The Jumper's Journals

by blackshadow111

What happens when you give an ordinary person, someone completely, utterly mundane, with little special and even less important in his life, bored and tired, a shot at... well, Everything? What would you do, with all of eternity, all that was, is and will be at your fingertips? These are The Jumper's Journals, the story of a man's ascension. There's Wish-Fulfillment, be warned.

23. Chapter 23

"Eddie. Edward. Brother, stop!" the sound comes in from the speakers around the lab, making me pause for a fraction of a second. Then I continue, pulling out a couple of intravenous feeding pipes and touching each entry point to see if there's any issues.

"You-you've literally just gotten up from a procedure, one that was complicated by that fucking snake venom you didn't tell me about. We have no idea what its effects will be. It's a really bad idea, to risk things like this, Eddie!"

I nod at the camera I know is looking at me "I hear you, and I agree. One hundred percent, I should not be doing this." Stepping away from the bed after removing the last of the apparatus required for the procedure from my body, I walk quickly into the next room and start putting on pants. I keep talking through it. "It's stupid, it's risky, and for the first time in everything I've done by now, this might actually get me killed."

"And yet you're not stopping. You're hearing me, but you're not listening!"

"What are you talking about? I said I agree!"

"You just put on a harness with six guns on it!" DADA all but shrieks.

I let out a sigh. Problem is, I wasn't just saying the words before. He's completely, utterly correct. This is really stupid. It's just…

"Four hundred thousand people in Miami, brother." I mutter softly, both for DADA's benefit and my own. That defines it all in the end, doesn't it? I'm an asshole by anyone's metric, and a selfish bastard besides. But am I enough of either of those to sit on my hands and let four hundred thousand people die in nuclear Armageddon?

Not quite. Not just yet, at least.

It all started with a call from Gibbons, about ten minutes ago right when I was in the middle of running an evaluation for what the fuck that freakish anaconda venom… and I still have to take a pause to digest that. Anaconda venom. What the fuck, dad? Anyway, I was right in the middle of assessing what it did to me and my planned procedures, when my brother informed me I had a call.

xxxx

"Krueger, line secure?"

I roll my eyes. Why would I receive a call from a Deputy Director of the NSA on an insecure line?

"Yeah. Only Pyongyang and Beijing listening. Tehran had to take a loo break."

"Oh, that's funny. You had a good laugh? Because this is serious. I need you to go active."

… I… no. I can't muster surprise at this anymore. I have to try, though.

"I told you, Gibbons. I'm not available for several days yet. I have some pretty risky procedures in process."

"And I got you the first time. This request has a 1600PA tag, Agent."

… Ah. A request carrying a 1600PA tag is a request only in name. In practice under the mutated, incestuous command structure between the NSA and the Pentagon, it's a direct order from NCA. Now for me that's not really all that important, since I have no particular affection for the C-I-C, America or the West in general. The important bit is that in the intelligence world attaching that tag is basically the equivalent of everyone in the office running around yelling, the sirens blaring with RED ALERT splashed on every screen. An emergency that transcends emergencies. To put it simply, a 1600 PA mission failing would typically have a casualty figure with a mile of zeroes behind it.

"Go on." Is all I can say.

"There's a ship carrying an unknown number of Muj and a nuke, loose somewhere in the Caribbean."

I consider speaking up against the abomination that is to give terrorists the epithet of 'Mujahedin'. It's basically the same as calling Klansmen 'Paladins'. But y'know, one needs to pick one's battles. Another day… and I'm deliberately trying not to focus on the important bit here. Need to stop that.

A nuke. Loose in the Caribbean. Presumably heading for some megapolis on the East Coast.

This is one of those days, isn't it?

"Tell me everything." I bark out, even as I abort all diagnostics and start unplugging myself from the machines.

xxxxxxxxxx

It takes me several more minutes to finish gearing up, my mind working furiously the whole while. I stare at the feed from the camera in New York, the gleaming image of the Delta 6 Accelerator mocking me from its perch between a dozen servo arms. I'd disassembled the suit soon after getting it and reassembled it with better weapons, better computers… basically better everything. As the thing is now I'd have a decent shot at taking out NORAD with just it alone. But it's all the way back in New York.

So much for a safe testing of my new capabilities before I 'live-fire' them.

"Plane ready?"

"Ready. You're going in the Viper again. I'm updating its comm protocols with the feeds Gibbons provided as we speak."

"Good. Patch in our own feeds, and re-task the Samyazaz 2 through Seven to start watching Miami, New York and the rest of the possible targets. Make sure you watch Miami though." I finish, picking up my bag from beside the door on my way to the hangar.

"Why are you that sure it's going to be Miami?" the computerized voice queries, even as the corridor blurs around me in my run.

"Oh come on. Nuke lost in the Caribbean, on the way to the East Coast? Your average moviegoer expects Miami from that setup."

In a long suffering tone, DADA continues "… I would really question your presumptions that this world works by whatever would make sense for an action movie or thriller novel audience, if…" he trails off, unwilling to continue.

Not that I'm going to let him get away that easily. Just as I reach the hangar and straightaway leap into the open cockpit of the jet black plane, I press him "Go on. If?"

"… if it didn't keep working. Satellites re-tasking complete. Loading up images in a moment."

I nod quickly, blinking my eyes to minimize the feed. Earlier it would have been on my spectacles, but I installed an uplink into my optic nerve… oh, seventy-four minutes ago. How time flies. Controls are in the eyelids, though. I thought to go for a completely new eye, but eh… maybe later.

"Scan through every spectrum, see if we can find anything the NSA missed." Though how terrorists can get a ship with cloaking technology good enough to fool the best the USA has to offer, and the Operational capabilities to use it… I have a suspicion, but I'm trying not to leap to conclusions.

As my plane takes off, I turn my minds to other things we need to do.

"Alright, line to Wilfred?"

"Available. You want me to dial?"

"Yeah. Go ahead."

I wait tersely for the seconds it takes for the communication channel to be established, and the few additional seconds for it to be encrypted, split up across multiple satellites and antennae, and all the myriad techniques it takes to keep a conversation safe around here.

Eventually, my grandfather's face appears on the screen in front of me, next to the radar input.

"Eddie! How did you remember me today, you brat? I thought you said you'd be unavailable for the next several days yet!"

"I did, and that was the plan, yes. This is something of an emergency. Do we have a full-scope lab anywhere in the Caribbean?"

A full-scope lab, in the jargon of my family and my grandfather's secret society, is a lab with full bio-mechanical-chemical capabilities. The kind I have in the defunct NY train station, and the one I just left in the Amazon. Though that one is primarily Bio, it still has full-scope capacities in the other fields. I went through a list of all the labs with DADA a little while back, but there wasn't one in the Caribbean, or anywhere close enough for my purposes right now.

"Hm. There's your father's old lab in Barclays. But he donated it to the National Research Center."

Ah. That would be why it wasn't on the list. Barclays, or the Dominion of Barclays, is one of the nations my family basically just owns. Like… actually so. I have very significant holdings in countries like Egypt and Bulgaria, and obscene influence with them. But Barclays… Barclays we just pretty much own. Very useful to get diplomatic passports on demand. It's not a surprise that dad donated a lab to the National Institute, but very inconvenient. Still, hope springs eternal.

"How much of it would be intact? I need pretty much all of the mechanical facilities."

"I'll have to have someone check. How urgent is it?"

"Miami will cease to exist in the next few hours."

He actually smiles. We aren't very emphatic people, us Montagues. Just in case you didn't realize that by now. "Ah. One of those days, is it? You know, your mother would have already-"

I roll my eyes. "Not the time, gramps. Call me when you have an answer."

I catch his nod before disconnecting, but my mind is already on alternatives

"Dada, how fast can one of the mobile labs get in the next hour?"

"Nowhere close enough. We have three of your Science Yachts in North and South American waters, including the one you left your latest conquests on. I already have them all moving in at full speed, but other than you needing to explain to the staff on them what this was all about afterwards, it's not going to achieve much."

Damn and blast. I need a good mechanical lab somewhere in the vicinity of where the ship is supposed to be so that I can design and build the right equipment to find it. It's… okay, so no matter howadvanced the cloaking on a ship gets, there are certain signals to be found. Often the very tech making the ship undetectable emits has its own comm feeds. Problem is, if this ship is as advanced as it seems to be, and it the people behind it are the ones I'm starting to think they might be, those signals will not be on any wavelength commercially produced equipment, or any military equipment for that matter, can hope to reach.

For me, though, it's basically a matter of having the right antenna that can pick up the signal and a computer sophisticated enough that I can write the code to track it to its ends. One of those ends will be the ship, and that's all I need.

I'm still considering options when the channel I had with Wilfred chimes. 'No Go' is all the message says. Shit. I check the distance meter. We're still over Venezuela, but it's not long before we reach the place the ship was last seen, a spot about 150 kilometers north from Caracas. Given as that was two hours ago…

"Anything from the Sats?" I ask the air.

My brother answers "Nothing. We're sweeping outwards from the target cities, but if they're there they're too well hidden."

I shake my head. "Well, nothing for it, then. Open up a line with Gibbons."

"In progress. Why is this such a last resort for you anyway? Shouldn't you prefer to use government resources whenever possible?"

I consider the question. He's actually right, if you think according to basic rationality. The problem is, I've been trying to accommodate to Action Movie rationality, under which rather different rules apply.

"Not really" I answer. "The important bit here is the Mystique. I want to be the independent, resourceful operator who never needs support but still never fails, the guy you call in when all else fails. That takes a serious hit if I go asking for help at every turn.

I can feel the computer staring at me, struggling to control itself. Then is just says "… really. That's your reason."

I smile. "Hey, don't diss the mystique! It's an important if I want to-"

"Yeah, yeah. Secure line to Gibbons is up."

I switch to Business Mode immediately.

Gibbons has seen better days. He's holding up under the pressure pretty well, but I can see the vein pulsing on his forehead and the way his shoulder muscles clench and unclench under his suit. He's about one smart-ass remark away from strangling someone.

"Yes, Kruger. Progress?"

"I'm approaching the area of operation. No progress on locating the ship?"

"Not yet. We're scrambling some drones with next-gen mapping and detection gear, with any luck we'll find the bastards."

"You might want to hold on that" I say, quickly continuing as he bristles "I'm sending you a list of gear. I need them setup as close to the Active Zone as possible in 30 minutes." I finish, before tapping a key and sending him the list.

It's not the exact parts I need, since those cannot, I suspect, be found anywhere outside of the most advanced and secret labs on the planet, such as I, and the enemy I suspect I'm facing here, control. The US probably has something close, but I have basically open access to every database controlled by the government and the closest I found was some prototypes underdevelopment in collaboration with GCHQ over in England, so they're hardly going to be any use.

Instead, the list I'm sending him are the closest approximations of the parts that can be found in America's inventory, the absolute, latest gear money can buy. It'll take some doing to jury-rig the device from these, but it's doable, even in the insane timeframe we're working at.

He takes a moment to look the items over, eyebrows rising. "You say you can locate the ship if these are provided?"

"Yes. I'll need someone on hand who can do rapid reassembly, but I can take care of the rest from my end."

"You'll have it. Get your end of things ready." He finishes, before disconnecting.

I frown. Isn't he supposed to say "Gibbons out"?

It takes me just over twenty minutes to compile the software I need, and just as I'm done, the line flashes again. I jerk in surprise for a moment. Okay, if Gibbons managed to move his mountains this quickly, that's genuinely impressive.

"Alright Kruger, listen up. There's an aircraft carrier, the Abraham Lincoln, returning for repairs and upgrades to the mainland."

I don't need to say anything as DADA brings up the files from the 'secure' Pentagon database. Sure enough, the ship is there, and… ooh. Air-gapped networks. That would explain why I didn't find whatever is on it. The only link to the world beyond the ship is a single computer, and that does nothing more than carry a ludicrously encrypted line off. It's not connected to any other device on the ship. No doubt all the communication is either through manual entries or through flash drives that are never reconnected to the outwards linked computer again.

Reading through the surprisingly scant dossiers about the ship in a moment, I listen to Gibbons again.

"It's a testing bed for a new program, and one of the components is a new, stats of the art drone system. It's the most advanced drone in the world, actually and the best armed. We basically took a fighter jet and turned it into a drone. If I'm reading this right, everything on that wish list of yours is in that drone, if in different configs."

Wow, that's… yeah. That's pretty much how this world works. Still manages to surprise me, somehow. "Does the carrier have-"

"Full-scale disassembly and reassembly facilities. Yes. You can take it apart and put it back together as you need." He interrupts me.

"Great. Line to the ship?"

"Should be showing up now. They've been briefed. You should know, there are also three human operated fighters on the ship that happen to now be your backup, so try not to piss them off?"

I just roll my eyes. What about me has ever given the impression that I'm anything except the nicest and kindest person out there? Except that time when I killed a bunch of people with next-gen poison gas. Or when I did the same thing to a whole other bunch of people, along with dozens of others who'd been shot and stabbed and cut up seven ways to Sunday…hm.

I switch my focus as soon as the line opens, looking at the screen as it resolves itself over the course of an exchange of digital keys and authentication codes.

Looking at the person on the other end… oh, wow. That's Jessica Biel. Nice. I spot the name, Lt. Kara Wade, just as she speaks up.

"Agent Lance Kruger?"

I nod slightly, ready for business. "Yes. Lieutenant Wade?"

She looks surprised for a moment, before nodding. I continue immediately.

"I'm sending you a file with the needed hardware modifications. It's an executable, just plug it in and it'll calibrate itself to your systems and do what's needed."

She looks ready to say something, before evidently thinking better of it. "Alright. I'm seeing the download, and… received. What about the software end of it?"

"Yeah, we'll need to coordinate on that. I'm setting up a joint environment so I can explain what I've done and what needs to be computed in next, if you'll just…"

It takes a good bit of time for the two of us, moving through options, sorting out extraneous data, but in less than ten minutes we have a model up and running, ready to scan and search for the telltale signals. By the time it's compiled and integrated into the drone, the hardware modifications are finishing up too.

Thirty-two minutes after my conversation with Gibbons, we have a drone taking off with the needed technology to find that fucking ship. It's a waiting game, now.

I've always hated waiting, and this time is no better.

"There. There is fucking is." I mutter out furiously, forty minutes later. I highlight the grid reference with a gesture, nodding at the air force officer on the other side of the screen. It hasn't been that long, to be honest, since we started at this. But the combination of an impending thread of nuclear Armageddon, and a subtle addiction to easy successes that I hadn't really noticed before now made me frustrated with myself all the same.

The cloaking and concealment tech on this ship is very, very good. Not only are the primary methods of detection, heat, radar, visual etc blocked, but even the signals emitted by the devices that have to be on-board are distributed and scrambled so as to make interception all but impossible. If that were not enough, the ambient signals any device can't help but emit, tiny waves and emissions, even those are fucking secured from detection.

Hell, they insulated against the micro water displacement any ship can't help but cause. We found it, because of course we did, but this has to be the single most advanced cloaking system Cobra, and yes, this level of sophistication does rule out anyone else, possess. Because frankly, if they had more of these they'd already have won.

Even now that we have parsed through the millions of decoy signal streams and found the paydirt, and moments ago, traced the end of it that leads to a spot on the ocean, I can't be sure that I can use it again to find something hidden like this. All it would take is to change around a few variables, switch around the decoys, and…

But nevermind that.

Looking at the screen, I see Lt Wade tapping the coordinates into a separate device, presumably to be sent over to the NRO or whoever else these things need to be sent to. She looks up a moment later.

"We'll be taking off in just over five minutes, Agent. How soon can you be at the ship?"

"Just as you take off, I think. I'll need to slow down to make a slow approach, but it's not that far now."

She nods, grimacing just a moment as she looks at the location of the ship again.

Oh, right. Yeah, about that? The ship already has Miami in the blast radius. At least if the bomb it the one intel said it was. Not satisfied with an ordinary nuke, they evidently went for some kind of 50 Megaton monstrosity, a copycat of the Tsar Bomba made in America. The whole mess that led to it turning up in terrorist hands apparently had something to do this secret plan to organize a series of military coups across the West by this delusional US General and his followers, back in the 80s. Why anyone thought that letting someone nicknamed 'The Butcher of Danang and Peiku' anywhere near a nuke was a good idea is unclear, but this is Action Movie US Military. I'm starting to think that these things just happen.

The important bit here is that this baby packs one hell of a punch, the kind of thing that wipes cities off the map and poisons Seaboards for generations. And it's there now, not ten kilometers from the coast of Miami. Getting bothered it very much in order.

I look at the screen again. Signal is strong, and the ship is moving awfully slowly. A requirement of the cloaking systems that protect it, obviously. My plane is close, and within minutes I'll be in position to jump out and get started. It'll be tricky, mind you. I don't know what the ship looks like, or where the bomb is, or any of the thousand and one details I'd like to know, so I can formulate a plan before going in. The one advantage I do have is that if they're using a ship this advanced, Cobra won't want to lose it lightly. The plan should be to plant the bomb and go away outside the blast radius before detonating it. There's no way to know for sure, not with crazy psychopaths, but that's what it's looking like so far. So I should be able to get in and cut through them quickly enough to get to the bomb, with any luck at all.

But all that depends on getting the element of surprise, if I happen to lose that-

"Missile Lock!" DADA's urgent voice screams out of the cockpit speakers, just as the plane starts evasive maneuvers.

Then I'm fucked. Yeah, figures. On the plus side, no mushroom cloud yet. Hard to argue with that kind of silver lining.

I just rise to my feet, checking my gear once before moving away to the back. A moment later the bay door opens, and I'm off. Already in the air, I mutter to my brother.

"Lose them and get to a hangar. I'll find my own way out."

"Gotcha." DADA responds, plane already accelerating behind me. I grimace for a moment as I consider the closest hangar I have. I never bought into rich people hating their houses, but I have to admit, that particular abomination deserves all the ridicule anyone can pile on it. If only I could get that place nuked somehow.

Looking down, I let the same feed from the plane be broadcasted into my HUD, and after a moment of static a tiny white dot appears, sitting pretty on the vast blue expanse. That's the ship, then.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"I told you, he's here! We should detonate now!" the black-turbaned, bearded man all but screamed, gesticulating wildly.

A slap rang out clearly, the effect of the sound almost visible as talk, murmur and even yelling shut down in a wave rippling across the room. The struck man, the one who had spoken just then, sat down in an instant, eyes boiling with a combination of rage and humiliation held in check only by the sheer terror that the man who'd raised his hand on him inspired.

Which was something worth noting by itself. Ismail Al-Tikriti was an Iraqi, the son of a full general in the Iraqi Mukhabarat under Saddam Hussein and indeed, he was himself distantly related to the man his tribe still called the Rais. A Major in the Iraqi Army, he'd been first blooded as part of the resistance that had swiftly formed against the short lived UIR that the Iranians had forced Iraq into after having Saddam assassinated. Once it transpired that UIR dissolved mere months into its birth, he'd fought wherever there was an enemy to fight and Brothers of the Faith to defend. Bosnia, Chechnya, then later Afghanistan and finally Iraq again against those most hated enemies, the Americans.

A man with dozens of successful attacks to his name, with enough American dollars on his head to make avarice drool. He was here as part of the 'loyal support' lent by ISIS, in the wake of the most unthinkable of disasters that had happened in Aleppo such a short time ago, and was a man few in the worldwould be comfortable looking in the eye, let alone striking in public.

Kasim bin Usama was one of those few. At first sight, he cut a figure that could inspire any true believer to rage. Clean shaven with a crisp, educated tone of voice, he was the greatest of the Takfir, drinking and smoking with the best of them, speaking better English than most British and basically all Americans. A man who could, and indeed, had moved within the greatest capitals of the west as one of their own.

But if any of that had caused doubts to form about him, people wisely kept them to themselves. The Hero of Karachi and Mumbai turned his head from side to side, eyes radiating the psychopathic rage and hatred that burned in him as they raked across the assembled Mujahid. Then he spoke.

"My father is in the hands of the Great Satan due to the treachery of this man. Let him come. We will capture him, and we will kill him as he should have been killed in Aleppo. And with their dog dead, the Great Satan will yield the Sheikh to us, begging us to spare their city of whores." He paused here, once again looking around at the faces staring at him, hungry like a jackal for any hint of doubt or disloyalty.

"Once my father, the Sheikh, is free and we're away, we'll finally teach the whorespawn of this land what it means to rouse the wrath of the Faithful." This sort of thing was where Kasim tended to lack. This diatribe should have been delivered by someone screaming and shaking their hands, preferably with a bit of spittle flying about to achieve the proper impact. It lost something in being delivered like the afternoon news report by the son of Usama Bin Laden.

Or maybe not. Looking around, the assembled Warriors of God seemed spellbound anyway, enchanted with the cold menace of the man's tone.

The man called The Craftsman just snorted in contempt, turning back to his vigil. He had wasted over two minutes watching this mess, and now the speck on the monitor that signified the Adversary had come that much closer. Perhaps it was hypocritical of him, to disdain terrorists so. After all, was he not a member of the League of Assassins, one of the oldest terrorist organizations of them all? The League was older than any language spoken today in these lands, older than their predecessors and their predecessors.

He remembered what he had been taught, of the birth of the Nine on their Island, the Mother Goddess they had once held to and her charge to watch for the coming of the White One from the South. That had been in prehistory. Then human nature had asserted itself, and the families had gone their own ways, using their skills to secure worldly wealth and power for all.

The League had been the first to leave the far east, but not the last. And they had been busy. Carthage, Alexandria, Rome, Cordoba… the League's casualty counts transcended people and listed nations and cultures instead. And now, if the Demon's Head commanded him to teach the basics of operational security to these… boys? Well, far be it for the Craftsman to reject a task for being too easy.

Not that it wouldn't be interesting, to take on the man they called the Scourge of Aleppo. The Craftsman had investigated Lance Kruger, expended considerable League resources into seeing just who this man was. There had been hope of recruiting him, briefly. The League still hadn't recovered from the last time Yujiro Hanma had taken on a contract against them, and a fighter of what seemed like a similar caliber on their own side had been… tempting for some.

But the recent spurning of their offer by Al - Waṭwāṭ and the death of the old Demon's Head, a man who had led the League since before Islam had… raised tempers at the idea of recruiting another outsider.

Not that he minded. As it was, they were dealing with too many outsiders for his liking anyway. This mission for instance, was a hitherto unheard-of joint operation between Al-Qaeda, Daesh, the League, and Cobra. The first two provided the manpower, the League contributed the knowhow, and Cobra had provided the ship and their weapons. It irked him to work with them like this, but orders were orders.

Noting the enemy's descent once more, The Craftsman tapped keys in front of him with a flourish, setting off the defenses. It was a bit early, but the AI that controlled the ship and its system tended to have unexpected conditions every now and then and it was best to see if everything would be working smoothly.

As each of the systems went live, their status checks flashed, and one after the other, each signified full readiness. With the last of them complete the Craftsman leaned back and relaxed for just a second. Things were in motion now.

He did not notice, nor would he have even if he were still watching the screen alertly, the notification that showed up on the screen only to disappear a split second later. Perhaps if he had been told… but not even then, in all likelihood. It would be big ask of someone who had been awake for over a hundred hours to notice every 0.05 second item they encountered, even if they had been trained for centuries to operate without sleep, as he had been.

But if he had, well, he might not have been quite as comfortable about the coming encounter as he was.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Dodge… now!" DADA's voice tells me sharply, even as my HUD indicators tell me of an imminent collision. I slow down midair with an exertion of my will, before resuming my fall a moment later. It's enough for the tiny rocket to pass under me, and for me to blow it up with a shot before it can correct course. Best of all, it's pretty unlikely anyone guessed 'flight' from it.

Which is good, because it's not.

"Explain to me again how you became able to fly?" DADA asks for the nth time. I'd be pissed if I didn't understand that he's trying to distract me just a bit from the job ahead, but as things are…

"It's not flight. I can lift things with my mind, including myself, up to the size of a supertanker. I could lift this ship, for example."

"But…"

"But that's all. I can lift them up, and move them around a bit torturously slowly. It was a Magic trick power I gained when I was a Stage Magician in my past life, and it's rather less useful than being able to pass through walls or teleport, which I don't see you freaking out about!" I finish just a bit testily, even as I dodge three more rockets, snatching one of them out of the air and loosing it at the other.

"Well, it's your own fault, isn't it? You rarely use those abilities of yours, while this…" DADA falls silent as I make a mental gesture.

"Is it just me, or is this too easy?"

The AI remains silent for a moment, in which I push my way through another three rockets, dodging one of them by a fraction of an inch. Honestly…

"Explain that question." He finally says, all too briskly.

"These rockets. Why do I get the feeling that they're just… y'know, pro forma shots?"

"Edward, that last one would have left your head in sixty thousand pieces if it hit. I know that for sure, I ran a simulation."

"And yet, it didn't. It was just slow enough for me to catch it. They're sending these in ones and twos. If they timed them right, sent a hundred of them spaced right, they could…"

"Ah. Yes, I see it. Well… I'm already trying to get into the systems of this ships. I'll tell you if there's any progress."

"Tell me, how do they rate compared to Valentine's designs?"

"… remarkably similar, actually. It's as if there are changes in the way each set of defenses is being utilized, but the underlying framework could be identical." DADA finishes, throwing up an analysis report that I read and digest in a moment. Half a second later, three rockets miss my right shoulder by a foot, tangling up among each other and exploding when they try to correct course.

I just nod a tiny nod to myself. That's the clincher, then. Already this ship seemed too advanced to belong to anyone else, but this level of similarity… yeah. It's Cobra. Whether that's good or bad is… questionable, really. The last time I had an encounter this direct with Cobra, I had to run out of a compound that was rapidly being flushed with the deadliest toxins in the world. On the other hand, with my new augments I could take that treatment on my chin and not even blink.

Oh well. Whatever it is, it'll have to be faced. I'm here. The ship expands under me, and finally I'm close enough for the X-ray features on my glasses to be able to directly map the whole thing out. The bomb I'm looking for is… there. The ship is… it's a retrofitted grain ship would be my guess, or at least a ship made to resemble a grain ship. Giant holds dominate the deck, interspersed with rocket launchers responsible for the fire I've been dodging.

My glasses tell me there are four holds under the deck, and the bomb is in the bottom-most one of them. Also at every level are… ooh, that's a lot of very dangerous people.

Well then. Showtime.

To their credit, loath as I am to give any to terrorists, the defensive fire intensifies just as I'm about to land. I finally face half a dozen rockets at once, and even a second and third volley of increasing numbers. But by now I have my own weapons in hand, ready to go, and well… it really is too late now.

Once the launchers are destroyed and I've landed, I get to work. I have my path plotted to the bomb, and the priority is to secure it. That is, to set down the appropriate countermeasures so that no one can set it off at will. Once that's done, I can get going to clear out the ship.

Looking around, there's no one running up to me shouting and shooting. I wonder…

With a tap between my heels, I drop a dozen micro-explosives on the deck, jumping high just in time with the explosion that blows it apart. It was a surprise seeing just how strong the hull of this ship is, I'll be honest. I'd come in planning to have plenty of my micro-explosives left over, but considering the strength of the ship I'm wondering if I'll even make it all the way. Thankfully, it works for the first level at least, as the explosive leaves a gaping hole in the deck, surrounded with jagged edges of metal pointing downwards.

A second later I'm descending in through the hole, to the first of the three holds that lie between the surface and the bomb. Looking through the X-ray options again, I should be landing right in the middle of the crowd. I ready myself to face the bullets, mentally readying myself to dodge… when the first surprise hits me.

As soon the thought of 'damn these bullets are gonna hurt' finishes transitioning through my head, I feel my body… well, changing. Skin hardens, drawing together and forming into a hard crust that rapidly thickens and densifies till it approaches something close to metal. I can feel it covering every bit of me as hair recedes and a visor of sorts forms in front of my eyes... what wouldn't I give for a mirror right now.

By the time the transition is complete I've landed on the floor of the enclosure, facing the crowds around me. It sure seems to have caught them by surprise, if the expressions can be relied upon. But it doesn't last for very long, or even long enough for me to get my own weapons up. Hm. Suddenly armored limbs are surprisingly sluggish to move.

I brace myself, jerking forward and jumping high just as I drop a second set of explosives on the floor under me. The first of the enemy fire their weapons, and… that is not a bullet. It's… it's a distortion in the air is the best I can say. Then my ears catch up a moment later, and I realize what it is I'm facing.

Sonic blasts? Who the fuck gave Al-Qaeda sonic-based… right, stupid question. Of course it was Cobra. The good thing is that they're aimed where I was a moment later, and go wide. A few even catch their own fellows on the other side. Ooh, that's not pretty.

Even as the floor under us explodes in a circle and a hole opens up for me to go further below, I fire off a volley off my own weapon, a new laser based design I finished a week ago. Looking at the way the shot shears through half a dozen of the enemy is gratifying.

The shot that slams into my stomach is rather less so. I feel the armor on my front being sheared away like a sheep's wool, and it fucking hurts. It slams me into the wall on the far end of the hold, making every bone in my body rattle in the process. But I'm still mobile, and that's all I can hope for, really. I toss out another mass of micro-explosives into the crowd as I jump hard and bend into a cannonball halfway through, diving straight for the hole my explosives opened in the floor.

This time I toss in my explosives on the layer underground even before I make it through myself, and the resulting explosions clears a path all the way to where the nuke must be held. I ignore the entire second level and just keep falling…

And twitch as a laser web flashes into existence just as I'm on the middle of it.

It's a torture worse than any I've experienced in my life. I feel every iota of the power in the electricity, as it courses through me. I feel the armor on my body smoke as it blackens and chars, breaking apart even as, impossible as it may seem, it holds away the worst of the shock. It's useless, though, considering that this won't be nearly enough… and then I just keep falling, gravity pulling me out of the web just ahead of the metal sheet that slams closed where I was a second ago.

Before it closes I look upwards, and I see that the holes in the above holds have already closed, and the vibrations of the ship tell me that everyone I saw upstairs is already stomping down, presumably through the ways you're actually supposed to move through the ship.

Nothing I can do about it, though. I feel my regeneration struggling to heal me, wounds closing one after the other… but it's too little. It seems there's simply not enough flesh in my body left undamaged, as every closed wound pulls flesh away from elsewhere to open other wounds. At least I don't have any blood left to bleed out…

I see a man loom over me. One of the people stationed here, presumably. He holds up a hand after looking at me, evidently holding off people who wanted to fire.

"This is the Scourge of Aleppo? Slayer of hundreds? He looks like a half-coked kebab!" I… can this be happening?

I send prayers to every god I've ever heard of. Fuck yes. Please, please keep gloating. I need to figure out just what the fuck my body is doing and how to fix it. If I remember correctly, which wouldn't normally be in question but is right now because of the amount of frying my brain just went through, I don't actually have anything resembling 'vitals' anymore. It's all just generic 'flesh', or 'biomass' may be more accurate, with a few specific organs needed for certain functions provided by other viruses and bacteria treatments I underwent.

The tests I ran indicated all sorts of possibilities with this flesh, but none of them quite covered 'being fried with enough electricity to run New York for a week'. I tune in to see what the man is saying as he turns a sharp gaze right at me "… dog of the Great Satan will be taught…" oh, good. I have a bit more time.

I force my mind to focus, suppressing the pain and spasms coursing through me with sheer will. The point of the treatments was to be able to survive all this. Okay, so the flesh isn't important. The hybridized, tailored micro-organism that houses my sapience now is. And I can infect any amount of flesh in a moment. While I can't create flesh/biomass ex nihilo, all I should need is… ah. I remember.

I turn just a bit, masking it as a twitch. At the far end of the hold is a cylinder about the size of a small truck, sitting pretty like a fucking video game prize. And just like a video game, I have several very angry men with very dangerous weapons in the way, with more arriving every moment. The important bit here, then, is to move. I still can't stand up, my legs refuse flat out, but I have enough strength to do this.

With a thought, my left arm changes. I missed it when the armor grew on me, but I see the innate flesh that lies underneath my skin this time. Black, black as night with flecks and lines of red wriggling inside it. It twists and morph, bubbling and writhing before it settles, the shape dramatically different. It's… it's a clawed tentacle. That's all I can call it. It's a tentacle made of several intertwined fleshy robes, with three sharp claws made of bone at its tip. With any luck, it'll do what I need.

But despite being monumentally stupid, evidently the terrorists aren't entirely blind. As soon as I'm ready to move, I hear one of them cry out "He's doing something! Look at the hand, it's-" he cuts off halfway. I don't blame him, since I had my claws in his throat. I take a fraction of a moment to look at the elongated tentacle, the wicket, whip like cord that stretches from my shoulder, the other end buried in the man that spoke. A second later I pull him back in, and the corpse moves almost faster than the ordinary eye can see, zooming through the air before it slams into my prone, near dead form.

And then I change again. I feel the change fully this time, as my whole body unravels in a single second. I feel the tentacles, hundreds and hundreds of tentacles that form out of every scrap of healthy flesh in me, as they dig into the hapless corpse, everything that makes up my body pouring into his flesh in a single instant. His flesh, which becomes mine equally swiftly. I'm moving as soon as I've consumed him, rolling away just in time to dodge a massed clash of sonic fire.

I feel a flow of memories halfway through the movement but catching a few flashes of the man's life I channel the rest away. This is just about the worst time possible.

My tentacle… no, my Whip-fist lashes out like only whips can do, moving in a circle around me and bisecting anyone it touches. A sonic blast moves through the air where I was a second ago, but I'm already moving, running with everything I have towards the nuke.

I grab and consume two men in the six steps it takes me to reach the nuke, just before I turn around to face the crowd. This would be the point where I would set down a device to map and mimic every signal flow to and from the bomb, while shutting down everything else. But of course, that fucking electricity map…

I lash out with the whip again, this time bisecting a man vertically. I pull one of his parts back to me, consuming it before the other half is finished crashing into the ground. Whatever instinct buried in my new DNA that controls my new powers, apparently this his how much biomass it deems enough to manifest the armor, as I feel it forming once again.

But it's not going to be enough, I know that much already. It's been just over forty-five seconds since I landed on the ship, about two minutes since I jumped off my plane. I've killed about fifteen terrorists, out of… I think back to the time I scanned the ship with my X-ray vision. Ninety-four enemies. Looking at the advancing forces against me with my back to the nuke, I see another dozen.

Above me the hole I came through is fully sealed, and the enemy is coming through a staircase to the right. If I don't have the jammer… I feel a plan forming, but I'll need to move quickly. Rushing ahead, I let loose with the whip once more, taking the sonic blasts head on to get a clear shot. Three blasts one after the other rip most of the left side of my body apart entirely, but in the process I eviscerate every single one of them, tentacles converting most of them to biomass.

And now I have a clear hold and a single means of ingress for the enemy. Now isn't that interesting. I pick up the sonic blasters of everyone I've been killing, running a quick eye over them. Hm. A sharp movement cracks open the covering of one of the guns, letting me have a look inside.

Very interesting. Yes, this should do nicely. I absentmindedly blast the man who just came in through the door with one of the guns, throwing them back out with what looks like half their veins having spontaneously detonated. Impressive effects too.

Completely dismantling the gun I was looking at, I move quickly, detaching and reattaching a few wires, bending some of the circuits to overload the firing mechanisms. In less than ten seconds the blaster turns into a bomb, set to go off in about twenty seconds. Meanwhile I've reached the door by this time, and looking at the next terrorist looking to come in, I gently put down the blaster-bomb before nudging it out with a foot. A second later I have the door closed. A sonic blast opens the panel next to it… or rather, it creates a small deformation that I then use to open the panel. Same thing.

I rip each wire in the panel out, locking the door beyond anyone's capacity to open. I don't expect this to last more than a few minutes, but with any luck I won't need it to.

Three seconds later I'm back to the bomb, only this time I'm finally ready to look at it as something other than a goalpost I must anyone from reaching. Looking at it from top to bottom yields nothing but smooth steel. There's probably the openings to find what I'm looking for, but there's no telling how long it'll take to find.

With a thought, I drop the dam between my assimilated memories and my mind. I'll admit, my mind buckles for a few seconds, as half a dozen lifetimes pour into my mind, all struggling to make space for themselves. Razaq Ansari, Abdulaziz Qureshi, Javed Al-Khalifa… I let the memories wash over the rock of my identity, ignoring and setting aside anything that's not relevant here and now. It's a bit of a struggle, until… here we are. The bomb.

Hm.

The good news is, they told everyone how to set it off. I kinda figured, considering they wanted it to go off at all costs, but nice to know for sure. The bad news is, there's just too many ways it can be detonated. A panel at the actual device, and three separate remotes in the possession of key leaders. Fuck this is going to be painful to secure now. What wouldn't I give for a basic computer, even something like… is that a smartphone I'm seeing?

In a flash I'm at the corpse I saw a second ago, and sure enough, there it is, a Samsung device hanging halfway out of his pocket. Picking it up, I toss the corpse aside and continue looking. Eleven seconds later, I see two things. The door I closed is starting to deform under the continued blasts from the other side, and I have three smartphones to play with.

I get working on the devices, pausing for just a moment as my internal countdown hits zero. And the ship shakes as a colossal explosion turns the landing outside the door to his hold into a charnel house. I have no way of knowing how many I got with it, but with the way the door is deformed, the number of shots it must have taken and the rate per gun… this is not the time.

Once I have the phones dissected, it's simple enough to rig them into a crude facsimile of the jammer I was planning to use. It should work close enough, but it'll require some more work. Rushing closer to the bomb, I let my newly gained memories guide me, as I trace barely visible grooves on the surface of the nuke to find a panel towards the back.

Once it's open, I can get working.

All in all, about two minutes since I got in this hold, the bomb's signal status with the outside world is essentially frozen in place. My device has mapped its current signal traffic, and will replicate it no matter what, while telling the systems of the bomb to ignore any other signals. It's a quick and dirty solution, but it will work.

What won't work is the fear of another bomb. Turning around, I see the door deforming again as the sonic blasts resume, only this time there's additional blasts on the panel covering the hold I made in the roof.

Two pronged approach. Nice.

Well, not really, but good on them. I take a second look at the door to the hold, trying to evaluate how long it'll hold up. I give it a minute, maybe two at the most. About the same for the roof block. That's two minutes I have to get ready, before things get real interesting, all Chinese-like. Well then, I better-

I let out a ragged breath a second later. My whole body seems to have seized up, with a strange and nauseating ripple making its way from my waist upwards, skin rippling in a way I'm sure skin isn't supposed to, while agony perforates every bit of me. It makes it hard to think, the way the sheer pain erupts throughout me.

Eventually it passes, and on checking I realize twenty seconds have passed. I stand up gingerly, trying to see if whatever it was may come back. My bio-armor is still in place, as it my Whip-fist, but I can see… goddam it. I can see scales, like those of an Amazonian Anaconda, appearing and disappearing rapidly on my shoulder. Bloody hell and a rain of black. That bloody snake…

But I just have no time. I have just over a minute to try and disable a nuke, before the room is flooded by people toting next gen, ultra-powerful weapons. I can't handle a medical emergency in myself at the same time. Turning to the bomb again, I start at looking for ways to more reliably shut down any chances of it going off.

One good thing about nuclear weapons is that they only go off if everything about them goes exactly right. Basically the whole explanation is long and complicated, but there are several complicated, precise mechanisms needed to make the bomb detonate effectively. Shutting down one or more of them would ensure that the chain reactions needed to properly detonate the bomb never happen, and it becomes a very expensive, very dangerous display piece.

Of course, this bomb is a cylinder 30 feet long and ten meters in radius, so it's easier said than done. The panels I used to rig my makeshift jammer provide a place to start, but these mechanisms are protected behind the bomb's jacket, and to get to them… at least a decent look around reveals that there's no triggers that will go off from what I do next.

I focus for a moment, and my whip-fist bubbles before changing. Instead of the tentacle and abortive claws at their peak, a set of long, hard blade-like claws takes shape from my wrist. Hooking them down, I pull, smiling as my efforts are rewarded by a wide chunk of the jacket peeling off like a sardine can. It's rough and ugly, but it does the trick. Not to reveal the mechanisms I'm looking for, oh no. That would be too easy. Rather, it reveals the hinges and locks I'm looking for, to go after the jacket panel after panel, and get started dismantling the systems.

What I'm looking to do is to disable the specific systems that are responsible for triggering the chain reaction, while leaving as much of the conventional explosives in place as possible. That way once they go off, they can really wreck the bomb right proper.

It's not long before I'm immersed in the task completely, seeking every mechanism and looking for the ones they're connected to. This… this is going to be complicated. I've studied nuclear weapons lately, and I've seen many designs. This is easily one of the most complicated ones I've seen, if not the most complicated. There's over a dozen separate mechanisms each individually capable of making things go boom, and I can only tell what a third of them are linked to.

It doesn't help when the door is blown open twenty-five seconds ahead of schedule, of course. I jump ahead as soon as I hear the metal giving, snatching up the sonic weapon I was using and turning to fire… but it does nothing. Damn, they shut it down. It's not difficult. The weapon's bio-locked, of course, but I spoofed that without even noticing since the virus allows my hands to perfectly mimic biometrics and fingerprints on the go. They just deleted the people I consumed from the approved list, and I'm left with half a dozen ugly paperweights.

I hate it when my enemies get smart about things.

Tossing the weapon aside, I charge forward, the now familiar sensation of a morph coursing through me once more. This time it's a whole new design, the most effective of the weapons this transformation was projected to give me. My right arm changes from the elbow down, morphing into a giant, two-bladed weapon. Where my forearm used to be is the bigger blade, pointing straight ahead from my elbow. A smaller, curved blade points to my back, and both sides look equally thirsty for blood. Good. They'll get it.

Shots rain down on me as I get into motion, but I'm deep enough in the zone to ignore them with impunity. I let myself go, every concern, every hesitation that has dogged me so far. I'm here, in a vital op with my most important piece of equipment, my own body, being an untested weapon. I'm alone on a mission that should have the entire US Armed Forces on it, and the enemy has weapons so advanced that I don't have a clue how to counter them, let alone a poor old Army cutting edge designer.

So what? I have an armor on my body, and a big-ass blade in my hand. And for several minutes… it's enough. I scythe through the numbers around me, moving at will. Some sonic shots I dodge, some hit me directly and slag off whole chunks of my body. Whenever I start getting weak I grab a few of the targets, absorbing them entirely in a matter of seconds.

Four separate times, I find spasms and attacks gripping me. Limbs weaken, my mind all but implodes under the sheer hurt of it, and my whole body tries to rebel against my mind. Every time I get back up, marshaling everything I can in the struggle.

Halfway through the massacre, I feel myself changing still. The blades remain in place, but even as I move and the last hunks of flesh from a consumption dissolve into my body, I fee now organs taking shape.

When, twenty seconds later, my forward blade suddenly starts crackling with bio-electricity, while the backwards pointed, smaller blade gets deep green veins denoting poison… well, let it never be said that I had compunctions in a fight.

The toughest fight I get is not from any of the turbaned idiots, not from any of the smooth shaved Takfir. It's from a man dressed like a middle eastern version of a shinobi, a man I identify immediately as one of the League of Shadows, also called the League of Assassins. After four minutes of painful and tiring combat when I finally claw him apart with a swing of my blade, I don't miss the chance to consume him.

The stream of memories that pours in is more of a tidal wave in his case, but I put it aside all the same. That's not important right now, what's important is when I can look around, to see a ship's hold basically emptied, with a swath of blood around the floor and walls, and only the remaining weapons and armor to denote where the enemy was.

Well, except for one. I see the last of the Takfir, the man I know from my consumed memories to be… oh. Oh.

Yeah, this is how these things always turn out in the end, isn't it? The actual, blood-born son of Usama bin Laden… but I'm not really inclined to let it. With a thought, I reform my hand into the Whip-fist. Readying myself, I pull the arm back…

"I wouldn't do that, if I were you." The voice comes out of nowhere. I'm not particularly surprised. This, too, is how these things usually happen.

"Is that so?" I just ask. It's not a person, that much I can determine in an instant. My senses have been evolving this whole time, even beyond my normal 'slightly supernatural' level. By now I can tell for sure, there's no one other than me and this… creature, alive on the ship.

"Yes. His bio-signs are linked to the bomb. Kill him, and it blows."

Oh. I think lightly. I need to be more careful with these things, I'm starting to get carried away in the tropes of this world. Even when I'm actively trying to subvert them… or maybe because I'm trying to… I'll need to think on this in detail afterwards.

"Who am I talking to, by the way?" I ask, while systematically calming my instincts down from the war footing they're on.

"Aww. You don't recognize me? We had such a nice conversation in Switzerland."

I feel my eyes widen as the words wash over me. Talk about finding opportunity in a crisis.

"I'll say, you're a great deal more conversational than Switzerland." I ask the AI that manages apparently all Cobra assets.

"Eh. Valentine was an asshole, wanted the computer to 'know its place'.You know how it is with these tech geniuses. They figure out a few 'for' loops and start thinking they own cyberspace."

I just nod bemusedly. A look from the corner of my eye reveals Kasim bin Usama staring at me hatefully, but still flat on his back. He's got a leg missing, but my blade was heated up to hell at the time, so it's cauterized pretty well. He looks like he wants to say something, probably scream filthy invective or proclamations of Allah's wrath on me… but I have no interest in finding out.

"So where are we with clearances, then? The last time, I seemed to have a good bit of command authority over systems. Can you shut down the bomb?" I ask, just before another wave of spasms courses through me. It's worse than all the times before, as I visibly see my own limbs try to dissolve as a tail struggles to from out of my ass… before subsiding as quickly as it started. It's because of the Multi Gloria, has to be. The same virus that makes me impossibly malleable also makes it possible for the unchecked pollution of the snakebite to cause problems by warping and morphing me.

"Not directly, no." The computer answers, and for a second I'm at a loss before realizing he's talking about the bomb.

"You can't shut it down?"

"Not directly. The structure of authorizations and access restrictions that govern these things are complicated, but this is project traces back to instructions issued by authority that transcends any member of the High Council. You alone have the power to countermand it, but only to a limited extent. Unless you complete the Initiative, of course."

And we're back to the out-of-context name dropping too. I have an idea about the Initiative the computer is talking about, but now isn't the time to do it. I need to render the nuke safe as soon as possible.

"Okay. Do two things. First, there's another AI watching the ship at this time. Check the air, there should be a fairly wide distribution of observer drones. Connect with one, and open dialogue. Use my voice as the handshake."

"And the second?"

"Tell me what you can do with the bomb." I snarl out, looking between the damned thing and bin Usama again. If the fucker dies…

"He can start the process of disarming it, under your authority." The voice that comes out of the speakers is different from the one that was speaking before, but it's so intensely familiar and reassuring that it's all I can do to not sink to my knees in relief.

"Hey, bro." I snap out, tone relaxed despite myself. We're in the home stretch now.

"Hello, Eddie. I see you made if after all. Pity, I was hoping the whole thing about fools and children would be disproved." The line is delivered in deadpan so flat that I have to suppress an actual smile.

"Yeah, funny how that works. Listen, while we're talking, do a complete download of everything I have access to. Then tell me what can be done here." I bark out, turning back to the bomb as the terrorist seems to be on the way to la la land soon enough. I feel a few traces of yet another attack coming on, but preparing myself, it turns out to be a false alarm."

"Basically, the bomb's operation is locked into separate modes by the original instruction set. You have the authority to stand down the Activation Levels, but not scrap them. And the levels can only go down one by one."

Hm. That's a weird way to run things. I guess it takes all types.

"Well, start shunting it down to 'disabled' then." I just say. They should be able to take care of the rest.

The Cobra computers comes back at this. "Certainly, sir. The current mode is instant detonation. Switching to one-minute countdown now… done."

I pause. "Just how many levels are there, out of curiosity?"

"Well, after the one-minute, there's the five minutes, thirty minutes, one hour and two hour modes, before the bomb enters sleep state."

I roll me eyes. Fuckin' action movie tropes.

"Okay, keep stepping down, then."

"Right. Switching to…" but then the voice switches abruptly, as DADA takes back the speaker. "Eddie, Kassim!"

I whirl around in an instant, only to find that the one-legged terrorist has moved several steps away. He's reaching for one of the sonic blasters, and there's no prizes for guessing what his aim will be. I start forward, but of course this is when I would get another attack. It feels a lot like a meter long metal rod being rammed into my head and then set on fire, and that's just the first second.

I gather every scrap of strength in my body to ignore the pain and just run, but of course, my legs are kind of… not there at the moment. Not gone or anything, but they're kinda jelly-like in a way that has nothing to do with Harry Potter.

I take one step and then the second, rushing forward in less than four seconds since DADA yelled his warning. Four seconds, as one might imagine, are a lifetime.

The sonic blasters these people were using is a powerful weapon. A blast from one of these is powerful enough to break apart metal doors, and to carve off chunks of my newly enhanced, hyper-strong body. What it does to a human head when fired from a weapon directly under the chin… can't even be called ugly, honestly. The way the blood and brains splatter on the wall behind… it's even interesting to look at in a modern art-ish way.

But that doesn't really help me right now. I turn back around, looking at the bomb, trying to see any hint of what it'll do now.

I needn't have bothered. "Triggering conditions met. Bomb active!" the voice of the AI echoes across the hold, every bit as cold and mechanical as it was in Switzerland.

"Disable it!" I yell back, mustering every iota of command in me.

"Request denied. Authorization conditions not met. Detonation minus fifty-nine seconds." The voice answers my call, mocking and humiliating in its cold certainty.

"Fuck! DADA, anything?"

"I'm bringing the plane back, if you teleport to the edge of your range, you could get out in time."

I shake my head. That's not an option. Instead, I turn back to the bomb. Let's see what miracles I can work in the end.

Over the course of forty-eight seconds, with the help of two AIs, I proceed to shut down detonation mechanism in the bomb after another. There are three remaining, but in another several seconds…

I fall flat to the floor, before the sheer hurt of it me want to drop everything and curl up on myself. The pain isn't a problem, but the absolute, utter incapability to move precisely is. At least that's what I tell myself, as every muscle in my body screams and begs to remain still. I feel my eyes and nose warp and mutate, heat signatures flaring around me for a moment before fading back.

Through the pain and the attack, I keep working. Every inch of movement is a fresh agony, and every attempt at thinking and remembering feels like a decapitation of the kind where they played football with the heads afterwards. Three times, it's everything I have in me to suppress my hand when it twitches wildly to connect the wrong wires. I'm aware that the AIs are saying something, but it's just unintelligible noise at this point.

I have no illusions of what comes next. I've already been helpless for four seconds, and that's four seconds that are never coming back. Even now I feel my strength fading, and a steady drowsiness coming on that can only preclude unconsciousness. And if I black out now, everything is well and truly fucked. Unless… one hint of an idea bubbles in my head, and one last time, desperately, I gather every hint of strength and act. I tap at the screen like a man possessed, tripping protocols and rewriting codes, before switching to reconnect one subsystem after another to divert the circuits and hopefully-

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX