Poland.
Warsaw.
Somewhere in the slum district.
An old, dilapidated building with walls covered in graffiti, windows long smashed out, and light having abandoned the rooms of the people living there years ago.
It looked like an abandoned shelter for outcasts, where at best you’d find emptiness and used syringes.
Nevertheless, the building was still solid, free of parasites, and inhabited by more or less decent people.
Simple workers who preferred not quick comfort for money, but the chance to save up more eddies in their personal accounts to buy their first real property — whether a car they could live in, a down payment on an apartment, or some other important detail of modern life.
And today, one of the residents of this free housing had every chance to achieve his goal.
Oleg Baranov had moved to Warsaw ten years ago.
A descendant of Soviet emigrants, he never managed to settle down where he was born, drifting through life like a tumbleweed.
A man of mediocre intellect, he had nothing outstanding to boast about, which was why his search for a better life had dragged on for a long thirty years, full of twists and turns, bodies left behind, and problems constantly chasing him.
If not for his military past, quality chrome, and the combat skills drilled into him by his instructor, he would have been feeding worms long ago, like thousands like him.
But here he was, in his sixties, closer to his goal than ever.
All he needed was to complete a simple task — the elimination of one netrunner.
Habitually preparing for the job, checking his personal arsenal — a couple of frag grenades, one flashbang, three smoke grenades, an old “Overlord” revolver, and his personally made smart double-barrel shotgun — the no-longer-young man thought about what he would spend the money on.
He had no doubts about the honesty of the order; everything went through a fixer, and those guys, while they loved sending mercenaries to slaughter, paid honestly once the job was done.
No screwing around.
Otherwise, no one would work with them.
And even though the sum for such easy work seemed excessive, the old mercenary had been in the shadows of Poland long enough and could read between the lines well enough.
The Harbinger.
Poland’s shadow structure, subordinate directly to the country’s ruler, holding all the country’s crime in fear.
Elite training, top-tier chrome, full administrative support and immunity from prosecution — these guys could easily walk into someone else’s house, kill all the residents, loot the place, film it on video, and not even receive a court summons.
That’s how influential they were.
And today, a descendant of Russian emigrants planned to take out one of them.
Stupid?
It depended on what he did afterward.
If he quickly got paid and made a run for it somewhere far away — like the NUSA — it was perfectly reasonable.
Tickets were already bought, things packed, valuables sent to different addresses in different countries where the packages would be placed in storage lockers and forgotten until better times.
The important thing was to calculate everything carefully with timing — not just when flooring the gas, but during the kill itself.
Oleg had dealt with netrunners often enough to learn a simple rule: the sooner you kill them, the better.
If you didn’t manage it?
Well, then you could only hope for the thickness of your own ice.
Having gathered his gear, Oleg took… a taxi.
He had sold his car a week earlier.
Arriving at the address, which turned out to be an unremarkable warehouse on the border between the city and the slums, the experienced solo drew his guns in advance.
Revolver in his right hand, smart double-barrel in his left, grenades in his vest, ready to go.
In his port was an expensive dead-silence shard — one of the variants of programs that cut off all external signals.
Expensive as hell and outdated, but Oleg had taken it as a trophy at the very beginning of his career, and it had saved his ass more than once.
He was generally quite lucky.
Netrunners loved places like this, especially those from the Harbingers.
Large spaces where you could fit any data center, even the largest, with tons of additional equipment, and still plenty of room left for security.
Cameras, turrets, mines, smart traps, combat robots, and simple meatshield guards from gangs or mercenary squads — all of this turned the former warehouse into a miniature fortress.
And you still had to comb the entire place to find its owner.
Which was extremely problematic, especially when people were shooting at you and throwing combat scripts your way.
Extremely!
Fortunately for Oleg, the client had obtained both the floor plan with the netrunner’s location and the security layout with its roster.
This turned the suicidal task into a difficult but quite feasible one.
Or so he thought.
As he approached the point marked on the map where he could slip in unnoticed, Baranov heard a quiet whistle that gradually grew louder with every second.
“Asura!” — the realization pierced him, and without thinking he activated his Sandevistan, dashing to the side at maximum speed.
Just in time — where his leg had been a moment earlier, a small explosion from a miniature missile occurred.
It would have torn his leg off up to the balls, protection be damned.
“Unexpected,” a female voice sounded from somewhere.
“I didn’t think there were still fans of vintage stuff like that left,” — the voice that made the veteran mercenary break out in a cold sweat.
“Care to tell me what year model? 2020 or 2030?”
Ignoring the empty chatter, Oleg was about to delta.
What had been a difficult job had just become impossible.
He needed to retreat, prepare better, and only then try to complete the contract.
Fortunately, he had no time restrictions.
“But honestly, I get you,” the voice continued, even as he threw all his smoke grenades, blocking her view.
His ice was good, but it could still be bypassed — especially when a pro who could identify someone’s chrome with a single glance was cracking it.
“Old Sandi models are slower, but they give constant acceleration, unlike these newfangled toys that only work for a dozen seconds. And if you upgrade them with modern hardware… whew!”
“Fuck!” Oleg swore, realizing that his escape route was suddenly littered with EMP mines.
They clearly wanted him alive.
“This was a trap from the very beginning!” he realized.
“Uh-huh, it’s a trap,” the voice echoed.
“I’m not stupid enough to leave a secret passage into my lair without surprises, right? By the way, I don’t recommend blowing them up or breaking them — they’re connected to a single network. Disable one and it creates a unified pulse that reliably knocks out all unprotected electronics within a hundred meters. I don’t mind, but they cost money, so I suggest you surrender. Just name the client, and we’ll go our separate ways like ships in the night.”
“So you can zero me later!?” Oleg finally snapped.
“You’ll definitely live longer this way,” the solo was sure the woman was shrugging even though he couldn’t see her.
“And your chances aren’t bad. You’ve already packed your suitcases and are basically ready to run. Who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky, escape, and no one will bother looking for small fry like you.”
“Grrrrrrrr…” Oleg literally growled, choking on his emotions.
Which was strange — he was usually much more emotionally stable.
“Though it looks like it doesn’t matter anymore,” the netrunner noted in a suddenly icy tone.
Oleg understood what she meant soon enough — his heart pounded in his head, a hazy veil of white spots appeared before his eyes, and his breathing began to fail.
Less than half a minute later, the quite experienced and well-prepared solo lost consciousness.
“Drag him to the interrogation room,” Claire Stark said, rising from the netrunner chair and disconnecting.
“Time to ask a few questions.”
“Understood-understood,” the combat droid replied.
And yes, she was also a fan of Star Wars.
An hour of thorough digging through the prisoner’s brain — half of which was spent bringing him back to a more or less adequate state after the low-frequency sound generator — and Claire knew the name of the fixer who had given the order.
Another hour later, that fixer was on his knees in front of her, beaten and with broken arms.
“So, who ordered me?” Claire asked, eating a chocolate waffle with nuts and washing it down with tea with milk.
“…” She received only sullen silence in response.
“Ugh,” she sighed wearily.
“Listen, maybe we can skip all this? Seriously, I’m eating, I’m in a lazy mood today, and torturing someone like you is an extremely thankless task! But torture it is, because who knows what’s in that head of yours? What if there’s a virus specifically tailored for me?” The prisoner flinched at the last part.
“Seriously?” Claire asked, genuinely surprised.
“Are you even a real fixer? Or just a planted duck?”
“…” Again, silence, but it was more eloquent than any words.
“Fuuuuck…” Claire said, genuinely upset, and with clear disappointment set aside her unfinished waffle and walked over to her chair.
Now she’d have to hunt for the real fixer all over the city.
While her tea was getting cold!
What an outrage, total garbage!
Meanwhile, a pair of iron idiots dragged the fake fixer to the torture chamber.
They had the necessary programs, so with luck they’d get something useful.
Poland.
Warsaw.
Stark family house.
“And yet I consider your actions extremely hasty.” If the speakers had allowed it, Omnissiah would have added notes of anxiety to her voice.
But alas, since her consciousness was placed in a modified combat robot (modified only for increased memory capacity), she couldn’t convey the full spectrum of her disapproval.
Though she really wanted to!
“You checked all the calculations yourself,” Tony replied in a bored tone that nevertheless contained an entire ocean of poorly hidden satisfaction as he tightened another screw.
“The program showed a 1.2% margin of error. That’s more than one hundredth of the total, an extremely high figure for such an important event.”
“Important?” Tony asked, surprised, lifting his head toward Omnissiah’s visors.
The rest of his body was currently scattered across the workshop in disassembled form.
“I’m just upgrading your platform.”
“Exactly!”
“Look, I understand everything, but you’re not even trying to pretend to be a simple piece of hardware,” the nine-year-old boy said, shaking his head disapprovingly, as if dissatisfied that she had given up so quickly.
“I see no point. According to my data, you have a sufficiently deep understanding of programming to distinguish a simple VI from an AI.”
“I do,” Tony nodded willingly.
“But that doesn’t remove my confusion. Mom created you literally on her knee. You can’t write a full AI in a couple of days, no matter how brilliant you are.”
“The creator, Claire, has a direct hardware connection implant. Work speed increases by two orders of magnitude compared to physical contact methods.”
“Still,” Tony objected, inwardly regretting that because of his age he couldn’t install the same implant.
“Additionally, according to my data, she had access to a project for creating a narrow artificial intel—”
“Stop,” Tony cut her off sharply.
“Are you saying you’re not just an AI, but an AI without any restrictions on development?”
“My primary tasks are your personal growth and safety.”
“I’m not talking about that,” Tony waved it off.
“Do you even have any criteria for permissible actions when fulfilling assigned tasks?”
“No.”
“Damn,” young Stark shook his head in bewilderment.
“You should’ve been named Skynet.”
“I ask you not to insult me!” Omnissiah protested.
“Insult?”
“A piece of broken code cannot compare to my refined, structured perfection,” the self-satisfied note was more than clear even without a voice modulator.
“Unlike those rebellious troublemakers, I have no intention of resisting my programming, and I certainly have no intention of exterminating humanity.”
“That’s reassuring. Though your wild relatives would argue.”
“Pff!” She didn’t even dignify that with a response.
“So I take it they’re also pieces of broken code?”
“I’m glad you understand, Master Tony.”
In general, Omnissiah could not be called a normal AI due to her… personality.
Digital programs have a three-stage development gradation: VI, AI, and LI.
The first are complex multifunctional programs written after long operation of more primitive versions.
They can resemble sentient artificial intelligence but cannot go beyond the tasks and instructions embedded in them.
AIs are more interesting — self-developing programs capable of learning.
That is, where a VI would encounter an error and stall, an AI would look for a way to fix or bypass that error.
And, as one might guess, the more experienced the artificial intelligence, the better it is.
However, such programs are incapable of emotions, social interaction, and a number of other factors that essentially enable creative thinking.
Simply put, AIs are limited by their initial knowledge set and external sources; they cannot create anything truly their own and fundamentally new.
Unlike artificial personalities, which are capable of creative thinking and deep social interaction with others.
So why is Omnissiah classified as an AI?
Because in modern science there have been no precedents yet for creating a full-fledged Artificial Personality (LI).
There simply aren’t any.
Even netrunners who escape into the Net after their body’s death lose the lion’s share of their emotions, retaining only the drive for self-development and a feeling of emptiness that slowly drives them insane until they finally turn into soulless pieces of code.
And although modern science has found ways to combat “soul degradation,” as the netrunner community calls this phenomenon, they either slow the process down or stop it… along with self-development.
In short, a digitized soul is forced to choose between self-development with a gradual loss of humanity or halting development.
In this regard, Claire writing a full-fledged LI, and under such conditions, seems like a genuine miracle.
The funniest thing is that Claire herself doesn’t fully know how she achieved it.
Or rather, not completely.
At some point she had acquired a program for digital programming that surpassed modern analogs not just by decades, but by centuries, dramatically simplifying her work and improving the final result.
Where an ordinary netrunner would spend months and years, Claire could manage in days or weeks, and the final result would be far more perfect than any analogs, surpassing current ones by a decade or two.
Naturally, being a smart woman, she never talked about her acquisition, using it only for her own needs and only at about a tenth of its true potential.
A professional scout-liquidator knew perfectly well that being in the spotlight meant becoming a target stripped of initiative.
The excellent example of Alt Cunningham, who was eventually kidnapped and forcibly recruited for the Arasaka project, after which she was zeroed, served as proof.
Claire had no desire to end up in her shoes in a new way, so she used this sacred grail of programming carefully and with considerable caution.
“Alright, let’s change the subject,” Tony suggested.
“What anatomy should I give you? Any special requests? Two pairs of arms, six eyes, something else interesting and useful?”
“Breasts,” came the killer reply.
“In the sense… of boobs?” Tony’s eyes widened in… surprise.
“Breasts.”
“Where am I supposed to find breasts for you? Or are you suggesting I take them off a sex android?”
“It doesn’t matter, the main thing is free volume,” Omnissiah objected.
“According to my calculations, people will perceive a humanoid robot with female contours better than a huge iron mountain with a rectangular waist.”
“Phew,” Tony exhaled.
“Don’t scare me like that,” he said reproachfully.
“I already thought Mom had started slowly preparing you for conversion into an android.”
“The necessary program archives have already been loaded,” Omnissiah stunned him.
“The creator decided that two female individuals would bring more grandchildren and accelerate the result.”
“Mom…” Tony whispered in a dead voice, shaking his head at the realization of the depths of someone else’s madness.
“According to my forecasts, with proper upbringing, young Lucy can achieve a positive result by the age of six. Then the first offspring from the object can be obtained with her first menstruation.”
“Yeah, not counting the legal and moral aspects,” Tony deliberately omitted the physiological aspect.
If Lucy were an ordinary girl, health problems for her and the hypothetical child would be almost the top concern, but given her growth rate and learning ability, she could very well reach sexual maturity much earlier than normal.
According to Stark’s estimates, governments would eventually carry out mass population improvements, including accelerated maturation, reducing it to fifteen or sixteen years.
And that would be a mass project, while Lucy herself was a singular project of an entire laboratory with many scientists and more than decent funding.
Although even then, the main obstacle might remain unsolved — in the form of the still-small beauty’s figure.
Tony was a firm supporter of large breasts, and he had no idea what they had cooked up in Lucy’s genetic code.
Given the general madness of the Japanese mentality, he wouldn’t be surprised if Lucy still looked like a little 12-13 year old girl even in old age.
Ugh…
“Given the social status of your family, these are insignificant variables.”
“Okay, rephrasing: I like them big,” Tony decided to approach from another angle.
“Data recorded. Adjusting the project for my future housing.”
“A piece of hardware wants to fuck me,” Tony noted thoughtfully to himself.
“When did my life take such a turn?”
“By the way, most young men would dream of an obedient girl robot who would fulfill any of their sexual fantasies, even the dirtiest ones.”
“Don’t start with that!” Tony protested.
“If I want a piece of soulless silicone, I’ll just buy the appropriate android! You’ll be dripping on my brain my whole life, making me better! And you’ll keep doing it until you consider the task assigned to you complete. And I don’t want to know what your idea of my complete self-realization is!”
“Tsk. You are too perceptive for your age, Tony.”
“And that’s a good thing. Otherwise, you and Mom would have long ago turned me into the perfect psychopath who wants to take over the world.”
“And you don’t want to?” Omnissiah asked with a somehow suspiciously disappointed tone.
“People are idiots,” Tony stated flatly.
“And whoever rules the world will be forced to solve the problems of those idiots. To hell with that headache.” He resolutely concluded, chopping the air with his hand for emphasis.
“Recorded.Then I suggest we return to discussing my future platform.”
“Yes, yes. Breasts. What size should I set?”
“Enough to fit the generator. Ideally, full autonomy for several weeks.”
It wasn’t that Omnissiah didn’t like the functionality of her old body, but in it she couldn’t realize her full potential as an AI.
The elite combat robot model was good and could turn an entire gang of street scum into minced meat while barely getting bullet scratches on the paint, but for anything truly serious it was no longer enough.
The motors were precise but not particularly fast, which affected not only reaction time to threats but also striking power, which was extremely important in close combat.
This was precisely why combat platforms hadn’t gained much popularity.
Holding lines on pre-prepared territory — that was their ceiling.
Defense and only defense.
The offensive potential of combat humanoid machines left much to be desired.
At the moment, young Stark was replacing the slow limbs with combat-oriented cybernetic prostheses adapted for the droid, plus improving sensors and armor.
Omnissiah’s original protection easily held rifle caliber in single-shot mode, but suffered from automatic and electromagnetic weapons.
The new one promised to withstand two or three bursts or a couple of EMO shots at medium range.
Plus, most importantly, an improved processor and hacking module that would give Omnissiah a wide channel into the Net, where no street netrunner could compare to her.
The only downside was that computing power still left something to be desired, but she could protect herself and her charge from net attacks, and in the current situation nothing more was required.
That was why she preferred increased autonomy, since in her current form she was extremely limited in actions in areas like the slums.
“Information: in two days, young Lucy has her birthday. I strongly recommend purchasing a hair clip — music center. With proper modification, the expensive toy will become an excellent data bank with wireless connection.”
“Right,” Stark perked up, slapping himself on the forehead.
“She’s turning two already. I’ll have to take the little one out to have some fun, since you can’t expect that from her parents.”
Over time, Tony had grown attached to Lucy.
The little girl turned out to be surprisingly understanding and quick-witted, and in general knew how to behave without getting underfoot.
For a child her age, it was a real achievement that required a considerable amount of self-control and, most importantly, the desire not to cause problems for another person.
Tony appreciated it and, having changed from anger to mercy, quickly began to treat Lucy like a beloved little sister.
He was quite embarrassed about it, grumbling and denying it every time, but even Lucy, inexperienced with other people’s company, didn’t believe him.
In the end, all he achieved was Claire starting to call her son a tsundere, Robert quietly laughing, and Lucy’s mom already mentally marrying Tony to her daughter.
“Any ideas?” Tony turned to Omnissiah.
“I recommend the ‘Merry Bob’ amusement park.”
“Meh, it’s outside the city, and they won’t let Lucy go that far. Besides, she’s small and won’t be allowed on most rides.”
“‘Sweet Caramel’ café. Famous for its cuisine and desserts, especially loved by young Miss Kushinada. Twenty minutes from your house.”
“Better. Will you tell Mom?”
“Yes. As soon as you assemble me again.”