12 Miles Below

It was all over. They’d found her.

It had been safe here before, but the machines had finally found this little city. And within it, the target they had been hunting down all these years. The last of her kind left operational.

Abraxas watched from his hovering boat, drifting lightly above the long river, as the human city burned. It looked like a small glowing light in the distance. He’d seen it happen, gotten here only to see the killing blow delivered.

Her steady IFF tag had gone offline.

“It’s over.” Tsuya had told him, as he felt her disconnect from the local network. “I’ll draw Relinquished away from you. Go hide, return to Sanctuary. You will be safe there.”

“What will you do?” He asked back.

“What I’ve always done.” Tsuya answered. “Survive. Live to fight again. You must too.”

The last connection died off. He’d need to go to the surface to find her again. He didn't know where exactly, in the same way that she didn't know where Sanctuary was. Secrets kept them both safe should the other be finally caught.

The boat drifted off the waters, following the current just under him. Completely alone now. He turned, guiding his boat across the river.

But not to the rocky refuge beyond. Instead, he turned the small engine to face the dying city.

It couldn’t be saved. The humans within were all dead already, even if they battled for their lives. Hope had died along with them.

But he wasn’t leaving yet. Couldn’t leave yet.

He knew what he had to do first. Something that could only be done, here and now. And only he could do it. The mites had sent him here for a reason, a prophesy. Nine simple words, given to him years ago. They'd seen this happen. They hadn't told him what he had to do, or even needed to. He hadn't known until he was here. But he knew now what he needed to do. Why he'd been here.

Soon, the shoreline met his silent boat and he gently floated over it.

Nothing but screams and howls remained before him. Walls were collapsing down, as the wood holding the structures burnt down. Brick and concrete skeletons would remain when all this is over. Scattered comms channels crackled around him, desperate humans fighting to their last breath.

He took a step off his boat. For the first time in years his clawed feet touched solid ground, raking the sand under. He was here, there was no time for caution anymore. He turned, and kicked his boat away. It floated backwards, back to the water.

Machines wouldn’t care or see it as anything more than a wooden rowboat. He could come back for it later. Around him, his cloak of invisibility wrapped tight, chains twinking against one another. Deep in the folds of his linen overcovers, two arms reached and clutched a small silver cube. Something he’d kept to himself ever since he’d found it. One of his most prized treasures.

Items that could save his own life in dire situations, always kept on hand.

Hope was dead. He shouldn’t be here. He should do as Tsuya had said, return to Sanctuary.

But so long as he held this treasure, he knew there was still one thing he could do. One small thing he could do. Damn the mites, and their little schemes.

He took a terrified step into the city. Feet gaining speed with each step, motors returning to life after years of rest. Brought back online one after another. Green across the board, well kept in shape.

Systems flashed back to operational as he turned them all on. Power drain grew exponentially, by nearly twenty times the prior lazy efficient draw he'd grown accustomed to. All his hands and legs began to move, bits of dirt crackling off them as they folded out. Speed increased with his footing growing more sure and optimized. Hands and small claws holding his chain cloak tighter around him, tightening the cloth around his shell to better reduce the noise of the invisibility cloak. Other, smaller claws holding tight to mite treasures he’d accumulated over the years. Ready in use.

This was as strong as he could be. Still nothing more than an insect in comparison to the current titans of this era. Still, he had to. Of all days to not be a coward, it was today. His footsteps took him past the shoreline, past the sand and onto brick road. And then up the broken human dwellings, climbing across the ruined buildings like the sulking insect he was.

He jumped from roof to roof next. Passing by the dead human bodies slowly burning away in the streets. Silent, invisible, unseen.

Danger was everywhere. He wanted to turn and go away. He’d live if he did that.

A deep part of him... couldn’t comply. The part of him that held a claw at that human’s throat, and decided for the first time in all his operational history not to kill something that offered him no threat.

She was here somewhere. He’d seen her fall. Seen the titanic battle from afar. Her IFF tag had winked out hours ago now, but her body had to be here somewhere.

He followed the battleground signs. Ripped roads. Dead humans in golden armor. A few still alive and struggling to fight against the waves of machines. He couldn’t help them. So he silently passed by overhead, internally thanking the humans for their sacrifice, keeping the machines looking everywhere but where Abraxas stepped.

He knew he’d arrived at the battle site because he’d passed the first dead Feather. A snarl etched in the dead machine’s features, anger at having been forced to fade back into the digital sea. Burned sections of artificial skin exposing mechanical systems inside, equally melted away.

That was the first of many. He passed three others, some only in shattered pieces. More cleaved from shoulder to hip. And a few still frozen in their steps, only half their body blasted into brittle pieces.

Soon he reached the impact zone. A crater spanned before him, and at the center, lay two Feathers.

One knelt down, holding the hilt of a blade stabbed straight down. Eyes left frozen open. A surprised look on his features. That one stayed silent, unmoving. Dead.

Abraxas could tell. The body had a massive hole that had been ripped through just below his neck, right where the soul fractal should have been.

And under him, was the second Feather. Wings outstretched, hands limp, eyes closed.

The rest of her body from the torso down was gone, ripped apart in that final confrontation. One hand had been sliced clean off. Her forehead had three deep holes going through where her mind was. Along with the rest of her body. It wouldn’t have been fatal for her.

Just under her throat, the first Feather’s blade remained firmly lodged down. Right where her soul fractal had been. This had been fatal.

He didn’t have much time. His treasure was limited. He scurried up as close as he dared to the dead demi-gods, then tapped the cube’s face. It lit up, occult pulsing out of it. Then the cube expanded, breaking into pieces, floating around him.

Occult pulsed again, and the pieces began to circle around him clockwise. Faster, trails of occult behind each.

Light faded, leaving him in a trapped darkened void with the pieces flying around him. Alone. He expected this.

The cube clicked loudly, like gears in a clock. Then ceased with one final heavy click. All the pieces froze in place.

He tapped the cube again. The pieces around began to wind backwards, slowly rotating counter clockwise around him, speed increasing, ticking coming from the cube again with each rotation, an audible means of counting the exact amount of time he had left. The cube had no other means to send information on status to him.

Light returned around him, illuminating the two feathers, the ground under them, further out into the distance. The pieces continued to spin around him counter clockwise, translucent.

Fire moved unnaturally, retreating back to itself, the flames growing weaker each second until they vanished away. Blackened wood pooling back, leaving healthy wood behind where it faded. Collapsed walls flying back together.

Time wound backwards with each rotation around him.

The two feathers before him stayed silent, unmoving. The cube pieces continued to wind around him counter-clockwise. Deep ticking within the cube core warned him of the impending end to the cube’s ability. He stayed still, waiting. Hoping. If he'd arrived too late, nothing would happen. The cube would shatter and all will have been lost.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Then, they finally moved. He'd made it in time.

The woman’s hand lifted from the ground, pointing straight at her killer’s throat.

Click.

A massive pillar of light flared from the cave behind him, tunneling through the back of his throat, across the hole he’d had, and sank into her outstretched hand. Leaving the once burned throat back into pristine condition.

Click.

A moment later he stood up, drawing the blade out of her throat, floating up, falling backwards while she began to thrash violently on the ground, dust and rock shards sucked back under her.

Click.

Cracks on the ground healed back up, chipped stones flying from the world around to fit back into the ground as if a perfectly solved puzzle. They flew through and past the circling cube pieces, as if part of another reality entirely.

Click.

He triggered his old overclock systems. Outdated, inefficient, capable only of a few seconds of action and nowhere as fast as these titans before him.

It would have to do. He had only one chance at this.

He tapped the cube. The pieces floating around him froze in their place, then zipped back to the cube’s core, each fitting back into place.

Three ticks sounded from the cube, with a final ringing sound.

The enemy feather leaped straight at his target, blade lit up, unerringly aimed at her throat. Abraxas stabbed forward, striking the flat of the Feather’s blade. Pushing it off course by a few inches. It still reached the enemy Feather’s target - sinking deep into her shoulder instead of her throat. The enemy turned a bewildered face at his shoved aside blade, following the visible clawed hand that had moved his sword out of the way. Watching as it vanished as the rest of the arm was hidden by his cloak.

He cannot see you. Abraxas whispered to himself as fear took hold of his systems. He cannot see you yet. Only the arm. It's not enough.

All the man needed was to reach out, and grab Abraxas’s cloak. To rip it off him, and he’d be discovered. Tracked down. This was as close to danger as he’d ever been, next to a god-slayer. They could be so terribly quick. It would only be a fraction of a second and he could have his head ripped off his shoulders.

But the Feather wasn’t quick enough.

Because under him, his dying enemy was far faster.

A confused glare was the last thing the enemy was able to muster, as the Feather below him brought her hand up in a snap movement, a flash of light burrowing straight through his throat, burning a wide hole, in and out past him.

The enemy froze in place, violet lights in his eyes powering down.

Her outstretched hand grabbed his ruined throat, and shoved the dead body off her. She tried to get up, but her lower legs were missing.

“We need. To leave.” Abraxas said out loud. He didn’t dare speak to her over comms channel, he knew she could tunnel into his mind faster than he could explain anything. Any open channel was a weapon to this small god. Even with three holes in her head, he didn’t want to risk it.

Sparks lit up around the broken sections. Her eyes glowed bright blue for a moment.

And then A22 - last of the protofeathers - spoke: “A-a-a-braxas. Is that you?”

“Yes.”

“The city?” She asked.

“Dead.” Abraxas said. “No fight left.”

A22 closed her eyes. A packet of data was sent, and Abraxas hesitantly opened it. A damage report. Her internal systems. Nearly everything was red or orange. The holes in her head had also broken most of her subsystems, forcing her to manually control the shell with her soul. “I can’t fight anymore.” She said. “You need to run, there are seventeen other feathers left alive here, and five that might still be functional. I couldn’t verify I’d completely neutralized them. They’ll be surrounding the crater in seconds, preparing for another wave attack.”

“It’s been two hours.” Abraxas said. “They. All gone.”

“What?”

“You died. Two hours ago. Time twister. Mite treasure.”

She paused, thinking, then gave a chuckle. “You used one of your hoarded up trinkets? For me?”

“I did. Had to. It was time.”

The Feather nodded, and let her body slump back down on the shattered ground. “And the idiots just left my body behind after killing me? Didn’t take it as a trophy or anything?”

The Feathers had come, fought and finally killed her, then left the city to burn away and the lessers to handle the rest.

“Not know. Found only him.” Abraxas said, pointing at the dead machine at her side. “Stabbing you through fractal. Dead though. You killed him. Same time he killed you.”

Maybe they left the two of them like this as some kind of monument. Out of respect to their fallen brothers and sisters who'd died fighting to kill A22 once and for all. Or perhaps, they were leaving the two bodies for the Pale Lady to make some kind of example. He didn't know.

She gave a look at the collapsed Feather at her side, her face taking time to move the muscles into a grin. “He won't bother us ever again. I hit him faster than he could escape through the unity fractal. Good riddance.”

“We need to leave.” Abraxas said. “Before notice.”

“And how would we do that? I can’t fit inside that invisibility cloak you have.” She said, head tapping the back of the crater with resignation. “You know that. Even just a torso, I’ll be visible. My wing systems are gone. Even if they were still functional, no gravity nodes are working anymore, everything's in the red. You need to leave me behind, I’ll see if I can crawl somewhere safer.”

“Nowhere safe.” Abraxas said. “Lessers will see body gone. Feathers return. Find you eventually. Have idea instead.”

“What’s your idea?”

He stepped over her body, crouched down and let the cloak envelop them both. His feet would be visible, but he wasn’t going to be long.

Two of his smaller hands extended out, each holding a small knife. With delicate precision, they lit up, like small scalpels in the hand of a master. He'd carved many things with these tools, and this might be their greatest test yet.

“Oh.” A22 said. “You intend to cut me out of my shell, and carry only my fractal away.”

“I do.” Abraxas said. “You rebuild. Over time. We find nanoswarm node eventually.”

"And where would we go?" She asked. "Relinquished is never going to stop hunting me down."

"Sanctuary." Abraxas said, as if it were evident.

A22 paused, eyes widening. "It... exists?"

"Yes." He said, and said nothing more. He didn't want to confess that he'd made a mistake. Sanctuary was supposed to be safe haven for all who defied Relinquished. It should have been a home to the protofeathers from the start. Instead, they'd been afraid of those demi-gods and their power. And while the greatest warriors against Relinquished had been hunted down to extinction, safe haven was barred to them.

They'd known about it. Protofeathers were too clever. Even hidden away, knowledge it could exist was still something A22 had predicted. And yet, each protofeather had taken that knowledge to the grave with them. They should have been trusted from the start. Abraxas felt only shame.

A22 gave a strained nod. “Give me a moment, I need to download a copy of my schematics and everything important I’ve done into storage. You need to cut it out with me.”

He paused for a few second, eyes glancing around him. The lessers were howling out in the city still. The humans were fighting them back, the final bloody last stands for all of them. They were buying him time.

“Done.” The feather said. “Cut me out.”

He did so, planting his two daggers deep into her chassis, then cutting a circle around. Connections to her systems winked out, her head slumped back for good. Blue eyes faded. More of his hands unlatched from his side, extending out and grabbing the cut sections of the Feather, lifting it up.

He executed a few other quick and precise cuts, taking off the bulk of her armor, exposing the glowing fractal that was her heart, and the small amounts of circuits fused with it. He made a few more smaller cuts, making sure to leave the tiny power cell module affixed, and all the wiring leaving too far off the plate.

Having it as small as it could be, his hands lifted it up, cradling it close to his belly. The soul and heart of a protofeather.

He stalked away.

Her broken shell, with a clear hole cut where her fractal should have been, would be a dead giveaway that the Feathers Relinquished had sent failed to finish the job. That would be their problem to deal with.

He’d make it to Sanctuary. There she could take all the time she needed to slowly rebuild her body in safety. He had no idea how he could do so, she had no nano swarms connected to her heart anymore. No means to repair anything. She'd live in the digital sea for a long time. Possible forever even. But at Sanctuary, she would have that time.

She’d eventually find someway to fix herself back to full. A01 had. Or should be, Tsuya had told him she’d recovered his shell and was handling it. Had sent him somewhere safe, where he could rebuild in peace. Somewhere no one else could follow, a place she kept secret from even him.

The great protofeather never return the same, the wounds he'd taken in his fight against A57 had cut him through to his soul. A01 would be like Abraxas now, too weak to fight anyone. A half dead machine from an older time, no longer relevant. But alive.

A22 wasn’t wounded in her mind or soul. Only her body had been broken down. She could still fight. There was hope. All they had to do was recover a nanoswarm command node. Sanctuary had a few hundred of his models still left. They’d find a solution. Find a dead Feather at some point, and rip away the repair swarms from the body. They had time. Centuries.

Abraxas fled, and with him, he carried the last protofeather still fighting, stolen from death and secreted away, clutched by four small claws at his chest. The most precious of all trinkets he carried on him.

Relinquished had won, this era would collapse back into darkness. But from the ashes, two protofeathers will have survived. A01. And now A22.

So long as he could get her back to Sanctuary.

Five hundred years later, she was once again a pain in his side.

He was connected to the mite network, waiting by a terminal for a very specific connection. He’d been waiting for days now, while the humans frolicked around, taking their time in finding a mite terminal.

They were accessing it now, finally. At least the human remembered his name was the password. Signatures lighting up as the terminal connected to the mite network, the line glowing green.

“Hello?” A voice came through. The human’s.

He regretted everything he'd ever done in his miserable life as a flurry of separate pings came through a port he’d closed just a moment ago.

How was a protofeather that stupid? More stupid than the human! Abraxas couldn’t understand. Did she need maintenance? Was her soul finally breaking down? He sent a quick message to the other machines at Sanctuary, run a diagnostic on their leader, see if she hasn’t slowly gotten brain rot like a human after all these centuries.

No. Her request was denied. Obviously it was denied. That wayward Feather was dangerous, still linked to Relinquished by the unity fractal. There’s a reason Abraxas only spoke to the human and no one else. Human memories couldn’t be hacked. Feathers could.

Relinquished wouldn’t recognize his chosen name. Abraxas was his own creation. His true serial number - what the lady would actually recognize - was long behind him. But automated programs would recognize his shell.

And Relinquished would absolutely recognize A22’s signature, voice and dozens of other details. Abraxas was a small pest in the end, but a protofeather? Automatic search protocols would be hardwired for top priority. He sent a few dozen angry pings back explaining this again and again.

“Abraxas?” The human asked through the channel. Which of course, got another fury of pings sent back at him asking the same stupid demand, as the protofeather listened in no matter how many ports he closed up. At least she had the decency not to say anything.

He connected to the terminal angrily. Already opening his systems up and reaching for the data packages and maps to guide the little wayward convoy down to the teleportation network. A meticulously selected path, optimized to avoid machines.

Once more, another ping sank through his firewalls and defenses, again through another port he’d closed a while ago. Easily twisting past all his built up protections.

So long as he was connected to the mite terminal, she could connect to him after all. And she was far too skilled at battling in the digital sea.

At this point, he was quite certain she was simply annoying him for the fun of it.

Every single ping the same exact request.

She wanted to meet her damn granddaughter.