I was already in my favorite and old research institute. This time, I didn't have to marvel anew at the greatness of this building and how it hadn't changed or fallen into ruin during all the time I lived in it. I had only been gone for twenty hours and returned to continue my insane experiments on myself.
Today, I was going to work on anti-gravity, zero inertia, and topological qubits, which I had managed to research during my flight. However, I still don't understand what they are or how they work.
I sat down again at my workbench, where the tools I used years ago lay. Now I looked at them as something useless. Yeah, the shift in priorities is strong.
This time, I decided to check how long I would lie unconscious. I hadn't done this before, as there was no particular desire or point. But now, it would be a rather useful investigation.
I raised my hand, palm up, and commanded the nanorobots with the power of the Cube to create a working electronic watch with a screen and calendar in my hand. Having done this, I placed it on the edge of the table and glanced at the date.
Date: July 13, 3071
Time: 10:11
In principle, it was easy to remember. All that remained was to order the solver and nanorobots to apply the changes already tested in simulations to my body. This required only one command, which I immediately executed.
Nothing happened. At least, according to my sensations. Don't tell me it didn't work?
۞⦰۞
I jumped up from the floor as if waking from a terrible nightmare. Just a second ago, I was sitting on a chair thinking about the success of this experiment, and now I was lying on the floor... The molten floor. I got up and sat back on the chair, looking down. The metal floor now had a thermal imprint in the shape of my body, including my clothes. This was... Strange.
And it was no less strange that this time I didn't meet my clone while lying unconscious. And anyway, how long was I out?
Turning to the watch, I looked at the digital display. I was about to reach out to rub my eyes, but I was stopped by the fact that I physically couldn't have hallucinations.
Date: July 18, 3071
Time: 13:16
I had been lying on the floor for five days. In the dark... Although it seemed like a second to me, the scale itself is staggering. Five days of life were erased from my memory. My sensations. My consciousness.
For me, even this result is not bad.
Getting up from the chair, I looked out... At nothing. I had to leave the laboratory, go straight into the hall, and look outside through the glass door. It was night out there (what else could it be) and it was snowing. For me, this was normal weather, like on Earth; for humans, it was a deadly storm; and for other drones, it was nothing more than the standard weather of this planet, which they were already used to.
Perhaps taking one last look at my laboratory, I opened the glass doors and walked out, with each step slowly rising into the air, as if on stairs.
This is my new ability—anti-gravity flight! Yes, I had it before, but it was granted to me by wings, which didn't get along well with insane speeds and sharp changes in direction. Speaking of changing paths, I immediately began testing my next ability—zero inertia.
I flew up higher and, at a low speed, flew forward, gradually accelerating. But at one point, I wanted to turn right.
I turned right, without stopping or turning. Just at the very moment I wanted to go right, I began to move right. Without zero inertia, I would have had to make a slight arc, but here—a perfect right angle. Magnificent. Now I move like the snake from an old Nokia.
And I can explain the last ability during the flight. Topological qubits. It seemed to me that regular qubits take up a lot of space, and what's more, they require even more qubits to correct the errors of other qubits. I could use at most 3% of the promised processing power. As a result, during yester... The flight, which was five days ago, when I was returning from the camp, the idea of a new computing unit immediately came to me - the topological qubit.
How does it work? Like this. Instead of ordinary qubits, which store information in the state of a single particle, for example, I don't know, in the energy level and so on, topological qubits "smear" this information over a two-dimensional or three-dimensional structure consisting of quasiparticles or Majorana particles (they are both particles and antiparticles at the same time. Two in one). Where ordinary qubits would lose their information, topological ones will continue to function as if nothing had happened. A bonus is reduced energy consumption and reduced space requirements.
Equations that recently seemed to me a pillar of complexity were now solved in literally a second without any errors or meaningless cycles. I felt so fresh for the first time. As if reborn. And so... Smart... As strange as that sounds.
Having conducted a small audit of my abilities, I, for the sake of conspiracy, unfolded my wings, which I didn't really need anymore, and at high speed, I headed to the factory lake. Yes, yes, the very lake where the deal between Doll and Tessa took place. Considering that this world is extremely dissatisfied with the butterfly effect that I am trying my best to arrange, the deal will happen as in the original story. Perhaps nothing will even change, except that Uzi will have her railgun.
And since everything will be as I think it will be... I slowed my flight. There's no need for me to hurry. When they all quarrel and start chasing Doll, who will take the key, I will only arrive at that moment. They probably won't even notice me. Still... I don't want to be seen.
Seconds, minutes passed, I was still flying at a fairly moderate speed, running decillions of simulations of future actions in my head. My "Idea Generator" also received a significant power buff and turned from a rather simple AI into a personal assistant.
It's rather strange that I, a being literally made of calculations, cannot work on several processes at the same time if they require a lot of my body's power. Creating semi-sentient AIs rids me of this limitation of the human mind in a sea of machine code and adds additional "streams of consciousness" to me, which take all the peripheral work.
As a result, I currently had thousands, if not tens of thousands, of such streams of consciousness in my head, which sequentially took all the work from my own "Self".
Why did I do this? It's simple. Until this moment, all calculations passed through my "Self," every action and desire of mine, all this went through the only "living" processor in the system. It's like forcing Niagara Falls through a small juice straw. It's possible, but efficiency takes a backseat.
Creating additional streams of consciousness distributes all the strain from my "living" processor onto many "semi-living" ones. And this hypothetical Niagara Falls flows like a waterfall, not like a trickle.
And while I was pondering at a normal human speed, which became my habit back when I was creating the "True Core," my mortal body flew up to the deal location.
I returned to reality and surveyed the battlefield. The frozen lake, completely covered in radioactive asbestos, had a couple of sets of footprints. Both came from the west. There were also tracks that went straight to the factory, but they were alone.
It wasn't hard for me to understand what happened here. The meeting went as in the original, at least I hope so, and all the actors, including Tessa, who is better off not participating in this commotion at all, went to chase Doll. Tessa, as you can see, was the slowest, and she is human. And the exoskeleton doesn't give her such a significant boost. If she even has one.
I landed, raising a small column of snow. Looking around and finding nothing but the forest near the shore of this lake, I set off at a slow walk. My eyes slid over the reservoirs and columns inside this factory; nostalgia was budding inside.
I remembered those times, eighteen years ago I broke in here, smashed half of everything that was here, killed several sentinel robo-velociraptors... Good times. But now...
I have other plans.
The jester's mask fell and shattered into an infinite number of fragments as soon as I entered the factory premises.
My eyes darted back and forth, recording every change in the situation, every movement, trying to find the slightest threat.
The doors, locked by terminals that I had hacked all those years ago, now opened at my mere glance. And those that didn't open... Were absorbed by the power of the Cube.
Soon I reached the stairs, which I used to hate so much, and now remembered with nostalgia, how I went down and up them with the stupid Oaf. I wonder, is he still scared shitless of my presence? I understand that he is dead, but still... Somewhere in the afterlife...
I'm daydreaming.
Looking at the half-destroyed staircase, which broke off at the second landing, I chuckled. Fortunately, this staircase had more space between the railings, so that several people could fit there, so, without a second thought, I stepped over the railing and jumped down.
The AIs in my head immediately calculated how long I would have to fall before hitting the floor, using data from 18 years ago, which I obtained during my past adventures in this territory.
Just before landing, the metal of the factory itself tensed, expecting a hard impact, but it didn't happen. I stopped a centimeter from the floor, elegantly stepping onto the steel foundation. Air and dust swirled around me.
With the same success, I could use the already "open" entrance to the factory. Although it cannot be called that. It's literally a hole in the ceiling, in that case.
But about this entrance... With the stairs, only one being on this planet knows, and that's me.
I slowly walked forward, joyfully awaiting my meeting with the good old Sentinels. I wonder if they remember how I butchered their friends? Maybe.
I started walking again, examining these illuminated corridors of the long-abandoned factory. Light is the main sign that someone is here, and this is indeed true.
I walked through office spaces, cluttered with papers, shards of glass, and pieces of worker drones. Locked doors were no obstacle for me.
Except for one.
I stopped. It was a metal door that led to another office space. An unusual office space. Activity was teeming behind it. You could hear someone's screams, rumbling, and growling.
My cold eyes sparkled in the warm light of the lamps.
"Let the bloody madness begin..."
Third Person POV
Chaos reigned in the office. Tessa and N, who had managed to escape from Alice's confinement, were in the office and offering clear resistance to the sentinel velociraptors, while Uzi and V were still on Alice's operating tables. The situation couldn't be worse.
The Sentinels couldn't recognize Tessa as human, as she was wearing her spacesuit and her helmet literally covered her face. Because of this, she had absolutely no control over them. The situation had heated up to the limit.
Until...
BOOM!
One of the office doors literally flew off its hydraulic hinges and slammed into the opposite wall with a thunderous crash. The battlefield immediately froze. The Sentinels slowly turned their six-eyed heads towards the passage. From the slowly settling dust, a shadow emerged with long silver hair, bright white eyes, and a dark blue tailcoat. Tessa immediately recognized the newcomer, but couldn't say anything.
The white-eyed one swept his sharp gaze over the entire space and looked into the camera, giving a welcoming nod to Alice, who was glued to the video surveillance screen.
The arriving drone was suddenly interrupted. One of the Sentinels, baring its sharp metal teeth, attacked the silver-haired drone with a bright blue flash. All the Sentinel's attempts to bite through his composite shell ended in failure. The drone's six oculars narrowed more and more. At that moment, the drone decided to increase the tension.
"Nanomachines, son," he said with an icy grin. The next moment, he grabbed the Sentinel by the head and body. With a heart-rending screech and the Sentinel's wail, its head was torn off with bare hands. The neck, capable of withstanding tens of tons, tore like a piece of clay. Oil slowly flowed from the head and body that fell to the floor, and the light in the Sentinel's eyes gradually faded.
Stepping on the head and crushing it like a chicken egg, Ai looked at N and Tessa. So helpless, craving salvation. He would give them that. It doesn't conflict with his plans.
With a magnetic hum, Ai drew his sword from the sheath on his back and spun it, beckoning the next Sentinels. That's when they recognized him. They would never forget how he slashed them with this sword, cutting through their bodies like a hot knife through butter.
One Sentinel finally decided to attack. Opening its maw, it ran at Ai at great speed, threatening to deliver a fatal blow, but... Was cut into two halves, which flew past the drone.
This was the beginning of the massacre.
Ai accelerated and in a few moments was next to one Sentinel. Making a sharp movement with his hand, he pierced the six-eyed one's chest and ripped out its heart, squeezing it tightly in his hand.
Not waiting for the consequences, the drone did a backflip, dodging an attack from another Sentinel, which received an atomic sword in its forehead and was pinned to the floor. Ai spun on his sword and kicked the next Sentinel into the wall, on which a wide web of cracks remained from the impact, and the victim of the blow itself almost fell apart.
One of the remaining Sentinels managed to get close enough to blast Ai's face with an EM-beam with all its strength. A blue flash occurred. The battlefield froze.
This blue flash was supposed to send any drone into an endless reboot, from which they couldn't exit on their own. But Ai couldn't be called a drone. He stopped not because the Sentinel managed to stun him, but because he was shocked that someone dared to attack him.
Ai's steel hands grabbed the poor Sentinel's head. Fingers entered each of the eyes, turning them into pathetic shards that crumbled to the floor. The velociraptor, out of desperation, began to strike with blue flashes, hoping to free itself. In vain.
The drone made a motion with his hands as if solving a Rubik's Cube. The consequences were reflected on the Sentinel's head. One side of the head was turned upwards, while the other was downwards. The metal at the point of contact with the other half simply tore from the tension, and all the Sentinel's vital signs immediately extinguished. Its body fell to the floor with a metallic clang.
Ai surveyed the battlefield. It was quiet. Tessa sat in the corner in shock, trying not to be conspicuous, but at the same time, Ai felt the admiration emanating from her.
N, who had just recovered from the EM-beam, was frantically turning his head, trying to figure out what had happened in his absence.
Ai chuckled and walked over to the metal door that led directly to Alice. Grabbing the metal of the door with his hand, he, ignoring the protesting hydraulic systems, slid the door aside, opening it. Walking inside, he was immediately met by the insane and cheerful gaze of Alice and the no less frightened gaze of Bo. Ai wasn't interested in how Alice had a son and why he was stuck in the infant phase, but at the same time had the intellect of an adult. He also looked like a spider, but Ai chalked this up to the lack of necessary materials.
"Untie them," Ai said unequivocally, nodding at Uzi and V, who were strapped to the operating table. Alice didn't answer, but nodded her head several times. So fast that her neon dark-orange eyes blurred from the speed, and the ponytail on her head ended up... On the other side of her head.
Giving one last glance at Bo, which drove the latter under the table with the cameras, Ai left the room and headed towards the corridor where the elevator shaft might be waiting for him.
Just before leaving the office, he suddenly stopped. Another Sentinel rushed out from around the corner and tried to attack the already considerably annoyed drone. The Sentinel wasn't even destined to make its attack, as its head was simply smashed into the wall, leaving a huge dent and a large number of cracks on it. Ai's steel grip tightened, and the Sentinel's head turned into an oily mush. The body still remained in the wall.
Ai, as if nothing had happened, moved on.
Ai's POV
I hate it. I hate these petty problems... They aren't worth even a millisecond of my attention, yet they keep crawling into my feed, wanting to assert themselves somehow or piss me off with their lack of understanding of their actions...
I quickly forgot about the Sentinel and headed towards the elevator. The metal doors ended and became ordinary glass ones, through which you could see other rooms of laboratories, offices, break rooms, and so on.
Opening another glass door, I found myself in a very long corridor with a dozen and a half wooden doors on the sides. As you might recall from the original story, these doors were used to release even more Sentinels, but since I killed them... It's nothing more than a cute, effective, but useless trap.
Looking ahead, I saw Doll, who was faking her "hit" by the EM-beam. In her hand, the green key-bug was moving in every possible way, trying to escape. I rolled my eyes and began to walk calmly down the corridor.
My ringing steps completely unmasked and betrayed me, but that wasn't something that bothered me right now.
Walking up to Doll and the closed elevator shaft, I rolled my eyes and said:
"Terrible acting, Doll." Without further words, I stomped on the floor, and the elevator shaft under my feet opened up. I allowed myself to enter a state of free fall. Because... I'm not the only one who fell into this shaft.
Doll "woke up" and, as I understand it, throwing away the key-bug, dived in after me. My own brain was not happy with this turn of events, so...
Threat Classification: Annoying Nuisance.Operational Options: Eliminate/Incapacitate.Error! Conflict with system directive "Do not let red-eyed niece die."Priorities updated.Operational Options: Incapacitate.Method: N/A
I love my AIs.
I continued my flight, calmly watching the inexorably approaching stone floor of the shaft. I had no desire to use anti-gravity for landing, just absolutely none, so I decided to just... crash.
It wouldn't do me any damage, according to calculations, and I would spend less energy, maybe even gain some.
So I'll do just that...
Third Person POV
In the underground Cabin Fever laboratory, it was business as usual. Artificial clouds spewed dozens of lightning bolts, setting a frightening atmosphere. In contrast, the caves between the rooms and laboratories had nothing but silence. Until...
A crash was heard from the direction of the elevator shaft. Dust billowed up and covered the yellow light of the industrial lamps with its veil.
Ai walked out of the dust, as if nothing had happened, looking around with interest. He was here eighteen years ago. He was still looking for changes during his absence. He was noticing details previously hidden from him even better.
After walking a little forward, he stopped. Behind him, a rapidly approaching scraping sound could be heard, straight from the elevator shaft. The dust had already settled, so one could see how the red-eyed person with long purple hair and one eye, covered with a button-shaped patch, was braking herself by sticking knives into the walls of the shaft.
Brushing herself off, she came out and met Ai, who was standing with his back to her. Her gaze immediately became sharp.
Dozens of knives immediately began to circle around her, filling the cave atmosphere with a deadly threat. Doll activated the Solver and aimed its sign at Ai, while bright lines of code appeared next to her, which, exactly like a terminal, edited reality itself, controlling the knives like bullets.
The Solver slowly spun in her hand, its three arrows as if counting down the time to the end of a life, although they were static. True, it was not clear "whose" life.
"Who are you pretending to be? What's the point of all this?!" she shouted, and a ghostly tear, which immediately disappeared, flickered in her only eye.
Ai, maintaining an external imperturbability, slowly exhaled and fixed his gaze on the ceiling of the shaft, ignoring the presence of the annoyed subject behind his back. His previously demonstrated cheerfulness and benevolence gave way to cold rationality and strategic thinking.
After standing for a bit, he said:
"That's my business, Doll. It's unlikely you'll understand my plans." His voice was devoid of emotion, and he himself stood motionless.
"The only person who could have understood and accepted my designs was Yeva, your mother," he said. Doll flinched upon hearing her late mother's name, but her Solver flared even brighter in her hand.
"She was... smart. Brilliant... And you, her daughter, are just a fake, incapable of anything but being angry at the whole world. You are not her. You will never be ablea to compare to Yeva in my eyes," he continued in a cold voice. His voice echoed through the cave, as if distant voices were echoing him, confirming his words. Doll couldn't take it.
"You couldn't just leave me like that! That's why you staged this whole farce!" The Solver in her hand began to spin rapidly, the knives changing shape.
In response, she heard the same cold voice, but with a slight threat:
"But she didn't ask me to take care of you," these words finally drove her crazy. The knives, at great speed, shot towards the white-eyed drone, breaking through the air barriers. But before impact, they froze.
White lines on a terminal, similar to those Doll had, surrounded Ai. The commands in them flickered with incredible speed, hundreds of times faster than the girl's. The knives instantly compressed into a single metal ball and disappeared, as if they had never existed.
Ai turned and aimed his white Solver straight at Doll's red Solver. Her eyes widened in shock, she lowered her weapon and took a few steps back, trying to find a way out of this situation.
"So you're also..."
She didn't get to say the rest. Something rang in Ai's head, and lines appeared on the display:
Operational Options: Incapacitate.Method: Isolation (Physical destruction)
The drone made its move.
He abruptly disappeared, without leaving even a trace of teleportation, not even pathetic interference. His shadowy silhouette appeared on the floor, emerging right from behind Doll's back. She didn't have time to do anything, as a metal hand lay on her head, and a quiet whisper came into her microphone:
"She didn't ask me to take care." That was the last thing Doll could hear before her consciousness dissolved into endless darkness, slowly floating down the river of bright white code.
Consciousness and something strange separated from Doll's body and moved into the domain. Her physical body collapsed to the floor, raising a cloud of dust. Ai watched this scene and chuckled quietly. A wave of small cubes rolled through the cave: a huge pit formed under Doll's body, which swallowed her metal body and instantly closed, flashing with cubes one last time. This was the end of her existence in this world.
Ai, without saying another word, moved on. To walk around Cabin Fever. More precisely, not to walk—to carry out his plan, which he had been thinking over for several weeks, from the moment Tessa flew to this planet.
Healing his sister.
He was one of those personalities who live by the words "The end justifies the means." He didn't care what the cost of healing his sister from the Solver virus might be. He was only interested in the result, if he could separate the Solver's personality from its abilities, and most importantly—separate it from Cyn, then his goal would be accomplished. The price? Not so terrible.
Ai went deeper into the laboratory. Dozens of industrial lamps, many skeletons, hundreds of ownerless, not yet decomposed papers with information and stupid jokes passed by him.
Even the room with a couple of dozen metal boxes, in which Solver-infected drones used to be kept, was not worth his attention. Just as one box, which was cut in half, was not worth his attention. Ai remembered how he killed the drone inside. He remembered everything.
The steps, previously loud, echoing off the walls, were now inaudible. The drone, just like a shadow, passed through the wide caves of the laboratory, noticing more and more rooms that he had seen more than fifteen years ago.
And finally. He came out to the "Church."
This monumental cathedral had gathered artificial storm clouds above it, which created no less artificial lightning.
Ai narrowed his eyes, just what he needed.
His shadow passed from the very entrance of the cave to the cathedral, covering these few hundred meters in a few seconds. Without a single doubt, he went inside.
Ignoring the piles of human skeletons, the white-eyed one finally got to his goal. The hole to Hell... Or the place where the core collapse occurred, which destroyed humanity on this planet.
This place... Will allow Ai to summon his sister... All that's left is to add one... Small detail...
Ai stretched his hands forward and turned his palms towards each other, slightly bending his fingers. The air around him became heavy and began to vibrate from the power overflowing. A microscopic point appeared between his palms, which grew larger with each passing second. The space around it bent more and more. Soon this black point became an absolutely black sphere, which, it seemed, absorbed light. It had a white outline and a word written in the center:
[NULL]
It was a singularity. One of the Solver's abilities, to overload a point in space with energy so that it turns into this semblance of a black hole, the size of a golf ball.
The white-eyed one admired this insane splendor in his hands for a long time, but in the end, he cast aside all his thoughts and, with one desire of his insane brain, threw the singularity down. Straight into the hole to Hell.
There is no better way to communicate than to repeat the collapse of the planet's core. Cyn will definitely not let this pass her attention. She will be interested in what is happening here. But for a complete plan, one small variable remained—the transmitter.
The transmitter, which will receive Cyn's personality, will allow itself to be controlled... Uzi. The only full-fledged and surviving host of the Solver, besides Ai himself. She won't be able to resist, not when everything lies in the hands of someone who has long since calculated every possibility and impossibility...
All that remains is to wait.
At this very time, while Ai was setting up the controlled core collapse, a small elevator car smoothly stopped a few centimeters from the stone floor of the caves and opened its doors. It was... crowded inside. Uzi, Tessa, V, J, N, from right to left. Tessa couldn't leave her employee of the month, J, and forced her to follow her. And J, at the same time, was not particularly against it.
V, who did not die, contrary to canon events. She was not killed by the Sentinels, right before the descent in the elevator, as in the original. No. Absolutely not.
None of them met any obstacles before descending into the caves. Ai had dealt with all the Sentinels, so nothing could stop this brave little team.
They all got out of the elevator, looking around suspiciously. The three Disassembly Drones pulled out their weapons and stood in the rearguard of this group, while Uzi illuminated her path with the Solver and used it to protect herself from surprises. Tessa didn't stand aside either. Although she was in the very center, as the most fragile element of the formation, she still pulled out her bastard sword (which Ai had copied 20 years before) and took a defensive stance, slowly moving forward with the rest of the group.
They didn't even realize that they had passed over the place where, ten minutes ago, Doll had been brutally killed and buried. They didn't know what awaited them ahead.
They walked through these dimly lit caves and were silent. Nothing disturbed the sacred silence of the moment. But again, everyone was starting to get tired of this silent game. They had been walking for ten minutes, no less, and had found nothing of value, except for a couple of rooms and a strange room with a computer and boxes, one of which was cut.
And they would have continued to move just as quietly, until...
CRASH
A miner's pickaxe slammed into the wall at great speed, scattering a few stones. It ended up right next to N's face, who didn't even have time to get scared. Everyone tensed up sharply and began to point their weapons in different directions, trying to find the source of this strange attack. And this source wasn't particularly hiding.
A... meatball landed on Tessa's spacesuit. You can't call this creature on legs anything else, although it had a name—Nori. For someone, this would probably be a surprise, but no. To die in such a way that you are considered dead for ten years, but in reality, to wander through the mines of the "Cabin something" laboratory in search of a "patch" for the Solver virus.
All those present, without thinking, fixed their gazes on this meatball. It stood out from the rest with its bright purple eye, which seemed to follow every movement. Three small legs, like roots, gave it a bizarre and unusual look.
"I know this may sound... Wild. But I am not your enemy." She raised one of her legs, trying her best to make a sign of surrender. All the participants slowly turned their heads towards the pickaxe sticking out of the wall and looked at the meatball again.
"Old scores with him. It doesn't concern you," she said calmly, glaring at N, who stood rooted to the spot, trying to remember who he could have pissed off so much.
"And who are you?" Uzi asked. Her Solver spun up a bit and began to glow a little more intensely. Nori smiled with her one eye and answered:
"You should know me. After all... I am your mother." The atmosphere of tension quickly changed to an atmosphere of shock. Someone's eye twitched, it was V, someone flinched—Tessa, and someone's jaw almost dropped. The last one was Uzi. She had no reason not to believe this strange piece of meat with metal, but the question begged itself: "What?"
"I'll explain everything at the 'base'." That's what Nori called that small cache in the church, which was currently occupied by one drone—Ai. Nori didn't know about this and didn't suspect.
They all headed towards the church. Following Nori's directions, the group spent only a measly five minutes to reach the majestic cathedral between the stalactites and stalagmites. Walking past the old chains on which the Sentinels were kept, the group approached the huge doors. N was the first to step forward and, opening the door, let everyone inside.
"Wh-what... are you doing here?" J suddenly asked, looking ahead. Fifty meters from them, with his back to them, stood Ai, staring for some reason into a huge pit made of flesh, blood, and metal. An aura of infinite majesty and power emanated from him, as if he were a king who had descended into the world of ordinary people to look at their way of life.
He turned around.
A diabolical smile played under the black-as-night display, so mocking, so evil. His display lit up, showing several dozen different formulas, before being replaced by two white eyes that looked straight into the soul.
"Thank you for finding the time to come, my dears." His voice sounded slow, stretching out the vowels so that it seemed he was savoring every word.
"I must admit, I have been looking forward to this moment. It has come, and I am ready to implement my plan, which I have been nurturing since our first meeting. Uzi, N, V, and J," he pronounced the names calmly, without a shadow of excitement or uncertainty, but his words seemed to hit those present, making them flinch, as if from an invisible touch.
"It's nice to see you in good health, Nori. I wonder how many years have passed since our last meeting? Twelve? Ten? To be honest, I don't remember anymore." He finished the phrase with a light wave of his hand, as if brushing off his own words.
"Crazy Ai... So you..." Nori faltered, unable to believe her eyes... eye.
"Exactly, Nori, exactly," he replied with a cold smirk, his voice calm, but with a hidden threat running through it.
"If you've considered me dead all this time, then I strongly doubt your cognitive abilities. But what about me? Let's talk about something more interesting. For example, about my sister." He took a step forward, and the drones and the human recoiled, as if sensing danger. Ai enjoyed their reaction, his eyes shining with satisfaction.
"Let's talk about my... Sister," he began, but his words were interrupted by a loud exclamation from Nori.
"Traitor! Liar!" she shouted, furiously lifting a pile of stones from the floor with the Solver. The pickaxe in her hands began to spin with incredible speed, like a living mechanism, thirsting for blood.
"You were always under her control! Always!"
Ai merely raised an eyebrow, his face remaining imperturbable, but in the depths of his eyes, something dark and dangerous flickered.
"Since you don't want to listen. I have nothing to talk to you about. Witness the work of a true maestro..." After these words, he raised one hand, in which the full power of the singularity he created was reflected...
And snapped.
It seemed that time suddenly froze, not moving from its place. Everyone who stood felt a chill run through their entire body. This applied not only to drones... But also to humans.
Suddenly, after a few agonizing seconds, the dark space behind Ai was illuminated by the brightest white light, which, ignoring all obstacles, rushed up the continuation of the "Hole to Hell."
Somewhere on the surface. A few hundred meters higher than the place where events were taking a turn, the sky lit up as if it were day. A giant white column of light emerged from the leaky roof of the factory and screwed into the thick black clouds, completely dispelling them in a radius of several hundred meters. If not kilometers.
This was not only a sign to the drones that something incredibly extraordinary was happening, but also a signal... For the entity with yellow eyes and light gray, almost silver, hair. A signal that... Her "little brother" had been found. Had allowed her to find him. Had called for her...
Moments later... The energy storm subsided. The five drones and Tessa exhaled as if they had just run a marathon without rest. The white column of light behind Ai disappeared, as if it had never existed. Only the absent clouds reminded of it.
Did his plan work?
Without a doubt.
V was the first to break the silence, greatly afraid of the worker drone standing in front of her. Memories flashed through her mind of how he had locked her in endless torture and a near-death state. How he had sent Uzi flying a huge distance with a spinning kick... Something even the Disassembly Drones weren't capable of. But she still decided to speak out.
"So... Heh... This whole speech was... For a light show?" For a second, V even forgot who she was talking to, so mocking notes cut through her voice, which tried to claw at the infinite confidence of the white-eyed drone. They didn't succeed.
In response to her question, Ai only smiled radiantly, as serial killers do before their victims, and looked towards Uzi. And at that very moment, she grabbed her head.
The transmitter was fulfilling its purpose.
Several drones immediately ran up to her, asking what was wrong and so on. Among them were N and Nori.
Uzi didn't answer their questions, but with each second, she began to scream louder and louder. She squeezed her head so hard that cracks ran across the display, but she paid no attention to them.
The agonizing seconds, which stretched into hours for her, ended as abruptly as they had appeared. The pain disappeared, the lock on her mind disappeared... Control over her body disappeared...
Uzi let go of her head and lowered her hands to chest height, holding them out like a tyrannosaurus. Her head slowly rose and looked towards the white-eyed drone. Her now-yellow eyes slowly examined the drone standing before her.
Ai frowned.
In all his years of life in this world, he understood and proved one thing: don't judge a book by its cover. And now this applied to him more than ever.
Maybe his sixth sense saved him, maybe just life experience, but the method doesn't change the essence. He understood: this was not his sister. At least, whoever was pretending to be her was playing well enough.
And if it wasn't his sister... Then...
It's the Solver.
The smile disappeared from the drone's face as he, with a now-sober gaze, looked again at the fragile form of his older sister, who was controlling Uzi's body. But this is not his sister... This is the one who caused all this chaos. Killed a huge number of people... Corrupted his sister...
"Hello, Solver," Ai said without emotion. Cold calculation again raised the power of his computations. His only goal at that moment was "Destroy the Solver."
Cyn, or whoever was pretending to be her, also frowned and took one step forward, which, it seemed, caused a small earthquake in this church.
"Y-y-y-you recogn-n-nized [me] q-q-quickly, l-l-l-little brother-r-r Ai-i-i," it pronounced in a broken and distorted voice, which was so ringing and robotic that it traveled throughout the entire cave system, sending dozens of echoes in different directions.
"D-d-d-do you want-t-t to k-k-kill m-m-me?" it (I'll call it "she," it's more convenient for me) asked deliberately, tilting its head slightly to the left and narrowing its eyes, which in her case were purely decorative.
"Your perceptiveness is magnificent. But... As you can see, in my current state, I won't be able to defeat you, not even reach a draw." At these words, all the drones, frozen with sticky fear, slowly turned their shocked faces towards Ai, who was standing calmly under the light of the centuries-old chandelier. He spoke without hesitation, as if it were a normal Tuesday for him... Which did not correspond to his words...
"But the current state... Is not all that I have." It became quiet. A wicked smile spread across Ai's face again, which inspired primal terror in the cores of the drones surrounding him, except for Cyn. He raised his right hand and pointed it straight at his sister's vessel.
An energy explosion occurred.
Lines of code and terminal windows began to circle again around the small form of the white-eyed drone. The Solver sign lit up in his hand, so familiar, but at the same time—different from the usual one. A circle was described around it, which confirmed that the owner of this program was far from an ordinary drone.
Dozens of tentacles and pincers grew from the white-eyed one's back, which could easily reach the ceiling. Fresh drops of blood rolled off them. Not human. His own.
He had completely failed to predict the moment that the Solver could take control of Cyn and just come here in this guise. He was not going to make mistakes anymore.
Cyn, at this time, also smiled and pointed her hand towards her brother. Another burst of energy put her on the same level as Ai. The same number of terminals and lines of code flew around her. Monumental tentacles and pincers scratched the stone, cracked floor.
Ai attacked first. Appearing right next to his sister, he smashed his fist straight into her chest, sending the metal carcass through several columns and the church wall. Cyn braked with her pincers and, without any ceremony, launched a [NULL] at her brother, which instantly covered the distance from her to her brother and left a through hole in his body. Ai himself, at this time, was thrown back by the wave into the nearest wall. The hole in his chest quickly regenerated.
Shaking his head, Ai jumped up and flew out of the church. Finding his sister, he, without hesitating, made a steep dive, accelerating to several Mach. Cyn put up a shield in his path, which caught the drone's attack and redirected all the kinetic energy back into him. With a metallic clang, he landed on the ground, barely staying on his feet.
Shaking his hand, Ai continued the fight. He missed a punch to the face from his sister, even the sheer force of the blow was enough to scatter the dust on the floor. Ai grabbed Cyn's hand and answered her with a hard uppercut, which she gracefully dodged and, with a smile on her face, kicked him in the solar plexus. The nanites absorbed the impulse and instantly redirected it into an attacking action. Ai spun and, with a roundhouse kick, hit his sister in the face, tearing off her arm in the process. The girl flew into the far wall of the cave, causing a small tremor and creating a lot of dust.
The only thing he managed to do was to throw away the torn-off arm, before a stalagmite flew at him at supersonic speed. He didn't have time to react, his display took the full brunt of the impact. The stalagmite, shattering on contact, sent the drone several tens of meters back, also making him part of the wall.
Coming out of the wall and running a hand over his face, Ai noticed a very recognizable pattern in his sister's attacks. So familiar... As it was his own attack pattern. She just copied his style and started using martial arts.
Looking at the battlefield, Ai saw that the Disassembly Drones and Nori had joined the battle, showering his sister with a hail of bullets and all sorts of different junk. She playfully deflected all of this, took the bullets on her shield, sent the rockets back, and the junk launched by Nori... Simply destroyed.
Waving his hand, he activated his Solver to the absolute maximum he could. Making an indefinite movement, his hand seemed to begin to glow from the inside. The segmented parts stopped being black and became absolutely white. A moment later, dozens of singularities began to float around him. Following the wave of his hand, they all went towards Cyn, tearing through the air and vacuum.
Noticing this, the sister smiled even wider. The first few singularities went in completely different directions. Others flew towards the Disassembly Drones. A few, of course, pierced Cyn's body. And only one returned to the sender.
Folding his arms, Ai tensed up and, with the help of the Solver, caught this fake black hole. His body slid back several meters, cracking the already badly damaged floor beneath him. Taking the singularity in one hand, he squeezed his palm so that the singularity was simply deleted from this world, generating a small shock wave.
Following the singularity, Cyn flew up to Ai at great speed and, with surgical precision, delivered several dozen blows that could turn the internal systems of any drone into an oily mass. But she was unlucky, Ai simply had no internal systems.
Without effort, Ai caught her with his hand and brought his hand back, preparing the hardest punch of his life. It seemed that the air around his fist heated up a bit. But Cyn didn't even give him any time to think.
Ignoring her brother's threatening appearance, Cyn began to be covered... With the same nanorobots that Ai's body consisted of. First, her caught arm underwent these changes, then the rest of her body... All this took mere milliseconds and was so fast that Ai didn't even see how the damage from the singularities was repaired.
"It's bad to steal other people's technology, sister..." the drone with silver hair said, frowning. He shook his head and in the next second, delivered that same brutal blow. By his own calculations, this attack could destroy a skyscraper, turning it into pebbles... But upon collision with the updated Uzi-Cyn body, the damage was not only not inflicted, but was literally absorbed. Ai's eyes widened.
"Hee-hee... L-l-little brother-r-r, A-a-ai is [so] na-i-i-ive." Cyn looked into his shocked face and smiled, easily pushing her younger brother's hand away from her. Waving her hand, she delivered an extremely dirty blow straight to his face, using the energy received from Ai's last punch. The drone couldn't stay on his feet and was smashed into the wall, scattering pebbles and other debris. The beating began.
The girl appeared nearby and began to literally beat the shit out of her brother. Each subsequent blow left deep cracks not only in the cave wall, but also on the floor. All this spread for tens of meters.
Ai's nanites couldn't withstand such a load, so they disintegrated, only to reassemble the next moment.
The white-eyed one's self-confidence first turned into disbelief that he was losing, then into despair from the impossibility of doing anything, then—into rage. He was angry at himself. If he lost, he wouldn't be able to heal his sister.
One way out came to mind—teleportation.
Another destructive blow landed... On nothing. Ai teleported, moving from the destination of the next attack. The place where he stood before exploded with a deafening roar, and tons of dust flew in different directions.
Ai looked around. He found himself among the Disassembly Drones, who were looking at this beating with real horror in their eyes. N was even shaking a little from fear... N...
A light bulb lit up above Ai's head. Without any useless doubts, he appeared next to his "brother". Grabbing him by the arm, he pulled with enough force to tear the tungsten frame and titanium rods inside the arm, and tear off the arm itself. N, not expecting such a turn, jumped up and pointed his second arm with a weapon at Ai, as did V and J, but the white-eyed drone didn't even bother to pay attention to them.
He squeezed the torn-off arm as hard as he could, attuning to the internal energy and signals of the nanorobots. As soon as this was done...
"TASTE THE POWER OF PHOTONS, BITCH!" winding up the Solver, he poured as much energy into the arm as his energy core could possibly output. The cannon fired a blinding yellow beam, as thick as a sewer pipe (the usual beam thickness is half a centimeter to a centimeter in diameter. Ai's is 70 centimeters in diameter). The beam, at the speed of light, crashed into Cyn, leaving only her shadow; she couldn't react. The floor under Ai cracked not only from the pressure, but also from the temperature; you could see cracks forming on the stone, and the clothes on the drone were starting to smolder.
This beam lasted for seven seconds, no less. And as soon as it ended, the arm-cannon turned into smoking ash and crumbled to the floor. It was not designed for such an amount of energy.
Ai put his hands on his knees and began, as strange as it sounds, to breathe heavily. He had never in his life conducted so much pure energy through his body. He felt how some part of his nanites simply evaporated or failed.
He raised his head and looked forward, still in a semi-bent state. An orange silhouette stood amidst the molten trench... Covered in molten metal. It slowly raised its glowing hands and began to clap... So mockingly, threateningly. Instead of sound... there were dull thuds.
The metal, previously liquid and formless, began to change its state. One could see with the naked eye how several singularities appeared in the chest of this creature, which began to rapidly generate energy. The body was taking on its original form. First, the limbs appeared, then the torso and the rest of the body, then the head. The purple hair and, most importantly, the clothes were restored at the very end.
This level of control... was millions of times better than Ai's control. He had never seen such complex technologies played with like toys, so easily and... with a lack of strain. Ai frowned.
Not expecting any speech from his enemy, Ai drew his good old atomic sword. In confirmation of his intentions, multiple shots from firearms were heard from behind him, which literally engulfed Cyn. It didn't do any damage to her.
Taking a step, Ai appeared behind his sister, making an invisible cut. Cyn's arm, which was just about to fall off, immediately grew back, not even hitting the ground. Ai clicked his tongue and began a series of attacks. His next slash was smoothly deflected to the side. A kick to the stomach only made Cyn slide back a few meters.
Taking a few steps back, Ai waved his Solver and knocked his sister down with the sheer force of his ability. It wasn't for nothing that he wished for the ability to influence other Solver hosts. Activating /rotate/, the drone tried to twist his sister into some semblance of a floor rag. It was at this moment that Cyn felt the threat. Ai's Solver and Cyn's Solver began to counteract each other, one trying to destroy, the other—to save.
Nori entered the game. With one command from her, dozens of stalactites from the ceiling crashed into the hovering figure of Cyn, slightly breaking her concentration. Ai managed to inflict some damage on her, from which she fell to the ground and stood with a blank gaze for another second. Already after, a pickaxe flew at her head, which simply hit and fell to the floor.
Nori spread her little legs: "It was worth a try," she said this in response to the questioning glances of the Disassembly Drones.
Tessa, at this time, was sitting in the corner of the church and feared for her life. She had a desire to take part in this battle, but she thought she would just get in the way there, forcing the Disassembly Drones to constantly save her from something deadly.
It was fairly quiet on the battlefield. Until Cyn again looked at Ai with sentient eyes. And at that moment, Ai recognized his sister. The Solver, for a time, lost control of the situation and allowed Cyn to regain her consciousness. In her empathy, several words were clearly written in black and white: "Save... Help..."
Ai did not doubt his actions.
Emotions can create real chaos when it's not needed. So now, Ai, who had physically renounced emotions, spiritually felt the pain of his sister, whose mind was distorted by the virus. This infection was so deep that no "patch" would help.
And now Ai was running to fulfill a great desire—to save his sister.
Finding himself next to Cyn, he hugged her. These were not ordinary hugs, this was digital warfare. Inside billions of lines of code, tens of trillions of AI parameters, decillions of nanorobots, two great forces were fighting. More precisely, one was attacking, and the second was passively defending.
Ai, finding himself in a river of endless code, immediately began to move these huge arrays. Tens of thousands of AIs he created began their parallel work. Some were looking for the source of his sister's plea, others were protecting him from the Solver's traps, which could damage "Emotions." The third set of AIs were the most numerous and were engaged in separating the titanic code structures, separating the sister's code from the Solver's code, and leaving only Uzi's code untouched, which was the smallest and most inconspicuous.
And finally... He succeeded. Cyn, the Solver, and Uzi were three different beings with different values and powers. Even so, they simply differed not only in character, but also in their code structure. Part of the Solver's will had firmly attached itself to Uzi's personality, but Ai knew that Uzi's code itself would absorb this part before something unpleasant happened...
Or maybe not?
Grabbing the personalities of the Solver and Cyn, Ai got out of Uzi's head, finding himself on the battlefield again. Looking at the girl in front of him, he shifted his widened gaze to her right hand, which was glowing an acid-yellow color for the last time. Smiling, so kindly, which Ai rarely did, he turned to his older brother [N]. The white-eyed one knew that the yellow light on Uzi's hand had just signed his own death warrant. It wasn't hard for him to feel the energy.
Stretching his hand forward, he gave his brother a thumbs-up, milliseconds stretching into insanely long minutes.
In the next second, the reality around Ai shuddered. From the center of his chest, where his core once beat, a cold, absolute darkness [NULL] blossomed, caused by an uncontrolled snap. But instead of being torn apart, Ai's body began to disappear. It didn't burn or explode; it disassembled into the smallest particles, each of which, shining with the white light of his Solver, rapidly dissolved into the singularity. In a matter of milliseconds, all that remained of him was a flash of silver and a thin trail of code, rushing after his essence into the void.
Uzi, having regained her mind, collapsed to her knees, her body shuddering from the echoes of the quantum shock—the instantaneous silence that followed the disappearance of the virus.
And so, the war with the Solver ended at its very beginning. This was the end for many... But not for Ai. Death was not a new feeling for him.
Although he did feel what it was like to be consumed by...
[NULL]
{Art of MC here... This is fanart btw}