Chapter Forty – All at Once

Chapter Forty – All at Once

“There was no need for Cyberpunk 2178 to actually kill the player if they died.”

–IRN article, 2045

***

I skipped–not literally–on over to the building the aliens were pouring out of. They slowed down at around thirty, then stopped around fifty-ish aliens of a few different models, all in the single-digits, all looking pretty damned healthy, though a few had signs of being chewed up by nanomachines, it was light stuff, not the half-melted walking corpses I’d seen earlier.

Our nanomachine attack had worked, so I couldn’t complain too much, but it looked like its effectiveness was dying down. “Do you think they’re growing resistant to the nanomachines?” I asked.

That would be nearly impossible. What is more likely is that they found other ways of countering them.

“What’s the difference?”

You don’t need to be resistant to fire to put it out with a bucketful of water. In this case, I imagine the simplest solution would be for parts of the hive which are unaffected to produce as many units as possible while recycling itself frequently. Eventually most of the nanomachines will be used in the flesh of models being sent out of the hive.

“Would that work?” I asked.

If someone spits in your drink and you empty half of it, then refill the glass, then empty half only to refill it again, eventually, after sufficient repetitions, there won’t be any noticeable traces of spit left.

“Did you have to use that analogy?” I asked.

No.

I shook my head. “Thanks for the mental image,” I said.

Trust me, the contents of your average bottle of drinking water are far more worrisome than another human’s saliva.

“Also great,” I muttered.

I’d crossed most of the way to the building the aliens had come from when I heard a faint bang on the other side of the street and several more came out of another nearby building. Were the two connected, or were there multiple hives disgorging aliens in the same spot? Or was it something else entirely? Maybe the basements of these buildings were linked?

In any case, I didn’t feel like spending the day exploring each of those possibilities. So I ducked into the first building, carefully stepping around piles of broken glass. My boots might have been designed for stealth, but there was no point in being lazy and inadvertently making something crunch.

A few nearby model fours twitched their tentacles my way at my passing, but they dismissed it soon enough. Could they sense the motion of the air? That was disturbing, but probably not too surprising from a stealth ambush model.

The inside of the building they were using to get out of their underground shithole was, predictably, a mess. I suspected it was some sort of office building at first, but the big plaques on one wall and the bulletproof glass above the counters suggested that this was more of a motor-vehicle licence place than anything else.

The lobby was quite large, packed with plastic seats so tight that I imagined it would pinch the circulation of anyone that wasn’t a toddler, and there were multiple guard stations around the room.

Some of those chairs had been ripped up, as had all of the plastic plants in the corners. The antithesis were probably disappointed at their unrealism.

The aliens had left a nice trail across the linoleum leading to the back of the lobby and into a corridor that probably led to the washrooms and to the back end of the building.

I stepped around some of the bloodstains dragged across the floor and tried not to think too hard about them. Probably some poor fucks caught outside, or some family pets that hadn’t been dragged into Downtown in time. Whoever’s blood it was, it was now feeding the hive.

“Hey.”

I startled, then swore under my breath before answering. “What’s up, Manic?” I asked.

“How’s shit going?” she asked. “Because I’m over here, sheltering in some shitty run-down apartment looking through some guy’s classic CD collection and slowly losing my mind.”

“Yeah, well at least you’re not being spooked while crawling through a deathtrap,” I said as I pushed further in.

This book’s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
I wasn’t expecting to turn a corner and find the floor missing, the walls ripped apart, and a stack of rubble pressed up to the edge of a slope that dropped down into an unlit basement.

“Fuck,” I said.