A/N: After a long hiatus, I decided to come back and fix up this story. And, seriously? This... this needed some serious, serious overhaul. I apologize to everyone that lost interest in this, or that was disappointed and wanted me to continue. I had to go through some... pretty hard stuff last year, and well, it didn't clear up until the start of this summer. Anyway, that's no real excuse, but I'm trying, and I'll try to finish this story. It shouldn't be too much longer, anyway, after I'm done updating/uploading all the new replacement chapters.
Warning: This is a CYBERPUNK AU (Alternate Universe), heavily inspired by Ocarina of Time, but not a parody/mirror/whatever. By cyberpunk, I am including dark themes, suggestive material (including but not limited to: drug use, horny teenagers, unorthodox violence, excessive cursing, and addiction/dependency). If this bothers you, if you are under-aged, there is a button at the top of your screen that stands for BACK. I suggest you use it.
Disclaimer: This is a non-profit, amateur effort not intended to infringe on the rights of any copyright holder. Characters belong to their respective owners.
Chapter 9 - Correlate
Lines. Lines and lines and more lines. And numbers. Numerical patterns written into the fabric of reality that existed where his mind traveled. Code flashed. Beeped. Screamed. At his eyes. In his ears. Sirens. Symbols. Systems. Pools and puddles and oceans of information. Naked. Everything. Open to him. Everything. Open, open only to him, because all he had to do was ask—and not ask but break into wherever. Wherever he needed. Wherever he wanted. Because he felt like it. Because he could.
Because even after four years everything still worked the same though the code was heavier and lighter and the symbols shifted in meaning and protocols reevaluated and processes optimized and pieces replaced and he could still stretch his grasp unhindered to everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.
But he couldn't. Navi reminded him of the job when he tried. Cut off resources. Reconnected them. Yes. No. The Net was off limits outside the parameters of the business. And not much was needed from outside. So he worked at the wall. The fire. The mountain of numbers and letters and symbols that danced and started to dance because he repaired it.
And then everything fell away.
Cold air blasted in his face. His eyes slid open and snapped shut immediately after. He forgot about the bright lights. A breath rushed from his lips as the wires snapped off and out of the ports along his spine and slipped back into the chair.
No more net access.
The memory came to him unbidden. The wires. The tools in his hands. Flashes of images, like a mental slideshow without a pause button, rolled behind his eyes. The memory of pain at the base of his skull ached.
So much shit happened when he bailed. The second worst thing was the manual removal of the chip in his neural network that granted him unrestricted NET access. But the only downfall was the greatest reason to remove it. In order to hide, to literally vanish, he could not be seen on the net. As long as that chip stayed, anyone who was looking did not have to look hard.
Link shook his head and banished the thoughts away.
"Do a quick scan for me, Navi," he muttered finally as he peeled his skin off the metal chair and trudged back to the corner to retrieve the discarded wife-beater. The material felt dry for the most part and (thankfully) didn't smell weird or foul, so he slipped it on.
:: Scan complete, no problems found within Goron network :: Navi beeped as she formed her image on his shoulder.
"Good." Link nodded. "Security Frequencies?"
:: Zero Red Flags ::
"Ha. Great." Link let out a short sigh in relief.
:: May I make a suggestion? :: Navi asked suddenly.
Link frowned, but nodded after a moment. "Go ahead."
:: Vitals read at 54% efficiency. Time spent WIRED clock at six hours, thirty four minutes, eleven seconds :: As she spoke, the wall behind emitted several loud metallic clicks and then lifted half an inch off the white stone floor, sliding on unseen wheels to the side.
"So?" Link asked as he stared at the gap. He then slid through the small opening into the adjoined hall.
:: Rest is recommended ::
The wall slammed shut once Link passed through fully. Once again, the teen found himself submerged in filthy dry air, surrounded by rusted iron and steel. A test breath turned out to be a mistake. Link snapped over with his hands over his mouth and coughed hard enough to feel as though he were hacking up a lung.
Son of a, his weary mind cursed as he quickly ripped off a good chunk of his tank to wrap over his mouth.
"Brothers?" he croaked, his voice hollow in the acrid air. The faded LED torch lights failed to illuminate more than the crap in the atmosphere and effectively cut his sight down to a maximum of ten feet in any direction. He took a step, and froze.
Further down the hall, he heard a loud CLANG. Then another. And another. And another. He squinted, his eyes picking up an odd, round shaped shadow and realized it quickly approached. In rapid succession, the clangs blended into squeals of iron against iron. The walls shook, the floor rumbled, and Link cursed his luck for the four thousandth time that day.
"Oh, Din," he cursed under his breath, and then tried to take off in the opposite direction. But his aching muscles resisted and instead of running he awkwardly lurched down the hall, slapping his hands against the walls for support.
The ground's vibrations worsened, the walls cracked and groaned. A high pitched whistle cut through the smoke and rang offensively in his ears. He threw his hands over his head as he stumbled. The LED torch lights shattered and rained glass down over him. The screech of metal deafened all senses as it grew louder. Link lurched once more as he slammed his shoulder against a crack in the wall…
And fell through into a black room. Link's skull cracked against the floor. Stars exploded in front of his eyes. The world appeared to double and mute simultaneously. He jerked his head off the ground to peer back through the hole. Sparks exploded in all directions, showering him in bizarre beads of hot light as a massive oval ball of metal and flesh rushed past.
The ringing in his ears ceased in time to hear the screech of movement halt suddenly to a stop, followed by numerous pops and squeals that Link vaguely pictured as the sounds a metal ribbon might make when uncurling. The ground trembled. Then it shook with every echoed thump from the hall, punctuated by soft pops of liquid bubbles and hisses of steam.
"Brother!" hollered a smiling, rounded, face as it peeked around the edge of his hole, both beady eyes still natural instead of the glass orbs Link expected. The teen gaped, mouth half open stupidly in his daze.
"There you are, Brother Link. I came to get—" It paused, and shone a small light into Link's face. "What happened to you, brother?" asked the Goron. Metal joints ground together as his leg stepped gingerly around Link's body.
"You, damn it," Link choked through the cloth mask. "You happened."
The Goron flinched as though struck. His smiling face fell slightly, though the metal half-jaw stayed glued in a half-grin. Then Link's world shifted violently as he was suddenly scooped up into two fleshy arms and tucked to a tattooed chest.
"We gonna have you fixed up in no time, Brother!"
"W-wait?" Link grunted in confusion as the Goron lept out the hole and into the hall.
"Put me down!" he shouted. "I can walk!"
The Goron rolled up his trademark ball form, seemingly deaf to Link's demands.
As if Link's poor stomach hadn't taken enough of a beating, by the time the Goron popped out of its roll and dropped him onto a human sized medical unit, Link could no longer tell up from down from left from right.
"For the… the love of all that is shiny… don't… don't do that to me again," he whispered with a hand clamped over his eyes. With his other hand, he tore the cloth mask off his face and threw it to the floor.
"Fixed in no time, Brother!"
Link cracked open an eye. Four Gorons immediately filled his vision, and to his utter horror, doubled to eight, and then spun counter clockwise around him.
"If… if fix means iron implants, I… I'll set off the self destruct codes to… to this compound," he rasped. Tension rippled through the air as the Gorons glanced at one another. He held his breath.
Suddenly the medical unit shook, throwing Link off the side as the Gorons burst into deafening laughter.
Link clawed at the cold, polished floor in nauseous agony. Every attempt to sit up failed due to his inability to hold his balance for more than two seconds. His stomach rolled. His eyes watered. He gagged, and choked back down the acid in the back of his throat. The floor cooled his forehead as he silently waited out the laughter.
Marble, like the lab, he noted dully. White polished stone and, he assumed, white walls and ceiling. Vaguely, Link wondered if the Gorons were less barbaric—and frightening—than he assumed earlier. Of course, the hiss of steam and hot escaped droplets of oil chased away that thought.
Heavy footfalls followed soon after one of the Gorons bellowed at him. "Yer free to use the med equipment, Brother!" The hiss of a door sliding open and then slamming shut echoed in his ears.
Finally, finally, he was alone again. But alone or not, he wasn't quite ready to try and get up just yet.
"Ugh," he groaned. "Fuck."
:: Link? :: Nav asked by his left ear.
"It doesn't make any sense," he sighed.
:: What does not? ::
"The Pit. Brothers. Hacking," Link explained poorly. A long pause followed his statement. The holographic image of Navi crackled next to his ear and his skin tingled.
:: It is Goron cultural practice. Winner of The Pit is accepted into Brotherhood. Hacking is to protect their treasure, which is based on trust, which is based on brotherhood ::
"So I kill someone, and thus I'm trustworthy to flex my hacker skills?"
:: Essentially, yes ::
"That's absurd." He closed his eyes and swallowed down another gag. "That's fucking absurd. The two don't fucking correlate. What the fuck? What. What the fuck."
Link laid there for a few beats, organizing his thoughts and pushing them away before he felt confident enough to attempt movement. He opened his eyes.
"Nav," he croaked.
:: Yes, Link? ::
"Which direction is the closest rejuv-chamber?" The image of a tall glass-and-steel tube came to mind. It called to him and his aching, tired body. Navi's image crackled by his ear as he felt her tiny holographic self walk by.
:: Roughly ten feet forward, two feet to the right ::
"Obstacles?"
:: Two medical benches, including the one beside you ::
Link breathed. His stomach flopped. He breathed again, and his world spun a little less rapidly. Another breath and he heaved himself up, threw his weight onto his hands and halfway onto the medical unit he fell off of. The whole room tilted dangerously to the right.
While concentrating on his breathing, Link jerked his body the ten feet forward and two feet to the right. He stared at the rejuvenation chamber. It stretched from the floor to the ceiling, consisted mostly of several advanced computers and chemical stations, with a central tube for the designated injured person. With a quick snap of his hands, he removed Navi from his wrist and attached it to the machine. In the next two minutes, Link somehow managed to strip down to his boxers without falling on his face, and then stumbled into the central tube.
The glass door slid shut behind him. Wires floated down from above and below as they slid through his clothes and attached to the designated ports. A mask hung in front of his face, which he eagerly snapped tight over his mouth. The teen breathed in oxygen as the container filled with a clear liquid solution.
:: Current status - 39% efficiency. Energy supplies low. System Orange. Estimated Rejuvenation Time - seventy four minutes, forty eight seconds ::
A pause. A series of beeps filtered strangely through the glass and liquid to Link's ears. He sighed and closed his eyes.
:: Standby mode engaging in… Five. Four. Three. Two ::
Panic surged in him. "Wait!" Link growled, voice muffled by the oxygen mask.
:: Link? :: Navi questioned, sounding almost… confused. He pushed that thought to the back of his mind.
"Don't put me in standby."
:: The process can cause great discomfort and pain ::
"I know," he cut off and opened his eyes. To his amazement, the fluid did not sting him.
:: Are you sure? ::
Link stared through the solution but could not see past the glass wall of the tube.
"Yes," he said.
:: . . . Request granted ::
"Thanks, Nav," he murmured tiredly as the chamber hummed to life.
