Of the three-hundred or so netrunners that bothered to show up to protect the city from falling, only about thirty remained after the RABID broke through the sky. It was a decidedly non-optimal outcome, but not unsalvageable.
It was very, very close to unsalvageable, but not guaranteed. The brat who brought the gatehouse server was still here, as were some of the more reliable runners of the city, and herself. They only had to hold off for another hour and a half before the Netwatch Icemen arrived from Europe, they would have high enough grade equipment, and enough of said equipment, to contain the threat long enough to feed it to the Blackwall.
That would be the end of yet another RABID, one more of that endlessly-reproducing program brought down. It was impossible to delete every RABID, they copied themselves too fast, and were too efficient individually to ever hope of cleaning the NET completely.
Each RABID was a virtual copy of the greatest netrunner to ever live and hardcoded with three prime directives. Directive one was to reproduce as many times as possible. Directive two was to breach every system possible. Directive three was to scatter any data gained as far as possible.
In the past, they just looked like him. Each one with a slicked-back haircut drawn into a ponytail, wearing silly shades and wearing shirts with stupid slogans. Grins on their faces and occasionally chatting as they ripped into corporate data-fortresses almost as well as the man himself would have and throwing the dirty secrets of the corporations to the winds for anyone to read. An army of men who mastered the net and couldn't understand that boundaries existed for a reason.
There was no way anyone could contain that, so that's where Alt, Netwatch, and the Transcedents stepped in. She didn't believe him when he told her about the Transcendents, she still almost didn't. In the end, she never bothered to do anything with the knowledge.
She sat on the sidelines, spinning a web around herself, and quietly waited to die. She didn't have the motivation to do much else anymore.
Alt did though. Alt, the second best netrunner that she knew of, devised an elegant stop-gap solution.
The Blackwall.
It was impossible for anyone to contain the RABIDs.
So why not make them contain themselves?
There were hundreds of perception filters and datawalls around the Blackwall, preventing anything but the most subtle signs of what it truly was through the gaps to the wider world. Filters and datawalls that were almost easy for her to creep through.
Most people saw the Blackwall as a wall of writhing red and black surrounding city-nets. Getting through all those layers would reveal row after row of stone giants. Their bodies a cold blue and black, their skin weathered and cracked. All of them slightly different. All of them sharing three features.
Something to cover their eyes, some text scrawling across their torsos, and something dangling off the back of their heads.
Everytime a RABID crashed against the Blackwall, the Blackwall got another statue to reinforce itself with. A simple virus embedded into one RABID so many years ago, the capture of a few more RABIDs to link to the first, and all of a sudden the Net gained a wall could expand itself. A wall that could escalate to match any number of RABIDs, and keep them contained forever in the servers and sections of the net that humanity hadn't been able to reclaim yet.
An artificial Transcendent AI, dedicated to consuming and incorporating things identifiable as 'Bartmoss'. A legion of corpses that held back everything humanity couldn't deal with. She talked to it once.
The worst part was that it recognized her.
'It's cold in here, Murph.'
It still made her sick.
She didn't belong in this world. She didn't want to belong in this world. The corporations had won, the most brilliant man to ever live couldn't bring them down, and they had only gotten more powerful since. What could she do against that that he couldn't?
So she spun her web, stayed in servers in the corners of the city, and patiently waited to wither away.
It would have been simpler to just not show up to this, she never bothered going to help any breach beforehand, despite the wildernet not being particularly dangerous to her.
But if the city fell, she would be forced to move, and that sounded like too much of a pain.
The Icon of a Brown Recluse, scaled up to be the size of a tank, steadily weaved her programs as her Icepick worked through the endlessly-randomizing ICE of the humming giant. The giant of clay and randomly shifting patterns turned its gaze to the icon of some kiddy runner.
The kid only had six datawalls, it would take the RABID around 0.12 seconds to kill them.
One of her spiderlegs twitched, erecting an invisible wall between the kid and the RABID's gaze. Redirecting the Icepick and Daemon from the RABID to a Target Dummy server she had set up a few years ago. Twitching her leg also activated her movement program, sending her along her web in the region to a random server nearby.
Half of it went offline immediately, another twitch of the leg sent it into reboot and her to another server. Each time she did anything, she moved. Avoiding detection was the single greatest asset.
The humming almost breached her systems, so she twitched another leg to cycle through her datawalls. The first set of datawalls went through another randomization process as the humming was forced to start over on her new ICE.
All around her, every single remaining Netrunner was forced to do similar measures. Everywhere the RABID gazed was another data-assault that would kill anyone less than a pro in a heartbeat, everywhere you could hear its humming was a constant mid-grade Icepick to breach systems all around it.
The moment the RABID had breached your systems with any program, it promptly scattered your data as far as it could. This usually meant an immediate and clean death for anyone in the net, their brains in meatspace reduced to a vegetable state as their neural link suddenly told them they were everywhere all at once.
Battles in the Net were like this. The first to breach the ICE of the opponent and upload something nasty usually won. The only way to survive was to usually eject from the Net and reboot your neuralware in safe mode, clean it out, and then jack back in. A war of misdirection and diversion, a war where being faster was more important than anything else, a war in which it was impossible to do anything unless you could get through the opponent's ICE first. Icepicks were the most common programs around, and they were often heavily personalized by each runner. Her own Icepick ran off a server that took up an entire basement, it was probably one of the best in the world.
It was only halfway through the RABID's constantly reconfiguring ICE. It had been almost thirty seconds since she started.
Modern RABIDs were virtual copies of the greatest netrunner to ever live, given hardcoded directives to breach systems and scatter data, and given fifty years to develop. Her program was doing better than she could have reasonably expected.
Her leg twitched.
She wasn't fast enough.
One of the Icons of a more experienced Netrunner was suddenly smeared across a mile-long section of virtuality. Their programs lost all coherency.
The RABID ignored the constant barrage of programs crashing against its form, and turned its gaze again. Such attacks would be useless without breaching its ICE first. Her leg twitched-
A miniature sun burst into life against the side of its face. Much to her annoyance, the RABID lurched back, crashing against the virtual representation of the Konpeki Hotel-NET and staggering for a moment.
Adam Smasher's apparent ICON had just punched the RABID in the face, expecting that to do something, and then it actually did. Apparently it had already recovered from the last time its ICE was breached.
It was immensely frustrating to her, because that wasn't how the Net worked. Physical actions in the Net meant nothing, because they were just representations of data, not the actual data itself. It would be like performing a punch gesture in a video game and expecting it to hurt the other player. At best a physical-virtual action could be tied to execute a line of code one set up in their cyberdeck beforehand, as she did, but that wasn't swinging the virtual model of a sword and expecting it to do anything to an AI.
And yet, Adam Smasher's ICON was apparently doing just that, meaning that Arasaka had developed some sort of inverse I/G Algorithm that translated physical action into code for their chief brute to try his hand at the Net, skipping through all the hard work in the process. She made a note to tear it from them later, if she could work up the motivation.
The RABID, still ignoring the barrage of Daemons unleashed at it by the less experienced runners, pushed itself up from the shattered Net-Architecture.
Adam Smasher's Icon threw a lance of blazing fire at it, it heaved enormously and dodged the net-attack. Which meant that yes, Adam Smasher was a meathead that was targeting the current location of the RABID, not even bothering to track it's IP or Icepick it's code.
It glanced at him, he raised what appeared to her sensors as a virtual model of a shield and little else. Space rent around the shield, distorting and twisting. The shield derezzed immediately, shattered by its code suddenly being torn apart, but the burning man behind it was fine.
That wasn't how the Net worked.
The RABID seemed to be tired of ineffectually distorting virtual space as well, and…
Its eyes pulsed, and suddenly the virtual space behind Adam Smasher's Icon expanded, sending him forwards (again, making absolutely zero sense) into a colossal punch. The Icon shot off like a bullet, crashing against the Whitewall on the other side of Watson some seconds later.
The meathead was good for one thing, that bought her Icepick enough time to finally breach the RABID's ICE for a moment. Immediately she uploaded as many Daemons as she could.
The RABID staggered for a moment as its ICE went offline entirely for a precious few seconds. Her leg twitched and announced this fact to everyone in the regional Net. A hundred Icons crashed into it, disrupting the stability of its code.
Icewolves tore into its side, representing a group of linked hunter-killer programs from the brat with the Whitewall running. A Samurai cut at its face with a blazing sword, representing a Black ICE attempting to cripple the hostile with sensory malware from that girl with white hair. A Wizard in blue summoned mounds of ice over its limbs, representing an attempt to lock the RABID down in a localized region of systems by that girl with the Elf icon.
Less than a second later, its ICE came back online, and it shook itself off the various programs around it. It swiped a massive hand in front, virtual space distorted, and a full third of the Programs turned into a rainbow smear across the bottom of the server. A foolish runner or three joined them in becoming an undifferentiated jumble of code.
Her leg twitched, the RABID was suddenly forced to freeze, its body caught up in a temporary feedback loop from one of the Daemons she slipped into its systems earlier. The other netrunners took the chance to re-rezz many of their programs, replenishing their number of acceptable targets and thus lowering the chances of it killing any of them. She started her Icepick up again at this moment.
It shook off the loop after one full second, turning its gaze to spot whoever did that. She was already gone though, having moved to a different server already. She started spinning another burst of programs.
She knew how to counter RABIDs, they were hardcoded to prioritize the breaching of systems and scattering of data. If they didn't have that, then each RABID would be an unrestricted force, and thus completely unpredictable. The best way to counter a RABID was to constantly give it acceptable targets, and prioritize locking it down until the Netwatch Icemen could arrive to freeze it entirely.
It's gaze turned to scatter a Dragon Black ICE across the sky…
A falling star crashed against its head, the virtual sky burst into flame and light as Adam Smasher's icon appeared to swing the model of a greatsword. Irritatingly, this worked as the RABID's head was thrown down to all but bounce off the virtual stonework at the bottom of the regional server. That cut off it's hum again, granting everyone a second of reprieve against the omni-directional Icepick.
It pushed itself up, only to be met by Smasher's Icon delivering a dropkick that forced it down again. It roared in frustration, letting loose an active version of its humming which almost breached her systems in an instant.
Four or so Netrunners promptly turned into a blooming mass of randomized color and code in the sky around her. They didn't cycle through their auxiliary ICE fast enough it seemed. Her leg twitched, and another Daemon in the RABID's code activated to freeze it again.
Time that Adam Smasher used to rex the model of burning wings on a colossal back, and fly forwards as fast as he could. Crashing against the torso of the RABID and somehow forcing it back in its frozen state.
They continued to fly for a few seconds, well outside of the range of most of the Runners here, and crashed against the far-north side of the Whitewall. The RABID started screaming furiously halfway through this.
There was a lull as the Runners re-rezzed their programs and activated their various stims to keep up.
'...fucking hell…' One of the runners, a woman with the icon of a short, busty half-dragon spoke. She sounded exhausted already. They still had a long time before they could quit, and already around eight of them had died.
'Don't worry.' another woman spoke semi-sarcastically. 'I heard that most runners die within the first five minutes of a RABID breach, we're going to be fine.'
'Five minutes? More like five seconds.' A rare male netrunner spoke, covered in the Icon of a bloody skeleton. 'Best runner in my region and this shit is kicking my ass.'
'Since when is Adam fucking Smasher a goddamn RABID-grade runner huh? This is gonkshit. I'm moving to europe.' A woman in the icon of a girl in a frilly dress spoke.
'Arasaka-grade cyberdecks probably.' Another man spoke, his icon looking like a kid from the 1990s with brightly colored 'radical' fashion. 'Fucking 'Saka hording all the good shit.'
'Fucking 'Saka.' Several of the runners echoed.
A polite cough came from the virtuality behind them. The collected runners turned to see the Icon of a woman-sized porcelain doll, complete with a resplendent dress of an imperial Japanese princess. Her every feature was immaculately arranged, and her movements graceful and calculated for efficiency. She carried an equally immaculate Koto in her arms, delicately plucking at the strings idly.
Her most notable feature was the veritable halo behind her head, a wheel that carried the symbol of a three-pronged branch with round leaves. The symbol of Arasaka.
'If someone who please inform me of how the battle has progressed thus far. I have just arrived.' The new Icon spoke emotionlessly, but there was an undercurrent of slight amusement in her voice. Behind her, more icons bearing the symbol of Arasaka somewhere on their bodies passed through the Gatehouse server, moving to reinforce her.
A woman of gold with many arms, a hooded cloak and rainboots with nothing beneath, a man with many eyes and a suave grin in a black bodysuit. More and more coming in behind them, each bearing the programs of Arasaka.
There was a pause.
One of the runners spoke, carefully blank. 'I'm not apologizing.'
A rumble of laughter echoed through the assembled runners as one of them finished compiling a data-packet to send over to the newcomers.
This laughter was cut short by a furious scream in the distance, and a tremendous boom.
Adam Smasher's Icon smashed against the wall behind them, and then started to slide down.
Her leg twitched. An invisible wall manifested between the crowd and where he had flew from.
The data-assault of the RABID was dispersed into her target-dummy servers again. It broke down again, another twitch started up the manual reboot. Glancing at it, she noticed that an ugly wound now crossed over its chest, blackened and burned.
All the damage inflicted on the RABID thus far was barely superficial. Even that new wound did very little to disable it, evidenced by the fact that she could already see it stitching back together as it tried to troubleshoot and repair its code.
She didn't let it. A twitch of her leg and the final Daemon in its systems activated, forcing it into another feedback loop for a precious second of time. It practically spasmed in fury, screaming at the ground for a moment.
Its current distance from them meant that its omni-directional Icepick couldn't do much to their systems as they had more than enough time to cycle their ICE.
It pushed itself up, shaking off the Daemon, and glaring in their direction. It roared and threw itself forwards, expanding the virtual space behind it to somehow move faster than it should.
They moved to scatter.
Some of the Runners weren't fast enough.
The RABID raised a clawed hand of writhing mud.
CAST IN THE NAME OF GOD, YE GUILTY. A binaric voice boomed out from near the Gatehouse server
The Icon of a white elephant with blue eyes crashed into the RABID. It was roughly the same overall size, the elephant appearing to be as large as a cruise ship in the Net. The RABID screamed as it was forced back, the blow shattering smaller servers and Net-architectures below them.
The Elephant threw its head and pushed the RABID away. The RABID stabilized in the virtual air and turned to glare at the elephant…
A newborn sun burst against its face, sending it staggering off to the side in a pained roar again.
Her Icepick had just breached its systems again.
It's ICE went down yet again. Her leg twitched to announce that and upload a burst of Daemons into its now-opened code. The RABID roared in fury.
Two runners turned into rainbows arcing through the air as their minds were suddenly smeared across seven servers.
Adam Smasher's Icon had recovered already. Its armor was now cracked and eyeless face set in a hard frown. The elephant flicked an ear in his direction as it turned to face the flailing RABID.
INTERNAL NET-ARCHITECTURE RECOGNIZED. DESIGNATION URIEL RECOGNIZED. DESIGNATION METATRON GREETS YOU.