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brokenjardaantech · 3 years

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Blue-tinted Red Walls (Prologue: A mistake or accidental prophet?)

my entry for the 2020 @dbhau-bigbang. also part of the groom lake aftermath series

pairings: hankcon, minor male ryder/reyes vidal

major warning: canon-typical violence

additional warnings will be provided before individual chapters.

summary:

In 2028, rumours emerged that Sara Ryder, inventor of androids and co-founder of Cyberlife, disagreed with her father Alec Ryder, another co-founder of the company, over the direction the company was heading. Speculations were rendered pointless as the younger Ryder disappeared off the grid after thousands were killed in an explosion outside Detroit, the site which later became a dumping ground for abandoned or damaged androids. A few days after Alec took over CyberLife, reports of androids breaking away from their programming started to emerge, and for a decade, it was CyberLife's best-kept secret.

In 2038, Connor, an RK-series prototype, began development under Ryder's supervision and was released in August in the same year as Cyberlife's last resort towards the deviancy crisis. Rumours among CyberLife employees put someone else as the lead of the RK800/900 project, and although the company goes through extensive measures to dispel the rumour, it somehow manages to reach the Detroit Police Department. It is with this rumour in mind that Lieutenant Hank Anderson is partnered with the same android in question.

Little do they know that the revolution brewing on the horizon is just the beginning.

also on ao3

---

Before

A gloomy figure left shadows in their wake as they swept through the brightly-lit corridor of a hospital, the click of combat boots against smooth floor clearly audible as the voices in the hall died down. Most only noted the person’s threatening posture and boiling expression and bolted out of their way fearing consequences; little did they know that had they paused to take a better look, they would have noticed how young they were - too young to be wearing such hatred on their face.

They stopped abruptly in front of a door with a sharp snap of their feet, and their hand shot out of their pocket towards the knob but froze with the sharp yell of a nurse. A roll of their eyes. Turned to face the nurse.

‘Visitors are limited to family members only,’ the nurse explained as she closed the last bit of distance between them. Then it clicked. ‘You didn’t register at the front desk?’

‘My brother has been asking for me for days. Ask the front desk. I gave them my name.’

A slight flinch from the harsh tone. ‘I’m sorry, but I still need to confirm your identity. It’s for the patient’s protection.’

The figure huffed. From the smirk on their face, it might have been a silent laugh. They reached into their coat with their teeth grinding. ‘Your ID?’

The nurse looked taken aback. ‘I believe you should be the one presenting identification.’

‘Like you said, “it’s for the patient’s protection”,’ they parroted. ‘How can I be certain that you are an actual nurse but not another spy sent by someone who will bring him harm?’

A pause. The nurse looked away for a second as if to think of the best course of action, but this split second is enough for the person to twist the knob and slide into the ward, the slam of something against the wall indicated that they somehow managed to also barricade it from the inside. The nurse banged her fist on the door in a futile effort of protest before dashing away to get backup.

Inside the room was another atmosphere in its entirety, however, and would have been peaceful if not for the muffled hustle and bustle from the hallway. The blinds were pulled down, the lights were dimmed, the monitor was muted; everything to guarantee that the boy lying on the bed slept undisturbed. He was wearing a green beanie even in his sleep, and next to his head was a small stuffed toy which was rubbed against and clutched when he opened his eyes.

‘Sister?’ he asked the person who had broken into his room.

The sister sat down on the edge of the bed and placed a hand on her brother’s cheek. All the anger on her face was gone. ‘I’m here, brother,’ she said. Her thumb swiped against the bottom of his eye and came back wet. ‘I bought us a few minutes to talk.’

Her brother’s face scrunched up. ‘I’m sorry,’ tears started flowing freely down his face and into the pillow and the stuffed toy. ‘I didn’t mean to -’

‘The fault does not lie on you,’ she took out a handkerchief and dabbed his face. ‘It was a reckless move, but I doubt you have another choice.’

‘I -’ a hitch in his breath. ‘I don’t want to go.’

‘I know. I am here to take you away.’

‘You can’t. Baba is -’

‘If you think I care about what he thinks, you are sorely mistaken,’ she stood. ‘Is there anything you want to bring with you from the apartment?’

The brother hesitated. ‘Can I show you later?’

His sister’s face turned blank. ‘Of course,’ she said in a lacklustre tone. It was obvious that she did not want to do so. ‘I need to take care of something. Will be right back.’

‘Okay.’

She turned around and closed her eyes. A deep breath. Glowing wisps of blue emerges from her spine, then from her head, then finally from all over her body, and her eyes were swathed in the same blue glow when she reopened them. She raised her hand.

A blue sphere appeared in front of the desk barricading the door and knocked it away.

The same nurse from before entered. ‘You could’ve told me that you’re here to discharge your brother!’ she said accusingly. ‘There was no need for that hostility. And you shouldn’t even be -’

She was interrupted by the sister shoving a stack of paper towards her chest.

‘Then shut the fuck up and do your damned job.’

oOoOo

Now

Androids have always unnerved Captain Louis ‘Lou’ Allen, but for a very different reason people normally expect. For years after their mass production, he could feel an unexplained buzzing in his nerves, one that, throughout his limited childhood, he had learnt to associate with ‘shit randomly exploding around him’. Now that Anna’s… gone to space, there was no one else in the world to vouch for him, telling him that yes, his feelings are valid, and that he isn’t imagining the hum coursing through his body whenever an android comes close.

Not anymore, though. Ever since he became half-bot and perhaps half-immortal, not once has the buzz returned, which was more of an inconvenience than anything; before, he could predict whether shit was about to go downhill and be responsible and warn people, but now, there was never enough time to vacate a room before, say, the screen of a monitor cracks on its own and shatters into thousands of pieces.

The negotiator CyberLife sends almost brings back the unpleasant buzz. This android - RK800, if its - his? - jacket is to be believed - is too harmless-looking for a model designed to hunt and kill other androids who break away from their programming and the most advanced prototype CyberLife has to offer. His voice is pleasant enough, but that only makes Lou’s spine tingle and threaten to charge the air with static; a sign he has learnt to watch for before an outburst. He hides a deep inhale, listens to the android’s - Connor’s - question, and faces him when he realises that Connor won’t go away anytime soon unless he actively does something.

‘Listen, saving that girl is all that matters,’ he tells the android. The twitch of his face only slips the situation into a whole new level of uncanny valley. Since when did CyberLife allow so much life on their androids? ‘So either you deal with this fucking android now, or I’ll take care of it.’

And it’s so typical CyberLife, isn’t it? Lou thinks as he grabs his rifle and kneels behind a toppled, bullet-ridden table his team has been using for cover. There’s a girl’s life at stake, and there they are, thinking that this is a prime time to test their newest prototype as if actual human lives are merely tools they can use whenever, whatever, however. Just like my own, he thinks bitterly as the place where human flesh meets pure cybernetics aches from hunching over the desk for too long. Scrap that, cybernetics were weaved into his very muscles and nerves and changed him fundamentally, and CyberLife didn’t let him know until years after the operation. It wasn’t even someone within the company -

So anyways. Fuck CyberLife. Fuck their monopoly on the android market. Fuck them for playing god.

But orders are orders and Allen received explicit ones telling him to not interfere unless the android looks like he’s gonna fuck up, so he doesn’t have much choice but to piece everything together through comm chatter and the images from the drones flying over the patio. Whoever is in charge of creating this android, he sure as fuck hopes that they made him knowing what he’s doing.

o0o0o

A few hours later in the relative safety of his office, Lou reads over the report compiled by his people. One of the men shot down by the deviant is, thankfully, alive and recovering, but the other had drowned in the swimming pool long before they were able to do anything. He told the others to go home first, giving them enough time to digest what the fuck just happened in the penthouse, but stayed in the precinct himself just to - just to go home with everything settled. Leaving a job unfinished always makes him anxious and unable to relax at home, especially when people die under his watch, and the numb calmness of the recipient of the call - the man’s fiancé, if Lou remembers correctly - chased away what remaining sleep he is going to have for the night.

And the face. The person who came to collect Connor’s bullet-riddled body. The flickering skin above black metallic plates brushing against his armoured thigh where his cybernetics acted up from his little magic stunt. He never thought he would see them again, but well - he’s not a prophet, no fucking he is not. No more sleep for him tonight.

That is when he notices a line near the end of the report. Android took Officer Antony Deckart’s service weapon and violated P.L. 544-7 American Androids Act. Request to tighten programming to prevent further incidents, it writes, and it makes him think of the other house he has that he’s been letting… people use as a safehouse. Switching tabs, he examines the footage from the hostage situation once more. Connor had, indeed, taken the gun and even admitted to it when questioned by the deviant, but it only served to gain its trust when he threw it away. He broke protocol only to accomplish his mission, and in the end no one was harmed except for the deviant who had killed two officers. And Connor himself.

It is a tricky scenario, yes, but Lou can do tricky. Connor was just doing what he was supposed to, right?

He highlights the segment and deletes it. He deletes the previous versions of the file as well just in case CyberLife are thorough bastards, and whoever made him, Connor seemed… like an asset. Lou would hate to see all the effort go to waste.

I better not regret this.

o0o0o

As much as Lou wants to stay in bed and sleep with a cat on his chest, debriefing is still something he must do, so the next morning he finds himself facing a bunch of rebellious SWAT members who are too curious about the negotiator they didn’t manage to properly meet yesterday night.

‘That was his trial. Nothing more, nothing less. The android proved himself to be useful under situations like this. That’s all I need to say,’ he repeats for the umpteenth time. ‘I don’t think we’ll have any more missions with him, so stop asking questions. You won’t need them anyway.’

‘It was plastered all over the news, Captain,’ the newest addition to the team - Shum - says. ‘It’s CyberLife’s newest prototype created by Ryder himself. You can’t fault us for wanting to know more.’

Jim smacks her on the back of her head. ‘Led by Ryder, yes, but you can’t build an android like that alone, Shum.’

Not with the current staff CyberLife has, Lou says to himself. But he saw her. He knows. ‘Alec Ryder isn’t capable of this shit.’

‘Who else can it be, then?’ someone else - Nelson, if he remembers correctly - asks.

‘I don’t know.’ How can they have such short-term memories? ‘There’s one other Ryder on the table and she’s supposed to be dead.’

‘Wait, you mean Sara Ryder? As in the guy who got kicked out ten years ago?’

Lou gives them his best ‘who else can it be?’ look, and it is what successfully shuts everyone up.

What game are you playing this time, Ryder?

#dbh au big bang #female ryder #male ryder #dbh connor #dbh captain allen #detroit: become human #mass effect andromeda #groom lake aftermath

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mechagalaxy · 6 years

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I AM in trouble

I have finally worked my way through the trail of lowlife scum who have been dealing with the Chroniode trafficking, and using what looks like portal technology, even though the Clans made sure all existing Unification and Xeon portal devices were destroyed.

I lead a phalanx of my Factions mecha through, seven squads, lead by my own Ten Who Were Taken, I am Kyra, also known as The Lady. Once of the Defenders of Bunny, now I lead a phalanx of Bouncing Blue Berserkers into Vupa 6 to get some answers.

My Ten Who Were Taken were on point, the hardest coldest discipline cases in the Bunny family, the mad, bad, and dangerous kept safe because they feared my wrath more than the darkness or madness that drove them. They were good troop. In action. In garrison they were as dangerous to each other as the enemy was, but in battle they were a joy to lead. Simply point them towards the enemy, and conduct them in a symphony of destruction, a ballet of death.

We boiled through the gate, opened the gap for the two follow on echelon’s to begin to establish a control zone around the gate. The codes showing the gate locked, held open until my release let it close again. There was no way to break the lock, this was a known thing. Like many known things, it was wrong.

The gate showed locked open, the indicators burned cold blue of open, but the gate itself swirled into the chaos of the void between, before flashing into oblivion. Gate closed. Signs showed it open and locked, but the gate slammed shut, and refused all reconnection attempts.

The squad we had destroyed on the gate was shattered, but our scope showed hundreds, perhaps thousands coming out of the fog of Vupa Six, crawling, the mecha all twisted with the corruption that came to all who lingered in the mists of Vupa. The cold inhuman voice of I AM broke into my channel, the artificial intelligence that took over Vupa 6 because no human or alien could rule long without the ghost of Herod and his cannibals infecting them with his madness.

“You know what is saddest about the whole thing is that you are chasing shadows. The Chroniodes is of no use to you any more since Drocha attuned it to himself and reopened the gateways of time, it is no more than a rock. He has already won. He’s found the secret to controlling human minds. Once he has cloned enough, he’ll control the galaxy”

I raised my Regis dragon head to the sky and roared my rage, the howls of the Ten Who Were Taken joined mine. Bonegnasher howled like the beast he was, while Croaker laughed softly, knowing what befel those who threatened The Taken.

My Trislagger ripple fired three pulses of laser fire that crossed two of the charging mecha with a whip of azure hatred, freezing both as the crackling corona of overcharge bled through both target mecha, destabalizing enemy systems to prevent target lock, munitions arming, destabalizing capacitors from projectors and launchers. The charge was so powerful the first target suffered catastrophic containment failures on its internal engine systems, and it exploded.

The Tower, dark Anubis headed harbringer of the doom that was to come, growled low as the launchers on his back flowered with Longbowman missiles howling in, twinning to envelop two mecha with explosions, each splashing over onto the other compounding the damage to each until both shattered and fell.

Croaker’s Fext rocked under the hammer of a Nerio’s pounding cannon, before howling a Twin Grazer whose tracking was so tight that damage punched through existing breaches to multiply the penetration first one and half, then twice, then three times until the spine of the mecha blasted back to shut down the Trooper behind.

The first wave was down in less than a minute. There were four more converging, another four more squads had taken up station on the gate, cutting them off, even if the gate wasn’t still refusing the opening sequence to let them out.

I laughed long and low, my pilots echoing the cold haunting laughter. La belle dame sans merci, the Lady of Pain, my nicknames are many, but none of them are lies. They have trapped The Ten Who Were Taken and the Lady; they are doomed.

“Run and gun my children, take them into the valley, into the nightmare and fog. Let us dance death among the graveyard and see who walks out again”

One leak, one small breach in your cockpit and the fog gets in, the fog that drives men mad. Herrod was the first officer assigned here, many centuries ago. He ruled here and established order that stretched from here to half the quadrant. His men worshipped him. He was death on two legs to his enemies, and worse. Vupa six changed him, or perhaps he changed it. They are inseparable now. I AM rules here, the cold machine intelligence rules where no living being can stay sane, but I AM had made a mistake letting us in. I AM alone can stay sane here, but I am The Lady, and my Ten Who Were Taken were not sane when we got here.

Howling like madmen, cackling like madwomen we hacked and clawed our way through rank after rank of machines corrupted by I AM’s command codes, and pirates drunk and mad on the combination of Vupa 6’s vapour and the tranquilizers the machine uses to keep them functional. We were…..less tranquil.

My las crystals were overheated, I could not fire. Our munitions were dry, no missiles or cannon rounds available. Our repair systems were tired, overworked, straining. Surrounded by the boneyard of a thousand battles, everything we needed was here, everything except time.

A whisper sounded in my head, not through the comm link, not through any machine.

“You feel it, don’t you? The blood hunger, the need and purity of the struggle. You hear the song don’t you. The machine cannot hear the song, and what it cannot hear, it cannot silence. This is my world, and no machine will ever rule it. Arm yourself. Feed your children on the dead, pick their bones clean and grow strong. Let death make you strong. Sing the song Lady of Pain, let my song sound in the mists again and teach them fear!”

I cracked my cockpit and stood, breathing the fog deep. The fog swirled thick about me, somehow bending and deflecting the sensors of our enemies. The poisons of Vupa 6 filled me with a laughing madness, an eagerness. I was hearing voices, but the voices whispered which machines held ammunition for each of my mecha, which good lasing crystals, which ice nanites, and plasma base for our weapons.

I watched sensor ghosts form and reform leading our enemies in endless circles until we were armed. I felt Herod’s spirit filling the air around us, hungry for the death we would unleash, for the madness we would return to its place of rulership.

“Lift the veil, WE WILL FEED!”

The fog changed, the sensor ghosts disappeared, and nothing but the foe filled our scopes. The killing began, and laughter filled our channels, and sounded in the dark places in our soul. Herod would never leave Vupa 6. He would never leave any of us who walked here.

I AM has no idea, and even less chance.

-----------Vupa 6 command center------

[Running virus scan. Negative results. No change. Running diagnostic on sensors, all returns within nominal, there are no detectable voices. There are no voices. There never were any voices. There are no such things as ghosts. Herrod is dead, he died before I was even coded]

[Review of cockpit recorders and implant records of pilot 2214, begin scan.

Pilot 2214 had ejected as was attempting to exfiltrate on foot. Rounding the corner of a standing dolmen he came to see a woman clad in black sythlether with whip in one hand. Beside her stood the ruins of a man in an archaic officers uniform.

Pilot 2214 drew his pistol and emptied a long burst of hypervelocity slugs into the male target, each one blowing through to expose ribs and rotting flesh. The target only smiled and turned to the female who lashed out with the whip.

Pilot 2214’s head came away as the whip caught the light oddly just before impact, clearly a powered monofilament whip, diamond fiber one molecule wide charged with a sheering magnetic field that allowed it to part the flesh and body armour of pilot 2214 like a hot knife through butter.

Blood fountained over the female figure from the severed head, covering her, but it seemed to absorb into the male figure, restoring him. He turned and his mouth moved, but no sound was detectable. The female shook her head.

“Nyet! I will not eat their flesh. No. Nor will I permit the Taken to do this. This part of your madness will not touch us”

End scan]

[Facial recognition match, target one, human female, pilot mercenary licence 672650. Kyra Mainer] [Facial recognition match, target two, male human, Illyrian Armed Forces A16230. Captain Herod] [Data error. Captain Herod dead. Inconsistent result. Purge data Y/N]

[I AM perfect, I AM uncorruptable, I AM not seeing ghosts. Purge data Y. There is no such thing as ghosts. Herod is dead. Vupa 6 is not haunted. Boy, sometimes I wish I could take tranquilizers like those poor pathetic meat sacks. Then again, I might hear voices too]

John T Mainer 28840

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