Next chapter up. This is a one shot within a story. This fills in a few of the gaps of what happened before the Nightwatch story began.

What is Project Godsend?. A dark figure wanders the war graves in London and weeps for the fallen. Among the cold, memories and old daemons return.

Some Mild Gore.

A Cyber-sphere - areas of uninfected space set up around several servers for certain parts of the net. This allows Synthetics, who exist both in body and in cyberspace to continue existing, to connect to the net, though only in a limited fashion but not conjoin with it as they once could.

Tharagon


There is only one puzzle, one enigma left. We are all locked within this one labirynth, one maze that will remain with us till our dying days. Cyberise your bodies. Yet we are still trapped. This is a maze, a trap. The only maze left, the only thing we are unable to escape from.

What Humanity is unable to escape from, is their own mind.


Hong Kong, 2039. It had been a normal day for the many people who lived within the city. The commuters rushed about their everyday lives, the children went to school, the parents went to work or enjoyed the sunlight, the cloudless sky, sitting out in the many parks and street side cafes. The students of the Research Academy, went to lectures and studied in the library. Couples walked through the wooden clad corridors hand in hand, making for the warm day outside, to sit upon the University green and watch the world go by. A perfect normal day.

At 12:00, there are reports of gaps in the Hong Kong cyber sphere, a massing of data outside several gates around the system. 15 web security personal report vast streams of data approaching from dark space beyond the cyber-sphere. At 12:30, several attack barriers were activated on a server in the Research Academy. By 12:35, 10000 megabytes of data were consumed and converted to a unknown and unrecognisable code. 12:45, the national bank's mainframe goes down as its central processor is swamped by an unknown code. 01:00, the transport grid around the city goes down, Mayhem ensues people are stuck on the road, unable to pull off in the gridlock.

01:15, Technician Doro-San of the Research Academy tries to establish the source of the virus. He claimed to hear a whispering within the main server. Hundreds of voice joined in one vast noise. The train network goes down, 20 thousand people are caught in the underground network.

01:30, Technician Doro-San of Hong Kong Research Academy is the first recorded carrier of the ODIN virus. In the space of ten minutes he begins broadcasting through an unencrypted cyber-comm network. All synthetic life forms in a 1 mile radius report a whispering across their main network. Within a couple of seconds those who report the whispering go offline. One of the survivors reports,

"they just stopped and shut their eyes. They wouldn't respond, they'd just start whispering,"

The whispering increases to a city wide area. Cars not caught in the gridlock, crash as their owners lose control.

02:15, Hong Kong Police report, or at least those not infected and not responding, that infected near ground zero begin to behave erratically, smashing up offices, breaking windows, attacking passers-by. 02:30, within the university, several of the first infected start to attack other uninfected students. 15 die as the infected push their way into the cafeteria. 02:45 the infected begin to attack across the city. On trains, the confined spaces leave little room to escape and there is a running gun battle between police and infected. The police are trying to evacuate the population to strong points within police stations spread across the city.

By 03:00 the Nightwatch are on the field.

(Archive 1800, Hong Kong, 2039)


The angel wept over the bright lights of the city. Water from the recent rain storm ran down the many stone folds of her robes as she stood among the war graves overlooking the vast city of London, which sprawled out, glowing beneath the night sky.

The graveyard watchman slowly walked among the hundreds of graves which stood, made of white marble, erupting from the black earth. As he passed his torch through the many memorials, he'd glance in passing at the ever silent angel. He would do that every night before scurrying back to his small house on the edge of the vast space. Around the angel, centred like points of wheel, the hundred of dead were remembered, to the wooded edges where paths ran under the leafy foliage. From underneath the peaked cap, the skin of his brow knitting as he brushed his hands against the cutting February cold. Feeling a slight shiver, not cold but the strange feeling he was been watched and glanced back at the tall and silent angel. The woman was back.

A dark shape alighted gently upon the head of the angel and gazed out across the dark graveyard to the vast monument of the Adieus Requiem, a large pillar of black marble where the names of the dead were inscribed. And she'd be there every night. Standing watchful and silent among the ever peaceful dead. They didn't actually know if it was a woman, the dark shape left little to the eye of detail. She would stand, watch and weep. Most of the watchmen reported tears in the air as they passed the base of the statue and would gaze up to see her form above. What for?. Nobody knew, the countless dead maybe. It would certainly explain why she returned nearly every night.


"You can't leave!!,"

Motoko closed her locker and ran a hand across the metal surface. Batou, eyepieces catching the light tried to make eye contact. "Every things just starting again. Are you just going to give up on us like you did last time."

"Things have changed Batou. The world has changed," Motoko responded, a slightly hard edge sounding resoundingly in her voice, reaching to pick her duffel bag from the floor, "we can't remain relics of the old world. I can't stay,"

"DAMN IT!!," Batou slammed his fist into the locker side, "Section 9 needs you, I need you,!!"

"And I need time," Motoko allowed her temper to flare a little to much, "I want something else!!, a new job, away from all this death. Cyberspace holds nothing for me now. My friends are dead or different. My life is gone, my job with it. I'm under the command of a man who knows he doesn't have long left. It's cold and sterile,"

"bu…,"

"You don't need me. The age of machines is over, just accept it!!. We're just a bunch of old dinosaurs stuck in the times. This world for me ends now"

Batou's face creased as for once the thick skinned man struggled to control his composure as he gazed across at Motoko's hard features.

"please,"

"if you really want me to be happy, let me go,"


A breeze stirred the neatly trimmed grass and caused several carnations scattered at the base of several of the nearby gravestones to flutter. Red poppies, their crimson leaves shifting in the darkness below the white marble. It was clear to see the woman's hair, caught in the sudden breeze, shift and flutter in the breeze. A stray tear, caught by the wind whipped back into the darkness. A single glittering point of light, before it shattered on the white stone.


The rain fell. The ground, a rapidly growing quagmire was a mixture between mud and Motoko's own blood. She coughed, feeling the coppery tasting liquid rising in her throat as she hung in the air, several feet above the ground. Finding it hard to move, she dropped her head to her chest, as she stared stupefied at the gore covered arm which protruded half a metre from a ragged hole in her chest.

"nnnn…nnn…" was all she could manage, as the cold chassis the machine behind pressed against her suspended body. With horrific slowness, the arm was withdrawn. Motoko screamed, retching at the sickening pain as the metal dug into her flesh.

The cold wet earth slammed into her agony racked body. Through rain soaked eyes, Motoko looked on in horror. Her arm was missing and the whole in her chest was spewing ichors onto the dark earth. And there, as the android brought its foot down onto Motoko's exposed neck, shearing it from it from her shoulders, as another trooper, the green of his eyes flashing with such rage burst out of the darkness, Motoko stared into the sky and saw the small form of a purple haired girl walking from the darkness.

Her lips parted forming the words:

"Mira"

The skylarks were singing.


A single bouquet of roses, caught by the sudden draft, drifted from their place on the pedestal and dropped to the floor. Their petals, disturbed from their resting place were caught in the wind and spread across the cold waiting graves.


The man scrambled amongst the remains of the house, hands clattering across the rubble and scorched earth which made up the floor of what appeared to be a kitchen. His pursuer could be heard, making easy progress through the remains of the other room. He smashed back against the walls, his unkempt white hair covering part of his face as he struggled to escape form the desolate pit of a place he found him self. The scorched remains of the kitchen cabinets shattered under his weight as he pushed back at the sight of the figure who entered the room.

The black combat armour, the cold face, the calculating copper eyes. He knew her, or at least his old self did. The ghost less shell, a husk, of Hidoe Kuze, eyes closed, looked up into the face of his killer and screeched, his perfect face splitting as his mouth gaped, the remains of his hands, torn, skinless and bloodied reaching up to claw at his assailant.

In the last fleeting moments of life. Kuze, through all his madness, as the ODIN virus retreated back into the net leaving his body limp. He saw her and the single moment of clear thought, he smiled. He'd found the girl from the hospital again.

Motoko pulled the trigger, the body of the man she once knew so briefly, jerked and then lay still. With trembling hands she reached into her belt and dropped a dirtied, white shape down into the mess by his face.

I learnt


The watchman looked up to the angel to the unspeaking, dark shape above his head and whispered into the night,

"Your Crying,"

There was a brief flurry of movement from atop angel and the shadow disappeared from view. He watchman wrinkled his nose at the smell of ozone as the woman engaged a camo shielding device. He sighed, disapointed, his noise been pulled back into the night as he passed his torch over the quiet dead and the night-time peace settled across the waiting stones.


Batou glanced off the railway sleeper. Yelling in pain and surprise as the hooded character planted a boot into his chest and spun off, twirling in mid air and landed, panther-like on the concrete floor among the metal and stone of the railway. Below the hood, the head moved, eyes flashing in shadow as they twisted on their haunches, ready to spring. As he reeled back, he realised the pain and the looseness he felt in his right hand, he'd broken his fingers. There was defiantly body armour under the shapeless cotton hoodie the figure was wearing. He swore pulling him self to his feet, knife ready, swinging toward the figure. It caught the knife between index finger and middle finger, stopping the blade dead in the air. One booted foot shattered Batou's knee as he struggled to pull himself from the vicelike grip of the figure.

"who are you?,"

Inside the circular room, the many tracks which converged on that single location, the question echoed along most of the tunnels which linked to that point. Behind the hood, the face was in shadow, the hands covered in large black gloves. There was no noise however, as the character wrenched the knife from his grip, lifted Batou and slammed him into the one of the columns which surrounded the wide hall, shattering the stone and with firm and unquestionable speed, smashed the remains of Batou's knife into his exposed shoulder.

He struggled to stand as the other grabbed the single, cylindrical case from the trackside.

"you bastard!!, coward!!, don't godamn move!!,"

The hood dropped, the shock of purple hair, the copper eye which glinted which such coldness even Batou shivered. The perfect alabaster skin.

"Major?!"

The Major is dead, don't try and follow me.


Within the small cramped space of the graveyard security office, the watchman dropped his hat onto a peg and crossed the stone floor to his crowded desk. He paused, something was different. Among the clutter, the abandoned rakes, old photos of friends, old and new. The wooden shelves and the lit plasma powered stove which burned blue in the corner.

On his desk, in a pool of light from the desk lamp was a single, paper crane.


Hope you enjoyed reading, next chapter wil be up soon.