The memories finally banished the last traces of lingering sleep, and Stark decisively threw off the blanket, bracing himself for the new day.
He had big plans for today: the first verification of his device, the first test run, and, quite possibly, its deployment on himself.
Walking barefoot across the floor toward his own private bathroom, Stark rubbed his face with his hands.
Feeling the distinct lack of facial hair once again, he analyzed his current situation.
What did he want?
What was he striving for?
Why was he pushing himself to the absolute limit in training with such total dedication?
And for what felt like the hundredth time, he arrived at the grim realization of just how terribly the world was engineered.
It was inefficient, foolish, and obsessed with short-term results at the absolute expense of long-term consequences.
Even now, without knowing many of the finer nuances, young Tony could see ways to improve the lives of ordinary people, reduce social stratification, stabilize the environment, and jump-start the processes needed to reboot a system that had long since stopped obeying humanity.
Granted, those methods were rough around the edges and promised oceans of blood and death, but the suffering would primarily fall upon marginalized predators and the current powers-that-be who had pushed the world past the point of no return.
Tony was ironclad in his conviction: a swift end to the agony and the dawn of a new era was infinitely better than endless suffering.
He had lucked out; he was born into a family of Heralds—the elite of the modern world, personal agents to the president, and a pair of highly experienced individuals who understood the brutal reality of this world firsthand.
But what about other children?
Children growing up in squalor, or those whose parents, blinded by corporate propaganda, did everything in their power to drag their offspring into that meat grinder, completely blind to the horror they were condemning their own lineage to?
Militech, Arasaka, SovOil, Kang Tao, Biotechnica, Petrochem, and so many other megacorporations propped up the global economy and provided jobs…but they were poisoning the planet and humanity itself.
When you really thought about it, it was a terrifying gridlock: everyone could see the approaching end, yet they either couldn’t stop or lacked the strength to pull the plug.
Standing under the streams of hot water, his mind churned with thoughts that were far from childish.
His brow furrowed with an expression typical of an experienced adult who had seen his fair share of filth, rather than a young boy.
He knew this.
He knew it wasn’t normal, that it defied all predicted baselines, and that it simply shouldn’t be happening.
There were flat-out no proper prerequisites for these kinds of behavioral deviations.
By all accounts, the only things that should be occupying his mind right now were his personal whims and his parents’ grueling training regimens…
but there were the dreams.
Dreams that with each passing year, every single night, unraveled more and more, imparting new knowledge.
But most importantly, they were gradually twisting from a beautiful fairy tale of a clean world untouched by corporate wars…into a living nightmare.
Every dream brought a new enemy, inevitably followed by another, even more horrific and terrifying, repeating endlessly until you were left feeling like a fragile insect trapped in a suit of armor.
A statement that had once felt amusing and ironic was now filling with a new, much darker meaning—the overriding sense of his own weakness.
Yet you still push forward, defying fear, inventing new technologies, mapping out plans all the way up to your own demise.
You do it over and over again, no matter how terrifying or painful it proves to be, because somewhere deep down, you hear it every single time:
“Your life, don’t waste it, Tony.”
“Don’t waste it.”
Death, killing, the loss of comrades—it was all becoming routine, a normalized part of a life that was rapidly morphing into something dreadful, where the entirety of civilization, humanity, and the world itself threatened to collapse into the Abyss, with nothing but you and a handful of your brothers standing in the breach.
“Every dream is a little death…” the boy’s lips quietly whispered a quote he had recently read.
For him, sleep wasn’t just one death, but two.
When he slept, he was someone else—someone more experienced, stronger, more decisive; someone ready to make the ultimate sacrifices and shoulder the weight of the entire world if the situation demanded it.
Upon waking, he was just Tony again—a boy, the son of his parents, whose biggest immediate problem was a mechanical nanny with an overprotective streak.
It was hard to put into words the sensation of waking up and realizing that you aren’t truly you, but merely…a fragment of something vastly greater.
Smack!
Striking his own cheeks with force to drive out the panicky, negative thoughts, Tony abruptly cut the hot water and stood beneath a torrent of liquid ice.
It helped.
Temporarily.
As always.
Stepping out of the bathroom and drawing a deep breath into his lungs, he slipped back into his familiar mask of a somewhat eccentric child gifted with an overly brilliant brain.
This was a problem his parents couldn’t fix; only he could solve it, and the technology from his dreams would provide the key.
No need to make them nervous.
They had been looking exceptionally grim lately, and Tony had no intention of becoming another source of worry.
“Shall we begin training?” Omnissiah was waiting for him just outside the door, her head tilted to the side.
“Let me at least get dressed, you perverted clanker!” Tony protested.
He slept naked, despised pajamas, and walked out of the bathroom just as bare, though he had long since given up hope of deterring Omnissiah from staring at him while he was exposed.
The overly diligent machine was constantly scanning his body for physical anomalies and muscle development.
She compiled his growth charts every month, trimester, half-year, and year, using the metrics to calculate his subsequent training routines.
After half an hour of morning calisthenics—which left his muscles pleasantly warm and his brain firing on all cylinders—Tony headed downstairs to join his parents.
Today was his day off from studies, his only one of the week, though his folks still had to go to work.
But they had just enough time to eat breakfast together.
“Awake at last, sleepyhead?” his mother greeted him, standing over the stove and frying eggs.
Just the way he and his father liked them: slightly crispy around the edges, packed with plenty of sausage and cherry tomatoes.
To round it out, there were a couple of sausage croissants and tea with milk and three spoonfuls of sugar.
“I get up at seven in the morning, how am I a sleepyhead to you?” Tony grumbled, casting a disgruntled glance at his parents.
He understood the discipline, but they could easily let him sleep a bit later.
What difference did it make if he got up at seven or eleven?
Why couldn’t they just shift the schedule?
He would start later but finish later too.
Unlike other human larvae, he didn’t need to physically go to school—he had already graduated!
“The absolute textbook definition of one,” Claire chimed, raising her kitchen spatula toward the ceiling for emphasis.
“If we left it up to you, you’d snooze through half the day, spend another two hours waking up, and only then start doing anything productive.”
“Hmm,” Robert grunted in agreement.
“Traitor,” Tony muttered under his breath.
“What’s the news?” he asked, changing the subject.
“The Pope. He wants to bring Poland back into the Holy See’s sphere of influence.”
“Again? Doesn’t he ever get tired of it?” the young representative of the notorious family grimaced.
Tony himself didn’t believe in gods; he simply knew that if they did exist, they wouldn’t be all that different from humans.
However, he harbored a distinct dislike for the Holy See.
The Polish Church, which had broken away from it at the turn of the century, at least provided the populace with some semblance of stability and kept the corporations and other scum from completely losing their minds.
The Vatican, on the other hand, had long since devolved into a hybrid of a megacorporation and a media empire, whose primary directive was squeezing as many eddies out of people as possible.
“When should I expect you guys back today?”
“After seven,” Robert replied.
“A lot of work.”
“Miss Kushinada will be over at nine. Don’t cause any trouble before she arrives, alright?” his mother looked at Tony, her eyes narrowing playfully.
“What could I possibly pull in a single miserable hour?” Tony sighed, entirely sincere in his dejection.
“Blow up the house?” Claire suggested.
“Set it on fire,” Robert added.
“Trigger a grid overload across the entire district,” Omnissiah chimed in.
“Slander! Slander and insinuations,” Tony scoffed, waving them off.
“And besides, that’s all on Omnissiah.” He pointed an accusing finger at the robot, whose processor practically short-circuited at such sheer audacity.
“Omnissiah is a good girl,” Claire countered smoothly.
“And cautious,” Robert appended.
“Thank you, Creators,” Omnissiah synthesized, causing Claire to nod with satisfaction and shoot a sly look at her son and her creation.
‘If things don’t work out between Tony and little Lucy, I’ll rebuild Omnissiah into an android with biological components,’ the family matriarch decided, completely oblivious to the sudden cold shiver that just ran down Tony’s spine.
Amusing (or perverse) as it might sound for a mother to design a companion android for her son, the underlying reasoning was somber.
The systemic decay of human societal morals hadn’t spared any class, making the search for a decent partner exceptionally difficult.
Claire, being a netrunner and a veteran operative, had witnessed every conceivable human vice during her service, among which lust and greed were far from the worst.
The situation wasn’t entirely hopeless, but she wanted the absolute best for her boy, prompting her to map out various contingencies.
Her top pick was Lucy, Kushinada’s daughter.
The father was a decorated former military man, the mother was an expert netrunner from an influential family with deep black-market connections, and the little girl herself was growing up incredibly intelligent and beautiful.
Given her upbringing by both parents, she promised to turn out if not into an ideal wife, then at least a reliable comrade you could trust with your back.
The second option was Omnissiah.
Even now, she was making massive strides toward becoming a fully realized AI whose core function revolved entirely around Tony—he was quite literally her raison d’être.
Growing a blank, mindless clone, flashing the neural matrix, and adding some high-grade chrome would yield the perfect wife and guardian.
Or she could combine both approaches, incorporating a clean clone!
While her and Robert’s past made it far too dangerous to risk having another child—the threat of exposure or genetic birth defects was simply too high—that restriction didn’t apply to grandchildren!
“Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh…” she let out a slightly sinister chuckle, causing both of her men to exchange wary glances.
“Breakfast is served!” And as if nothing had happened, she set the omelet down before her husband and son with a sweet smile.
Breakfast passed peacefully, as did their preparations for work.
Tony didn’t particularly mind that his parents were away from home for long stretches; he was growing into an extremely self-reliant and independent individual, and he received plenty of attention regardless.
Claire and Robert dedicated immense amounts of time to him during his training and education, so Tony never felt neglected—if anything, his parents’ watchful eyes usually meant a mountain of extra work, and he wouldn’t have minded a bit less of it.
But he didn’t complain.
After seeing his parents out, he immediately holed up in his workshop, connecting his computer to a netrunner chair equipped with an integrated braindance wreath.
He needed to calculate the energy vectors, stretching the capacitor charge cycle over a longer duration to avoid overloading his power supply like he did during the previous test run.
“What do the instruments say?” Tony asked Omnissiah, too lazy to stand up himself.
She was assisting him while the baseline power feed was initialized.
“The calculations were correct. Metrics are resting within the lower threshold of the green zone.”
“Excellent. I’m stepping up the output gradually,” Tony nodded.
“Dummy 02, the moment I give the word, throw the breaker. Got it?”
This instruction was directed toward a robotic manipulator arm running a custom AI he had coded himself.
Nothing flashy—just a claw on wheels outfitted with a couple of cameras and a rudimentary AI.
Calling it a true artificial intelligence was a stretch, since all it could do was build a feedback loop of experience based on operating its own chassis, which was precisely why he had named it Dummy.
Tony had been too lazy to script every individual articulate movement for the claw, so he had loaded a self-learning program instead of static software.
The claw nodded in response, gripping the emergency shutoff lever.
Tony had absolutely no desire to rebuild his prototype from scratch for a THIRD time.
“20 percent,” he narrated, keeping an eye on Omnissiah.
“Nominal,” she responded.
“30 percent.”
“Nominal.”
“40%… 50%… 80%… 100%!” He cast an anxious glance toward his robo-nanny.
“Nominal. The calculations have been verified as accurate.”
“So…that’s it? It’s done!?” Tony stared in utter disbelief, his eyes darting between Omnissiah and his creation.
“Confirmed. However, until a comprehensive safety audit is conducted by Creators Claire and Robert, I will restrict your access to this mechanism.”
“I don’t even need to,” Tony waved it off.
He was entirely confident his brainchild wouldn’t fry his brains; he hadn’t sacrificed so much time and so many attempts for nothing.
The fuses he installed were heavy-duty and redundant—tripled in the high-risk junctions.
“All that’s left is to run a trial initialization, scan my skull, and we’re golden. You’ll let me do that much, right?”
“I will permit it.”
But Tony ran out of time, because a tiny disciple of Chaos Undivided arrived right on cue, her sole objective being to disrupt the follower of the Machine God from executing his sacred work.
“Tony!” Lucy squealed, slamming her white head full-force right into his ribs.
“Oof!” The impact knocked the wind clean out of him.
“Lucy…what was that for?”
“Tony?
Tony!” The little girl hovered over the “dying” boy.
“Noooooooo!” she wailed theatrically, throwing her hands up to the heavens.
Meanwhile, her mother stood in the doorway, trying her absolute hardest not to laugh out loud.
A few days flew by.
Everything was locked down and ready for the activation of Tony’s invention, and he was merely waiting for his parents to give the green light.
He had no doubt they would grant it.
Even if they couldn’t fully comprehend the underlying principle and objective of the apparatus, his father’s technical knowledge alone was sufficient to verify the safety of the design.
In a worst-case scenario, he could always slip into the workshop dead of night and do it all behind the backs of his parents and Omnissiah.
But Tony wasn’t in a rush; he trusted his mother and father and wanted them to verify his preparations before firing up a machine meant to interface directly with his brain.
Robert and Claire were currently at work.
Claire was stationed inside a deeply hidden and heavily fortified data center, fully submerged into the Net as she breached the terminal of an incautious fixer.
Robert was holed up in a safehouse, sipping synth-coffee and ensuring the surveillance and recording arrays didn’t experience a hardware failure.
None of this, however, impeded their ability to converse with one another.
“Our son is a genius,” Claire declared for what felt like the tenth time that day.
“We already knew that,” Robert remarked.
“But not to this extreme!” she exclaimed emotionally.
“Building a technology of this magnitude entirely from scratch is unprecedented! It won’t just unlock new capabilities for humanity; it will allow people to ascend to an entirely new paradigm of development! And it does so without requiring a single genetic or cybernetic alteration—simply by optimizing the biological hardware already present!”
“Are you entirely certain about the software architecture he coded?” Robert asked, taking a sip from his cup.
“The programming is flawless; I couldn’t have optimized it better myself,” Claire assured him.
“Furthermore, the software code is revolutionary in its own right.”
“Oh?”
“If you scale it down to fit a standard biomonitor, it will radically overhaul its efficiency. Right now, even the cutting-edge consumer models only register acute physical trauma and advanced pathologies. With Tony’s program, they will detect underlying diseases and developmental deviations at the absolute earliest cellular stages, fundamentally simplifying medical diagnostics.”
“Should we file a patent?” Robert suggested.
“Tony could use an independent stream of revenue.”
“I was just about to suggest the same thing,” Claire nodded readily.
“But we’ll have to take it directly to the Man Himself.”
“Why? It’s not in our interest to draw unnecessary attention.”
“You simply don’t grasp the scope of the program Tony created. The moment it hits the market, it will instantly draw the crosshairs of EVERY megacorporation that manufactures biomonitors and medical cyberware. Without heavy political leverage, we are guaranteed to face immediate blowback. But with the backing of the head of state, all of that disappears.”
“Mmh,” Robert was forced to agree.
“Plus the optics and prestige it brings to Poland.”
“Exactly!” Claire confirmed.
“To Skalk, protecting Tony’s patent costs pennies. Besides, he’s not about to rob a young prodigy who was born, raised, and intends to live and work within his borders. A strategic partnership will suit him perfectly.”
“Tony will pull in less raw capital,” Robert frowned.
“In exchange, he completely bypasses distribution hurdles and secures state-level immunity,” Claire countered.
“No matter who comes out on top in the upcoming proxy conflict, they won’t touch the goose that lays the golden eggs—and Tony is slated to become exactly that. An influx of foreign capital is a necessity for any government, especially ours.”
“Particularly if a percentage of that revenue funnels directly into the state treasury,” Robert caught his wife’s drift.
“What about the core technology itself? Are we patenting that?”
“That’s…more complicated,” the mother noted.
“On one hand, the global players won’t find it overwhelmingly lucrative initially because it’s engineered specifically for children. Sure, adults will receive some minor cognitive optimization, but children are the ones who can maximize the tech’s developmental potential. Essentially, Tony solved the bottleneck regarding early-stage cybernetic implantation, which is technically a breakthrough…”
“But the corporations never let that stop them before,” Robert finished with a nod.
Children could only be outfitted with a highly restrictive spectrum of specialized cybernetic implants, requiring systematic replacement every one to three years depending on the chassis model; otherwise, adulthood brought severe developmental pathologies and premature systemic failure.
The reality of it looked grotesque on its own, even disregarding the long-term prognosis.
Top-tier league football players who underwent these procedures from early childhood systematically developed disproportionately elongated limbs that failed entirely by their thirties, forcing full-body prosthetic replacements.
And that was assuming their nervous system hadn’t been completely fried in the process—otherwise, anchoring such high-output chrome became fatal, leaving them permanently wheelchair-bound.
Unfortunately, the world map had plenty of jurisdictions where such practices were entirely legal, meaning the prohibition on early-stage implantation didn’t deter any serious corporate entities.
“Correct,” Claire agreed.
“But even the software alone is enough to dramatically streamline those procedures and scale up their efficiency. If we leak the core technology itself, we essentially open up a brand-new corporate market for infant-and-above cyberware, because the primary financial bottleneck regarding non-profitability becomes obsolete. And I have no intention of stripping our boy of such a powerful trump card for his future.”
“You think he’ll be capable of anchoring his own enterprise?” Robert asked, surprised.
Who knew better than them just how ruthless and depraved modern corporate competition truly was?
Any independent newcomer showing a shred of promise was immediately devoured by the established monopolies—either absorbed directly into their corporate structure or reduced to a disenfranchised satellite asset.
“Under the umbrella of state sovereignty? Entirely feasible,” Claire asserted casually.
“Naturally, the terms of the alliance will look completely different compared to a standard patent. But Skalk has been searching for a backdoor out of Poland’s absolute reliance on black-market smuggling for decades. An domestic corporation that corners the internal market and ultimately becomes an extension of the state apparatus will align perfectly with his long-term goals. An Arasaka 2.0 of sorts, but built under government patronage from day one.”
“I agree regarding Skalk. But what happens when his successors take the reins?”
“By that point, it won’t be our problem anymore,” Claire let out a somber chuckle.
“Is the prognosis truly that bleak?” the father asked, his brow furrowing.
“The stakes are escalating,” she answered.
“The Cardinal is systematically distancing himself from the president’s coalition, clearly pulling leverage from an external backer. In response, Skalk is increasingly cozying up to the Vatican, which is driving Lewandowski up the wall. Instead of walking back his position, the Cardinal is doubling down and escalating the friction. I don’t think I need to outline his operational directive regarding the Heralds if his faction takes power?”
“Total liquidation,” Robert answered grimly.
“Exactly. Fortunately, the Cardinal is a deeply pious man; he won’t target the operatives’ families. If anything, he’ll likely allocate a respectable stipend, complimentary education, and state housing for the kin of the deceased. He may be a fanatic, but it’s precisely because of that fanaticism that he won’t lay a finger on children under any circumstances—to him, they are ‘innocent.'”
“Mmm… it’s highly probable SovOil is backing him. If they manage to seize administrative control over Poland, they secure immediate access to the largest black market in Europe, with all the logistical advantages that entails.”
“Or Militech. Let’s be honest, inviting Arasaka into the fold and so overtly broadcasting alignment with them was a tactical blunder. Saburo harbors an animosity toward the Soviet Union that is only marginally eclipsed by his hatred for the NUSA.”
“A blunder,” Robert conceded.
“But a project of strategic magnitude holds more value than the theoretical risks.”
“I know, I know,” Claire rolled her eyes.
“‘Next-generation netrunners will allow us to decisively break the back of organized crime,’ I’ve heard the script a thousand times.”
“You don’t think it’ll yield results?”
“Why wouldn’t it?” Claire looked surprised.
“It will yield spectacular results, but that’s precisely where the danger lies. The criminal syndicates aren’t run by idiots, regardless of what the media claims; they fully comprehend the blade being forged over their heads. And unlike netrunners who require years of cultivation, the syndicates are deployed right here, right now. You can’t keep a black project of this tier under wraps forever; every major intelligence apparatus is already digging into what exactly Arasaka is constructing in Poland. A data leak is an absolute mathematical certainty.”
“As is a preemptive strike.”
“Precisely. Which is why we need to insulate Tony’s future in advance and account for the fallout of our own deaths.”
“Morbid. I’d rather not talk about it. We’ve already finalized the contingency.”
“Yes, yes—assign guardianship to the Kushinadas, I remember. The logic holds up; no one is going to risk picking a fight with them. But Ryu himself worries me. Do you have any idea what he keeps logged on his terminal?” She didn’t wait for a response.
“Photo archives from the Corporate War! And I’m not talking about nostalgic snapshots with brothers-in-arms, scenic war zones, or anything of the sort. I mean corpses! Entire battlefields littered with bodies—people executed either by his own hand or under his direct command! I fundamentally fail to grasp how a man with that psychological profile was handed the reins to a project of this sensitivity!”
“Security,” Robert answered flatly.
“The asset is far too critical to compromise, which dictates that the oversight must belong to a hardline security specialist. And Ryu Kushinada is a legacy corpo with pristine connections and a secondary degree in genetics.”
“Right, except an asset with that particular disposition runs an incredibly high risk of breeding monsters that despise Arasaka, rather than loyal corporate netrunners.”
“The protocol is locked down; the baseline test batch holds minimal intrinsic value. The primary objective is establishing the infrastructure for mass indoctrination and securing the output data.”
“I know, I know. Replicating an optimized workflow is infinitely easier than engineering one from scratch, but I still despise the setup. Furthermore, I am virtually certain little Lucy is slated to be pushed into the frontline classes just so her father can score political points with the board. And we’re supposed to trust a man like that with our son? Even theoretically?”
“The priority is operational security,” Robert countered.
“Under his umbrella, the greatest existential threat to Tony is being integrated into Arasaka’s workforce. Given his cognitive index, he’ll end up running a cutting-edge research laboratory under Saburo’s personal patronage.”
“Or he’ll defect,” Tony’s mother shot back.
“Our boy places far too much premium on his independence and creative latitude; he doesn’t tolerate boundaries. Do I need to remind you what he threatened to pull—and nearly executed—when we tried to restrict his workshop access after the electrical fire?”
“Regardless of his choice, by that point, he will be a fully grown, wealthy individual with combat proficiency. The projections from the ‘Talent Forge’ database yield highly favorable metrics.”
“Assuming you disregard the anomalies in Tony’s cognitive behavior, which are entirely capable of warping his choices in the most volatile ways,” Claire countered.
“Out of the two of us, I was one of the lead architects on that project. Anomalies of this nature are unique; there is zero historical data on them, which leaves the predictive AI entirely incapable of mapping an accurate trajectory.”