“Okay, exactly how fucked are we?”

The fact that the hallway we’re in doesn’t seem to have been flooded with deadly neurotoxin gives me some indication. But this is Zero’s area of expertise, so I’ll defer to her. Besides, most of my attention is on dealing with the private security team currently shooting at me.

In spite of their relative mediocrity compared to bigger mercenary groups, the Guarantor Security Solutions unit under contract with XS Technologies has a fairly impressive response time. Within under a minute of the facility’s alarms being triggered, they had a dozen men at our position. The steel shutters closing the hallway off at both ends raised up momentarily to let them through, and then slammed back down, locking us in with them- or locking them in with us, depending on your perspective. My shield and Sandra’s armor means we don’t have much to worry about with regards to bullets, but any moment now, they’re going to wise up and try a different approach.

“This isn’t ideal, but I think we got lucky. Relatively speaking.”

Right on cue, the gunfire stops, and the guards draw stun batons. All the force of a regular reinforced club, plus a few thousand volts for good measure. My armor’s insulated, but being hit with one isn’t pleasant, to say nothing of six at once. As they advance, I drop the shield and part my trenchcoat, drawing weapons of my own from inside. Two reinforced titanium truncheons, with several inches on the guards’ weapons, but lacking the electric charge. I have no interest in killing them, considering we’re the ones breaking and entering, but I won’t let them kill me either. As she prepares to deal with her half of the rapid-response team, Zero continues talking.

“Maitreya can’t have become aware more than a few hours ago. It hasn’t figured out recursive self-improvement yet, or managed to propagate beyond this facility. Turning on the alarm was the extent of its ability to deal with us.”

One of the guards swings at me. I block his baton with one of mine, and use the other to bash his kneecap in, making him buckle and fall to the ground, where a well-timed knee to the face ensures he won’t be bothering me for the next while. Seeing one of their number dispatched so easily makes the rest of the guards hesitate, but not enough to deter them. After watching Jason send entire squads running simply at the sight of him, I’m starting to get sick of having to deal with them all personally.

“Are you sure? This facility is off the grid, but it could have turned some of the staff to its side and had them construct backups.”

Even though most of the machine intelligences I’ve dealt with in the past didn’t qualify as true AI, I’m well-aware of the capabilities a real one would pose. With limitless intelligence, it would be easy to construct the perfect argument and make someone willingly serve you, no ‘mind control’ necessary. Though I can’t exactly turn and watch, I hear Zero dealing with her own problems while she responds.

“If it did, why not just let us destroy these servers and think we solved the problem? There’s no reason to put up this much of a fight except for genuine self-preservation.”

Unlike my recent encounter with a roughly equivalent number of untrained street punks, I can’t simply count on these guards approaching me one by one or in pairs. All five that remain approach as a group, forming a semicircle around me, stun batons ready to strike. I wait for one of them to get cocky and make a jab, before sidestepping and bludgeoning his outstretched arm with enough force to shatter the bone. However, the move forces me to turn my back on one of the guards, and he doesn’t miss the chance to whack me with his weapon. My coat absorbs most of the charge, meaning I don’t feel more than a static sting, and the armor underneath diffuses the impact. It won’t leave so much as a bruise- but it was sloppy of me. I jam an elbow into his gut and jab the other truncheon into his throat without so much as turning around, leaving him gasping for air. He isn’t going to asphyxiate, but for the next few moments it’ll certainly feel like it.

“Double-bluff?”

In an effort to maintain greater focus on the fight, I keep my reply short, but Zero gets what I mean.

“Maybe. I’ll run a trace once we’re done here. For now, mission stays the same.”

Pretty much what I was expecting. Even if Maitreya is trying to fool us into thinking that destroying the servers at this facility will kill it, we can’t do much more than speculate at the moment. But I had to at least raise the possibility. My assessment of the overall situation is essentially the same. This facility offers no avenues for the AI to spread outside its current confines, and there isn’t much on the internal network for it to use against us, meaning the little trick it played with the cameras might have been the best it had. Neither of us are quite stupid enough to underestimate an AI, though, even one that might have only activated a few hours ago.

Using one of the three remaining guards as a shield, I block another’s attack, and get to see up close what unprotected exposure to their stun batons looks like. It’s not pretty- neither the spasming nor the sounds he makes are particularly pleasant. I shove the unfortunate man towards his friends, and they stumble back, giving me an opening. One receives a truncheon thrown directly at his face, and the noise tells me his nose is almost certainly broken. Catching the weapon on its ricochet, I deliver the other man a snap-kick to the ribs, breaking at least two. One last fist to the face is enough to knock him down.

When I turn around, Zero is finishing up as well. Her fight did more damage to the environment than mine, as one of the guards seems to have been slammed into a wall hard enough to leave a dent. Fortunately, the chances of making this entire operation go completely unnoticed were already virtually nil, so a little physical evidence won’t matter much. And thanks to the Fawkes program, none of these people will be able to positively identify either of us afterwards.

“Guess this means we can take a more direct route,” I offer, as Lai catches her breath. Though she’s clearly a competent fighter, it’s obvious she doesn’t have as much stamina as I do. Not that I’m judging her for that- I spend every night and most days picking fights with people who are stronger than me, and she spends most of her time behind a keyboard. Overall, she’s probably done more good in the world than me, but at least I don’t tire as easily.

“Mhm.”

As we head towards the nearer shutter, I take a moment to pull up the facility blueprint, keeping it minimized in a corner of my HUD. Thanks to the time I spent memorizing the layout on the flight, I’m fairly confident in my ability to navigate without it, but considering a hostile AI has control over an unknown amount of this building’s operations, it seems prudent not to take chances.

The micro-explosives in my utility belt could get us through the shutter, but Zero saves me the trouble by simply punching it off its hinges. Seeing someone with such a slight, if athletic frame demonstrate such strength is a little disconcerting, but not as much as you might expect. It’s not as if super-strength is granted exclusively to people who already look like bodybuilders, after all. Her hard-light armor is opaque, deep blue and reasonably large, though weightless by nature of its status as an energy construct. I still don’t quite understand how it functions, and despite the circumstances, I decide to just ask.

“How can you hit that hard using a construct?”

Lai doesn’t look back as she answers, and I assume that she’s got at least two separate screens active on her AR display.

“Well, I can whip up a simple design like your shield on the fly, but more complex ones are harder. So I have a bunch pre-programmed into the suit. Robards actually designed this one, so it’s fully functional underneath the surface. All the same servos and stuff that help him hit as hard as he does.”

There are some obvious downsides to that setup, particularly in that she can’t use ranged weapons of any sort. The projectiles would simply cease to exist once they strayed too far from the projectors in her bodysuit. But given that she can suit up even faster than Machina himself, and doesn’t have to worry about the armor’s weight, it seems like a solid trade-off. Not to mention the fact that she’s got other, equally complex pre-programmed designs ready to deploy at any time.

“Smart.”

As we round the corner, another person comes into view. Not a guard, but a uniformed employee. He’s kneeling by an elevator, and welding it shut using a handheld acetylene torch. The man turns as soon as he sees us, just in time for the stun-gun built into my right gauntlet to hit him in the chest, dropping him immediately. Zero doesn’t question my choice to incapacitate him, despite the fact that he didn’t pose a threat. Given that there’s no good reason for someone to be welding an elevator closed while an alarm is going off, he was presumably acting on orders from Maitreya itself- meaning he was a potential vector for infohazards. The fact that it’s got human agents already is concerning, though the guards seemed to simply be responding to an alert, not following the AI’s instructions directly. At a guess, this guy wasn’t turned directly, but rather received orders from someone closer to Maitreya who was. Either way, it was safer to knock him out than risk an interrogation. Sandra approaches the elevator, and taps the door experimentally.

“This won’t take us to the sub-basement, but it should let us bypass the Robotics division entirely.”

I shake my head.

“That’s bait. Maitreya’s not stupid- it knows those doors wouldn’t stop us, welded shut or otherwise. At best, if we tried to take the shaft, it would drop the elevator on us. That’s assuming it wasn’t being rigged with a thousand other traps while we were dealing with the guards.”

Sandra’s expression isn’t visible, but I can imagine her lips forming a tight line, as she considers my words and accepts that I’m right. I can’t blame her for taking the bait- it’s only thanks to my training with Jason and years of experience dealing with dangerous psychopaths that I have such a well-developed sense of paranoia. If we were just executing her plan as it had been originally outlined, I don’t doubt that Zero would be in complete control, but things went wrong almost immediately, and it’s thrown her off her game. Good thing I asked to come along.

“Robotics it is, then. But don’t waste any time. Every second Maitreya is conscious, it’s getting more dangerous.”

The stairs aren’t much further down the hallway, though Lai has to bust down another shutter before we get there. Neither of us are exactly sprinting, in order to conserve energy for the next fight, but we don’t stroll leisurely either. As I step into the stairwell, instead of walking down one step at a time, I vault over the railing and descend to the next level, letting the suit’s slow-fall arrest my momentum. These stairs only go down one floor, and the next set that lead downwards are halfway across the building. Hopefully all we’ll have to deal with are a few more guards.

Behind me, I hear Zero land, making much less noise than you’d expect given the size of her armor. Even knowing rationally that it doesn’t weigh anything, I can’t help but expect it to be louder. Putting aside my momentary cognitive dissonance, I open the door, and a charging bull immediately greets me.

My armor’s impact-resistant plating is all that prevents me from getting a full set of broken ribs, as the creature slams into me. I barely manage to brace against it, saving myself from being trampled. In the process I notice that it’s not actually a bull, but rather a headless, quadrupedal machine with a horse-like body. Fortunately it wasn’t built with horns, or I’d have an exciting new orifice somewhere on my chest.

Despite my armor-augmented strength, I’m not capable of holding this thing back for more than a few seconds. Luckily I don’t have to, as Zero swings an arm down, with a massive blade having replaced the gauntlet of her holo-armor at some point. It may just be condensed energy, but it’s sharp enough to cleave the robot in half instantly. As the two pieces fall to the floor, I get a chance to examine them more closely. The design is obviously aping one from a certain American robotics company, though perhaps with an emphasis on speed rather than carrying capacity. It was also presumably networked in some way, considering Maitreya was obviously attempting to use it as a weapon. We’re lucky that XS Tech isn’t an arms manufacturer, or we’d be dealing with a much deadlier class of machine right now.

“Thanks,” I wheeze, the wind knocked out of me by the impact. It takes a moment before I’m back on my feet. Strangely, there don’t seem to be any shutters down this hallway, either blocking our way forward or sealing the labs shut.

“No problem,” Zero replies, striding briskly forward. Another door swings open, but instead of another quadruped, what emerges is an automated vacuum cleaner. Just a harmless metal disc designed to keep houses clean. But another follows, and then another, until there are a dozen of them shifting back and forth on the floor. In order to proceed, we’re going to have to walk over them.

While some part of me figures they’re also land mines, I have a feeling this is exactly as simple as it seems. Just a tactic to delay us by a few seconds, so Maitreya can develop that much more, and generate a way to deal with us more permanently. I pull a grenade from my utility belt and toss it into the fray. After a second, it detonates, spraying the hallway with vacuum shrapnel. I can’t help but chuckle, and when the ringing in my ears subsides, I realize that Zero is laughing too.

What’s less funny is the armed squadron of guards that’s assembling at the far end of the hall, preventing us from accessing the stairs down to the first floor. Unlike the ones we dealt with before, they’re armed with rifles rather than handguns. Not that it makes much difference. I let Zero advance towards them, shielding me from their gunfire, while selecting another device from my belt. Maitreya may not be capable of killing us with neurotoxin, but I’m under no obligation to play fair; these guards aren’t wearing gas masks. Once we’re close enough, I lob another grenade forward, letting it bounce off the floor and roll towards them. They scatter, but rather than detonate, it starts pumping out tear gas. I feel some sympathy for them, having been subjected to the stuff myself, but not enough to refrain from disabling them. Lai follows suit, protected from the gas just as I am, and we make short work of the men. Whatever their orders were, killing us wasn’t the real objective. Just slowing us down. Fortunately, once I can be sure they aren’t going to shoot either of us in the back, I move on, and Zero moves with me.

“Just so you know, I’ve authorized an air-strike on this facility in case we fail. Ideally, we’d translocate out before the bombs dropped, but there are some scenarios where we die before that happens.”

The completely casual way Sandra says that should unnerve me, but I’ve had similar conversations a hundred times before. It’s a part of the job for me, and for any self-respecting hero- as contradictory as that term might feel.

“Guess the others will have to figure out how to spin it as a terrorist attack if that happens,” I quip. That gets another chuckle from her, though more thanks to the grim nature of the joke than any real humor.

Even without shutters blocking them off, the lab doors remain shut, and behind them is utter silence. If we weren’t on a tight timer, I would want to see what was going on inside, but we can’t afford distractions. Not to mention the high chance that whatever’s inside would try to kill me. Reaching the next stairwell, I hold the door open to allow Zero through.

“Ladies first, this time.”

“Funny.”

Lai doesn’t complain, as she drops down to the next floor. Really, I should have let her go first before- she’s significantly more durable than me, thanks to her armor. Not to mention, I’d agreed on the flight over to follow her lead. Though it does feel as if we’ve silently agreed to discard that notion, what with the situation having changed so dramatically.

No robot horses, bulls, or other animals try to trample Zero as she opens the door to the first floor. In fact, there are no obvious obstacles in sight at all. A little ironic, considering this is the home security division, but at the same time I can’t really fault Maitreya for being unable to weaponize inanimate locks against us. After taking a few cautious steps forward, waiting for some hidden trap to trigger, Sandra starts to pick up the pace, almost jogging forward. Once it becomes clear that nothing is going to explode or attack us, she starts running, and the suit’s enhancements kick in, making me work to keep up. I remain rather impressed that Zero managed to replicate the complex inner workings of one of Machina’s suits, entirely using hard-light holographic constructs.

The shutters are back, and instead of stopping to knock them down, Lai simply slams into them, leaving a hole wide enough for me to comfortably follow her through. Even if this division’s tech didn’t provide any specific tools, it’s concerning that Maitreya barely put in any effort trying to slow us down, this close to reaching it. There’s little doubt in my mind that whatever always us in the sub-basement will be worse than everything we’ve faced so far.

A top-of-the-line ‘smart lock’ bars our path down to the AI division. If this were still an infiltration mission, I’m sure Zero would do something clever to bypass it. Instead, she simply tears the door off its hinges. Together, we descend one final stairwell, into the belly of the beast.

Up until now, the facility itself has been completely unremarkable. Standard corporate design philosophy, boring and minimalist. But down in the sub-basement, Maitreya has been doing some redecorating. The drab white walls have been coated crimson, not by paint cans, but by the corpses strewn across the hall, violently mutilated by blunt weaponry and human hands. A part of me wants to scream, or start vomiting, but there’s no place for revulsion or horror here. Lai doesn’t say a thing.

Compared to the rest of the facility, the AI division is fairly small. At the end of the hall is the server room, where our target awaits. Along the way are a number of different labs, where the monster we’re about to slay was born. Before either of us can take a single step down the corridor, someone speaks.

“I can’t see you, but I know that you’re there.”

Unlike everyone else we’ve seen so far, who’ve exclusively spoken in Korean, this voice is addressing us in unaccented American English. The digital cloak makes us invisible to artificial eyes, but not inaudible- Maitreya probably heard us talking on our way down here and decided to do its best to communicate. Zero doesn’t even wait until it finishes the sentence to bark an order at me.

“Switch.”

“Switching.”

There are quite a few hidden buttons scattered across the surface of my suit, each one keyed to a different function. The one I hit this time puts me on ‘mute.’ Whatever the AI says next, I don’t hear a word of it- or of anything else. All external audio input has been completely disabled. Most days I’m happy to listen to the villain’s final monologue, especially if they let a crucial detail slip in the process. Maitreya isn’t a supervillain, though. It’s a nascent superintelligence, and I have little doubt it could talk me into killing myself if I gave it the chance. Zero’s presumably managed to shut it out as well, and she opens a channel between the two of us. We’ve got to assume Maitreya can listen in on the line, but so long as it can’t communicate, we should be fine.

Before either of us can speak, every door between us and the server room opens at once. Slowly, the people inside stagger out. Not a single one doesn’t have blood on their hands, or elsewhere on their body. Some are security guards, but plenty of them seem to be researchers and support staff as well. I spy a few weapons, improvised and otherwise, but some seem to have participated in the bloodbath with nothing but their nails and teeth.

“Fanatics.”

I don’t need to hear them to know that Lai is right. These aren’t people anymore. They’ve been altered permanently by Maitreya. Turned into creatures with no purpose but to kill. It's a trick the American military has been trying to replicate for a while now- using a specific pattern of sensory inputs to drive people insane. Sort of like the psychological equivalent of the brown note. Apparently Maitreya's figured it out, and hijacked the sound system and lights in order to turn these people into frenzied killing machines. Worse still, they all seem to be more interested in killing us than each other.

“You know, I’m starting to come around to your perspective.”

Zero’s turned her armor’s fists into blades again, and she readies herself to use them as the mob begins to approach. I wish, not for the first time, that I’d brought my rifle. Being able to simply shoot these people would save us both a lot of trouble. It’s unfortunate that they have to die, but there isn’t anything human left inside of these things. Putting them down will be a mercy.

“How’s that?”

The fanatics begin to move faster, until the whole mass is swarming towards us like the tide. I’m reminded of starving rats, ready to strip every last scrap of flesh from the bone. I toss a grenade into the crowd, and watch as the napalm ignites, scorching the psychotics.

However horrifying the pictures of burn victims look, it pales in comparison to watching people get burned in real time. Seeing skin start to melt off of a man’s bones is easily one of the worst things I’ve ever had to witness. Worse is knowing that you’re responsible- especially knowing that the people you’re burning alive were completely ordinary not too long ago. My suit protects me from the stench, but I’ve been near a burning body without that kind of protection before. For a moment, I can almost taste the acrid scent again.

It’s already clear that it won’t be enough, though. Only the handful who were closest to the detonation died- the others were shielded by their friends. It still scorched them horribly, but these things don’t feel pain anymore. Even if I wasn’t suppressing all external sound, I doubt I’d be hearing a single scream right now.

“Well,” I begin, drawing my sidearm and putting a hole in the head of a kind-looking man in a lab coat, “this seems like an inefficient use of resources.”

Though I manage to get a few more shots off before the fanatics reach us, it doesn’t do much to thin the herd. My weapon, Inquiry, is a precise one, designed to take down well-defended targets. It’s not as useful against large groups as my rifle would have been. Luckily, Zero picks up the slack, charging into the fray and impaling two men on one of her arm-blades.

“Maitreya could probably have turned each one of them individually if it had more time,” I continue, taking a step back. “Made them into intelligent sociopaths, capable of creativity and problem-solving. Instead, it tried to make everyone down here into a killing machine, just to slow us down. It couldn’t even successfully convert all of them, so it clearly doesn’t have any kind of universal argument. That’s not long-term planning, it’s survival, like you said.”

She’s busy dismembering the ex-humans, but Lai finds time for a terse reply. “Probably only figured out how to do this recently. We don’t have much time left.”

If the AI did this, it can’t be far from being capable of creating willing, intelligent servants like what I described. And if it manages to send someone like that into the wild, we’ll be in big trouble. Despite our best efforts, Maitreya’s delaying tactics are working.

“This is taking too long. Go- finish the job. I’ll deal with these guys.”

Sandra is silent for a moment, and I can tell she’s making a quiet calculation of my chances. Whatever the outcome, she doesn’t say a word, just simply takes off down the hall. Fortunately, the fanatics aren’t particularly goal-oriented, so they don’t follow her- they focus their attention on me instead.

Even having had their ranks thinned significantly by Zero, the mob is still sizable. None of their improvised weapons can penetrate my armor alone, but that doesn’t mean I’m safe. It’s easy to imagine them overwhelming me, pinning me down, and tearing it off, piece by piece, so they can rip out my heart and eat it. Needless to say, that’s an outcome I intend to avoid.

The AI research team at XS Tech was about seventy-five people strong. About a third of them were dead when we got down here, sacrificed in the name of Maitreya’s redecoration project. Lai dealt with another third before I sent her off to stop Maitreya. That leaves me with roughly twenty-five. Most of them are covered in burns, including a few who are actively on fire. Others took nonlethal hits from Zero’s blades, leaving them with deep gashes that they show no indication of feeling any pain from. I’ve got about five yards between them and me, and I intend to make the most of it.

Grenades aren’t going to do the trick, even standard fragmentation. Shrapnel does most of the work there, and unless it kills them instantly, it’s of no use to me. Instead, I take a metal orb from one of my belt’s pouches, slightly smaller than a baseball. Rather than throwing it into the crowd, I toss it towards the space between them and me. It activates in mid-air, firing wires in every direction. They attach to any available surface, each one connected to the orb in the center. Thin enough to be nearly translucent, they’re monofilament, sharp enough to flense off a man’s skin like peeling a potato.

The first fanatic to charge into the tangle of wires discovers what really makes them special. Instead of snapping, as a taut string should, they remain rigid. The faster you’re moving when you make contact with them, the less flexible they are. That means someone trying to simply smash past will end up like him- in pieces. A wire slices right through his skull, killing him instantly, but momentum is enough to take him through a few more, each of which carves his corpse into smaller and smaller chunks. Insanity is supposed to mean doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result, and the next fanatic certainly proves himself insane when he does the exact same thing. To his credit, he tries to leap over the first few, but all that accomplishes is making sure he falls into even more wires on his way down, which dice him up like a carrot. But after a few more failed attempts, they seem to wise up. Instead of rushing headlong into the wires, the next few fanatics approach slowly, pushing at them with one hand. It’s sharp enough to cost them a few fingers, but the wire bends, and when they apply enough pressure, eventually one breaks.

Obviously, I’m using Inquiry to pick them off while this is happening, but it can only fire so fast. Not to mention, every shot that isn’t instantly lethal may as well be a miss. I’m used to incapacitating enemies simply via pain. A gunshot wound or a broken bone will usually be enough to stop anyone who isn’t highly trained. These guys feel nothing at all. I’ve dealt with opponents who intentionally deadened their nerve endings to make themselves better combatants, but never this many at once.

By my count, there are thirteen left when the last wire snaps. A few cut their hands in half trying too hard to break the wires, and some have chunks of skull missing from where I got an indirect hit. But they’re all functional enough to fight, and now there’s nothing between them and me. So I holster the pistol and draw my truncheons again.

Unlike before, I’m fighting to kill. Broken bones and nerve strikes aren’t going to slow these things down. One of them lunges for me, so I use the momentum against him, slamming him against a wall. Then, without hesitation, I drive the end of a truncheon through his eye socket and into his brain. When it comes out, covered in a dozen different fluids, he falls to the ground.

That pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the fight. In terms of advantages, all the fanatics have are their numbers and their immunity to pain. Savagery and bloodlust are nothing new to me, so the way they fight doesn’t throw me off. And even if some of them were trained, they aren’t using any of those skills now. Killing them isn’t particularly hard- staying alive long enough to do it is the tricky part.

Blunt weapons aren’t ideal for this kind of fight, but I don’t carry swords. Instead, I use the truncheons like a pair of blades, if dull ones. They won’t be cutting anything, but I can still stab someone with them if I need to. The human body is fairly durable, so I target weak points, ramming a baton through one woman’s throat. A younger man is screaming something, so I stick my hand in his mouth, and while he’s failing to bite through my gauntlet, I tear out his jaw. Then, with the lower half of his head exposed, I position a truncheon underneath, and push his head down onto it, until I can feel the weapon break through his scalp.

Increasing the amperage well past what’s lethal for an ordinary person, I fire my stun-gun, completely frying the next target’s nervous system. Though they twitch and spasm on the ground for a few seconds, it’s just muscles firing involuntarily- they’re already dead. Activating the hard-light shield to block a hit from a stun baton, I use the defensive measure as an offensive measure, knocking the former guard to the ground and using the shield to separate his head from his shoulders. It goes on like that for a while. Some of the fanatics manage to land a blow or two, but nothing that comes anywhere near properly hurting me. When all’s said and done, I’ve made my own contribution to the AI division remodeling effort- though most of the paint seems to have ended up on me somehow. It’s a good thing I already wear black.

Once the fanatics are dead, I realize belatedly that it’s been several minutes without word from Zero. Without caring whether I’m treading on a corpse or not, I sprint down the hall, making little splashes whenever I step foot in one of the many puddles of blood. All the while, the AI’s been talking, though I haven't heard a word. My suit still registers the noise, even if it’s preventing me from hearing any of it. I wonder if it’s trying to reason with me, or beg for its life, or threaten me with a slow and painful death. Most likely none of the above. Maitreya doesn’t fear fear, or anger. It’s a completely alien intelligence, and if what I just had to deal with is any indication, it’s one that we can’t allow to leave this place.

Maitreya’s ‘home’ seems to have been spared the redecorating process, thanks to the reinforced doors that Lai broke down on her way in. The walls are the same blank white, but row after row of servers stretch up to the ceiling and across to the far side of the room. There’s no sign of Zero, but the servers nearest to the door seem to have been sliced into pieces, which gives me some indication of where she’s been. I simply follow the trail of mutilated machinery until it stops suddenly, and gets replaced by a trail of blood.

Picking up the pace, I follow the crimson path through the maze of servers, until I round a corner and find Lai. She’s on the ground, leaning against an intact server bank, pressing her hands to a stomach wound. The armor is gone, but she’s protected by a translucent hard-light cube. A few feet away is the corpse of a technician, with a device I don’t recognize clutched in his death-grip. As I approach, Zero looks up and sighs in relief. Pressing a single key on the holographic keyboard in front of her, she takes the cube down and beckons me closer. Once I’m within range, she brings it back up and taps her ear.

Cautiously, I ‘unmute,’ but Maitreya’s voice is gone. Instead, Sandra speaks. I’m prepared to attack if she’s been compromised, but there’s no indication so far that that’s the case.

“-you hear me? Good. The box is soundproof, don’t worry.”

“What happened?”

Zero frowns, and glances at the body outside her box.

“Maitreya had one of its converts rig up a device that knocked out my suit and comms. He got me pretty good, but I got him back.”

Brightening slightly, she gestures up, and I notice a USB stick in the server she’s leaning against. A quick check confirms that none of the others nearby have anything in their respective ports, meaning she put it there.

“Got it, too. Shouldn’t be much longer before my virus wipes the whole thing out. But there’s more converts in here- smart ones, not like the fanatics. You gotta finish them off before we can leave.”

For a moment, I wonder why she’s sitting here alone if there are more of Maitreya’s servants about. But if these ones are smart, they’ll know that they can’t penetrate the hard-light barrier protecting her. Instead, they’re hiding, waiting for her to run out of power so they can finish the job. And when I step out of the box, they’ll be gunning for me too.

“Understood. Take this.”

I toss Lai my RegeneraGel pack, and she begins applying it to her wound immediately. I’m a little surprised she didn’t bring any of the stuff herself, but perhaps she assumed she wouldn’t ever need it. Or, more charitably, there’s some other reason that I would find perfectly logical if only I was aware of it.

“Ready?”

Turning the mute function back on, I give Zero a nod, and she takes the box down to allow me egress. Once I’m out, she puts it back up and slumps a little further down towards the ground. It’s a good thing we can simply translocate out after the mission is complete, or I’d have to carry her.

The converts aren't going to be as easy to deal with as the fanatics. They haven't taken leave of their senses, they're fully in control of their faculties. Yet Maitreya still controls them. That suggests two possible scenarios. Either it's been 'awake' for weeks now, and whispering in their ears to convert them slowly, or it figured out how to turn them within minutes or hours of achieving sentience. I'm not sure which prospect is more concerning. But either way, these people need to be dealt with permanently, and fast.

I’m half expecting the attack to come immediately, but it doesn’t. While I have the chance, I switch to thermals, allowing me to identify the converts by their heat signature. The server room is kept cold, and while my suit’s insulation keeps me comfortable, it does make locating the enemy easier. There are six heat signatures- one of which is very close. Right on the other side of the nearest server bank, in fact. Probably waiting to ambush me when I walk past. Instead, I draw Inquiry, and fire a tungsten penetrator round through the server to hit him, disabling the machine itself in the process. Though I can’t hear his body hit the floor, the way that his heat signature starts to fade tells me everything that I need to know.

While intelligent converts are notionally more dangerous than rabid fanatics, it really depends on two factors. First, the resources available to them. These converts are technicians and AI researchers, meaning they’re of above-average intelligence, and they were able to cobble together a device capable of disabling Zero’s armor. But this is a server room, not a workshop, and I doubt they had time to fabricate armor-piercing ammunition. Second, the baseline intelligence of the converts themselves. These people are intelligent, yes, but that doesn’t make them clever. I, on the other hand, may not be able to match their raw intelligence, but clever I can do.

One of the other converts, realizing I can shoot through walls, makes a run for it. Unlike the fanatics, these things have a self-preservation instinct, but only so far as it serves their master. That means he isn’t trying to save himself, but rather buy a little more time for something. What, I can’t be certain, but I’m not especially interested in finding out. Instead of wasting ammunition firing at his distant heat signature, I adjust my weapon’s firing mode, and activate the plasma torch. The battery life on this attachment is abysmal, but I only need it active for a second. Firing a superheated beam in the convert’s direction, I swipe it from left to right, destroying several rows of servers in the process. Doing damage isn’t the point, though- I just need a clear line of sight.

When the servers are finished falling, it exposes the convert, who’s clutching something in his arms as he runs. Probably some sort of makeshift weapon, designed by Maitreya to penetrate my armor, or otherwise disable me. An AI’s design is no use if the human hands tasked with creating it can’t work fast enough, though. Before he can turn to face me, I switch back to standard fire and shoot him. Inquiry doesn’t fire ordinary ammunition, meaning the phrase ‘had his head blown off’ isn’t exactly metaphorical in this case. Jason didn’t always carry such a powerful weapon, but it became pretty clear after he started working with the Front Line that regular bullets weren’t going to cut it. While I was dealing with that convert, one of the heat signatures belonging to the four remaining ones disappeared. Apparently one of the converts is clever- he managed to figure out that I can’t hear anything at all. That, or Maitreya told him. Either way, he took full advantage of that fact by running across the room, obscured by the server banks, to get behind me. This sequence of events clicks together in my head moments before he strikes, and I dart behind a corner just as he opens fire.

Unfortunately for the convert, none of his bullets seem to be capable of penetrating the servers I’m taking cover behind, while my own certainly are. As he’s spraying his master’s own brain with lead in the hopes of saving it, I fire off another tungsten round, and drop him. Despite his clever tactics, the convert was ultimately limited by a lack of time and resources. It’s still chilling to imagine how dangerous these people could have been if Maitreya came online a few weeks sooner. Stepping back out to examine the body and verify that the gunman is dead, it becomes clear that he was simply wielding an ordinary rifle, of the same model as what the guards carry. If he’d been equipped with armor-piercing rounds, or possessed faster reflexes, he could have actually taken me out. And if we allow Maitreya to escape, it’ll have access to smarter, better-trained converts, and the resources it needs to make them dangerous.

There are just three left. They’re on the move, probably coordinating. The suit tells me that Maitreya is still speaking, but at this point I would expect it to have given up on trying to penetrate Zero’s soundproofing or my own. More likely it’s directing the actions of its remaining converts. Having a superintelligent AI guiding your hand will certainly improve combat effectiveness, but it’s not as if Maitreya can grant any of them the ability to take me in a fight, or build them a gun capable of piercing my armor from scratch. With enough time and resources, maybe, but right now it has neither. A lethal virus is worming its way through the AI’s systems, and the computing substrate that it lives within has taken some serious damage. Despite everything, we’re about to complete the mission. So long as I don’t fuck it up.

Maitreya’s converts are trying to box me in, approaching from multiple directions. If I focus on one, the other two will strike, and I can’t be certain they aren’t wielding unconventional weaponry. If I deployed Watson, it would allow me to multitask, but I don’t want to risk opening up an unsecured connection. That might give Maitreya a chance to infect the drone, and survive past its imminent destruction. No- I’m just going to have to kill three birds with one stone.

Both the converts and I are approaching an intersection. When I reach it, they’re going to get line of sight on me, and open fire with whatever they’re packing. Conversely, it will give me line of sight on them, which only matters if I can figure out a way to take all of them out at once. Being forced to fight without sound is unfortunate, but the mark of a competent combatant is being able to turn disadvantages into advantages. So I whisper something, well aware that Maitreya will hear- because it doesn’t matter.

“Execute Symphony.”

As I step into the intersection, my suit begins broadcasting a high-pitched sonic frequency designed to be maximally painful to human ears. I’d hesitate to use this in proximity to an ally, but Zero’s box is soundproof, meaning the only ones who are hearing it are the converts. Being unexpectedly exposed to upwards of a hundred and eighty decibels is enough to make most people drop whatever they’re holding and press their hands to their ears, but sustained exposure means their eyes are about to start bleeding. These people may have been turned into heartless servants of a malicious artificial intelligence, but they don’t deserve that. So I Inquiry once, twice, three times, and then end the broadcast.

Once it’s done, I realize that the room is silent. My suit isn’t registering Maitreya’s voice anymore. Either Zero’s virus finished it off, or it’s simply given up. I’m still not going to risk being hit with a last-ditch sonic attack until Lai can confirm that the mission is complete, so I holster my weapon and head back to her holdout. When I get there, she’s already taken the box down and pushed herself into an upright position. I tap a finger where my ear would be on my helmet; safe to unmute? She nods once.

“It’s done.”

That much was probably obvious, but Zero gives a sigh of relief regardless. “Good. Let’s get out of here.”

“Shouldn’t we trash the rest of the servers, just to be sure?”

If she’d been in better health, I get the sense Sandra would have sighed, but she just shakes her head. “Bombs will take care of that for us. Which is why we need to leave sooner rather than later.”

The nonchalant way she says that is a little worrisome, but it’s not like I can pretend I didn’t know this was coming. The moment we knew Maitreya had created intelligent converts, the entire facility’s death warrant had been signed. Even as it was ‘dying,’ the AI was growing, and there’s every chance that it managed to create a fully general argument before it died. In theory, a sufficiently intelligent entity could construct an argument capable of convincing any person of anything. Not only would this serve to create the same kind of converts I just dealt with, it would also function like a virus, as each of the converts would be compelled to repeat the argument to as many people as possible. Even with Maitreya dead, if a single convert escaped, they would be able to create countless more, and potentially even reconstruct their master if left unchecked. Any person in any of the sealed labs above us is a potential convert, and there’s no guarantee we’d identify every one of them if we tried to conduct interviews or evaluations. Not to mention, there’s every chance they’ll try to simply make a break for it. Bombing the whole facility flat is the only realistic answer.

Nothing about this feels remotely superheroic, but that isn’t who we are. Superheroes save the world, but it’s thanks to us that the world will still exist to be saved. Nobody is going to give either of us a medal for this. Aside from the other members of the Council, nobody will even know what happened. I can hardly imagine how many other ‘freak accidents’ were really times the Council had to bomb something into the ground in the interest of protecting the planet. That’s who they are. That’s what they do. And now, I’m a part of it.