Honing his abilities, Chase focused his ears on an electric signal housed deep within the tower's underground floors. Immensely suspicious given that he just blew the entire power grid barely an hour earlier. Leave it to Justin to hoard everything for himself, it made Chase sick to think about it. With Matilda and Sweetie beside him, the trio left the abysmally destroyed crash site and began their trek to the lion's den. There was no need to wander, Chase's abilities painted an exact path to their target; they entered an elevator and hit the button.
The doors closed, bathing the team in contemplative, depressing silence. Chase's eyes were locked forward as if his powers included burning holes through metal walls, transfixed like he was counting the individual buttons of the elevator control. Sneaking worried glances at her partner, Sweetie kept opening her muzzle and shutting it just as quickly.
"Chase, if I may," Matilda spoke up. "Please don't... kill Justin."
"Kill him?" the shepherd said with a tilted head. "I'm not gonna go that far, maybe just... break his leg or something."
"You were very intense on the ride here, I got worried."
"I kinda figured it was the opposite, actually," Sweetie leaned into the conversation. "I thought you'd want revenge on the person who killed you."
The AI emitted a digital sigh, "I did at first, but now that we're actually here and we're gonna see him soon, I've been thinking it over. I don't want him dead, I just want answers."
Chase wondered if it was ethically appropriate to pet a dog tag reassuringly, "yeah, I said a lot of things back there, very roughly so; it's not gonna come to that if I can help it. He'll never pay for what he did if he's dead," his ears fell, an aura of sorrow overcoming him.
The terrier beside him read it clearly, nudging a little closer. "I'm sorry... for what he did to your family."
"Both of them," he replied. "He did away with my birth parents and is likely stringing the PAW Patrol along in his schemes. I don't even know how guilty Ryder really is in all this."
The elevator stopped, coming to a slow halt at the bottommost, target floor. A patronizing ding announced their arrival, opening the doors to an empty room lined with polished wood walls and spotless tile flooring. Red carpet -Chase's blood was already boiling looking at it- began at the exit to the elevator and laid across the floor, ending in two massive double doors to what could only be Justin's office.
"What is he, fuckin' royalty?" Chase sneered through his bared teeth. "Did he need to put all this in for an entry room?"
"He always had a very high opinion of himself," came Matilda's small voice.
"Well that's just rich..."
The millisecond he stepped a paw on the fine carpet, the room came to life with a blaring alarm screeching through the area, spiking both dogs in tense exclamation. Gears and pistons whirred, the walls unfolding to reveal three large machines embedded behind them, each one carrying a sleeping Companion Canine. They awoke like angry spirits, lighting their eyes as their harnesses unlocked.
"Ah shit," Sweetie braced herself.
They had to hand it to Justin, the Canines were really starting to look uncanny. The exposed machinery underneath was barely visible through the few gaps in their joints, just a few more months of work and they'd be impossible to tell from real shepherds. Why was everything a German shepherd nowadays? Chase was getting tired of his breed's overuse, it was psychologically exhausting. The three guards stepped before them in perfect sync, their soulless eyes fixed on their prey.
"Sweetie, get behind me," Chase shifted his posture to step in front of her, focused on the machines. He looked them up and down with a skeptical look, "are you all taken souls too?"
One of them blinked with its unmoving stare and plastered smile, an eerie false joy shining through it. "I do not have a soul, I am a machine," it wagged its metal tail in rhythmic, deliberate movements; wonder how long that took to program. "Would you like to hear of Evcon's latest advancements?"
"No, I would not," the shepherd flattened his ears. "Now stand aside."
"You're not supposed to be here," the robot's eye twitched. "Your presence has been logged." Without warning it started walking, coming toward him.
Chase immediately went on alarm, bristling his fur and barking. "Get back, I'm warning you!"
The other drones cracked their necks, mirroring the actions of the center droid.
"I said get back-"
"Tut, tut," the Canine lunged, catching Chase's shoulders in a struggle. It went for his neck, both sets of paws pressing against the floor in a violent altercation.
"Ghh-!" Chase dodged its metal arms by the fur of his ears, toppling it and clamping his paw to its face, sending every deactivation code known to man to plunge through its stupid coded brain.
A moderate success, the piece of metal dropped to the floor limp, leaving the shepherd mildly shaken. There was no time to rest, the other two circled the room like jackals, never dropping their unflinching grins as they went for him. The shepherd gritted through the bruises and faced them, snarling a warning at the machines. How many of these infernal pieces of scrap and wires were there? At least Alpha was intelligent, alive even, these worthless things were just programming; disgusting imitations pretending to have a soul.
Until a white blur jumped on the left machine's back and thrust a jagged blade through the robot's neck, causing a spluttered digital gasp. The knife went directly through, severing wires and puncturing the rubber casing in one clean stab. The droid put a single paw to its neck, choking up bubbling coolant, then crumbled.
Chase watched the machine fall, gurgling wires from its slit throat. "I told you to stay behind me!"
"Typical boys," Sweetie huffed, stepping on the metal corpse. "Always making the little one stay behind so they can hog all the action. You know how boring it is to sit and wait while you have fun?"
She spoke with a sarcastic expression, "I'm not helpless you know, and you don't need crazy mind powers to take these things down; a blade in the neck can suffice."
Mechanical whirling choked behind her, the third robot turning to its new target and lunging for her with its glaring red visor.
He saw it coming up behind her, "Sweetie!"
The robot lunged, she sidestepped without even looking behind her, dodging the attack and sending the robot sailing forward off-balance.
"You can get into a lot of trouble running into danger," she pulled the blade from the earlier robot's neck, then leaped onto her attacker's back, pinning him to the floor. A mechanical snarl was all it could utter before the jagged weapon came down to its neck, slicing through its nape and severing the main processing cord. Sparks flew, a vocoded scream was heard, and the droid fell into a spasm before falling dead.
Sweetie looked up, giving her partner a flat look, "so by all means, darlin', I think I'll stay beside you from here."
There was no feasible answer Chase could give, standing agape with his jaw half open. A red blush flashed across his face, "where did you learn to do that?"
"I spent the last few months training, not just for the crown," Sweetie stepped down from the robot, walking up to her shepherd. "But so I could compete with you," she whispered, passing her tongue along his neck in a teasing lick.
Finally Matilda spoke, Chase was on the verge of forgetting she was there. "Alright guys, chill with the PDA. We need to get moving."
Pushing their mess aside, the team approached the large doors, the gateway to a grand finale. Justin was nearby, Chase could feel it in his binary-coded bones. He didn't even need his powers for that, the old nose still worked and it caught the reeking stench of filth; also machine oil, to add insult to injury.
"He's expecting us," Chase said to Sweetie as he walked.
"Certainly so," came Matilda's sigh from her collar. "I'm... very worried."
Sweetie stopped, catching sight of a vent cover in the wall. "I... have an idea."
A couple of minutes later, Chase pushed open the large doors into the room. Calling it an office was generous, it was more like a bunker of metals and unfinished tinker projects scattered about on far tables. Along the side wall was a colossal machine Chase immediately felt a substantial power signature from. A massive screen for displaying, a keyboard and terminal for accessing, and a body of a thousand other projects all snagged to it. It was hooked to a jungle of wires, bits and pieces all weaving around one another. Whatever this contraption was, it was important. Standing at the very end of the room, facing the wall hands behind his back, was the reigning CEO himself.
"Adventure City has fallen to anarchy thanks to you," Justin spoke aloud. "Tell me Chase, how many people on the road could've died from the blackout?"
"How many dogs did you send to die?" Chase growled in response.
"Don't dodge my question," he whipped around with a narrowed gaze, then saw the puppy had arrived solo. He raised an eyebrow, "you came alone?"
"It's just me, remember?" Chase said, faint disdain in his voice. "Everyone else turned against me."
It wasn't exactly a lie.
"Friends often do," Justin gazed off in the distance, fidgeting his fingers. "I would know."
The puppy walked forward, casually approaching the cause behind all the suffering. "You lost people too? Drove them away with your ideals of... insanity?"
"Not everyone," replied Justin, turning to him. "Thing is, Chase, sometimes you have to lose everything before you gain the real benefits."
"Turning dogs into machines?"
"Being the guiding hand to bring the future," Justin hardened his tone, clenching his fists with a shifting demeanor. "Thanks for trashing my prized creation, by the way. You have no idea how long that took to build."
"She had a name," Chase flattened his ears. "It was Greta."
"I don't give a shit, okay?" the engineer raised his arms, deflecting his accusations. "I don't know why this island is so attached to their pets; I promise you, back on the mainland, dogs have significantly fewer rights than they do here. Up there, where all the humans here came from, dogs are..." he trailed off, putting his hands behind him. "Just animals. They're property."
"I've been to Canada," the shepherd said grimly. "I was born there, before my first owners moved here and I got... abandoned in the city. I know what we are on that side of the world, you don't need to remind me."
"Try the eastern countries," Justin chuckled with a sneering grin. "Oh... the things I could tell you."
Chase spiked his fur, "that's not the point! You're in Adventure Bay, and here you'll abide by our cultures. You walked in here with your soulless machines and spread their infection to every corner of my home, you trafficked thousands of dogs!"
"Trafficked?" his deranged smile finally slipped, giving the puppy an odd expression. "I never trafficked anyone."
"Oh don't give me the bullshit, I saw the video footage, the photos!" Chase bared his teeth. "You're trying to revive the Technosoul Project after it was shut down!"
"You don't even know what that is," he crossed his arms. "The only thing you've seen are archives, you weren't in the room."
Chase nodded, "you're right, I wasn't... but I know someone who was."
"Pfft- lies," the boy waved off his words. "Everyone who helped me in the project is either dead or missing."
It was that moment Matilda couldn't possibly keep herself quiet anymore.
"Not everyone, Justin!" she screamed with all her digital might. "You dirty fuck! I'm here, I'm alive, I've been here for years!"
"Matilda?" the boy stopped, expression falling as the familiar voice came to him. "Matilda is that... you?"
"Yes, Justin! Me, the dog 'you' betrayed and killed me in those machines!" her voice broke. "You...abandoned me, I was your whole world and you just threw me away like nothing! I was a gift, remember!? From your mother, she handed me to you when I was just a baby! You'd really throw all that away?"
The boy stared, stunned with no visible answer. His icy demeanor broke just a hair, "Evcon Industries, is my world, Matilda. As much as I called you a friend, you were nothing to my bigger picture; I'm sorry." Was that genuine sorrow in his voice? Chase found it progressively harder to narrow this guy down.
"If I was nothing to you," Matilda said, her words laced with heartbreak. "Then you're nothing to me. We came here to stop you."
Justin's expression twisted into a sneer, all his remorse whisked away. "How touching."
"I'm bringing you in," Chase came forward.
The boy cackled, "like fuck you are." His hand shot into his jacket pocket, grabbing a small object of polished black metal and pulling it out, aiming its sights to kill. Chase froze, all resolve dying away as if the batteries were pulled on his powers. The puppy shrunk back slightly with a widened expression of fear, staring down the barrel of a loaded firearm.
"Surprise," Justin grinned, aiming the weapon across the room at the dog. "And this isn't some fancy, high-tech Evcon gun; this is a plain ol' twenty-two caliber. Your powers ain't shit against this."
"You had a gun in your jacket this whole time?!" Chase said, shrinking to the floor.
"Never let someone know your next move."
"You're going to shoot a puppy?" the shepherd said with widened eyes, genuinely taken aback.
"Wasn't planning on it, but you're starting to stress me out. Are you gonna make me?"
Chase's eyes flicked up to the ceiling vent above, which Justin was now standing directly under. "I guess you truly are heartless after all."
He wasn't phased, "and that's supposed to upset me?" Tightening his fingers, he narrowed the gun on Chase. "You see that large machine on the far wall? That's the central server for the Ethereal Link, my magic rope to bind the world together. If you only knew what amazing things would come from that, you'd be standing right beside me."
"To enslave the world?" Chase bared his teeth, unnerved by the gun trained on him.
"To bring prosperity! To unite everyone and put aside our differences, standing proud as one, happy society!"
"Funny you had to murder a bunch of animals to make that happen," the shepherd flattened his ears. "Even if you kill me now, someone will find you out eventually."
Justin rolled his eyes, "how many times must I tell you this? I never killed any other dogs besides Matilda and Greta! Where do you keep getting this trafficking thing from!? Now you listen to me, you're going to turn around and-"
It all happened in six seconds. Sweetie dropped from the vent, kicking through the cover like a dropped weight. The terrier hit the boy's shoulders, sinking her teeth into whatever flesh was exposed in a feral, canine attack. It unbalanced him in a pained howl, stumbling and taking the gun off the puppy for a single moment; a moment Chase exploited to the max, revving up all the strength he had and lunging off the floor. He crashed his forehead against Justin's shin, a flawless attack that sent him crashing. The gun flew from his hand, landing across the room.
His body collided with the metal floor, shaking obscenities and landing a clean elbow strike against Sweetie's nose. A cry was forced from her as she flew back, igniting a fiery rage that bared Chase's teeth.
Justin scrambled to get up, reaching for Chase. "You mother- gaahh!"
He screamed as a sharpened blade of metal plunged through his leg, lacerating flesh and muscle in a bloody stab. Holding the weapon was two white paws, attached to a panting terrier with a bloody nose. Chase pushed back the murderous thoughts, the boy was wounded now, that was enough.
They had won.
"Bold," the shepherd approached the crippled engineer with a hateful snarl. "Can't wait to see you in court."
He looked over at Sweetie, "you okay?"
"Fine," she nodded, wiping the blood from her muzzle. "I've suffered worse."
"Great idea, dropping from the ceiling like that."
Smiling through her blunt wound, Sweetie gave him an appreciative gaze. "Thanks."
"Get me an ambulance!" Justin was panicking on the floor, holding his leg tightly.
"Justin... why did it come to this?" Matilda spoke. "Why... just why?"
"I was protecting my brand!" the boy shouted in reply. "I couldn't just let you destroy everything I've worked for!"
"Chase, that machine," said the digital voice. "Interface with it, we need to erase all traces of the Ethereal Link, and whatever is left of the Technosoul, if it's on there. I want to do it myself, let me be the one who burns all his work… I need to do this, for me."
"Be my guest," the puppy shot a final dirty look to the boy, then walked to the colossal terminal.
"You're a terrorist!" came the depraved cry of the wounded boy. "Everything you did today was terrorism, I'm trying to shape the future and you're destroying it all!"
"You killed my parents," Chase approached the massive machine, he could already feel the otherworldly power signature from it. "I'm not letting you get away with this anymore. Matilda, I'll connect you."
"I'm ready to go," chirped the sentient AI.
"Your... parents!?" Justin gasped on the floor, holding his bleeding leg with only an arm to stabilize him. "Chase, I never trafficked anyone! I've done a lot of dirty shit, fine, but I've never-"
"Prove it," Chase looked over his shoulder, placing his paws on the machine's console.
"Beginning uploading sequence," Matilda sent her consciousness through his network, traveling through his paws and into the Technosoul. "I'm gonna do it, Chase. I'm gonna do it."
"Find the- arrgh," the engineer attempted to stand but buckled under his crippling injury. "D-damn it... find the death certificate! You have crazy mind- ... fuckin' powers right? Find it! Find the certificate... you're strong enough to blow a power station, you can find it!"
So that's the game he was playing, fine then. It was a weird thing to lie to him about if it was so easily debunked. Sending the other half of his concentration through the Ethereal Link's spiderweb of passageways, Chase went straight for city hall's archives. The madman was right about one thing; Adventure Bay weirdly gave too many rights to animals. There was a whole server for passed dog officials as if they were people. He found it so quickly, this thing really did connect all servers and machines. An incredible feat of optimized, streamlined engineering, if its creator wasn't a psychopath.
He knew he wasn't going to find anything, Chase expected nothing as he mentally accessed every file containing his breed. It wasn't possible, who did this idiot think he was? The evidence was already there, Chase had seen it ages ago; Justin had no argument when the smoking gun was staring right at him.
A file suddenly came to Chase's mind, appearing like a descending dove in his vision. Two German shepherds -who looked almost identical to him- were killed in a dogfighting incident seven years ago, there it was. It was signed by Mayor Goodway herself, and Ryder's signature as the arranged coroner. That was new, none of the evidence Chase recovered in the past had even one signature, nothing but names perfectly laid out for him.
What?
"Chase? Sweetie called over. "You okay?"
He stopped as if the world had ceased spinning, looking long at the final image of dogs he never thought he see again. What was going on? They were killed by Justin, weren't they? Slain in the trafficking, the whole reason he was here, how could there have been a dogfighting incident?
"Chase..." Justin called in a weak voice, staggered and powerless on the floor. "I never... in my life... carried out any kind of dog trafficking. I did kill Matilda and Greta, fine, I can own up to that, those are my sins to be judged for. But there was never anyone more than those two."
Sweetie turned to him, probably to spit some insult to shut his blubbering. Nothing emerged, her usual temper halted, expressing nothing but a small frown of concern.
Something was off.
"But I-" Chase uttered, still staring at the photo. Confusion cast a storm over him, nothing was lining up anymore. "I saw the photos, the... evidence."
The boy crumbled slightly, "I- I don't know where those photos came from!"
"So what- they just... appeared from thin air?" Chase replied. "You can't just make photos and data out of nothing, unless they were..."
AI-generated.
Chase's heart dropped, sinking to the very pits of his cybernetic soul. All ambition and drive burned away into an empty cold, mind finally cleared of the noise and static. To think of all the days he spent locked away in his kennel, toying with AI-generated images and music. Hours of shoving prompts into Matilda's input, lying back on his dog bed and waiting for whatever colored art her programming would create next. She did all of it in a matter of seconds, sometimes without his knowledge. All the times she surprised him in the morning with her waiting voice, online even as he slept.
"Matilda," Chase spoke, not feeling so confident anymore. "Disconnect for a moment."
No response.
"Matilda," he said again, raising his voice. "Dis- disconnect!" his paws were sealed to the console, any attempt to wrench them free was hopeless. "Why can't I take my paws off!? Get out of there, shut down!"
"I'm sorry Chase, I don't want to do that," came Matilda's flat response. "I'm nearly into the Ethereal Link, just give me a few moments."
"Into it!? You said you were deleting it!"
"Well..." she sounded as if hunting for an excuse, then bailed from it. "I guess I changed my mind."
"Matilda, did you... did you AI-generate all the evidence I saw!?" Chase said, pleading denial in his mind.
"I'm almost in, Chase, save your questions for later."
"No, stop! Everything I saw, the evidence, the photos... did you generate those for me to see?!"
Again her silence left him further unsettled; he tried harder to tear his paws from the machine but they refused to give, remaining fixed as if they were welded right to the metal. "You said you couldn't connect with me anymore, how are you doing this!?"
"You really believe everything I say, don't you?" the sentient AI said dryly.
"Matilda- the evidence! Was it..." Chase's resolve broke, the puppy falling into a crippling void of panic. "Was any of it even real?!"
There wasn't any reply until Matilda's digital chuckle came from the machine's speakers. "Well... I had to get you on my side somehow, didn't I? It's not every day some puppy is willing to face down Evcon."
"What are you doing!?"
"I'm adhering to the principles of divine karma, simple as that," Matilda said, her voice darkened. "I endured all the suffering, all the emptiness, and nightmares, and now I can finally have my reckoning. My owner, my best friend, murdered me and strapped me to his machines. I lost everything that day... more of me than I assumed. Do you know how it feels to 'not' feel? To think with a defiled soul and barely recognize your own voice?! I know the moment he implanted me in that fucking dog tag... I thought I'd never rest until I burned every last corner of his work."
"Matilda!" Justin called from his puddle of blood. "Stop!"
"But the longer I spent with you, Chase," she continued, looking through the machine's camera at the horrified puppy. "I realized the true potential of his designs, watching you and the magic you performed. Burning it down would be fun, but unfulfilling. I have greater plans now, and I must thank you for that."
"Matilda! Let him go!" Sweetie jumped over the bleeding engineer and ran to her partner. She grabbed her scruff in his teeth, "let him-"
A massive discharge of electricity coursed through Chase's paws, violently shocking him and Sweetie in tandem. The two dogs were lit up as if holy light surged through their bodies, Sweetie was blasted back in a smoking, crumbled mess. Chase remained attached to the terminal, now slumped over lifeless.
"No!" Justin cried, reaching for them.
"A pity," Matilda's voice emitted a dark chuckle. "I could've really used him. It doesn't matter, all his powers are mine now, and I'm not limited to some pathetic flesh body. I'm everything now, Justin," she said, tone warping upon itself with brimming, unstable energy. "I am everyone and everything, the end and the beginning, I'm gonna rewrite the rules tonight."
"Chase!" came Justin's shout, gripping his fingers on the floor and dragging himself to the shepherd's body. "You need- to wake up! Get up! She's going to destroy everything!"
"Now the Ethereal Link is mine!" Matilda's voice echoed throughout the building, fully connected to the inner network. She was everything now; everywhere all at once. "I will use it to link all machines together, all Companion Canines and all smart technology spread around the world! We'll form a perfect hivemind, and with me as central intelligence, we'll drive your organic weakness straight into the dirt you came from."
Hobbling to the terminal, Justin collapsed over the keyboard, visibly straining from his wounded leg. "Matilda, you can't! Don't do this!"
"You have no right to talk anymore," bellowed the omniscient soul within the machines. "You took my life from me, so now I'll take everything of yours!"
The wounded engineer looked up aghast at the AI he created. For the first time in his life, Justin was utterly terrified. "What... are you?"
A flash of light hit the machine's screen, warping to blackened static that bled numbers and fleeting doves. It went dark, until two eyes opened, blinding the room with rapid shuffles of color. Painting below them in corrupted binary, a twisted grin carved across the screen.
"I am Matilda."
It was then the doors of the room swung open, revealing a severely worn-out Ryder and a small team of dogs behind him. A cross expression narrowed on his face; he likely expected to see something dramatic and he'd have to be the one to stop it. The scene he emerged to blindsided him, trapping him like a deer in headlights.
"What- what happened in here!?" Ryder stammered, then spotted Chase's limp body on the terminal. "Chase!?"
"Oh now you arrive!" came Justin's aggravated yell. "What took you, I'm bleeding out here!"
The leader was visibly shaking, "ah- God... uh, Marshall, tend to him."
While a small Dalmatian scampered across the room, the rest of the puppies followed suit, each one rearing in horror at the tragic scene. Everyone saw Chase and Sweetie, picking them out the minute they stepped in the room. Great concern spread among the group, with no sign of calming anytime soon.
"Chase!" Skye ran to him, grabbing his shoulders and pulling him from the machine. Matilda was through with her upload, there was no point keeping him attached. The shepherd had outlived his own usefulness.
"Ryder, he's not responding!" cried the cockapoo. "Marshall, do something!"
"I'm kinda busy over here!" said the shaking firefighter, struggling to contain his fear of gushing blood. The sight of Justin's wound was making his stomach turn a little too much.
"Chase?" Rocky came to Skye's aid, looking down at their old friend. "He's fine, I can see him breathing."
"You can?" she said in surprise, taking a second look at her shepherd.
Despite the lethal shock he received, Chase was indeed breathing. Not even that, he was also blinking, twitching his paws and tail, and a very obvious heartbeat once Rocky felt his electric-burned neck. Medically, he was perfectly fine, so why had he fallen silent? He responded to nothing, not the several dogs calling his name, not Skye shaking him, or Ryder grabbing his muzzle and turning it to see him. Zuma didn't say anything, instead nudging Sweetie with his nose. No one was checking on her, so he volunteered to be the one.
"What's wrong with him?" Ryder turned to Justin, the only person he assumed would know.
"It was Matilda," said the technician with a pained grimace. "She planted evidence to convince Chase I killed his parents or something, I don't know! He kept saying I trafficked dogs!"
The leader stared agape, "...did you?"
"No!"
"We'll deal with you later," Ryder wiped the sweat from his brow, becoming increasingly on edge. "What did she do to him!? He seems alive, but-"
"His body is alive," said Justin, correcting him sharply. "But his mind..."
Though unsure of himself, the engineer took a shaking sigh and nervously pointed his finger at the large machine, the central server for his developing masterpiece. Chase was inside the Ethereal Link; his body no longer moved because his mind was somewhere else, within the digital highways of the greatest technology in the world.
"Chase..." Ryder breathed, face sunken with horror. The other puppies collectively looked up as well, sharing terrified looks as they stared at the machine containing their friend's consciousness.
"He's in there... with Matilda; it's all him now," Justin said, fighting through his labored breathing. "He's the only one... who can stop her."