Outside the warehouse.
At the same time.
Holy Father Stanislaw Kucharski looked upon a truly horrific scene.
Hundreds of dead, mutilated bodies lay in heaps, staring into the surrounding area with lifeless eyes.
It was a literal field of corpses torn apart by heavy bullets, with shards of flesh and spilled organs floating in pools of their own blood.
“Yet another proof of the sinfulness of technology,” he thought, tightening his grip on the detonator in his hand.
Kucharski had come to Poland as a teenager—fourteen years old and already without a family, friends, or a lover.
Living on the border of the Polish Republic, they were often harassed by wicked people, whether simple traveling bandits from abroad who were accustomed to their own power and impunity back home, or smugglers who decided to quickly line their pockets with the organs of young men and the tender bodies of beautiful girls.
He still clearly remembered the fear that gripped the adults every time strangers approached, the security provided by the high walls of reinforced concrete, and the pride he felt for his brother who stood on watch with weapons and armor purchased collectively.
And he remembered the despair when nothing but ashes and corpses remained of his home—ashes that a single cyberpsycho had turned their home into.
It was then that he realized the truth: such power is unnatural.
It should not belong to humanity.
Then came long wanderings, hunger, nights full of nightmares, and the Temple as the end of the road.
The hollowed-out orphan was welcomed into the church; they washed him, shod him, fed him, and gave him the Word of God, which brought him the peace he so desperately desired.
Years of diligent study, selfless assistance to his fellow man, sincere faith in his own words, and, as the culmination, a personal meeting with Cardinal Lewandowski himself.
Becoming a personal proxy, a loyal man, the one to whom the Cardinal entrusted the most complex, dangerous, and ambiguous tasks.
And he executed them!
He stained his hands with blood, allowed abominable metal into his body, and immersed himself in the filth of the streets, condemning his soul to the eternal torments of Hell—all in the name of saving people from evil.
Man should not possess the power that metal grants him.
He should not replace the body given by God with artificial fabrications, no matter how perfect they might seem.
Is cyberpsychosis not proof of this?
Is it not a sign of human nature fighting against evil?
The Holy Father believed this with all his heart, convincing more and more people with each passing year.
Now…
those for whom there was no turning back to human nature had marched into battle against the embodiment of modern evil.
The witch…
he didn’t believe in magic, and he was skeptical even of the scriptures crafted by church officials, for man is weak.
Only the words of the church founders—the people who stood at the origins of the Faith, those who marched in the name of an idea and human well-being—only their words were unshakeable to him.
But, as the Cardinal had once told him, “People love fairy tales very much. So much so, that they have turned them into reality.” He understood what he meant.
Netrunners are witches and sorcerers; wild rogue AIs are evil spirits and demons hunting for human souls.
Just another parallel proving the utter sinfulness of the current age.
And here he was, leading the faithful but stained into battle—a battle against heretics who had sold their humanity for power.
Just like dozens of his brothers and sisters all across Warsaw.
He was already about to activate the detonator, as the timer was counting down the final seconds of His Warriors’ lives.
It was a pity, since the data gathered in the witch’s lair could have greatly aided the search for her accomplices, but alas, her death was more important.
“Huh?” the Holy Father blinked in surprise, looking down at his missing arm.
“What?” He stared in astonishment at a tall, brown-haired man with a masculine face, wearing a coat.
Indifferently leaving the fanatic’s decapitated body behind him, Robert holstered his loyal weapon and pulled out bio-grenades instead.
Standard issue, not the highest quality, but modified to cover a larger area.
The perfect solution against an ill-protected crowd of ragtags.
Walking through the chaos of agonizing people, stepping over corpses and the dying, the old operative braced for the worst.
The defense was breached, and his wife was far from a frontline operative.
She was experienced, capable of holding her own and surprising the enemy, but first and foremost she was a master of the net, hacking, silent elimination, and viruses.
Direct combat was his job, not hers.
“Hey, honey,” a bloodstained, slightly battered, but alive Claire greeted him.
Her armor had a few dents and scratches; her left arm was clearly dislocated and covered in someone else’s blood—seemingly forced into hand-to-hand combat at the very end—but that was it.
She was simply sitting on a destroyed robot, wiping a deactivated thermal knife against a scrap of clothing from an enemy she had killed.
“Status?”
“Everything is falling apart,” Claire replied, returning the knife to its shoulder sheath and actively typing something on a computer.
“Someone is taking over the entire Warsaw network, the Harbinger has been destroyed, and operatives are being crushed all over the city by both the military and unknowns, under the cover of the riots and with the support of the holy rollers.”
“Militech,” he shared his data.
“Makes sense,” Claire nodded.
“But honestly, it doesn’t matter. We need to leave the city, and then the country.”
“Skalk will hold out,” Robert objected.
He didn’t understand the overall situation as well as his wife, who was tracking the bigger picture, but he didn’t want to abandon everything they had built over years of hard work.
Here, they were at the top of the hierarchy of a European country.
They were the elite with numerous connections and resources; all they needed to do was erase their tracks, change their identities, and settle into inconspicuous but promising positions.
Skalk was too valuable as the ruler of the country; they wouldn’t touch him, and reaching him was an incredibly difficult task even for corporations.
True, he would weaken and lose many strings of power, but he would hold, after which he would start pulling his loyal people closer to the throne, restoring his former level of control.
They would have to compromise on their previous level of freedom, but overall they could maintain their current standing, preserving what they had built.
On the other hand, fleeing meant a backwards country with high levels of corruption and anarchy, a mountain of problems, changing their appearances, and losing their resource base along with a number of valuable devices—but most importantly, losing their stable position in society.
Here, they had every chance of maintaining their status simply by surviving the first couple of weeks of chaos, after which the local elites would evict the outsiders and begin restoring order.
They might have to bend the knee to Arasaka, but the Starks didn’t give a damn about Poland or the fate of the passive biomass called “the people.” A couple of weeks of risk versus several months, or even a year, of an unstable position with the loss of everything except finances looked all too attractive, even to a cautious man like Robert.
“He’ll hold out,” Claire confirmed his conclusions.
“And then he’ll sell our asses to his new masters. Not because he wants to, but because he won’t have a choice. That’s exactly why we must…” Claire didn’t get to finish; she abruptly ducked to the side, throwing a grenade.
Robert wasn’t far behind, drawing his revolvers in less than a second and firing six shots at the new adversary.
Incredibly, none of the enemies died.
They were wounded, but not taken out of the fight.
“Surrender,” a voice rang out from beneath a helmet.
“Robert and Claire Stark, also known as Oleg and Larisa Bykov, you are surrounded. Surrender, and your lives will be spared.”
“Ours?” Claire guessed.
“Ours would be speaking Russian,” Robert countered, reloading his weapon.
He didn’t believe in fairy tales about sparing lives, knowing perfectly well how such outfits operated.
“Same escape routes?”
“The tunnel, then. I’ll hold them off while you open it. See you there,” and without listening to his wife’s objections, he activated his Sandevistan and rushed into battle.
They had been expected.
The enemy knew for certain that a bunch of fanatics, even well-prepared ones, wouldn’t be able to defeat even Claire alone, but they would exhaust her, neutralize the security systems with their own bodies, and lower her guard.
The calculation succeeded; no matter how experienced Claire and Robert were, they simply couldn’t have expected a squad sent personally for their heads.
Especially Claire, since, having access to information, she had tracked the military movements and knew that their nearest unit was half an hour away.
There was no reason to fear a new influx of combat bums with Robert by her side; he could slaughter such opponents by the thousands, even if not quickly.
But a full-fledged special forces squad—that was a problem.
Even at first glance, they possessed advanced defense methods, a whole bunch of implants, and electromagnetic or smart weaponry.
And while Robert didn’t lose much effectiveness against the former—he just needed to keep moving constantly—going up against smart guns with self-guided bullets meant taking a serious risk.
“Fire!” Claire heard the unknown commander’s order while she herself, biting her lip, rushed toward the tunnel.
Once inside, she still had to neutralize a security system composed of mines, lasers, and automated turrets that had no network connection.
And that took time.
Damned time that they didn’t have!
Approaching the gate, she initiated an emergency opening procedure that required only twenty seconds.
Yes, this would disable more than half of the tunnel’s defense systems, but it didn’t matter; the main surprise in the form of explosives to collapse the tunnel would remain intact.
The only thing Claire regretted was the small number of escape routes, but she could do nothing about it; circumstances forced her to be right here, almost in the center, where everything had been built up long ago.
“Robert, look ou…!” turning back to her husband where explosions, screams, and gunshots echoed, intending to give him the signal, Claire felt something quietly thud against her armor.
Alas, even her reaction time wasn’t enough.
Claire was an extremely powerful netrunner who knew how to counter remote hacking.
It wasn’t that difficult: you just had to disconnect all your implants from the external network, and even the most powerful netrunner wouldn’t be able to breach them.
Yes, this lowered their performance metrics, could lead to an accumulation of errors, and rendered her cyberdeck utterly useless, but security was worth it.
However, methods to combat this had been invented a long time ago—a closely placed, pre-configured transmitter that acts as an access point upon contact, and that’s it; no tricks besides your own skill and computing power would help anymore.
And it was exactly such a miniature transmitter that a stealthily approaching operative attached to Claire.
“Gotcha…” she heard a whisper inside her own head before a short circuit convulsed her body.
No!
a single thought thrashed within her.
“There’s a first time for everything,” she heard a smug voice say before her consciousness plunged into darkness.
Two weeks later.
The Stark home.
“I’ll stop by a bit later,” Alicia said gently, running her hand over Tony’s head, looking at little Tony with worry.
Since the riots in which the boy’s parents died, he had been strangely quiet.
Previously a cheerful and active child, he seemed to have turned off all his emotions, becoming more like an animated doll than a living human, sending a chill even through the worldly Ryu.
And Alicia’s behavior was all the more surprising for it.
Only Lucy managed to draw the boy out of this state, bringing a faint, sorrowful smile to his face.
“…” Tony didn’t answer, continuing to scan the living room of his own home with a blank stare.
Without waiting for a reply, Alicia went to the owners’ study; she needed to find the boy’s documents and enter the access codes received with the wills of both Starks.
Perhaps leaving Tony alone in such a state was a bad idea, but Mrs. Kushinada had gone through a similar experience in her life, knowing perfectly well that at first, you really just want to be alone.
Simply to sort out your thoughts.
Tony, scanning his own home with a hollow gaze once more, went to his room.
Two weeks had passed since the riots in which the Stark couple died.
Two weeks during which the streets of Warsaw were plunged into literal warfare of everyone against everyone.
Gangs, sensing the weakened influence of the Harbinger, began running rampant; all available mercenaries suddenly got jobs protecting wealthy citizens and their property, shooting anything and everything that crossed an invisible line; the military fought everyone, including each other.
Those who believed the deception and those who saw through it, albeit late, spilled each other’s blood single-mindedly, sparing neither themselves nor others, unhesitatingly using heavy weaponry within the city limits, quickly pushing the civilian death toll past a thousand.
No one knew how many had died during the two weeks of fighting, but the morgues were overflowing.
Tony himself…didn’t believe it.
He simply couldn’t believe that his parents were dead.
He knew little about their past, but the skills his father and mother displayed during his training spoke clearly of their combat experience and the abilities of seasoned cutthroats.
And now they were dead?
He found it hard to believe, but…days passed, and they never showed up.
At some point, you just get tired of hoping, exhausting yourself with worry, fear, and hope, burning out from the inside…eventually resigning yourself to reality.
And so, Tony resigned himself.
I need to recall Omnissiah, the thought came to him.
As soon as the riots subsided slightly, never quite reaching their neighborhood, the young Stark had sent his loyal robo-nanny to look for his father and mother, hoping she would help them get home.
Well, the upgrades Omnissiah received shortly before the incident had fully proven themselves, turning her into a formidable combat force that easily traversed even the hottest conflict zones.
But she never found the Stark couple, though she kept looking.
Tony’s steps led him to the workshop where the communications station sat.
A quickly assembled shortwave radio, boosted by repeaters that Omnissiah herself attached to antennas across the city, ensured uninterrupted communication with each other, even when all other systems went down.
Now he would use it to bring the last member of his family back home.
“Omnissiah…” had Stark been in a better state, he would have flinched at how alien his own voice sounded to him, “…return.”
“Acknowledged, Master Tony,” an immediate reply followed.
“Has anything become known about the Creators?”
“…no,” he replied, his voice trembling slightly.
“…” no response followed.
And what was there to say anyway?
What do you say to a child who has lost his parents?
That everything will be fine?
Perhaps, since the Stark couple had looked after their offspring, securing him with enough money to last for many years, with plenty left over for his grandchildren.
But who actually thinks about their own well-being when losing a loved one?
That was the whole horror of it—you think about yourself last, as a deeply secondary matter, while all your thoughts and feelings are directed toward processing one simple fact.
They are gone.
You will never meet the people dear to you again; they will never speak to you, hug you, scold you, or spend time with you.
They will no longer be in your life; all you have left of them are memories, or at best, some keepsake.
That’s it.
Only this, for long, long years, until death comes for you too.
Some find solace in religion, believing that they are simply out there somewhere, and that your separation is temporary, but that wasn’t Tony’s case.
For a child, his parents are the whole world; they are the anchor and support, the foundation upon which his entire future life is constructed.
It is impossible to put into words how terrifying it is for a child to suddenly lose their family. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
Even adults, prepared by time itself for this moment, take the death of their parents extremely hard and with great difficulty, despite the experience of lived years and an understanding of the torment experienced by their loved ones trapped in collapsing bodies that cause them pain.
A child…
a child simply loses their entire world.
An incredible stress after which it is impossible to remain the same, even with a child’s highly malleable psyche.
Setting the radio aside, Tony slumped helplessly into a chair.
A simple plastic chair that looked almost provocative in a workshop worth millions of eddies.
He scanned the empty workshop once more, in the futile hope of seeing his father working there, or his mother standing in the doorway, but just like hundreds of times before—no-thing.
Only him, the emptiness, and the dust accumulated over two weeks.
And then…his gaze locked onto his project.
I completely forgot about it, Tony noted to himself, stunned.
The work he had labored over for more than a year, a project that promised answers to the questions tormenting him, something that would have divided his life into “before” and “after.” It had seemed so important, significant, and interesting, but now…now he just didn’t care.
Maybe it will distract me?
a faint hope flickered to stop thinking and remembering, even if just for a short time, to escape this emptiness.
Slowly, like a man drained of all strength, Tony rose from the chair and shuffled toward the netrunner chair with the helmet attached to it.
He calmly connected all the cables, activated the necessary devices, settled in comfortably, put on the helmet, and gave the command to activate.
Ah…
right.
Mom and Dad never fully tested it, a spark of an anxious thought flashed, but went out just as quickly.
Whatever, I don’t care, he decided, closing his eyes.
Right now, the prospect of death was perceived by him as an eternal sleep with no feelings or emotions, which at this moment felt like the source of his suffering.
Like an eternal rest in a dream, when all the daytime anxieties and hardships are left behind.
The buildup of voltage, the final seconds before activation, the final scan of the brain structure, the smart program compiling new parameters, a sudden power surge, and the subsequent AGONY.
“Khh-h-h…” a painful gasp escaped the child’s throat, as his jaw, locked in a painful spasm, refused to open.
His back arched at a dangerous angle, his fingernails dug forcefully into the upholstery of the chair, tearing it apart, and capillaries burst in his eyes…but Tony didn’t care.
He…saw.
Saw memories.
Felt.
Felt himself waking up from a long sleep that had lasted a long ten years.
Felt his mind and personality unfold like a beautiful flower, gaining wholeness and completion.
Tony Stark became himself…and simultaneously something more.
…..
Ryu Kushinada.
A year later.
Netrunner training center near Warsaw.
“The final checks on the reactor and the structure will be finished in three days, but we can already state that construction is complete. If everything goes smoothly, we can launch the project in a week or a week and a half, as soon as the consumables and specialists are delivered,” an old Japanese woman in a strict office suit reported.
“Good,” Ryu nodded dryly.
“And your impressions, Suzuki-san?”
“Excellent,” the woman replied just as sparsely.
“I am even surprised that, despite all the turmoil, our Polish partners were able to fulfill all their obligations.”
“Nothing surprising,” he shrugged.
“Whoever came to power wouldn’t want to cross Arasaka, and Skalk, who managed to keep his seat, couldn’t afford to do so even before; now… now we are the only counterweight keeping him from turning into a complete puppet.”
“To be honest, Ryu-sama, when you decided to stay despite the events of a year ago, it seemed like a mistake to me. Now, your decision opens up new prospects for our company.”
“You simply didn’t possess the full scope of information, Suzuki-san,” Ryu replied in the same dry tone, though allowing a proud smile to break across his face.
“In any case, the complex will be ready soon, and we must finalize the first batch of students. Did you bring the lists?”
“Yes,” she said, opening a file with personal records on her tablet and placing it on her boss’s desk.
“A total of thirty candidates, but two-thirds of them will be filtered out at the medical check stage due to poor health.”
“Life on the streets benefits no one,” Ryu agreed, picking up the tablet and coldbloodedly scrolling through the list containing photos of the children.
Average faces, some showing signs of malnutrition, others looking ill even on the surface, but he was interested in their brains.
Everything else can be replaced or improved, but not the mind.
“Good, I am pleased with your work, Suzuki-san. All that’s left is to wait for our dear doctor, and we can begin,” Kushinada concluded, leaning back in his chair with satisfaction.
Following the weakening of the government’s power and the new freedoms granted to criminals and opportunistic politicians, they had been able to significantly expand their agreements with the president’s apparatus.
This included the recruitment of test subjects and their survival rates during the training process.
Although last year’s upheavals had made Arasaka’s management nervous—primarily regarding the funds already invested in the project—in the end, everything turned to their advantage.
The chaos that began in the state administration due to the almost total elimination of the most critical oversight body in the hands of the head of government had a severe impact on the stability of the ruling elite’s positions, forcing them to compromise, seek allies, and most importantly, make unpleasant but necessary decisions.
For instance, securing protection through mercenary specialists from the Arasaka corporation, since the current military had compromised itself, and netrunners in state service had been wiped out almost entirely, miserably failing to protect the government servers.
This, in turn, had untied the hands of Ryu himself, who received colossal support from the central office, where they saw non-illusory prospects for seizing the largest shadow market in Europe, gaining a bridgehead right next door to SovOil.
Naturally, management couldn’t help but be interested in the background of the events that had transpired, which is why the best hounds the corporation possessed arrived from Japan.
Three months of searching, three months of gathering fragments of truth, as a result of which the puzzle of past events revealed the full picture.
Militech.
Arasaka’s main competitor and enemy had made its move, aiming to achieve several goals at once with its action.
First, to warn all European countries about the consequences of cooperating with the Japanese zaibatsu, loudly and vividly announcing the use of military force in the event of any agreements with Arasaka.
Second, the theft of data from government servers, including the theory behind the methodology of raising netrunners.
Fortunately for Ryu and the entire corporation, he had transferred a simplified version to the Polish government, and moreover, without the documentation regarding the necessary implants and equipment.
Without a doubt, first-class netrunners could be raised using them, but they would be a far cry from what HIS project would bring into the world.
And third, much to Ryu’s surprise, the elimination of a portion of the Harbinger’s operatives.
Not all, far from all—fewer than ten people across the entire organization of several thousand operational staff—but they included the Starks, whom Ryu knew.
What’s more, the strangest part was the mandatory destruction of the bodies, which…
didn’t add up.
Arasaka analysts racked their brains trying to understand why Militech—a corporation that had practically swallowed up all the states formerly comprising the USA—would eliminate a dozen people in Europe who had no connection to America, Militech, or anyone else.
The only common thread found among all the slain was a dark past and veteran status within the organization, but that was all.
And Ryu didn’t like it, primarily due to the presence of the Stark child in his house.
Too…
too suspicious and unclear, and everything unclear and suspicious carries a threat.