- Client: None
- Location: Not specified.
- Duration: 60 days.
- Commanding Officers: Colonel Smithson, Chief Warrant Officer Gammon Vortega.
- Primary Goals:
- Unmask the identity of the investors behind the glitter farm south of Aba.
- Prevent public disclosure of any connection the Crows Guild may have to the operation.
- Upon success:
- Promotion from Probationary Recruit to Private 2nd Class.
- Upon failure:
- Expulsion from the Crows Guild.
“What is this?” Thorn asked. The anger that had been subsiding surged back.
“Your new orders,” Smithson said. “Gammon here will be your handler while I’m offworld. I expect to return in two months.
“You want to join the Crows? Fine, but I’m not going to give you a free ride.” The smile that Smithson gave Thorn could have frozen water. “You’re going to earn your spot, and I don’t need to tell you what will happen next if you fail and I get to expel you from the Guild.”
Thorn felt like he’d been had.
“And then the last thing… I told you not to lie to me, and yet you did,” Smithson said. “Take care never to do so again.”
“What are you talking about?” Thorn’s teeth clenched.
Smithson raised a single finger and pointed at the crow on Thorn’s shoulder.
Thorn didn’t see anything. There was a soft sound, and a flash of heat on his face. The crow fell off his shoulder and onto the ground, a smoking hole through its chest. Thorn stooped to pick it up, shocked to his core by the casual, unseen violence.
“Your lie was telling me that that beast is a crow,” Smithson continued, dropping his hand back down to his side. “It’s not a crow. Crows travel in flocks, in groups. Crows are native to this planet’s ecology, at least for the last half a millennia. That animal…that beast…is called a ‘raven.’
“Your Warden friend over here should know but likely doesn’t because ravens aren’t native to Agrotis. They were never introduced during the terraforming. That’s how I know it was part of the beast experiments that idiot Marta was fooling around with down in that cavern.
“Don’t hate on me kid, seems like you wanted a pet. We all go through that phase… but part of my job here was making sure none of those experiments escaped to see the light of day. Be thankful that I left you a body to bury.
“Gammon, seeing as you just put your own life on the line to give the new recruit a chance, you can stay here and make sure they get back to the outpost safely for their orientation.
He paused and frowned, looking down at the ground.
“And how do I say this… You decided you’re out of the game. So stay that way, understood? For your benefit. For everyone’s benefit.”
Without waiting for a response, Smithson jumped off and immediately took flight, hot red flames extending from machine tech extending out of his boots. Beatrice, in her large mechanized armor, took off right behind him, the roar of her turbines flattening the grass and brush in the clearing.
Thorn watched them fly off, the trembling body of the crow in his hands.
Not the crow.
The raven.
It wasn’t dead, at least not yet. It trembled and tried weakly to flap its wings, but couldn’t gather enough strength. It let out a soft “crrrk” and turned its eye to look up at Thorn.
“Why’d he have to do that?” Thorn asked no one in particular. Neither Lief nor Gammon answered him. “No one would have known.”
His System, on the other hand, didn’t seem to understand rhetorical questions.
There was no way he was going online.
Normally, in order to Integrate a user into a System, he needed something called a System seed. He obviously didn’t have one. He was also supposed to be online and have the necessary permissions.
That was the way things were supposed to go, ordinarily. But with the unpacking of each new skill, a certain level of implicit knowledge about the skill themselves came along with it. A gut instinct, perhaps you could call it. That same gut instinct had led him to create different types of loops with Concentrate.
That same instinct was telling him Integrate wasn’t such a simple, cut and dried skill. There was more to it, and there were ways around the requirements.
“Thorn,” Gammon said. “I won’t be able to carry both you and Lief back via my flight Skill; it won’t have enough lift. Where did you park your truck?”
“Gimme a minute,” Thorn replied.
“Of course,” Gammon said, looking down at the raven in Thorn’s hands. “I’m sorry. Take the time you need to say your goodbyes.”
“I don’t have time for goodbyes,” Thorn replied angrily. “What’s a System seed?”
“Why do you want to know?” Gammon asked, confused.
“Humor me.”
“Well, it’s basically the physical component of the System that’s implanted in every user. It’s a piece of machine tech. Usually very small. Nothing much to them, really, just something to house the System initially. A processor, some memory, etc. You should have seen yours when you got your System.”
He hadn’t seen when he’d received his System. So a “System Seed” was a fancy name for a basic piece of machine tech. He wondered how complicated or specific it needed to be.
“How much for your eye?” Thorn asked.
“He’s finally gone off the deep end for good this time,” Lief said. “I can’t handle this anymore. Next thing you know he’s gonna ask me for body parts too, and I’m running low as it is.”
“Um, not for sale,” Gammon said slowly. “But seeing as I’m the curious sort…why do you want one of my eyes?”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“The left one, specifically,” Thorn said. “I’m trying to save the bird.”
“And my left eye, which incidentally, is a very, very expensive piece of tech, is going to help…how?”
“One of my System’s Skills lets me Integrate a System into a new user,” Thorn explained. “The crow, I mean, raven is dying because Smithson nuked its core. Vaporized in a single shot. The beast is basically going through quintessence withdrawal and won’t live. Plus it has a hole in its chest. Why do I need to explain this to you? Use your eyes.”
“I am,” Gammon said. “No need to get snippy.”
“I’m sorry,. Thorn took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “All I need is a System and a seed. And apparently your left eye would do in a pinch as a seed.”
“Says who?”
“My System.” Thorn shrugged.
“Those cultist goons and their Systems are weird as hell.” Gammon looked at the raven and back up at Thorn. “You can always get another pet.”
“You can always get another eye, too,” Thorn retorted.
She rolled her eyes at his comeback. “Do you have a System to implant, though? Before I pop this guy out and put in a new commission with Beatrice?”
“I’m still working on that.”
“So just to back up one second, your plan is to implant a System into a beast,” she said. “I don’t think it’s possible, and even if it is, you need both the System and the seed. Do you have the spare System?”
Lief scooted over in the dirt and motioned for Thorn to hand him the bird.
“You know, Thorn,” he said, “you should have led with, ‘I’m trying to save the bird that saved our lives multiple times,’ instead of, ‘can I buy your body parts.’ Sounds a bit less soft in the head. Let me help stabilize the beast. I don’t just cull the animals of the forest; I have a few Skills that aid them as well.”
“Thanks,” Thorn said and gently handed the bird over to Lief.
“So back to the main problem. Do either of you have a spare System?” Gammon asked.
The two looked at her with blank stares.
“Right.”
“How about admin access to your System’s fork?” Thorn asked. “Or do either of you have an Architect friend you can send a quick comm to?”
“Noooo…”
Thorn ran the problem over in his mind. If he didn’t have a System, then all of this was moot.
Thorn was frustrated. He thought he’d stumbled onto a way to save the beast…to save their friend. He wouldn’t call it his pet. The daggone bird was too smart for that.
He had one more idea, one last ditch effort, based on what his System had said about how to use Integrate. He checked his status, and if he hadn’t been extremely frustrated he would have been depressed. Just how many quintessence loops had he made on his way out of that dead zone? He’d used so many quints. So. Many. Quints. Just gone. Looking at his balance of free quintessence was physically painful.
“I’m gonna level up,” Thorn said. “But I need a few more quints. I know Lief is out, since he gave me all of his. Gammon…can I ask for a loan?”
“So when you asked if you could buy my left eye earlier, like it was a normal thing to ask, sitting in the middle of a forest, as if you were purchasing a vehicle or a chair or a cake…you were going to do it on credit?”
“I’m kinda scrambling here,” Thorn admitted. “I have one more core skill in my System, and it’s supposed to make a set. I know it’s a long shot, but I want to try and see what it does. Please.”
“I’m pretty sure this is why I never had kids.” Gammon let out a long sigh. “How much?”
“Just another five thousand or so,” Thorn said. “I have about nineteen thousand, and just need twenty-four thousand to level up.”
“Oh. That’s not that bad. That’s all it takes? You kids got it easy these days.”
The message asking if he would accept the quints hit him a second later. Two moments later his eyes rolled back in his head as he bound the quintessence for level six.
When his consciousness returned, he finally understood.
Each level up had given him a piece of the puzzle; each of those pieces connected to the others, but weren’t entirely complete. Just like his System had told him, the full knowledge of his Skill kit had yet to be unpacked.
With the last Skill now in place, all of the pieces fit together and he understood what he could do. Not everything he could possibly do; there were still some tantalizing hints about the directions his System could take him in the future.
But with this last level up, he also knew without the smallest shadow of a doubt that the Church of Epistemological Singularity would be coming for him.
“Okay, I have a plan, and I think it’s gonna work, but I’m gonna need that eye,” Thorn said. “And I’ll pay you whatever. Lief’s got some cores in his lock box, he’s good for it.”
“Does it have to be the eye?” Gammon asked. “I’m very confident you cannot afford machine tech of this level.”
“ I guess not. But it does have to have a control module in it.”
The skin on Gammon’s forearm opened up, as if split down the middle, and a metallic, blood-slicked cylinder popped out. Gammon unscrewed the end of the cylinder, polished it on her shirt to wipe the blood off, and handed it to Thorn.
“It’s not very often I get to watch a newbie attempt experimental field surgery alongside potential war crimes on his first day with the Guild,” Gammon grumbled. “Take this. Much cheaper than the eye, but it should still work.”
Thorn took the offered piece of machine tech. It was similar in shape to a lugnut, but heavier and smaller, only the size of an acorn. The gray surface appeared smooth, but felt rough, with tiny, unseen pricks jabbing into the skin of his fingers. He received a prompt from his System to connect with the tech after he touched it with his bare skin, and he did so without any issues.
That was too bad. Maybe if Gammon had been willing to give up her eye, then he would have been able to do more, but with the options he had, there was only one choice.
This was going to be painful, Thorn realized, but there was no way around it.
His head split in pain as his connection to the custom agent was splintered off of his consciousness. The oddest part was he could still feel it; but it was like looking at a severed finger. It was his, it was supposed to be attached to him, but it wasn’t there anymore.
HIs latest skill, Splinter, was designed to be used against other Systems. With a touch or a connection, he could attack other Users’ Systems. It was a powerful, fearsome ability that Thorn had never heard of.
There were more advanced uses of the Skill, however. More subtle and insidious uses. Instead of directly attacking the coherence of another System, he could prepare an Agent with a specific set of instructions and let it loose in the other user’s System. He could create viruses to infect others. It made him feel dirty, even having the potential to use the Skill that way.
What he had just done was use it on himself. He didn’t believe that was the intended use case, outside of receiving a similar type of attack from another user. If infected by a rogue agent, he could slice the infected parts off and quarantine them, or discard them.
Ignoring the lingering pain in his head, Thorn gently pushed the command module into the wound on the raven’s chest. The tiny, raised bumps on the surface of the module extruded fine filaments into the raven’s body, holding it in place and extending its control. Lief packed the wound with gauze, bandaged it, then continued to use his healing Skill.
Thorn entered Meditate.
He examined the quintessence flows within the beast for minutes. Memorizing their weakening patterns as they attempted to pull quintessence from the shattered bits of core surrounding the System seed improvised from Gammon’s machine part and the Splintered Agent.
After he exited Meditate, he relayed the information he’d gathered to the agent and then sent an activation signal.
The System seed began to pull in quintessence. The bits of core that had shattered and not been completely vaporized disappeared and flowed into the seed. The raven convulsed and then went still. With his enhanced perception, Thorn could see the flutter of its heart stopping.
This was the most dangerous part, when the quintessence levels in the beast would be the lowest as the seed cleared out the damage from the shattered core. Next, it began to feed the quintessence it had gathered from the core fragments and was continuing to gather from the environment back through the beast’s body on the bound pathways that Thorn had meticulously observed.
Its heart began to beat. Its wings twitched, and it opened a baleful, blue eye.
“Did that actually work?” Gammon asked incredulously.
“I think so,” Thorn said.
The raven attempted to rise out of Lief’s grasp, but was too weak. It might have passed the most dangerous point, but it still had significant recovery ahead of it before it could fly again.
“Honestly, I’m shocked, and not much can do that anymore,” Gammon admitted. “I always knew you were a bit of a rebel, Thorn, but this…this might be on another level.” She shook her head, but she was smiling a little. “The Colonel didn’t leave any specific orders regarding the raven, either, so I’m not going to say anything.
“What’s your pet’s name, by the way?”
“Well, it’s not my pet, not really,” Thorn said. “And we’ve been busy trying not to die, so we never really got around to a name.”
“No name, huh?” Gammon said. “Hmmm.”
“How about…‘Raver’?” Lief said. “Since it’s a raven, apparently, whatever that is.”
“No,” Thorn and Gammon said in unison.
“Just call it ‘Crow’ then,” Lief said. “No one will know the difference.”
“Smithson would,” Thorn said, his tone biting.
They spent a few minutes thinking over name options, but nothing seemed to stick.
What would a good name be? Thorn queried his System and it gave him a few options. One name stood out in particular. He rolled the syllables over his tongue. It had a nice ring to it.
“Korakis.”
The black-winged, blue-eyed beast looked over at Thorn and gave a caw of approval.