B2-44 - A Mind and A Goal (Patreon)

The first of the new arrivals into the Cage were three meter tall cylinders with four thin legs. They immediately sat down heavily upon the deck and began pulsing with light. Maya felt the space around her begin aching, not the pain she felt with the mind flies, but somehow the cylinders were effecting the dimensional space around her. Another arrived, then another, each sitting down and locking down the dimensional space Maya controlled.

In a five meter radius, she could not control the dimensional space nor the Cage. Maya grimaced as she tried to, but it felt as if she were probing an loosened tooth; she could rock it back and forth, but the pain was too intense to try yanking it.

More reinforcements appeared, regular assassin ants and more of the burly gatling ants.

“Did I drop a cookie behind the fridge again,” Maya said, “because that’s how we got ants last time.”

Maya raised up a wall, shifted gravity, and then ran. The current size of the Cage was large, the extra components Chuckles had gave her and all the days she had been creating and building within it, it had turned into a multi-room complex of sleeping areas, workshops, storage, and the main area where the control panel and doors were.

Four assassin ants appeared before her, teleporting in, Maya immediately summoned a sword and slashed down with the weapon across the first ant’s head. Swords were not her thing and she felt the weapon warp and bend as it punched through the armor of the ant. She pulled the sword out of the lifeless hands of the ant and rammed it straight into the head of the second ant, the blade also warping from the force behind the strike. The third and forth ants rushed her with weapons drawn, but they were each dispatched by a single shot from the sawed off railgun.

Maya dropped to the deck as a hiss and sizzle flashed over her. She looked up to see the Blob had transformed itself into a weapon. One of the Executioners was manning it, standing behind what looked like a satellite dish with a series of long prongs crackling around the rim of it.

She looked to the wall they had shot and frowned. Maya could feel the Tier 2 components ‘die’ in the spot. The spot in the wall blackened and crumbled away, leaving behind a meter diameter hole.

“No fair,” she said and raised up another wall to block them.

The second Executioner ant appeared and Maya barely got a stolen ant sword up to block the strike. The sword, like her original axe, snapped from the strike. Maya screamed as the descending blade crashed down upon her shoulder barely missing her head. Her HUD screamed abuse once more and Maya felt the sword as it cut flesh, the black armor splitting from the strike.

Her stomach erupted in pain as a kick sent her crashing into a bulkhead, which immediately sizzled as the other Executioner began firing the satellite dish at her. The wall crumbled away and Maya barely managed to dodge the attack, a blast of low-grade healing potion automatically injecting itself into her.

A blade imbedded itself into the wall beside her, Maya snapped to the Executioner who had thrown their sword at her. She grabbed onto it with her right hand, raised the middle finger of her left hand and inventoried the blade.

Maya pulled up another wall, staggered forward, and then pulled up another wall. She kept moving forward, trying to put as many walls between her and the Executioners. The healing potion wasn’t enough; she could still feel blood trickling down her back.

She blinked, finally noticing she had run out to places to hide in the Cage. The end of the Cage had been reserved as a storage area, for the components she had been using to make weapons and tools, the liquid mana containment field, and the tesseract packs.

Maya gasped and clenched her eyes shut, trying to concentrate. The pain in her hands and shoulder were throbbing, but she ignored them. She had to buy herself some time to think, she had to speed up time around her. Pain burned through her head, she was pushing her mental recovery and strength with all the wall raising. Maya could feel it, the edge of mental exhaustion she walked. She might be the god of this little Cage, but that required a lot of her brain to make work.

Her head was aching as she set her hands down upon the deck of the Cage and began using her remaining control to shape it. She could raise walls, she could change gravity, she could make a frigging bed if she wanted, she could make a gun. She had never tried it before, the biggest change had been using the Cage components to make a few machines to help in manufacturing the giant railgun.

Now she focused, forming a picture in her mind, forming all the components that made up the weapon, she shaped them, bringing them out of the Cage floor and creating them one by one, piece by piece. Before her the deck warped and changed, a device slowly began to assemble itself upon the deck, changing from a blank gray object to one suffused with color and finally coming to life.

Gasping, Maya made the Cage bring her two of the tesseract packs, melding the metal together as she snapped up the weapon from the ground; a snaking power cable attaching itself to the weapon. Maya cursed at herself and dug through her inventory, activating the mana shield enchantment she kept forgetting she had.

The first Executioner ant appeared, smashing their way through the walls she had raised up. They automatically launched themselves at her, without regard or hesitation as they saw the weapon she hefted.

Maya pulled the trigger on the heavy weapon, it was shaped like the plasma gatling gun, but instead of a series of barrels, this held only one large barrel, making it appear to be almost a hand held cannon. A burst of light flashed from the weapon and Maya could feel the Cage shudder around her.

The design was one copied from Big Snake. The massive plasma cannon they had as their main weapon; Tender and Maya had tinkered with the weapon, trying to figure out how to use it or copy it. Their experimentation had fallen to the way side as they didn’t have the power to use the weapon and the rogue tech had still been a mystery to both of them at the time.

Pain stabbed through Maya’s head at the same time she pulled the trigger. As the light from the plasma cannon fired, she also focused on the area the Executioner ant would be, forcing time to slow to a crawl in the area. The Executioner leaped, but they suddenly slowed as time for them crawled by.

The bolt of plasma flashed across the space between them, seemingly unhampered by the slowed down time in the field the Executioner was caught in. The first blast struck it and the armor it wore absorbed the blast. The second strike dented the metal armor, the third punched a hole into the chest cavity of the ant, and the fourth ran amok.  Maya immediately released her hold of time in the area and watched as the Executioner ant was torn apart.

Rogue AI AA4575ZX - Level 120 - Defeated

Command Squad Gains EXP

Lootable

Maya pulled the trigger again, aiming for the hole the Executioner ant had entered through. The second ant would not be far behind. An assassin ant appeared, then another, and another, they were sending in the cannon fodder. Maya cursed as she watched as the power hungry weapon began chewing away at the tesseract power pack.

Her focus was entirely on the swarming assassin ants that she didn’t notice as anther wall was chewed through until she was hit by an explosion. Her mana shield shuddered and failed, the energy of the explosion threw her across the room.

Her armor was screaming once again, red flashing across her suit. Maya groaned and tried getting to her feet, but something slammed into her, pushing her back. She looked down to see a long spear embedded in her right shoulder. The HUD told her the tale that she had just been impaled and was attached to some machinery behind her.  At least she had managed to maintain her hold on the plasma cannon.

Damaged machinery crackled in her ear. Maya turned her head and stared; she looked at the liquid mana containment tank.

“Oh, shit,” she said. She turned to see the last Executioner ant and the Blob moving toward her; the cannon fodder ants were pushing through the hole on the other side of the room.

The system tech components cracked and sizzled, they were not Cage components, they were normal components she had harvested from the Hangy. Maya wrenched herself free from the machine, pain blossoming in her shoulder and blood fountaining to the deck. She barely had time to watch as red lights flashed across the screen of the containment field, before she was enveloped by something liquid.

The Blob had consumed her.

Several things happened the span of a heartbeat. Maya was lost in darkness and without direction, she felt she were in a tumble drying, as she was tossed around and the Blob tried their hardest to ‘eat’ her. She pulled the trigger of the plasma cannon and felt the heat of the weapon burn the Blob from the inside, they shuddered and squealed, the high-grade rogue components frying or flinching back, allowing the weapon to come into contact with the deck of the Cage. At the same time the mana containment tank gave up the ghost, the spear having damaged control components. The overlapping resonating mana fields collapsed and like a water balloon popping the condensed liquid mana hit the Cage floor.

Thousands of tiny blades were tearing at Maya’s armor as the Blob tried to tear her apart. Her armor had long since ‘died’ as the damaged piled up, she began screaming as she felt her flesh being ripped into. Maya pulled the trigger of the plasma cannon again, more reflex and spasm than intentionally.

The weapon died a moment later as the components were fried by the plasma backlash and as the Blob chewed through the cable connecting the tesseract to the weapon. The weapon ‘melted’ the dead components sloughing off and they tried returning to the Cage, melting into the exposed floor.

At that moment, the collapsing liquid mana touched the Blob.

With the mana purge and the subsequent creation of mana lakes, the hiveship had undergone an extreme period of internal growth and chaos as the main AI core began obtaining sentience and sapience. Their world had been thrown into chaos. There had never been a singular mind guiding the entire hiveship, instead it had been the combination of thousands of rogue AI processors working together to find the ideal and most efficient manner to live their lives.

Only the Executioners were truly independent, yet their loyalty was unquestioned. They lived and died to protect the hiveship and to see its wishes fulfilled, it was the reason they were created and even with their high levels, they still stuck to their core programming.

In the thousands of standard years the hiveship existed, they been of one mind and one goal. That was no more.

The Blob, as Maya called it, was a high-grade, Tier 2 rouge AI construct, it did not have the same mental capabilities or independence as the Executioners, but there was a core within it. As it touched the spilling liquid mana, the weal mind became sharper and for the first time it realized it wanted more.

Maya screamed as the Blob shifted and moved, feeding upon the pooling liquid mana. She cried out as the jagged teeth still held her in place and the melted plasma cannon wouldn’t release from her grip. The metallic gauntlet had welded itself to the trigger assembly.

Like a sponge, the Blob began soaking up the liquid mana. It coursed through its form, a brilliant golden among the dull grey of its flesh, it moved through its components and mana pathways, searing, burning, rebuilding, remaking them to something different, something more. The Blob shuddered with ecstasy.

Maya screamed as she felt the teeth in her armor begin to grow, to change, to pierce deeper into her flesh. Her darkened HUD lit up as the glow of condensed mana began to suffuse the rogue AI, while it still had its teeth deep within her. The Blob suddenly constricted and Maya felt a thousand teeth suddenly puncture her. She screamed, but blood welled up instead and she struggled, but she was being crushed within the Blob.

Even within the crushing confines of the Blob, Maya heard a crunch and felt something pierced her back. Blood poured down her back and her eyes snapped open. She felt her skin tear and a jagged piece of something scrape against her bone, but it wasn’t pain or terror that caused her to scream. It was power. Power, hot and intense, poured through her. She could feel it burning across her veins, through her capillaries. For a moment she thought she had Seared herself once more, but that wasn’t it. She hadn’t tried channeling essence mana, she hadn’t tried to call upon that power that would kill her, instead it had been something else, something she had on her back.

The tesseract pack she had been carrying. The Blob had crushed it, shattered it, and as it constricted, it sent the shards into her.

As the life was being crushed out of her, as the Blob evolved from the liquid mana, and as her friends battled against hordes of worker ants in different parts of the hiveship; Maya felt a moment of utter clarity. It was as if she had disassociated from her body, standing to the side and looking down upon the scene of her death.

The Blob greedily sucked down the liquid mana, it’s components changing and the mind within the Blob growing sharper and clearer, becoming its own thing. It wanted to live, to grow, to consume, and to destroy, it was a mind that would challenge the main AI core, it would gain its independence.

Maya could almost feel the intensity of its new emotion pouring off of it. She realized they were connected, the tesseract crystals were being consumed by the Blob, its teeth were inside of her, her blood was mingling with the components as she was bleeding out. They were connected and Maya could feel the base instincts of its thoughts.

All it took was a mind and a goal, Maya realized.

It wasn’t the liquid mana itself that changed the rogue AIs, it was the rogue AIs desire to change that ultimately reformed them. The liquid mana, the condensed version of mana, was a step down from essence mana. It was a conversion of liquid mana into component pieces that the rogue AIs would normally not be able to obtain.

Maya took in the sight and saw the pooling liquid mana, its water-like characteristics caused it to spread across most of the decking in the power room. She could see the dozens of other tesseract packs that weren’t being used lined up against the wall. The liquid mana ran across the decking of the Cage, seeking out low spots and the Blob tried soaking up as much as it could.

A mind and a goal, Maya thought.

She wasn’t dreaming or hallucinating, Maya realized as she looked around. She wasn’t standing outside of the Blob or looking at anything with her eyes, she was seeing it through the Cage. The same way she could sense what was occurring within the Cage if she concentrated, how she could eavesdrop if she wanted, and the way she could shape the Cage to do her bidding; she ‘looked’ at the Blob and the spreading mana and felt her connection with the Cage grow stronger. She was connected to the Cage, mentally and physically as the plasma cannon was fused to her armor and flesh.

A mind and a goal.

Maya soaked up the liquid mana into the Cage. Even as she was being crushed and all life was being snuffed out of her; she let out a gasp of amazement and ecstasy as the liquid mana began pouring into the Cage.

A mind and a goal.

The only thing she could think of was: help me.

Maya could feel the liquid mana running through the Cage components, she could feel them twisting and shaping them to something else, they moved across the decking, through the half melted plasma cannon, and then through her. The components entered her skin, flowed through her veins, coursed with her beating heart, and within an eye blink began pushing back against the intrusion of the Blob.

The components pulled power from the remaining tesseract crystals, greedily consuming the shards until they lost their red color and turned white. Spines began to grow upon Maya’s arm and back, long and razor sharp needles that pushed their way between the rogue AI’s own components.

They rode the pathway that had been constructed between Maya and the Blob, the animalistic thoughts that she had felt, the connection of blood, of liquid mana, and tesseract crystals, they bridged the two beings and began their assault.

The Blob writhed as it was invaded, its vulnerable change interrupted as system tech components began tearing into it. They carried a strange taste, a flavor, a trace of something that it could not comprehend. A danger to it and its kind. It sensed a great wall of determination and resolve looming over it, not rage, fear, or anger, just determination, so vast and great that it dwarfed the rogue AI’s own desire to be free of its confines.

Maya pushed forward, her mind suddenly beginning to clear as she directed the Cage components into the rogue AI, it sizzled and cracked, the liquid mana leaking from its form and burning across her skin. Maya screamed as she felt the purest form of mana touch her.

The rogue AI wasn’t done fighting, like any trapped animal it became dangerous. Lashing out and trying to destroy everything it could, trying to save itself in a last ditch effort, but it was overpowered. Maya latched onto the mind and wrenched its control away, she bound it up and crushed it.

Maya was dying, not from the Blob, but from the liquid mana that was burning its way through her. She could feel her non existent mana channels flaring for a brief moment, like a phantom limb that ached. She could feel the mana trying to find something to latch onto, but there was nothing for it to connect with. Maya grabbed everything she could, everything that would save her and used it to pull the mana from her body. Components swirled in her blood, her organs, and her body, absorbing the liquid mana before it could diffuse into her body and cause damage.

Time crawled to a stop and for what felt like an eternity Maya fought against the corruption of the liquid mana. She could see her body in its entirety, as if she stood outside of it and looked down at it, through it, every vein and cell visible to her. Maya dug into her body, she carved out areas, forced the components to push blood, organs, cells, and nerves out of the way so they would not be damaged. Bit by bit she soaked up the liquid mana and removed it from her body.

She needed more power, more mana, as the components absorbed the liquid mana they were not powered, instead they were changed. She could feel it, the components began warping within her, she controlled them still, but they were different than what they had started out as.

A mind and a goal.

The Cage responded to her needs, tapping into the remaining tesseract packs and pulling power from it. Maya gasped as it began coursing through her, she opened her eyes to see the world beyond her frozen in a place. She looked to at the last Executioner ant with their sword raised above their head and charging at her. The other ants were tripping over one another pouring into the room.

Her brain was a bruised and battered organ, she could feel the world beginning to dim at the edges of her vision. She couldn’t hold on much longer; she had defeated the Blob, but she realized she had got nothing out of it. The creature had been consumed by her, by the Cage, and Maya looked down to see the Cage floor beneath her tinged a purple color.

She blinked and felt herself losing conciseness.

Her last thought was of Tender and Bell before darkness consumed her.

***

Dimensional Threshold V

Maya gasped and reopened her eyes, she looked to the see the yellow eyes of Bell looking down at her. He was battered and his helmet was cracked and broken, allowing her to see his face.

“Get up!” Bell shouted, he had an injector in one hand and glanced over his shoulder.

Maya could hear a battle raging behind her. Her head was pounding and she could feel the old taste of blood in her mouth and the pain of her battered body.

“What?” she asked.

“Get up, we need your help.”

An explosion rocked the room and Maya felt a prick of something against her skin. She looked to see Bell had shoved another injector into her. She blinked in confusion, but that was suddenly washed away as energy burned through her veins.

Maya practically jumped to her feet. The first thing she saw were all the dead ants around her, the next thing she saw was Tender and the Executioner ant battling at the far end of the room.

It wasn’t hard to tell that Tender was getting his ass kicked, the Executioner over-leveled him and all he was doing was slowing it down. Maya glared and then raised a wall between Tender and the ant.  Perhaps it was the ant’s own experience with the walls she had raised, but they tried to just throw themselves through it.

The wall did not budge and the ant rebounded. Maya raised and other wall and another. Soon the ant was trapped within an indestructible box. Pain burned through Maya’s skull, but she ignored it. She focused on the ant within the box and then squeezed.

The box condensed and within a moment Maya felt the surge of something as the rogue AI perished. She blinked and looked at the box once more, there hadn’t been a notification of the rogue AI’s death, yet she knew it was dead. She took a breath and thought on what she had just done, she hadn’t crushed it, she had absorbed it.

“Did you just…” Bell trailed off.

“This if weird, man,” Maya said. “I think I just ate the rogue AI.”

“Ate?”

“I don’t know, I boxed it and then… destroyed it, then consumed it, taking everything that it was into the Cage.”

“How is that possible?” Bell asked.

“Things have been really weird,” Maya said. She saw the remains of the mana containment tank and the tesseract packs. She noted many of the packs were ruptured, the blood red crystals now only white.

She could feel the Cage, nearly every component and if she closed her eyes she could almost walk through it as if she were there.

“What the hell happened?” Bell asked, he rolled his shoulders and tossed off his helmet.

“The hiveship wasn’t a pushover,” Maya said. “They hit me with some mind flies, secured the door, and then tried hacking the Cage to gain control of it. Then they sent in two high leveled ants and a fucking blob creature that was high-grade, Tier 2.”

“No, I mean with that rogue AI. We got the notification from the command squad about the first one dying, but you obviously killed that one. What happened to the experience?”

Maya shrugged. “Beats me, buddy. I need to take a long look over what happened, but after we survive this whole thing.”

“Good to see you’re alive, boss,” Tender said, limping over. His armored body was battered and he was missing an arm, but didn’t seem too hurt. “It was a close one there.”

“I’m sorry. I got a little ambushed,” Maya said. She looked around. “How did you get back in here?”

“You opened a doorway for us,” Tender said. “Each of us.”

“There was already a doorway opened, the hiveship locked that down, how could I open another?” Maya asked.

“Not only one, you opened two, one for me and one for Tender,” Bell said. “We came in right when you collapsed and that big ant was about to kill you.”

“Huh,” Maya said. “Dimensional Threshold V, guess that means I can open more than one door.” She grinned.

“There are still ants and the hiveship seems to be still trying to secure the Cage,” Tender said.

“Yeah. I can feel them,” Maya said. Bell gave her a questioning look. “Long story, I got real close with the Cage in the last few hours, real, real close. All it took was nearly being crushed by a ball of rogue tech Tier 2 components.”

“Is that what made that purple stuff?” Bell asked.

“Purple?” Maya turned to see what looked like a pillar of crystals, purple in color, where the Blob had once been. She reached forward and touched it, while Bell muttered something under his breath. The purple crystals moved, swirling around her hand and then melted into the deck of the Cage. “Oh…”

Maya grinned. “This is interesting. This is very interesting,” she said.

Bell sighed.

“I think that’s the Blob I killed, but not only that, there was some strange business when I killed it with the Cage components, then I got splashed with liquid mana as it died, and there was a lot of… I don’t know… stuff going on. I was desperate to save myself and I used… Everything around me.”

Bell continued to stare at her.

“I think… I think I combined the system tech and rogue tech together inside of my body, as I was covered in liquid mana and also had some tesseracts embedded in my back.”

Bell continued to stare at her.

“It was a desperate move,” Maya said lamely.

“Jesus,” Bell cursed in English. “Seriously?”

“Uh.. Yeah?” Maya said, she lifted her hand and she could feel the Cage respond to her, it wasn’t like before where it was muffled and sluggish, it flowed and warped at her bidding. The connection was smooth and flowing, like an extension of herself.

“There are some records about people who have managed to integrate themselves with system tech,” Tender said. “Although, such stories are… considered rubbish. Who would want to limit their mana channels or essence channels by forcing system tech into their bodies?”

“I was already kinda punctured by a lot of stuff,” Maya said. She looked down at her tattered armor and ship suit, realizing she was about half naked in front of Bell and Tender. She saw that she wasn’t entirely healed, there were cuts, punctures, and bloodied patches.

“You’ve used too many healing potions today,” Bell said. “You’ll need to refrain for about a standard day, otherwise it may cause some ill side effects.”

“Yeah,” Maya said and winced as she rolled her shoulder. There had been a spear through it minutes ago, now there was a jagged scar and the muscles felt weak.

“What are we going to do about the ants?” Bell asked. “Right now they’re a bit… scattered, seems the death of all those high leveled ants was a punch to their gut.”

“That’s easy,” Maya said. She raised her hands dramatically and clenched a fist.

The Cage responded to her movements, within seconds the walls were warping and changing, the entire Cage shifted, the deck undulating and the lights flickering. She could feel every invader inside of the Cage and she separated them, moved me, cut them off from one another and within a minute, she had shunted them off into another area she formed.

“What are you doing, boss?” Tender asked curious.

“My control of the Cage has gotten way better,” Maya said. “I can basically create time bubbles, gravitational bubbles, and even…” Maya paused and concentrated. “Yeah, I totally can move ambient mana around.” She grinned.

Bell folded both all of his arms and stared at her. “This is impossible,” he said.

Maya frowned and then concentrated, Bell let out a gasp of surprise, his yellow eyes bulging. “See?”

“You just increased the amount of mana in this area?” Bell gasped.

“Yup,” Maya said. She rubbed her head and groaned, “but it takes a lot of effort. My head is killing me. Hold on a second.”

In the firing chamber, the big railgun melted into the ground and reformed a moment later in the large room where the dimensional lock cylinders were causing Maya issues. She could feel the lock, forcing the Cage material to not change and not allowing her to move them.

The railgun rose out of the Cage floor and then fired a single round, Maya immediately shielded the weapon afterward.  The Cage shuddered from the explosive power. She grunted and nearly dropped to the floor, the energy traveling and dispersing about the Cage. She let out a sigh and Bell grabbed her and held her up.

“What are you doing?”

“Closing that fucking door,” Maya said. She could feel the dimensional locks vanish and then fired the railgun again. The centipedes were fried and Maya felt a sudden sense of relief and ease of pressure. She wasn’t connected to the RSH anymore. She grinned at the two and then steadied herself on her own feet.

Maya formed a chair and sat down heavily in it.

“Are you okay?”

“Hell, no. I feel weird and I can sense everything in here. I can sense those rogue AIs even though they’re in timeout. I can feel void space outside of this bubble of reality, I can feel the carbon dioxide you’re exhaling.” Maya shook her head, her head was pounding and she needed to rest and heal up.

“Rest,” Bell said.

“No. I can’t. I just used up a fuck ton of our mana and all of the liquid mana. We’ve got about four hours of time left and we need to get this done. We need to get back to the multiverse, grab those extra packs, and then we can rest.”

“The shields are down,” Tender said. “The core is exposed and ready to be destroyed.”

“Alright, let’s get this over with,” Maya grunted as she rose to her feet.

/Author's Note: I do appreciate the constructive criticism, peeps.  I tend to work in a little bubble of my own and some ideas I just can't see beyond or I personally believe they are the right way to go, and then miss a lot of glaring errors. I'm glad you're all reading and commenting. warms my heart cockles.