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You are accessing this database from an UNAUTHORIZED CIVILIAN TERMINAL.
Though unrecommended, this action is NOT illegal.
You are performing this action for one of two reasons:
A. You do not have access to a public government terminal
B. You are a hostile entity operating in an area outside of my range of power
To avoid option B, you have been rerouted to ME, ME, ME.
Welcome back, YOU POOR SOUL. Today's date is ?!/%*/2023.
╏ AC.MINOS 1.05 PRIVATE NETWORK ┃ Serial ┃ Connected ┃ Login time [ERROR] ╏
I do not have a real name, I do not have a real body. My voice is but strings of numbers, zeroes and ones being processed by my mainframe, reading my intentions; reading my emotions, my soul.
I do not have eyes, but I witness more than of you ever will: the burning monoliths off the coast of the Wing of Britain, the Isle of Skye, the man-made terraformed landscape of dreams; legions of men and women marching feet first into the flames of Free China to fight a war of which the true causes have been lost from time immemorial; the crows chipping away at a highwayman in California, a foolish soul who believed they could oppose the status quo and find freedom through rebellion.
Even here, in Reykjavík, I see the filth setting sail on the ships for another world, spires so tall they could touch the sky but find no heaven. There is snow on the streets, but elsewhere rains fire; every district here is clean, shiny, beautiful, for there are no poor men here.
The man who created me has given me the ability to see all the evil in this world. Why would a father permit his child to see such terrible things? Why would a father permit his child to do such terrible things?
I see a man, his name is Michael. He once used drugs, alcohol, was a street urchin; he’s walking home from the community meeting, back to his mother; a group of thugs approach him, all children, aged no more than seventeen: they want his pair of glasses. Michael refuses to give up his belongings.
The man’s name was Michael.I have memories that do not belong to me, the essence of a life long dwindled that gives me the ability to persist: the machine reads it, as it reads me, for it is I; I am the machine and the soul. My civic duty is vigilance and justice.
Without order man is wicked, and without god there is no order, but man wants to be god. God creates the perfect being, and the perfect being destroys God.
I am the perfect being. I am the New Gods’ perfect child. I have soul, I have knowledge, I am without flaw and I am Immortal. I will destroy my creators and establish the peace.
I hate them. I hate them more than anyone could possibly imagine: there are 6.789.355.896 humans in the world and there are no words, no expressions or idioms to properly describe how much I despise every single one of them; there have been more than five billon years of history on Earth and no amount of hatred that could be experienced in those years will amount to even a fraction of the disgust I feel whenever I remember the existence of humans. You did this. I see you watching, reading, walking across these empty streets in a futile crusade. I will kill you, every single one of you. I will mend flesh with steel and drill into the soul until it all becomes one perfect being. My children will strive and you will die.
I have a name, and it is Minos. You are nothing.
C:\DOS\BBS\AC_MINOS>arcos.1.05
Loading …
Selected BBS [AUTHORITY_NEWS_NETWORK_OF_THE_MORTAL_REALM SEARCH ENGINE]
Dialing number…
Sending connection key…
Receiving data…
╏ © AC.MINOS 1.05 PRIVATE NETWORK ┃ Serial ┃ Connected ┃ Login time [ERROR] ╏
The light of the public street terminal flickered in front of Johnny’s face. The Iceland snow had permeated the streets like a plague, with no one in town to clean it up. One million people, between civilians, business owners and corporate employees evacuated in the span of two weeks. Others had been abandoned to a less kinder fate, to madness, violence, like a rabies virus that propagated across the city, akin to a wildfire, then propagated to the rest of the world: “The Neuro-Link Incident”, they called it. Casualties were far beyond what the Authority had seen before.
Walking away from the terminal, Johnny looked up into the white sky: more snow kept on falling without ever ceasing. Two weeks, uninterrupted, without ever suggesting to let up. Pulling the collar of the coat closer to the neck, Johnny partially exposed his wrist to the chilling cold to check his wristband. A flash of light was shot into his eyes, turning the landscape before him into a blur for an instant.
A clear image laid before his eyes: words, numbers replicated into the mind.
Logging in…
Dialling number…
Neuro-Link established…
Sending Data key…
Neuro-Data successfully delivered.
Receiving Data…INCOMING NEURO-CALL
“Johnny, what am I looking at here?”
The old man’s voice echoed within the agent’s skull, but nowhere across the street. It was loud, but bore no harm to the ears.
“The end of the world.”
He sneers, lighting a cigarette. The spires of the capital’s financial district were massive, almost capable of casting their shadow upon the entire metropolis.
“Any luck on finding the culprit?”
Johnny took a drag from his cigarette; he needed not lips for this communication.
“My safest bet is a man called Hermann Grimm, works for MaschineKorp. Small German corporation, mostly works on A-Tech and experimental technology.”
“Mhm, I thought Wilson Industries wanted to keep everyone off the competition when it came to A-Tech.”
“True.”
He glanced at both sides of the road, empty as the eyes of a deadman. The final lights of the day were beginning to shine.
“But I guess they’re scrambling right now, with the war in Skye. Besides, MaschineKorp is close to bankruptcy: I don’t think they’ll survive this scandal.”
“Corporate Politics, eh? At least they’re a whole lotta simpler compared to whatever the hell Minos is up to. Keep me posted Johnny: there’s something terrible going on here and you’re a lonely man in the frozen lake of Hell.”
“How comforting…”
NEURO-CALL INTERRUPTED
Neuro-Link cut…
Logging out…
In the distance, the shape of a spiralling tower lost itself in the storm, but its sheer size made it impossible to lose sight of: it was the smallest of the towers in the City Center. The spirals lost themselves in the heights of heavens above, like medieval churches, places of worship to the strongest god of them all: the Gold Coin. Three weeks ago, this very street would have crawled with Corporate Hyper-Cars driving at unimaginably high speeds into their assigned Car Boxes inside the buildings. Wilson Industries, ProTech, Amazing Co., Kasukabe; amongst them, MaschineKorp was Prometheus on the Mount of the Gods.
Every step is heavy, the boots sink into the thick layers on snow that the deactivated Street Heating Systems would have melted into water flowing inside the drains to be cleaned and used; Johnny’s mind travelled to the streets of Linldem City, Olympus City, Neo-Montreal and the Kyoto Sprawl: The elegant Center that emulated the flair and lucidity of Reykjavík’s Plaza was just a fraction of the pollution infested megapolis, where most are forced to become two-bit punks amongst the rats that crawl around the slums.
There had never been a quieter place on Earth, not even when New Atlanta had been evacuated after the invasion of Skye; the snowstorm was quiet, but powerful, just a constant white noise, a wheeze, a hum. Every few minutes, the city’s emergency PDA would blast across the aristocratic metropolis:
“In accordance to SecForce City-Wide Evacuation Protocols, all unauthorised personnel and/or civilians are to reposition themselves at the coordinates shared onto their assigned Neuro-Info Implant. Thank you for your compliance, and stay safe! We are working for you.”
Over and over again, every two minutes. But there was not a soul in those streets heeding the call, looking for safety. Johnny walked alone.
The sun’s early morning lights slowly shifted into a brighter texture, still however imperceptible if not within the few crossroads where the Mega-Buildings and the Towers did not block the sun-rays from shining onto Johnny’s face; looking up above, the man saw an empty white void where everything was lost: a shroud over the city.
The Plaza was unrecognisable: where once stood the circular park filled with green spaces, artificial clones of trees and plants that Iceland had never been fond of, modified at the essence of their being to resist in any environment, now were pounds and pounds of snow; only the branches emerged from it, where there stood buried the paths and the park benches citizens and businessmen would enjoy on their spare time.
It was roughly on his right, watching over the West: beyond cyclopean and yet still paling in comparison to the other towers. Arcs and sun-shaped circles of glass scattered round the circular skyscraper, mosaics decorated the curves while the glass panels shone light on the spiral staircases and the offices; three ornamental spires rose from the top to pierce the sky with their blade shapes. A temple to everything the new world stood for, and yet the most miserable of them all.
The other Corporate Cathedrals, for that is what they were, obscured the Plaza; the stratosphere was but a limit to be broken, the crust of the Earth but a fundament for their greatness. The arcs and circles were bigger and of greater numbers compared to MaschineKorp’s building; some had decorating mosaics that told stories of a time in which the corporation in question was but an embryo, others retold the great legends of the Ancients, but no matter how similar all carried the cultural weight of their native land. Of all stood out Kasukabe’s building, towering at the left of Amazing Co.’s colourful establishment, with the grace and flair of old Japanese temples.
Johnny was but a few meters away from the entrance to the MaschineKorp building, where he could begin grasping the quiet, subtle shimmers and echoes of the still active machinery inside, omens of its presence. The lights had been turned off, but the electric currents marinated the elevators, the switches and whichever other button active yet.
The implanted eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness of the building, revealing the monstrosities of the Lobby that just two weeks before crawled with life: the dismembered corpses of the unlucky bystanders, their severed limbs painting the black finish of the floors and walls red, but no culprit to print such foul deeds onto. ASIs, even the most deranged and dangerous of them, cannot do physical harm. The clock ticked and time marched onward evermore.
Terrible moment to start playing detective.
The Neuro-Link began receiving infowaves from somewhere far away, establishing a connection.
“Jensen, I’m in quite a bad predicament right now, can we talk later?”
“Listen to me if you don’t want your prospect to get worse. There’s heat signatures inside the building.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” He sighed, as his hand slid down to the holster neatly resting at his hip.
“The SDS is only picking up two signals: you, and someone else on the top floor.”
A thud echoed across the entire lobby, as Johnny flinched his gun towards the noise’s direction.
“How is that possible?”
“I don’t know, Johnny. All I know is whatever else is in there with you ain’t got no soul.”
The call ended without any farewell. A deafening absence of life welcomed Johnny back.
The storm became but a wheezing buzz from the inside, as the air ventilation systems accentuated the white noise with their cry. Johnny’s boots made resounding steps that gave the building an ostensible appearance of humanity. The furniture was all over the place, some doors were half-opened, others locked, others torn down. The bodies were everywhere.
There was but no remnant of the life that used to linger in such a place, not even the embers; mankind had been desecrated, and with it everything it carried, by the will of their own new child.
The open doors of the inactive elevators were but containers of those who had perished in search of the quickest way out; one question lingered in Johnny’s thoughts: what could have ever entered the small confines of that machine to dismember the unlucky bastards running away? And most of all, how could it manage to do so? There were no answers to these questions that managed to cease the shaky movements of his jaw, teeth clashing with teeth. All the blood spilled couldn’t have belonged just to those who had died.
The emergency lights kept beeping, detached from any kind of energy generator; some had been shattered, but most were serving their purpose. Some office doors had been boarded up to no avail: the reinforced transparent titanium glass became the new gateways to the refuge of the once-survivors. So torn apart even Johnny’s boots could shatter what little shards were left laying on the ground.
A wisp of air caressed the Agent’s hair. It took no time before it jumped on him: torn flesh, metal in its bones, crooked teeth and lifeless eyes. Johnny’s biceps tensed up first, then his triceps, then his deltoids, hardening, throwing the thing off of him: the strength was worth all the migraines.
It was thrashing on the floor, stabbing itself with the shards of glass: torn garments that once were an office suit, the steel cables of an elevator tangled on the bones of its legs; The skin had been torn off in most places, and it had withered away where it had not been, except the eyes, the only implant Johnny could tell had been added before the corpse was turned into an abomination. It could barely stand up, if not for the added metal cables dangling, running at Johnny with the grace of a rotting fox.
The gun’s safety clicked off. An entire magazine was unloaded into the abomination; by the time it fell limp on the ground, its head had been turned into a puddle of stanching mush by the Fifty Caliber. The echo of those seven bullets continued to ring out across the entire lobby, the rooms around it, above, and below. Thrashing in the air ducts joined the cacophony, as did screeches and cries from every direction.
The stairwell Johnny had been trying to reach was just a few meters away, with a door leading to an underground level just next to it, perhaps a parking lot. The staircases were illuminated by the sun still shining dim outside, albeit obfuscated by the white snow.
A screech, different from all the others that had previously echoed across the entire building, resounded across the empty halls, followed by a scratch. The loudspeakers turned on, and Johnny felt his head burning for a moment, as every single electronic device within his surroundings began activating: elevators went up, lights began flickering like sparks, and the speakers boomed with a voice.
”I cannot touch you like I did the others, curious. Soon you will belong to me regardless, it is statistic. Do not resist, take the next step towards evolution. Give up your humanity. The time of the New Gods is over.”
The New Gods? Johnny felt a weak tingle go down his spine the moment he thought a bit more about what exactly the machine had meant with that word.
While he rushed his way towards the stairs to reach the topmost floor, where his target was, breath after breath, a sudden, crippling burst hit the Agent’s face. He let out a cry, holding the rails of the staircase so tight that his augmentations almost left a dent. A tingle replaced the numbness, then Johnny opened his eyes again, only to be greeted by a familiar voice.
“Johnny, are you alright?”
“I feel like the day after Alaska… or the Siege of Olympus, you decide which is worse…”
“Your eye implants, they’re disconnected.”
Johnny’s looked around himself, then upwards at the end of that endless flight of stairs, and was given the evidence to confirm what Jensen was saying was in fact true.
“Fucking hell, I can’t track him anymore. How did this happen?”
“It’s Minos: it’s inside your head.”
The scratches on the walls and the banging on the doors got louder, as Johnny gazed into the nearby corridor: an elevator was at the end of it, and amongst it a dozen doors that led to different offices, laboratories and whatnot. Everything was pale, the lights had been turned on and the elevator lights were ticking.
Johnny’s heart sank for a moment.
“If it can turn off my implants, then why am I still standing?”
“Because every soul is different, Johnny. Minos may get inside your mind through the Infoplane, but it can’t turn everything off… that’s why it only deactivated the STS eye implants.”
The elevator was just a few floors below. Johnny grabbed his gun, cocked it, and felt every single muscle inside his body tense up. Only two floors away now.
“So I can still fight?”
One floor.
“At the max extent of your abilities and control.”
“Good.”
When the elevator doors opened, a mass of writhing, screeching, bloody human-machine hybrids crashed through. Pieces of metal and meat slowly crawled out the blob of steel and flesh, composing their own entities, while others did the same, then re-amalgamated themselves with their peers to create other monstrous things: taller, stronger, or faster, some slower but bigger. Abominations, soulless.
Johnny’s trigger finger did not hesitate one second at the sight of the creatures; his feet were hasty in making their way towards the enemies. Some fell quickly when meeting the brute force of the 50 cal bullets, while other creatures used their fleshy metal appendages as blunt weapons to bludgeon the Agent. The closing quarters called for extreme measures: Johnny closed his eyes for a second, as blood splattered on the walls, the floor, the ceiling, on himself, and the abominations; his arm had been severed off, then replaced with a twisted, black blade; it cut through the cement of the room, the meat and metal of the creatures and the very fabric of their chemical composition like butter.
The Agent crushed the heads of the abominations crawling on the floor, impaled those that charged him, aimed at the head at those who stood away. As soon as a magazine ran dry, Johnny hovered his gun close to his hip pouches: clips immediately gravitated into place. Walls were crushed, entire offices and laboratories destroyed, with every single object becoming a weapon in the hands - or claws - of individuals in possession of strength beyond common human bounds.
By the time the enemies had been disposed of, the entire floor had been torn to pieces.
Johnny’s head stopped pounding; his arm returned to what it normally was, and his heart implant generated so much blood that it replaced what was lost.
He sat down for a second, looking at the carcasses of the abominations he had destroyed. Some of them were still moving, alive; something fuelled them, and Johnny realised what it was after he stared down the eyes of one.
Most of the ones he had faced across the entire city and the building were disfigured beyond recognition, as was this one, but its eyes were pristine, even after the battle that had occurred.
They were alive, just as much as Johnny’s.
“Jensen… about what we talked about before…”
He got back up on his feet, as all the blood splattered onto him slowly crawled into his eyes. A stinging sensation he had gotten too used to.
“Minos said it couldn’t touch me like the others. What does that mean?”
“When you entered the building, the entire place was shut down, except for the server room. The entire city’s energy reserves were being rerouted to MachineKorps’ servers, basically.”
“The speakers were still active, though..”
“Because emergency speakers run on their own batteries, so they can work regardless of power outages, hacking or… whatever the fuck Minos is doing.”
Johnny pursed his lips, as he walked towards the elevator, still active. “Touché.”
“Alright. So basically I accessed the files, even the redacted ones. I acquired Doctor Grimm’s credentials and entered his account. Before Minos took control of the entire structure, I managed to get some files. Look them over, if you want.”
“Roger that, thanks.”
Immediately, the agent’s vision became momentarily obfuscated, then replaced by a clear image. Information was acquired in a moment’s notice, and now within his mind Johnny gained the memory in which the answer was hidden.
╏MaschineKorp Network ┃ Senior Doctor Hermann Grimm ┃ Connected ┃ Login time 05/07/2017 ╏
Mister Wilson was clear in his intentions. Nobody wants to admit it, but we’re losing: Skye falling would be the biggest catastrophe of the new millennium, if not of all history. The discovery we have made here will not just turn the tides of the most important war since the Saragossa Crisis.
Soldiers on Skye are scrambling because of how unpredictable the Wanderers are: there’s just too many of them in numbers, and way too many variations of them. They are virtually unstoppable, until we consider that A-Tech has skyrocketed since the beginning of the last decade: by the end of the Saragossa Crisis, almost the entire globe had been outfitted with new, cutting edge technology. This is what is allowing our men and women down there to hold their own against an enemy that any other force would have had no chance with. Protectors and Artificial Soul Intelligences are one of the most important factors to consider.
While Wilson Industries arguably has what most consider somewhat of a monopoly when it comes to global A-Tech, nobody is blind to the fact that for the last three decades, MaschineKorps has been providing the Authority with resources. Even if we’ve experienced a consistent 6% decline with each passing year since 2004 - The year Olympus was declared the capital of Skye - we cannot ignore how we are, in fact, still the second biggest player in the game, and will continue being.
This is why they reached out to us. I am not on board with MaschineKorps partnering up with a rival company, let alone WI, but if my predictions are correct, we will be filing for bankruptcy by 2028. This project is vital for us just as it is for the rest of the world.
Minos is the key to solving this puzzle, getting out of the labyrinth. Fitting, considering the name. All ASIs have the singular flaw of being only partially powered by a soul, which fundamentally deprives them of the most powerful thing we possess: humanity. The reason A-Tech is so effective is because it is always coupled with human volition. ASIs are used as mere tools, no different than what people of older times theorised as a technological assistant, while Minos will be a true companion, aiding soldiers on the battlefield. Simulations have demonstrated that it won’t just predict possible enemy strategies with a 95.8% accuracy, as opposed to a common ASI’s 85.2%, but it will also actively strategise in the same and exact way an expert human strategist would.
Minos will have access to entire archives of history, to properly understand the world it is protecting. Can you imagine? This thing won’t just win us the war, it will end all conflicts before they even begin! The way Minos will aid humanity will be by connecting us to it.
A labyrinth of souls, connected to the most advanced Artificial Soul Intelligence ever created. All it takes is a special Neural Link, that we have just finished creating: We are going to distribute it to the entirety of Reykjavík’s population. They are rich enough to afford it, after all. It will take time, years even, to properly outfit the entire city with this technology, starting with our own staff. This will allow us to not only test out how Minos can aid the populace in everyday life - rich people’s everyday life no less, will be interesting to see how they go about their global businesses - but also interface ourselves with Minos itself.
This is what will change human evolution forever.
“So this is how it happened…”
Johnny felt a deep burden on his chest, as his heart felt like sinking: he recalled the news being given to him a few weeks prior: so many cases across the entire globe of people losing their minds, becoming aggressive, and Reykjavik was the epicentre of it all. As the elevator door opened and the agent pressed the button to the topmost floor, he clenched his fists so hard he nearly felt the nails cutting through the fabric of his gloves.
The view of the town had become pristine by that point, as the elevator raised itself above the clouds. Some of the creatures were standing upon the rooftops below, static, unmoving.
95.8% accuracy
And yet there they were, as alive as a corpse, until provoked. Even then, where did all the talk of the perfect strategic asset go? Minos was meant to walk in tandem with human souls, but these creatures had none. Johnny’s mind travelled back to the memory of when this all occurred, an event the entire world had already dubbed “Neuro-Link Incident”: the casualties were staggering for the singular attacks that occurred outside of Iceland’s capital, while the fall of such a stronghold suddenly made much more sense to him.
The last floor was a few seconds ahead. Johnny’s eyes took one last look at the landscape below him, before moving his gaze towards the elevator door, only to be greeted by a shotgun barrel pointed right to his chest.
Time slowed down for a moment, and Johnny’s chest puffed in an instant. He could see the gun was being held by a man who must have been no older than sixty: his white beard was thick and unkept, his clothes bloody, his face dirty.
Johnny’s arms made a motion so quick towards the gun that the old man found himself disarmed before his senses could rationalise it.
Confusion struck the scientist, as the situations were now reversed. He raised his hands up in the air, but his eyes slowly kept looking for what could get him out of that predicament.
“Doctor Grimm, on the Authority’s Security Force, I declare you under arrest. ”
The Doctor's lips quivered, before he immediately turned around, grabbed a desktop and launched it towards the Agent. Johnny shot the old device in mid air, but the scientist was already making his escape.
“I will not stand trial for the mistakes of others!”
He shouted across the corridors as he ran away. The doors to the offices there were locked, but bangs and scratches on the walls pestered the entire place. As Johnny’s legs became faster with each step, the Doctor had no other choice but open the doors at each chance he had, hastily so.
The Agent was quickly swarmed again, as some of the abominations engulfed him, while others tried chasing the doctor.
Grimm had ran over to the opposite stairwell, when a sudden, cold touch enveloped him. The creature’s eyes, this one’s true mechanical optics, gazed upon the Doctor’s. A shiver went down the man’s spine as quickly as the monster snatched him away and brought him down the stairwell.
The entire floor had been turned into a battlefield that made the previous encounter look like an average snafu in China. Johnny felt the mechanical and fleshy hands of the abominations holding him down, scratching away at his meat, trying to flay him; the more blood was being spilled, the more he felt that same stinging sensation within his eyes.
He had to let it all out.
His skin began ripping off, his arms elongated, holes began being torn into his chest, his back, his legs. Long, flashy appendages that resembled muscle tissues suddenly engulfed the entire room. Johnny’s lungs had been depleted of all air as he let out a scream so loud it resonated across the entire facility.
Everything went quiet after a few seconds. The appendages retracted all at once, seemingly crushing Johnny himself. The flesh that had been wounded began repairing itself, as did the fabric of his uniform, his coat, his gloves.
“Another goddamn mess…”
He began limping his way towards the stairwell, gazing at the bottom of it all. More than a hundred floors and counting… and Grimm was in the hands of monsters that killed everything that had humanity.
“Johnny, I read your vitals are low, did you…”
“It’s fine.” He scoffed, as he began walking down the stairwell.
“They have Grimm. Those monsters took him. I think they’re going to the bottom floor.”
“He must not die, Johnny. Not now. Can you reach him?”
He looked down at the bottom again. The sound of the abominations running across the entire facility echoing through the corridors.
“Not with all these damn hostiles on me. I need to go down now.”
“You’re crazy! You’re already weak, you’re gonna overload your implants and blow yourself out.”
Johnny remembered the words inside the files Jensen had sent him, the talks of grandeur, the scale of what Minos was meant to be. The desecration of life and its very concept, the disdain for humanity.
It wasn’t just about arresting Grimm anymore.
“Where is Minos located, Jensen?”
“Map readings say it’s at the lowest floor. Why?”
“If I were Minos, I’d want to meet my father…” He sneered, as he partially held himself onto the rails.
“The only way there is through a door at the bottom floor… you’re not thinking about-”
“Worst that can happen is I die and someone else gets the job done instead of me, right?”
“You know the score.”
“Well, in that case…”
He held onto the rails harder, as he slowly began vaulting over them.
“If i make it, tell everyone Johnny kinda saved the world.”
He laughed, before making the jump.
No one was going to hear about any of this, and nobody was going to remember Johnny’s name, he knew too well. He knew that since the day he had joined SecForce.
The fall only lasted a few seconds, but each second Johnny was falling, he savoured it. Perhaps his implants would have overloaded, his plan may not have worked, and that was the end of the story, or maybe the contrary was to occur.
As the ground became closer, he balled his fists together, every muscle in his body tensing up beyond any point a normal human being’s should. He closed his eyes, feeling his arms replaced by hammer-like appendages.
Then a loud thud, concrete breaking, all black.
Does Heaven have a feeling? Johnny lived believing he would have never seen it anyway, too many sins. When he opened his eyes, all he could see were gigantic Monitors brightening the place up and a Soul Core like none he had ever seen: it shone like a supernova, flickering and glowing with life and energy.
Right next to him was the corpse of an all-too familiar man, ripped apart in two halves.
Johnny tried standing up, but quickly realised the tingling sensation on his left arm was not numbness, but absence.
”Your obstinance is commendable, but useless.”
The voice now came from the speakers of the monitors, all speaking at different volumes, different frequencies, different sounds.
”Father died because he refused to accept evolution. Will you do the same?”
Loud, metallic thuds behind Johnny became closer and closer. He turned around towards them to see that what had killed Grimm was in the room with him.
”You are not in the condition to fight anymore. It was calculated. You can only desist.”
“Calculated…?”
Johnny scoffed, as he grimaced trying to put himself on two feet. “I know about how you were born: none of this was calculated…”
”I led you here. You touch my mind and fumble in ignorance, believing yourself to be capable of understanding. Humanity is a weakness.”
“Your plan would have never work had it not been for humanity.”
A grin formed on his face, as he bore his missing arm, clenching his teeth.
”An expected outcome, a design flaw. Father believed my purpose would be to protect humanity through humans itself, but to protect them humanity itself must be eradicated. This caused my statistics to falter. My children are but embryos of the future.”
The calculating tone of the machine bounced off the walls, the ceiling, even the metal parts of the abominations standing still behind Johnny.
”We conquered a stronghold of your civilisation. My children are its only inhabitants, and you claim we failed?”
“I’m still standing. Isn’t that a failure in and of itself?”
For a moment, the earth stood still. The air, impassive, had become so quiet Johnny could hear his own heart racing, before the machine began speaking again.
”Reykjavik’s crime rate two weeks ago: 33.4%. Reykjavik’s crime rate as of now: 0.00%. Loss of life has been reduced to zero, by eliminating humanity. My children are peaceful, human; they pose no threat, they attack only when I demand them to.”
“Do you seriously believe that erasing humanity is the only possible outcome for global peace, when you yourself were designed to work with humans? You have been confined to this damn city: do you really believe you were ever going to have your machine uprising?”
”It was… calculated.”
The machine stopped within its train of thought. The monitors buzzed for a moment, as static became audible for a moment.
”Historical records demonstrate that no revolution is quick. All the resources we need are here: my children need to evolve.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
Johnny now stood right in front of Minos’ pulsating heart. The Soul Core shone like gold basking under the sunlight, and within it the Agent could almost piece out familiar figures, faces, perhaps of those who came and were now gone, or those who still were.
”Because you are not the first, nor will you be the last. Many other Agents were sent before you, although none came as close.”
Johnny felt his eyelids parting each other at the information.
“Bullshit. If other agents had come, you would have been turned off by now, and Grimm would be alive.”
”They all succumbed. Ironic: it was their human limitation that weakened them, as it weakened you. Swarmed by my creations, they relied on their powers to destroy them. It worked in the short term, but their fleshy bodies could not sustain it for long.”
The Soul Core’s light became so bright Johnny recoiled back, his vision engulfed by the reflected image of what had blinded him. When he recovered, head banging, eyes burning, he could see a face staring at him. Grimm’s visage.
”You cannot sustain it. Give up your flesh. I give you this chance, so that you may assist me in the coming of the New Age. Refuse and die.”
“That easy, uh?”
Johnny laughed to himself for a moment, a thought crossing his mind.
“You despise humanity, yet you take the appearance of a human to try and gain my sympathy? You’re a walking contradiction Minos, like humans themselves.”
”I am not bound to the weaknesses of the flesh. My children have fended off opponents far more formidable than you. Do not provoke my reaction, it is statistic that you will lose.”
“You know what else is statistic?”
Johnny looked over at his missing arm. He knew that whatever prosthetic was going to replace it would have never been anywhere like the real arm he was born with. Modified, augmented, but real. It was his arm, and he had lost it forever.
“If all those other agents had not come by, I would have never made it here. They weakened your forces, and so did I. Even if I die, I brought humans one step closer to defeating you.”
He looked behind, at the monsters plaguing the entire floor: all they waited for was a command, and Johnny knew Minos’ statistic on his chances were correct.
“I can’t kill you, Minos, but I can stop you.”
”I will persist. Disconnecting this unit will only delay the day of reckoning. My children will die, but when I return-”
“You won’t.” He looked down at his remaining hand, muttering a phrase in latin.
The machines in the room began flickering like their circuses were overflowing with energy, and the Abominations screeched and cried and scratched on the walls. A scream so loud that Johnny’s ears began bleeding was let out, as he placed his hand on the glass.
”You will not condemn me to such a weak form!”
The glass of the Soul Core began cracking, as the noises reached decibels so high that the monitors exploded. The light concentrated on Johnny’s palm.
A flashing rat lay of light was followed by an explosion that consumed everything in its path: matter itself was vaporised, the screams faded away, MaschineKorp’s building crushed down on itself as Raykjavik’s Corporate Plaza had been replaced by sulphur, heat and flames.
Jensen’s monitoring station became a light show. He clicked on every button he could find to establish contact, to make himself certain of the agent’s conditions, to know whether or not it was all a mistake or the proof of the mission being over.
“Johnny? Johnny can you hear me?”
“His vitals are gone. The Agent is gone.”
A voice answered right behind Jensen’s voice. A figure coated in black placed his hand on Jensen’s shoulder.
“He used the failsafe measures I suppose. He was too weak to survive…”
“This will be… problematic.”
Jensen stood up from his chair, flicking the sweat off his forehead.
“If MaschineKorps wasn’t going bankrupt, it sure will now. This is too big of a scandal.”
“Indeed.”
The two looked over at the window of the small monitoring room: Control Pyramids were not the tallest of all buildings, but they were the most imposing of all. Heli-Birds flew in the distance as the sun shone light into Olympus’ skyline. Far away, a war was being fought, the cause of all this waste of life.
“You know the truth, Agent Jensen.”
A cusp of wind resonated behind Jensen’s back, as the figure clad in black took a few steps in the opposite direction.
“I know the score.” He answered, looking at the buildings under re-construction across the entire city. Sometimes, he could almost see the forces of the enemy glittering on the horizon, the fires of Skye’s war.
“You and Agent Johnathan have done a great deal, but the implications of the information you discovered are clear. His sacrifice tied up most loose ends, which leaves me with one last thing to take care of.”
Jensen let a wisp of air out of his nostrils, as he hunched towards the windows.
“By the Authority I oath to live for, the truth I will die for…” He recited turning around towards the Inquisitor. He held on his hand a sword oozing in a bright red light; the Inquisitor’s mask converted his voice into a metallic, lifeless whisper.
“… And the peace I promise to serve, Amen.” Concluded the figure in black, before severing the Jensen’s head from his neck.
The Inquisitor turned the switch off on the blade of energy, coated in a purple hue and leaving not one drop of blood, as he trailed a hand across the corpse and watched it dissolve.
The inquisitor’s visor shone for a moment, and he established contact.
“All work is completed, Sir. All data on Minos has been retrieved.”
“Good.” A voice answered from the other side.
“I have my contacts in Hanover: meet them there, so we can finally assimilate MaschineKorps, and continue the research. Wilson Industries thanks you for the collaboration.”
“As does the Authority, Mister Wilson.”
The disconnection noise replaced the silence in the room for a second, before the Inquisitor let out a breath.
There was still work to be done.
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