There were many perks to being a cyber-soldier, as there were downsides.
And right now... the Player wasn't sure whether being nearly impossible to tire out was a perk or a downside.
The objective markers continued to change as she went through, although the DNI Tactical Mode continued to remain mostly free of hostile markers (thankfully), so, after a few hours of boredom-filled running, she stopped for a break near a lake, with exhausted Falcomon slowing down and faceplanting two steps away from her.
As the owl-like Digimon was slowly recovering, the Player decided to test the water in the lake, although she was far from sure how'd it work in the neuroscape. Interestingly enough, the sensors in her arm reported sufficiently low levels of contaminants, so she took a canteen from her belt, extended it, filled it with water and, after extending a drinking probe from her helmet, took a sip.
Strangely enough, it didn't quite taste like the water she tasted during one of her missions of lesser notability…
And then her train of thoughts got interrupted with the "Energy reserves below 50%" message in tactical mode. Given the events of the last days, especially the battle before the entrance of One Coalescence Way, it did make sense… but it didn't quite look like she could recharge them, unless...
After taking a good look at the lake, she did notice some semi-normal fish swimming around. Even though she didn't have any normal fishing equipment, it didn't mean she couldn't improvise a bit.
As the Falcomon slowly recovered from that marathon run, it saw its human partner first dip her hand in the lake, then take some water in the canteen (which the Digimon kinda craved by now, but was too exhausted to even ask for), taste it, and now… was she giving it water?
"Here, have this - you really look like you need it," said the woman, helping Falcomon to return to a normal position and take a few sips. Even though it wasn't much, the Digimon was already starting to feel noticeably better, albeit quite hungry.
After that, she walked to the lake and… stuck her hand in it?
Before Falcomon could ask, what's going on, a massive electrical surge went through the above-water parts of her arm. As soon as the discharge ended, she dived into the water and, soon enough, returned with a large amount of electrocuted fish packed inside a string bag. Falcomon really had no idea, where in the world she'd acquired this string bag, although, to be fair, she did feel a bit like the type to pocket things that caught her interest.
Some more dives later, she's tasked Falcomon with helping her clean up that fish, while she was gathering flammable material and preparing a campfire, which she called "old good Dakota". Digimon didn't exactly have an idea what that meant, but, apparently, it involved digging pits in the ground to put fuel here… for some reason.
Once she started the fire with a Firefly Swarm, however, the reason became clear - this way, the flame was smokeless, preventing their cover from being blown.
While the fish was being cooked, the Player suddenly went on alert, raising Banshii and taking the aim, then unleashed another Firefly Swarm… before frantically swinging her left hand down, forcing the drone swarm to drop dead right as it began to surround the target, and rushing towards it. Falcomon, curious, decided to follow her and take a look at what made her act like this.
Ashkii Williams knew there was something wrong.
Normally, a fishing session didn't end in a fish taking the bait, spasming, and then going limp. Or just about every other fish in the lake doing the same. Thankfully, Gomamon was on the ground and wasn't hit by any of it.
At the very least, his grandfather's lessons about the dangers of electrofishing meant he was able to roughly pinpoint the point of the electro-angler, judging by the way fishes had spasmed.
And now, as he was closing in, he got suddenly attacked by some strange insect-like machines… were those even Digimon?
He didn't have much time to think, as the bright strobing light and incredible heat made him feel like he was in a burning building again… right before it all ended, with mechanical insects falling down to the ground.
As he was recovering from almost being set on fire, the bushes before him parted, letting him see… wait, what..?
The figure before him looked mostly like a human, but was heavily augmented (all four limbs, possibly more) and clad in an advanced armor jacket, with a helmet looking more like a modified version of those military pilots use.
In addition to that, the weapon this figure held in hands wasn't something he could recognize, looking roughly like a shotgun, but with a massive nozzle-like barrel complete with a suppressor, some kind of a double screw in place of the firing mechanism and an unergonomic side-mounted... charging handle? Thankfully, at least the sight on this thing was recognizable as a standard-issue BOA 3.
As the figure came closer, he was able to recognize the writing on the gun - apparently, this thing was called "Banshii", not that it reminded him of anything in particular. The pistol in the holster, from what Askii could see, wasn't like anything he knew either.
"In fact," thought Williams to himself, "What is that thing before me - a human or a Digimon?"
Given the utterly weird guns, though, he thought the figure would be more likely to be a Digimon, as, from what he's seen in the past week, some higher-leveled ones (such as Machinedramon or Beelzemon, if those paintings in the village DigiDestined passed were anything to go by) had similar weapons too.
In fact, it could even explain the weird combination of armor jacket and pilot's helmet - it wasn't like Digital World cared much about practicality, given what he's seen from the AWOL Commandramon and Sealsdramon, which seemed to work as mercenaries those days.
This train of thought got somewhat derailed, when he heard the figure mutter something like "Another human face in this neuro-hell… though… either Corvus is now fine with dragging children here or I'm not in the Frozen Forest anymore, and I don't even know which one is worse…" in a surprisingly feminine voice.
"Ahem…" started Williams, feeling a bit awkward, "I'm sorry, miss, but can you, please, tell me, how to call you? Your name, I mean. I'm Ashkii Williams, if anything."
The figure chuckled, before answering:
"I wish I could, but, I'm afraid, I am currently lacking this memory. Although… You can call me Player."
It wasn't like Williams lived for a long time or talked with a lot of people, but, to him, this sounded somewhat stupid. Amnesia and short nicknames? Digimon weapons and, for what it looked like, attacks too? What was that, a badly-written fangame of the Capumon Mystery Dungeon?
Before he could find an answer to this question, an actual Digimon emerged from behind the Player. One usage of Scan later, Ashkii discovered it to be a Falcomon and… a partner to this human?
"Wait…" the Player mumbled, seeing an all too-familiar twitch of the eyelids and slight wave of hand. "Don't you tell me you've got a DNI already…"
As much of fucked-up shit did she see in her life so far, this one took the cake, as subtle as it was. Even in the Coalescence facility in Singapore, all the test subjects were adults… and here, in this neuroscape, she was seeing a 10-year old, implanted with a DNI, before herself.
And she was not sure if it was real or not.
On one hand, installation of the DNI was a prohibitively expensive procedure, barely affordable even for those, who weren't short on money. Not to mention what the bone growth would do to the anchor in the spine and DNI cabling inside it.
On the other hand… she wasn't entirely sure, if Coalescence wouldn't actually do something like that. After what she saw in Singapore and Zurich, experimenting on children didn't seem like too much of a stretch. Of course, the "what for?" part was left unanswered (for now), but, in all honesty, she was not exactly sure about the purpose of Nova 6 manufacturing in the corporate HQs - yet the Coalescence Corporation did it anyway.
"Well… let's hope you don't bleed ravens…" the Player mumbled, prompting puzzled looks from both kid and Falcomon.
"Sorry..." she added. "That...does sound completely insane, now that I say it out loud. Let's just say I've seen some shit. Did you hear about Zurich?"
"It's… a city in Switzerland, right? My DNI shows that it was made here," said the kid.
"You don't know what happened today, do you?" said Player. "How long have you been here?"
"Three weekcycles, miss," sounded from somewhere closer to the beach. One activation of Scan later, Player saw it was a Gomamon, partnered to Ashkii Williams (whatever it meant), talking. If she was honest with herself, it looked kinda cute with a koi-like fish in its teeth.
"That reminds me... " Ashkii suddenly started, "why were you electro-fishing? Did you really lack any other way?"
"This one was the fastest. I've just needed to get some recharge going and be on my way again."
"On your way… where to?" asked Falcomon, prompting Player to stop and rethink a bit.
For quite a bit of time, whenever things came to combat, she trusted her DNI and tac-net to mark the next set of targets, the next objective, the next waypoint… almost anything.
Now, she was trying to hold onto this last semblance of normalcy - of a time, when she needed not to question her sanity or reality of things around her.
And besides… It did sorta seem like her waypoint was set in a way that brought her to the only other (probably) human in this neuroscape.
"To Ashkii's camp… apparently."
Falcomon just glared at her, but, after a few seconds, shrugged and nodded, as Ashkii, Gomamon and Player went towards the camp, with the cyber-soldier carrying all the cooked fish in the string bag she used before.
Revati Bhandari was ready for many things today.
But Ashkii returning from his search for electrofisher with someone, who proclaimed to be a soldier of Winslow Accord, wasn't one of them.
Even moreso, when this soldier had a Digimon partner on her own (a Falcomon) and was heavily augmented. Even the weapons looked more like something Digimon would use… albeit the face under the helmet looked definitely human - not that it was saying much by itself, given the existence of certain high-level Digimon, which looked fairly human too (if Ashkii's findings were to be trusted).
At the same time, though, seeing a cyber-soldier on their side was… rather nice, even if one was to take all the info from the CIA leaks into account. At least this way, there was an additional Digimon and a walking death machine (no relation to the man-portable Gatling gun) in the team, which, considering the hazards of Digital World, were much appreciated.
While the introduction went pretty smooth, despite Antonina and Janani shuddering a bit at the sight of a Winslow Accord-affiliated cybernetic supersoldier (as both of them were from member-states of the Common Defense Pact), the following talks, upon reaching the topic of events in Zurich, mentioned to Ashkii before, went… weird.
Rogue artificial intelligence, capable of infecting people through DNI contacts? A single infected cyber-soldier managing to plunge one of the most advanced cities on the planet into utter chaos, even going as far as taking over the systems of One Coalescence Way and unleashing robotic army onto the closest parts of the city?
All of this - and more, like the story about nazi zombies in mind of Sarah Hall and a world upside down around the Lotus Towers - felt to Revati like a fever dream of a sick (or dying) mind...