Bioshock 6.0

January 28, 2011, Brockton Bay, 5:34 PM

I kept an eye on the proceedings that Taylor was sending as I made my way to Coil's Lair. She had things pretty much under control, so I didn't pump my speed to levels that would start draining my mana. Meanwhile, despite my misgivings, I forced myself to recall the inadvertent scan of Lisa's body I'd made.

I spun off a parallel mind to analyze the scan, the body was inarguably dead, neck snapped, massive neuronal death due to oxygen loss. Could I have tried to revive her there? She was well beyond what Heal could fix, and the little knowledge I'd learnt from watching Amy fix brains was that she never tried to revive dead neurons, just repaired the damaged ones. Even if I did revive her, she'd have lost a lot of herself.

I knew at the back of my mind that I possibly could simply remake her from yesterday's scan, but would that result in just another comatose body? It was my last hope that I could do something about that, and I was reluctant to test it out anytime soon.

Also, who the fuck burns everything in a fit of rage? I had no idea that I was a closet pyromaniac. I'd need to tweak the activation controls for Gamer's mind a bit more, seems I'd loosened it too much towards manual control after the awkward activation near Taylor's locker. Anyway, the current priority was Coil, better to hold on to my hope while I dealt with him.

The guy really was a complete moron, why on earth would he think killing Lisa would stop his downfall? He must've gotten something from her in his precog timelines, and Lisa must have not let our names slip. A wave of grief and frustration again rippled in the back of my mind even as I reinforced my mental controls and went back to watching the scan.

The marks on her hand, they were too regular to have been random scratching - a combination of straight and angled scratches. Was there a code in the angles? The count of the scratches? Ugh, I was still to disturbed to think coherently. I chose defer to a better mind for this, I took a snapshot of the scratches and sent it to Taylor. She received it and said she was working on it.

As I was entering the service entrance which served as Coil's emergency exit, I only stopped to slice through a few doors in the ID that I was travelling through. I was almost there when I saw Coil lunge to the door and call out his code before Swarm could subdue him. I poured in speed till I reached his office. Once I came out of the ID, I almost stumbled as I saw Coil's label - his threat level had dropped down from ? ? ? to Lvl. 38.

What?

I shot off an Observe as I walked up to him, he was babbling the kind of nonsense that anyone under torture did. Oh, the observe results made sense, he had been stripped of all his failsafes and/or modes of communication. In his last desperate gambit he'd also activated his biggest failsafe. Code Gamma meant the base is compromised, and I didn't have to think too hard to guess what the 'Eldritch' part meant. Of course his threat level had dropped.

"You utter moron." I echoed Taylor's sentiment as I scanned him, then fleshcrafted him into biomass and inventoried the remains.

Swarm gave me a gobsmacked look, "Did you just kill him?" In the course of making her Avatar look natural she'd made it mimic her emotions too closely, I'd warn her about it later.

I shrugged, "If Lisa lives, he'll live."

Swarm stilled, then nodded. Smart girl. "Oh. I see... By the way, I couldn't stop the code from propagating, the guards outside radioed it across before I could bring them down."

I nodded, I'd gathered as much from Coil's dramatic level drop anyway, "We don't know the countercode to Gamma Eldritch. Keep your eyes on the vault level. How long will it take you to subdue all the mercs here?"

Swarm looked pensive, "I didn't have enough time to bring a sizeable swarm through the vents, I was focusing on this office. I've put the base in lockdown, most mercs are trapped in whichever rooms they were... Wait, how many tranq bugs do you have?"

"A few hundred, I can make more."

Swarm nodded, "Give me about two thousand, it'll be enough to tranq all of them. But locked doors might not be enough to stop the Travellers. I can possibly tranq Ballistic and Genesis... but the others."

I nodded, brought out the bugs from the inventory and started fleshcrafting them into batches of duplicates, as soon as each batch was made, Taylor took control and took them up into the vents. I spoke as I worked, "Don't attempt to tranq Sundancer or Genesis, the former will just burn your bugs and Genesis' power works in a dream state, focus on keeping her awake. We'll have to try and communicate with Trickster. He's possibly the only one amongst them who'll listen to us."

Swarm nodded, "Got it. By the way, Sundancer is out, she's burned through the door and is on the way to liberate the others from their rooms. Also, one of the two guards at the Vault level is approaching the Vault panel, not to worry, the unlock code won't work, I've changed it."

I'd made about 1500 tranq wasps by now, suddenly, Swarm looked alarmed, "Maker, the Vault opened! He used an unknown code, must be a hardware override! I still don't have enough bugs there! This much should be enough, go! Now! He's telling Noelle that Coil and her team is in danger!"

I nodded, dropped into an ID and started busting through doors to the elevator shaft. On my way I messaged Taylor, "Try to talk to Trickster, tell him I'm trying to Heal Noelle."

Taylor gave me a bug-map of the Vault level, the mercs on that level were trying to flee, I had no idea what Noelle was doing, I could only see her as a big void in the map. Taylor let the two fleeing mercs into a lift and then locked it down halfway up to the next floor, she'll deal with them.

As I was dropping down the cargo Lift shaft, Taylor messaged me, "Aveek, you were overthinking the code, the angled slashes are dashes, the straight ones are dots."

Dammit, of course Lisa would leave me something in Morse Code... I quickly recalled the scan and decoded the message.

1EGONTLIVE

Huh?... Huh?

1 EGO, NOT LIVE?

Did she mean that if I revived her from a previous scan she would still be dead? Or did it mean that she would not consider that being alive? But she was not one for that kind of philosophy, or else she'd have had problems with my cloned bodies! And what did she mean by one ego? Dammit Lisa! Didn't you find any other time to be cryptic?

I was at the vault level, I shapeshifted into a Calvert-like body and equipped Coil's costume. Then I came out of the ID a few turns away from where the big blank of Noelle was.

I walked out calmly into the view of the chimera girl, "Ms. Meinhardt, not to worry, it was a false alarm."

She looked startled, all of her extra limbs and heads still looked agitated, "Coil! Are you sure?"

I nodded politely as I stopped about 5 metres away from her. Let this work, let this work, I had no intention of going into combat with someone whose level was in the thousands...

Her eyes narrowed again, "What's the release code?"

Fuck. "Gamma Alpha Charlie." I was guessing out of my Arse, Lisa would have figured it out!

A ridiculously fast tentacle formed and lashed out towards me, I didn't have time to react. It slammed me into the wall, the momentary lance of pain and shock was disorienting, but subsided quickly, thank you Gamer's Body. Shit, there went almost half my HP. "Ms. Meinhardt..."

"There was no release code! Who are you? What have you done with my team?!" A gigantic hand picked me up like a ragdoll and brought me face to face with her.

Okay, plan B then, I sent out a scan, ugh, damn her dimension-fucking core, 450 MP was enough to scan a mountain!

"THIS BLUE... YOU'RE MAKER! I SAW VIDEOS, THIS BLUE LIGHT. WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH KROUSE?!"

"Noelle, Your team is fine, my enmity was with Coil. He's all I came for. I want to help you..." I worked frantically as I was talking, swapping Noelle's current brain in the healed template I'd created yesterday, it took only a few seconds.

"LIAR! COIL TOLD US YOU'D TRY TO SWEET TALK US! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH HIM?!"

I didn't bother replying to her, I just applied fleshcrafting with the fresh template. No time to ask for permission, there was another blue flash...

A few gouges appeared on her body as she let out an ear-splitting shriek. A body appeared on the giant arm, it was her healed body, hanging out of the arm limply.


WARNING

Fleshcraft failed! Insufficient Mana.

Dimensional Anomaly detected. Target is dimensionally anchored.

Reminder - Rob is a dick.

A singular ego will not be allowed to have more than one discrete conscious instance!


Shit, this was bad. The limp body was quickly absorbed back into the arm, which jerked a bit around as the gouges on her body filled up with bubbling flesh faster than I expected. She was almost crushing me in her grip, and my MP had just started climbing back up from zero. But I was too distracted to notice any of that.

That sentence! A singular ego! I had set it to auto archive after I'd tried to make my first clone!

I remembered repeating that statement to Lisa when she'd asked if the clone bodies were separate instances of me. But I'd always focused more on the discrete/continuous parts.

That's what she meant! The clones came out unconscious because another discrete instance was alive. She was not currently alive, which meant remaking her would create a singular ego, she'd not be comatose! YES! Thank you for that reminder AI, you're the best!

My glee was cut short as Noelle kept shrieking incoherently, the hand brought me closer, I didn't have enough mana to do anything substantial. My HP was also alarmingly low. Unboosted and in a weaker-than-Maker avatar, my strength was no match for her.

Suddenly the hand released me. I looked down to land and jump away, and realized that I needn't bother, a gaping maw had opened up on her body below me.

I received an anonymity protocol alert that I'd been scanned as I was engulfed by the maw. I diffused whatever mana that had regenerated into my body, my consciousness was slipping. I shifted into the Maker Avatar but my HP remained low and kept dropping. Possibly due to whatever digestive fluids she had. I equipped my construct armor, the full-face version was hermetically sealed, then let the mana infusing my body accumulate with the intent of casting Heal when there was sufficient MP for it.

Then oblivion overtook me.