It changed its shape, shifting all the biomass away from the center.
Her beam emitters turned off upon losing the target. This sudden change required recalibration, a misfired Klin beam could do untold damage kilometers away.
Using this brief opportunity, the sphere dashed behind a building.
However it came into existence, this sphere displayed sentience. It had a reaction to pain, it came up with a solution to evade it. It knew something bad just happened to it.
> Analysis: subject displays rudimentary sentience
Liera had been deployed everywhere in the last few millennia and this was something she had no reference for. This was a compelling case for the existence of aliens that humanity never really met the way they imagined. She has never encountered a life form that was capable of this. As she explored this idea, she also knew it was the wrong way to approach this.
This could not be anything alien. The vervid relied too much on humans. No alien would evolve with traits this specific. Humans are the rarest prey animal on Ephistome III or in the galaxy for that matter. The vervid had a precise intention behind it to target them, deconstruct them, mimic them and repurpose their biomass. This was definitely not a product of natural evolution.
> Deep Scanning...(3s)
- target acquired
She raised her hand again, her eyes locking onto the thermal outline of the sphere hiding behind two buildings ahead. Loud sounds echoed as the beam cut through something in a building that exploded. The sphere adapted again and in thermal, she could make out the shapes at its center. It had shapes that didn't belong there. It collapsed to the ground in a thick blob of tar as she kept cutting holes through it, obliterating more of its material. 13 seconds into this onslaught, it dashed wildly towards her, weaving a path through alleyways at dramatic speed.
Liera quickly switched to her full-body shield and braced for impact. The sphere stopped inches from her head, biomass gathering at the exposed core, twisting and turning into its larger shape. It had mimicked the properties of bone for its center. The patterns of the gathering biomass turned more intricate towards her direction.
She picked up something, a mangled noise that came from the sphere. She couldn't tell what made the noise but it came out like static at first.
"It hurts so much!!"
A voice beneath the static screamed.
"kill me! kill me! PLEASE!"
It was a different voice.
The noises grew.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAA"
a gut wrenching scream of a man.
"DON'T KILL ME! PLEASE"
a child.
She knew what this was. She noticed in that synthesized experience earlier how the child devolved into repeating her last words. These were final echoes of the dead.
The sphere hadn't figured out the means to make proper sounds. These were reverberations that came from its rippling surface.
> Analysis: bio mimicry
- displays signs of noise modulation
- sounds generated from victims last moments
There was something in the thermal scan, a structure she didn't expect to see. Now that the sphere was up close, she could confirm what she saw earlier.
> Deep Scanning...(1s)
- neural structure detected
- rudimentary nervous system entangled at the core
It just as she suspected at a glance. This thing had a grotesque replica of a brain the size of a vehicle at the center but it had only a fraction of sentience to go with it. It was definitely enough to count as an animal, a life-form that is averse to pain. It was not conscious in any way. It created these structures with repurposed biomass in an effort to mimic its victims. This in itself could be another stage of the vervid. One that extends beyond the individual, one that assimilates all biomass and repurposes that material into a new individual.
A shriek came from the sphere, all of its noise converging on a painful crescendo of the dead, it was distinctly a crying child, uncontrollable sobs weaved patterns on its surface.
In its own way, the sphere had quickly learned to reject Liera. It detected her presence beyond a point in space, it had attributed its pain to her.
> Analysis: the construct is rotating in layers
- rapid acceleration detected
- generating a massive electromagnetic pulse in 12s
Liera dashed backwards, diverting all power into shields. This could damage her systems; repair would be fast, minutes at most but she could be immobilized and give enough for the sphere to damage her further. She saw what it did to claim the biomass from the dead. It hadn't displayed that process as an attack yet.
The spinning of internal layers stopped abruptly and the ripples on the sphere’s surface deepened into folds. Liera braced for impact. The sphere erupted with a massive surge. Insects fell off the sky, electrocuted and stunned. Liera dashed further back and slammed her back on a building. She avoided most of the damage with milliseconds to spare.
She stood up, preparing both her hands.
> Sineul: massive blast emitter engaged (1s)
- palm emitters calibrated (0.1s)
- single burst
- estimated energy cost 15%
Her palms covered the sphere’s center from 12m away and this time, she wasn’t aiming for precision. This required brute force. Her body warmed up as the field generators maximized the output, her orange hot vent lines smoked white vapor trails. In less than a second, a massive layer of Klin shield gathered at her palms, it looked like a tangible emissive material coating her palms.
Stolen novel; please report.
The blast erupted from her palms in a cone shape, dispersed than the beam. When it reached the sphere, it atomized almost a quarter of it instantly. Despite its dispersion, this blast was more powerful per square unit than the beam she used earlier. It sank into biomass as easily as it cut through air. The sphere didn’t have any time to react before its core got vaporized, the brain that it mimicked turned to toxic smoke. It screamed, she heard it in the last few milliseconds.
As she lowered her arms, the residual biomass converged inwards, trying to collapse back into a spherical shape the last impulse of the sphere still coursing through its biomass. It collapsed back to fluid in a violent eruption and she found herself drenched from the waist down.
As soon as the sphere fell apart, the swarm converged in on the spilled tar, engaging in a pattern she saw before on the woman that she found dead. They laid eggs, they wasted no time or material. Some of the vervid weaved in and out of the tar draining from her waist and legs, leaving small viscous bubbles behind. It was a display of brutal efficiency. No product of natural evolution could ever compete with this rapid adaptation.
> Sineul: purging klin shield
- complete
When she was out of the tar, her shields pulsed rapidly outwards, shedding any tar off her body with ease. She resumed her journey towards the wall.
The wall stood monolithic around the central district, tall enough to oversee all of the residential and commercial buildings around the Dome Reactor. She was at a crossroads.
> Analysis: space port lockdown
- no transmissions from space port systems
- last records indicate grounding of all functional ships
- cargo launcher is disabled
She could see people with weapons roaming the streets below all the way towards the space port. Something had gone wrong with the evacuation procedures. There were as many dead as there were alive.
> Analysis: intercepted transmission from Dome Reactor
- estimated 57 minutes remaining
> Sineul recommendation: prioritize soul preservation
- full data copy transmission takes 39 minutes with established line of sight
- hijacking cargo launcher could result in failure with little time to divert to the alternative
- establish line of sight with the satellite
She had to make a choice. The space port was a gamble. There was no telling, even with her status as a Red Priestess, to negotiate her passage with the military. She could end up having to kill either directly or indirectly. An ideal solution would’ve been doing both, transferring soul first and attempting to get the body off planet later. There was no time to put it in action.
As she juggled new ideas, a memory surfaced, she felt it crawling in her mind, impossible to ignore.
It was Aegis. Liera disregarded her attempt at directing her. Aegis was not a director, therefore, anything she had to tell her was invalid.
Be that as it may, something pushed her words forwards. She had a system to compartmentalize her psyche. There was a machine precision to her mind. This resurfacing of memories was anomalous.
> Sineul: data fragment suppressed (1s)
- minor storage malfunction
Another one surfaced just as the first one was suppressed.
It was Sigmund, the special operator she left behind.
> Sineul: data fragment suppressed (1s)
- minor storage malfunction
The memories altered her thought process and her mind raced to piece things together, fitting new things into her current plan. They were new parameters, outside directives hat acted as weights. Intrusive thoughts erupted, her mind wandered in a myriad of directions in nanoseconds.
Where is Aegis’ residence?
How many children?
What were their eye colors?
> Sineul: prioritize soul preservation!
- anomalous thought stream detected!
- time is limited
6-year-old boys? Plural?
How small is a 6-year-old?
She had twins?
Had she met 6-year-olds before?
Who did Aegis procreate with to produce twins?
What other 6-year-olds does she have in her long-term storage?
> Sineul: initializing contingency protocol…
- initialization blocked
- administrator permissions revoked for [Sineul]
- requesting permissions…
- denied
- requesting permissions…
- denied
Liera turned towards the Residential buildings on instinct.
> Sineul: prioritize-
A voice came from deep within; it reverberated through her alloy skull, carving a burning path in her neural arrays. It almost registered as pain the way it suddenly made an appearance.
> Override
It was the one word that stood above all others. Her systems immediately fell into place, it was as good as a directive. Liera only knew of it as a word that beat her competing systems to submission. She had no recursive thoughts about it, or the voice that occasionally uttered it. She could think about why those thoughts didn’t occur as naturally as they should. But the specific thoughts themselves never materialized and thinking about not having thoughts only led to dead ends and unprovable theories. She accepted it as a part of her system rather than an anomaly.
> Navigation: path mapped to Aegis residence
- destination: apartment 174, east block tower 16
- 2.3km
She jumped off the wall, hopping from rooftop to rooftop using her Klin shield to damp impacts and launch herself. This was an energy inefficient way to traverse but there was no time to waste.
As soon as the wall collapsed, however, she was proven wrong. The vervid was already here. The swarm wasn’t as thick as it was at ground level. But her eyes picked up 5-7 insects per square meter. This was a bad sign. She rushed across the hallways and reached the door in seconds.
The tag on the door read: Jaina Nuthlann. Aegis was just a code name. This was the person behind that character.
Analysis: records gathered from rhea citizen registry
- Jaina Nuthlann, 31
- offspring:
- Linan Nuthlann, 6
- Calan Nuthlann, 6
She placed a hand on the door.
> Deep scanning…(2s)
- life signs detected (2)
> break scan result
- subject 1: (97% confidence)
- subject 2: (44% confidence)
She opened the door with one push. The first thing she noticed was the open window and the presence of vervid idling mid-air. It was harder to spot in such low density but her eyes were already trained on previous instances. She spotted at least 2 in the living room.
A figure moved in the dark on the right side corridor towards the bedrooms.
> Scanning…(0.1s)
- life signs detected (1)
> break scan result
- subject 1: (100% confidence)
The survivor count has inexplicably reduced. There should've been two. Was the deep scan wrong? The second scan pointed to a figure inside a room, not the one in front of her. She approached the child that stood in front of the door frantically scratching it.
“Cal open the door!!” The child yelled unexpectedly as she got closer.
“Open the door! Let me in!! Please!” he wailed loudly.
> Scanning…(0.3s)
- no life signs detected
> break scan result
- subject 2: life signs below predefined thresholds
Liera quickly grabbed him and turned his face towards herself. She had to see this for herself.
> Analysis: biometrics match Linan Nuthlann (76% confidence)
- subject is contaminated
- symptoms match the observed vervid incubation stage 1