12 Miles Below

The mite terminal was embedded inside a small cave halfway up a cliffside in the middle of nowhere. How Wrath knew about it, I wasn’t going to ask.

This time around the mites went with a hidden laboratory theme. A human one at least. Or it gave off the impression of someone who thought they knew humans had tried to come up with ideas. There were chairs inside the hidden room, some made with five legs, others looked more like morphed stools, welded together seamlessly into the image of a chair. Desks where there too, not always level surface, along with monitor screens displaying gibberish. Lots of user interface linework, graphs, numbers, scrolling letters, everything needed to make the place look like a crazy Reacher's home away from home. Odd place considering there was no way up here except to climb the cliffside. Wasn’t even visible from the ground.

Which made the couch at the back of the cavern all the more strange. Especially that it did look to be the most functional and comfortable thing inside this room. The entire place was animated as well, light blinking around while a large bundle of thicker cables connected the center mite terminal to all the lab equipment and desks surrounding it.

White granite tiles made of smooth stone were the bedrock for the large central pillar, to which Wrath walked up and tapped the terminal’s side a few times, as if poking a sleeping beast.

“It is operational. Functionality at eighty three percent. Some ports lead to disconnected ends, however there is one strong connection directly into the general digital sea.” She walked around the terminal and I followed behind, watching her find a small port.

A cable was connected from the palm of her hand to the input, and all the screens flashed with yellow and red. “Connection speed is adequate for our purpose. I am inscribing two soul fractals into the system.”

“Ready?” I asked, getting comfortable on a seat I looted from the lab and scooted over closer to the terminal side.

Wrath nodded. “I will keep in contact with you through text messages. Once you’ve reached the archive, communication between us will be lost. I will guard the cavern entrance and make sure your physical bodies do not come into danger while you are on the other side. You remember all the steps to take in the digital sea, yes?”

Father’s voice grunted from the necklace I carried. “We’ve prepared. We know what to do. Begin the mission.”

The terminals flashed some more text, then all turned green. “Connection established. Return safely once the mission is complete.” Wrath said.

The soul fractals she’d inscribed inside the mite terminal were clear and easy to see with my soul sight. I stretched a tendril out, taking a seat inside. Father must have been doing the same to the other fractal, since I felt his presence follow into the same server the terminal existed in.

Both of us materialized inside the digital realm, and what a strange landscape this was. The water was still there, only the geometric shapes that had served as landmarks for the servers Wrath had us train in were not quite so clear cut. Instead, there was more solid ground than water here, and all the geometry looked far more jagged and organic, like metal chunks with some general form to them. Dim blue crystals sprouted from the majority, forming statues and shapes. Weapons like spears, swords, hammers and others, wielded by deformed people. All of it shattered, as if caught in an internal explosion frozen in time.

Very eerie.

“Advance until you find the exit gate.” Wrath said, voice ever present within, followed by a ping showing the direction.

Father strode past me, armor appearing around him same as it had in his life. I followed behind, wondering what the actual digital sea would look like. I'd only seen isolated servers so far.

The world grew more unhinged, twisting directions and shifting gravity until we reached what looked to be the center of the terminal. We hadn't run into anything, the mite terminal had been devoid of enemies or friends. Nothing but shattered geo-organic shapes. Until we reached a vast abyss surrounding by a hexagon gateway. Crystalline matter broke off periodically, floating around lazily in the water murk, sinking into it. More growing like tumors on the gate edges, only to break anew.

“This is the gate.” Wrath said. “From there, you will need to be cautious and quiet. I’ve mapped and prepared the closest connection to the archives.”

"Do we just step inside?" I asked, "Because last time I fell down into an abyss like this, it wasn't a great tourist experience. And the guide was also pretty cranky the whole way."

Father scoffed, but kept his gaze down through the gate.

"Yes. You will need to jump into the gate. It will handle the rest. I am unsure the second jump through an abyss will be more pleasent, however I believe you are a big strong boy and can handle it."

"Cathida teach you that one?" I asked.

"She did. Why?"

"I'll need to have a talk with her." I grumbled.

"I would recommend against that. The engram is very argumentative and will not listen to logic or reason. I have tried multiple times."

Picturing Wrath trying to negotiate with a terrorist like Cathida was bringing a little smile to my cheek. Poor girl, not understanding how perfectly clear logic wasn't compelling and actively making things worse. All the while Cathida would be having a ball with it.

Father took a jump off the ledge, weapon out. I followed behind him. Instead of falling down, we found ourselves dragged up by the current, falling backwards, up and away. The gate wasn't in front of us at all, no, the hexagon gate had been just one of many. Looking up, I could see them continue forward like an eternal mirror. It sucked us in and spat us out into another world.

No landmarks anywhere here, only millions of smaller specs of life floating with us, moving with their own mission. The hexagon gate under us rapidly faded away, while the current carried everything away. This was to be expected, the current had been Wrath’s setup. All we had to do was act dead and float along with the path.

I’d have thought this would have taken us a few minutes at most. Turns out it took an hour. An hour of just hanging limp, floating in the current, while all kinds of small programs filtered around.

The sea was vast, looking more like sporadic servers that we flew in between. Programs of many different shapes and sizes flowed by, some absolutely massive, looking more like moving landmasses, with hundreds of smaller programs living there, floating about it, like a tiny village. Most of that world didn't notice us, or didn't care. We outright bumped into some of the larger beasts, and nothing turned hostile on us at all.

Wrath had explained before that many of these programs didn't even understand any world beyond the digital sea, or had any stake in the great war. Reality was a distant concept to them. If by chance they had paid attention and knew we were humans, they were far more likely to avoid us or consider us novelty, rather than an enemy.

Programs directly under the pale lady's command were rather rare, compared to how vast the sea here was. Wrath had been reasonably sure we wouldn't run into issues at this stage, even if we were the most exposed so far. No place to hide, only vast stretches of water in every direction and thousands of smaller programs wandering around on their own journey. If there were programs under Relinquished's command, they would glow violet.

Life moved on, and we never spotted a single violet light anywhere. Maybe I didn't have the right impression of machines the first time around. The ones hunting down human were a tiny minority as it turns out, the few that both knew reality outside the digital sea existed and had a shell to occupy. It just so happens that they had the strongest AI entity on the planet at their head, with exception to the mites.

But mites didn't travel in the digital sea, they had an entire different network they lived in. We flew right above, the distant seabed barely visible every now and then in the murk.

Confusing neighbors I suppose. Wrath had been on the other side of that for a few minutes and told us it wasn't worth even thinking about right now. That would be a completely different world to traverse.

“This is the machine archive?” I asked.

The current had swept us closer to the ground level of the sea, and then continued to push us at speed across the alien topology, up until it suddenly faded off, letting us sink to the new abyssal plane, before which was the entrance to the machine archives. Or at least one of many,

and this one clearly not taken care of.

It had been made to look like a massive palace, once. Now, it looked more like two massive hands had dug into the center of the structure and pulled apart, ripping both the ornate stonework as well as the very ground itself.

“Take care inside, boy.” Father said quietly as we made our way into the dead ruins. “The structure used to operate with security systems. Some may still be active.”

“Just like going out on an expedition. Reminds me of home.” I muttered, keeping my senses sharp. The palace itself wasn’t really a palace but more the remains of a highly well organized server stack, complete with many layers of firewalls and guardians. Over time, things were mothballed, and then left behind completely as the rest of the world moved on. The sea eroded all, and the parts of the palace that still worked connected to nothing, eternally working in isolation from the rest.

Thankfully, the place didn't seem to have any visitors, guards or staff. It was outright abandoned. Whatever guards would have originally patrolled around here had long ago been eaten up by denizens of the sea searching for spare processing power. They might have held off the invaders for some time, but eventually they'd all been eaten up and the palace ransacked.

So we had little problem passing from silent room to room, the architecture here looking outright regal, if not for the cracks and broken seams. Despite the lack of care, things were at least still neatly organized, up until the centerpiece of the palace.

A chasm went down into the ground.

No need to make any bets we'd need to go down there to find what we wanted.

Father didn’t answer, eyes looking for footholds to start scaling down. I simply took a step off, floating down slowly. This world was still digital, even if gravity and other bits of reality were harder to manipulate the further away they were from our base of operations. They weren’t completely immune to our meddling.

Father shrugged and followed behind, sinking into the blackness with me, both of us keeping an eye down to our feet, making sure when the ground would appear we’d be ready.

I almost missed watching the sides of the smooth cliffside, realizing what was there the whole time. Data packets. Almost like a library, the sides of the cliff being the shelves stocking books, only they were all digital. My senses passed over a few, feeling flickers and fragments of what the data could contain. Meta tags, bits of quickly revealed information on each. Not much but enough to tell what the archive was supposed to store. Like the titles of books, except extended out past the more generic titles.

Most were completely useless junk. Things like weather data, seismic activity, build reports and other mundane projects, all from centuries ago. Others felt like more relevant data I could use, casualty reports from old wars, deployment strategies, digital warfare results, seized assets. All locked and trapped of course, except that Wrath had provided every key she had on hand, along with lockpicks to deal with the rest.

I yanked those archive files out of their mooring as we floated by, tendrils of thoughts greedily throwing them into the pipeline feeding back to our home server. I wasn’t a barbarian of course, I did it quite gently, scanning through and copying the information delicately before returning the archive to it’s place without so much as disturbing the dust. Wrath had trained me well for this.

No idea when any of this would be useful, but knowing how Relinquished dealt with casualties from a few centuries ago in some obscure war would possibly shine a light on how she operated on a large enough scale.

Anything that was left open had long ago been corrupted, the unguarded storage space used by critters looking for temporary shelter. They'd nestle into an archive drawer, eat up the data so they could fill in their own, recuperate their resources and then continue to strike out for the next home, leaving junk behind. Some hadn't even left, I could feel their eyes watching us sink past. Curious. Cautious.

The further we sank, the more the archive began to look rusted and ancient. Coral started to grow around the archive bins, corrupted data mutated on it's own. Programs down here were also started to be a little restless and less organized. There seemed to be a small war happening between archive programs made to maintain the area and some kind of corrupted variant that was trying to do the same thing. Both sides viewed the other as intruders and went at it.

They turned their attention to watch Father and I sink by, a few nipping at our heels but we were far too big for them to do anything. The two sides seemed to agree to ignore us and continue squabbling and fighting for shelf space. Like tiny crabs scurrying around, jumping from rock to rock, and hiding away as our shadow passed by.

Geometry down here was steadily getting more warped, looking less streamlined and more organic. Dust had started to coalesces into actual physical parts. Reminded me of snow piling up and turning to solid ice. Holes had appeared later within that fragmented matter, as different programs snuck into the archives and quickly tried to find places to hide from the war happening between the custodian bots. Usually by making burrows to sneak through. Entire tunnel systems shared by multiple different species of sub-intelligent programs that survived to replicate. An entire ecosystem. Some working together, others opposed.

Thankfully we were giants compared to anything here, and all the local wildlife didn’t want to mess with us.

Further down, the floor finally appeared into view, dim and lit only by the glowing coral growing wild. To find anything of note, I had to actively brush the sandy bottom to search for lockboxes. Gone was the tight organization of the upper layers, everything down here looked to have been collapsed in, or knocked free, sinking down to be buried here at the bottom.

Remains of larger programs littered the area, skeletal, still somehow functioning enough to fend off the ecosystem attacking it. Or rather, more becoming a fixed location where smaller programs found safety and shade while the dead program’s defense systems attacked in predictable patterns they’d learned to avoid. Those dead corpses were still big enough to sting if father and I got too close. These must be the remains of the palace guardians, dying long ago and floating down to the very bottom of the archives.

He simply crushed one with a grunt of will as it had the audacity to mindlessly bite at his arm as he passed by. The skeletal thing shattered into hundreds of brittle bits, and thousands of smaller programs fled from the bones.

“This is it. The location Wrath specified. History of the empire and protofeathers was left behind here.” I said.

Father looked around the murky depths. “Where?” He asked, not spotting anything.

“Burried in the slit.” I said, kneeling down and wiping off the grim by my feet. Under it, I could feel the weak return ping of a sealed archive file, perfectly preserved inside it’s casing, even if everything around the case had degraded and been eaten away. Wrath’s set of cyber warfare keys made short work of the lock and the archive file happily opened up, blinking green. Despite the wild cancerous evolution of the ecosystem around it, the skill required to break the encryptions couldn't be stumbled upon by random chance. All these centuries later, the ecosystem had simply given up trying to get inside.

Within this particular seal, tags revealed the result of some fight with an imperial army, around the fifth strata, near a few landmarks that had long since vanished from the world by now. I downloaded the thing and resealed the archive.

“Better get to work, keep me covered.” I said, as I started looking around to see if I could narrow down something more general.

Father nodded, walking behind me, keeping watch. Programs scuttled away, hiding from his sight as we walked through. I found quite a lot of interesting trivia here as I hunted for data. Information intermingled with protofeather hunting, human cities that needed to be wiped out, digital fights and locations where Feathers had been destroyed.

Then I started finding information about the emperor.

Getting hotter now. Mostly mentions of possible staging grounds in old campaigns, and what looked to be predictive models trying to pin down where mankind's emperor would show up. More evidence that whoever or whatever the emperor of the imperials had been, they were strong enough to have the machines worried.

More archives opened up as I searched the nearby era, grabbing bits of interesting info and keeping my movements slow and steady. Didn’t want to wake anything up here. A few productive hours passed, before we ran into a problem.

It wasn't the local environment turning hostile, no everything down here was too tiny to really give us issues. Or too dead.

Nor did anything go out to call for help. Wrath explained that everything here was far too mutated and outdated to reconnect to the world at large. Or they might have all completely forgotten the outside world exists, given how hyperspecialized the programs floating around were.

No, trouble came with two feet, two hands and a metal halo. Since both of us were hyper vigilant to our surroundings, we caught his traces first before he noticed us. So there was still some luck in the world at least.

It started with footprints in the dust. That told us we weren't alone. Following behind, zipping from rock to rock, we eventually reached the owner.

White armor, short cut black hair, an angular face that was flawless. Small reading glasses with violet eyes behind them. Which was ridiculous for so many different reasons I don’t know how to start. Feathers really were on a different level when it comes to eccentric.

At least, for someone looking through ancient machine archives, he looked the part of a librarian. And that was armor he wore, unlike other examples I’d seen. So maybe he wasn’t as ridiculous as the rest.

He was picking through information from the protofeathers, given where he was in the archive, likely some kind of caretaker. Wrath hadn’t informed us of this, she’d told us nobody had looked into those records in centuries. Had her own recent access caused issues? Why else would a Feather be patrolling around this dead place?

No. Looking more closely at the Feather’s movements, I could tell this wasn’t a routine visit - nor a sanctioned one.

Thieves recognize thieves. And that Feather was absolutely doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing.

I could detect his attacks on the locks and systems, taking his time to wiggle the key around until the locks opened up and squashing any alerts as they came out, just in case one of them still somehow connected back somewhere. Same thing I had been doing, even down to making sure the archives didn’t look moved or opened up once he was done.

Wrath had said she hadn’t known they existed before. The first generation had been known as a single Feather named by Relinquished herself, a proof of concept that was killed in action after years of being a champion. He had been replaced with the more robust and fixed up second generation, in far higher quantity. No one had reason to doubt that explanation.

Except, apparently, this new Feather.

“We need to deal with him.” Father hissed at my side, as we both hid behind a particularly large hill of solidified dust. Programs of various sizes had eaten up enough holes that we both had a small window to peek at him through. “He will find us eventually.”

“You want me to introduce you to him? Quit being shy and you do it.” I hissed back.

Father growled, then took me literally, eyes narrowing down on his target. I knew that look, he was about to wallop the enemy into dust. I willed a longsword into existence a moment after, readying myself to follow behind.

The Feather noticed the hostility somehow. He recovered one more file, paused and stood straight up as if alerted. Looking around him with suspicion.

Father remained hidden, waiting. The Feather gave another few cautious glances, then locked the archive stone up with a blind hand, violet eyes kept alert and searching around.

A ping was sent out. I snapped out my hand, catching it with a vice grip, like teeth. I mutated the return and sent it back, making it return the expected junk within this archive. Father nodded at the work. He was the one who was good with the swords, but when it came to doing support work like this, I was the better qualified one while Wrath wasn’t here to hold our hands.

The Feather frowned when the ping returned no useful results. Another dozen pings were sent, and I consumed them all as quickly as they were sent out. I thought I’d gotten away with it, except the last one must have been messed with, or triggered some kind of trap, since that caused him to snap his gaze straight to where we hid.

“Who’s there?” The Feather asked. “Show yourself.”

Father took the request and accepted. Walked slowly into the open ground, appearing from the dim murk of the dark. A knife materialized into his hand, spinning idly.

“Humans?” The Feather asked, puzzled. “No. Impossible. Signal duping? How?”

Father’s spare hand reached out, fingers stretched out, and closed. The Feather’s eyes widened for a single moment before he leaped backwards with great instinct. The world shook, an invisible sledgehammer of willpower outright collapsed the space the Feather had been in a moment ago.

Father tutted, annoyed, snapping his fingers to the side. A bow materialized, white and sinister looking. He drew the string, one foot sliding backwards into stance. An arrow appeared from the aether, pointing straight at Father’s heart.

“Explain yourself, or I will open fire.” The Feather said.

Father twisted his knife into a defensive stance and wordlessly sprinted forward. The Feather leapt into action just as silently, firing out three or four arrows all within moments of each other. Maybe in the real world that would have put Father in a hard spot, but here he moved as quick as thought.

The Feather quickly realized he was in far more danger than he had any reason to have thought.

With alacrity, he leaped further backwards, continually opening fire on Father, rapidly becoming more desperate when his technique simply failed to slow down or even bother Father. He rapidly approached, slapping away arrows with hand and knife, utter contempt in the movement. I could feel the Feather send a tendril of thought out, data streaming out, a message help. Straight up it went, seeking to escape the abyss we were in.

Not gonna happen. I brought in my own will into the fight, reaching an invisible hand out for the emergency message and dissolving it into its components. Ripping it apart before it got some much as halfway out of here. The surrounding ecosystem easily tore into the wounded parts, consuming the rest.

The Feather narrowed his eyes, head twisting my direction. He didn’t get more time, as Father closed the remaining gap, hand reaching out again.

The enemy struck back, his own willpower flaring up and launching out. He’d clearly been expecting this to buy him some time or at least do some kind of damage. The attack hit an iron wall and outright broke apart, as Father continued forward as inevitable as an avalanche, completely unaffected. Shock passed through the Feather’s features, before he was driven back by a series of jabs I was all to familiar with. Probing strikes to first determine opponent reactions and movements.

After which, the more lethal techniques would start to rain down. Father was already starting the mechanical process of breaking down an opponent. Feather or not, a meal was a meal.

There was some change to the technique, since the Feather was fighting not only with a massively unfamiliar weapon to anything we’d seen or fought before, but the enemy also wove in gusts of willpower with a flick of his finger. That forced him to improvise on the moves, which would have slowed the fight down had it been anyone else.

But it wasn't. If that was all the Feather could throw out, he’d be a match for Wrath but certainly not against the original angry surface knight.

More messages of help were being sent out, controlled and calm at first but slowly turning frantic. I intercepted each, breaking them apart. The Feather was too preoccupied trying to survive against Father to come searching for me, though he must have realized that the only victory conditions left for him now were to find some way to shut me up.

He'd need to find me first.

Another mass set of pings were sent out. I took the challenge head on, multi-tasking, mutating his pings while also gagging his emergency beacons. He got me again with whatever he was doing with those pings despite my best effort. No idea what it was, even the second time around. All those pings looked gods damned identical.

Cheating or not, the Feather found me.

Eyes locked on my location for a moment, he twisted, firing a few sloppy arrows in point blank range at his current opponent, just to give him a moment to sprint straight at me.

He got his chance and committed completely to it.

That was a mistake.

A pillar of metal and random data ruptured from the murky ground, directly into his path, old dust billowing into the water, completely obscuring the battle. He wasn’t fast enough to dodge my meddling, slamming headfirst into it. I’d have thought he’d do some kind of Feather scrapshit to dodge around, but no, this tactic had proved surprisingly effective. Father’s hand was one heartbeat behind, grabbing the enemy by the back of his neck and slamming him again into the pillar.

He yanked the stunned Feather off the pillar, twisting him around at the same moment, before grabbing his throat, holding tight. The other hand was already midway through stabbing the Feather's gut.

The Feather twisted in Father’s grasp, curling on himself to avoid the attack on his right side, and kicking out with both feet against the knight’s chestplate. It was strong and quick enough to loosen the grip. Not fast enough to avoid the counterstrike, as Father punched with a palm down into the ground, at the same time as he recovered his footing.

The pulse of willpower from above crashed into the Feather, crushing him right into the sand and mud. He rolled in the ground, trying to get back up, only to find his legs stuck with strings of data and sand wrapping like vines around. I solidified the tendrils, matter wrapping around his ankles, arms, chest and hands. Dragging the struggling prey under the surface. He hissed, eyes searching around, trying to find where I was.

Father descended down like a hunter, going for the kill on a trapped enemy.

“Don’t kill him!” I called out, right as the knight was moments from running a knife across the throat. “If we do, he’ll get pulled right back into the physical world, where I can’t gag his call for emergency.”

Father rose his head to match my gaze for a moment, then nodded. “I’ll hold him in place. Recover the rest of the archive and prepare for extraction.”

“What are you attempting to accomplish?” The Feather asked, far more calm than he had any right to be.

“You look like you took defeat pretty easily.” I said. “Odd for a Feather, I thought your kind was more egomaniacs with bad ideas for weapons and clothing picks.”

“Most are.” The Feather agreed from his seized location, sounding oddly reasonable all of a sudden. “You didn’t answer my original question, human.”

“Boy, archives, now.” Father hissed, kneeling down before the captured feather, closing his eyes in focus. A tangible weight of willpower dropped like a metal column directly into the surrendered Feather, outright digging him and an entire circle deep into the ground. He wasn’t moving from that anytime soon.

“What… are…. you?” The Feather grunted out, trying to fight off Father’s oppressive strength. The man, of course, gave no answer.

On my end, I quickly moved through the cyphers Wrath had given me, ripping apart coral locks and dusty archive bins, stuffing it all into a data pipe feeding them right back to the temporary server storage prepared. History about the empire, timelines, and any kind of junk I could get away with. Gone was any sense of doing this strategically.

“What… use… is any… of that?” The Feather asked, still capable of telling what I was doing, even while Father’s aura kept him squashed like a bug.

“Just sightseeing.” I said, “Looking for pretty pictures, restaurant recommendations, the usual. Nothing suspicious or anything.”

“Quiet.” Father said, “Focus on your task, boy.”

Speed wasn’t exactly affected by my mouth running on autopilot, I’d already sent out all the commands, mass opening every archive within my reach and clearly causing a massive interruption in daily life of the denizens here. Now it was just a question of the hardware doing the work before the locals showed us the door.

That wasn’t really Father’s point though. Feathers like to chat, so I’ve noticed. Staying quiet and staring them down might rattle them more than throwing out taunts come to think of it. Father really was the worst thing a Feather could fight.

The downloads were working far faster than normal, now that I wasn’t bothering to be gentle with anything. That also meant the archive itself was waking up, irritated someone was breaking all the expensive pottery and ripping the colored tapestries.

It didn’t like rude guests, which, to be fair was understandable. I’d also be mildly annoyed.

Red light began to overtake the world. The mostly empty waters that had previously been silent were churning around now, old programs booting up to verify damage reports, and very quickly clashing into an impromptu war with the current generation of custodian programs. Looks like everyone thought everyone else was the enemy down here, a real mess. I could sense them probing, small things I could crush between my fingers. Problem was there were many of them, like a swarm of insects, and they were far more dumb than their currently living grandchildren. Those knew better than to mess with us given our size. These dumb guardians were swarming and biting at us no matter how many I crushed.

“You won’t avoid capture after this.” The Feather said, having put most of his energy into steadying his speech rather than trying to match or escape Father’s vice grip. “No human has ever escaped intact from here.”

I was a slight bit envious of him. Crushed up to the ground with a mountain of willpower holding him and everything around him down, none of the new guardian programs could get near his body. No biting insect swarm for him, lucky bastard.

“First time for everything.” I said, swatting another hoard of small flies nipping around, as I watched the last percentage bars tick to completion. So far, I've grabbed more gigabytes of information in the past few hours than my entire lifetime combined. Green lights all across the archive ground blinked with different intensities, depending on how much dust had piled up over them. I turned to Father, giving him a thumbs up. “We’re done. Time to go.”

Father didn’t let the window of chance pass by, the world warping around a closed fist. He punched directly down into the chestplate of the captured Feather. It clearly caused the unfortunate enemy a great deal of pain, ripping apart the digital avatar. The rest of the avatar rapidly began to disintegrate, too much damage. Somewhere in the world, a Feather was opening his eyes to the real world with a massive splitting headache and a bruised soul. Wrath had been on the receiving end of this enough times I knew the steps happening.

I could feel the machine archive buckle slightly as the punch continued through into the ground, several servers breaking down from the damage. Only a drop in comparison, but noticeable still.

“He’ll be going for help the moment he’s able to put his thoughts back together.” Father said. “We need to evacuate and remove all traces behind us.”

Climbing out of the archive was a lot easier than I had thought, especially since I was no longer bothering to stay hidden. Instead, I ripped handholds into existence, cutting through archives and letting data bleed out of them just so I could use them to drag myself up.

The locals were all universally upset about this, but there was no truce possible with the dumb archive immune system kicking into gear to purge everything smaller than a dog, and at least try to purge the rest out of principle.

In moments, the two of us passed through the final seal, getting back onto the abyssal shelf, the gate closing behind us as the loss of gravity returned, floating us up and away. The massive machine archive faded into the murk behind, as we both follow Wrath’s guideline back home.

The current claimed us, and we left no more footprints behind. Got a good haul, all things considered. Probably not going to be invited back to this particular party without a better lockpick next time though. Can't win them all.

And now there certainly must be a very confused Feather waking up somewhere in the world wondering what the hell had just happened.

Next chapter - Min/Maxing

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