Lia the Venator

I sent a message to Aki but got no response. Knowing him, he planned to fly to the Rat King in a grand quest, and he’d claim I couldn’t come along because it was something he needed to do alone. But with my new Venator licence, I had a multitude of resources that led me to him. More specifically, an airfield north of Neo-III Tokyo. Using the ultra-highway and a rented motorcycle, I reached the airfield within hours.

I found Aki and, to my surprise, Serizawa in a hangar’s office trying to rent an aircraft. They had the funds to rent a cheaper plane, but it wouldn’t get them to the Galapagos Islands. They wanted the Vandagriff Z-22 (gen.14) military jet. The attendant argued with them about needing the whole payment, and they tried to convince him to use a deposit, citing how they’d be gone for under twelve hours.

‘What will you do if there isn’t a suitable runway?’ I asked, coming up behind them. They jumped. ‘Besides, the Z-22 only has two seats.’

‘Mako is coming with me,’ Aki said.

‘Not what I meant,’ I replied, patting the bag over my shoulder. I pushed past them and showed my Venator licence to the attendant. ‘I’d like to rent the VM-4, the Taipan model.’

In literally three minutes, I had clearance to pilot the VM-4. The aircraft worked as a troop transport and gunship while also having the speed to reach the Galapagos Islands. An armoured exterior kept us relatively safe from any defences the Rat King’s headquarters might have, and we didn’t need a runway to land.

I moved toward the hangar’s exit. ‘It holds eight,’ I told Aki and Serizawa.

Though reluctant, Aki followed. As we neared the landing pad, he jogged to catch up to me. ‘Are you sure about this?’

I kept my pace brisk. ‘You really want to go through the obligatory back-and-forth? Fine. Am I sure? Is this safe? What about your family? What about yours? We might not make it back. This is something I have to do alone. This is something we should do together. We’ll be fine. You trust me? How about me? Yes and yes.’ I tossed my bag into the passenger area. ‘We done?’

Aki sighed and answered by tossing his bag next to mine.

Serizawa trailed behind us, phone in hand. ‘You seeing this?’ She turned the screen. The Rat King’s army had begun a new attack in Adelaide, Australia. ‘Good timing. If we’re lucky, we’ll encounter fewer of his androids.’

We needed the luck. 

Our trio prepared the gunship for departure.

If my arrival shocked Aki, it was my turn for an arrival to shock me. An old lady wearing a spy helmet, seated in a wheelchair, got pushed by a woman in a kimono across the tarmac to our landing pad.

‘Granny?’ Aki said, hopping off the gunship. He went to meet them, and I followed a few steps behind. ‘What’re you doing here?’

The woman, a maid named O-Hisa who worked for Aki’s family, bowed and helped Aki’s grandmother remove her spy helmet. The face beneath the helmet was pale and wrinkled, eyes clouded, as if it hadn’t been exposed to sunlight in decades.

‘Akinori,’ said his grandmother, beckoning him closer with a loose gesture. Aki kneeled beside the chair. ‘I have seen you,’ she said. ‘I have seen much, and I have seen more. When first I sighted the being called Ennio, I resolved to see – and see I have.’ Her clouded eyes changed, as if particles reformatting. ‘I see clearest now of what you are capable, as an aberration and semi-daemon…’

Aki’s grandmother glanced at me, an odd expression on her face. She turned back to Aki.

‘You are free to reject fate, and many choose to do this, for they feel fate is the enemy of freedom. Do not make such a childish mistake: It is not the enemy. Tatsuya rejected his fate and chose death. You and Tatsuya are alike, but you are not equal. You are not better. You are not worse. You must make your own choice, and I hope you do not impulsively play with fate and freedom. Show the Rat what you can do, but do not try and prove anything.’

Aki’s grandmother gestured to O-Hisa, who produced from somewhere in her kimono a sheathed katana and offered it to Aki. A gift, from Aki’s mother, their ancestral sword, to fulfil a supposed promise Aki had made.

Profound envy coursed through me. A soft touch on my shoulders guided me away, back to the gunship, leaving Aki to offer parting words with his grandmother. The hands belonged to Serizawa, yet I pretended they were a more familiar pair. Whose hands, I knew not, but I liked the idle daydream.

#

We readied to depart.

I piloted, while Aki rode up front with me. Serizawa napped in the back. New Year’s Eve parties were in full swing. We saw the lights and fireworks from the sky. We soared past the glowing, semi-sentient city, onward toward a moonlit ocean. I did not feel small; my life felt broad and deep, a multitude of feeling, if only from my own perspective. But it did feel detached, as if the Rat King’s attacks and New Year’s Eve celebrations were kept from me by a glass partition. I did not know how to care anymore. What was the purpose of multitudinous feelings if they had no point of reference?

The darkness of sky and ocean engulfed us, our gunship little more than a firefly gliding above the surface. A couple hours into the flight, the gunship’s systems detected a second aircraft coming from behind. A Vandagriff Z-22 jet.

The jet pinged our gunship, using the name: Snow Fox.

I slapped Aki’s arms, rousing him. His eyes widened at the name, and he raised his brows, as if to ask what I intended to do. May as well answer it, I thought. When I opened the channel, Snow Fox said:

‘Sorry for getting you shot, Aki.’

We exchanged looks. Was that…?

‘Taeko?’ Aki said, rubbing his jaw.

‘I know, I know. But before you accuse me of anything, let me explain.’

Aki and I waited.

‘Oh, cool,’ Taeko said. ‘I expected you to interrupt. Yeah, I’ve been the Snow Fox. Lots of people have worn the mask. It’s a communal role for non-syndicate, non-Venator people. The CVC funds the program. We assassinate syndicate Venators who haven’t assigned someone to inherit their licence. That way, the licence goes back to the CVC. Lots of Rational Hedonists have accepted the Snow Fox role over the years, since taking a human life is one of the optional phases.’

‘Why’re you here?’ Aki said.

‘You told me about Hong Kong, how there was a way to find the Rat King’s location. So, did you?’

Aki and I shared another look. I conveyed the idea we may as well tell her everything. Aki wasn’t so sure. Didn’t matter.

‘You don’t have to tell me,’ Taeko said. ‘You’re flying across an ocean on New Year’s Eve. Just lead the way and I’ll follow.’

‘…Why?’ Aki groaned.

‘The Rat King has a plan. I want to know what it is.’

Without a response, Taeko cut the channel. I checked the external cameras and spotted her jet, and her in the cockpit with a fox mask. 

Our two aircrafts continued across the endless ocean.

The hours passed.

Aki and I said little. What was there to say? We were too excitable to reminisce on the past. Too anxious to talk about the future. Nothing to say of the present: We’d made all the preparations we could. A nervous resignation settled upon us, a kind of hypnosis, letting the irrelevant time blur past. I suspect we thought similar things, though I didn't know what. We were alike, and we knew each other well, as well or better than we knew ourselves. Silence was comfortable. 

Black ocean.

Moonlight.

Serizawa’s steady breathing over our headsets.

I’d settled into my seat when the sensors pinged a few targets. I’d predicted it. ‘Hot zone,’ I said. Aki rubbed his eyes and unbuckled, when I told him to wake up Serizawa.

You-Know-What. The incident in the Mariana Trench. Sea monsters. We’d have needed a deal with the Devil to cross the Pacific without encountering any monsters. Well, deal or not, the Devil had other plans.

The gunship’s sensors went from detecting a “few” targets to over fifty. Then a hundred. I barked orders at Aki and Serizawa. We needed to be strapped in. I pushed the sticks and gained elevation. The gunship rumbled. Taeko’s jet did the same, overtaking us. The waters below turned white. Pockets steamed. Dozens of hulking eels leapt from the water. Circular rows of teeth tried to snare our gunship. 

A school of what appeared to be angler fish emerged from the surface. With a splash, they shot from the water, as if using a volcanic geyser. Winged limbs widened from their bodies. They flapped. They glided. Against God’s best intentions, the freakish beasts had learned to fly.

I flicked an overhead switch. The passenger doors slid open and mounted guns swung into position. Aki and Serizawa got behind them. They wasted no seconds. They fired into the flying school of savage fish. The gunfire cracked across the open air, the open water, a lonesome and hidden war. A single bullet tore through multiple fish. Red mist exploded among the flying swarm. The gun barrels glowed a fiery and intense red.

Aki and Serizawa’s screams of violent delight couldn’t distract me. While they handled the fodder, I had to navigate the eels and—

I angled around a cresting eel, only for the water ahead to spray kilometres into the air. An eight-headed hydra loomed. It blocked the moon. A roar seemingly vibrated the whole ocean. ‘Ahead! Ahead!’ I shouted. Aki and Serizawa changed their target. I launched the gunship’s rockets. One of the heads severed halfway along the neck. It didn’t regenerate and didn’t need to with seven others to consume us.

The flying angler fish reached us and gnawed at the hull. They were too close to use the mounted guns. Aki swapped his fastening strap to an external loop and leaned out of the gunship with his Kasagi rifle. He cleared his side, but black smoke still came from somewhere. We lost altitude and speed.

‘Little fuckers,’ Serizawa shouted, using her Cat-Claws to cleave away the back corner of the passenger area. With part of the gunship removed, we found the source of the trouble: Most of the monsters had nestled in a gap between the rear engines and loading door. Aki and Serizawa reeled from the ugly mass. With rifle and submachine gun they fired at the opening. No aiming. No need.

The hydra was still an issue. I’d dodged two of the heads and gotten past the main body, but another three heads waited ahead. ‘I’m going to try and—’

Another head blindsided me. I jammed the sticks forward and plunged toward the ocean, just dodging the maw. But we didn’t have the distance or altitude to evade the three heads. I fired the guns, knowing they would’ve break through.

But rockets shot past us and exploded the middle of the three heads into a gory mess. Bone and scales and dark flesh scattered into the ocean. Taeko’s jet cruised over and settled ahead, showing us the path through.

I maxed the speed.

A few monsters tried to pursue us, but the mounted guns took care of them. Aside from some damage to the gunship, we’d made it through better than we could’ve hoped.

#

The Galapagos Islands.

We’d made it.

The Rat King’s headquarters didn’t appear to be on the island, but it wasn’t like he’d make it obvious. We’d have to sweep the whole place, island to island. So, I thought, until Aki linked his cybernetics with the gunship. New mapping data got relayed. But, from where?

‘Proteus knows the route,’ Aki said, before giving way too little information on how he had an AI sharing his brain. An AI who escaped the Rat King. Did it not occur to Aki that the AI might want us to bring it back to the Rat King, therefore leading us to a trap?

Gaps in the islands’ foliage parted. Steel barrels sprouted.

‘Hold on!’ I shouted, veering. Taeko did the same.

Anti-air artillery pounded. Flak rained thick and heavy. As we drew nearer, close-range artillery added barrages of rounds. Taeko fired rockets, only for laser and flare systems to hinder the course. The Rat King’s defences chewed through the gunship. More black smoke. We’d have to evacuate over the shore.

‘Head low, circle around,’ Taeko shouted. ‘I’ll draw their fire.’ Her jet sped ahead, firing another few rockets. She gained elevation and stayed in range of their guns. Flak powdered the air behind her, each shot getting closer. I did as she commanded, flying low to avoid their larger guns, and then circling the main island to reconnect with the directions Aki’s AI provided.

‘I’m skipping some phases,’ Taeko laughed. ‘Death by blazing glory isn’t until phase—’

The channel went dead. Fire erupted from Taeko’s jet in the distance. She went down on the other side of the island. Aki watched from the passenger door. Blank. Empty. He slammed the door shut and took a seat.

The gunship lost most of its manoeuvrability. We skidded to a rough landing on a slope, grabbed our equipment, and piled out before the gunship skidded further down and stopped upon the sands. We didn’t have time to equip ourselves, in case external defences spotted us.

‘This way,’ Aki said, again with directions from his AI. We followed him to an outcropping, inside which we found a metal hatch and staircase.

Never stagnate, I thought, and descended into the darkness.

‘This is the only entrance,’ Aki whispered. ‘It’s a double-edged sword: Good because we won’t get flanked. Bad because all the Rat King’s androids…will…be…’

We took the final steps into an imposing concrete passage, like an oversized subway tunnel. Temporary standing lights and overhead bulbs strung along metal frames illuminated the space with a sharp, sterile white. Metal desks and crates littered the ground, along with vehicles and miscellaneous objects. Standing around, moving cargo were:

A hundred androids.

Our trio dashed behind cover. The androids reacted simultaneously. Some rushed to secure weapons. Other pushed cargo into barricades. A vanguard force rushed us, to apply immediate pressure.

‘Handle the prep,’ Serizawa said, leaping from cover. Her Cat-Claws slashed through the nearest android’s neck, neat grooves all the way through. She contorted under a leaping foe, caught him by the ankles, and hurled him at the others.

Aki and I prepped our equipment. Body armour. Kinetic displacers. Aki injected something into his arm and tossed me a vial. ‘What’s this?’ I asked.

‘Best you don’t know.’

I jabbed it into my arm and depressed the plunger. A sickly feeling pervaded my body, akin to living creatures crawling through my veins. Energy and immense clarity followed. I could see and hear and feel and move without a single mistake. So long as I thought it and my body could handle it, anything was possible.

Aki spun from cover and emptied his magazine in under nine seconds. Every shot hit the mark. The magazine cycled to the secondary one. Emptied. Another nine seconds.

I had an AvMak’s NK89 rifle and wrist-activated Hornet-V6 Darts. I started with the latter. The darts traced the tunnel’s upper surface like shooting stars and exploded into the mouths of androids. With my rifle I maintained a constant, rhythmic firing, supressing the androids further down the tunnel from returning fire.

Aki and Serizawa cleared the vanguard and main force, but those that retreated had regrouped well enough to return fire. We took cover behind crates of computer equipment.

‘There’s a side passage ahead,’ Aki yelled over the gunfire. ‘It’ll take us deeper inside.’

‘We’ll be followed,’ I countered.

Serizawa flexed her Claws. ‘You two go. If the doorway is narrow enough, it won’t matter how many there are.’

‘Proteus says it will matter,’ Aki retorted.

Sure enough, androids piloting mechanised suits marched down the tunnel. Some bipedal. Some quad-based. Firepower equivalent to tanks. A bottleneck wouldn't help Serizawa against those foes. 

Aki and Serizawa discussed. 

I sensed my internal systems calling to me, as if a digital spirit. With my Venator licence, the four experimental implants were usable. I didn’t even know their functions, but now seemed like a good opportunity to learn.

I closed my eyes and saw the four triggers.

Organic Cycler, activate, Y/N.

Subdermal Thyroid STiM, activate, Y/N.

Subdermal Adrenal STiM, activate, Y/N.

God-Heart, activate, Y/N.

Yes, yes, yes – and yes.

It started. Warmth emanated from the base of my neck and collarbone. Energy pulsed through me. Felt like I could rip atoms apart. Implicitly I knew what the implants did. The STiM implants provided an unnatural amount of energy. The Organic Cycler provided information about my biology to the God-Heart. And the God-Heart…it made new cells. I understood why only one existed. Activation crossed something like a systemic event horizon, meaning it couldn’t be deactivated; it needed to deplete.

My cells reformed. They overtook and pushed out some of the 94% of cybernetics. It wanted to reconstruct my memories, my body of biotech.

‘Lia,’ Aki said. ‘Lia!’

I’d stood up without thinking. Everything felt – alive. Too alive. Like my body was being pulled apart, sewed together, and shared around. I grabbed a piece of shrapnel from the ground and slashed open my inner arm. The cells immediately regenerated. But they didn’t stop. New flesh, like tumours, pulsed rapidly out from the wound.

I can’t be killed, I thought. But I need to try. The cells were being replaced too fast. I needed damage. A whole army of androids were willing to oblige.

‘Go,’ I told Aki, and stepped out of cover.

Precise gunfire dotted my limbs and torso. The God-Heart sampled the lead and pushed it out and healed the wounds. The pain was immense but fleeting, as if being killed in a dream and waking up. Over and over. And over. I returned fire, felling the androids one by one. The pain started to feel good, if only because I preferred it to when the God-Heart produced tumours from my wounds.

White light ahead silhouetted the androids. I drifted to the right, to draw fire away from Aki and Serizawa. I checked, briefly, and saw them reach the side passage. Aki, I thought.

I felt heavy and strange. I didn’t dare check my body – what it had become. A mech’s cannon fired a 30mm round and hewed off my arm at the elbow. In the same moment, a 40mm grenade knocked me off my feet. I landed among debris of deactivated androids. Some of them were indoctrinated: Humans-turned-androids. I fumbled with my wound and randomly grabbed loose bones and jammed it into the mess of my arm. The God-Heart produced more cells, but they got confused. It did its best to respond to the stimulus of multiple sets of bones. Two new arms and hands sprouted from the mess.

Well then.

I grabbed two guns and continued firing. More cannon fire ripped apart my limbs and torso. Smaller attacks split my skull. I found leftover parts from where I could. Bones and fragments. Fresh eyes and organs.

I knew not what I became and nobody should. I felt it and that was already too much. My grotesque mass of amalgamated, constantly repairing flesh could not have seemed human. That many parts—it shouldn’t have been alive.

With weapons aplenty I overwhelmed the androids and engulfed the mechanised suits. Their weapons blew me apart from inside but my flesh reformed around them. Soon there was silence in the tunnel. The androids were destroyed. The mechanised suits were torn asunder. I had one enemy remaining and I could not conceive how to defeat them other than through perseverance.

The God-Heart.

I swallowed grenades to slow the progress and fired the mech’s cannons to cleave away the larger parts of my body. The pain grew too great. I blacked out. I regained consciousness after a handful of seconds, but the God-Heart had already counteracted my efforts.

I heaved and moaned, a surreal whale in a claustrophobic tunnel.

I needed more damage.

There. Ahead. A crate of ordnance. Pipes of gas; I smelled it. I hammered my fist against the pipes and jammed the ordnance into the opening. Let this be enough, I thought. Please let this be enough.

I found a handgun, pushed it to my chest, and fired.