12 Miles Below

“A virus.” I said, pointing at the schematic designs superimposed by the HUD. “If Feathers are just near impossible to kill in the real world, how about we attack outside the physical world?”

We’d been combing over for any possible weak point or shortcut built into Feathers, and come up with nothing. Wrath even brought out some schematics for the protofeathers, the more expensive ones, considering future generations were cheaper and less powerful.

Only real difference was alloy composition in addition to power ratio. Protofeathers just had higher quality materials, and that meant better means of making maximum effective use of a power cell.

Gods, even the power cells couldn’t be put into a supercritical position unless the Feather deliberately removed all the overrides and safeties.

Wrath looked over the outline, the virtual cursor jumping from section to section as she studied the internal Feather architecture. A red marker appeared around the head, zooming in on what looked like a set of parallel memory bars all stuck together. “The latest generation cybersecurity default protocols are heavily insulated against breach ever since the early era of the protofeather war. If this direction had merit, it would have seen further use into later moments of that time period.”

Relinquished had a Feather problem, so when she made Feathers to hunt down Feathers, only made sense they’d been equipped for the job. They settled the fights the traditional way from the records we had - by beating each other up with guns, blades and insults. No mention of digital warfare anywhere. Other than that final fight over the digital sea where the last two protofeathers wiped each other out in some way.

The protofeather rebellion was long over, but the safeguards were still there. Avalis knew he was going to be fighting a Feather, so he'd brought out the whole package from retirement.

“How impossible are we talking about?” I asked.

“These cybersecurity systems were authored by Abdication, the same protofeather that designed the digital countermeasures for a human soul attack.”

The only protofeather that didn’t turn traitor. He’d been very productive apparently as Relinquished’s chief tactician. Clearly took on some extra credit.

“All right, I’ll put that down as ‘very.’ What would you rate your chances?”

She frowned. “If it remained undefeated when pitted against fifty six other protofeathers, I do not predict high chances of my own success against it.”

“But Father did.” I said. “He managed to get inside the shell, and then take over. If this guy's system were as powerful and smart as you think it is, then it wouldn’t have let an intruder just take the command seat.”

Wrath frowned. “Tenisent attacked from a vector that cybersecurity could not prevent. Once inside, that code is no longer applicable, else permission errors would slow down combat efficiency. Abdication’s code is built around preventing intrusion from any direction. This cybersecurity suite is impossible to surmount even for a verified user outside the shell. To’Avalis was unable to recover his shell once his signal came from outside, for example.”

“So, not impossible, we just need to find an unlocked doorway to sneak in?”

She nodded. “Essentially yes. However, all possible routes have already been discovered, studied and eliminated over the protofeather war. There is very little chance that you would discover something that hasn’t been discovered pri--” She flinched just then, hand going to cover her ear as if startled.

“Something up?” I asked.

A head shake back and hand wave away. “Only an alarm I set long ago to remind me not to underestimate… certain people.” She brushed dust off her legs, and took a breath. “Tenisent did manage to discover a vector in the end, by defeating a different system of defense. I will keep an open mind. Assuming you discover a means of injecting a virus into a Feather’s systems, I will do my part in designing the digital weapon you wish.”

I hadn’t come up with any good ideas back then. But I did have a few weeks to mull it over. And eventually, the answer was staring us all right in the face.

Every doorway had been sealed up since the protofeather war, leaving no way into a Feather’s mind. So we were looking for new doorways built after the protofeather war, when the good old A57 wasn’t around to patch up his code against. Doorways such as the one To’Aacar had unwittingly built.

Back in the present, Father didn’t hesitate to bolt out of the way the moment Wrath spoke. Three steps back, blades back out, keeping a wary eye on what I could do.

Nothing happened to him, and that just made him more worried.

My HUD cleared up, shields powering back online along with my full set of fractals and weapon loadout. Ammunition counters reset, taking stock of everything I had on hand. Three shape charges on my chest, two sub machine guns with a full set of occult bullets inside, knightbreaker ready to fire and my occult shotgun barrels all neatly lined up my arm with a shell loaded in each for the right moment.

I shook off the dust and stood up as if I hadn’t ever been pinned down.

“You’ve countered the attack.” Father said. “Acceptable.”

“Didn’t just counter it. It’s a weapon.” Man in the middle attack on his own man in the middle attack, except ours had been planted long ago. Wrath had been here the entire time.

“Announcing her presence in combat was a mistake.” Father said.

“They’ll know she’s part of the fight. It's not like we'll be splitting up down there, and they’ll know about this the second time they come knocking at our door. Wrath’s a Feather, she has a compulsive need to be dramatic.” I gave my hand a quick test, flexing fingers. “More than that, she’s part of House Winterscar - which means she's going to be dramatic only when it’s too late for you to do anything about it.”

Journey flexed its hands a moment later on its own power, a full set of tremors running through the armor as every movement was re-calibrated. Cathida reinitialized a moment later, with her first words being exactly what I expected: “Having me work with a machine is already asking to squeeze gold from pyrite. Count yourself lucky I want to win more than I hate that metal bimbo.”

"I don't think you hate her at all." I said. "In fact, I'd say you're quite fond of her, you cranky old bat. You just can't admit that to anyone."

She pointedly didn't say anything to that.

“I have registered all movement configurations from Journey." Wrath's voice came across the comms. "Tenisent’s override commands have been isolated from your system.”

Father on the other hand just glared forward. “What have you done?”

"My part was to be bait.” I shrugged. “Best of luck, Father.”

Embedded deep within Journey’s return data had been a viral payload that compiled itself upon being read, then sank into his system undetected. Opening up certain portways, exposing Father’s shell to further attacks, sneaking past all the defenses a Feather had.

A trojan horse, as Wrath called it. He probably had a few million copies of that already by now, all of them mutating and spreading outwards to become truly impossible to flush out.

I took a few leisure steps forward.“We didn’t just come up with a one-time surprise either. The moment you read anything - my vitals, the carbon monoxide levels in the armor, where I’m looking, the armor’s current position, even down to how my pinky finger moved - that’s all we need. Every data package is infested.”

Father's body twitched, then collapsed on one knee. His internal balance systems were now compromised. Just one of many system failures currently cascading through his shell. Shields flared out across his armor and then died off. Eyes were twitching, iris refocusing, turning the world blurry.

A hand hit the ground hard, trying to keep him from toppling over.

He was fighting back. But Wrath had built her weapon expecting that kind of defense.

I took a few more steps across the room, hand reaching down for my discarded imperial longsword. “So, where were we? Oh, I remember! Ahem.” A moment later, I had my blade right at his throat, and he couldn’t do anything about it.

His body was wracked with tremors, electric whining coming from the joints and internal chassis under that relic armor of his. The kind of sound from a few dozen mechanical systems all moving against each other.

Some part of my Winterscar blood, the part that reminded me that my House and family lineage came from outright villains and backstabbers - that part demanded I twist the knife in a bit. Victory had to be savored.

I wasn't a paragon like Kidra. Nor some silent killer like Father. Not a nobel warrior like Shadowsong and not some heir to a lineage like Ankah.

I was a rogue with a lot of personal tools painfully built up along the way.

And I was damn good at it.

My imperial blade tapped his neck, metal pinging on his relic armor’s neck guard. "Father. You’ve died."

Knelt down on the slowly cooling floor, still struggling to get back on his feet, he started to laugh. A sort of unhinged, full belly laugh, like a mix of frustration, relief, anger and approval.

"You've done well. But understand this, boy. This match is not over. Not until my center fractal is cut through. I must push you to your limits, only then will you grow. Those were the terms I set." Then he went completely still. No more struggling to control his shell, no mechanical stress or anything. A total shut down.

"I've lost connection to Tenisent's shell!" Wrath instantly called out. "Keith!"

Occult pulsed across his body, and I didn't wait to see what he was up to.

The imperial longsword dove straight for his central fractal.

An occult dome shield lit to life, deflecting my blow up and over his shoulder.

A mirror image of him rose out of his body, blade swinging straight for my head. Cathida took over, instantly ducking under the attack and launching a flurry of sword strikes in retaliation.

He battered them all with occult shields, then slowly stood back up.

"He's turned off the central neuro-cortex system." Wrath said. "His soul is manually controlling the shell, without any subsystems to assist."

Father had been stubborn about moving his body the same way he had in life, and relying as little as possible on the Feather's true capabilities.

Now I see why. If he ever had to turn off everything, he could do it and remain dangerous.

He swung. It wasn't as quick as he had been before, but there was still that precision and planning he'd put into every spar and duel in life.

Cathida met his match, and this time she was moving at the same speed he was. Which meant the tie-breaker would be how good we were at wielding the occult.

The knights and I all began the attack at the same moment. Occult ghosts and arms flashed out from the armor, and Father fought back using nothing more than a few badly formed occult arms, and far more occult shields than he had any right to use.

He hadn't been able to use any of these in the fight when he needed them - because the war within against the clan knights required willpower above all other abilities. Now, with the knights firmly locked away in his separated soul fractals, he had no distractions.

"He's initiated a full wipe and reset backdated to one hour prior." Wrath warned. "When the system is restored, my intrusion code will not be present."

"Doubt he's going to put his hand on the fire a second time." I hissed, trying to dogpile him down with more ghosts.

Father's command of the occult wasn't on par with my own, and not a match against the combined might of the clan knights all manning different fractals within my armor. We were getting scores of hits over his body, whittling down his willpower.

He didn't need to be good with the mirrors however. He'd been putting his efforts elsewhere.

The occult pulsed out around him again, and then pooled into his eyes, leaving bright blue trails behind him. His movements solidified, becoming utterly confident in every strike.

The futuresight fractal.

He wove through my army of ghosts, sliced through any arm or attack sent by myself or the knights, and struck against Cathida's core defense.

Occult domes appeared on my armor, blocking the strikes that had navigated through every possible defense I had to hold them off with. The two knights gripped each other in support, turning their focus back to keeping my defenses as maximum.

I knew from Atius this spell would only last a few seconds at most. All we had to do was wait him out.

That fractal was notoriously difficult to use. The multi-verse spell I’d used had a balanced ratio. For every alternate world, there was an alternate Keith processing the information. I could never be overwhelmed. With the future sight, many possible futures would all collide into one single mind - mine. Three of four I could keep track of, more than that and I’d quickly be overwhelmed and left with a splitting headache.

Even Atius couldn’t maintain that spell for long, despite his decades of discipline in mastering it. Father was going to run out of steam in seconds and then he'd be right back to the meat grinder we were putting him through.

He had to have another plan then this doomed last stand.

A moment later, I understood what he was doing: Buying just enough time to get his systems back up.

Humans can’t think a few thousand possible directions all at once. But a computer could. A haze appeared over his head at the same moment Wrath called out over comms that he'd completed the reboot.

He was tapping into the shell’s overclocking abilities. And he was using those to directly process the sheer amount of information the occult was feeding into his mind.

A good plan, but I could beat it.

I brought my attention back to the present, and ordered all my ghosts to flood the room with heat. The overclocking had to be stopped. So long as that was running, he would always have that futuresight spell running at full blast. If that spell ended, so did his chance of winning against me. Fortunately, it wouldn’t take long to get the entire room nice and toasty.

“This is futile!” I shouted out in the melee, “Moment the room is back to scorching hot, it’s over! Quit being a sore loser and just accept that I’ve gods damned beaten you at your own game!”

He growled, then leaped back, occult flowing across his blades before he launched out a massive set of arcs in an X shape. Not at me, or my army of ghosts harassing him.

His target was the roof.

Because beyond that thick barrier of metal, concrete and aerogel - were nothing more than the white wastes.

The deep, utterly limitless chill, ever waiting for a single crack to slip through.