Perdition's Child

Chapter 22

"Is this the end of our function?"

"I don't know. I don't see Tusannah, so probably not." There was something new in the silver eyes, and the faint shadow of fear made the thing in the reflection look very young. Ah, Mehk realized, this is why I'm still getting carded at twenty six.

"Data cycling is beginning to return to normal levels."

"That's good, normal sounds real good." Oh a whim he tried to fill the blackness with desert sand, but instead he got a Gestalt city canal over an incongruous trickling streambed. Well, that was fine too. He sat on the ledge to watch the water whisper over sand.

"Numerous strategical errors were made last cycle. Chasing an armed target without a weapon, splitting from the armed team member, taunting the enemy while under it's power... This situation was unnecessary, what did you gain? Attacking an enemy of a subject you don't even know has no possible advantages. There was no gain. There was only meaningless risk!"

He couldn't move fast enough, he barely even had time to register that something had broken and shifted in his mind when he felt the virus shove him over the ledge into a pool of black and then he was drowning without having to breath. Desperately he fought to move his limbs and claw his way up to the surface, but it wasn't enough.

I'm doing this wrong, he thought, and twisted the world so it dumped him back onto the familiar solid blackness. It began to squirm, turning into a million little biting bugs so he leaped into the boat he knew or created behind him. They swarmed that so it became a pillar keeping him above the rising tide of insects. There was no winning this through defense though, so the pillar turned into spinning blades to slice apart the bugs. A familiar feedback scream cut through his mind, making him drop his concentration and return to default darkness where his reflection waited.

It was fighting like a kid, all kicking and screaming and clumsiness.

He was fighting a kid, Mehk saw, looking down at the terrified and desperate entity locked in his head and pinned beneath him. "What the fucking hell?"

"You are too incompetent to live, you have no survival instincts, you are a failure. Surrender control from here onwards." It couldn't quite manage it's normal tone, as its words ran together in the haste of getting them out.

Mehk just stared. This... This shouldn't be possible. "What the hell are you?" He'd ignored it before, but now he couldn't deny any longer that the thing in his head was real, was dangerous, was learning.

"I-" It froze, startled by its own choice of word, eyes wide, and the feedback scream that followed jarred him awake with a jerk.

He groaned and tried to sit up, the word 'I' ringing in his head inexplicably, but someone gently aborted the motion by holding his shoulder down. "Hey, you okay?"

Irika... "No, what happened?" That's right, he'd gone out with Irika, and something important happened and... Something else teased at his mind too, something about a dream, but his chest hurt like hell and he set it aside to think of later. It was worse than getting shot in a bulletproof vest, it even hurt to breath. Maybe Tes had more of that lovely gel with the little nano machines that repaired bruises, and if it worked on insides. He was really learning to like nano-tech...