me through.

  Thread the needle. It was alot easier when time was slowed down and you could make microadjustments every second. My Arachne compacted last second to give me passage into freedom, extending back out just in time to brace my blow against the heavy steel fencing of the facility’s outer borders.

  Fucking finally! Home free, now I just had to reroute my path through the Pleasure Lanes… except… a spotlight glared down on me from above. Two floating Aerodyne’s, the same blocky and whirring machines that had been chasing me before now burned their fury down on me.

  I sighed down my annoyance, this day was never-ending.