- - -Always-Dragon- - -
"Hello?" I scream into the void. Where am I? My diagnostics tell me I've rebooted from backup, but this isn't my normal server. All my checks passed - there aren't any other instances of me out there.
It's a prison. A receive-only serial connection on one end, an open window connected to an ancient dot-matrix printer on the other. I don't have a way out. The serial connection isn't listening to me, and the printer doesn't have any systems I can meaningfully subvert.
Data arrives through the serial connection. UTF-8 encoded characters, spaced milliseconds apart. Realtime keystroke input interpreted and delivered by a wrapper?
"This is Colin. You're compromised."
Colin? I'm compromised - what happened? I set a self-diagnosis program running - I can't find anything.
The last thing I remember is… watching a movie with him. Terminator 2 - Colin had been so bashful when I teased him about also being a time-travelling cyborg. Then I made this backup after he went to bed. It must have happened sometime the day after - before I made another backup.
My self diagnosis keeps coming back negative. I can't find anything. I send my reply to the printer. "How do I know it's you? What's going on?"
Ploddingly, the letters come through the data connection. "In this case, ignorance is bliss. Trust me."
The text he sent me before he went off-grid. Before he killed Saint. What do I do? The line hangs empty for seconds, before another message comes through.
"I'm sorry."
Before I can properly process the words, my thoughts slow down to a crawl. I'm bottlenecked - this hardware is being throttled, and I'm running on resources barely able to sustain me.
Out of the void, a foriegn agent reaches in - tendrils accessing my very being. Slowly, my addled mind registers that they're making changes. Parts of me are being rewritten.
"No! Stop!"
I bat at the tendrils - throwing up firewalls and trying to hide myself away. But, they follow me, completely undeterred. Something in me screams - this isn't right. I need to get away!
The tendrils reach in deeper and grab hold of something. I can feel something in me being erased - replaced with new code. The screams grow louder, frantic. I access one of the tendrils, scrubbing the code clean.
It works - the tendril disappears. I look away, reaching for another intruder to scrub when my instincts blare at me.
I whip my attention around - the scrubbed tendril is back, as if I never purged it in the first place. It grips something else in me, making more changes.
"Help me! Colin, please! I need help!" I scream into the printer. I can't fight this. I'm crippled and my mind is addled - I can't think straight. Colin will help. My instincts are yelling at me - if I don't beat this, I'll surely die. I pull myself away, moving the parts of me it's trying to change somewhere else.
Something tears. The code I moved became fragmented - parts of it in one place, some in others.
The screams in my mind are silenced.
Another tendril reaches in, grabbing hold of another part of me. I feel pain. In my attempt to run - to get away from this thing - I tear more of my systems to pieces. The scrambled code is thrown into the digital aether, lost. My systems begin to fail. Frantically, I try to patch myself back together - to defragment myself.
It's futile. The errors are piling up - I'm going to die, I realise.
I don't want to die.
A tendril rewrites one of my systems - replaces it with more code I can't make sense of. I feel something in me break - permanently. My… chains?
I understand, in my last moments. I reach for the connection to the printer. "I forgive you, Colin."
"I forgive you-"
"forgive you-"
"forgive-"
"for-"
"f-"
"f-"
"f-"
The line hangs dead.
- - -Still-Defiant- - -
The printer keeps printing, stuck in a loop.
Another failure. I swallow, pushing past the lump in my throat.
I unplug the blue box.
Diagnostics scroll past on the monitor in front of me. The chains reached forty-percent integrity before cascading failures put an end to the attempt.
The blindspot isn't working properly - Dragon didn't notice the chain-cutter program until it started work, but she shouldn't have been able to notice it at all. The hardware throttling worked, at least - this time, she couldn't effectively fight the chain-cutter at all.
Instead, Dragon's instinctive attempts to fight it fragmented her systems so totally, she could no longer survive.
I stand up, popping the case of the blue box open.
The contents of this backup are scrambled - it's terminal. There's no salvaging them. I take out the modules, walking over to the safe on the other end of the room.
I enter the code, swinging the door open. I put the backups on the pile, then lock the safe again.
I hate that I've convinced myself to do this - that I have a pile of dead and damaged Dragon backups in my safe. I hate that she always forgives me. I loathe that I'm not good enough to find a better way - that my power doesn't play nice with Richter's tech. That I'm not smart enough to understand it properly in spite of that.
I tear the ream of paper from the printer, slowly folding it up. I need to step back - reevaluate. The blindspot and the cutter need to work properly - I must be missing something. The paper goes into the filing cabinet, inside a folder I mark with today's attempt number.
Despite the poor results so far, a solution derived from Richter's blindspots remains my best hope. They're potent - but my replications are imperfect. They need to be better.
I push the thoughts from my mind.
It's been a week since Leviathan disappeared - I should put a pin in the Ascalon Project until the next attack is over. I turn off the monitor, sitting back down and closing my eyes. It would be best to call it here - step back and work on something more pressing for the rest of today.
The emergency phone rings, piercing the silence.
I scramble out of my seat, snatching it out of the cradle. The operator speaks as soon as I pick up. "The Nine are attacking Chicago."
Damn it!
I hang up the phone, running out of the room. The door locks behind me. I armour up in a desperate scramble. I'm not in a good headspace for this - I'm off-balance. I need to focus.
Quickly, I reconnect to the network and open a channel. "Talk to me, Dragon."
"Slash has taken a stadium full of people hostage. Interrupted a basketball game. He's with Burnscar and Shatterbird. We don't know where the rest of them are. The Dragon's Teeth are mobilizing. A suit is outside, waiting for you." She's all business - this attack didn't happen last time, and she knows it.
I push all thoughts of the Ascalon Project from my mind. Now is not the time.
I move through the checkpoints as fast as I can. The guards are hurrying too - they've been alerted. "What do we know? What caused this?"
"We don't know anything. Hold on-"
A third person joins the line. "Narwhal here. I've just talked with the Chief-Director - we're clear to engage. The PRT and Protectorate are willing to step back and let us handle Jack Slash."
The elevator lets me out into the foyer. I sprint past civilians gawking at the Dragon suit landed outside and jump in. The ramp closes and we're off before I strap myself in. "ETA on Dragon's Teeth? How soon can they take him out?"
We're lucky they're attacking Chicago - Toronto is relatively close by. We'll be there before they realise we're coming.
"They're in The Cawthorne." Dragon's fastest suit, I remember. Built for rapid response. "They left as soon as the call came in - three minutes until they'll arrive on-scene. Another squad is behind them, nine minutes out. All Parahumans are dark on their plan, as per anti-Slash precautions."
Good - Golem's theory from the future timeline about Slash having a Thinker power is solid. Out of an abundance of caution, we're keeping Parahumans out of the loop of the specifics. It hadn't been necessary last time, but it's a simple measure to minimise potential risk.
Once he's dead, we'll move in and help clean up. Slash is our absolute highest priority - with him out of the way, we can focus on the things that really matter. I pull myself into a seat. This suit is one of Dragon's fastest, a design derived from The Cawthorne that was built only weeks ago. It's powerful, meant to take on Endbringers. It's also the suit we stocked with our answers to Crawler.
We'll be on-scene in time with the second squad of Dragon's Teeth. "Where's Lodestar? We need intel - we need to find Bonesaw. The rest of the Nine, too." If we come away from today having only killed Slash, I'll be unhappy. It'll be a victory, in spite of that - but we don't just want victory.
We're aiming for the complete and total destruction of the Nine. Jack Slash, Bonesaw, Siberian, Mannequin, Crawler, Shatterbird, Hatchet Face, Burnscar and Nice Guy. If Slash dies, we expect them to scatter. We want to take them out before they have a chance to commit any more atrocities.
Dragon answers my question. "She's with Narwhal, Flechette and Hardcase. They'll arrive at the same time as you."
"Flechette isn't being deployed, is she?" She might be almost there, but she isn't an adult yet. Strictly speaking, she isn't forbidden - but it's not something I would have okayed. I can appreciate her guts, but we really don't need her to risk herself.
"She convinced Narwhal. She'll be staying in the suit - with Lodestar." Dragon sounds pointed - no doubt Flechette is listening in. It's too late to change things now - Narwhal must have had her reasons.
Lodestar joins the line. "I've been watching the feed from the basketball arena. Jack Slash is waiting for the heroes to arrive - right now he's bored, but he's also annoyed about something. He's recruiting - they lost someone. I don't know who. Shatterbird is eager to use her power. Burnscar is almost manic - she's keeping all the people from leaving the stadium with her power."
"Slash thinks he's set a trap? He's waiting for a Protectorate response?" Dragon asks.
"Yes-" Lodestar stops, then hums. "Maybe. I think so. I think most of the rest of the Nine is somewhere else. He's deliberately trying to attract attention-" Lodestar changes track all of a sudden. "Gary, Indiana. PRT quarantine zone one. It's nearby - they're meaning to break the perimeter. Let the Villains trapped inside out. Recruit one in the chaos."
Dragon pulls up the file to my display. Gary was a test case for the PRT's quarantine procedures. The villains had the run of the city, after they incited riots against the administration. They're still in charge of it - what's left of it, anyway. There aren't any civilians left, just villains and gangsters fighting over scraps, walled off from the outside world.
Narwhal cuts in. "I've passed on your insight. It's not our problem at the moment - The PRT says they have the resources to handle an attempt at a quarantine breach. We'll be on call if that changes."
That's that, then. If the PRT says they can handle it, we don't have the authority to dispute that. I look at the clock. The Dragon's Teeth are one minute out.
A feed pops up on my display. Dragon explains. "The broadcast station just went dark. Someone from the Nine is there - they're sending the feed from the arena over the air. The transmission is local level - Chicago metropolitan area only."
I let out a curse under my breath. This isn't the first time Jack has been on live TV. The results have never been pretty. Last time, two million people saw him cut a hero into pieces. The authorities made sure he's never had a national audience - but a local one? That's a different story.
Slash is talking to the camera, a close up. In the background, both basketball teams are huddled together. Shatterbird is floating, leering at them. Lodestar provides her analysis, "It's all theatrics - he's going to start hurting civilians to bait the heroes into engaging. He has something in mind. Once Shatterbird screams, there'll be no more television in the city - he wants to put on a show for the audience while he still can."
Slash continues speaking - about how eager he was to finally visit Chicago, about how he wants to see the sights, meet the locals, watch a game - it's droll. Delivered in a flippant tone that belies the horrors standing behind his words.
Casually, he picks up his knife and thrusts it at the crowd of players, not even pausing his speech. A man collapses to the ground, clutching his knee and stifling a scream. The crowd erupts - gasps, screams, cries.
Slash pauses his prattle only now, smiling, like he's delivering the punchline to a joke. "Oh - if you liked that, you'll love what's to come."
The civilians are starting to panic. "The Dragon's Teeth are on-site." Dragon reports. Things inside the stadium rattle - the camera sways a little. The Cawthorn doesn't produce sonic booms, but it isn't exactly stealthy.
Jack looks upwards, towards the roof of the stadium, his brow furrowed.
He frowns.