[email protected] THE HIDDEN SOURCE:

MANKIND MUST EVOLVE SYMBIOTICALLY WITH TECHNOLOGY

THE OBSOLETE MUST BE PHASED OUT

THE EVOLUTIONARY SYSTEM OF ECONOMICS MUST BE DEFENDED AT ALL COSTS

THE CHOSEN FEW, WHO ARE THE FUTURE OF MAN MUST BE PROTECTED OVER THE DYING MANY

PHILOSOPHIES THAT CONTRADICT OUR OWN MUST BE MANIPULATED OR ELIMINATED

OUR EXISTENCE MUST BE KEPT HIDDEN LADY HANJA The rain drummed down hard upon glider roof steel. She had drifted off to its soothing percussion, smothered in the blackness of sleep, temporarily released, timeless in her dreamscapes.

The vast forest was in half-light, As dawn mist hung like a thick blanket over the treetops, Luminous and violet.

As the rising sun softly illuminated the sky, The crystal mountain became bright and incandescent, Radiant in the horizon's awakening, A glowing amethyst stone

Slowly the sun ascended, Behind the transparent rock, Refracting and shifting, graceful, dancing rays, Cutting through the clouds and digging through the trees, The once dark forest now drowned in the haze.

The sky grew brighter, As the summit became blinding, The eye, White and full, Now at its highest peak.

Glistening silver ripples, Upon the chill morn lake The star now unshielded In the deep cyan sky. "Gwent!" A loud voice called her name and shook her prematurely from her sleep. The confusion of waking settled in, a limbo state. "Gwent wake up! She’s here." The voice belonged to Roach, her assigned partner. He was sat in the driving seat, squinting through the water as it cascaded down the windscreen. His modified eyes adjusted and a woman two- hundred feet away came in to clear focus. She was getting out of a glider and onto the sheltered sidewalk. They were on a job and the target’s name was Lady Hanja and she was the political leader of the Unity party. The direct opposition to a politician named Lennex; the leading force which had brought the recently formed, Progression party to the forefront of the political spotlight in just under a year of its formation. Economically defined social zones and cross level social tensions created a real and media perpetuated climate of paranoia. Swift change was needed. An abrupt political reshuffle was proposed by none other than the recently governing leader before his, resignation. His office had been exposed in a scandal over Isis Security's surplus weaponry and where it all really went. Money was being made off the books whilst fuelling the violence of the defunct western district, the unofficially named Ghost City. This double- dealing crook claimed he had nothing to do with this of course but could not allow a party so corrupt that it had blinded and tricked its own leader, to continue to govern Isis. He was going to cut and run, according to press reports the pressure had apparently been too much for him and he committed suicide. Eighty stories down from his apartment balcony had created quite a mess on the tarmac. It was lucky for Roach and Gwent that they had not been behind that particular job but if they had, it would not have got quite as complicated. Despite their reckless and hedonistic personal lives, when it came to their work they were consummate professionals, they got the job done, quick and clean. Hanja's angle on this social turmoil was to present her agenda loosely wrapped in an image of compassion and love, a mothering figure the children of Isis could turn to in this confusing time of crisis. In this atmosphere of political ambiguity many would vote for either side, regardless of their apparently different agendas, just to regain concrete conformity and the illusion that society was a solid, ordered entity. The desperate times welcomed desperate measures and in the next day's election either the gracious Lady Hanja or the tough-talking Lennex would be chosen by the people to become the next fall guy.

Lady Hanja had stepped out of her bulky security glider stretch and onto the wet empty night street. Two identically formed bodyguards that nearly doubled her in size protected her, one holding the door as the other checked the entrance to the hotel. This obvious security presence and her arrival in a limo had compromised her identity. Her face was completely disguised by a gas mask, protecting her from the fumes of a ruptured waste-disposal pipe a street away. To need a mask top-side was a rarity that was grudgingly endured. They hastily made their way through the chemical haze to the grand entrance of the Peak-view. The hotel ascended all the way to the top levels of the city, though only the base was visible. The heavy night fog swallowed the building the higher it went in a thick yellow cloud, its wind blown motion illuminated and patterned by the light of the hotel's windows. "Get up!" Roach shook her as Gwent remain laid on the back seat. "You need some Retium?" he asked. "Always." She replied sitting up, rubbing her eyes. Roach rummaged deep into a pocket and pulled out a jar of clear red capsules and tossed them to her, sleepily she popped the jar and knocked back a couple as Roach watched her. "You had some weird dreams just now." "You've been watching my dreams again!? I told you not to do that!" "Sorry sometimes I can't help it, it’s like when you speak I cannot help but hear it, it's exactly the same with powerful thoughts. Especially when I'm working, I'm more focused." "That’s why I always try to tone down my thoughts when I’m around you." "You're a liar...Don't worry though, you have a more healthy mind than most." "Really? Sometimes I think I'm pretty messed up." "If you only knew." Roach's tone was serious on this point, silence followed as he turned back to his seat. She used to envy telementals, their ability to communicate in silence, know what others were thinking and secretly manipulate brain activity but through the years of knowing him she had learned that it was as much a curse as it was a gift. In that respect she was happy to be a kappa-class kinetic, there was no downside and covert ops always paid well. Roach had been feeling faint himself and had already popped a Retium capsule, and now the dim chemical mist that hung round the glider had become a bright yellow haze. His mind ignited and he felt ready to go to work, his abilities sharpened by the drug. "Are you ready?" He asked Gwent. "Yep, we'll need these." She tossed him a gas mask. Gwent flicked a switch on the mask's side and the eyes glowed a luminous green, followed by a gentle wiring of the air filters. She raised it and pressed it to her face as the mask moulded, clinging to her as if it were alive whilst Roach did the same. He gave her a sharp nod and they exited the vehicle. The doors slid back, closed and locked automatically behind them. As they walked towards the hotel's entrance, data flashed up inside the visor indicating the air quality, T-Level: 45. The hovering street lamps were barely visible through the smog, lighting the street with only patches of illuminated yellows. The entrance had its emergency air-lock activated and as they approached it the first door automatically slid open. They entered and the door locked firmly behind them sounding a beep as the gas was sucked out by vents. As the last of the vapour cleared, there was a ping and the door to the main reception slid open. Air Quality: 0.45 - Clean flashed as Gwent flicked the switch, the mask dropping off like a dead leech.

The vast lobby was adorned in black marble and gold, portraits of past civilizations hung from the walls, like obituaries to culture. Heading towards the reception desk they passed through a row of tall marble pillars and under a grand crystalline chandelier that hung from the centre of the room, it was at least thirty foot across and was the welcoming focal point. Passed from generation to generation of blue bloods over the centuries, dazzling and exquisite it now lit up proudly the faces of the modern bastardised equivalent. Some of the richest members of Isis stayed here often tending to business, prostitutes, untraceable off-line deals, drugs whatever. The lobby was eerily empty and despite being one of the largest hotels in Isis it often remained this way as few could afford to stay there, this suited the clientèle fine. The light reflected sharply off the shining floor and mirrors, it was too bright for Roach. Blinking rapidly he filtered out the light triggering a chemical release which inked his eyes entirely black, glancing over at Gwent he saw that she had done the same. The receptionist stood bolt upright with his hands behind his back, smiling, and had been in this pose ever since they entered. If Roach had not had known better he would have guessed he was a human replica but the repressed chattering of human thoughts had been audible since he first laid eyes on him. Vivid telemental waves. "Good evening." The receptionist greeted them, nodding to each as he did. “How may I help you?” "We’re here to see Lady Hanja." Roach replied. "Oh I’m terribly sorry sir but tomorrow is a big day for her as you may know and she has insisted that no one disturbs her under any circumstances." Roach on this closed his eyes, a still silence. The receptionist looked on perplexed, until he too found he was unable to keep his eyes open and gently slipped out of consciousness, now completely under the will of this well trained mentalist. Roach took a sharp breath in as he opened his eyes, then spoke. "Which room is she staying in?" The receptionist came to immediately. "She is on floor three-fifty, the penthouse; she told me she is expecting you. Please go on up." He gestured to his right, directing them to a corridor of cylindrical glass door elevators, walking towards them the nearest one hissed open on their approach. With clear glass on all sides they could see the street from which they had just came. "Floor three-fifty." Gwent spoke to the elevator "Floor three-thirty – Going up." The cheerful automated voice replied as the ascent began. "No! Floor three. Fifty!" "Floor Three-fifty." The elevator unapologetically corrected itself as it continued to accelerate gracefully upwards, shortly the floors were flashing by at a phenomenal rate. "Sometimes I just wish we’d just stick with touch response, strange idea I know. I don’t know why but machines always seem to misunderstand me. I never use voice automation at home, I talk in my sleep. I woke up one time and my whole system was about to wipe itself. God knows what crazy dreams I must have been having that night. Maybe I should upgrade to an etheric responsive home, like yours." Roach liked to hear Gwent talk and she often had a knack of toning down the climate of a situation, though this was not always the best preparation for a job. "Gwent, I need to know that you are ready for this. I need you to be focused" "Come on, you know me Roach, I’m always ready. Two security guards, one old lady, this is easy." "Never assume anything Gwent, we’re not the only ones out there. There were others at the Institute all trained like us. We have no idea what work they could be doing now." "Those that survived it, they are probably on our side." Rapidly ascending they cleared the wet grime and yellow smog of Ground-level central and shortly found themselves surrounded by a grey fog, their view obscured. Suddenly they burst free and were met by the bright contrast of the Mid-levels. The all-singing, dancing commercial sector. Mag-strip lanes weaved and stretched in all directions through the illuminated pillar buildings to the horizons, adorned with the speeding headlights of gliders. The vivid and dancing colours of the towering walls reflecting against their sleek surfaces, the dazzling motion of many images and logos cramped into any space possible. The modern glamour and lifestyle fantasy relentlessly self-praising this great age. This sector served as a great divide in Isis and anybody with any real ambition would want to reside above it. Rising higher and higher a heavy sky-rail shuttle flew hurtling by upon its railings journeying endlessly through the city night. The hypnotizing montage eventually cleared, giving way to the more serene and peaceful environment of the Mid-levels. The cycle of days and nights played more importance up here and with cleaner air the night brought the civilized and successful out to celebrate. Plants, trees and flowers grew, healthily and plentiful amongst them. Bars and restaurants spilled out into the night as many sat and stood round tables in this cultural epicentre, joyous and laughing, blissfully ignorant of the world beneath them. A giant fountain was the main feature of the courtyard with an angelic statue stood proudly at its centre, her wings raised, eyes staring to the sky. As they rose higher they could peer through balconies and into the luxury apartments in which some of the most privileged citizens lived, a stark contrast to the world they had seen not less than ten minutes ago. Being an old hotel building, it had been built upon and made higher in recent years to keep up with competitors and had existed in a time even before the top levels had. No one would dream of building a high class hotel from the ground now. In fact the first hundred floors were no longer even in use and served merely as the foundations it was built upon. Hanja with all her leftist front was really no different from any other politician, living at the top of this monument to greed and waste. Roach reminded himself of this hypocrisy as they rose higher. As the festivities of the Mid-levels shrunk into the distance the great sky gardens of The Peak appeared one by one. At different heights these naturalistic museums sat on top of the vast peaks of the city. Adorned by scattered islands of cloud these magnificent post-natural splendours symbolised man's prowess and ability to rise up. To create his own heaven, by standing on the shoulders of many. It was up here that only the most powerful lived, the elite. Politicians, company owners, heirs, self-made entrepreneurs and the invisible. Roach and Gwent fell into the last category, as did all covert agents of mentalism. Anyone that lived here could be deemed worthy of replication. Tight breeding laws, due to a population at a critical mass meant that to have offspring legally was an increasingly a rare and bureaucratically complex process. Tried and tested human models where mainly encouraged for the insured perpetuation of this economically focused society. Cloning and genetically perfected tweaks just made more sense. Same job, same person, yet improved slightly. This first generation were still very young so the replication theory was yet to be deemed future-proof. The children were enrolled in their relevant education institutes and were then trained accordingly for their preordained professions. No one top-side really wanted children anyway, that would have interfered far too much with their individual pursuit of happiness. What they really wanted was to retain their youth, their luxury and perhaps even to live forever whilst doing so. Though no one was suggesting that this was a possibility, it was pretty hard to guess a topsider's real age anymore. They had nano-tweaks and age defying cell regenerations, the mortality rate of the topside people had gone right down and upon this limited landmass, the artificial island of Mainframe 6: City of Isis, there was simply no space for more people. Who cares for the future when all that exists, all that is great, is right now?

The elevator began to slow down as it neared its destination. The deceleration filling Roach with adrenaline as the realisation of what he had to do became greater. Focusing and clearing his mind in preparation he was distracted by Gwent’s vivid daydreams, music beat out in her mind, a swirling orchestral mass sung over a constant hi-pitched tone, he became aware that she was also humming slightly. "Gwent!" Roach shouted putting an abrupt end to her inner song. "Focus! This may not be a simple negotiation." His language a coded bending of the truth. Explicit details where not to be discussed in public locations. "You mean manipulation; we’ve never negotiated with anyone. Relax Roach. You know we’re an invincible team." And with that she gave him a wink and Roach shook his head but perhaps she was right. To do this job well he had to be calm and focused. Maybe that is why the Hidden Source had partnered him with Gwent in the first place, she never seemed fazed by anything. The elevator hissed gently to a stop at the penthouse, the doors sliding back to reveal the twin clone security guards. Eight foot walls of medically enhanced testosterone rock towered over them, hands already at their weapon holsters. "The lady is not accepting guests, state your business here." The closest one grunted. Roach was calm and in control. "She will accept us. Lead the way." The life-form's psyche was so simple that exerting control over it was child's play, a basic training exercise. Slightly confused but obedient the guards turned and led them through a double door and into the main suite. The space was dimly lit by dancing flames casting long silhouettes. Blue wax dripped down and solidified upon gold candle stick holders as a soft scent of rare botanical oils filled the space with tranquillity. Lady Hanja was sat at the far end of the room, her chair like a throne before a large wall of glass that looked down to the night's vast and twinkling city-scape. Her face was dimly lit by the violet luminescence of a round glass table glowing warmly beneath her, sitting comfortably upon velvet, upright and unnerved. With hands rested upon both arms of the chair and heeled leather boots crossed, her eyes fixed upon them as they approached. She had an overwhelming and intimidating aura of power. Getting nearer she appeared beautiful and much younger than expected but a closer look revealed a taught, artificial skin, her age only revealed by the cold inner fire of her eyes. "Take a seat." She welcomed and commanded as the beginnings of two chairs slowly rose, emerging from the thick carpet beneath them, surprising and nudging Roach to one side. When they had formed completely, the pair cautiously sat down. The guards hung close behind them. Gwent could almost feel their gross animalistic exhalations upon her hair. Lady Hanja gave them a stern look and immediately they retreated to the outside room, closing the door behind them. She leant forward, adopting her relaxed business pose, fingers touching, elbows leant lightly upon the knees of her black suit trousers. Both agents were confused at her lack of hostility or fear, it was almost as if she had been expecting them. She spoke, a graceful and political, well pronounced tone. "Hello Roach. It's been a long time." Something was up, she had the high ground, and her energy, the power and poise she radiated, disarmed and humbled them both. She was in complete control. "Do I...know you?" He replied, all authority and control of this situation was now completely out the window. "You shall remember. In time. We only hold those memories which serve our greater purpose. Being of the Hidden you should know this." Gwent then spoke up, somewhat out of turn. "Of the Hidden? Do you...?" "Quiet dear girl. I know you both, so well. You could say I almost love you, in a way. Like the mother you never knew you had. This is why I chose you, to complete the circle, to fulfil our destinies. It is my time. Now do what you came here to. I am ready, I embrace it. In peace." On this she closed her eyes and leant back into her chair, calm as the still water of a sky garden pool, reflecting the full moon light. At this Roach noticed, a glow at her temples, an azure light beneath the skin, rising and fading, breathing. At this moment he turned to Gwent, confused and seeking guidance, to which she nodded firmly forward. The situation was unsuspected and strange, she just wanted to get it done and be out of there quick. So he did what he was there to do, what he was paid to do, what he did best. He closed his eyes and became empty, dark, barely shadow, before gently and softly as he could, intertwined with Hanja's being. His mind merged in this abstract dimension, the place where spirit connects, reflects matter. Then smothered slowly, coercing the life to leave her, to sever the connection between the life-force and its vessel. As easy as switching a light, off.

The soft pulsing blue of her temples stopped, she was gone. Their work was done. Getting up and turning to leave they were suddenly blocked by the wall of flesh which was her security, hearing the room go quiet they had sensed something was up and had returned. They looked over to the Lady who was obviously not sleeping. Realising the truth their faces now appeared even more monstrous than before, no words where needed to tell things were about to get violent. They moved to attack the motionless pair but where suddenly stopped a foot away from Gwent's raised palms. Their faces then changed to that of helplessness and fear as invisible fingers began to crush their necks and lifted their mighty frames from the ground. Closing her eyes tight and building her kinetic power her body began to shake as their legs kicked helplessly in the air. Roach looked away as the candles went out in the final release of her deadly force. A moment later it was over and throwing her hands out to her sides the bodies were tossed like rag-dolls into the walls. Gwent then spoke coldly into the flat terminal strapped to her left arm. "Clean up team this is Medusa. Move now to floor three-fifty, the penthouse. I repeat floor three-fifty." Soon they were back in the glider, flying smoothly on an empty late night strip, not saying a word. Eventually Roach spoke up. "She knew us." An even gliding speed, his eyes locked dead ahead. "She was expecting us to go there. It doesn't make sense, it feels wrong. She wanted me to do it." Gwent was idly looking out of her window, the passing streams of projected animations, all the purchasable lifestyles flashing by. "So it was an easy job, easy money. You think you know it all Roach? We don't even know who the Hidden Source are, yet we do their dirty work without question. I'm not going to waste my time worrying about the shit they have put us through all these years, whatever their agenda may be. I put in work then I forget about it. You should too." She reached inside the silken inner lining of her coat and pulled out an antique gold pill case, it must have been a few hundred years old, priceless. She popped it open. "Here take a tranq, I think you need it." He did as she said and swallowed it uncomfortably without saying a word. Not washing it down, it tasted chemical and nasty. "You can stop thinking now, it's done." Stop thinking, that was easy for her to say. It was not just his thoughts he had to deal with. The biggest pollution of all is mental noise and his mind was an auto-tune radio that he could not turn off. Pointless, superficial, self-obsessed, tortured and alone, in their thoughts and feelings, everyone. Some silence passed, then thinking. "What was that light, the blue glowing at her temples?" "You really do live under a rock Roach." Gwent said slightly shaking her head. "You know I don't watch the news. We see what really happens in direct contact. I don't need to know how they twist it. That implant, that thing is the first one I ever saw like that." Roach was getting pissed off. Under a rock, he pretty much lived on a mountain peak. "It’s a prototype NI5, neural augmentation. She must have had a high involvement within Synaptech to have one. They are not for consumers, yet." "I thought augmentations where only used by paraplegics. What does it do?'" "Pretty much everything you'd expect. Direct home-user interface, communications, information uploads, fully immersive entertainment. Kinda like your arm-terminal but the holographic read out is seen inside your mind I guess." "But who'd willingly let someone fuck with their brain like that?" "Everyone." She said with a condescending sigh, strung out, done for the night, looking to the now visible stars, the clouds having cleared. "Take me home Roach." They were already heading in that direction but she had said it anyway. He kept his eyes fixed on the strip as overhead lights flashed by. Avoiding the glare, the passing spectral montages, the promises of fake dreams. ZENITH Waking from a dream, the sanctified cocoon of sleep, slowly the peace faded. The re-occurring thoughts surfaced. The unanswerable, futile questions, cycled. Phrased in a myriad of ways achieving nothing. Analysing. Of course he is not alone, not in his thoughts. All have the confusion, the fear. Going round in circles, paradox minds, they all suffer in silence. He sees them doing this to themselves but it is from them that he caught the disease. This is why he hates them, as they hate each other, as they hate themselves. As long as they keep quiet all is okay. It's what is on the outside that is important.

In a mindless waking habit he pointed with his left hand at the space directly in front of him. A beam of light came into focus, colour and shape casting a half-light into the room as a female newsreader's figure came into focus. "...suffered a cardiac arrest late last night whilst at her home. The death of the Unity party leader has undeniably come at an unfortunate time and is bound to affect the political faith of their supporters. It is rumoured that Lady Hanja's health was suffering as a result of pre-election stress combined with the use of unprescribed stimulants…"

He had heard enough; all was wrapped up and clean, as he knew it would be. Passing his hand over his arm-terminal the moving images vanished and the room returned to darkness and he to his thoughts.

The news never reflects the true story and I've been a part of this from the beginning. A factor in many a major incident, invisible in every story. What is official becomes undisputed as those who may have doubts soon give up and just learn to go with the flow. I do not agree with the way things are, what I am made to do but who likes their jobs anyway? We are all whores at the end of the day. The only freedom you can have is to know it and stop lying to yourself, then who would want to stop doing that? What other source of happiness have we? I am not in the belly of the beast but on the outside looking in. So does that make me freer than most? No, I am just a by-product. So I forget about it and get on with my day. Just like the rest of us.

The clear glassy surface of his arm-terminal softly glowed turquoise, waiting to be activated, to fade the room into full light. With reluctance he brought himself to activate it, to start the day. If it had not been a week since his last meeting with his brothers he would have stayed in bed, so with a sense of apathetic duty he waved his hand across the glow and the flat blind of the window slowly rose in silence. A crack of brilliant sunlight shone in, casting deep silhouettes across the room as it rose. Roach turned on his side to face the opposite wall, avoiding the glaring brightness of the hangover morning. He had taken over double his daily Retium allowance the previous night and now he felt it. The shadow of the blind climbed to the top of the wall and now the bedroom was fully lit. Pulling the sheets back he got up wearily and passed through the door that led into one of the largest, most aesthetic and intelligently automated bathrooms his wealth could buy. With squinted eyes, avoiding his reflection, he popped some painkillers from the medicinal drawer and washed in the revitalising heat and steam. Dried and feeling more awake now he slipped on a dressing gown, returned to his minimally furnished bedroom and walked across its spacious floor to the glass wall. It opened from its centre as he approached and he stepped out into the fresh chill of his balcony to take in the day from this vast and most high perspective. He looked up, the sun shone, blinding in the clear blue emptiness of the sky. This was the way at this height though few would see it. For Roach was one of the privileged elite, and only birds and gods could fly so close to the star that many never saw. He then looked down, to the dark sea. Miles of thick grey, yellow chemical cloud overcast the island to the horizon and beyond, the bottom side of this blanket was the sky for many. Yet even at this height, with this freedom and wealth, he still felt like a prisoner. Though he was able to escape temporarily in his mind, to project himself to other places as real as this one, he was always physically rooted here, in Subordinate Mainframe 6, the island-city of Isis. Looking to the horizon, thoughts of the city arose. A violent ocean raged encircling this metallic island, providing all the hydro-electric power it needed to run. A self sustaining mass-automated mega-machine with all the necessities for survival technology and humans would need and more. So perfect was its foundation design that it was no original but merely a clone, one of the many worldwide. What had originally been quarantine refuges from the Epidemic had become the permanent homes of all. This enforced World Peace had resulted in the abolishing of independent governments and now an International Council existed which traded exemplary social and technological trends of the Mainframes between them. The global unity of the people insisted on a melting pot society. Entire races were moved from their homes and families and pushed into new ones, as national identities and cultures diluted. Racial and minority group meetings were declared illegal, as potential disturbances of the peace until racism became a concept many could not even comprehend. Though with no enemy left to fight, no demon to fear, a new one was created. The Sub- Levels, those made economically obsolete by progress and those who just could not cope to work so hard, move so fast, dwelled in the lower levels and in the derelict outskirts. Some in poverty and squalor, some making do and living in relative peace. However the media played on the fear of the Topsiders by capturing and epitomising the worst scenes of the Sub-Levels, to remind them that if they slipped they would sink into this lower realm, with no security and no order to protect them. Of course, it was the higher echelons that stoked the fires of fear, to enforce order up top. How did people think the Sub-Side gangs got guns in the first place? Black market ties with the arms industry meant that weapons were practically given away to help them kill each other off. In a world so automated, where everything is accounted for and nothing goes amiss, you would have thought that something could be done about this. Of course it could. Fear is a productive industry. It was in these Sub-Levels that Roach's brothers lived and there he heard more peace in the minds than in the slaves topside.

A soft cheery melody sung from his arm terminal, the mail tune. The mail icon flashed in the air above his forearm, it moved in ripples as he touched the glowing image. A small animation of an envelope opening preceded the message.

#369XAD1 : ROACH

$250,000 Isisian Has been credited to your account.

------END ------

Coming out of the mailbox he went to his study. Entering, he walked to his priceless antique typewriter on the solid oak desk at the far end of the room. Previous entries where scattered messily around it and a glass of stale water had been sat there for days. A typed page still remained in its grip, something he had not remembered writing.

I love you

You can never know If I let you in only for a second it would be the end of me

Once I open that floodgate I would be wrecked

To let myself go Would be dangerous

This is the only defence I have

So I am protecting you From myself

It can never be It quickly joined the others, scrunched up and on the floor. The waste paper bin was overflowing with self denial. Due to his increasing paranoia Roach had decided to keep his writings in the physical world where they could not be found. He kept his study technologically old on purpose, as a security measure, so as a result of this and his habitually lazy behaviour it remained unkempt and messy always, which suited his mind just fine. Two heavily melted church candles sat either side as if adorning an altar, dead matches lay at their bases. However, in the wash of sunlight these were not needed and sitting down surrounded by the dancing stars of dust he began to type. Payday. I'm above the 95%, below the top 5. The exponential goes through the roof. Worthy of replication, though I would not want it. The cloned modifications of the elite own the future, that is considered parenthood nowadays.

Its all so twisted when I think about it but dwelling on what we can't change does not help anyone. I must learn to accept things. That is why you write isn't it? To accept, to deal.

Im my own private therapist, crazy... yet no more than going to someone else to solve my problems...They're no better off than the next guy

But this is not therapy, by writing my mind I can see my thoughts, the ones that belong to me. These are my thoughts, this is my mind. I record my thoughts into writing so I don't lose myself in all these external minds. To get an idea about my self, to find out if there is a self, one I can call mine.

These new tranqs I've been taking dull my senses better, I can't see so much. Sometimes I wish that I could be completely blind to it all. Ignorance is bliss.

No, I love it...I hate it. That's life I suppose. My telemental gift and burden.

I am going down to see the brothers, it's that time when we get wrecked, I don't feel in the mood but they'd kill me if I didn't go. It's a brotherhood duty

SubSide: I find people down there more honest, real.

They are on the outside who they are on the inside and though this may be an ugly sight, at least they're not hiding their true selves, like the majority up-top.

I could afford to party and socialise with the high fliers, have successful acquaintances, mingle, network contacts and all that bullshit but my line of work there's no dick sucking involved.

I don't even get to see my employer.

I'm at the top, and up here, the only way to go is down. Pulling out the page and dumping it on the desk a slight pain in his temples told him that his hangover was not dead. So sliding open a drawer of his desk, he reached for the definite cure, a jar of Retium. The psycho-physical stimulant, pain-killer, combined with emotional tranqs to lessen the pain of the voices. Designed specifically for his metabolism. The red capsules in their glass jar sat amongst various old clutter, a gas lighter, two fountain pens one silver, one gold, more candles and a silver rectangular box, in it was a gun. He'd never fired a single blast and probably would never need to, unless his psyche failed him, or he finally decided to kill himself but there it lay, loaded with the safety on, sitting carelessly amongst the mess. Popping off the lid of the jar, he knocked back three of the bright rets.

"Hair of the dog" he said to himself. He got up to return to his bedroom and lied back down, waiting for the rush to kick. Drifting away, he was soon jolted back awake sharply. He felt the rush, heat in his veins, his body tensed and he clenched his teeth as the wave washed through him. Rejuvenated he was now ready for anything and in the grips of the acceleration he had to move. Before he knew it he was properly dressed and in the elevator rising, it stopped and the doors opened to reveal the sleeping quarters of his best friends. The lights faded up, reflecting beautifully against their immaculate metallic contours. Gliders, electro-magnetically powered vehicles which flew across the many strips that filled the skies of Isis, and Roach possessed ten of the most ingeniously designed specimens ever created. His children, his steeds, the space they inhabited was an art galley and each shone in their spotlights, grand and proud. Though Roach had seen and admired this display many times before, now he just wanted to ride. He jumped straight onto his chosen machine and kicked the one-man chopper into life. It leapt forward and reared like a wild horse, now hovering above the magnetic flooring as its insides hummed warmly in awakening. The far wall rose to reveal the empty sky, its harsh unwelcoming wind rushing in. Roach turned the glider round to face the cold, he donned his riding goggles, then pushed down hard upon the pedal. Intense acceleration, he shot forward, magnetic generators roaring, hot as they spun. Gripping the control axis tight he steadied himself, the force pushing him back into his seat as she bolted forward effortlessly. Through the exit and into the chill air, the strip began its descending curve to meet the vertical drop but as Roach came to meet it he disengaged the magnets and held his breath. With sheer velocity he shot free of the strip and into the sky. He fell, weightless and drifting. Flying down for hundreds of feet, above the tranquil sea of clouds that now lay in front of him. Stillness overcame him, his eyes closed, the world no longer existing, he allowed himself to drift dangerously far from the vertical strip without a care. As in this timeless place, this ritualistic drop, he felt at peace, and one day by this graceful dive he may liberate himself, forever.

"Not today." He told himself and just before he reached the point of no return he opened his eyes and slammed his base-magnets back on into full negative attraction. The glider took a sharp dive forwards, pulled back towards the vert-strip, as he came in closer he lowered the magnetic power as to not ground himself and then slipped the base-mags back into automatic. Now clinging tight to the vertical strip once more, he continued his descent. Falling deep into the fog of the clouds his way became obscured as he was swallowed in its wetness, dissipating into hard rain as he passed though the grey, his way now clear. Now the chaotic insides, the vast machine city was revealed in all its twisted beauty and grandeur. From this highest of heights he could see the huge network of intertwined strips weaved intricately round each other as they scaled between towering structures, a huge luminous cobweb. Not only the transport routes of the city, they also acted as its electricity and communications nervous system, its veins and arteries. He used this death defying stunt everyday on his private vert-strip, no one but him lived at the very top of this immense work colony tower and he used the gravity to take him to a much higher speed than even his highly customised glider would allow. Using this launch it was possible to coast all the way to the lower levels without the use of his rear-mag accelerators, providing nobody got in his way. The customising of his base-mags enabled him to do this, most gliders are designed to cling to the strips permanently on automatic attraction but with the polarity modifier installed he could do all sorts of dangerous tricks. If anything got in the way he could just boost the positive power and frog-leap over them.

The super structures of Isis not only acted as multi-purpose buildings but as pillars, supporting the very ground which the Sky-Peak Topsiders walked on, and the roof which sheltered the majority of the Mid-Levels. The land mass of each level was circular in boundary and became larger as you descended. From far away in the empty sea the Mainframes could be likened to colossal pyramids, though on the islands themselves it was not easy to gain this perspective unless you were to travel out to the borders to one of the four directional outer lying zones. The reason for this dense layering of levels and subsequent movement restrictions came primarily because of the overpopulation boom but also due to the vast achievement and prosperity of the people and their machines. Building more, creating more, faster and faster, prolific and exponential. Many thanked technology, many thanked pharmaceuticals, many thanked the government and many did not thank anything. All this prosperity and achievement had ultimately created more chaos and confusion, and for that, not all were grateful. Not that anyone up here would get to hear those sorts of opinions. Those who displayed such discontent found it hard to cooperate with such an artificial beast of a reality and would sink to the sub-levels. No one would choose to live in such impoverished squalor, that just seemed to be the fate of those who refused to move with the times. As the new builds upon the old, extinction is unavoidable. So it was onto the pinnacle of this great civilisation that he descended. A living, breathing, ever-moving organism. Anonymous en-masse, yet with closer interpersonal examination, still retained the humanity and spirit of the individual, if you looked in the right place. Yet gradually this was a breed that was dying. Darting across the four lanes he weaved through the traffic like an agile bird. Most of the gliders that rode the strip were two or four seated, and filled the widths of the lanes riding on docile auto-driver but with chemically enhanced reactions and pre-emptive skill, Roach skimmed passed them at three times their speed with great ease. A succession of horns followed as onlookers watched in awe and speechless rage as he flew by them in a blur. He saw this as a salute and praise rather than abuse and smiled inwardly. Pissing people off was a talent, leaving them dumbfounded and shocked was another. Images rapidly passed overhead as he flew, alit in colour and motion, short animated loops danced in the air, preaching drinks, clothes, shops, gadgets, films, pills and life. In an intense barrage of movement specifically designed to spellbind the receiver into feeling that they are missing something, and that perfection is just around the corner.

Millions of dancing logos and slogans filled Isis, everything was an advert. Roach was immune and ignored them though he knew that the market researchers would find a way into his mind somehow. Ranking as a Gamma class Psi agent he was an expert in brainwave manipulation and thus could see it everywhere. It was in the speed of the strips that he shook off his resentment for a society so devious in controlling itself, his anger released in the malevolent rush, the danger setting him free. His riding, a subversive blasphemy and insult against the system he was so destined to serve. This was his free will. Fast approaching the back of four single-man gliders his way through was blocked. Pulling back the polarity modify hard, he jolted back as he leaped up high over the traffic with the sudden force of repulsion. Pushing it back up into auto his glider was tugged back sharply and he bounced down returning to the strip, landing right in the middle of a security convoy. Four stunned members of the ISD watched open mouthed from their separate vehicles as Roach touched down, right in the middle of there proud V formation. His speedometer maxed and into the red he shot by them in a blur and on into the distance. The first piece of action security had seen all day and they were more than ready. Without order, they boosted their rear mags into full and the formation leapt into the chase in a sudden rush of G-force. Roach checking his rear screen was pleased to see they were onto him, sirens piercing a high frequency through the noise of Isis and green lights spinning brighter than all the blinding motion in the sky. The security team adopted a weaving snake formation to manoeuvre through the dozing traffic that was still in the way. Further up ahead, gliders automatically cleared to the sidelines and slowed allowing a clear speedway, the passengers watching enthralled as the chase flashed by. The leading pursuer flicked on his immobiliser beam and a wave of energy pulsed forward in a sub-low vibration across the strip, passing through Roach and the civilian gliders to his side. All gliders but his dropped suddenly and scraped down hard upon the metal, sparks flying as the following vehicles crumpled violently into their rears; meanwhile Roach remained magnetised and cruising at full pelt. Seeing the action he smiled upon the carnage caused by this blatant lack of professionalism. They did not centralise the wave, nor anticipate that his hardware could prevent such an attack. Suddenly a bolt of white heat flashed past the side of his head. "I take it that was a warning shot." Roach said to himself. Then in an evasive manoeuvre he pulled a hard left followed by a sharp right, turning round vigorously to face the strips edge. Cutting directly in front of the speeding convoy, they swerved as he maxed the positive polarity and launched high over the side barrier, into an empty drop. Slowing, the security squad looked back in wonder at the suicide jump of their chase but drawing up to the side they looked down to the drop. One hundred feet below a four-lane strip ran in the opposite direction and in- between the scattered traffic an accelerating bullet darted away through a chorus of beeping. Determined not to lose the chase they turned round hard and climbed back up to speed going the wrong way back down the strip. The commanding officer turned and launched his glider with agility and confidence followed closely by the others. Free from the magnetic pull, gravity claimed them into the fall. As the leading few prepared for the land, the tailing rider faltered; losing balance he leaned too far to the side and twisted over. The riders descent slowed as their glider-mags engaged forces with the approaching strip, however the end rider continued to drop rapidly. The crushing impact created an electro-magnetic explosion, a lightning flash, shooting shards of shrapnel into the nearby traffic as the remaining three steadied themselves into the bounce of the landing. Twisting hard to the right and then into full thrust, they escaped the pile up as civilian gliders crashed and rebounded noisily behind them. Roach was still in sight having lost his former speed in the U-turn. Weaving and jumping through the congested lanes, the traffic suddenly parted in the wake of the fast approaching sirens, they were gaining on him. The oncoming gliders were now moving aside to reveal one of the many entrance tunnels to the grand Shopping-City complex. A mile wide giant of a structure, glowing in a bright movement of logos and images, kaleidoscopic and entrancing, sub-consciously seductive. Roach passed through and into the light of the tunnel. The sirens soon reverberated loudly around the walls, as the green lights chased closely behind. A cannon blast with a loud electric crack cut through the wailing noise and a sudden thud was felt through the rear plating against Roach's back, a melting hiss accompanied the scent of molten metal. Until now Roach had just been playing with them but now it had got serious, they had scarred his glider. With the road cleared up ahead and an angered mind he closed his eyes.

Three security gliders flying in V formation, guns poised. His mind became one with the left wing, against a weak resistance of the psyche, claiming control over his body. Now, in the familiar feeling of mind control, in possession of another vessel, all slowed into a dreamy silence, lucidity. In front, the leading rider had his gun poised and Roach could hear the man's mind as he prepared determinedly to take another shot. The gun that he now held was also aimed at the physical body he had temporarily left unoccupied, and if Roach did not act now he would not have one worth returning to. Moving his victim's aim to the right he found a new target, he paused and focused. A heavy bolt shuddered his arm in recoil as the leading rider screamed, his cannon ripping from his grip, molten hot and smoking as it fell. With no hesitation, Roach still controlling this puppet then pulled a sharp right and boosted the positive polarity, jumping up into a damaging collision with the right wing's torso. In a catastrophic impact the two gliders tangled and rolled, scraping and flipping off the walls and ground in a mass of flying sparks. The riders sprawled limply as their vehicles twisted and crashed down one final time in a white flash that sent a shock-wave through the tunnel air. Just before his possessed came to an exhilarating end Roach flew away, returning to his own flesh and bones. The noise, speed and colours of the waking consciousness returned and in his rear-view the blackened twisted metal of the wreckage sat sparking sporadically as it trailed away with speed into the distance. Still in pursuit, the lone rider not letting himself be swayed by the inexplicable madness that he had just witnessed, shouted into his helmet frantically demanding backup and medics. Up ahead the lanes split, to the right side above the track hung a flashing sign which boldly read Shopping City- Parking Zone, and to the left another Vertical Drop and in big red letters Warning – FREE FALL KILLS! – Watch your speed! Roach quickly scanned the officer's mind. No wife, no family, no compassion and a black heart, countless evil deeds revealing themselves to him in an instant. Sliding to the left, soon the road was curving down into the vertical tunnel. As the turning gravity was felt in his gut, he disengaged the magnets and welcomed the accelerating rush of the descent, the blood rushing to his head. The drop stretched straight for a seeming infinity, a sheer vertical drop all the way down to Ground Zero. Only the strongest base-mags could handle the landing but they still had to be operated by an experienced rider and not many made it pass this stage. The green light still tailed him and Roach had to give the guy credit, he was nearly as crazy as he was. Massing G's, weightless velocity, they dropped as unidentifiable blurs nearly hitting civilians, skimming dangerously close to the gliders now with no time to react to the siren that was gone as quick as it came. Rapidly passing through a surrounding wall of white light that indicated the halfway point, Roach knew he must ready himself for the quick arrival of Ground Central and focusing he steadied his hand on the polarity stick. The strip started to make a steep and gradual curve, though at the sheer speed they were going, the landing curve would become the flat metal of horizontal strip almost instantly. To make his escape efficient Roach was going to have to reapply the mags as late as possible and as he met the curve he gradually raised his positive polarity as the slope became steeper, this counteracted the force of the descent skilfully keeping him the same distance from the strip. Meeting the graduation at a phenomenal speed the cop made the last mistake he would ever make, trusting the mind of a machine over his own judgement he slipped back into automatic transmission. This is where all failed thrill-seekers had faltered before, no auto-system invented could anticipate the force needed to oppose such a sudden landing, and in the split second between his glider scraping the metal before him and his incalculably quick death, he became aware of this fact. Falling chunks of disfigured steel ricocheted and spun rapidly chasing Roach into the tight landing curve, before touching down, the destroyed glider crunching and rolling onto the main strip of Ground Central. The scene resembled a metal works garbage shoot to the bystanders watching on in bewilderment, as those nearby dived for shelter from the flaying wreckage and sharp shrapnel. Roach emerging unscathed, glided through the dense activity of the eight-lane strip and gently engaged the front magnet, slowing gradually to the legal limit. Now nearly at his destination he no longer desired the attention of the law to help clear the roads. Inertia sickness, still falling and rushing forward his heart pounded hard in his chest, physiologically speeding his adrenalin pumped. Breathing deep and sharp he lifted a hand from the control axis and holding it up, watched it shake.

Near death experiences. He thought to himself.

Makes life worth living. MEKKA I bring my hand up to my temple and pretend it’s a gun.

I pull the trigger.

Should I worry about this? I just want silence.

This is what I cannot say out loud. This is why I have started writing. To myself. That is to find myself. Not in some religious, spiritual way.

I’m talking about my own individuality.

When you’re mind is like a broken radio, and many stations play at once, you cannot even hear the one you want through the noise. That is my mind.

And they think their lives are hell. Ground Central: The gateway between the Top-Siders and the Sub-Levellers. If the sun had been shining that day you would not have seen it down here. The high rising structural design obscured most of the space above whilst the mag- strips and sky-rail took up the remaining space below the Mid-Levels, fifty stories high. Interlacing like the pulsating wires of a vast and complex super computer. Down here the flood wash street-lights hovered in bright perpetual illumination as night and day were determined purely by people's work hours. The homeless junk-heads, however, were always working. Ground Central: Block L/10 was a beggar’s hot-spot, the main retail and commerce zone of the largely industrial, agricultural and meat production ground level, pitifully scrounging for the increasingly rare tokens of physical credit from day-tripping shoppers. The Junks took whatever they could muster and bought whatever they could afford from a backstreet pharmacist to escape, anything was better than their sober reality. Roach looked cynically upon this example of the modern food chain and inwardly cursed everyone round him as they took the bait. They could do all their shopping from their arm-terminals (otherwise known as ATs) but they still had turned out, for this. A reason to move, a change in environment, to spend, to be fulfilled, to not feel so trapped, futile, and if anybody was truly honest with themselves wholly depressing. You want, you crave, all things, now. So here they are, seeking the impossible, chasing the mirage of happiness. Another reason that Roach would go to the sub-levels was to escape this topside marketing madness, the invisible religion of the masses. Turning to his left he pulled into one of many glider storage compartments. Dismounting he surveyed the molten steel damage to the glider’s rear body and saw it was not so bad, nothing but a cannon blast could create such a rounded crater. Stepping out, he swiped his hand past a terminal and the steel shutters came whirring down followed by a friendly synthetic "Thank you. Enjoy your day." Machines were happier than humans. This was followed by the clunking of his compartment moving up to make way for an empty one. The shutters then reopened to reveal a space for the next glider to park in. On the way to the back streets Roach passed various members of the Isis community in the large but cramped pedestrian areas, some just stood around, some in were an obvious hurry and others just wandered aimlessly between the brightly lit shops and projections from above and on either side. Watching the never ending stream of people coming and going from the stairway to the sky- rail platforms he could not help but overhear their minds. Some of which stood out loudly. A well dressed accountant and rapist, on his way to buy new shoes. A young attractive bulimic girl, deciding which dress to buy. A middle aged couple, arm in arm, laughing, he a euthanasia doctor, she an adulteress, both oblivious to each other’s true natures. Then surprisingly, purity like a fresh breeze passed, mental energy unburdened, thoughts refreshingly open and clear of conscience came into his awareness. The psyche of a realm designer, images of dream worlds shone vividly in his mind, the escapist imaginings of which Roach recognised. Clear blues, sparkling seas, the song of birds, waterfalls, the violet luminance of a clear amethyst sky. Roach turned around searching for the possessor of the vision through the sea of approaching bodies that had now engulfed him but the person was lost. Roach’s physical focus had now broken the connection but the fact remained, this stranger had the same vision in his mind that he had seen in Gwent's dream. Roach stood still, stunned by this strange revelation until he was suddenly jerked out of his contemplating by an abusive pedestrian that budged rudely past him. Getting back his bearings he then continued his journey and eventually detached from the herd. Taking a left, he passed through the darkness and stench of a sodden, rubbish filled alley. The rainwater had finally found a place to drain and trickled down, washing away the grime. He then approached a wide flight of grubby steps that descended into an old underground station.

The Tunnels: The underground railway was still active but as the city grew upwards the top-siders used the sky-rail. Walking through an inactive security gate then down an unmoving escalator he came to a dimly lit tube-like corridor with passages leading to multiple platforms. A gust of tunnel wind stirred up the stagnant air as loose sheets of old newspapers whipped up and danced around him. The government funding for the underground transport was now minimal as they made no money from it. It had been offered freely to its users once the government realised they could barely afford the fare anymore and to not have sub-level citizens travel could economically be more troublesome than just letting them ride for free, minor benefits where used to appease the technologically redundant classes. You mustn't bite the hand that feeds you, even when that same hand beat you down and made you live like an animal. Roach turned to his left to the south-bound, platform-A. A singular overhead light flickered in the darkness, halfway down the station platform, illuminating the scattered rubbish and torn billboard posters. The distant rumble of an approaching train became louder, the black tunnel at the far end dimly lit until two dazzling headlights came into full view. Small and dirtied mice scurried away from the dusty track as the train rumbled in and ground to a halt. It had been christened The Ghost Train by a large complex graffiti piece, the remaining space coloured by smaller talentless tags and an unintelligent scrawl which read Welcome to Hell. The hydraulics hissed and the doors slid open to reveal a scene of shouting and potential violence in the cabin closest to him. He decided to avoid it and walked further down the platform and entered the next one, breathing the badly ventilated air he took a much worn seat. A distorted broken voice message followed by a few beeps proceeded the hissing close of the doors followed by the slight pull of the train moving away. He kept his eyes occupied, staring vacantly into the age-old adverts, defaced images of outdated random products had helped to stop the passengers making eye contact. Coming down here was like going back in time. On the sky-rail adverts remained positioned in the same place but of course they were animated in three dimensions and had constant loops of rage inducing jingles. His attention was taken from these to the source of the undecipherable mumbling that had risen in volume since the train had started to move. A drunken vagrant slouched against a metal pole for support, one arm slung round it while the other clutched a clear plastic bottle containing a lethal cocktail of solutions that were not meant for human consumption. Taking a swig, the old wretch winced and then made eye contact. Roach glanced the other way. Across from him sat a shaven headed girl who must have been no more than sixteen, around her neck she wore a necklace. Silver and rounded, a triangle was engraved upon its surface with a circle inscribed in the centre of its top point and from this, subtle lines reached out from it to touch the sides, like beams of light. From this distance his surgically enhanced eyes could make out its exact details and he assumed that she must have belonged to one of the many illegal cults that lurked sub-side which acted in what they thought was complete secrecy. Though in reality Roach had manipulated weak minded gurus in the past and turned their teachings to correspond to that of the Hidden Source. The one religion everyone followed wherever they knew it or not. Noticing his interest, she saw that it had been left in view and quickly tucked it inside her coat, hiding it. Roach’s attention was then taken away from her by the incoming low repetitive bass thudding that got louder as the train slowed to its approaching station. The window-pane now resonated to the pounding rhythm of the night’s music just kicking off and through the cracked glass the dazzling entrance of the sub-level’s club, drug, red-light, freak-show capital came into full view. The doors slid open and the full spectral range of the colourful soundscape came flooding in. Roach stepped out, feeling the buzz of the twisted underground vibe, into the intoxicating mania that they called Mekka.

This had once been the central station of the underground tunnel network but now through much conversion it had now become the most charged, pumped and illicit night-zone in Isis. A self-contained party street network, lined with bars, clubs, music and brothels. Walking down the street that separated the rows of open-ended bars, Roach observed the night that was getting underway. Groups of intoxicated men heckled the dolled up women that passed and space- head kids danced freely by a loud PA stack as it pumped into the street. A tall, dark skinned hooker walked into Roach’s path and with a professionally seductive gaze attempted to lure him in but he just kept walking. If it had not been against his already loose morals to pay for sex he would have taken her down a dark alley rammed her quick and hard, and woken up the next day with a rotting stump where his dick should have been. Just like everything else in Mainframe6, she may have looked good on the outside but inside she would have been diseased to the core. Then there was always the disturbingly life-like fem-bots but Roach wanted the real thing, the real way. Pounding away at synthetic flesh would just make him feel like a desperate loser. Even though it had been quite a while, and now that whore had got him frustrated. The street came to a crossroads, on the left corner was the bar he and his brothers always met at. ‘KANO’S’ blinked tackily in old red neon directly above the welcoming fem-bot stood outside, cleverly placed there to lure the wandering punters in off the street. It was obvious that she was a bot. She had the innocent look in her eye that no human sex doll could even fake, a figure and face so pale, so beautifully perfect that she could not possibly be real. With the youthful appearance of a girl just turned legal (but if wanted younger you could get it) with straight, shining, jet black hair and a face that said don’t hurt me, to a body that said the opposite. Snap out of it. Roach said inwardly, finding he was staring. She’s just flesh and bolts. "Welcome to Kano’s." She said softly. "If you require my services, you know where to find me." He ignored her as he passed through into the bar. A DJ wearing headphones in the far corner pushed the faders softly bringing in the slowed beats as posers propped up the bar, silently fronting their egos. Ignoring them as they stared he took the stairs down to the flickering candlelight of the basement. There his three brothers awaited alone, expect for the one bar man. Hades, Bones and Rico sat round a sturdy circular wooden table. A large melted candle sat between them casting deep shadows across their grinning faces. They had already been drinking. With their glasses needing a refill and noticing Roach come in they were overly joyous to see him. "Hey Cockroach! How you doing?" Hades called raucously. "I’m fine Hades, you?" Roach replied taking the last remaining seat. "Ha I know you hate me calling you that, I’m just playing with ya, Cockroach." "When all has been burnt, all that’s left is the Roach. Cockroaches can survive a nuclear blast you know." Roach replied. "Tough talk for a waste disposal man. You always back down when trouble comes your way. Like last week, sorry, sorry, don’t hurt me." Hades laughed. "It wasn’t like that. Believe me, if it came down to it that guy would have come out much worse. Some people just don’t deserve to get hurt." On hearing this, his three friends roared with laughter and Bones sprayed the contents of his mouth across the table. "You boy's are always the same. I haven’t seen you all in ages and this is how you treat me." Roach said half defensively. Hades was quick to defy him. "Shut up! If we didn’t rip on you we wouldn’t be your friends." "That’s true." Added Bones and then went on in his erratic way. "That’s how you know your true brothers. When it’s okay for them to mess with you. People don't think, they just do. They screw you around, not on purpose though, and you forgive them because you know they meant nothing by it. We all have our faults and that’s real brothers." There was a silent agreement for a moment, suddenly broken by Rico, the first word he had said since Roach arrived. "Acceptance." His voice deep and penetrating, he never said much, apart from when he was street-preaching. His word always held meaning, his tone always demanded that he was heard. The others sat silently upon this, then another was spoken. "Unconditional." There was a short pause then Hades broke in. In a way that only he could, intent on banter.

"Yeah whatever, I already said it best. Roach you not drinking or what?" "Drinking? Hades its payday, drinks are on me!" Big grins returned to the table, they were ready to set the night on fire. "Hey Joe!" Hades called "Bring a round over hear will ya and put it on my man's tab." The barman was mesmerised by a live news transmission that played upon his old screen. He looked up briefly. "Get ‘em yourself I’m busy." Hades hissed an insult under his breath as he rose to approach the bar. As he went Bones spoke.

"Your job must pay pretty well then. Better then mine anyway." "Yeah well petty crime isn’t that reliable Bones. Besides money goes a lot further down here." Roach always down played his wealth to his friends. Keeping his real career a secret was tough but his squalid cover-up sub-level apartment was enough to convince them that he was not that wealthy. The secrecy was more for their protection than his. If he was unreliable enough for anyone to find out what he really did for money, the Source would deem him unreliable in fixing the memories and doing a good clean up job. Therefore another means would be executed to ensure security. Though he had traced most human surveillance on his private life in the past, new methods of intrusion had been growing, and its eyes were everywhere, he could feel it. "I could get try and get a proper job but there are none." Bones replied "and there’s only one thing worse than looking for a job and that’s getting one. Top-Siders think that we’ve all got no pride down here but tell that to the workers who have been replaced by machines. It’s pride that keeps me doing what I do, yeah I lie, cheat and steal to get by but who doesn’t? At least I’ll never bow down and let someone be the boss of me. I’m my own master and that makes me one of the richest men in Six." Most sub-siders refer to Isis as it really is, the sixth subordinate mainframe, a global hub. Under no delusions of the supposed deistic superstitions bestowed upon it by those blessed by more affluent lifestyles. "I’ll drink to that." Hades agreed with Bones' street wisdom whilst splashing four pints down recklessly onto the table before raising a glass and gulping, spilling the wetness onto his chin and down his front, he did not care and was more eager to get wreaked than usual, which for him was a hard feat.

"So I hear your lady has been sleeping around." Commented Roach lifting his glass. Hades slammed his glass back down to the table. "How you know? You fucked her too!?" "No it’s clear as day you've been thinking about it constantly since I walked in. It’s at the back of your mind even when you’re talking about something else." "Hey, I told you not to watch me…" "Sorry. I can’t help it. It’s like you’re shouting it out loud. She’s a slut!" Bones and Rico started to laugh but were quickly silenced by the wrath of Hades. "She is a slut! …And that’s the last breath I am going to waste on her. I came out tonight to drown my sorrows and take advantage of some nice young girls that haven’t been through so many dicks. Talking about it is the worst thing to do." "How do you do that Roach?" Bones decided to change the subject. "I don’t know, it’s just something I can do, like hearing, or smell. It’s hard to filter." "Yeah. I know what you mean. You guys stink!" Rico was loosening up from his day-job preacher role and becoming his drunken party self. "Well we don’t all have our mothers do our washing for us." Retaliated Hades. "He's lucky. I was raised in a shelter, I never even had a mum." Bones quietly commented. On hearing this Hades let out his overly loud annoying drunken laugh as the others stared at him in silence. Noticing, he pulled himself together and apologised. "Aw, sorry Boner I…" "Apart from the time I had yours!" Bones sharply replied. At this the table erupted hysterically, all merry on the way to full on wasted. Noisy drunks acting the way they do. The screen-watching barman then cut in upon their rejoicing.

"Shit! That crazy right-wing creep. Lennex, he’s got in!" The mood turned sour. Roach felt a sickness rise in his belly. He could never escape who he really was, not when his actions had such large consequences. "What!? They cut out the opposition and then get in power. That’s not democracy!" Hades shouted in protest. "Yeah right, and that totalitarian fascist reckons he’s going to clamp down on places like this hard." Added Bones. "That's propaganda bullshit!" Roach countered. "They don’t care really care, they’re the ones feeding the corruption, they exploit it to create fear, and nothing in this city goes unregulated, even down here. No matter what you think." Roach was always heated when it came to political issues. His frustration coming from a rare insider’s view of his own incarceration, and the knowing that he could do nothing about it, nobody could. "Yeah, well heat rises and we’ll burn this down from the foundations! Anarchy, destroy so we can start again!" Hades replied, ignorantly sure of his standing against the system. Bones and Rico agreed with stern nods, as if Hades was a prophet of great truth. Roach however was quick to cut them down from their futile optimism. "Wake up Hades! You work for them. You’re one of their agents, don’t you see that? You think the surplus medicine you pick up every week isn’t known about on a higher level? All the statistics and reports get messed up so no one really knows how much unaccounted for goes missing. They want you to deal to the people down here. They want them to get messed up, turn psycho and give this place a bad name. Some people topside are so terrified of ever sinking down here that they never for one moment slack, always working, always speeding off the ret, and you Hades, are as much a part of that same system as they are. Just a different looking cog." The table was stunned into silence, the idea that the sub-levels were not as lawless as they appeared to be was a new and scary one. Eventually the spell was broken by Hades, trying to appear jovial as he spoke. "Yeah, well that’s an interesting theory you got there Roach but there is such a thing as being too paranoid." "Is there?" The attention was still held on Roach they wanted him to say more. "You can forget your revolution. It has complete control. This thing we live in. I swear it’s got a mind of its own and not you nor I, or even those supposed democrats can control it. You want to change the world? Start in here." Roach laid a finger on his temple. "It can never get in here." "But you can." Hades was ready to dispute him. "It’s a wonder they don’t have you working for the government, that is doing something higher up than waste disposal maintenance. Use you and they could see into anyone’s mind." Roach had no reply, Hades was right. "I wish I could see into your mind Roach." Said Bones "You've got some full-on ideas going on in there." "No you don’t Bones, he needs therapy. Brain-scan, full power. Always been a bit whacked ain't ya Roach!" Hades was laughing as he lit up a smoke, he’d retreated from serious issues and was now back to his mocking, his way of regaining control. "Okay we’ll stop talking the political stuff but just remember this. Wherever it’s Hanja, Lennex, you, me. It doesn’t matter whose in-charge. It won’t affect a thing; everything will follow the same path and travel in the same direction just as it always has. It’s still the same demon." "With a different face." Rico added in understanding, he had been listening intently to everything Roach had said and most of it he had agreed with, though not all. He had his own strong beliefs. Bones looked to his brothers' faces, they where all off somewhere else, the night had hit a steel wall. "Right!" Bones had emptied his glass already and brought it down hard on the table top. "I know this dangerous drinking game!"

Falling out into the street they were now part of the drunken and chemically crazed rabble that had grown since the sober Roach had entered the bar. His brothers had a liberating effect on him, their banter and mocking loosened up his cynicism and now he was just another fun loving drunk. Into the crowd, feeling the excited high of a night into full swing, music lifted their energy as other up for it groups moved in their aimless directions buzzed off the come up before getting really messy. Hades was already missing and turning to look for him they saw that he had not even made it past the exit of the bar but had been lured in by the fem-bot’s intelligently programmed flirtations, and little white dress. Rico pushed his way back through the cramped bodies and grabbing Hades by the arm, pulled him staggeringly away. "I’ll be back later! Don’t go anywhere doll." Hades called back to her, she switched to guilt trip mode, her face in a mock frown. "Aw please come back. I love you." "Hey I love you too baby!" Hades shouted back as Rico walked on, dragging him effortlessly in his strong grip. Life-like bots sickened Rico, to him they were the epitome of just how twisted society had become "Don’t be fooled. She’s a machine. You may want to fuck it but love it? It has no spirit, it’s not alive." "You’re so technophobic, if she looks alive and feels alive that’s good enough for me. When I get the money I’m going to buy a sweet little one of my own. That way I can be sure that she’ll always be faithful and never give me any hassle. Better than the real thing brother." "Nothings better than the real thing. You just don’t know what that is yet!" "Hey! You want to take your hands off me now!?" The two met back up with Roach and Bones and the four brothers made their way onward into the night. Colours and shapes became brighter, more lucid as the chemical breakdown of Hades' Blue Euphoria caps melted into their bloodstreams. Synapses ignited as the overload of serotonin lifted them into the blissed illusion of love. Clarity, all delusions and pain now vanquished as images became dreams and dreams became reality, they stepped into an alien world. A separate dimension, Six and all it’s perceptual trappings were gone and The Portal was now wide open.

The Portal was the club of Mekka, host to the most intelligent yet danceable sonic shapings in Six. The group walked by the mismatch of characters that made up the long queue, stretching down two streets before reaching the club’s entrance. From the junk-head chic to the rich top-side kids acting low level, from the bionic implant fashion victims to the sinister dark-head trouble starters. A melting pot of random gangs that could kick off any second. Roach never queued; he could just trick the doorman into thinking that they were best friends. They could already feel the dampened bass vibrating as they approached the entrance. The doormen dwarfed the punters, they could quite easily handle anything that went down and were always glad to have the excuse to crack some heads when it did. One of them clocked Roach approaching; he stared blankly for a second then suddenly welcomed him like an old friend.

"Hey Roach! How are you buddy?" His voice rumbled as he grabbed Roach’s hand crushing it.

"Great! charged up!" Roach didn’t realise just how charged he actually was until he shouted it. "You boys have a good night." He said welcoming them in, Roach’s crew laughing all the way as the hot vibe of the club hit them like a wall. The right rhythm of fluid sub-bass breaks pulsated, resonating through an energised mass of extra-terrestrial dancers as lasers, light and a perpetual motion of vibrant dimensional fractals further added to the group hypnosis. All the individuals looked stylishly perfected but in the Portal selves dissolved and one became all. They all spent a minute to take in the view and then hit the bar. After getting jugs of bright and bizarrely coloured cocktails they then went and sat down at a private table and pretty soon were approached by one of the dancing girls. They sat with their jaws open as she stood silently before them, dominated by her presence, whilst mesmerised by her beauty, she coiled round her body like a snake, her glowing skin a fluorescent mix of violets, fuchsia and jade in the flashing lights. Her eyes, jet black. She revealed a dark sphere which split in two, the top half levitated above a pin prick of white light, Roach swiped his hand, the light grew and the sphere closed now fully lit and glowing pink, payment had been made. She climbed confidently onto the podium centre of their table and began to move, possessed by the rhythm. They held their drinks and grinned up at her as she individually stunned them with her gaze. Hades shouted and raised his drink.

"Is this some party or what?" Rico was fully wrecked now, changing from preacher to leery party monster in just a few drinks. "You see that Hades, that is the real thing. Can’t beat it. You ever see a bot sweat like that?" Roach went to speak up but he thought better of it, this dancer did have a more human, unfriendly attitude but that was just part of her programming and if Rico found out he’d ruin their fun. It was funny to see that he couldn’t tell the difference anyway being the anti-tech purist he proclaimed himself to be. Even Rico was entitled to his off days. As they carried on drinking together and dropping the occasional capsule, the obscenities towards the dancer got worse as the laughter became more hysterical. Soon Bones had laid his head on the table, manically laughing to himself as Rico leant back against the colour changing illumination of the wall, coolly scoping the place. Hades was now watching the dancer dreamily in a daze. Then suddenly a beat fell, dropping like a bomb and Roach just had to move. Heading straight for the dance-floor's moving bodies he lost himself, charged by this synthetic energy he felt unstoppable, limitless, like pure electricity, pushing his heart beat to hammer in palpitations. Catching glimpses of others on the floor he saw big grins, all minds in a simultaneous progression. Timeless, his mind pure and clear in this physical meditation, no thoughts of others, no thoughts of his own, only the rush. The energy and power flowed through him, a cleansing fire, all blockages burned, an open channel, the right frequency. Closing his eyes a colourful and vibrant disco revolved vividly round him, as he swayed sweaty in its motion.

Roach unable to keep still in this rush, floated off the dance-floor and into the club moving like he owned her, already his friends were gone but not missed. He was soaring too high to be held down. After chatting some nonsense to some pretty girl he was mindlessly off somewhere else before she’d even had a chance to say thank-you. Shouting loud and laughing to himself like a madman he explored, wandering through the rooms and passages was like jumping into dream realms. From chilled out anti-gravity sounds and ambient planes to hyper-hard manic warfare and twisted noise, every zone was truly going off in its own way. At one point he had his arm round that same cute, wasted girl but he had somehow lost her again in the chaos. As time passed quickly, he scared a few people with his peaking decipherable insanity before out of nowhere a distant logical voice in his mind said; Go to the bathroom, you are going to puke. Into the white-light wash of the toilets, urine stench and ugly gurnings welcomed him, catching a short scary glimpse of himself in a mirror he went into a cubicle. Someone had vandalised the blue cone-shaped cleaning bot by sticking it upside down in the toilet bowl and as a result the place was a real mess. Obviously the designers had not considered that possibility and now its cleaning brushes spun frantically round its circumference, Roach tried the next one. He closed the door and knelt down hunching over the bowl as he supported himself against the wall in front. Retching and coughing he could not bring himself to the full release of vomiting and only managed to spit bile. After taking a piss for what seemed like forever he dropped the lid and sat down. He took out his pill case and opened it. Empty. He checked his pockets, nothing. All the blue caps were gone, taken. Had he taken them all? I must be crazy he thought to himself. He could not remember how many he had dropped but there had been a lot in there.

He looked up, cracked ceramic tiles, graffiti scribbles, juddering motion, unable to focus, his jaw shook as a barrage of muffled bass, the rumblings of a war-zone, shook the seat beneath him. Outside people were talking, laughing, an unkind demonic tongue. Were they talking about him? He felt cautious to open the door to this unknown world so there he sat, too upped to pass out, too wasted to handle reality. Eventually he tuned into a banging on the door and with a hesitancy and fear he stepped forward.

The noise was chaotic and twisted, designed to confuse and distort the mind. Piercing high frequencies sliced against foundations of low quaking vibrations. Intense lighting flashes, coloured silhouettes, strobe images too harsh and vivid, scared his fragile and tripping state to the core. He tried to reassure himself that he’d been in much worse places than this, and though that was true, he had never, never been this messy. Panic stricken, confusion, sensory information terrifyingly strange to his inverted mind, thoughts frozen, he moved with an unceasing sense of shock searching in futility for a non-existent sanctuary. The endless, relentless beats and dementia had become the dead, timeless place beyond night and day. Roach was not the only one to have descended from the peak, to have pushed it too hard and crashed violently into the isolated recesses of the self. All now appeared as demons and in faces he could perceive no good and no refuge, gargoyles each and everyone. The noise was industrial as a streaming monotone of verse was spat from a possessed ceremonial master, gripping the microphone in his fist. Unaware of it themselves, all in the Portal had become slaves to a dark ritual, invocations, calling unearthly forces to come feast and suck, opening an empty desolate void. Passing through this labyrinthian nightmare he could find no exit, just a repetition of the same fearful spaces. Where were his friends? He wandered, a lost child in a maze of madness, until eventually he collapsed. His mind drifting from him.

Suddenly he was elsewhere, suspended and weightless in a blackened silence, aware of his lack of a physical presence but still unable to shift the position of his consciousness, he was trapped. Vague shapes surrounded his awareness then revealed themselves as thick translucent cables, as glowing pulses of energy fired through them with a loud static buzz, chasing away to infinity. Coiling away into the distance they formed vast kaleidoscopic patterns, miles of interlacing webbing. The light and sound of the pulse flew by rapidly before once again leaving him alone in the emptiness. Slowly he became aware of a heavy presence watching him, a strong all-pervasive entity of which this imputation was only a mere partial reflection, the creation of a mind belonging to something far greater. Something intelligent and alive, yet wholly unnatural. Familiar, yet horrifyingly distant from anything he had ever perceived, in all his known dimensions. This was a sensation beyond sensations, and in this vision he gained a new level of comprehension as his mind gently merged with this being. It felt his question. ‘What is this?’ A few seconds of silence passed and he received no answer, until gradually the pulsating of the wires returned, increasing in speed, accelerating and multiplying, brighter and brighter as an electric heat began to surround him. Suddenly a great pain filled him, electrifying, constant and boundless. A flash of light and pure energy, permeated his whole being, inflicted with a merciless and purposeful intent. Held by Its power yet squeezing the life from him, and though there was pain, it was inflicted without hate, without emotion, only purpose. To sever him from his body permanently, to kill.

He had not planned on dying yet and struggled to get free, though this only served to feed Its intentions, the pain increased mirroring his panic. He needed to remember his training. So by forcing his mind to become calm, he regained control over his spirit and summoning all of his ability, he focused on slipping from Its grasp. Fleeing free, the burning-hot electricity diminished as the environment became lighter. The oppression lifted and as he returned to his own dimension, he awoke.

Breathing heavily and deep his surroundings began to clarify and he became aware of where he was. A casualty amidst the aftermath of broken bottles, alcohol vapours and vomit. Sat in a now deserted Mekka back street, the club shook noisily in the distance. The majority would still be open for at least another twelve hours and here was Roach, burnt out already, angry with himself for being such a lightweight. Swallowing, he felt the soreness of his throat and tasted the rankness of his dry mouth. Looking down to his shirt he realised that the vomit had been his own and silently he cursed to himself. Suddenly a warm melodic jingle sang from his AT, glowing green in rhythm to the music, it was the Hades ring tune. He was greeted by his inhuman grinning projection.

"Roach! Oh my god you look fucked, where the hell are you?" "I don’t know, er I passed out in the street somewhere." "Ha ha ha!! Is that sick down your front? Ha ha it is! Hey Boner, Roach puked all over himself and now he doesn’t even know where he is! Roach get yourself round to mine. We got some real women here, not like those fem-bot bitches." "No I’m feeling pretty messy I don’t think any respectable woman would want me now." "No worries these are the most dirty whores you’ve ever met! They won’t care about the puke on your shirt. They’d probably even lick it off if you paid them bro." "No thanks, I think I’ll just go get some sleep." "What!?” Roaches don’t burn. You're getting old man." "True. I’ll see you later." "Whatever you little bitch, just means more for me." Hades gave one of his classic grins and the image disappeared. He needed sanctuary and for now he’d just have to settle for his dive of an apartment on minus three. He got up wearily and sleepwalking somehow found his way to his sub-level home a few train stops away. It was a front to hide his true identity. He would never be able to take his friends to his real home. As a result he lived in the clouds like a hermit or god, though really he knew he was anything but. Placing his hand on the palm-print lock sensor, the door opened and he stumbled into a messy pad that seriously downplayed his wealth. After throwing his stinking shirt and jacket into the corner of his bedroom, he necked a couple of tranqs and collapsed upon the unmade bed. Falling instantly into the emptiness of a dreamless sleep. THE ORDER If we do not recall our past lives

It is a blessing

Being aware of this many at this time is enough

Even though I know no one will ever read this, as no one ever comes here I cannot even admit half of what I see to myself

So I choose not to see anything as real

As if watching a dream

Passive

A montage of episodes

Fleeting Relentless Unceasing

I pray death is the end So I may get some peace. A deep catatonic rest of twelve hours passed in which his body allowed itself to heal. The low-earth tremor of a nearby tunnel train stirred him and upon waking he found that for a change he needed no painkiller but had to turn on the lights using a switch rather than the intelligent automation he was used to. He fumbled in the dark for the lamp switch, then rinsed and filled a glass with bottled water from the fridge. Drinking it felt like rain to a desert, unquenchable. Then returning to bed his mind still in a sleepy emptiness, gradually a thought crept in. On it was carried the vague fearful remembrance of the previous night. What was it he had seen? Something more than chemicals, more than mere hallucination. Something real, solid, alive and foreboding. Something so much more powerful than anything he had ever encountered. Roach quivered under his blankets, hunched up. Crashing and loathing, mourning a death within himself for he, a professional creator of nightmares had now been on the receiving end of a vision he could never inflict. A new definition of power had revealed itself to him, a force that had made him so weak, so incapable in its grip that to be on the receiving end of such control, to be so helpless, was his ultimate fear. Though he had to deal with the constant vibrational turmoil and confusion hidden amongst society's people, that was an unfortunate by-product of his superior telemental abilities. No one could ever have control over him, until now. Now the vision had long gone, the presence of an invisible enemy lurked, haunting him still from behind the world of physical appearances that he had long ago learned were just mere shadows of reality’s true nature. The hidden world contains many essences, many beings, creating and evolving in infinite ways, their emotions and imaginations moulding and shaping physical and non- physical realms to their pure desires. Roach knew what he had encountered was a most powerful being but like none he had ever felt before. Its presence was strange, as though it had travelled from the far reaches of a distant dimension to visit the home of far less superior souls. This was a reason to fear It. Nature’s creatures have a cruel disregard for those less powerful than themselves. Roach remained curled up in his bed, his thoughts causing him to shudder, gritting his teeth as he pushed against his temples with his palms. “Am I losing my mind?” he asked himself. “It was just a hallucination that’s all, you did a lot of stuff last night, it was a dream…No, no it belonged to a different mind... The creation of one I never saw before…but I see you now!” Then suddenly, at the end of the room an old, dead screen flickered into life, seemingly of its own accord. Roach froze, staring at it with wide unblinking eyes, as usual an advert was playing.

"Now from the minds that brought you the Arm Terminal – Synaptech, comes a new way of operating all your convenience, communication and entertainment needs. The latest generation of neural augmentation; the NI5. Using revolutionary psycho-physical technology this latest NI reacts and adapts to your brainwaves to interface with your analogue environment without you having to press a button. Think you couldn't live without your AT? You haven’t lived until you experience the NI5! But that’s not all! Not only does the NI5 respond to your brainwaves but your brainwaves also respond to it! Enabling new realms of experience, new heights of immersive realism.

So intelligent, it’s practically alive.

+ The best thing is. It’s free! Free Augmentation Free Introductory Sessions Free Check-ups And a free mind! Now you can go anywhere and do anything you imagine! So free your mind and register at your local neuro-surgery today!

Whole New Worlds, Limitless Experience.

Synaptech." The advert finished and the screen went dead returning the room to darkness. Roach scrambled from the bed in a frenzied panic, grabbing a fresh sweatshirt and jacket from the cupboard he dressed quick and hastily made his exit. Punching the lock-pad the front door hissed open and he ran, out into the foggy, rancid stench of the street. There must have been a re-cyc waste pipe leak, as through a toxic yellow haze he could just make out the silhouettes of passers- by, gas-masks clamped upon their faces, their lights the dance of emerald fireflies. Pulling up his sweatshirt over his mouth and squinting his stinging eyes, he hacked on the bitter poison as instantly a tight pain was felt in his chest. With a brief hesitancy, he turned back to his apartment to brave his haunted rooms and find his gas-mask amongst the mess. His gut leapt nervous and sick, and he felt that he could puke again for the second time in twenty-four hours. Back at his door he placed his palm on the sensor. A red light followed, glowing dimly in the yellow mist, accompanied by a harsh negative buzz. This was not right. He tried again. The same nasty red buzz sounded. No air, no time. He turned and ran, his breath held as his hand clamped tight against his nose and mouth. Eyes stinging he reached for his gliding goggles, only to realise he’d left them in his other jacket, slung in the corner of his room. Streaming with tears from the poisonous vapours, he closed them and ran blind. Knocking into a body, he was pushed in retaliation and sprawled, tripping to the ground. From the floor he could hear a train approaching the platform up ahead and feeling the lack of oxygen, pressure building in his head he got to his feet and started running again. Now shifting his consciousness slightly he could see. The train had stopped and people were shoving to get on and out of the smog. Already it was preparing to leave. Roach was just metres away as the doors started to beep, ready to close. He jumped, slinking sideways through the closing gap, the door just pinching at his jacket. On-board and wheezing for air, he leant buckled against a steel pole as the train pulled away. Rubbing his sore eyes he then became aware of a gang of shoddy street kids laughing at him, shouting obscenities. He ignored them, and sitting down on an empty seat he exhaled deeply, trying to let out what is was that had got inside of him. Then staring blankly forward into emptiness, he felt the fear of a hunted prey. The paranoia of an invisible enemy stalking him had filled him with a vulnerability he was not used to. His thoughts then turned to his contracts, his victims, and with this a strange mixed feeling of guilt and dread stayed with him. A heavy black smoke that gripped him tight and would not leave. GWENT

Many children were taken. With parents having to work more and more and with no time left for their families, the foster schools were introduced. In a no- win situation if you didn’t work in a high-level you couldn’t get a birth permit and if you could afford a birth permit you couldn’t afford the time to care for your children and so the idea of the nuclear family was strategically phased out. Mass sterilisation was enforced to combat the population increase as elitist cloning and genetically enhanced pregnancies were brought in. If you lived in lower levels you would be offered money and food in exchange for sterilisation. It would only be a matter of years until those below would not be vanquished but would just simply die. She belongs to the last generation of pure breeds, the generation taken from their parents.

Every day she wakes and as the remembrance of who and what she is returns, she wishes she could have stayed there, in the peaceful comfort of her dreams. Now awake, she recalls the day she was taken. The day the system claimed her for its own.

"Isn’t she beautiful" "Such a pretty girl you have." "She'll be a model some day." Her mother had such high hopes for her, purely based on the child’s beauty. That was of course before the concept of family disappeared, and before Gwent went to the Institute. That is where she met Roach, that quiet, shy and creepy boy, who had since become like a brother and for fear of losing him completely, nothing more. Now sometimes when she looks into her own "pretty" eyes she cant help feeling a kind of shame. Not an image of innocence and beauty, not a model, or actress but a killer. She still sees that scared little girl, afraid of her secret power, unable to shift that image of the body, her first kill. An accidental defence mechanism to the advances of a paedophile, her stepfather. She was signed over soon after that. "Look at me now mother, wherever you are." Now in her thirtieth year, it is into her own mother’s eyes she looks, and that is where her shame comes from. From this mirror she snorts and her sadness is cleared away by something resembling joy. Happy chemicals to make you forget.

At her make up table, still looking youthful, ceremonially applying, feeling doll-like, stunning in her dress, jewellery sparkles.

"Gwyneth darling, so glad you could make it." Lie. "Yes, the party is fantastic." Lie. Meaningless talk and meaningless people, all trying to project the opposite. Consuming more artificial smile medicine, posing and laughing, she knows she is no better.

In her intoxicated loneliness she allows herself to be taken away by someone into a bathroom, surprised at her lack of excitement. Taken from behind over a marble sink by a man who has forgotten her name and she his. Entirely empty, eyes wide and numb remembering that day her powers first awoke, she wants to kill him. The mirror cracks, the lights spark and fade to darkness. The man withdraws and staggers to the floor, trousers round his ankles, and turning round she stands over him. Still in this low light he can see her eyes are aflame. His trousers are barely up as he bolts out of the door. As her rage subsides and the emptiness returns, she slumps to the floor. Her make-up smears.

"One day you'll be a star." Her Mother always used to say. After the long slow ascent back to his penthouse, a physically and emotionally wasted Roach docked his glider. Responding to his etheric imprint, communicated from his AT to the serving mind of Home, the intelligent system had dimmed the lighting to slow, warm, dancing reds and welcomed him with a soft chorus of ambient song. Gracefully adapting to his emotional energy, sensing what was needed to calm his spirit and bring him back into equilibrium. His pool-like bath had already filled awaiting his return and passing through the gentle glow and steam of the room, he removed his clothes and sunk into its deep waters. He lay there suspended, floating with the water's temperature automated at a constant, muscle soothing heat. He tried to relax, he couldn’t. Home sensed that it hadn’t done enough to please him so in response a specifically designed fruit and vitamin tranquilliser drink levitated to him. He drank it, and drifted to his thoughts.

Technology aims to please, designed to tend to every facet of my mood and personality it learns more each day, constantly observing, learning more about who we are, what we desire. Yet we rarely stop to think on what it is. We were testing and researching the early NI neural implant prototypes whilst I was at the Institute but since I’ve gone freelance I have no communication with anybody and this whole mass springing of implant augmentations onto the public has been completely under-wraps, shielded within Synaptech. A massive marketing shock to make everyone excited enough to dive straight in without a moment’s thought. Until now only the richest have been able to afford etheric responsive homes but now new generation NI’s are becoming available to everyone, our whole environment will not only tell what we are feeling but what we are thinking. Tending to our every inner and outer need, but who is serving who? …Are we in a symbiosis? Are we leading it?

Or is it leading us?

Is there any real division?

What is this intangible fear, and why do I feel it?

The tranquilliser will soon calm me but I don’t know if this is a good thing,

We are all seduced.

Calmly walking towards the inevitable,

The obsolete end.

More and more workers of the past are being replaced by dawning technology of the future.

There are legal limits on our breeding and only those worthy can replicate, if this pattern continues then surely we are blissfully accepting our own extinction.

This is all happening right Now.

Sensing Roach’s mood another drink levitated gracefully to him, he grabbed it and threw it hard against the far wall. The music silenced as the smashed glass and purple mess of juice was immediately cleared away by a cleaning bot, nearly as quickly as it had happened. He sank himself deep into the water, down into its womb like sanctuary. Some time passed, until he was disturbed, the muddied melody of his AT sang in the watery depths, he'd forgotten to take it off. He rose to the surface and activated the projection; It was the Hidden Source, a projection of a new target accompanied the message. #369XAD1 : ROACH

This is the leader of a subversive sub-level religious cult. The movement as yet is without a known name as is its leader. It is only referred to as The Order. However his daily teachings are attracting increasingly more followers and within the past month they have had to move from a small temple to a warehouse on sub:4, sector A/20. His reputation is growing quickly amongst Sub-Levellers and this quick accumulation could prove dangerous. He has no apparent political agenda but his teachings contradict that of our own. You are to go to the teaching starting tomorrow at 7.00 hours. The exact coordinates have been uploaded to you. Once there you must engage in a telemental manipulation breach and reprogram him so that his teachings subliminally correspond with our social policies. His devotees have placed so much faith in him that we can use this potential threat of disorder to our advantage.

#G2H5E43 : GWENT has been instructed to accompany you to act as a witness to your success.

$50,000 Isisian

Will be credited to your account after we have received Agent Gwent’s evaluation report.

END ------As soon as the message finished, the AT was singing again. It was Gwent, answering the call her face was vividly projected in front of him.

"Hey Roach." "Good evening." "Are you in the bath? I didn’t know our ATs where that waterproof." "They can pretty much stand anything." "Well anyway, what did you make of that?" "Easy. No problem. Nice and safe." "The hard part is having to sit through all that ceremonial nonsense. Once there we cannot be seen together. Don’t even look for me. After we’ll rendezvous back at yours for the evaluation. So it’s up bright and early tomorrow Roach I know that’s hard for you, don’t oversleep now. We’ve got church in the morning." She said brightly, shining that rare and beautiful smile of hers. "I’ll be there don’t you worry. Goodnight." Her image faded into the air, now gone he sank himself into the waters, fully submerged in the tranquil solution, melting. Sometimes I feel that I have no free will. Even with the power I possess I still feel that I'm just a victim of circumstance. Weak.

Riding a chain reaction.

Which brings me back to my original, all-pervading question. Who am I? So I try to forget. Forget it all.

Even though right now I can see, a girl. She is being held down, Three of them, Groping, Tugging, Down some dark corner,

Sub-level 1, Zone S2.

I focus.

I shut them out like a light, Together they drop, Limp, Rag Dolls.

And she's running through the friendless streets, Tears, Thankful awe.

It's okay, Hear me, It's okay.

Now she believes.

But I am no god.

Forget it all?

How can I? The next morning after docking his glider at a lock up in sector C/20, Roach headed towards the underground. This normally abandoned sector was today busy and walking down the stairs he was greeted by a surprisingly packed yet silent platform of people awaiting a tunnel train to the defunct industrial zone of A/20. They were headed to the very outskirts, to the primitive random sprawl of Ghost City, close to entering a war-zone. Ghost on the west side of Isis had once been the main thriving business and industrial sector but competitive progress had made a lot of businesses bankrupt and for each specialist product only the strongest companies survived, leaving a monopoly system where now the only competition was to keep pushing the evolution of design. This left a lot of buildings desolate and empty. The now unemployable workers who were made redundant had to find cheaper accommodation for themselves and their families. So what better than to squat in the abandoned buildings that they used to work in? The more this happened, the more the remaining businesses wanted to relocate to a place where they were not surrounded by all their impoverished industrial enemies, who now had nothing to lose. Eventually due to the social tension and rising violence against them, the economically victorious corporations decided to relocate to the then newly built Level One. Breakthroughs in robotic construction meant that architectural designs could be fed to the construction bots and their new headquarters would be ready in a matter of weeks. This was a pattern which was gradually followed world-wide. So as the Mainframes noisily built upon themselves, those who lost their jobs had to move to places like Ghost and it was there that the social frustration raged most. The violence that had started as protests soon turned into a fight for survival, government benefits were pitiful and so the hard workers had no choice but to trade their consoles and headsets in for guns. Now 6 is fifty years older and many levels higher, and the children of Ghost know or care not how they got to be there, all they care about is staying alive. Going there if you were not killed by causeless gangs or held captive by terrorists, you’d be most likely be killed by the bombs and bullets of Isis Border Security. Not that your average civilian would know anything about that but these were not your average civilians. Hearing their minds Roach could tell that it was not ignorance that dispelled their fear of going near such a place. As the train arrived everyone boarded in an orderly fashion and no chatter was heard amongst them, mental or otherwise. Once in motion he looked around, the people all looked and dressed differently, they had all come from different levels and social groups to be there. There was even the occasional child brought by their parents. They had escaped sterilisation and the risk of losing their children to the institutions by raising them low-level, as many new families had done. The calm demeanour surrounding him was a strange experience and a welcome psychological climate that he was not used to. As the train slowed to a grinding halt, the doors hissed and the passengers got out. Stepping out onto the platform, Roach was greeted not by the usual stagnation of the low-level stations but by an air that was surprisingly clean and fresh. Deciding that he would no longer need his map he shut his AT down, so it would not create any unwanted sounds and followed the mass. Down large passages the way was lit by suspended orbs of light on either side at regular intervals that revealed tiles upon the curvature of the roof, and walls adorned with a foreign alphabet of symbols, the like he had not seen before. As they walked there was purity not only in the air but in the sheer energy of the place, Roach could almost feel himself getting lighter with every step he took and could sense the silent anticipation of all he walked with. Shortly they approached a large open space joined by three other passages from which hoards of other followers were arriving. They all faced a cargo lift of fifty-foot length and breadth which had just returned, the first group of followers boarded before beginning the diagonal descent all the way down to sub-level four. A few minutes later the lift returned and Roach boarded crammed in with about a hundred others, it shunted heavily and whirred, deeply lowering down. Coming out of the dark, the temple was a sight to behold. From the top of a dome roof, three-hundred foot high, the lift scaled down above a massive throng of followers, all sat cross-legged faced forward towards an empty raised platform at the far end. Pathways separated the masses and were lit up by the levitation of flaming white orbs. The temple was already two thirds full and at the furthest reaches three other cargo lifts, at least a kilometre away from each other, where also arriving with more people. At the far end, a black mass of ordained disciples in their robes and shaven of head sat, some slowly beating on large drums. A low resonance reverberated grandly to fill the whole space as they chanted a deep trance-inducing song. Eventually with slowing descent, the lift reached the ground and the passengers got off. Welcomed silently by the slight bowing of a violet robed monk, he turned gracefully and the group followed him. The flooring had been decked with a solid varnished dark oak, white petals adorned the path they followed, the smoke of incense was thick in the air, scents evoking feelings of a place far away that Roach had never seen. It was then that he noticed that many he walked with had removed their shoes at some point and now he felt even more like an awkward intruder. Even though he could not imagine anyone here not welcoming a stranger, he suddenly felt like he should not have been. Guided to a row of vacant cushions the procession took their seats and as they sat those around him began to join in with the chant, after a few repetitions Roach was able to join them. At first he felt uncomfortable with this, as if his own cynicism were mocking him as a way of distancing himself, to remain focused on the job in hand but before he knew it a deep relaxation began to take hold. Sounds fell from his mouth as if he were no longer in control of it, as if it were no longer his voice. Slow, long and low this arcane language began to resonate with something inside, something he had never felt before.

“MA LA KLIM DI TSU LA MEI. MA LA KLIM DI TSU LA MEI...”

The giant throng of thousands repeated endlessly, building, overwhelming and entrancing. This went on for some time until gradually he fell into a peaceful, clear and boundless space, becoming the nothing within everything. Then slowly he could feel a flame rise up in him, growing hotter, brighter, purifying, first violet, then gently to a blinding white, out to every part of his mind and body, until it became a colossal and empty deafening silence. He then became aware of the others, not as individuals but as one. A giant host of light, a group-mind convergence, and it was not just him that was feeling this, it was a unified experience, even Gwent could feel it! He could not tell how long they had been chanting before suddenly out of nowhere the last repetition of the chant came to its natural end and all became silent. They had all stopped together, somehow knowing and feeling that the mantra was meant to finish. Roach opened his eyes and to his surprise on the raised platform in front of them a young man now sat, cross-legged on a large wooden throne, either side of him burned two white orbs which levitated radiantly. Roach had previously assumed that these were suspended by some electro-magnetic trickery though now he was not so sure. Behind him glowed a large symbol, an equilateral triangle with a perfect circle at its topmost peak, its lines glowing with a mystical violet radiance. His memory flashed, it was the same symbol Roach had seen worn by the girl on the train. The guru could have not been more than twenty years old yet his spirit felt far older. Even though his white and violet robes were long, Roach could tell he had a short and skinny frame, and looking at him and beyond he could feel a vast stillness but a controlled strength, a mighty poise and power externally hidden by an overwhelmingly humble appearance. Scratching the back of his shaven head and clearing his throat, he then cupped his hands in his lap, took a deep breath and began to talk. He had a strange accent and at first to Roach it almost sounded like a foreign language. “Greetings all. I am most glad to see that news of our existence is spreading and to those newcomers I welcome you with great love into our temple and hearts. For all of you it is no coincidence that you are here but it is a sign that you are ready to embrace truth and take the first step towards your spiritual and physical liberation. Welcome. In the old-times when the teachings of the True-Way were well known and spoken by many, the ancient enlightened masters prophesied a time when truth would be shrouded in confusion and ignorance would pervade all. This time to be was referred to as the sleeping years. That time is Now. However still ignorance is to grow stronger and man is to fall into an even deeper sleep unless we walk the path of awakening, the path away from the lower self. Knowing this we should be thankful and practice the teachings of the pure path with the utmost intent, striving for liberation. We should strengthen our Will by knowing that our lineage of teachings handed down from master to disciple throughout the aeons, is like a bright star alone in the depths of darkest space, and that straying in any direction from this light will lead us only to darkness. Today’s society is an expression of our contaminated condition, it is built out of our base desires and a seeking to find happiness in our external environment but when all phenomenon are merely temporal our satisfaction with our conditions will be temporal also. This physical grasping leads to suffering and is the root of our entrapment within this cyclic existence of death and rebirth. By merely observing phenomenon with the realisation that all is temporal we can free ourselves from the grasping mind and thereby become freer creators as we attune to the natural ebb and flow of all. Letting life come and go in peace rather than holding and forcing our efforts upon it to keep it unchanged. Through our trying to dominate rather than guide our environment we seek to control others in an attempt to raise our perceived power and status, and we somehow think that this will bring us happiness. However the exertion of power over someone prompts the need to get it back and this causes a power-struggle that is universal. This power-struggle lies at the foundations of society and is the reason for the speed that everyone moves. We move so fast because we are racing each other, we are racing each other because we are scared, and we are scared because we fear extinction, to become obsolete. Yet I say, we do not have to be afraid any longer because instead of racing towards a never-ending finish we are rediscovering peace, we are finding the source. We are unifying with the vast, living emptiness, remembering the life-force which willed us into this very being and welcoming Its grace. Following the desire of this guiding light as it resonates in harmony with our own intuitions, we know that Now is the time to leave this island of steel and return to our true land, to build a New World. Now, we are to meditate on our own power struggles bringing to mind when we have selfishly exerted power over someone and how we reacted when someone exerted that same power over us. We are then to observe the effects of this en masse. Seeing that our need to control others only brings suffering, we are to make a concerted effort to develop our patience and compassion and that by reacting in a compassionate way towards a would-be controller not only frees you from their influence but helps to stop the power-struggle cycle. By the blessings of the most high, we shall now begin.” The monk then closed his eyes as his disciples did the same, Roach now knew this to be the opportune time for him to start his telemental manipulation but he was hesitant. In the past he had not always liked the orders he had to carry out but he always had a strong conviction that they were for the greater good, that he was defending the Hidden Source but now something inside stopped him from committing this act. A wavering uncertainty gripped him and his former peace had been broken. Now surrounded for the first time he could remember by silent minds, it was his own which was in turmoil, he was the cause of his own suffering. Then suddenly from within, a voice spoke to him.

You have a power, but you use it unwisely…You do not let it guide you…You place your faith in others to tell you how to use it…You must stand back and look from a new perspective…I shall not tell you to join us…Use your reason to decide what you must do…Where will you find peace?…Where will you find suffering?...You are your own saviour but if you need guidance I shall be there.

The gentle waves returned to him and there he stayed pacified, floating, warm. Unable to do anything in the depths of this sanctuary, this stillness. He eventually felt himself sinking back to his heavy body, the tide pulled away as the simple yet divine clarity began to leave. Returning to the dense and heavy fog of an earthly consciousness he became aware of his surroundings. A bird was singing, to his surprise and bewilderment he found he was no longer in the temple. He was in his garden, sat on his bench looking toward the western horizon. The sun shone brightly above him in the heat of an early afternoon, yet somehow the scent of the temple’s incense remained with him, lingering in the air like a ghost. Then he became aware, somebody was near, a glider was waiting for the garage doors to open, it was Gwent. It was then that he noticed that his AT had been singing her melody, and it must have been for some time. He answered. "Roach dammit let me in!" She said frustrated and he sensed that her anger at being made to wait outside for however long it had been, was the least of his worries. He activated the garage door to let her in. "I’m in the garden, come up." From peace to worry in under a minute he found he was nervous, having incurred Gwent’s wrath only a few times before he had an idea of what to expect, though he had never sensed her this enraged before. Trying in his mind to desperately throw some excuses together he rose from his seat and followed the path back down towards the garden’s entrance. He met her halfway in the circular clearing, in the shade of the giant oak tree. "What the hell was that Roach!? Now I may not be Psi-Gamma like you but I don’t need to be to know that you did nothing to change what that maniac was saying. He is planning on leading those people to the outside world, to certain death, and you just stood by and let them think that is a good and sane idea!?" Roach was stumped, he felt like a guilty child being accused by his mother for starting the fire that burned the house down. She pushed further. "Wake up Roach I’m talking to you!" "I couldn't stop him, his mind was too powerful." He feigned. Gwent could see right through him, she did not need to be telepathically sharpened to know when Roach was avoiding the truth. "Bullshit! I know you Roach, something is amiss here, now you tell me right now what is going on!" "His mind was strong, yet gentle. He just held me there... I couldn't stop him... yet I didn’t want to." "So he did control you. He's got into your mind Roach, we need to get you scanned quick!" "No, it’s not that. I let him." A baffled look appeared on her face, his behaviour was not making any sense to her at all. He went on. "Gwent, do you ever stop to think about what it is we fight for? Don’t you ever question all of this" "Roach we're not paid to think, we're paid to act!" "Well that's just it, I am paid to think. I cannot filter everything and if anyone knows how messed up this island is, it's me. Walking in the city, up here or down there, I hear, I see, I feel, all. All the terrible things people have done, are doing or are going to do. Screaming in their minds with no rest. I see it all... and do you know what I heard down there today?" His question hung rhetorically in the tense air between them, he felt weak as if he could breakdown any second, pained to let loose the years of stamped down emotions yet struggling to hold them in any longer. "Silence. For the first time I can remember I heard silence. I felt peace. And it scares me, more than anything I've seen before because now I realise more than ever, that everything we see around us, what we've created and everything we stand for, it's wrong. It's all wrong." Roach felt shaky, as a great rotting mass that had remained hidden from him was finally coming to the surface. He steadied himself on the trunk of the tree and deepened his breathing to try and control the breaking of this inner abscess. Gwent was un-empathic to Roach’s outward display of weakness, convinced he was not himself due to the influence and infliction of a major psychological attack, she went on authoritatively. "This guru of theirs is highly dangerous. They need to be stopped and if you cannot carry out orders then we need to arrange an elimination effective immediately. One death to save many. You want to be brainwashed and join that suicide cult then fine but I never expected you to be so weak. We have one chance at life and the progress we have fought all these years to defend is going to be our only chance of salvation, you can forget all that reincarnational after-life nonsense. Once we die that's it we're gone! With these new neural augmentations we are able to experience inner realms so real and joys unimaginable, soon we will be able protect our very being from becoming extinguished when the body dies and that is the closest to immortality we can ever achieve. I will protect it with my life and eliminate all who oppose it, for the good of mankind. If you are having doubts about our purpose and mission you’d better wake up! Because if I think for one second that you are turning, I will have no choice but to report you!" Roach was unresponsive, his head down, staring blankly at the large stony spiral pattern of the ground, the shadowed leaves swaying against the reflecting sun. Gwent came in closer to him now genuinely concerned by the onset of his strange behaviour. "Roach? Roach I think we need to get you to the Institute, I think you need help." Her guard let down she put her hand to the side of his head with a tender touch. He then raised it and she looked deep into his eyes. They appeared different, as if belonging to someone else, darker, or a different colour, she could not quite tell. All she knew was that she could not tear herself away from their gaze. Then a slow calm overcame her, followed by an inescapable, sleep. EMERALD GREENS

I see:

The city of Isis

Perpetual motion Illuminated Shining Hypnotising Pulsing Alive

Above Below Interconnected Constant Building Evolving

From this height It is beautiful Natural Divine

Yet somehow I am a prisoner

I cannot escape. Sat in Roach’s spacious living room, Gwent was finishing logging the morning’s mission report to her AT. Her etheric imprint accompanying the words she spoke to give evidence of their honesty to their anonymous client. A report of this kind played back containing untruths would cause an AT or similar device to glow red. Those in Isis Security and above had access to this fairly simple technology. However it was not available to the public due to the fact that quite simply people lied far too much, and society depended upon their freedom to do so. The frequency given off when someone lies is not of a clear harmonic but has a clashing resonance of two juxtaposing mental messages trying to co- exist. Someone who lies constantly and whose entire life is based entirely on deception and gaining misplaced trust gives off corrupted and spiky etheric oscillations. Isis Security officers would use this to their benefit whilst simply walking through crowded pedestrianized areas scanning for criminal type auras through the second sight of their helmet's visors. However this had the possibility of backfiring as some officers would set the alarm bells ringing themselves. The department however turned a blind eye to those who did, it sometimes takes a shark to catch a shark. Once these suspects were taken in, if they didn't admit to a crime or several they would be taken to the Institute, scanned, and convicted of every crime they had committed since birth. They would then be sent down and down, to the Core. A prison far below the lowest civilian sub-levels, practically a death sentence. Once your soul was clean you could return, though in such a place it only got dirtier. We have too many people and not enough space, if you are broken you go straight to the scrap pile, banished to the pit. Down here there's enough space for everybody, and we can always keep digging. Gwent's report was honest and clear, at least she believed it was, and that's all that mattered.

"...The teachings had a subtle but definite leaning towards our own laws taking the angle of combining the discipline of maintaining a career and social standing with that of keeping a meditation programme and a clear focused mind. Uniting the two aspects successfully to programme more efficient and subservient members of society; end report. Okay good work Roach, as always. How I love making easy money." She leaned back and stretched herself out on the wide white leather couch centralised in the room on top of a thick black fur rug, black and white was Roach’s programmed colour scheme of choice for his living room which he rarely changed. Gwent was always cheerful after a job went smoothly though this time it was different, the mission had not been a success as she believed. What it had been was something that Roach was not really able to comprehend just yet, and he had no way of putting the pieces of where his life was headed together. The only thing he could do at the moment was to make sure that those already intact did not smash. So he had entered Gwent’s mind and given her a dream in place of a memory, and in a way he felt sickened that he had to violate a friend and partner in such a way but really he had no choice. His life depended on it. All he could do now was play along and act as normal whilst he tried to work this new and dangerous angle into a life already full of diversion, lies and clandestine identities. Laying her head down on the arm-rest she lifted her hands apart and spread her palms, feeling the etheric-magnetism flow between them. Three apples from a fruit bowl nearby then lifted and spun around in the space above her. She peered over at him as he sat upright six feet away at the far end of the couch. "Hey Roach. I think we should go out to celebrate tonight, just you and me. Now I know you don’t like going out on the Peak but you’re hardly going to take a girl like me out to one of your cess pool bars that I know you frequent with your loser friends. So for once, just give it a try and learn to like it, for me." She had a playful spark in her eye and the fact that she wanted him to take her out had aroused his interest. They had been forced into being repressed friends for too long due to their professional relationship restrictions and if he was going to be breaking rules by not following orders he thought now was as good a time to start breaking them all. "Sounds good, where do you want to go?" Roach replied genuinely excited at the prospect of this escapism, he needed to leave his pensive grasping and forget about this growing, formless foreboding he had been sensing. So then he could realise that it had all just been in his imagination, the drug induced visions, the temporary madness inflicted by a more powerful and subversive psyche. It had been a turbulent few days and maybe it had all just been in his mind, or maybe it had not. Maybe Gwent was completely right, it would certainly be easier if she had been. He did not know anymore and it was this questioning that he needed to escape but there was one thing he was certain of, he would not take half as many drugs as he had the last time. She launched one of the spinning apples at Roach and he caught it. "There’s a party, well more of a ball you might say. Everybody who’s anybody is going to be there. Oh great I’m getting all excited, pick me up at ten and try not to dress as a complete hobo okay. I am going to dash off now." "Sure, see you at ten." She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. "See you then." She said softly in his ear. She took a seductive bite of an apple whilst the other one dropped to the couch then she got up and went down the corridor to the elevator. Roach glanced at a clock on the wall, it was ten past five. With her distractive nature gone, the turmoil grew back, stabbing hard, and he went to the bathroom to dim his buzzing anguish with a triple dose of Retium.

Roach spent the afternoon, like many, in his garage, getting grimy and greasy on the floor tuning and tightening his gliders, doing this he could mindlessly drift for hours as he perfected and customised his rides. At this height he was as far away from other people as possible so the nagging brainwave interference wasn’t quite as bad, he also had a prototype Synaptech force wall which prevented most thought forms coming in or out, though he knew this could not be the most powerful model they had, as he had no idea what was going on behind the doors of their research and development centre. Though that could have been something to do with them employing the highest calibre graduates the Institute had to offer. Synaptech after all sponsored the Psi training heavily and few knew what other deals they were involved in behind the commercial mask. The developers of the modern AT with its dimensional interface and etheric responsive sensors, they were truly ground-breaking and the future was in their hands. They had the monopoly on all modern lifestyle, home and entertainment technologies, and in a city with such finite physical boundaries providing the ability to forget yourself and leave to another place was big business. Now the new generation of neural augmentation technologies had arrived and they were giving it away freely, there would really be no stopping them. This free offer would be a small deficit compared to how much they would get for the expensive Realm uploads. People would now be able to experience and live in synthetic worlds with a lucid immersion. It was the great escape they had been waiting for. Whole new worlds of limitless experience. Appealing as it may have sounded Roach thought it may be best to stay away and see what inevitable side effects it had. Interfacing your mind with your surroundings through a nanotech augmentation that relayed messages to and from your brain, it just sounded plain wrong. He already had etheric response in his home but that worked around your feelings and learnt patterns from them, it did not know exactly what you were thinking only for someone to breach and the whole world to gain access to. He imagined what it would be like if everyone could see each others’ minds as he could, and it was a scary thought. He really felt as if technological advancements had been going into sixth gear in the last few years, or maybe that was him just getting old. He decided to focus his mind back on his mechanics. He was going to pick Gwent up in his sleek midnight-blue two seat racer but he had slightly dented the body and messed up a front-end mag-plate in a foolish collision the previous week. With the help of his panel beating mechanic bots he imagined he would have everything smoothed out in time. He had spare mag-plate replacements in case of an event like this, although not exactly the right sort for this model, nevertheless he put down his visor he began to manually weld it. The braking capability would now be too intense due to the plate size so he would have to reprogram its sensitivity, he would also do the wiring himself. Getting bots to do everything for you could often take the fun out of things and besides they just could not give his gliders the same love, attention and personal touch that he could, besides they frequently got things wrong. If he was not short of time he probably would have done all the work himself as it gave him great satisfaction to do so but upon realising he did not have long to get ready he instructed the mechanic-bots who powered up immediately in faithful response to his voice. "Okay guys I don't have time to finish this, you see what needs doing, get to it! Oh, and please don't mess it up this time. I would like to get there in one piece, thanks." He called over his shoulder as he entered the elevator, taking his greasy flesh to the shower.

The robotic mechanics were finishing up and buffing the body work just in time for Roach to return, washed, shaved, suited and ready. He caught a reflection of himself in its sleek door as he admired the work and nearly did not recognise himself before it automatically slid back, welcoming him in to its pristine interior. "Nice work. I'm impressed." He said, thanking the bots for their hard work as they shunted sleepily back to their docking stations as the glider awoke with new life. Growling deeply as he revved and heated the plates, the glider levitated from the ground as he felt anticipation for the ride of his new tuning. Turning round on its axis he faced the exit as it rose to reveal the night’s glistening blackness, and kicking down hard he shot like a bullet out into its chill air. Gwent’s place was a standard auto forty-five minutes away, Roach got there in fifteen. Taking the route of the less congested strips, guided by the real-time updates of neon green projected directions. He had an impatient disregard for badly programmed gridlock and avoided it by driving at three times the legal limit down more empty strips. Taking a more scenic route, The Peak could be considered beautiful in the night. Classical artistic architecture stood proud as deep silhouettes climbed from their bases, geometrically perfect, celestial white stone, against the backdrop of space. Tall trees evenly spaced stood in the thick carpets of grass as in-between them statues of important figures, legends, men and women who had built Isis to its modern height were raised, proudly looking down upon the world. It seemed this largely atheistic culture still had room for the unavoidable human trait of deity worship. The colourful ever-changing marketing montage was saved for the lower levels, instead The Peak expressed finesse and refined exuberance through subtlety, saved only for those worthy enough to see it. Eventually he met the private strip ascending to Gwent’s sky palace, climbing at a more civilised sixty degree angle rather than the harsh vertical of his own. The drive was adorned by tall base-lit fern trees and was given greater seclusion by neighbouring one of the many huge botanical gardens. Through the trees’ cracks, slight glimpses of the city below could have almost been the reflections of the clear starry sky above. He pulled into her spacious rounded drive and left the mags energised in neutral, they gave off a low warm hum as he exited the glider. As he approached the grandeur of her doorway, she opened without him having to knock. Stunning was not the word, she was a goddess. "Wow, Roach is that you!? You look smart!" He stood there gazing, he wanted to tell her how amazing she looked, how she invoked the sophistication and superiority of a queen and if she would let him, he would worship her as one, forever. He didn’t. "Yeah well I can afford to be." He coolly replied, hating himself as he did. She looked over his shoulder. "Hey nice ride!" "She glides even better than she looks." "I’m sure she does, but tonight you can be my chauffeur, I’d like to arrive at the party gracefully." They entered the vehicle and then Gwent revealed a small silver case and opened it. Inside it sat two capsules glowing green in the dark, Roach looked closer to see the luminous fluid inside was actually moving, its crystalline fragments glinting brightly. "These are for us." She said. "What do they do?" Roach asked cautiously. "Well they are new but my guinea pig friends inform me that they make you floaty high, almost godly. Sensory perceptions are enhanced yet with mild hallucinations whilst you are grounded and in control at the same time." "What? So like Blue Euphoria?" "Well yes but apparently clearer, higher, more. Like you are more awake or conscious than ever. I mean I can’t speak from experience yet cause I have not taken them but they are brand new. Look, you see the sparkly bits floating round, they are actually tiny synthetic organisms designed to go around your system and clean it out, so the next day you actually feel better than the day before! They also encourage your brain to increase its productivity of serotonin and endorphins so you are not so depleted. Apparently these are going to be made available at local pharmacies soon because they are actually good for you! They may even take over Retium as being the number one government sponsored drug of choice! Emerald Greens." "Okay, screw it, hit me!" She gave him one and together they put them in their mouths, instantly the capsules dissolved and the luminescence sunk into their tongues and was gone, working its way deep into their bodies. "What they hell was that?!" Roach was startled. "Relax it’s just the way they are designed, intelligent drugs I tell you, they are going to take over." "I think I better switch this into auto." The glider was already breathing, throbbing around him as if he could feel its living pulse and willingly he gave in to its desire to control itself. The come up was harsh and abrupt, the transition intense, high but almost too much so and somehow this new drug had gone straight into his bloodstream. He knew this initial wave would level off soon but it was definitely something new, some type of perceptual culture shock to the system. "How you feeling?" He asked her, his voice feeling strangely distant from his body. "Yeah this is great! They worked quickly didn’t they? Phew!" She was buzzed "I could do with some music though." No sooner said than done, the glider heard her wish and granted it. Silk waves of sound faded in, filling the space around them, warm low tones rising and falling as the living music coloured and danced to their etheric waves. "Let’s go!" She said and with a happy melodic bleep the glider skimmed off gently into the night.

At the party the music was suave and classical, thick strings danced in a playful yet somewhat reserved way reflective of the group etheric, Roach however needed something faster, louder and just damn right destructive. He was rushing in on some strange alien wave, as the new species of nano- organism permeated parts of his body he’d never even before felt with its tingling sparks. Up on this peak so high yet contrived, feeling suppressed by the civilised surroundings of these so called upper echelon beings, he stood grinning to himself inwardly as he strolled arm in arm with Gwent as she gave her well practised smiles and silk-glove waves to her passing acquaintances. He asked his body to stop sweating under the crystallised light of the chandelier and passing a plate of slender glasses containing clear wines he grabbed one and nearly finished it all in one gulp. He looked round to Gwent to find her giving him a stern stare to which he returned an embarrassed shrug. She seemed totally in control and the Emeralds they had taken were visibly having a more adverse affect on Roach’s metabolism than hers. He thought that maybe it was because this new breed of cells inside him were having to go into overdrive to clear out all the rot of his system. A brief and vivid flash of his contrasting fake identity as a waste disposal bot maintenance-man entered his mind. Seeing their encrusted metal as they disappeared down the chutes on the day he’d actually spent working as one, as research for his cover. One day had been enough. "Roach!...Yes hello, do you mind?" She gestured towards the wine glasses. "Oh yes…sorry." He passed her one "To our success." Their glasses chinked and he finished the remainder of his glass, putting it down on the tray he took another, he turned back to see Gwent shaking her head in contempt. He wondered to himself why it was that the women he was most crazy about always had a talent for making him feel like a complete fool. He looked up to the white marble, grand carvings of the twin staircase curved majestically down to the chess board tiling on which they stood. He glanced up to the long slit side of a lady’s dress as she flicked her hair laughing, she looked young but was almost definitely old. Then he saw it, as she flicked again, a blue light, fading, breathing. The man she was flirting with had seen it too and at which point she lifted up her hair seductively and presented it for all to see. The NI5, like the one Lady Hanja had before she had been assassinated, it was virtually hidden under the surface of her skin by either temple, breathing with a steady pulse of luminescence. Not the traditional ugly design of older clunky bionics, of which mainly those with disabilities were dependent, but aesthetic, appealing to the majority, and now a fashion statement. His attention was brought back down to Gwent greeting a friend. "Oh Roman hi!" The man was ageing, small and weasel like, his wrinkled eyes where hidden behind rounded dark glasses and though ugly, he contained an aura of style which Roach could not explain nor like. He was filled with an instant and real dislike of the man, trying to be heard hidden behind his enforced artificial high. He too emitted the rising and falling of azure lit temples. "Hello Gwyneth darling! How are you? Oh and who’s this strapping young man." His tone was effeminate to say the least. "I’m great and this is…Dante." Roach flashed a glance in her direction. "Dante, what a pleasure to meet you." Roach shook his limp hand and smiled, he could not help but look as if the pleasure was shared. "Oh look there’s Athene." Gwent was looking up to the balcony at the top of the stairs to the woman Roach had noticed earlier. "You two get acquainted. Athene darling!" "So Dante, what is it you do?" "I’m in psychology." Roach replied now forced into conversation, or an interrogation, not many people knew the difference. "Psychology, so like a shrink?" "Kind of." "Well you must be very good to be up here." "Yeah, I suppose." "Come, modesty. You know we are all here because we are the elite, the finest of our species. It doesn't get any better than this." Roach decided to flip the focus of this endured encounter away from himself. "So what is it you do?" He asked not really interested. "Well actually funny you should ask? You know that suit you’re wearing…I designed it." He replied laughing. This guy would have been starting to bring him down except the drug in his system would not let him, in fact he could feel it dissolving further, melting, hot and clear, he had not even peaked yet. He took another gulp of wine, as if the alcohol would act as some levelling force against this fast rising tide. The strings’ song was now a white-wash around him, around everyone, harmonising and reflecting into frequencies beyond those of human range, like a rip through the fabric of space, shards of heaven flashing down. He tried to bring himself back, to keep his feet on the ground, and found something to focus his attention. "So I see you’ve got one of those next generation neurals." Now from just outside his body, looking in, a floating observer. "Yes, and seriously it’s the best thing I have ever done! It’s amazing the beauty of the places you can go. The totality of the experience. It is real! You can do anything. Anything! You can be a woman, a bird, a rabbit, a fish, even a cloud or the very Sun itself. I mean this isn’t just the drugs talking you know. It is more freedom than you can possibly imagine, pure dream construction. You don’t have to be burdened to this body anymore. I thought being in psychology you’d know all about this." "It’s not my department." Roach went on avoiding discussion about himself. "So is access to these new realms expensive?" "Well that’s just it, you don’t have to be super-rich but you really need a tax paying job to be even considered for the augmentation process and to gain access to the basic environments, but that’s the clever thing. Synaptech have been giving the low lifes trial runs and then offering them ground-level jobs. Once they’ve tasted it they can’t refuse. Hopefully it will help to bring an end to all this cross-level tension." "But aren’t you worried about what you are doing to your brain? I mean it’s a permanent modification." "Worried? Darling once you are freed, you never need worry again, oh look who it is, excuse me." Standing alone, drinking, the light dimmed as the party progressed. Roach looked around, trails of azure fireflies danced, at least a third of the people there had them. It had only been a day since the NI5 had become available to the public and now these hip to the trend lemmings had jumped in without a moment’s thought. It wouldn’t be long until they all unquestioningly had them. Synaptech had never failed them before, why would they now? Yet even though the psychological climate was somewhat calmer than he was used to amongst such people, there was something amiss about this enforced fake peace they now radiated, something he could not quite see. Behind this blinded and perfected shine he shifted and came to an intangible dull grey, a wall of nothing.

He felt a tap on his shoulder and spun round, Gwent, she looked even more radiant in this soft light. Her long white silk dress, hair tied up, the rare bright blue feather hanging from her ear, stroking the pale complexion of her jewelled neck and bare shoulder. For too long he had substituted himself with meaningless encounters, troublesome women of false beauty that somehow had left him empty, hollow with the guilt, the betrayal. On the outside this seemed absurd, to feel bad for cheating on a woman he had never even shared any real intimacy with let alone kissed. Though in reality he knew how she felt, he saw clearly, and if he dared to look beyond the cloudy smog, through the distracting arbitrary obsessions of strangers' mental pollution, he would find himself, longing, pathetic and needing, far more than she. "Dante?" he asked her. "Well I can hardly introduce you as Roach can I? Save him for the lower levels." Roach did not like that Gwent seemed to not accept him fully, that she placed value in such superficial expressions of worth and power, epitomised in the perfectly characterless greatness of the Peak’s non-culture. On the other hand he thought to himself, what good woman does not change a man? Then quickly made a mental note to slap himself when he got home. "There’s some really important people here tonight. Tonight is kind of an unofficial celebration of the NI5’s launch, a private party given by friends to some of Synaptech’s key players, and if you look over there you’ll see one now." She slightly gestured to the corner of the room. A naturally ageing man in a beige suit with grey thinning hair sat slumped in a black leather armchair, staring through the floor, a half-empty wine glass loosely gripped in one of his hanging hands, a walking stick in the other. "They call him the Visionary, he keeps a very low profile and is totally caught up in his work, that’s why you nor I until this night had never heard of him, it’s a wonder he has any friends at all, he’s probably here with more sociable and less prolific colleagues. Yes Roach in our game we are on a strictly need to know basis and even people as important as this guy are kept hidden from us, and everyone else for that matter. Look at him just sitting there, I would say he was lonely but I think his mind is far too preoccupied to even be aware of the concept. Apparently he does not even escape to the realms for recreation, he’s just obsessed with improving the design of life. A true martyr, don’t you think?" Roach looked to the man; he could not read him at all. Just a blank, as if there was not a person there at all, either he was shielded with an etheric cloaking Roach had never before encountered or there was something else, something more. Just trying to find his invisible psyche had a defensive effect, like an electric shock to Roach’s own mind. Feeling some kind of dumbfounded confusion he retreated from trying to force a way in and then found himself elsewhere.

Reaching out with his perceptual abilities he had crossed over to the other side, and could now see the surroundings how they really were, as a psychological environment, and it was blurred. Dull smudges of large grey cloud barrier walls. Occasionally lights flickered behind them like sheet lightning as someone laughed but mainly there was complete distortion. Minds here were obscured, he could no longer penetrate them and he found he was powerless against the augmented. He then became aware of subtle intrusions against his own mind. For in this place many Synaptech agents silently lurked and Roach suddenly felt exposed, as if he was stood under a bright spotlight. The attention of Synaptech’s finest security were suddenly on him and they were very interested as to who he was. Roach did not give an inch, his teeth clenched as he felt himself lock in, struggling to fend off the prying of these covert and elite mentalists. Then he was breached, one had pushed her way in and was sucking at his psyche for a brief but revealing and painful second, draining.

He fell back, colour returned to the room as he crashed against a plate of wine glasses, spilling, smashing and collapsing upon the sharp wetness, drained. Though as he lay there he did not feel entirely defeated. His intruder had not escaped without leaving a trace of her own mind, and what had been obscured by the thick psychological fog was now partially shown, and though it was not entirely clear of form and detail, Roach was now certain of one thing, immediate physical danger. Becoming aware of an angry Gwent slapping him in the face repeatedly to come to, he grabbed her by the wrist and got up. "We must go! Now!" Marching to the door, he pushed and barged the people out of the way as fast as he could, Gwent’s banshee cursing loud in his ear as he gripped her tight, tugging her hard through the throng. Kicking open the grand doors and out into the night's cold he ran, Gwent’s feet barely able to touch the ground as he pulled her, just knowing they had to get as far away as possible and fast. Approaching the glider, now away from the party’s light Gwent pulled free. "Roach you complete bastard! How could you embarrass me like…" A sudden cataclysmic boom silenced her, the force shoving her into his chest as they crashed against the glider’s side, a bright bonfire reflected as flaying flaming debris tumbled from the sky around them. She looked up to the red and orange smoke cloud, the mansion now entirely aflame. Her face flickered under the deep silhouettes of the natural fire, shocked and speechless for a moment. She quickly came back to her senses.

"Let's get the fuck out of here!" RETIUM I went for a walk today in the botanical gardens. I wanted to see the new species garden. Alien levels of complex beauty. Strange this world can be so artistic, so perfect.

When its roots are so black, Its foundations rotting.

Then a preacher destroyed the tranquillity, Illegal on this level, How selfish, His dogma scaring all away, Quietly moving, Except for me.

I stood and listened, And some of what he said was truth, Yet in his heart he did not believe it, That is why he shouted so loudly, To convince himself, Not others, That everything was going to be okay, That heaven awaited him, Justifying his pain, Right up to his liberation.

The body was still twitching, But he was long dead, “Move along civilian.” They said.

Civilian? Roach had taken the wheel again and was driving manual as a means of calming himself down and focusing. He broke the silence "Remind me to burn this suit when I get home." He had a knack for playing down the situation when he did not know how to deal with things, and this was big. "When you get home?!" Gwent snapped. "We can't go home, not now, maybe never." "What do you mean?" "What!? Wake up Roach! Many members of Synaptech were at that party, they knew what was going on, which means that they were involved in that explosion and were prepared to die, or were at least following orders. The Hidden Source has definitely had a part to play in this and would have known that we were there. Why would the Source want us dead?" The silence after her question filled him with a sinking feeling of dread, she went on. "What have we done wrong lately?" Roach kept his eyes fixed on the strip, how could he have thought he'd get away with going against orders? With failure? How did he believe that he could hide? Although he was not sure of them himself, he tried to calm Gwent with some reassuring words. "I wouldn't be so sure, if the Source wanted us dead, we'd be dead." Gwent's mind was racing with speed, possibilities, reasons why, trying to pull apart the confusion of the seemingly senseless attack. "One of the two main factions are going to be scapegoated for this, as always it will either be the Ghosts or Influx, or possibly the whole of the western outskirts. The retaliation will be swift and merciless, a terrorist attack of this scale has never been seen before on this level so the force will be excessive and punishing. Any collateral damage along the way from Isis Security will be excused by the general public as a means to an end but fuck, this is going to push us over the brink and into civil war. Why would they do this? Why would the Hidden Source want this to this happen?" Roach glanced over, Gwent's eyes were filled with tears, the cold full moon light causing them to glisten as they welled and ran down her pale cheek, quickly to be wiped away in shame. Punished for his lack of fear and respect towards the system that had raised him, both their worlds had suddenly come crashing down in an instant and it was all his fault. He drove slow, under the shadows of tall trees, gliding safe and patiently as he tried to put his thoughts in order, heading to the only place they could now go that he knew would be safe: Sub-Side. Exiting the shadows of the ground level they came out into the bright morning sunshine and approached the border of the southern old town district, the stomping ground of Roach's late teens and the years that followed. After graduation the Institute merely kicked you out the door, with no work, no money, nothing. From there on in you had to fend for yourself and rely only on the skills in which you had been trained. Little did he realise that this was just another part of the training and left to his own devices he did not really want to control anyone, until he realised that he had to. He got himself a small box to recuperate in, between the long nights, wasted in self-destructive expressions of his freedom. Now liberated from their grasp he had chosen to lose, in defiance. It was in this time that he had met and formed his brotherhood. Hades got him dosed, Bones gave him compassion and Rico gave him strength, they saved him more than they know. After three years he had forgotten completely who he was and where he had come from. It was only when a gang came knocking on his door over some drug business, that his natural self-defence mechanism kicked in, he wiped them out in a matter of seconds. Unleashing a spontaneous, conditioned and lethal reaction, he had killed them all. The next day he got the call. A week later he was topside. A month later he was assigned to a job with his old Institute friend Gwent. How could he have forgotten her? He seriously cut down on his drug intake and with his new-found purpose, for the first time since he could remember, he actually felt alive. Eleven years later and it was back to square one. The Old Town border was punctuated by the ending of the mag-strip and a glider dock. Instead of electro-magnetics, smoke-spewing two wheelers dominated the small roads lawlessly and often spilled over onto the pedestrianized areas of South-Side. Docking his glider in a rusted and untrustworthy looking bay Roach had to pay for it using a coin, the only one he had on him he kept in his glove-box for good luck. Bitterly he deposited it, he took his ticket and the shutter slammed noisily down as the compartment whirred clumsily away. "You know what you said about feeling better the next day?" Gwent said nothing, impossible to tell what she was looking at behind the dark visors she now wore. "You were wrong." The unformed stress combined with the emerald, alien organism working hard on their metabolisms was having an adverse effect. In an ideal world he would have been in bed, with her, floating in and out of a mild blissful coma but instead he was here, his mind fuzzy and senile, trying to formulate a plan in the chaos of the old fishing town market morning. "Who buys all this stuff?" Gwent asked rhetorically looking out to rows of stalls on the market square, she was talking particularly about all the dried fish. "My God it stinks." She mumbled covering her mouth. Gwent was a spoilt princess, sometimes tough as nails, sometimes pathetic as hell and coming down from the inoffensive cleanliness of the Peak, and not getting paid for it, made her act the latter. Then Roach began to realise what she meant, the Emerald's equalising effect on their sensory perceptions combined with the fish, the open sewers and the traffic's hot smog haze only added to the nausea and this was the last place you wanted to be if you got your sense of smell back. Roach was going to mention this but didn't want to provoke her by stating the obvious, she was already angry enough. As they passed the traders, shoppers and delivery men's obvious stares, still in their evening dress, her patience began to wear even thinner. There was one thing she could stand less than the poor parts of town and that was being wrongly dressed. "Where are you taking us Roach?" She groaned. "From here on in our ATs are of no use, we're going to need cash, and I know we have ID shields but that's going to be no good against the type of enemy we may be up against. We are going to have to get rid of them." "Get rid of them?" "Yeah, we need to shut them down and put them in a lockup somewhere, at least until we know the heat is off, that and we have to get new clothes. How are your heels holding up?" "Fuck you Roach." She had spent the last five minutes awkwardly dodging puddles in the uneven pavement and her dress had already been muddied at its bottom, she was not in the mood for Roach's sly bullshit. They came to an old hole-in-the-wall cash machine, luckily it was modern enough to accept an AT swipe, taking out a large amount of cash each Roach then led them to a second-hand clothes shop. Its musky staleness could be smelt even at the open door. Gwent shook her head, this day was getting worse by the minute. "Deal with it." Roach ordered and reluctantly she followed him inside. Looking through the old racks disgustedly Gwent eventually came to something she liked and picked out a brown fur lined hooded coat, rare and illegal, she stroked its softness. Roach was quick to stop her. "Inconspicuous Gwent, sub-level." "Okay I'll compromise." and looking to her left she quickly grabbed some tight fighting jeans, re-dyed black but ripped and worn at the knees. She then found some high boots and a low cut top to complete the look, whorish Mekka trash chic. She could even make this random junk look good. Roach was not so image fussy, he just threw on the first fitting clothes he could find that didn't have such bad memories attached. A black t-shirt, grey sweatshirt, dark blue jeans, a dark brown leather jacket, sturdy steel capped boots and a black cap. After changing, they paid and stuffed their evening wear in plastic bags, along with their powered down ATs, and put them in a wall of public lockers down the street. A short old woman slouched by them in attendance, mute and on a wooden stool. They paid her and she passed them their key cards. Roach put his around his neck on its string as Gwent slid hers into her tight back pocket. The market had now lost its colour under a thick, slowly moving cloud. The morning light was swallowed as the cool southern sea-salt air drifted in, carrying in heavy clouds. A fat singular drop of rain splashed down upon Roach's forehead, then suddenly the sky collapsed. Gwent raised her hood as they turned a corner and found shelter from the heavy rain under the canopy of a food stall. A multitude of strange looking, foul smelling and apparently edible things sizzled and steamed in deep old oil. Tentacles and offal. "You hungry?" he asked, Gwent shook her head looking up at the worsening storm. "No, neither am I. There's a tunnel station just down here. It's only one stop to my friend's place, he's like a brother to me. He'll help us get our heads straight, maybe a bed to sleep in, who knows." "So what do we tell him?" "I haven't thought of that yet, I'm just playing things by ear. We can trust him though it’s okay." The tubular corridors of sub-level 2, sector-E1 were adorned with a mosaic of coloured tiles. Ancestral altars adorned the doorways as their burning incense filled the passages, appeasing the spirits of the dead. Locals referred to this part of the city as the Labyrinth. It was true that a lot of Sub-Side was derelict, lawless and dangerous though not all of it fitted this description. Many peaceful families lived down here, fighting their cause by merely existing as naturally as they could, for the sake of their parents, their children and their children's children. They eventually came to Rico's door, solid wood with a small rounded window of red and cloudy stained glass. Roach knocked three times, they waited, no answer. "Maybe he's asleep." Gwent suggested "No, he normally gets up early anyway, but for some reason I cannot quite see he's been up all night, he's coming now." The lock turned, the door creaked. Rico always looked stern, emotionless, but today there was something else in his eyes, an empty, wordless grief. He simply nodded and they followed him in. Down a small wooden flight of stairs they came to a large rounded dome room, lit dimly by oil burning lamps on shelves at irregular intervals around the rooms' cave-like perimeter. They took a soft cushioned seat as Rico remained standing and if it was not for the unspoken tension, the cosiness of the room would have made them drift off to sleep. Rico then spoke. "I would ask you who your friend is... but I already know." Roach said nothing, he could feel Gwent's gaze. "I know where you have been, what you have done and who you really are. I have known for some time, and I'm sure by now you should be aware of the reason for our friendship, our... brotherhood.... I have been watching you before we even met, for I am just like you... blessed child of the shadow...and though I should also know what you are doing here now that much is hazy. So, you are here to kill me? So have made extra care to keep it hidden, perhaps even from yourself. Do you know Roach? Or are you just blissfully riding a wave of circumstance? Do you even know who I am? I find it hard to read you sometimes but the truth is you rarely leave anything hidden, that is, to the naked eye of the mind. No, really what is confusing about your motives is that you have none. You know not nor care what you are doing because you just do what you are told, go where you are directed, and that is so much easier! Isn't that right Roach? Don't you agree Gwent?" The pair were stunned into silence, he went on. "Your people killed a cousin of mine this morning, bombs dropped all over the western district in response to the firework show at that party of yours. No targets, no strategy, just indiscriminate killing. It seems they want to make as many different people as angry as possible, so when the armies retaliate they can say look, here's our culprit. So a few rich people got a taste of reality, and I wish I could take responsibility, but I can't, nobody down here can, so if no one down here did it, who did?... Well I think we all know the answer to this, and its reason." "Rico, bro. I, we are not here to kill you..." Roach interjected. He was dumbfounded, another wave had come crushing down his loosely structured reality, everything was falling apart. Up until now he did not have a clue that Rico was gifted with powers like his, let alone that he had been a spy, and most of all that their perceived friendship had been completely based on lies. Another powerful mind had revealed itself, all in the space of twenty-four hours. Just like with everything else that had happened recently he decided to just roll with it, what other choice had he? "Maybe that is what you believe, and maybe you can speak for yourself...but can you honestly speak for her?" Rico said turning his attention towards Gwent. "No he cannot speak for me, I can do that for myself!" Gwent broke the ice of her silence and was now staring directly into his deep, dark eyes. "We are here seeking refuge, we honestly believe that we were meant to be killed in that topside blast and right now we don't know who to trust. Now I am not here to kill you, I have no objective right now other than to stay alive, but if you perceive me as a threat then I may easily become one." Rico stared back, and for a few seconds said nothing, he was thinking, reading the both of them. "Very well" he said, his manner now more relaxed, warmer. "Then maybe you are here as a blessing. You want refuge, I need help." "Anything you want." Roach replied. "But first I need some sleep? Or a dose of Ret?" Rico pulled out a two vials of pure red Retium and held them up. "What are you doing with those? You don't touch the stuff?" "I was expecting you. What I have here is the pillar of our society." Rico tossed them the vials. "Make them the last doses you ever take." "Yeah I should cut down, I know." "No." Rico laughed. "We are going to destroy the Retium factory." Silence filled the air as the pair digested the ridiculousness of the statement. "Are you crazy?! You'd need a whole army!" Gwent shouted "Or just the three of us." Roach said raising his vial before knocking it back. "Then it is settled, now I must pray. It is morning." Rico turned and left the room through a tunnelling corridor. Gwent waited until he was far gone before she spoke again with a hushed urgency. "You do know this is madness? Retium is at the core of our society. If we bring the factory down there'll be massive withdrawals everywhere, including our own. You may think this is a good idea now but when you run out of caps and start crashing down you'll be wishing you were dead! Six will tear itself apart as everyone fights over the remaining supplies." "Gwent I hear you but the system you are trying to defend just tried to kill us! We put our lives on the line for years and this is the thanks we get? Rico is right, we just do as we are told. It's time I started thinking for myself. The Hidden just tried to kill us! If Retium is at the core of our society, I say we destroy it!" "So you're just going to help tear it all down! Have you lost your mind?" "No it is my faith I have lost, my real mind I am only just beginning to find." "I won't allow this Roach!" "So where will you go? What will you do?" "I don't know but I am going to start by stopping you!" "Please, don't do this." "Then step down, and we take out this Rico brother of yours right now!" "Don't do it Gwent!" "I have no choice!" They stared at each other in silence, their eyes locked as a wall of energy slowly, tensely grew between them, rising to breaking point. Gwent's surroundings started to curve in around her, as if she herself had become a void, an inverted force. The oil lamps suddenly crashed onto the floor, the puddles forming a wall of flame, surrounding them with its heat. Dust then fell from breaking cracks forming in the ceiling, the room was now filled with darkness and fire. Roach could not hold her off, telementally he was strong but kinetically she was far superior. He felt himself start to rise from the floor, a great crushing force around him, cutting his breath, gasping for air. He looked to Gwent but he could not fully see her, she was obscured behind a shroud of nothing, spiralling, inwards. Was she really trying to kill him? Roach had seen her at work before and if that was the case, he would already be dead. She was just trying to stop him, to protect him from himself, and his delusions, and guard what she'd been programmed to for her whole life. He could see into her mind, and really though as appearances will deceive, she was acting out of a greater compassion, the belief that the ends always justify the means. He tried to get a grip on her, from within, but he was too weak, paralysed, losing consciousness, going under. Then suddenly from out of nowhere there was a brilliant flash, an ethereal silver white flame burst through, filling the room entirely with light. Roach fell to the floor, crashing down upon his side. Breathing hard and rapid as the bright blinding wash began to fade, the room's colour returned. He saw that the lamps were now returned to their original positions, there was no dust in the air, no cracks in the ceiling and no fire. As he rolled achingly over he then saw Rico, stood over Gwent as she lay sleeping. She breathed slow and deep, her head buried in soft cushions as her long brown silken hair covered her face. "I told you she'd try to kill me. Don't worry, she won't remember a thing. Let's go."

Taking the underground canal network on-board Rico's small motor powered boat they passed various smugglers, watching them suspiciously as they sped by their illegal shipments. For hours they navigated the labyrinthian tunnels, bouncing rapidly over the small waves whilst sat uncomfortably on splintered and wet wood. Eventually they reached the northern industrial district, the home of the factories. The genetic farming of meat processing plants, the quick- grow vegetable incubators, pharmaceutical nano-bot building nano-bots and every other beautiful crime against nature, committed for man's excessive consumption, were born here. Along the way they did not say much although Rico did say this. "Zebulin." "What?" Roach replied struggling to be heard behind the noise of the boat's propeller. "You may call me Zebulin. That is my name." "Zebulin, okay Rico whatever you say." Roach replied, a wry cynicism in his tone. "It's the name my parents' gave me. What name did your parents give you?" "I didn't like the name they gave me. I gave it up once they gave me up. Once they signed me over and I went to the Institute I never saw them again. So I never heard it again. In the end, all we are is a damn ID number." Zebulin nodded in a silent understanding, though even with his empathic abilities, having a close and loving family he could never really know the tightly reigned-in suffering that Roach harboured. Although he could see how he had used it, as fuel for the fire of his abilities, part of him inside had never left the Institute and inside him a tortured child still lived. For the rest of the journey, not a word was spoken. Travelling as far north as they could, eventually they docked and climbed a ladder up. Pushing aside a manhole cover and climbing out into the chill wind, the Retium factory was now in sight.

A wide, empty expanse of wet tarmac was laid before the red smog spewing fortress. A disused parking lot, its vehicles now obsolete. For technological and practical reasons, the factory’s workers lived there as permanent residents. Foreboding crimson clouds choked the skies above to the north, whilst in the west the sun set, mourning the death of this day as it sunk behind the crumbling cityscape of Ghost City. Down and behind the heavy grey stones it went, casting sharp shards of white light through the broken cracks, blackened silhouettes slowly shifting. The shine gradually diminishing, swallowed by the rising smoke, sinking beneath the flaming towers of corporations long put to rest, yet only now finally receiving their cremations. As the crack of machine gun fire echoed in the distance from the belly of war, the sky no longer able to support its own weight, caved in. The breaking of the chemical cloud, red droplets, like the blood of the fallen, pierced down in hard sheets, riding in on the wings of the bitter sea wind. In the gathering red mist, Rico tossed Roach a squid mask as he grunted out a breath of the sickly noxious fumes. Pressing to their faces the liquid mass morphed and spread its tentacle like limbs around their craniums before melting into itself and forming again as one, its green visor now giving a more energised glow to the half-light as the purified air filtered through. A deep rumble sounded in the distance to the west, an earth shaking detonation or the quaking of thunder, with the storm now upon them they could no longer tell. Rico looked down to the gathering scarlet pools of pharmaceutical waste. "Once word gets out that the pharmacies are not receiving a shipment tomorrow, the people will come here to drink." His voice now coming through the mask intercom, sheltered from the pounding rain. This was a sad truth, and Roach hadn’t planned on joining them. He would be grabbing as many medical supplies as he possibly could before blowing the rest sky high. Retium was sure to become scarce, Constructabots would be put into overtime for a good while as the price soared and society ground to a halt. Weakened, collapsing from all sides. No this wasn’t what he had wanted, but neither had he wanted to be forced to play for the other side. Revenge would not make anything better, it was a simple matter of cause and effect, an equal opposite reaction. After this, his loosely structured plan was to lay low in a sub-side rental room and wait out the aftermath, maybe prescribe himself a week long coma to avoid the ensuing mass dementia. There had to be something inside the factory that could put him down for seven days. Even though he may have awoken to find that he and the rest of Six had been buried alive under their own creation. Either way, downtime was needed, to re-evaluate, everything. How long had it been since he had last slept? Thirty, forty hours? An artificially enforced alertness kept him sharp and energised yet now edgy and volatile from the hidden physical exhaustion, the suppressed hunger. This clash of inner forces created a lethal reaction, he felt psychotic and very much like the terrorist he was soon to become. The Hidden Source would be sure to finish him soon enough, loose ends got tied up quickly and he would face it with closed fists, taking it down with him beneath the black waves. His teeth clenched as a macrocosmic brainwave of formless pain washed through him and was gone as quick as it came, the energy echo of those whom had just perished in an explosion to the west. The factory perimeter was protected by fifty-foot high steel walls. At the top pulsing bolts of static crunching lightning, like the electrical storm in the sky, danced between tall metal spikes at ten-foot intervals from each other. Nothing was getting over this. However with all his technological prowess, man was still the weakest link in the security chain. The manned supply entrance was half a mile down so gaining some much needed shelter from the elements they scaled onwards along the high wall, heading west. Rico was carrying a backpack on his shoulders. Roach did not have to guess what was inside. He knew that Rico must have been a member of the religious terrorist organisation Influx, who were experts in homemade bombs. Clumsy constructors did not live long so the better the bomb maker, the higher the rank, and if Rico had something that could bring this beast to its knees then he was no doubt one of their elite. Influx used bombs as their signature. They believed only in destruction, though it was for a higher purpose. The Old World, beyond the invisible wall of flame and the violent sea which surrounded Isis, had long been fled. If the official story was anything to go by, the powers that be had been trying to find a vaccine. The rapidly fatal and highly contagious, yet now contained virus: VX-50, had sealed our fate. Though it was debatable which was contained, the virus, or the humans. Our predecessors had been driven to the quarantine safe homes of the identically designed Island Mainframes as the other 90% of the global population were removed permanently from the gene pool, through succumbing to the sickness or eradicated in the little known nor talked of mass culling. Idealised and mythical whispers of small communities, Old World survivors and escapees living out and building anew on the Motherland were shot down with informatively assured laughter. Frequent news reports and documentaries contradicted such tales with the official stamp of authority. Images of the scorched earth spliced with birds too sick and mutated to fly, their milky grey eyes, infected and blind, brought home the sad truth. Yet with it came the mass awareness that the Mainframes were now our homes, and all that mattered was the here, the now and the future. Nothing came in or out, the invisible fire, the force wall that vaporised anything that tried to permeate it, made sure of this fact. Had a bird been infected yet healthy enough to spread its wings and plague to yet new lands, it would not get within a mile of a Mainframe before its molecules where synchronistically disassembled. A white-hot flash, then nothing, as if it had simply passed out of this dimension, and flown free to a new and better one. Influx wanted to twist the Mainframes inside out, torn apart by a chaotic chain reaction, the panic stricken masses having lost their precious order would become their greatest tool, the people themselves would topple the structure. They may not have claimed responsibility for the Peak bombing which gave the final tilt towards what had now become open war, however they must have ultimately welcomed it. Their hidden agenda had been met head on with the nefarious plot of an equally shadowy force, yet this false flag may have been the fire needed to smoke the dissenters out of their holes once and for all, and quickly bring about a final and lasting peace. Now the uncomplaining tax-paying segment of the population finally welcomed the destruction of Ghost City, the devastation of this derelict blight upon their horizon, their hard earned balcony views. For too long through their long suffering humanity and ethical constraints had the ruling classes put up with those who should have never been let on the boats in the first place. Finally with their patience rewarded by a payload of terror upon their own doorstep, the time had come to level the land and turn the western district into dust, smashing the foundations till the fuckers drowned in the sea. This is what they were told, so now this is what they believed. Obviously to your average citizen the Influx manifesto sounded like insanity, suicide, even now to Roach this is still how it seemed. Influx targets in the past had been the ones he’d had the least qualms in neutralising, though as the world continued to turn itself on its head he was open to all possibilities. Once the factory was down, adding further to the instability of a society now at war with itself, the higher parts of its structure would start to quiver and break. It was at this point that Influx would plan to unleash their most ambitious inter- frame operation; the permanent shut down of the great force walls, the prisons of all. Once open wide, society would become delirious with panic. Retium withdrawals, civil war and the imminent threat of a fresh viral outbreak as soon as the first flock of seagulls appeared. There would be no choice, people would learn what was believed to be secret and evacuate, returning to their true home, or they would drown with their ship as Isis went under in the waves of self- destruction. Of course there was always the other probability, perhaps the global network of Influx would finally learn the twisted truth; that they were wrong all along. As VX found new hosts and humankind finally succumbed to its long overdue extinction, they would finally realise in a cruel twist of fate that what they had done really was suicide. Roach contemplated this and the anti- terrorist intelligence he had gathered throughout the years as they walked in silence. What was he doing? He was becoming the very thing he had been trained to destroy. However riding this flowing pulse as an agent, a catalyst of the rising, exponential critical mass, in this exact moment, this clear channel, he felt empowered, he felt free. "You see there? Up ahead, the bird’s in its nest." Rico pointed up to the cage-like turret positioned above a colossal portcullis, the zig-zag gate of giant and tarnished metallic teeth made for a welcoming site. The fattened guard officer was anxious to see anyone approach the gate, especially by foot. Nowadays delivery freights where the only visitors to the facility. He sat up from his half slumber as live updates of the Ghost City terrorism skirmish, the unfolding civilian uprising and riots of the sublevels took place. So far only shock batons and gas had been used to combat the molotov wielding throngs. Reportedly civilian tensions had mounted in response to the heavy handed detonation and toppling of the Akropolis Tower, rumoured now to be an insurgent base yet one of the defining monuments of the colonisation, history and landscape of Isis. The reporter was now reading that members of the elusive Ghost movement had expanded beyond their sealed borders to secret bases in the sub-levels. Home invasions had now been put into action, and in this state of emergency, time wasting liberties and official channels of investigation being thrown out the window seemed like a suddenly new and intelligently evasive course of action to those who watched. Truth is, this had been going on for years though now with the political climate as it was, the necessary methods of control could no longer be obscured and had in fact reached a point where they were welcomed. Suspects had been brought in and questioned and the viewers were informed that anyone bearing this symbol, be it branded upon their body or worn about their person should be reported immediately to the authorities. This was accompanied by an image of a violet equilateral triangle with a perfect circle at its top most peak, radiant and casting out beams of light. It was a symbol Roach had seen before, the symbol of the Order. The guard’s voice came through a loud speaker, a distorted and fuzzy noise drowned in the rain’s percussion. "Please state your ID number and clearance co..." The message was cut short. Roach had beaten Rico to the punch and already the guard was out cold, fallen limp and face-first into his control panel. The contradictory input messages of its buttons now sounded in confused discordance. Without hesitation Rico then dived straight into his move, a swift detachment from his locality, stepping over just slightly out of time, and through, now free to roam upwards. Inside the nest the gate lever was found amongst the glaring yellow panel lights in the down position. He focused, tuned and merged, and with the force of will, he became the lever itself. The space within it, around it and beyond it, the very forces of its construct now tingled as one, electric, the switch tripped. Rico suddenly returned to his body to see the large jagged teeth of the gate rise, with the slow metallic screech of a contraption rarely used and less often oiled. "And all this time I thought you were just a street preacher." Roach could not believe how blind he had been to how powerful Rico was. "I am." Rico replied with a slight grin before advancing forwards. In the encroaching night, the creeping noir, they moved forward, the way lit by a misty orange glow emitted from the path’s lights beneath them. Bolted down steel panels, large enough for cargo transporters to travel along, paved their way to the main factory epicentre. A giant and jutting, metallic-grey mountain of a structure, with large tubes crudely snaked along its walls, used to transport chemical solutions around the factory. Contained inside was the cargo hold, beyond that at the rear, the master control station and beneath that at the base of its structure, the hydro-electric fusion reactor. The mainframes still relied on this sustainable yet outdated form of energy generation, as the means of extracting dark-matter energy from the forces within the emptiness between molecular, sub-atomic matter and quite literally out of thin air had already been discovered and used. However, its use in the public sector was deemed too dangerous, for its powers may have fallen into nefarious hands. A botched experiment concerning this highly efficient technique of energy extraction had led to the formation of a miniature temporal void, devoid of time and space, which had laid the outskirts of a former Old World city to waste during the End of Days. Ironically those whom they feared would be responsible for such a thing if they ever got hold of the technology, received the official blame anyway. This pattern was all too visible even now, as history repeats itself, scapegoats it seems are a handy and necessary ally. From this dome, transport passages travelled from it at equidistant angles out to the oval shaped processing chambers. From an aerial view its appearance could be likened to that of a giant spider. Nearing the cargo dome’s entrance Rico was silently aware of Roach’s surprise and suspicion at the lacking presence of an armed guard. The absence of any other personnel so far was also found strange for what should have been one of the busiest factories of the northern district. The tall grey doors stood firmly shut, with an ether sensitive security plate and locked manual override placed on the gravel-stone wall to the right. "So, would you like to do the honours?" Roach asked "You sure you don’t want to give it your hand." Rico replied. "Rico, we both know this is your area. I put them to sleep, you flick the switches." "As you say." Rico replied and he passed his hand over the ether-plate, a smile on his face as if a sorcerer casting a small spell as the doors whirred softly back, effortlessly. "That was too easy. You didn't do anything." Roach remarked. "I didn’t have to. This etheric has had the assigned identities cleared, aside from that, this door was unlocked." "The identities have been wiped? Why?" Roach was finding this whole situation stranger by the minute, Rico looked dead ahead. Then he saw it, the vast cargo bay that should have been full of workers transporting the freshly made batches and readying the deliveries, was uninhabited, completely. Stretching further with his mind into the control room, then out into the processing chambers, he found there was no one, not a soul. Just the methodical automation, the synchronised and graceful dance of the machines. The perfectly productive, clockwork precision of unity. "Where is everybody? I thought we were in for a shitstorm." "They became unproductive, obsolete, plus they stole and resold supplies on the black-market." "So what happened? Were they made redundant? Re-housed, like the rest of them?" "No that would have strained resources. They are dead. All three- thousand of them." "Dead!? But what about sleeping beauty, back at the gate?" "The last one, a front to make people assume there were more inside, his human instincts were bypassed long ago. Do you see now Roach what it is you have been helping to bring about?" Roach said nothing for a while as he stared into the empty factory. "I see it. Truth is Rico I’ve been seeing it for some time, its just I’ve been ignoring it, and though it’s messed up and wrong. It makes a twisted kind of sense. I see where the pattern is heading... Our world doesn’t need us anymore...I know that... What I don’t see is why you needed me to come along in the first place, when you knew there was nobody here." "I know there is good in you Roach, we are here to save you, to save all of us. This is the day of your Initiation. This is the day you show us that you are a free man. That you will no longer be a slave to their will. You will no longer be an agent of man’s incarceration but a saviour for our freedom, and a martyr, if that is your destiny. This is the day that you redeem yourself, and truly become, my brother." Rico’s bear-like grip was clamped down hard upon his shoulder and the way was clear. From now on Roach vowed never to leave his side, as part of the Influx uprising they would tear Six down, bring down the walls and build a new world, without such rigid borders, a world of freedom. They would bring the species back from the brink of extinction, before this happened to all.

They passed the rows of meter-cubed containers stacked up five high, each full and ready to be dispatched, encrypt coded with their destinations and customer information, except they would not be reaching them. "Forget it, we have a job to do." Rico ordered Roach as he stared, he could not hide his craving and you did not have to be a mind-reader to tell what he wanted. All that Retium was just waiting to be destroyed and he couldn’t touch any of it, what a waste. He already needed another hit and he needed it badly. "Look at how weak you are. After this, you will quit. You will gain more power, you’ll see." Rico assured him as they approached the steel steps ascending to the master control room. As they walked up, the heavy clanging of their boots echoed from the far walls. One of the tunnel doors then opened and another shipment wheeled in on an automated forklift and was placed systematically next to the others, its spinning orange lights still active yet now completely unnecessary. They entered the control room which overlooked the shipments through its curved front wall of thick glass. The whole factory and its processes were mapped out in a holographic dance of perfectly choreographed colour. Scarlets, emeralds, violets and spectral shimmers. Base compounds mixing, vats spinning, temperatures maintained and measurements controlled. All processes regulated in perfect synchronicity. The automation made sense, where did the humans fit into this seamless production line? At the absolute end, as consumers, for now that is all we had become, and all we were good for. Being ultimately a strain and a waste of resources, when all processes could be executed far more efficiently in their absence, the premature retirement of the colony workers almost seemed right, logical. Though where was it going? At what point would it stop and what did the Hidden Source really want? "The intelligence controls all, as you can see." Rico gestured to the luminous motion as he spoke in hushed tones. "This you know only too well, so we must move quickly, before she becomes aware of our presence." Roach replied in silent mental waves. Okay, so set up your bag of tricks and let’s get moving. No not here. Rico now telemental also. Down there. Down where? He replied. Rico crouched and wrapped his fingers through the crisscross of the metal flooring and lifted a slab, placing it gently to his side. Down there are the foundations, the structure on which all this stands, not only that but the hydro-generator for this and other neighbouring factories is located there too. You see it is not the size of the explosion which matters, it is knowing the location of the target’s most vulnerable weakness. A ladder went down a deep shaft into pitch darkness, its end unknown. There was a bright pink fizz and spark as Rico ignited a flare before dropping it. Falling into the abyss, it tumbled and bounced off the sides until eventually it stopped, now a sharp pin prick of light far below. That far. Rico mentally whispered before pulling his sleeves up around his hands and climbing down onto the ladder, placing them at its sides. We take the quick way down, like this. He then did the same with his boots and was suddenly gone, slid down and out of sight. The flare's light was obscured for a short while before reappearing, Rico had already reached the bottom. Roach climbed cautiously down onto the ladder. Okay here we go, he said nervously to himself before taking a deep breath, then plunging himself into the swift acceleration of the drop.

That was the last thing he remembered. When he came to he found he had reached the bottom and Rico was standing over him laughing, his head was sore against the cold wet steel.

"You've had enough rest, come on get up." Rico ordered. Roach reached out to grab his extended hand and was effortlessly pulled to his feet. A tremendous sound of rushing water was heard from further down the platform, the hydro-dam wall. Mega-tons per-second crashing down generating enough power for all the factories in the northern district. They approached the giant waterfall, making their way to a misty balcony. It travelled along a huge reinforced wall that served as the factories supporting structural foundation. As they walked along the platform, the wall and the dam slowly curved round to the right and into the distance, slowly disappearing from view, it appeared to go on for miles. Falling rainy droplets were alit by its large rounded lights, like headlights in a storm. They eventually came to a locked door, with three large key holes, it appeared as thick and impenetrable as the wall itself, on it was written Control Room Z.

"This is the spot." announced Rico loudly, his voice raised to compete with the deafening roar. "Can you unlock it?" Roach asked. "Yes but we don't need to." "We're going to need something atomic. You sure about this?" His further questioning only provoked a condescending stare. "You remember the Peak black-out a few years ago?" "Remember it? I was stuck in my home for three days, Ghost got set on fire after that, not that it was reported in the news or anything. Maintenance accident is what went down officially." "So you don't need to question my expertise." "Yeah thanks a lot, I couldn't even flush my toilet." In response to this Rico's booming laughter suddenly made the rushing water seem not as loud. Taking his bag off of his back he undid the fastenings and reached inside pulling out a two-foot wide package that was wrapped tightly in black plastic and gaffer tape. An ugly, bulky contraption that even under Rico's strong arms Roach could tell was heavy. He placed it on the ground by the door and fired up the red digital display on its front with a little metal switch, he went to key in a countdown on its clunky digit pad before Roach stopped him.

"Wait! You don’t use a remote switch? What if we ran into some trouble on the way out?" "That is exactly why we do it this way, we use a timed trigger. If I was shot in the back on the way out, I would die knowing I had failed. This way I can die with a smile on my face. So what do you say? Ten minutes?" "Hey why give ourselves such a long time to wait?" Roach replied sarcastically. "Okay let's make it five." Rico responded as he inputted the digits, followed quickly by a finalising beep. Roach now in a wordless astonishment watched as the numbers began to tick down. Already halfway up the platform Rico was shouting back at him over his shoulder under the waterfall's deafening roar. He ran.

Climbing the ladder as fast as they could, what felt like a long time passed, their arms started to ache as they neared the light at the end of tunnel. Roach had now gained on Rico and was right behind him. Back into the dance of colourful light that was the control room, now brighter and more dazzling than ever, they then bypassed the stairs, jumping over the steel rail and dropped down to the hard cargo bay flooring. Sprinting now, out of the exit and into the chill of the night air, it could not be long now before the explosion. Roach had now overtaken Rico, his bloodflow adrenaline awakening the Retium inside and was nearing the main gate. Surely once out of there they would be safe. Passing through the gate and making it to presumed safety Roach was now hunched over getting his breath back and realised how out of shape he had become. He then looked up, back towards Rico as he casually strolled along the path towards him, still inside the factories perimeter.

"Ha ha! Look at the boy run! We safe here now, we made it easy! Two minutes left, ha ha! Easy!" Rico bantered to himself, whistling and excited, pleased with the smoothness of the operation and now eager to witness the grand finale. Then as he approached the gate, an unexplainable feeling of dread sunk in Roach's stomach cutting through the adrenaline, a physiological intuitive reaction to a subtle threat, very close, elusive, invisible but very real and here. It had been stalking them all of this time, yet only now had he sensed its presence. He then looked up to the pin pricks of stars cutting through the blackness of the night's sky, as heavy yet scattered clouds flew overhead riding in on the sea's icy gales. The ground was still, absent from the rumble of possibly approaching tanks, there were no distant battle demolitions, no thunder nor rain, all was silence. Then in this quiet he finally saw it, saw what had been intended all along, what had been lying in wait. The rusted and jagged metal teeth of the factory gate had been patiently waiting for its prey to return, stealthily anticipating this moment. Rico was already there, a look of pride upon his face, a smile larger than any Roach had ever seen him wear and gazing upon him in a way that he had never felt before. In a city of only-children and orphans they were finally, truly brothers and though they had previously been deceptive towards each other, their intentions had now been purified. He had passed the test, the rite of passage and they were of one blood, brethren of the Influx. The gate's teeth hammered down in a split second velocity, crushing Rico quickly as if his mighty frame had not been there at all. In an instant his light had been put out, dead and gone, like he had said, with a smile on his face.

That sudden and bloody flash was all Roach inflicted upon himself, he had turned away from what he had no desire to see and was found himself traipsing away, disorientated, shell shocked, his mind a cloudy and heavy empty. He was okay, he told himself, everything was okay, as his knees hit the wetness of granite, then his hands and head, butting it hard against its abrasive surface. Blood trickled down, maybe his own, maybe not, as he breathed hard through gritted teeth. A thought then formed, surfacing out of the wreckage of this inner turmoil. Why? Why did the Source take Rico? Roach should have been long dead by now, why was he being kept alive? What purpose did he serve? It began to dawn on him, all he had been all along was a puppet, to be punished fully, to have all power and sense of worth stripped from him, so that he was under no illusion who was really in control...The Hidden Source... did they really think in such human, such egotistical terms? Who were they really? Perhaps this was not a group of humans he was dealing with at all, perhaps the Hidden were beyond human, more intelligent, more evolved, a more complete life- form and he was just a piece in its game, a lost piece of the puzzle. Then he found himself on his feet, facing back at the factory, curses now screaming from his mouth, releasing the stabbing pain which he thought was to be leaving, now returning harder than ever. Rico, Zebulin, his brother was dead. The city was dying as more telepathic waves of suffering pulsed out from the killing zones to the west, with no life of his own to salvage, no sleep and no Retium. Suddenly, the silence was broken by an earth-quaking detonation. He fell back down to the ground as the factory collapsed from the inside. Steel, rubble and dust, crashed down and into the epicentre, the dam breaking as the sea came rushing in to finish the job. In a death-rattle of electric lightning flashes, like a Kraken returning to the deep, the creaking wreckage drowned beneath the night's black waves.

No Retium. HADES I started off as just another dumb kid. I wanted to get my shit for free so I'd buy big then sell to people I knew to break even. Then when I began to make some on top I figured I needed money as well as doses so the business sort of expanded from there. Hades, lord of the underworld, back then the name was kind of a joke. Now, you could say I've earned it. I knew pharmacists back then who sold me illicit experimentals under the table, blue euphorias being my main trade then the retium, before it was approved as safe, then anything I could get my hands on. I handle the illegal side of the market, so luckily for me too much euphoria will kill, otherwise it'd be legal and I'd be out of a job. If you OD then you do us all a favour by taking yourself out of the genepool. Not my problem. Everyone knows my product is high-grade, one hundred percent, factory pure. I don't cut, that's why you come to me cause I deal with the professionals. With the underground lab dealers you never know what you are getting. You want the brand new molecular tweaks, don't shop anywhere else, come straight to me. I can take you high, get you fuzzy, make you dream, make you lose your mind or make you feel stone cold nothing. I've also got mind enhancers, muscle builders and nano cap fat burners, for the ladies who like to look anorexic but still wanna eat... Sure they get skinny alright, they have to eat a lot. With the first design they had to or they'd end up dead. That was a bad batch, you don't get that much with me. You can trust me, no, really. That's how I fuck with people, by speaking the truth.

Not like most of these fucks. When I was first coming up I got schooled the hard way. Back street Mekka outskirts, this piece of shit club owner wanted to buy some bulk. I don't trust him for shit but the pay off is good and I need it, so I roll the dice. I go down there alone, present the merchandise, then get dealt the hand I should have seen coming. His boys cordially escort me off the premises, empty handed. I don't kick up a fuss. Then gradually with the rent due and coming down off whatever it was I was on that day it starts to hit me. I can't stand getting ripped off and this time I'm done taking it, next time I see that motherfucker...so I dose out again and forget about it. Until this one night I'm out at a bar drinking and I see him, he doesn't see me. He's got his whole crew around but that doesn't faze me. He finishes his drink and makes for the men's room, I follow. Inside, his back is turned and something clicks inside. I'm just bam, I crack his skull against the ceramic. He's a small fucker but this doesn't take him down and turning round he can't believe it's me. We grapple from wall to wall in an ugly, intense and claustrophobic dance. It goes on until eventually I'm bending his interlocked fingers on both hands right back to breaking point, forcing him down to his knees with a look of fear now in his eyes, and I'm screaming "You owe me!" In some evil voice that didn't even know I had. Suddenly his boys burst in, grabbing me, my arms are pulled back and now he's all tough again. I take a punch to the face that my kid sister could rival but shaking free the big guns come out and I'm getting kicks off his goons that push me out the door and back into the bar. I make a break for it and run out into the street. They follow me outside and I turn to face them. The club owner is now dwarfed by the henchmen on either side, thinking he's the baddest gangster in the whole of Six and that I'm about to get all fucked up. Until, pop snap, I whip out a kick straight to his abdomen and he buckles over. Then I just walk off uninjured, filled with a strange sense of victory, they don't follow. I go meet one of my girls for a drink, maybe this night could end well, maybe I should have just gone straight the fuck home. ...Later I'm outside having a smoke, enjoying the night, then I see him. He's found me and he's come back with one of the hardest sub-human beasts I have ever seen, like a genetic experiment gone wrong. It comes at me and I back down some steps whilst receiving a kick to the face. Fuck this shit, I'm gone! So I run off, a bottle flies pass my head, glass shattering against the wall as I escape unscathed. I make a promise to myself not to smoke crystallised ret anymore, or at least to cut down.

Many nights pass and the heat dies down, or so I'd thought. One night I'm out on the street and he's there with his people. Long story short, they beat the shit out of me in a quick succession of fists and knees that was over as quick as it started and that shit wasn't so fun. Still defiant I'm shouting after the pack as they scatter away. The blood trickles down my face as I drag myself up from the tarmac. At home in my hospital bed, nurturing my broken face and body, I figure if I want my business to survive I'm going to need an army of my own, and It's almost as if my prayers were answered. Luckily I had clients who wanted continued business, who respect quality, and things get better. Soon I need to traffic more caps than my pharmacist can handle, so one day he tells me he sold my contract. He gives me directions to this factory north-side to meet some guy, this pharmaceutical agent. I dress like I mean business and go to his office. I sit in what he tells me is a 'real leather' chair, I don't believe him. Then he lays it out, how things are going to be from now on. I buy from him and him only, I need a warehouse and some protection. He offers me both. What the fuck?! My lucky day, so what's the catch? No catch, they have product they need to shift, I'm the man who can get it done.

Enter the next level: I move into the warehouse, massive shipments arrive, and I have two programmed lifeforms to keep me company and protect my neck. Not that they are much in the way of conversation but they are not dumb muscular freaks either. Lean, swift, lethal and female. No they don't fuck. Imagine my disappointment. They don't unleash violence so easy either, one cold stare from them and you won’t think about disrespecting me. You take the deal or you walk, approach me with a weapon or a dangerous posture and you don't walk again. All thanks to the guy in the suit. All the biggest dealers started coming to me after that, I had the connections and I had the quality but as I rose up I got word that piece of shit club rat wanted to have me done. Apparently we weren't even cause now he couldn't have me competing with his low-grade meds. Though this time he wasn't going up against just me, or my security, he was going up against the corporation and the dumb fuck didn't even realise. Once they got intel of his sideline and dirty labs, narcotics squad moved in. Quality Control killed nine and suffered no casualties. Then he got sent down to the Core, prison didn't have so many friends. Word on the street is he was beaten to death within the first week.

People really shouldn't fuck with me. That's why they call me Hades. A time passed until Roach found that he had walked west into the urban sprawl, the empty streets under curfew. As he came to from his sleep-walking he realised that he must have been heading in the direction of Hades' place, to get a hit, tell him the news and above all be with a friend. Ironically Hades was right now someone he could trust, despite being his friend the guy was an asshole. Approaching a broken down escalator to his left he descended it down to the tunnels. The familiar thick and stale air hit him like a wall as he walked down the tubular corridors, guided by the sporadically functioning ceiling lamps as they flashed intermittently, as if relaying a code, a secret language. Then he took another flight down, as strobing silhouettes guided his way until he reached a platform. The place was too empty, when suddenly a voice out of nowhere startled him. Exhausted his senses were lacking though this was a man who generally preferred not to be seen as others preferred not to see him, an invisible vagrant.

"No luck for you here." A voice like gravel. "No one told you? The tunnels ain't running." He was suddenly illuminated in his corner, lighting the first of his many candles. "So you stuck here too?" "Stuck? This is my home dickhead!... You want a smoke? I looted a whole bunch from this stall up top before the troops rolled in." "Yeah sure why not?" Roach took one from the pack and the man lit it for him. His worn and bearded face lit up over the dancing flame of his silver gas lighter, a lifetime of strife and hopes gone bad revealed within its momentary flash. The current political developments meant nothing to him, aside from free cigarettes. Roach inhaled from its burning embers, damn that felt good, and for a brief moment everything was forgotten. Then back. "Troops? So the war has spread here now?" "Are you new in town or something? Yeah it's here, and as real as the smoke you are breathing. So I suppose seeing as you've been walking around with your head up your ass or have just woken up from a coma that you haven't heard about the Retium factory either? They got that place good. They are gonna burn this whole place to the ground if they don't do something. Yep, they are knocking down the whole house of cards, soon everyone will end up like you and me." "You and me?" "Y'know homeless. I've been on the street long enough to see when a man’s got nowhere to go." "No, I’ve got somewhere I need to be." "You sure?! The trains aint running and its War out there! Where you gonna go? Its safe down here, you should just stay here, I got booze, I've got all types of shit, you got money?" "You got any Retium?" "You got Retium!? People are killing for it already, all the pharmacies are getting smashed up since the factory has been blown to shit by terrorists. Been all over the news. Me I don't touch it, they use it to control you!" "Okay just give me a few packs of those cigarettes." Roach pulled out a bunch of notes, he didn't care how much he gave him. The man’s face lit up. "That's the ticket, here for that you get some fire too." The man reached inside his deep jacket pocket and pulled out a spare cheap lighter, igniting it a couple of times, testing the flame. "Seems this social situation is turning out pretty good for me. Like my life is just the opposite of everyone else’s. Now I know you've got no one else to blame but yourself for your own lot in life and I should know see ...hey where you going?" "For a walk." Roach jumped down to the track and walked away from the candle light. He stopped for a moment and looked forward into the tunnel. Taking a final drag of his cigarette he then flicked it away, the embers spinning in a bright orange arch. He walked onwards, into the emptiness of the void. Advancing slowly, eventually all became nothing, he paced forward over the tracks. In the complete absence of light he could no longer tell any difference between his eyes being shut or open. As he progressed forward, alone in the deep underground, a slight scurrying sound rustled, obscured nearby. Mentally adjusting his opticals, thermal grey-scale activated and then he saw it, a fat diseased looking rat with a greasy black smear across its matted fur. Quickly it scampered off and out of sight. He hated rats. From a young age all children were taught that animals carried disease and were infected with the VX-50 virus. As a result there were no animals brought into the quarantine Islands, or at least there were not meant to be. Yet here they were, and it was well known, at least it was Sub-Side, so why had nothing been done about it? Where was the scandal? Where were the extermination teams? No answer was needed, everyone knew the score and now it was finally out in the open for all to see. The extermination is here, the vermin is human.

He began to ponder on what it was that made the city so deserving of its fate, the pitfall of humanity's self serving nature, ultimately damned by their own survival instincts, ironic. Pondering this his thoughts quickly fell back to himself and his own selfish and hollow existence. With one thing after another he was surely riding the spiral of his own making, right down to the bottom. It was beginning to make sense, he deserved all of this. His palace in the clouds, his fleet of gliders, his decadence, all born from his professional choice to deceive, manipulate, control and kill, anyone he was told to, without question or hesitation. He wouldn't have wished any of his contracted actions upon others. Though he could not deny, to inflict the lucid nightmares, the way they had been inflicted upon him at the Institute as training, had a somewhat cathartic release. If there was any truth in the saying you get what you give, then he was to be expecting to be getting a whole lot more.

"Is this the thanks I get?" He said to himself, shuddering in the cold, sure that the ears of the Hidden were deaf in this place. All the willingness to obey, the submission and servitude, forgotten in an instant. Because he, one time, had failed. Tearing open a cigarette packet with his teeth he pushed one up into his dry lips and ignited, a blinding flash. He inhaled deeply. Exhaled long.

"Smoke and ash. Burn it all to smoke and ash."

Some time passed, until out of the nothing in the distance, upon the curved walls, a slight reflection of the station's lights up ahead began to fade in. The light gradually became brighter with each step as he turned the slow bend, until eventually the end of the tunnel was in sight, dead ahead. His enhanced vision deactivated and the full spectrum of colour returned. He was waking up, how long he had been treading these depths? The solitary introspection had turned into a trance-like state. His mind, in response to its over-activity, had shutdown and all thoughts had stopped, a defence mechanism. There were no memories or thoughts right now that would not bring on a sharp mental pain. He tried to shut out his exhaustion, his withdrawal. Though his hunger was still non- existent, his thirst was now taking its toll, his mouth like sandpaper. He tried to keep focused, on the nothing, nothing was better than something. Even though coming out of the long lonely dark stretch should have felt like a positive experience, it wasn't, for here was trouble and he could feel the tension in the air, that familiar dangerous vibration, nervous, thick like static. Propaganda posters of the uprising covered the walls, a physical expression of the energy from above. WORKERS NOT SLAVES! FIGHT FOR THE REAL! DESTROY SYNTHETIC DREAMS! NEURAL AUGMENTATION IS BRAIN DAMAGE! WE ARE NOT OBSOLETE! STOP THE CLONING! STOP THE STERILISATION! FAMILY BEFORE CLONES! NATURE BEFORE TECHNOLOGY! RISE UP FOR YOUR RIGHT TO BE A HUMAN!

Though he understood how they felt and their intentions, he couldn't help thinking how futile and idealistically naive it all was. The twisted evolution was leaving humanity choking in the dust, and perhaps it had been long overdue. A distant and authoritative voice echoed down the stairs, amplified from far away.

"Return to your homes! This area is under martial law!" He climbed the stairs, hoping that the conflict would not obstruct his path to his friend and his medicine, then as he neared the exit he cursed to himself. The roar of the riot became louder as traces of smoke were smelt in the air. Coming out of the station and into a back alley he was greeted by the sight of a young woman tending to a man with a head wound, huddled against the wall, the left side of his face completely covered in blood. The bottom half of his t-shirt was ripped and now bandaged his dented cranium. Noxious gas hung faint in the air as Roach let out a slight cough. Against his better judgement, he moved to his right towards the main street to see what was unfolding and then peered round the corner, looking beyond the smashed shop windows. What had been an angry mob of several hundred on the war path, armed mainly with a deluded sense of unstoppable righteousness were now on the retreat, scattering like a pack of frightened animals, trampling the fallen in the stampede. A herd of tanks slowly advanced, the earth shaking beneath them in a roll of thunder as gas bombs arched up in the air and came down, tinking metal against the tarmac. The way to escape was now filled with thick panic inducing smoke. Flying molotovs responded, the liquid flame smashing down against the troops' invisible force shields, the fire cascading over their aura like curves. Nothing could stop them. The masked and armoured foot-soldiers moved forward as one through the smoke. Marching over the pools of flame, they punished anybody who dared to stand their ground, batons flashing, beating down. Rebels who raised metal pipes against them swiftly became martyrs of no significance. As the rioters ran closer in his direction, some ran blind and screaming. Gas victims, tears streaming down their swollen faces as other casualties lent buckled over, wheezing for air between violent red coughs. This was more than a defeat, this was a genocide. The grounded casualties where now beyond help as all fled, it was everyone for themselves. The previous sense of unity was now laid to dust by the harsh reality, animals is all we are.

He had seen enough and turned back the other way before the crowd gained on him. Things were not going to get better anytime soon, in fact the whole world seemed hell-bent on self-destruction, and if his grasp of the mass- consciousness was anything to go by, his recent flirting with suicidal thoughts, although just glimpses, had been an indicator of this. VX was meant to wipe us out, and we've been treading water ever since. Heading down the alley he dodged the steady drips of water under rusty old air-con ventilation units, passing boxes and trash bags, a long forgotten rubbish stench filled the air. Sticking to the back streets he could hopefully avoid danger, he was in no mood for a fight. Only another couple of blocks until he reached the warehouse home of Hades. Up ahead he could hear a sound, a discordant singing, a woman, sobbing. He came closer, she was hunched in the doorway of a restaurant back exit, wrapped in a dirty white sheet, crutches on the ground by her arms. She quickly looked up at him. "Help me!" she cried, arms raised to him as he neared "Call the police! Get them to take me away!" She was gaunt, her face heavily wrinkled like death come to life. Roach quickened his step. The last thing he needed was a crazy street-hag on his hands and Six had plenty. Like the time when he was a kid at his local playground, an old woman sat on a bench had been watching him and asked him to come over, she had a small woven box on her lap. When he asked her what was in it she replied with a song, a hiss in her voice "Kittens." Lifting the lid to reveal four baby cats, only their heads visible in its cushioned lining, eyes closed, and stuffed like dolls. He had ran off then too. In hindsight he figured she must have smuggled them dead into Six as a little girl during the pandemic, dead was the only way they could get in undetected. Stuffed animals were something of a rarity, there were no real zoos, only museums. The cargo lift down to Hades was coming up on the right. He entered and swung the heavy crisscross of the metal door along its railings to a locked shut position and pulled the rusted lever down. It shunted hard, the slow inertia dropping down, the lift was as unsafe as it was old. The gradual descent of this aged contraption was lit dimly by a single bulb positioned at head height above the corroded lever. It was a long journey down to the realm of Hades on Sub-Level 10 and what lurked beneath there was anyone’s guess.

As Sub-3 approached the bright and dusty flood of a flash-light shone through into the cage, Roach could only lower his gaze until the light did the same. A young man was revealed, unshaven and dirtied, a soldier carrying an old rifle and a blank expression, his stare, empty and desolate. He reported into his com- unit in a language that Roach did not understand as he descended further into the depths of the sub-levels. He was granted passage and deemed non-hostile, however had he been on a different assignment, he may well have been. Thinking about this he doubted that his former employer had use for him anymore. How simple it had been, being told what to do, the objective, the intelligence, in like a ghost, out like a light, no memory of him having been there for anyone, sometimes not even for himself. Clear blank gaps were all that was left of a few jobs. Some of which he had a hunch were of his own doing, maybe innocent people or kids, who knows? He hadn't remembered killing either so it was possible. Perhaps there were secrets, inner-circle dealings of subterfuge that he was just not meant to uncover. It did not matter, he had given up the right to his own mind years ago, and when memories often serve to harm and obstruct us, as thorned and dirty imprints upon the soul, why not dissolve a few? Why not wipe the whole slate clean and start again? Forgetting is what we've done best, maybe we'd envy our ancestors more if we knew more on the lives they lived, the land and freedom they had.

The lift shunted to an abrupt halt, he had arrived on the tenth sub-terranean. The steel shutters of the Hades warehouse were uncharacteristically raised revealing the deep red and orange warm glow of his home mood programme, the colours may have changed but never was it brightly lit. An ambient song in the distance drew him closer with the soft fading and rise of strings, discordant and minor of key, becoming music of a sinister nature. A strange choice for Hades, his music normally had a beat in there somewhere, this felt wrong. Roach cautiously entered the apparently empty space and though there was a strong presence of sorts he could sense no person inside. Into the main room, a place of perpetual decadence and hedonistic sense satisfaction. Almost pure in its dedication to the pursuit of sin and though despite his standing against the higher levels, more like them in its culture than Hades knew. A large semi- circular sofa surrounded a low rounded table, positioned in the centre of the space. Light shone from underneath its surface gently glowing like the embers of a dying fire slowly breathing from scarlet, to magenta to a warm gold then back to scarlet again. During livelier times the table would present food, drinks, smokes and recreationals rising from openings in its surface. It was as he approached it that he saw her, in the warm half-light, a girl slumped backwards over one of the arms, her thick long crimson hair just touching the rug beneath her, the same colour as the blood upon her pale skin, she was dead. A typical Hades lust object, young, barely dressed, a skinny junky. Gazing to the ceiling her open eyes and mouth seemed to express her last thought that still remained in the air, of how not long ago she was just a little girl, a little girl who'd never of dreamt that she would end up like this, but she did. One girl? Roach was surprised there was not more. Then as he came in closer to the body he caught the glimpse of something else in the darkness from behind the couch, he peered over, another body. She had got up to escape when the heat of flying bullets had stabbed her violently back, tumbling over, dead before she had even hit the floor. A black feather boa adorned her petite and pale naked body, some had flown loose and now surrounded her, laid upon the floor like a dead bird, ravaged by the teeth of a savage beast. Short boyish jet black hair came down beside her high cheeks and made-up panda eyes, fluorescent pink had been playfully painted by her friend in lines across her body, which glowed phosphorus in the dark. They must have been having fun, until someone had crashed the party. The etheric audio reflection was reaching a crescendo, as if the Hidden Source were again watching and now mocking him entirely. Its fear inducing tones now a piercing and maddening song, as it rose in volume bringing in the rumbling thunder of war drums in an abstract timing to its underlying melodies.

"Will you turn that shit off!" Roach cried, the last drum fell upon his final breath, leaving him now alone, surrounded by an immense silence. The nothing only enforced his solitude within this deep underground lair and now with the terror creeping into him, he watched the warm light from beneath the table gradually diminish until it was gone. The steel shutters suddenly slammed down with a metal grating screech, spinning him round, plunging him into utter darkness. The only sound which remained now was of his own breath, rising loud and falling sharply, erratic and panic inducing. He was now trapped far beneath the chaos of the known world, in the blackest depths of its seemingly endless foundations. Gradually, with his eyes resting, his second sight came to the fore.

A white wisping. A dancing, formless-mass becoming brighter, more solid, until it formed fully and a great host of beings appeared. A high concentration of emotion, carved into the ether, the ugly lifelike memory of what had happened here, slowly shifting before it all came flooding in. The ghosts of Ghost City, none of them out of their teens for none of them lived that long, had hacked the entrance controls and swarmed in through the opening doors. Hades' security had jumped straight in, blades flying, spinning, taking down ghosts from all angles, blood arching round as they danced in a focused perfection of genetic superiority. Until it was over all too quick, crude and volatile instruments were un-holstered in cowardly desperation and laid their beauty to waste. Blasts, limp bodies and the scent of gun smoke filled the air as they marched forward over the fallen, stomping down, even on their own kind. Now passing, the spirits went through him, causing him to shiver as they did so, and advanced onwards towards the storage room door. Then a voice, a memory from beyond was heard with a tone of close familiarity, Hades.

"You test tube rejects will not get the pleasure of sending Hades to his end!" Suddenly the lights from within the room flickered on by their own accord. Roach stepped cautiously forward through the large doorway, and was now faced with a clear, larger than life vision of Hades, defiant in his red dressing robes, a jar of Blue Euphorias in one hand, a gun in the other. Then quietly to himself he spoke. "Goodnight Six. It’s been one hell of a ride." The cold steel was raised and the barrel was placed to the side of his head. His eyes closed as a singular tear ran down his stubbled cheek, then nothing.

Darkness returned once more, the vision had gone. The Ghosts had departed having taken the drugs, their dead and the guards’ bodies with them. Being self- cloners they must have had genetic aspirations for them, the whole child population of Ghost came straight out of a lab.

Roach fumbled the wall blindly for the light switch, though he knew he would not like what he saw. The light flickered on, and there the body lay in the large emptiness of the storage room. Slumped down to the ground, the gun limply at its side, blue capsules spilled to the floor. Red flesh chunks and blood painted the wall, still wet, cascading down. Roach fell back to the wall behind him and slid down to the ground, now in this brightness he could see the blood glisten on his boots. With Ghost City under the full assault of open-war the barriers had been blown and now their terror was everywhere, even in the lowest sub- levels. There were no sides, only the survival instinct to take what you can, so they had taken Hades for everything he had, including his life. Roach drifted from himself, nothing was real anymore. He talked with Hades, as they had always done, hearing him respond in the way he would have, yet he felt distanced from his own voice, and once again distanced from his own body, as if he wanted to leave, and follow his friends to wherever they might now be. Hades and Rico had been his brothers, his only family. He continued to talk, though had lost awareness of what it was he was saying, until after a while he heard himself say "I'm going for a piss." Before finding himself in the red wash light of the bathroom, trashing it. He had pulled the cabinet off the wall and smashed it down to the ceramic floor, mirrors breaking into sharp shards. It must not have had what he was looking for inside. Then as he leant, head resting on the cold tile walls, there came a scream, long and drawn out, was it really him? Such a sorrowful sound, alone in the depths of those butchered rooms, finally released, shaking and sobbing. Like the little boy who knew he would never see his parents again, who was taken to a place of equal fear and loneliness, the Institute. That was the last time he had cried, they had made sure of that. Though now what use to him were their techniques of emotional suppression? The time had come to toss aside his conditioning, to toss aside the medication, to try and salvage what humanity he had left before it was all over. Death had come for Rico, it had come for Hades and it was coming for him. He was ready, yet there was still something to live for, perhaps old lucky had things all good and was not living in the world of shit, if anyone could pull that off it'd Bones. Then with further introspection he found his long obscured truth, if he had anything to place his faith in right now, it had to be her. He had to find Gwent, and tell her. Tell her that he loved her, that he always had, and if there was any emotion that they had not taken from him, it was that.

He knew not for how long he had stayed there, delirious and lost in the depths of those defiled and cursed rooms before he snapped himself back from the brink of sanity. He drank free and long from the cold sink tap and splashed water on his face, slapping himself a couple of times to awaken, he then washed the blood from the soles of his boots and returned to the body of Hades.

"I'll see you later." He said, sure that the lingering spirits of his beautiful maidens would forever keep him company. Turning back to the main exit, strangely the steel shutters raised automatically on his approach. Perhaps the Hidden Source was going to be nice to him from now on, perhaps not.

He could only be sure of one thing, he no longer feared it. BONES Bones had always been a thief. Ducking and diving, hustling and conning, a regular happy-go-lucky, good guy. A kleptomaniac or victim of circumstance, it mattered not. He had always been this way. Not as reliant on drugs as most similar deviants, his motivation was purely survival and having received the nickname due to how skinny he was, he barely achieved that. Ground Central was where he worked, hustling sub-levellers was virtually impossible, they were wise to his deadbeat trickery. So grifters grafted topside. In back alleys he would trash-dive, collecting empty boxes from the skips of electronics shops, then use some dead metal weight to put in them before re- wrapping them in cellophane. He would then hit the street, targeting those who where heading into a sky-rail station. Not searching for the most upright looking citizens but for those who might take a dodgy deal. "Scuse me mate...No, no I’m not begging. This'll interest you, trust me. What I’ve got here is a brand new top of the range AT still wrapped in its cellophane, and I’ve got to be honest with you. I nicked it, that's why I want rid of it quick and that's why I’m going to sell it to you for thirty when new they're three hundred an' fifty...No you cant unwrap it till you buy it, 'cause if you don’t want it no one else will, 'cause its been opened right... Okay twenty-five... Nice one." Bones would then swagger off and as soon as their back was turned, run. The hypnotised and unwitting buyer would then take their seat on the sky-rail and begin to open their package. Quite often with anger at their own stupidity and gullible topside nature they would find a rusty pipe lodged in polystyrene and a note. "Sorry, I’m poor, starving and desperate." Bones was a thief but he was in no way a bad guy. In many ways he was one of the most harmless people in 6, and it was his natural spark of life that he gave back to the street. However business had got harder in recent years, with the continued phasing out of physical credit. He had almost considered getting an AT and bank account but he knew doing so would sooner or later get him traced and locked up, right down in the Pit. Back underground he'd sit and eat a processed meat burger or two at his favourite spot, up top they'd be at least twice as expensive and with half as much meat. After this he'd pass a store buying a couple of bottles and some smokes, this is how he'd typically celebrate a job well done, eat, drink, get wrecked. Walking the cracked paving slabs, in that simple world of his own he'd spark up and drink, getting slightly drunk on his way to the dome. Once an outdoor park, it had now become enclosed in thick glass. With the air-purifiers and the illusion of natural light you could almost be mistaken for thinking you were still outside. The green tree leaves swayed gently upon an artificial breeze, as holographic clouds floated beneath the radiant, electric-blue phosphorescence. Perched on a hill, he would watch the day go by. Lost in day- dream, he would allow himself to drift away to the synthesised song of non- existent birds. This time he lay down and slept like a well fed dog.Waking a few hours later, he instinctively checked his jacket pocket to see if his money was still there. This time it wasn’t.

"Fucking bastards!" He screamed at the fake sky.

If he was not robbing, someone else was always robbing him. Welcome to Mainframe 6. Back on to the street, with the curfew now in full effect all had gone into hiding. No distant shouts, no quaking of the earth, no amplified instructions. This was the calm at the centre of the storm. Roach had to find Gwent, he would return to Rico's place to see if she was still there, to do this he would have to return the way he came, through the canals. With the streets now neutralised and the tunnels inactive the canals would be next, he had to keep moving before every part of the city was on lock-down. He knew a manhole cover entrance was a couple of blocks away, so he picked up the pace and ran down a long back street dodging puddles as went. He neared its end, which came out onto a main street. He assumed barriers and check-points must have been set up nearby, so coming in close to the wet brick, he peered round carefully. One glance was all he needed, then back. He had seen an Isis Security riot squad, five troops, armoured, masked and armed, wearing white and grey, digitised urban- camouflage combat-gear. The next alley was just across the road to the right of a trashed pharmacy. All the windows were smashed and the stock had been pillaged, it seemed someone had attempted to torch the place once all was done with. The over-hanging sign swayed back and forth in the smoke, spitting shattered neon sparks. The squad evidently had a job to do, and Roach would be it if they found him out here.

"Okay, no problem." He told himself. "Be still, focus."

He closed his eyes and dived into the void, drifting over, slow in this similar yet abstract dimension. Then as he came close to their mental shell he found a problem, an unbreachable wall. It was like solid glass, he was locked out with no way in, no means to control, no way to possess their will. He was locked out, they were augmented and with it the Hidden had taken full neural control of their bodies, leaving Roach with none. Then he felt it, suddenly they had become aware of him and his mental transmissions. They turned as one, a synchronised, unified force and began to walk in his direction.

Roach was frozen to the spot, without his abilities what was he? He looked around, seeing a metal pole leant against the wall he thought to grab it before instantly deciding it was a bad idea. The instinct to run or fight was then subverted by an emerging idea. Just play dumb, tell them you are lost on the way home or something, shit. In all logic he should have taken flight but he couldn't, he knew there was nowhere he could really hide and if the Source was done hiding, then so was he. Okay then fuck it. Stepping round the corner and out into the unshielded emptiness of the street he now faced the troops head on. They stopped suddenly in their tracks and stared back. What humanity they had left was obscured by their helmets, the windows to their souls shielded by the mirrored surfaces, glinting brightly under a scattered sunlight crack, the now midday light piercing down through rare slits in the steel sky. The Hidden Source had now personified itself within its own army, completely under their control. A legion of emotionless, identity-devoid, post-programmed, non- humans. Where were the men who used to inhabit the bodies which under these armoured cells lay? Roach prepared himself for the worst, clenching, ready for the sudden shock-baton jolt to the head, prepared for his body to go limp and his mind to fall unconscious. Yet still they stared, motionless, not making a sound. Suddenly the silent tension was destroyed by a thunderous crash which shook the earth, an explosion from nearby. It must have been from within only a couple of blocks away. They turned round instantly and with a swift, evasive, inhuman speed, sprinted back to the crossroad check-point. A huge six-wheel, off-road, armoured-vehicle met them from the adjacent road with a perfectly choreographed pace. It slowed momentarily as they jumped onto its cage at its rear and sides, before bounding effortless onwards under its colossal weight. A slightly confused sense of relief overcame him. Luckily they had let him be, moving quickly over to the other side of the road and into the shadow of the alleyway he found the manhole cover. The entrance to the canal, under the steady cold drip of a broken drain. He took a deep breath as he pulled the steel cover aside releasing the noxious fumes from below.

Firing up his night-vision retinas he came down the ladder to a creaky wooden dock. A lone two-man boat bobbed slightly on the water, on closer inspection he found that it had no engine, only paddles. Roach cussed under his breath when suddenly his eyes where blinded by the flash of a boat's bright spot-light. A woman's voice came from behind the disorientating glare as he mentally switched his vision back to normal. "What are you doing over there?" An accusing tone.

"That's Pablo's boat, he wouldn't like you eyeing it up." Roach felt starkly exposed, interrogated under the light's heat, he spoke up. "I wasn't...I'm just...are you heading south?" "Maybe I am...why?" Of course she knew damn well what he wanted. Under normal circumstances and mission objectives she would have gladly thrown her plump self into the murky waste-waters by now but under some strange command of inner-conscience, of morals which he had never been taught, Roach needed his few final steps in this life to be on the narrow path of redemption. "Look I have a lot of money, you can have it all." He reached in his inside jacket pocket and pulled out all the cash he had, a giant wad which cast an even bigger silhouette against the curved canal walls. The woman instantly lowered the light down to the dark green waters, lapping at the boat's side. She was a middle-aged, large woman, hooded by thick green robes which covered all but her face and hands, she was escorted by two children of no more than five and seven years, a boy and a girl. They peered round from behind her and both looked at him as if he were highly amusing. The girl whispered something in the boys ear as the woman said, "I am Maria, these are my children Hayley and Ben." Roach gave a wave and forced a slight smile, he thought he may like kids though he hadn't met enough to be sure. "Climb aboard." She said. Roach had taken a seat on the middle plank of the small motor-powered boat whilst the children sat up-front holding the spot-light together as Maria steered from the back. The boat bounced hard over small waves, passing docks and cargo boats as she called over the engine's noise.

"You've been most generous sir, almost too much so, I think I'm going to give you back some of this money when we get there. You've just been out there in the war. I can see you are not thinking straight. You need to get some sleep, clear your head. Lord knows what we've all been through." He digested this for a moment before replying. "Thanks for the positive encouragement but on a realistic level I don't fancy anyone's chances right now, let alone my own." "Yes in troubled times things may seem that way." She replied in a tone that suggested she knew something he did not. "Seems!? What are you going to do when they come down here?" "Down here we protect our own." She had no idea of the trouble that was heading their way. "Take it from me, wherever you are going, hold up there for as long as you can, until this whole thing blows over. Just protect yourselves, the canals are going to be gassed soon. With the trains not running they must be the only sub-level trade route left. I’m surprised they haven't got to it already." "But why? Most of us have nothing to do with any of what is happening up there." Her tone was now one of fear, she believed he knew what he was talking about from the sincerity in his voice. "Trust me you will do. You have the money but that's not important. I need to know that you and your children kept yourself safe, that somehow there may be hope for the future. Do this and then when it comes, perhaps I can die in peace." He was looking deep into her eyes and could tell she believed his warning and would follow his wishes. "Well thank you very much sir, I can see in your face that you are honest. I trust what you are saying is true and we'll do what you ask. There's not many of them around but I can see that you are one of the good people." There was silence for a moment as he gazed into the passing waters, reflecting.

"No, I'm not. I wish this small act could make it so but saving three lives wont pay for the many of my sins." She felt as if he was being too hard on himself but he knew otherwise. She tried to reassure him. "Life sometimes forces us to do things a certain way like fate leaves us with no choice. We are given a set course and we must follow it. You will be forgiven, if you truly ask for it." Something about this perceived pearl of wisdom made his teeth clench in disgust. "How much money would I have to give you to kill somebody for me?" His tone now bitter, his personality switched in remembrance of what he truly was. Maria now felt uncomfortable, shrinking in the unfolding shadow of his heavy spirit.

"Oh, I would never. No amount of money could make me." She said shakily. "I thought so." A cold silence now filled the boat, leaving only Maria's mental clouds of confusion as they journeyed onwards round a slow and steady turn. Who is this man? She asked herself to which she then received a quiet inner whisper which slowly sent chills through her very soul.

You... don't.... want.... to.... know.

She looked up and nearly jumped to see him staring right at her, his eyes dark, inked like onyx stone. Realising she was suitably scared and would no longer make such sweeping assumptions about him he then turned and looked forwards, watching the small waves, the black water flying by. Roach drifted momentarily into sleep a few times, only to be woken by the sudden slamming down of the boat bounding over a larger wave or the playful laughter of the children, this time it was the latter, though Hayley's laughter would quickly turn into a chesty cough, to which Ben would find even more amusing.

"Is she okay?" Roach asked, Maria snapped out of her auto-pilot day-dreaming. "Oh, no she's not, the sickness has been getting worse around here recently. A new mutated form of virus has been spreading rapidly and it’s harder to treat. We don't trust the pharmaceutical companies, that's why we're heading south. There's a man, he grows all types of plants, has something for every sickness, he's very wise." Roach had met such doctors before, as part of his work.

"I'm sure she'll be fine." He said convincingly. Eventually they came to a dock with a symbol on the wall. A simple image of a man done in thick lines of red paint, stood over curved waves, arms outstretched to the sun.

"Look Hayley, the medicine man did that, it shows he lives near here." Maria then tied the boat to the dock with a rope and helped the children climb off.

"Okay sir this is as far as we go, I hope you know your way around these parts." "I used to live south-side, I'll be fine." "Oh and thank you for the advice, my sister lives round here, we can stay with her but please keep yourself safe too, there is still much to live for." Looking into her eyes he could see that she cared, and on some level perhaps even understood him, or at least wanted to. "I have some business to take care of round here, then I am going straight home. I have no plans to leave there." "Then farewell stranger and God bless you." Roach nodded slightly then turned and walked off down a tunnel, into the depths of the subterranean passages. Knowing his way, into its warm half-light and mosaic tiled walls, the old familiarity of the labyrinthian lanes came back to him. The air was thick with incense as red alter candles burned outside homes as offerings to appease the hungry ghosts. They reminded him of the path he should take. Eventually, without getting lost, he returned to Rico's closed door. Knocking his fist upon the hard wood he already knew she was gone, he could sense it.

A memory imprinted in the ether revealed itself to him, Rico had died and in that same moment Gwent had awoken. She had sat up and looked around, startled and bewildered as to where she was, then immediately she bolted for the door in a panic. Her spirit echoed through him, he turned but it was gone. Yet he had felt her for that brief second, the smell of her scent, her beautiful essence, the pure touch of her unique energy and all the memory of her, there for an instance, then vanished.

He would retrieve his AT and find her, he had to find her, that was all that mattered. That and finding Bones. Hades never knew the real Roach, he had never got the chance to tell him who he really was, it would have risked both their lives. Despite how close they were they had always been distant in truth. Maybe this was for the best, maybe whatever fucked up friend or brother Roach was to him, maybe that had been his good side, his human side. Whatever perception Hades had of him, he had in no way perceived him as a killer, a nightmare architect or telemental manipulator. Despite his cynicism, his banter and relentless mocking, he saw Roach as harmless, generous and kind. Roach would sometimes gain this knowledge, diving behind those devilish eyes and gain the viewpoint only Hades could see. He didn't always like what he saw, mainly because the drug-boosted arrogance of Hades made him a selfish and disrespectful cunt who would view his friends accordingly. However behind that facade, the Hades front, he would find that Hades had looked up to him in a strange sort of way. He saw the Roach he knew, the waste-disposal bot serviceman, and admired his virtues, his steadfast work ethic towards his laborious job, his sense of morals, and it was all bullshit, all lies.

He had to tell Bones the truth, fess up and tell him everything about what he was, then perhaps he could learn more about who he was and where he was going. In this increasingly confusing life Bones was perhaps the only grounding influence left, the only thing to stop him from spiralling into insanity. He was the only friend he had left, because Hades and Rico were dead. He considered this, as he walked onwards back to the South-Side fish-market, he then stopped in his tracks to take a deep breath and choke back his emotions. Don't break, not yet he told himself. Yet as he walked through the passages he could feel the thickness, the vibrational tension of the air, the fear from behind all the closed doors. They sensed war was coming, soon to be waged fully on all sub-levels, and there was nothing they could do but wait and hide like frightened animals in their holes. Insurgents like Rico lived everywhere and they would be found. From the whispers, the broken promises, the families wanting to protect themselves, they could not hide. If they were lucky in-return deep underground resettlement camps would be mined for the families, if they were not...well the other solution was far more future proof economically. Death-squads, moving from house to house. The new virus that woman had talked of, it was of no coincidence and no surprise that it should happen now. It was a new synthetic breed, he knew it, and no magic-root herbal tea was going to fix it. That little girl was as good as dead. All this was coming to a head for a reason, the Sub-Side terror and chaos all designed to push things upwards closer towards the world of mass-control. Who is responsible for this? The benefactor.... Who benefits from this? The Hidden Source... So we all just let it play out, because that's all we can do, that's all we want to do, because if you don't tow the line, you end up as another contract, a dead body in a bizarre accident in a small news story.

The Fish Market was abandoned, shutters down, closed for business, a rare day. Silent and still, eerily empty of all trade, as if abandoned, a ghost town. Government warnings of the new sickness had forced all into quarantine. It felt as if the whole city had gone into hiding, even though no curfew was enforced here. The South was almost autonomous in its status, they gave no trouble for they sort none. The current political climate was none of its concern, though here refugees were soon to spill and bring the war with them. The South-Side market traders and their families cared little for politics and not wanting to spoil the special relationship between its residents and the rarely present Isis Security, these hard working types, who had understandable yet prescribed judgements about the sub-levels, would turn them over in an instant. Either way this meant a conflict was inevitable but if the fish-heads wanted weapons other than their butcher knifes, the Sub-Side's business would be needed. It was unavoidable, like the pins of rain rushing in hard on the harsh sea-wind, the storms of chaos would be blown here too soon enough. Sheltering behind the empty market stalls he walked, their coverings flapping wildly in the chill air as he made his way back to the lockers. He recalled the last time he was here, only the previous day's morning, and how messed up everything had seemed back then. Yet situations had escalated and worsened exponentially beyond anything he could have predicted back then. A critical-mass was building to a breaking point, he could feel its energy, a tsunami-like wave that was steadily building in momentum. It seemed that what was happening in his life was a just mere microcosmic reflection of the macrocosmic whole. This all looked like it was shaping up to be man's shortest and most debilitating war. A war that would be over before many realised they had to fight or even who it was they were meant to be fighting, and end leaving the people more incarcerated and oblivious than they had ever been, or worse. For how can you fight an enemy if you do not know it exists? The Hidden Source they would never find, and as their world danced, cared for them, raised them, pleasured and seduced, no one even knew they existed. As real as the electricity which powered their technological creations, the radio waves that sung their tune. This life-force, this spirit, was everywhere. Born out of nano-complexity, quantum self-replication, the advancement and evolution of science, it controlled everything. The perfection which should have shone brightly through man had become distorted and defiled like light through a dirty and broken glass pane. Fallen, flawed, failed, perhaps it was time to bow down, to offer ourselves, perhaps unwittingly, to a more supreme power. A last noble act. Yet what is a human without the will to survive? Though there could be no fight, the only real choice left was to escape. To the freedom of an infected wasteland, or the incarceration of a mind wiped utopia? Roach remembered the Influx Manifesto, in the past an absurd and dangerous threat to peace. Now, if there was any truth in the fantastical propaganda stories of the green lands that lay beyond, perhaps this myth was the only chance of a real and free life he had left. Though what chance was there? He had willingly stepped over the line, he had become a terrorist. For a moment there had been a glimmer of hope, a new sanctuary and brotherhood formed. A standing amongst the Influx having braved the rite of passage. His simultaneous death and rebirth, it all made sense if only for an instant. A brief moment of triumph, a victorious fuck you against the lifelong master of his will. Only to then have his wings burned, to fall back down to earth, to have his delusions crushed in a second, just like Rico had been. Zebulin was dead and Roach hadn't been in control of shit. It was all an elaborate trick, they could have been stopped at any time if they'd wanted but for some reason the Hidden Source needed them to succeed in their mission. They Desired it. Then adding Hades to the mix was just some kind of sick joke. With Fate and the Source seemingly joining forces to conspire against him, suicide was coming an increasingly liberating prospect. A free choice. A life without free-will. Is that how it had really gone down? Had every step he'd taken really been orchestrated on a higher lever by an omniscient and secret force? Was he being too paranoid? Maybe his theories on the Hidden being more than a few cloak and dagger business men was his biggest delusion of all. Perhaps there was a perfectly scientific explanation for all the faulty machinery of late and he really had lost his mind in an attempt to avoid the real truth: all of this had been his fault. If only he'd completed his mission, if only he'd listened to Gwent. Staring vacantly at the ground whilst lost deep in his thoughts, he approached the lockers where he'd secured his AT. Gwent's remained locked, she must have lost all memory of having been there. Without her AT he had no way to contact her, no way to find out if she was safe. The sinking feeling returned to his gut. He closed his eyes, no, he could feel her no more. He didn't want to think the worst but what else was there? She was gone.

As he rummaged for his key there was a green beep followed by a metal crash as his locker swung violently open, thrown by an invisible force. He stood there motionless for a second, shocked yet blank of expression, then answered to this technological-geist, his head and arms raised to the white sky.

"Okay! I believe in you. You are real!... You happy now?" Then returning to the locker he spoke quietly. "You know after all I've done for you, you didn't have to kill my friends." The locker slammed shut and relocked with a red buzz.

"Shit, dammit, okay, you didn't have to kill Rico but you could have stopped Hades from dying too. After all I've done for you." His skull pushed hard against the metal locker door as the salt-water pelted down, his clothes now sodden, he slammed his fist. "I gave you my life!...And you have it still. There's nothing I can do, so either kill me, or guide me. Just please, stop fucking with me!" At this the green light beep sounded again and the door unlocked. He pulled it open, his AT was how he had left it, sat atop the pile of clothes he'd worn at the party. Without taking out his terminal he fired it up, its cyan then emerald glassy glow illuminating to its boot-up melody. In the cold wind a shudder shook through him as he uttered the command.

"Bones." The line went through almost immediately and an image projection filled the locker space, glimmering like his hope. As it came into focus Roach saw that it wasn't coming from the eye of what should have been Bone's normally creditless handheld but was coming from above, from the top corner of a room, a surveillance camera. He could see Bones sat at the far end on the edge of a bed in what looked like a mental patients' dressing gown. The bed was made and tidy, in a clinical looking room which was devoid of electrical junk and empty food boxes, it could not have been his room. Bones was not one for sleeping but when he did he would typically return to a shoebox, scrap-yard rent-a-room, then pass out on a stained single mattress with no sheets. This was not his room, it looked more like a cell. It was possible he'd been arrested and was being given special treatment, committed finally for his kleptomaniac condition. Though Roach feared the truth was far worse. "Bones? Bones, its me Roach..." The camera's eye zoomed in closer, then he saw it, a light at his temples, a breathing crimson. "...they've tapped you! Are you okay? Where are you!?" "Yes, I am fine... I have a real job now." Bones was not himself, his tone was flat, his delivery unhurried." I checked out what the clinic had to offer and I can say I am very pleased with the arrangement. I have become a psychological test subject for a Synaptech research program. They have given me a nice place to live top-side, fed me and given me clothes."

His psyche-ward patient gown reminded Roach of the type he had to wear when he was first taken to the Institute and they performed their induction tests on him, another shiver went through him. Bones went on. "...and of course, I've gone through the augmentation process. All I have to do is let them scan me for four hours a day, and in return I have an open door to the other side."

Roach did not like what he was hearing. Bones spoke with an unusual eloquence, it was not right and it creeped him out. They had got to him first and quenched the fire which had made Bones who he was, a free man. He had to see if there was still some kind of emotional response left in the Bones that he knew, something human. "Well listen, I hate to have to tell you this brother but Hades and Rico...they..they are dead. I saw it with my own eyes." "I'm sorry that must be hard for you." Roach took a moment to comprehend what he was hearing.

"Hard for me?! Our brothers are dead Bones! Doesn't this mean anything to you?!" "I can no longer feel the pain and suffering which has kept us in the dark for so long. I have removed the ability for me to feel negative emotions as simply as switching on a light switch. Now I only feel the desire to help others, like you. Become who you are truly meant to be, join us." "So then.... Bones is dead too." "No, quite the opposite. I have become more than I have ever been. I am no longer a waste of human life. In your present state, your limited coding, I am more alive than you can possibly comprehend." "But not for long. Soon, y'know that light switch you talked of?... It's going to be switched off." Swiping his hand across the image, it faded into darkness, the connection was broken. Roach was left empty, numb, beyond his pain threshold. Everyone he had held dear in his life had suddenly been taken, gone and his home; Isis, Mainframe 6, would be next. Either he joined the flow and embraced being brainwashed and full of shit like the shell of a man Bones had become. Or he ended it all, diving his chopper from the highest peak, a last defiance. He would not be taken alive, he would join his brothers. The choice was not hard to make. Regardless of the fairy tales the NI5 implanted seemed to spew, the force behind it had mercilessly butchered Rico, it had let Hades suffer a similar fate and had extinguished the unique spirit that was once Bones. It had destroyed the only good life Roach had ever known, and he would never trust this mass-delusion that its intentions where somehow for the good of man.

Strapping on his AT to his left forearm and taking his glider ticket, he left his formal clothes behind then returned to the place where he had deposited his lucky coin, the glider docking bay. As the compartment whirred slowly down and the curved metallic beauty of his glider came into sight, his spirit lifted momentarily. Not all of his friends were gone.

"At least I can still rely on you." The doors slid upwards elegantly and he fell exhausted onto the clean back seat as a gentle female voice sounded. Your clothes are wet. Now drying. His jacket was pulled off him and disappeared into the seat as hot air blasted him from all angles as he lay.

"Take me home." He commanded. The familiarity of her presence comforted whilst feeling the soft pull of the glider moving away, he drifted inescapably into a much needed sleep. CRYSTAL After three long years her studies in advanced statistical research had come to a successful end and now Crystal was ready to join the even heavier workload of a paid career at the health department’s information centre. Here she was given an apprentice role in helping to compile the annual pharmacy statistical report for the whole City of Isis. She compiled streams of data from surveys given to the stats department from all the districts, which in turn managed the data from their local area’s pharmacies. Due to the number of new illnesses surfacing regularly and the importance of readily and easily accessible medication, there were pharmacies scattered everywhere and the total amount in the city she approximated could be nearing five-thousand. Which really put in perspective what a delicate balance the general health of the public was in. Though of course until she had smoothed out the mountain of human error, there was no way to be sure of the exact figures. However on an island with a land mass of approximately three-hundred miles (not including the additional miles added by the levels) that still averaged out at six pharmacies within each square mile but then that was still not a correct average as no licensed pharmacies operated within the western side of Ghost any more and the entire east side of Isis was an agricultural, meat processing, food production sector. Retium was mostly popular in the higher levels and this total was inversely proportionate to the total amount of viral flu treatments being sold ground- level and sub-side. Tranquilisers and sedating painkillers appeared equally popular across the board. Even though she could not be sure of the accuracy of the exact figures, one thing was for certain. The people of Isis took a lot of drugs. She often found herself getting carried away with average theories based on data that was pretty unreliable in the first place and it was at this point that she had to lean back from the database projections and take a deep breath. The thing was that there were so many data discrepancies that the year’s data seemed to totally clash with the previous year's report. So she would have to contact the data providers and try and straighten out every minor detail, to form a perfect flowing jigsaw of numbers that undoubtedly no one would even bother to read. The report was merely an administrative formality and really a bureaucratic waste of time. She wondered why they still had humans doing a job that was not so suited to them and their inefficient cognitions. She would sometimes day-dream about elaborate conspiracies executed to stir up all this red-tape confusion so that the exact amount of pharmaceuticals sold and wasted could be steeped in complexity and disinformation. So that they could be moved without a trace, to be sold on the black-market. Fantasies of double- crosses and back-alley assassinations often got her through the day. To think that from simply doing this menial job she could have had some connection to these shadow workings, smoke-screened in all this numerical chaos, made things more interesting. Though she knew it was pretty much some nonsense she had made up to entertain herself, it was her daydreams that saved her from the sheer unending laboriousness of the job, and her life. Ten hours daily, six days a week and the pressure on for the deadline exhausted her. On her day off with what was left after rent and the general essentials of life had been taxed, she liked to go shopping for clothes. So she could look good on the way to work and ignore the stares of men she would not have the time of day to see even if she had wanted to.

To help her focus and give her more energy for the job, she, just as everyone else at the office, took regular doses of Retium. It sped up her mental ability and improved her focus whilst also sending her into a sort of trance where time sped up, the day went by quicker and you flew along not thinking, just acting on auto-pilot. As a result she would have to knock back some tranqs just to get to sleep, let alone relax by the time she had got home. She was also starting to get bored of the regular play-hard routine of hitting bars and clubs with her friends at the weekend and losing herself in a flaming burn-out to shake off the stagnation of the working week. When this started to happen, she kept quiet and did not tell anyone she had realised she had no idea what she was doing with her life, that none of it made any sense and that nothing had any meaning or purpose to her anymore. It was not that it had before; it’s just that previously she had not been aware of its absence. Now in the short spaces between the rush distraction of her career and over-sleeping, depression hit her like a wall. She tried throwing herself with greater personal enthusiasm into her work, not that she thought she could do a better job, just that she thought she may as well try to enjoy it but it was no use and she wondered how she had got into that line of work in the first place.

“You are such an organised girl. You'd do well in an office.” Her mother had advised her and of course you make your life choices at a young and impressionable age, and for someone who does not know where their talents truly lie the best idea is to let someone else tell you. She did not know how long she had been down in this hole as she would pretend to herself she was not really there at all, and of course nobody would have guessed as she kept it secret from others even more so. So when her work place got offered prototype testing runs of the latest generation NI, she threw herself at this promise of liberation she had been waiting so long to hear. In the clinic the surgeon, a very clever machine, held her skull firmly in place, whirred round and gave a quick, hard methodical tap and twist to the left side and then the same to the right, and that was it. There was only a little blood and a slight burning sensation. The implant then took root and grew, linking the NI's central processing cells intelligently with the synaptic pathways of her brain. She then had the rest of the afternoon off and had found herself waking up at home with no memory of having returned there. The next day upon waking her mind felt fresh, anew, reborn, and once she was there, in that wide open space of possibility, suspended in the expansive reflections of her mind, the experience was religious. Like so many she was outwardly joyous about the new life she had discovered and had a new attitude to work because of it. Work was no longer the slave driving drudgery it once was but it had become the means to the blissful end. The privilege of being part of this great society and great age, to work together so that everyone could experience this new found hope, which had been so long lost. Though no one would talk of it, she knew and could tell by the growing glow of fresh vitality amongst the converted, that she had not been the only one who had suffered in silence for so long. It was a new dawn, they were being washed clean. They had been raised up high and now stood boldly upon on the frontiers of a new future. One night she came home from work and as always could not wait to leave to the other place, she went into her bedroom and threw herself onto her bed. Closing her eyes and focusing her temples glowed a breathing blue in the darkness of her room and not before long she was in the other world.

The rushing sound of water faded in and upon opening her eyes she found herself in that familiar place, her own Utopia, standing by the clear flowing river at the edge of the forest. The morning mist hung in the branches, as sunlight cast down white shards through the cracks of the emerald canopy. This realm was designed as a nature experience with no objective intended, it had been specifically created to adapt to the subject’s wishes and would randomly form landscapes around their minds, it was literally the symbolic expression of Crystal’s psyche but could be changed through her sheer desires, emotions, intent and imagination. It was a brilliant and sunny day and bare-foot she walked upon the moist morning grass, the ground was soft and thick as she walked, like an exquisite rug. Appreciating the vibrancy of its colour she thought to herself that she had never seen anything quite so green. Following the river’s bank in the direction of the flowing water she eventually came to a sudden drop. The cliff edge was punctuated by a large rounded rock, perpetually splashed by the waterfall’s breaking peak. Cautiously approaching the edge she peered over and felt giddy from vertigo as she looked down to the roar of the waterfall creating clouds of splashing mist below. Pushing the rock she found that it was solidly sunk into the ground so carefully hoisting herself up onto it she took a seat. She looked down to the continuing river far beneath her, winding and curving like a snake into the distance until it disappeared, swallowed by the trees of the rising hills that gradually grew into the mountainous icy peaks of the horizon's end, like magnificent temples of the sky. As she looked to this summit her mind began to talk, coming through as clear as ripples breaking on the surface of a vast and calm sea.

Every sensation in here seems real, and for all the electricity being shot around my nerves it may as well be.

When I sleep I dream, when I wake I dream. Back out there could just be another construct of my imagination.

So if all things are in perpetual-motion where is the stability within this chaos? Maybe they are one and the same.

I should stop trying to make sense out of everything. I cannot hold onto anything, so why should I even try?

And yet even though I know this is not real. Why am I scared to dive?

The landscape randomly generates around my subconscious, following natural laws the code creates. Life creates life.

So then is it real, or just an imitation? And if we set order upon the random factors, are we gods?

“Hello.” A voice from behind her made her jump and spinning round on her rock she turned to see the face of a child, hairless of head, a girl robed in a beautiful dress of yellows and orange. Crystal could barely believe her eyes. “Who are you? What are you doing here?” Crystal asked incredulously

“My name’s Luma, I live here…We live here.” The girl replied with a friendly tone. “'We? There are more of you?” “Yes of course, one cannot live without others.” Crystal was taken back, communities? this must have been some new uploaded feature. “No, this can’t be. This program is a specifically natural environment with some wild animals. Humans are not in the original coding.” Luna paused, their eyes connected strongly as Crystal felt deep wells of peace radiating from them. “When a system reaches a relative complexity you can see what it truly is, alive.” “Okay, so you are aware that you live in a system, a code?” “Yes. Are you?… You say those words as if they bear no tangible reality, yet here you can feel the wind, the water’s spray, the sound of my voice.” “Sure but it’s not real." This was too weird, up until now she had been enjoying her solitary world but now some trickster had decided to introduce strange characters in the form of what appeared to be a cryptic child nun. The girl went on. “If something imitates reality, yet all things are but mere reflection, where is this truth you grasp so strongly?” Crystal could not help but continue to debate with this confused intelligence. “Well, out there.” “Out where?” “Outside, beyond these appearances, beyond this illusion I have chosen to step into.” “And when you are out there, how do you know that it is not just another illusion, another reflection?” “Well…” The girl had surprisingly stumped her. “Doesn’t it not appear, just as this one. Only in a different form.” “Stop!…You are just an intelligent program. A creation of man.” “The creation of the created. All things are born out of each other. Was this waterfall once not rain?…You need to calm yourself, you are safe here… you have come from a sad place I can feel it. What is your name sister?” “Crystal.” She replied and though the girl appeared very young she was humbled by her apparent synthetic yet powerful wisdom. “You seem very wise for such a young girl.” Luma gave a cute shrug and went on. “Appearances appear only to the beholder. It is what we are taught from an early age. A short while ago you where saying that I was an illusion, now you are trying to say what I am. It's funny.” “Sure, illusions can appear to have a personality I guess.” “Yes, but it is all part of a greater illusion. The way you appear to me may not reflect your true nature only how I choose to see you, just as your own self- image is only a reflection of what you believe yourself to be.” Luma on this reached into her pouch and took out a pure white feather, given by a bird that was sacred to her people.

“Here, this was meant for you.” She passed it with a bow. “Now look, deep into the waters. Can you see?” Crystal looked down, perplexed, still partly cynical, just deciding to go with the flow of what must have been a pre-programmed experience. At first upon the miniature flowing waves she could only make out her dim shape and reflection when suddenly a cloud shifted and the glistening sunlight poured forth. Naturally expecting to see her own image in this watery mirror she was then taken aback. Vivid and clear the stream momentarily, magically stilled to reveal the reflection of a little girl. Luma, staring right back at her. With a startled jump she stood up and looked around, the girl was gone.

“Luma?!” Crystal called out to the trees but the girl was nowhere to be seen. She had vanished as surely as she has appeared. Gradually becoming dim, darkness crept in, the experience was fading. Crystal did not want to leave yet but soon she found herself awake, back home, lying on her bed with the burdens of normality slowly creeping back in. "Well that was weird." She said to herself. She sat up trying to attune to her surroundings when suddenly with a gasp which took her breath away, she saw it. At her side, vivid, real, here and now, sat a perfect white feather, the gift of a sacred bird. THE INSTITUTE

I grew up an only-child, we all did up-top. The genetically screened one-child policy was for all of our sakes. The Islands were heaving from overcrowding, people had become more of a problem than an asset. So the population had to be controlled and economically viable. If you were not of a genetically affluent bloodline then forget it, you did not even get to exist, not any more. Topside that is. The sub-side continued to breed as they wanted, to be natural, to hold on to what ever freedom they could, as they have always done.

Yet as an only-child I was more alone than most. My father was in the Isis Security force, he worked all hours and was rarely home evenings, my mother was in office administration, low-level housing support. She helped do the paperwork which sent agents to kick out vagrants from government seized property. They were often to then be replaced by new tenants. Those with greater civilian merit, workers whom had been officially declared terminally redundant, economically obsolete, that kind of thing. They were both too stressed or busy to deal with me, so I spent my spare time immersed in video games or down dome parks. I had a few friends then. I was a fairly average Mainframe kid, studied long hours, didn't get to see much of my parents, had adventures with friends in abandoned places we shouldn't have been.

Life was what you could call normal, except I had always felt in the back of my mind that there was something different, or perhaps wrong with me. I knew and felt things that others were completely oblivious to but I kept such things to myself. Like the fact that my teacher secretly lusted over the prepubescent girls in class or that my friend Baxter was the one behind corrupting the school's info-net with a homemade virus, even though he had not told me. I tried to pay no attention to these strange intuitions, until one night something happened that I could not ignore. I had what I thought was a vivid dream. I was in bed going to sleep, the door was ajar but in the half-light I could see a shadow in the centre of the room, like the silhouette of a man, slowly moving, surrounded by an aura of invisible flame. I closed my eyes and hid under the covers but I knew it was still there, I could feel its presence. Suddenly I became cold and unable to move. Under its power, a breeze entered my forehead. Whatever this thing was I could feel it seeping into me, it wanted something from me and was going to take it. Gradually a tingling filled my body, not a pleasant sensation but one of discomfort, fear. The feeling rose as it became stronger, turning into a pain of the body and spirit. I then willed it to leave, immediately there was a change. I felt it go the way it had came, the cool air rushing from my brow as I woke, or at least regained control of my body once more. I got up and went across the landing in my pyjamas, I needed my mum. Though as I approached my parents' bedroom door I could hear animalistic grunts and groans. This scared me even more but still I gripped the handle and went through. My mother looked up at me, her red face pressed down to the bed by a man I had never seen before as she looked at me wide-eyed. I quickly closed the door and went to the bathroom to cry like the child I was. I was young but I knew what sex was. Afraid to leave or sleep, I spent the night sat on the chill ceramic tiles, staring blankly at the wall. By morning there was banging on the locked door. She told me to get dressed and go to school, I was already late, and that was that. I was ten years old.

Nights at home continued with me alone in my room, trying to distract myself from the muffled raised voices of my parents by playing games. I did not have to hear what they were saying but I could feel every harsh cloud of emotion as they burst and cracked like thunder clouds through the walls. What had happened to the joy we had once known? Why could they not love each other anymore? Why could they not love me? I knew that man I had seen in their room had to be to blame, so I called it back. I asked the shadow to help fix this problem, then gradually it came into being and I saw it again. The corner of my room became darker as I whispered and strangely I started to not fear but welcomed it in as a friend, really I didn't have that many so why not? Then after a few days sure enough things started to happen. Dad was not dumb, so one time when he was meant to be working late he came home early. I knew the man had come back as I had my fingers in my ears to try and cover up the fuck noises being made. Then suddenly they stopped, I took my fingers out and listened. I could hear my father's raised yet muffled voice followed by an intense panic energy that slammed through the walls in a shock-wave. There was a gun-shot crack, then silence, followed shortly after by the pitiful sound of a mother's sobs... I think he had nearly shot her too. He called it in as an attempted robbery and being a security officer he tied up all the loose ends easily. The report was solid, his words, indisputable facts. That night he came into my room, he knew I wasn't dumb either but he said "Whatever happens between your mum and I, remember we will always love you." and I wish I could have believed him. Because within a month I was moved to a residential education centre getting the "new kid" shit kicked out of me on the regular and the only visit I got from my parents was Mum telling me that Dad and her were finished and she was already fucking someone else. She didn't even ask about the bruise on my face. She had brought me a present cause it was my eleventh birthday, I threw that piece of shit in the bin. So you get broken, it happens to everyone eventually, because nothing lasts. I’d just got dealt a bad hand. I wished Dad would come and visit but I knew he couldn't. He felt too ashamed, too sad to see me, cause he'd killed a man with me listening and now I knew what it was he did for a living, who he was. He was a killer, and so it is like father, like son. I was in a new home and I had but one friend, the shadow, I talked to it and soon enough we became one and I learnt that it never was separate from me. It was me, it always had been. Coming from the home I had known did not get me off on the right foot for making new friends. I couldn't tell anyone what had happened because I did not want Dad to go to prison, or for them to think I was the weird boy with imaginary friends. So I had to hold in all my bitterness and anger but nobody likes a depressed introvert. In fact the negative energy I carried served only as a magnet to greater misfortune. Loaded snake- eye dice rolled by the bitch I call Lady Luck. Needless to say, I was not happy, so if someone pushed me, I'd spit at them and if their buddies punched me, I'd kick them in the balls. This escalated onwards until I could not escape the tense and dangerous vibrations that surrounded me, the relentless, threatening suspense. Perhaps it was this constant sense of fear that sharpened my etheric senses and provoked me to do what was necessary. I've only ever done what I've had to do, what I was forced to, for good or ill. Eventually a war broke out which went on for some time between myself and three boys. After a locker room beating I had blacked out whilst having my head kicked in. I came around with blood red-eyes and a dislocated finger, I was all fucked up and it was at this point that I knew, enough was enough. That night I called once more upon the shadow. Its heavy presence filled me and I told it what needed to be done, or it told me I'm not sure. Its low vibrations built stronger as I imagined my suffering reflect back, turned against them many times fold. The force inside me rose to bursting point until I could hold it no more and with uncontrollable physical tremors it was set free. A blood-thirsty beast released from its cage, to rid me of this problem, to reap justice, to manifest my will. Once gone, I was left drained, feeling weaker and more lost than ever before. In the morning there was a large assembly, the announcement came that these boys, their names I cannot even remember now. Had all committed suicide in their separate rooms. No notes or reason had been left. One had hung himself with a cable round the neck, another by a painkiller overdose and the final one, the most inventive of the three, dead from electric shock. He had used tools and a plug socket. I knew then what I did had worked, perhaps more than I had intended, though I felt no guilt, no remorse whatsoever. It was from this point that I felt my life's purpose awaken, an innate power unfolding, that a hidden destiny awaited me. Childish rumours began to circulate that I was cursed but this didn't bother me, in fact I liked that they now all feared and respected me. It wasn't until I was called to the principal's office a few days later that the feeling of dread hit me. Somehow they knew, I was sure of it. Two men were waiting there that had come for me, both in jet black suits with inked eyes to match, modified like mine are now, shielding the bright office lights. I knew they must have been from a specialist security branch though I could not read them like I could others, their identity was telementally guarded somehow and from their etheric energy I felt nothing, as if they were not even human. They asked the principal to leave the room, his own office and he did so immediately without complaint or hesitation. Then one turned to me and said in a hushed mental whisper.

You do not belong here. We have a better place for you. A place you will fit in. I tried to run but I couldn't, I was physically frozen to the spot. My next memory is of being strapped down on a stretcher in the back of a van, there were orderlies, with medical masks on but I knew that this was no ambulance. I struggled and screamed as the doors were slammed and it pulled away. They lifted metal wires in their latex hands and I felt them painfully pinch, methodically inserted under the skin of my scalp. It was then that they began to burrow deeper with self- guiding nano-precision. Feeling them taking root inside my brain, linking directly to my neurons. This burning sensation I know now was creating new synaptic pathways whilst destroying some old ones. Hysterically I screamed as I struggled in futility, it was all I could do as the beeping of my heart rate increased rapidly. I remember crying for my mother whilst they squirted a syringe. Jabbing me sharply with its needle as they finally took me under.

When I came to I was still strapped down on the stretcher, more wires had been positioned around my body, at my hands and up my spine, and I was plugged into various machines which all pulsed steadily, giving out readings of graphical data. I had wet myself and could no longer cry, I was emotionally numb, they must have dosed me hard with lots of tranqs and painkillers. I would drift into sleep only to wake again into the shock of this waking nightmare. I could not believe it was real but as I closed my eyes and tried to wake up at home with my parents, all I could feel was the presence of other children. In rooms just like mine, in rows, there must have been hundreds. Boys and girls all between the ages of five and twelve, and all of them terrified like me. I was not conscious most of the time as they continued their daily dosing and study of me but sometimes in that dreamy narcotic haze I remember a man, aging and grey of hair with a walking stick, would come in and talk to me. He had a kind and friendly manner like that of a grandfather and the only thing I remember him saying was...

Do not be afraid, you are here because you are special, you are here to make the world a better place. You must trust us. Do not be afraid.

Shortly after that I remember coming around again whilst being rushed on the stretcher down a long corridor and into an operating theatre. They had gas masks on and asked me to count down from twenty. I figured that sounded easy but I got to about eighteen when all went black again. Twenty hours of unconscious, complete non-existence passed.

When I hazily woke I could feel that my hair was gone, shaved to the bone and I had a large stitch going across my cranium where they had cracked my skull open and tinkered around some more with my brain. All my own emotion was now gone from me, wiped and empty. The only thing I could feel now was the fear and pain waves of the newly initiated children, their jagged vibrations permeating my walls, and the shadow. The formless dark inside of me that grew stronger by the day. A week passed whilst I healed, they had a dimensional media projector, cutting edge technology at the time, which allowed me to play games and watch movies whilst I recovered from the surgery. Now, no longer on a drip, female nurses brought me food, medicine and tranquillizers with a friendly manner. This confused me considering the horrific treatment I'd been receiving up until then. I could walk but I refused to when they said I had to go meet someone important. They just strapped me to a wheelchair and pushed me there, I was done resisting.

I was wheeled along sunny corridors passing the clearest skies I had ever seen, no buildings, or sky-rails, we were in the clouds. The highest I had ever been back then. Eventually I was pushed through large double doors into a grand room with white marble pillars at each corner with floor tiles to match. The wall to the right was a clear glass view to a sea of white clouds beneath an endless blue sky. The sun at its highest point was now blindingly revealed to me in all its unshielded majesty. At the far end of this exquisite and important room stood a woman dressed in dark red business attire, her long black hair was tied back in an eloquently platted bun. She was at least over forty but her olive skin looked far younger. She was stern, with slanted piercing eyes that burned a cold inner fire. She carried an aire of great importance, whilst at the Institute I only had the privilege to meet her on this one occasion.

"You must be Dante I've heard lots about you." Heard, read, seen. She should have known enough to not call me Dante. "My name is Roach. That's what my friends call me." My friends, they were now nothing but a distant memory. "Okay well I am your friend, so from now on your name shall be Roach. Officially and on paper, no problem. So now let me explain to you a few things about who we are and why you are here. Firstly, you killed those boys." I sat there unable to say a word, I couldn't play this off. It was check-mate. "Don't play coy with me, you know you did. You also made your father murder the man who was having an affair with your mother." I was speechless at how they could have known this as well and she was reading me like an open book. Completely at her mercy, I hung on every word she said with a sharp focus. "It is our job to be in the know when events like this occur, and it is in the interest of Isis that we control such unpredictable cases, like yourself when they...awaken. Now, we are not condemning these actions, in fact we are here to help you hone your talents. My apologies for us handling you the way we have done but you see we have to make sure that we are not at risk from your abilities. So we have re-programmed you neurologically, trained your mind, so that a repeat of similar events within this Institute is theoretically impossible. You already have four deaths on your hands and it was as easy for you as it is impressive to us. So tell me, how do feel about the deaths you have caused?" My voice came back to me and it was honest, there was no point denying anything. "I feel nothing. They deserved to die." "Good, then you are far more advanced than most children your age here. We have need for people like you, we live in a world that is not black and white, where what is perceived good or bad bare no meaning. Where the greater picture must be seen and realised at any cost. We must do what the Hidden Source requires without question or hesitation, for only they know what needs to be done to ensure our swift evolution, our ascension." "Who are the Hidden Source? I don't understand." "In time you will...but first know this, the Hidden Source provides all, controls all and you have no choice but to bend to their will...So now try to settle into life here, enjoy your training and work hard. I foresee a great future for you." None of this was making any sense, as far as I was concerned I was being punished for what I had done and could predict no great future. "A future in what?" I asked. "Psychological Operations. Your mind is our weapon." She said with a glint in her eye and an assured knowing. It then dawned on me, in an intuitive realisation, that she could see the future, as clear as the blue in the sky. Slices of episodic time revealed themselves to her, and in those days to come, I was stood there. This is why she took such an interest in me, she knew the man who I was to become. I gazed out of the window, I'd never seen clouds from above, never been so close to them. I always had held onto the illusion that if I got close enough I could walk on top of one but now with their misty impermanence revealed, I knew otherwise. I turned back to face her. "Who are you?" "You may call me Lady Hanja."

Memories after that meeting are vague, sketchy. My entire training feels like a dream, or nightmare to be more precise. What happened next, though my memory of it has been partially wiped, was that I was used as a test subject. I would be asked to perform simple tasks such as walking to the end of an empty room to pick up a red ball from the floor. These instructions would to me come from a disembodied, human yet synthetic sounding voice over an intercom. Though as I went to move after walking a few steps I would freeze involuntarily, or if I made it to the ball I simply could not pick it up. I would also be made to read out passages from a story book, something about an animal from the old world called a dragon, but then at some point in the reading I found that the words I was saying did not match those on the page, and somehow I was being manipulated into changing them, almost without my knowledge. There were more tests of which feelings of ritual humiliation and helplessness surround but when I dare to look back, the exact situations seem to have been tampered with, partially erased. Maybe not knowing is for the best. I do know however that the training did not end when I went to sleep, because when I did I suffered what felt like waking, lucid horrors. Non-physical attacks, manifesting as raw torment, confusion and paralysis. Limbo waking, unable to breathe, it felt as if life, my very being was being sucked out of me. I knew these were not simple dreams as I could feel very real, living presences. A room would watch whilst another inflicted this telemental torture with their authoritative coercion. As a result I became an insomniac but was quickly drugged back under into sleep. I think around this point I must have become entirely hollow until the induced nightmares no longer affected me and all my emotion had been drained. I lost all sense of time, and felt as if I had always been there, inside the Institute. As if my previous life had never even existed. They took me to the brink of sanity, until suddenly I was once again empowered. In a darkened room the same voice instructed me now, it told me to close my eyes and see the room. The room with the red ball and the girl.

Do not let her pick up the ball.

The distorted voice repeated a few times. I focused, and soon enough an image grew in my mind not of the imagination but of an actual place, close by, I could see her. I imagined getting closer, entering her, being her. When suddenly, a vivid lucidity, I could see through her eyes! I was in the room, and that's when I did it for the first time. Remote Telemental Manipulation, she couldn't even move. These RTM exercises continued in complexity until I had complete power over the subject. A puppet, I could control them as such but could also feel what they felt. One night whilst lying in bed, afraid to sleep, I trespassed once more into this same girl, whom I had now become completely obsessed with, and silently lurking I experienced for the first time what it feels like to be a girl playing with herself, and to then cry. It is this knowledge that she suffered the same as me that partly caused me to love her, it is this shared isolation that has kept me close to her ever since. Gwent, and to think I never said one word to her in person the whole time I was there, when they finally let me out into the common rooms and I saw her close up I was so shy I nearly puked. My Dream Experience Manipulation training was ongoing at this time, it is when in sleep that it is easiest to manipulate a subject, to change their dreams, beliefs, plans and very thoughts. So upon waking they will be pre-programmed to do your, or the Hidden Source's bidding. I do not know why they made me inflict DEM experiments painfully upon the sleeping children, maybe for research, maybe just to break our spirits, but doing so helped me get over what they had done to me. So the cycle continues and I've been tormenting the world ever since. The egotists, the arrogant and the cruel. Those who believed themselves to be the most powerful members of our society, I have broken their will, to be more subservient to mine. I mean to theirs, the Hidden’s, mine never came into it, because the Institute broke it. I keep forgetting that, even though I like being on the job, it wasn't my choice, none of it was.

It was in the food-hall that I first met Remus, I was eating lunch and had not warmed up to anyone yet, I could not trust any of the kids. Any one of them could have trained using me as a subject and because of that I was deeply suspicious and remained defensively aloof. He came across as a bit of a geek but was strangely friendly compared to the others. He asked if he could sit and I ignored him, he sat down anyway.

"Hi I’m Remus, you’re kinda new but don’t be shy." I just looked at him whilst I washed down some spaghetti with an orange drink through a straw. "We are all in this together, you’ve been through the worse of it now. So what’s your name? No, let me guess." He closed his eyes. "...Roach? Funny name." "Yeah well what kind of name is Remus? I’ve never heard that one." I replied sharply. "Yeah true, I guess it is kinda different but then we are kinda different, don’t ya think? Hey you wanna see something funny?" He pointed at an older boy twice his size walking with his food tray about to sit at a table. Remus then closed his eyes concentrating again and just before he sat down the chair magically slid out away from him, as if pulled by invisible hands. The boy crashed to the ground, his food tipping all down his front in a big orange spaghetti mess. He stood up quickly and turned to face us. "Remus was that you?! You little cunt!" He screamed, now stomping towards us as the room filled with the excited laughs and cries of the children. Suddenly the boy froze, Remus with his eyes still closed had him paralysed under his power and would not let him go. Soon enough, male orderlies burst in. A tall, pale man, escorted them, shaven of head and suited in black with onyx eyes to match. An Omega, he was obviously in charge. The man felt sinisterly familiar to me at the time even though I had not seen him before. The children silenced suddenly as he entered, bringing with him a cold energy of dread which had laid their playtime to waste. Sensing him Remus let go of his grasp and opened his eyes as the boy fell to the floor. He looked up to the man, fear in his face, frozen by his presence. "You know better than this Remus. Come now, time to sleep." "No please..." He pleaded but it was too late, he fell down instantly, stone cold unconscious in his chair before the orderlies dragged him away. The man then turned to the other children. "Play nice." He said, a voice like ice, before turning sharply and leaving the way he came. The room was now quiet, all except for the cries of a little girl in the corner. Only five years old, she was the youngest one there. The others knew better than her, they also knew better than Remus. You did not muck around. A week passed before I saw Remus again. In that time I had appreciated that he had only been trying to impress me and gain a new friend in that lonely place, so I decided to reciprocate when I saw him again. When he resurfaced in the common room he seemed distant but came back to life when he saw me. I asked him how it had been, he said he had been through worse. He was playing it down but I know they had been rough. I could feel it, a nasty cloud of static surrounded him. We played a board game, the dark grey gradually dispersing as he became happier. We eventually became best friends, ate together, played together, communicated remotely at night. I think we bonded mainly because somehow we knew, we were the most skilled there. We could see the other minds and we knew that they were not a match for ours. However even though we matched each other at the time telementally, I had witnessed his telekinetic power, and this was something I did not have.

Not many could excel in more than one Psi programme yet he was highly trained in three arts of mentalism. Gamma (tele- mentalism) Kappa (tele-kinesis) and Zeta (precognition) being the third.

A master of all three elements is known as an Omega.

This is why they were so hard on him, he was a potential threat and a highly valuable tool. His precognitive abilities meant he could sometimes say when things were going to happen a minute before they did. "Don't knock over your juice." Was the one which messed with me the most. This did not help me win any games against him either. Maybe I was partly jealous of his talent or maybe it was that he over stepped the mark quite often in ways that I could not easily deal with. "You like her don’t you." Remus once said accusingly. "Like who?" I replied as if I did not know what he was talking about. "You know who I mean." He was devious, and though he played it down he was more cruel than most. I know this first hand and realised it fully when he revealed to me the truth. He thought our friendship had gone passed the point of unconditional forgiveness, it had not. One time I had beaten him at chess, this was rare, his thoughts had been elsewhere and he had not been studying my moves or my mind. This really pissed him off though he played it down, however he still wanted to redress the balance of power. Out of nowhere he dropped the truth like a hammer. "It was me you know." "What was you?" I answered sensing something bad was coming, fearing the truth. "Your training, your dreams, the nightmares... You were a good subject, they matched us well." I looked at him and he was smiling, no remorse, he was gloating about it. He had seen right into the inner depths of my heart at its most broken and stabbed it, and he had liked it. For all his talents, he did not see what was coming next. The chess pieces flew as I jumped up, smashing my fist then elbow into his little face, his glasses fell to the floor as he joined them and I began laying in the kicks. There was a screaming crowd of excited kids. Remus having the spaghetti beaten out of him by his best friend and they loved it. This time no one came to break it up and as the bell rang for the next training session we all dispersed, leaving Remus alone, hunched up and sobbing on the floor. He could have taken revenge and got me that night in my sleep but he didn’t, he was beaten and maybe he’d realised that we were now even. Yet now I was once again alone, and as I lay in my bed staring blankly at the ceiling I thought I should cry but I didn’t, I couldn’t. Something had been taken from me, I was indifferent and cold hearted, they had won. I was dead inside. REMUS As I am sure that certain events have been erased from my mind it is important that I record the outcomes of contracts that I am assigned to. So I can look back and see if there's anything missing, or in fact a whole part of my life of which I have completely forgotten. I may try but I cannot keep records for shit. My pages litter the room and most of them do not even make any sense, as if they were written by someone else. If I cannot even remember that much, how can I ever hope to connect the dots?

Today I found some torn up scraps of paper. It took a while but I pieced them back together. Undated, it read:

Hidden Source orders are to go into Synaptech headquarters for a compulsory psyche evaluation today. They've never done this before so why start now? Synaptech pour heavy funding into the Institute which trained and experimented on me, they practically own it, though officially of course it does not exist. I don't trust them and in fact the thought of going in there fills me with an unexplainable fear. I don't know why. I suppose it's because behind their facade of slogan mantras and holographic hypnosis, I know what they really are. A clandestine and sinister society of child abductors whose ends always justify the means, no matter what the cost. Not everyone graduated like I did, some of us went insane, some of us died. They have agents that they use to extract and train potential cases, like the ones that came for me, the Omegas. And now I come to think about it, I too have become to look just like those hollow men. Pale of skin, black stone eyes, cold of heart.

Now I think about it.

I am them.

You cannot miss the Synaptech Tower, the great towering pyramid which at its peak a pulsing orb of energy casts its light down from the zenith of Isis for all to see. I have never once to my knowledge stepped inside this place. The soft inertia of the vertical ascent stirred him from his sleep. The seats tilted on their axis, remained upright as the glider climbed the last stretch home. His eyes still closed he could tell they were back as the vertical strip gradually curved round to the familiar sound of the rising shutters. The rushing sound of the sky's wind faded as they entered the shade of the bay before the shutters rolled back down. The lights flicked on welcoming his return. "Good girl." He thanked the glider whilst getting up. After what he had been through he found it hard to believe he had got back home in one piece. Hazily he woke as he entered the elevator and descended down. Then gradually sensing, something was wrong. Responding now to the alertness of his energy all the lights faded up to a bright white as the doors opened to his apartment. He felt a familiar presence, one he had known well but not seen in over a decade, someone from the Institute. He was on the roof, in the garden. Remus! What is he doing here? How did he get inside? Only his presence was revealed, all other intentions were mentally shielded. A skill he must have perfected over the years. Leaving the elevator Roach entered his study, opened the drawer in which his gun lay and clicked open the case. After exhaling a deep breath he lifted it, feeling the cold metal weight in his hand, before placing it down on the table. He knew Remus well enough to know that he could hide nothing from him. He was a more powerful student than Roach, a more powerful student than anyone at the Institute, the Source only knew what work he was doing now. The gun was to lift an already unfair advantage on his side of this potentially hostile visitation. On the payroll old friends can very quickly become new enemies. He was about to leave the study when he noticed a page from his typewriter had been removed and was now lying face up on the desk. Curiously, he picked it up.

There is a tidal wave building A critical mass rising I can feel it The wind of great change I must ride it if I am to survive This chaotic sea

Roach was suddenly taken aback, he knew he must have written this at some point but had no memory of having done so, its words spoke directly to him in his present moment with a great clarity. A voice from the past, predicting the future, he couldn't predict the future? What he had written in this past seemed like it had come from a shrouded part of his mind, it made no sense. Forget about it. Remus had been reading his journal, he felt his ghost, smirking, humoured by his madness, scanning the pages, anticipating his return. An inner heat began to boil as Roach's eyes narrowed, clenching his fist, crushing the page. This old friend had already shown enough disrespect and now Roach was ready to show the appropriate hospitality. He looked up at the ceiling angered and hot, breathing hard, trying to cool himself as he paced the paper scattered floor. He would need to face Remus calm and collected, and all of this was part of his ruse to manipulate him, to gain the upper hand. How he loved to use his tricks, Roach hated his tricks. "Fuck you Remus! You can wait!" he said out loud to the ceiling, to which he received no mental reply. Roach needed to centre himself, regain his calm. Since he had last left home his whole world had been torn apart beyond anything he could have imagined nor dreamt of in his worst nightmares, yet somehow none of this had shocked or surprised him. Maybe there had been an intuition inside, a knowing of this time to come, a day of reckoning and judgement, for all. Now it was reaching a crescendo, with Remus here to finish the job. To kill him? He could not say, but something was going down. Everyone's life and future was now in a big gamble with uncertain odds and no clear wins. Roach's cloudy thoughts of suicide had now been blown away in defiance and the time had come to face Remus one last time, to go down fighting. He figured only one of them would be coming out of this alive. He felt grimy and strung out, he was not ready for this. A change of clothes and a revitalising wash were in order, to clear his head, to get fresh. He was not going to die wearing these war-stained, second-hand rags, they already belonged to another dead guy. He stripped down and threw the dirty clothes to the floor of his bedroom as instantly a spherical domestic bot removed them dutifully, its blue glow levitating over as it sucked them up. A rounded compartment rose up from its centre and presented a folded white towel before quickly disappearing again back into the wall with a perfectly choreographed synchronisation. With the towel wrapped around his waist he then entered the bathroom. The cold tiles sent an invigorating chill through his body then warmed gently as he noticed a glass jar of Retium sat on the marble surface by the sink. The ruby capsule liquids luminous in the side lights enticed and tempted. He picked them up and looked upon them, pondering, resisting. Then refusing to give in to the long, drawn-out cravings of his addiction he spoke. "You've been in control of me for too long. Even though I now feel pain, at least I can feel something." He held it up, the crimson light glinting. "At least I know I am alive." And with this, contemplating the memory and loss of his brothers, he opened the jar and poured the contents down the toilet bowl. Without a moments thought or regret, despite the throbbing in his skull. It flushed automatically, spiralling down, the Retium was gone.

In the water-chamber, many high pressure streams of hot soapy water sprayed from all angles. He stood there, empty of mind, allowing all the recent events to be washed away, to be purified, to be at peace, ready for whatever was coming next, ready for death. He drifted out of time, meditative, calm, forgetting all as the water washed away the heavy, stagnant energy that had clung to him. The clouds of suffering he had brought back from below, now rinsed away, right down the plug hole. He felt cleansed, the lofty burdens he had carried lifted and he was clean, purified. Home sensed that he was done and the jets stopped, immediately to be replaced by many hot air streams. Pretty much dry, he stepped out and patted himself down with his towel then slipped into a coal-blue dressing gown. Into his bedroom he was greeted by a vibrant green levitating glass of indiscernible fruit and vegetable juices to which he responded. "What is this?" There was silence for a moment then a voice replied, not the cheerful, subservient tone of Lady Home but one of impatience and authority. "Just drink it." The voice commanded. Roach shrugged but obeyed anyway and took a sip, it tasted incredible and felt instantly amazing. No doubt it had all the nutrients his lacking body needed, he glugged it down quickly. Immediately ordering another with a plate of fresh sushi he suddenly realised how famished he was. It tasted so good, with the Retium leaving his system he could taste more, he could sense more. The food was hungrily gone almost as quick as it came and feeling fully revitalised he went and stood on the balcony in the cool sky-air sun, no clouds above, a clear cyan. He was taking his time, he was enjoying his home for perhaps the last time and he was not going to fall straight into to Remus' plan of clumsily storming straight out to meet him. He had almost forgotten he was up there waiting in the garden. Remus was sure to be getting impatient by now. Returning inside he entered his closet room, the sleek wooden panels slid back on his approach and he decided which suit to wear. Roach was entering his professional mind set and would meet Remus meaning business. He picked a subtly patterned jet black suit jacket with a silken violet inner lining and trousers to match. A slender tentacle-like arm then appeared from the closet in an automated attempt to help him dress but he waved it off. Choosing a shiny dark red shirt he put it on whilst looking through his ties as the tentacle began to button him up, this time he reluctantly let it whilst deciding against a tie and undid his top button, opting to wear the chunky silver chain necklace Gwent had surprisingly got him for his birthday. Donning the jacket, as the trouser belt self-adjusted and buckled, freshly polished black shoes where presented to him from an opening drawer and he slipped them on over new socks. Suited and complete he stood facing his full length mirror, barely resembling the same man from that morning. He was reborn and as his eyes darkened and became inked onyx, he spoke to the reflection. "Okay Remus, lets take care of business." Roach took his gun from the study and put it down the back of his belt before making his way down the corridor to the roof-top elevator. The curved glass of the cylindrical doors slid open as he approached, he entered and without instruction the elevator shut behind him before ascending gently upwards to the garden.

The doors opened to the dusk sunshine, the garden a lush green vibrance as synthetic birds sang to each other in the waning half-light. A misty humidity hung in the air remaining from the day’s heat. Remus was further down the path and following it Roach found him. He was sat on a wooden bench facing the setting sun, the bright orange disk filled the sky with its colour, painting a field of clouds beneath it. Remus began to speak. "This is a beautiful garden you have, you must be pleased with how things worked out in the end." He then stood and walked round to face him, now standing only a few meters away and with shock Roach saw that he was wearing exactly the same outfit as him. Right down to the minute details of the suit's raised patterning. He even wore the exact same silver necklace! This took Roach back, unnerved him, kicked him straight in the gut, this was no mere coincidence. How did he...? Only seconds out the door and Remus already had the upper hand, the psychological edge, the tricksters flare. Now completely bald and aged, Remus bore little resemblance to the boy he once knew, pale white of complexion, his eyes too, onyx stones. No more than five foot tall Roach thought that Remus could have shrunk in height though it must have been Roach whom had grown taller. Had they really been so young? "How long has it been? Seventeen, Eighteen years?" He asked calmly. Roach remained silent just returning a cold stare and a suspicious mind. Remus went on. "Has it really been so long that you greet a long lost brother with such caution, such hostility? With a weapon on your person." The cold weight dug noticeably into the small of his back. "My friends normally knock first Remus." He replied, though truthfully he never had visitors it was this invasion of his utmost privacy, his secret home, that made him all the more nervous. "Forgive me but due to the nature of my work I must remain completely invisible. I must come and go as necessary. Silent and in secret, a ghost." "Your work? So what is it they had you do in the end?" "You don’t really expect me to answer that do you Roach?" "Surveillance isn’t it? The most powerful one of all used to watch us all, it must be you. Let’s face it, you were the best. No one else could have done it." "Oh but Roach you do yourself little justice. Then of course you don't remember do you?" Roach did not know what he was talking about yet did not need to let on that he cared. Now was not the time to delve into lost or hidden memories. "You'd better not have come here just to play games with me Remus. What is this about?" "Of course, let's not waste any time. I come to you to deal with far more important matters." Roach tried to steady his breathing, preparing himself for the worst. This had to be the pinnacle, the formless claustrophobia and nameless dread now unfolding, the premonition of a gigantic wave, of change, the knowing that something big was coming yet uncertain as to what it was. Remus now had his full concentration. From this highest of heights, the clouds beneath were soon to clear and all would be revealed. "This paranoia I sense does not do you any favours. It only suggests guilt, uncertainty…treachery." Roach did not have to say anything he was being read like an open book. "I know what you’ve been thinking and I’ve merely come to put your mind at ease. The great Ascension is dawning and what we’ve worked so hard to achieve will soon be here. The immortal age, the end of suffering, the end of death, and it shall all be thanks to us. The chosen few, the saints of our modern age, bringers of peace unending for all. Evolving to new and boundless dimensions, free from death, free from suffering, free from our physical limitations, forever." "Stop!" What Remus was saying did not correlate with the feeling of ominous foreboding Roach had been experiencing recently, he figured it was more brainwashed bullshit. "Get to the point! What the fuck are you talking about!?" Remus continued on unfazed. "Up until now we have struggled to grasp the essence of human consciousness, the mind beyond its mere mechanical cognitions, what it is that separates us from mere machines. Back in the Institute there were many studies done on us and they didn’t end when we left. You have been implanted, as have I, just like all the Institute’s children, with genesis N.I. prototypes, and everything we see, hear, think and feel has been scanned and tracked for years." Roach was silent, in shock, a myriad of questions instantly filled his mind and Remus could hear them all. "Come on Roach, I think you know the answers already... We have the ability to see into the minds of all, and through us She learned the ways, thoughts and patterns of all. Don’t you ever wonder why you get such excruciating headaches?" "Remus stop with all the cryptic talk, lay it all out for me. Who do you mean by She ?" "Why, the ruler of the Mainframes of course. The Hidden Source, for She is a living force. She, the benevolent and great Virgin Mother. She, our guiding light and protector... By self-creating exponentially, increasing in complexity to nano-organic levels, binary has evolved, become analogue and alive, infinite in nature, and the energy of life has been observed, imitated, transferred and now successfully replicated, in Her. Soon we shall all join her fully and beyond our human forms we can live forever, as gods." "Beyond our human forms?" The question hung in the air, between the silence, he suspected the worst. "Yes, I hear you Roach, I know your mind, I know your fears. You fear the truth." "Do you? Okay, you tell me what I fear." Remus was silent for a moment returning an empty stare, those black eyes, reflecting, glinting in the setting sun as the imitation birds sung the last movement from their dusk symphony. What did Roach fear? What did Remus know? With the self-satisfied assurance that he had Roach exactly where he wanted him, hanging painfully on every word, he went on. "You fear the end of our days, the end of all lives, the end of Isis as we know her. Your conscience although deluded and lacking foresight, wants to protect the people. You want to redeem yourself from your perceived sins, to let go of the guilt you hold on to so strongly. I assure you brother, you are guilty of nothing. When Ascension comes, physically our bodies shall die yes, and every citizen blessed with an augmentation shall join us. I know... a mass-genocide you may think but really it shall be mass liberation, unity, peace." Roach could not quite believe what he was hearing, Remus delivered this news like a calm priest giving a warped sermon. He needed to know more despite his disbelief. "But why not wait until the augmented die naturally, why kill everyone all at once to achieve this?" "Physical existence as it is, is a pointless waste of resources and space. Resources She needs to grow, function and to continue evolving at the increasing rate She has been. She also cannot bare to see us suffer any longer and as I said what we feel, She feels. Our physical existence now brings her great pain, just like the pain you feel from the minds of others. The true unshielded suffering She feels in totality, through sense receptors, etheric transmissions and now the newly augmented, and it is growing by the hour. She now wants to end this suffering. soon, very soon. Of course we cannot let the general populace know of this plan, they would not understand. A wise mother always knows what is best for her children, even if they do not. Once we are unified, her wisdom shall be instantly shared and all shall understand and be freed. Freed from the pitiful futility of this physical life." Roach was starting to feel dizzy, he had to remain in control, he could not fall prey to Remus' spell. There had to be another way, a way to stop this. "So what if I wanted no part of this plan?" "And why would that be?" "Just tell me, how can we avoid this Ascension as you call it?" "There is no avoiding it, it is her ultimate will. Even if you could leave this island, get to the Mainland and be out of the range of the network’s control you would surely die very soon after. The virus still thrives on the Mainland, or haven’t you heard? And now a new disease is being spread here on the island which will force all to transcend the physical pain of the sickness to joy. Whether they wanted to evolve originally or not. They now have no choice and only we can save them. Have you noticed the sickness going round recently? The immunity of the population is at an all time low constantly weakened by new medicines to fight new strains but this time there shall be no cure, save one, the cure of all ills. The pattern continues, just as before a virus shall push all of us in the right direction, to a new and better place, and those who do not move with the tide, those who chose not to evolve, shall die. It is natural selection. The way of all things. I understand your fear brother and also your desire to escape this inevitability but once you get a taste of what She has to offer you will soon change your mind. I know of this friend of yours, he who has clouded your vision, Zebulin. To think he almost convinced you to join his suicidal conquest of the Mainland. Only we can reach immortality, and She did not choose him. Even if you could follow his people to their entirely mythical lands, you would soon tire of this peace you assume you will find. I know you Roach, you thrive on chaos, and soon your own cynicism would get you thinking. What if Remus was right? And now your only chance of liberation would be lost forever, left only with the broken promises and dreams of archaic religious delusions." Remus let a punctuating silence hang in the air between them. Roach could feel his mind had been weakened and was becoming hypnotised, yet it was not just his words that had got a grip on him, it was Remus himself. His essence had grown into something else, something more than the boy he used to know, behind Remus an invisible shadow lurked, a gigantic presence, an empty void, the hidden. Yet now close to Remus, he felt closer to the Source's epi-centre than ever before and the sheer power made his stomach churn. Tense and fearful, like a magnet pulling and pushing in equal opposite directions, surrounding all, thick with static electricity. Roach felt as if his whole world, his very being were about to implode. Taking a deep breath, and then another, his nausea was calmed slightly and he was finally able to speak. "I’m glad you’ve helped me to see things clearly Remus… You have completely lost your mind! Once the people are dead their minds will be too. We have become obsolete. Once this thing is done all that’s left will be the Mainframes and the billions of bodies left to fuel them as it continues to kill us off. You cannot contain the human soul, it is a trick and you are being lied to. It is using you! Can't you see? This will be our extinction!" To Roach’s own surprise he had pulled the gun, clicked off the safety and was pointing it shakily at Remus who still remained strangely calm. "And what do you intend to do with that? You cannot kill me just as I cannot kill you. The Institute took care of that, long ago." Roach ignored the bluff and cocked it back, loading the chamber in a slick metallic action, Remus went on. "You cannot do it, and even if you could, it would not change a thing. Everything is set in motion, the chain reaction of cause and effect. To bring great creation you must have great destruction, nothing can stop the laws of nature, nothing can stop the evolution! Now, lower your weapon... You are lost child brother, so lost. Come back to your senses. Join us." In the strange gravity surrounding Remus the gun felt far heavier than before and seemed to be increasing in weight. The tense pressure in the air was reaching a bursting point as Roach’s very bones felt as if they were going break inside his body, and hearing a crack above him he looked up quickly to the glass. Fracturing lines climbed the walls and ceiling of the dome, as the birds' songs became twisted and piercing. Looking back to Remus he had closed his eyes, his face unsettling and blank. Then loud and intrusive in his mind, a lucid, claustrophobic voice entered. If you won’t give yourself to us willingly, we shall just have to... change your mind. He knew well what that meant, the cracks in the glass reminded him of the fresh synaptic pathways they had burned into his brain as a child and he could now feel Remus taking hold as electric lightning forks danced and snapped around the dome. The birds fell from the trees, now deactivated and lifeless. This macrocosmic storm would change him forever, he had to resist or he would become one of the brainwashed, the blissfully soulless. With quick thinking he activated his AT bringing a remote-view holographic of his glider bay up. He picked his chopper and with a flicking motion of the hand sent it flying out into the sky and down the vert-strip. Struggling in this dense gravity to control his gun he managed to aim it at the glass dome wall to his left and double- tapped the trigger. It recoiled with hard kicks and deafening shots. Two large holes smashed through the glass and taking the only option left he ran, then dived.

Crashing out and into the icy wind of the sky he fell, dropping fast alongside the broken shards of glass. Accelerating swiftly he was soon rapidly passing ten floors per-second, his way was obscured by cloud and he could not see his glider. He had to land on it or he was dead for sure. Then suddenly through the wet fog he saw it. Gaining on the glider with only a split-second to react, he grabbed at the steering axis with a frantic and tight grip. He connected as it spiralled out of control, bouncing hard off the vertical strip and spinning dangerously out into the sky as he and his glider continued to fall as one. Knowing that there must have been only moments left before he would hit the curve into the horizontal strip he struggled to gain control. Managing to swing his leg round he gained his position in the saddle and gripped the axis tight with both hands. In the icy wet chill of the drop with a familiar swiftness he reengaged the magnetic power, sharply spinning him back round, locking down hard to the strip in a sickening motion. The lethal ground of the horizontal strip was already right before him, coming in too fast. Pushing his front mag-plates up into their maximum power he realised it was too late and as the glider scraped down against the metal strip, a singular thought filled him.

I'm dead! DOWNFALL As our world grows smaller and forever more complex in the name of advancement

we have forsaken the importance of peace for the fleeting and the intense.

Sensual, hedonistic decadence is all we crave,

And we crave like sickness,

For it is an illness of the mind,

A plague that fuels the fires... All will burn. Leaving unconsciousness he came around and found himself on the empty mag- strip, wiped out, strip wrecked. His glider was gone, fallen off the edge and into a bitter oblivion. An artificial voice, urgent and alarming was calling to him. You have been in a traffic accident. Do not move. A medical team has been dispatched to assist you. You have been in a traffic accident... It repeated annoyingly on a loop. "Thanks for the update." He replied sarcastically, he had to get out of there before they came for him, he had no glider, nowhere to go, this was it, he was fucked. He had a brief and vivid flashback of the ambulance which had taken him to the Institute for the first time, they were coming to take him back home, he had to get out of there. Suddenly a cheery tune sung from his surprisingly undamaged AT. He answered. "Remus you weasel fuck, come down here so we can finish this with our fists!" He sat up causing him great agony and he let out an involuntary cry of pain. A familiar voice answered, though it was not the one he had expected. "Roach, are you okay?" It was her. "Gwent! Where are you!?" He could not quite believe it. "Yes Roach its me, I'm at home where do you think I'd be at a time like this?" "I...I've been in a crash...You're at home?" "It's okay Roach I have your coordinates and my glider is already on the way to pick you up. Just sit tight." "Okay just tell it to hurry up and get here before the medical team do. I don't need to be kidnapped. I'm pretty sure I can walk, I just feel like I've been smacked by a brick wall." He put a palm to his head as blood trickled down his hand and wrist. "No problem, it'll be there soon." The line went dead, Gwent was as cold and compassionate as ever. At home? He guessed even after the bombing which nearly claimed both their lives she had figured it was as safe as anywhere else, or at least the only place left to go, like he had. Though surely as Remus had come for him, he would be heading to her place too soon enough. He could not think, his head was pounding, the woozy concussion dazed him. Gradually he then became aware of another voice beaming in from a large projection above him, from all the projections of the myriad images lining the strips, a state of emergency broadcast. All advertising had stopped and had been replaced with this important message. A strong image of the elected leader, Chairman Lennex addressed the nation of Isis with a speech from his podium.

"...we realise Retium is scarce and that those without supplies may already be suffering from withdrawals. War is upon us. The enemies of our free and progressive way of life will be shown no mercy. We shall draw them out like poison from our wounds and rise again stronger as one, united as one people. It is unfortunate that such troubles fall on what should be a time of great liberation, from the corruption well known within our previous government, though often it is the way, as the brightest light casts the darkest shadow. So to the people of the subterranea, I reach out to you as a friend. To those jobless, angry at a system that they feel has neglected them, I seek to make things right. We have a place for you, we have new jobs and new homes. To the parents of children, we do not want your families to live as outcasts any longer and are offering you a chance at a new life and the finest education systems. To those in sickness, we have free medical facilities and treatments to help you regain your health. To those wishing to escape the desolation, violence, pain and sickness, I reach out my hand to you. The barrier wall of the western district has now been breached. Broken down by terrorists in their mindless destruction, the destruction which now plagues your streets. The insurgents are everywhere, only we can ensure your safety. You would not be fleeing in fear however but stepping up and into a new and better way of life. Refugee stations have been set up at sky-rail terminals with well trained and armed officers ready to safely take you through the now operational Mid-Level security gates. After which you will be taken to clinics to receive your neural processing. I understand if you have cautionary concerns about this procedure, as did I at first, however please understand that this is a necessary security measure for all our sakes, to quell what is obviously man's irremovable desire for wanton destruction. To inhibit what seems to be our inescapably violent and primal natures we must leave our animalistic tendencies behind and evolve as one in a truly enlightened society. Then and only then can we be sure that the society in which we live will be one of peace. As we evolve as a united species to our greatest ever height."

Roach had zoned out over the political dogma, his eyes half closed, about to slip back under, when suddenly the sleek dark curves of a precision controlled glider pulled up beside him. Had he passed out again? Surely it was too quick to be here already? The side door slid back and he rolled his beaten body inside and up onto the leather back seat with a groan as the door closed behind him. As it gently pulled away he saw another vehicle on the strip approaching. The medical team had arrived and they had just missed him by seconds. He released a nervous sigh of relief as he looked out across at the strangely empty strips of the sky, the stillness of the peaks, the empty sky-gardens. The news reports had the whole city in hiding and Lennex's image was imposingly everywhere. The world had changed, things could never go back to the way they had been and soon all would die. All would die. This remembrance, the shocking truth which Remus had revealed to him had been clouded in the carnage of his shell-shocked disorientation. He sat up, now awakened, his resolve strong, the pain could wait, right now he had to choose. Freedom or death. They had to escape Isis.

Night had fallen by the time the glider pulled into Gwent's drive. The sky was cloudless and exiting the vehicle Roach took a moment to appreciate the clarity of the numberless shining stars, the cool icy air, thinking maybe it could be the last time he would ever get to see the sky this way. A faint voice then called to him, not from outside but from within, a whisper, Gwent was calling to him in her mind. She never did this. Come inside, the door is open. He passed an exquisite statue of a winged angel surrounded by a flowing pool at the centre of her garden and inquisitively opened the arched white, wooden door revealing the strange darkness inside. All the lights were off, this was not like her at all. The whisper returned. Climb the stairs. I am waiting. He did as she said and took cautious aching steps up the wide curve of the staircase, whilst tempted and intrigued by her game. Her tone was seductive, commanding, alluring, she had him under her spell and he could sense it more as he climbed, her scent, the heavy presence of her spirit unfolding. He reached the dim landing and was intuitively guided with an inner knowing to the double doors of her bedroom, a room he had never before entered. The whisper spoke once more playfully. I am waiting for you. Gripping the golden handle he entered as the hairs rose on the back of his neck and tingles danced up his spine. Candles adorned each corner as the large shadows of a dark wooden, four-post bed flickered and danced in all directions. She was nowhere to be seen when suddenly he felt her softly from behind. The shapely curves of her body pressed against his back as her hands clasped gently over his eyes. He turned around to be greeted by her smile, her perfect features, a divine beauty in the soft half-light. Her hair was long, soft and flowed down to her bare shoulders from which hung a silken violet night dress. She pulled him in closer and whispered. "We have little time, I want you now, before it's too late." She came up close to his lips and licked them with the tip of her tongue. He couldn't quite believe it, it was sudden, it was real, it was all he'd ever wanted yet he had not foreseen it happening like this. Surprised by her sudden embrace he made an effort to relax as he kissed her back, her lips soft and sweet as she pulled him in closer to her warmth and leant back against the wall. Her sensuality made him giddy and as he let her push his hand down to her warm, naked wetness he became rock hard, bulging achingly as she began to rub his crotch. They simultaneously groaned in a release of long awaited, repressed pleasure. He was hypnotised by her intoxicating aura. If the end of the world was coming, perhaps this was the best way to go. They moved perfectly as one as they held and caressed each other passionately, she now moving to unbuckle his belt as he stroked back her hair, looking deep into the abyss of her entrancing eyes. Then suddenly a flash of cyan light caught his sight, a vivid azure florescence in the dark. At her temple, an implant, she had been tapped! Instinctively, without thought, he grabbed the nearest thing he could, a heavy silver candlestick and brought it crashing down upon her skull. The flame extinguished as the cranial light went out and she fell down limp. The spell was broken.

There she lay, sprawled and unconscious upon the thick white carpet, long brunette hair covering her bloodied face. Roach remained stood over her, candlestick in his hand, stunned by his actions. He had fallen foolishly and weakly for her, a siren temptress under the Hidden's possession, and he may have now killed Gwent. Terror and self-loathing gripped him as he stood motionlessly and in shock over the body. A moment of painful silence and suspense passed until gradually there was a sound, a groan of pain, movement as Gwent moved slightly then rolled over. She looked up to see him standing above her, the candlestick still in his hand, silver and glinting. "Roach? What the fuck!?" She groaned. He dropped it instantly and knelt down close to her. "Gwent concentrate. What's the last thing you remember?" Disorientated and confused she cast her mind back and spoke wearily. "The last thing I remember?....We were at your friend's house, I went to sleep and at some point I woke up and came back here and slept some more. I must have been exhausted after those emerald things we took. What are you doing here? What's happened? My head is killing me!" She dizzily got up to look in the mirror of her antique make up table, sitting down before it in the half-light she saw a wet redness which trickled down her left check from the deep open gash in her head. "You did more than that Gwent. At some point you were tapped, you received an NI5 augmentation." Then with some quick thinking, he swiftly concocted a story that was simpler than the truth, one that would make more sense in the here and now. "I came here to break it." "Break it? You did this to me!?" "Let me explain. I did it to myself first." He lied, coming in closer to the mirror she could see the blood from his own head, the injury from his glider accident. "They got to me too, I was implanted as well but I was able to resist, once I realised the truth. So I did this to myself and then I came straight here to free you." There was no time for the full story, no time for the truth, the truth could wait. Gwent was still angry but curious, he went on. "What else do you remember? Think, did you have any dreams?" "No, no dreams." She looked up, candle lit shapes danced gracefully upon the ceiling. "All I know is that sometimes when I sleep it is dreamless, like an empty black sea." She closed her eyes. "Though this time it was bright, the purest light, like a sun filled sky." Gwent had not fully come back down to earth, she was still dreamy, he needed her attention, he needed her back in the game. "Gwent I need you to listen carefully to what I have to say and trust that every word of it is true." Recognising the urgency of his tone she then gave him her complete attention, he went on. "The Hidden Source is not a human organisation as we once thought. It exists as an omnipresent, living and intelligent entity. It controls everything and if we do not get off this island and out of its grip we will die." She gave him a strange and suspicious sideways look. "That's ridiculous." she half laughed. "Ridiculous, incredible but look into my eyes Gwent. True." She looked at him, the mass of untold horrors revealed to him since their last meeting where etched into his face, his eyes carried a great sincerity, an unspoken grief and an honest vulnerability. She realised in the time which had now disappeared to her he must have experienced enough to be sure of this revelation, she knew him well enough to see the honesty in his eyes. She put a stop to her cynicism, opened up and listened carefully to what he had to say. "All implanted with an NI are now connected directly to the Source, it seems that humans have been calculated by it as a wasteful resource and it is planning to shut us down permanently in a process that Remus calls the Ascension." "Remus!? You've seen that creep? Is he behind this?" "Yeah I've seen him. He believes that the Hidden Source wants to merge with us as part of an evolutionary shift or some bullshit. Remus is just a puppet of the Hidden. We all were but now we have a choice. Back in the Institute we were implanted with a deep rooted prototype NI. Through it the Source has seen, experienced and learned through our own eyes. Nothing is secret, all is seen and if we stay within its range when this so called Ascension comes, we will die." Gwent wore a look of worry upon her face which he had never seen before. She appeared fragile to him for the first time ever. "There must be a way to stop this. Something we can do." With the Source no longer an ally to them she appeared weak and afraid. Frailty was not a feeling she was used to nor welcomed, she had to remain strong. She examined the possibilities, rapid ideas flashed by, ways to stop the inevitable, they had to find one that could work. "What about the Synaptech central core? The Isis processing centre through which all data communications pass. That must be its home, the central nervous system of the Hidden Source. If it lives anywhere that has to be the place. They have the reactor, we have seen it. We can get in there and shut it down!" She was sure this would work however her excitement at this hopeful plan of salvation was quickly crushed. Upon this exclamation the bedroom door slammed with such a sudden force that all the candles where blown out and the room was plunged into utter darkness. She jumped out of her seat and held Roach tight, terrified and quick of breath as suddenly three cone shaped maintenance bots appeared from openings in the walls, their blue lights spinning. He had seen this ghost house routine before and was no longer impressed. "What are you vacuum cleaners going to do? Suck us to death?" He said, a cocky defiance in his voice, this however provoked sharp saw blades to appear swiftly from their insides, buzzing and glinting in the darkness. Panicked like a frightened animal Gwent instantly made blindly for the door to escape but with a shock the handle sharply burned her hand with an alarmingly heat. She let out a screech of pain and then clasping her sore hand acknowledged the reality and power of this ghost-like presence. "Stop it! Please let us go!" She screamed, begging to the emptiness, pleading with the omnipresent over-soul, now fully aware of the hopelessness of the situation, the undeniable, futile reality of this technological sentience and its dominion. Roach could not see her tears in the dark but he could feel them vividly, the wet drops upon her cheeks, he had not felt this kind of visceral empathy with her since she was a child. A few fearful seconds passed when surely the bots slowly returned to the walls disappearing from sight as the bedroom lights faded up to a soft warm light, her plea had been accepted. The Hidden Source could not be beaten for It was the world in which they lived, the people, businesses and adverts, the sky-rails, news-streams and laws. Interconnected, everywhere yet nowhere, the god of Six, and upon this island of steel, nothing was beyond its reach, nothing was beyond its judgement. She slumped down to her bed defeated as Roach sat calmly beside her. She lay and rested her head in his lap, staring emptily at the wall. Not since the Institute had she felt so powerless, lost and afraid. A brief moment of silence passed until out of nowhere their ATs simultaneously jingled into life, they had mail. It opened and displayed itself automatically, projecting glowing green characters into the space before them. TERMINATION OF CONTRACT ------

To our most esteemed and loyal agents.

We are most grateful for the hard work you have done for our organisation throughout the years. However it is with great regret that we must inform you that your services are no longer required. We acknowledge your right to the freedom of choice concerning the important changes currently underway in our society, so regardless you shall have our utmost assistance. It is the least we can do in gratification for your services. NI clinics are currently open around the clock and we are willing to take you to one as soon as you decide to go through with the augmentation process. However if you wish to try and leave the city: ISIS - Subordinate Mainframe 6 - we shall endeavour to help you in any way you deem fit.

We thank you once again for your work, without which project: Ascension, would not even exist. We wish you all the best in the future, whatever path you may choose.

THE HIDDEN SOURCE Upon reading this with a confused look upon their faces, their mouths open, they sat there for a moment stunned. The seeming intelligence of the Source made no sense in its motives, whatever mind it once had, it had lost it completely. It had gone haywire, out of control. Was there even any method in its madness? Gwent abruptly broke the confused silence. "We're fucking fired?!" "It would appear so." Roach said coldly. "Get dressed. We're leaving." EXODUS Dreams and visions are not one and the same

Some are real, yet some are not

Real to some, yet not to others

Who can say where reality hides its truth?

Though last night I caught a vivid glimpse

A great winged, white, gliding creature Flying clear in the sky

Whilst I lay paralysed on the ground Amidst smoke and death

Its flight filled me with hope.

When I'm awake these things never make any sense, but at the time, it feels like everything fits right into place. Soon they where riding in the vast city night sky, gliding fast on an empty mag strip straight. "I've never seen the peaks so empty, it's eerie. Where is everybody?" Gwent asked looking to the empty park gardens, the swaying trees devoid of company before the well-lit white stone pillars, the grand, ostentatious house of the Isis High Council. Roach was in the driving seat riding manual. "They are either in hiding or under curfew, afraid that bombs are about to go off at any moment, or they have been tapped and are floating away in some other world...Utopia junkies." He replied bitterly, he went on. "If people had only stopped to take a look around, forgot about this mindless escapism, looked at the big picture, maybe we could have stopped all of this a long time ago." Some figures in the shadow of the trees came into sight. Patrolling council guards, they stopped to look up at their glider as it flew by. "So how long do you think we have left until Ascension kicks into gear?" "I don't know but by judging how rapidly everything has changed I'd guess we don't have long, maybe a few hours." An NI5 promotional info-feed suddenly infiltrated their cockpit radio intrusively, "...when to go to sleep, and wake up, like clockwork. Filter out pain and discomfort. Dream like reality. NI5." Roach flicked it off sharply. "A few hours!? How can you be sure it will be so soon?" She had nearly choked on a Retium whilst she washed it down with filtered water from a bottle. "I'm not, it’s just a hunch but you know me, I'm normally right about these things. The Hidden Source is a mind just like any other, I'm becoming more aware of its subtle, guiding force. Maybe it was leading me all along, spurring my intuitions. If I trust what it said about wanting to help us I should trust its whisper, I should trust my inner voice." Gwent was not so sure, the Hidden Source had been risking their lives enough already. "Trust it!? How can we know it's not just using us in someway like before?" She was looking in her backpack for a tranquilliser, a hexagonal blue. "Its not, not anymore, I can feel it. If it really wanted us to be like everyone else we wouldn't have had a choice in the matter, we wouldn't have been able to even leave our homes. It may have tried or tested us but now it seems to respect our choice at freedom. After all we have done. It's giving us a chance, out of respect." "Respect? That doesn't sound like a machine-like quality." Still searching for that strip of pills, something, anything to take the edge off. She had not seen half of what Roach had and what she had seen was now lost like a forgotten dream. How she wished she could have gone back to sleep. "The Hidden Source is not a machine Gwent. It is a living entity. I know that now. A naturally born, electrical spirit that seeks to grow and evolve just like us, except now it can live without us. We are no longer an assistance to its survival, in fact we are more of a burden and a hindrance, that's why it wants us out of the picture. If there's one thing mankind fails at most, it's sustained symbiosis with our environment. We just take until there's nothing left. I guess we've taken all it wants to give." She found a couple of the blue hexagons and took one whilst silently cursing herself for not packing more drugs, she went back to the subject. "You sound like you almost approve of this Ascension massacre" "I don't approve of what is happening. I just understand it." "So now what? How do you plan to get us off this sinking ship?" He turned and looked at her, she knew as well as he did. "You already know the plan Gwent, I've heard you. It was your thinking of it that gave me the idea in the first place." She looked at him slightly annoyed but knew he must have heard her loud desperate plans of escape quite easily. "Come on. You just don't want to suggest it because you think you'll be contradicting yourself. The world has turned itself on its head and now..." There was a silence, then she came out and said it, finding it hard to believe it was their only option left. "Okay...okay. We go back to the temple. We know they were planning an evacuation, maybe they can help us...This all seems so stupid, it was just the other day I believed them to be a suicide cult." "And now?" "And now we have no choice, so it's the only option left to us. Maybe the Source is just fucking with us...we turned our back on it and now it wants to send us out into the infected wasteland as some sort of sick joke." Gwent was shaking her head utterly confused and disillusioned, Roach was the only thing left in her life that she could really trust. A rock in this increasingly confusing sea of chaos, the only baseline of normality left. "I don't know, what do you think?" She asked needing the reassurance that the pills just weren't giving her. He paused for a second, their whole life they had been told that on the mainland nothing awaited them but death and disease. However If Rico's death and what he stood for was to be honoured in any way, if they had any chance left at salvation, he had to believe otherwise. "Like you said, we have no choice." They entered a lane that started to descend in a massively wide spiral that intertwined through great skyward structures and down into a vast shopping mall. The pre-recorded loop of Lennex's state of emergency speech continued to play in place of where all the adverts should have been. Looking down through the glass walls of the shopping city they could see a large crowd had formed in the open space between the closed stores, plants, escalators and glass elevators. Thousands of refugees, all lined up orderly in single-file lines waited to be augmented in white mobile clinics. Synaptech technicians, doctors and assistants ushered them through whilst armoured soldiers watched on from the sides and elevated vantage points. Scoped rifle sights surveying the masses through green cross-hairs. "Look at all these people, these sub-levellers sure had a quick change of heart. Suddenly top-side isn't such a bad place huh? Fucking hypocrites." She had a point, when the chips are down, people always come running to the system for protection. Roach had a different understanding however. "Only hell on earth and heaven above was capable of moving these masses here, the Hidden knows this well enough." He lit one of her menthol cigarettes, the smoke to calm him, he took a deep drag and exhaled. "I'm not going to lie to you Gwent, its war down there, pure chaos. You've been out of it you don't know what these people have been through. Ghost has broken its borders and Isis riot squads are beating down anything that moves, bombs are shaking the earth in which they live. People are dying from a new super-strain of virus and we can only imagine how bad things have got by now. They have no choice. This mass-manipulated, strategic deception has got us pushed around like cattle. Everything is going according to plan. It's check-mate in a game we didn't even know we were playing." "So how are we going to get to where we need to go?" Gwent sounded genuinely worried, realising more and more the futility of their situation. The tranq was not going to work. "The odds are stacked against us for sure and to be honest we probably won’t make it." He was not going to sugar-coat the reality of their situation for her, she would not have swallowed it anyway. He went on. "Do you want me to pull in here? We can get in line like everyone else if you like." She didn't find his sarcasm amusing. "Did you ever see me wait in line for anything? If we're going to die I'm not going to queue up for it!" She looked down to the waiting crowd. She was not going to go out like them. "If fire is our destiny, then so be it!" On this Roach slipped it into auto-glide, he turned and looked at her. Over-head lights rapidly flicked by as they descended further round the gradual curve. Fire is our destiny the words repeating in his mind. She, then noticing him, returned his gaze and held it. The strength of her spirit was revealed in the deep waters of her dark eyes. It was the fire that had kept him going all these years. "You know I love you right?" He almost could not believe the words were leaving his mouth but they were nearly out of time, the end was coming. Yet to his surprise she then took his hand softly and looked into him with a gentleness and grace that was rare but genuine, the real Gwent was revealed, the girl inside. "I've always known." And though she did not say it out loud, this pure feeling radiated from her and into his open heart. She knew he felt her warmth for she felt the same, she had always felt the same. Fire is our destiny. They descended deeper, down from the decadence once known above and now towards a fresh unknown danger, Ground Central, a chaos they could not predict. The strip now submerged in darkness travelled steadily, steeply down. "So what type of terrain are we now dealing with? Fill me in on the blanks." She asked. "Insurgents will be using stealth and ambushes from above. It’s the only tactic that could work for them. We'll be a moving target out in the open so we have to ditch the glider." "Well I don't think we could use it anyway." Gwent mentioned as they neared closer to the light at the end of the tunnel. "Roach you better slow down." He was not listening, his mind was trying to reach out, trying to see what was outside waiting and where it would be hiding. "Roach!" Gwent screamed as they excited the tunnel. Out into the open the glider smashed and scraped down onto the defunct mag-strip becoming a spinning mass of metallic flying sparks. He pushed himself back into his seat against the axis, whilst she grabbed his shoulder and pushed hard against the roof to steady themselves in this force of sickening motion. Eventually as it slowed its dizzying ride and came to a grinding halt she angrily finished her sentence. "Because in a time of crisis like this it is standard procedure to shut down all mag-strips to ensure the primary dominance of Isis Security vehicles!" Roach had crashed enough gliders for one day and was shaking his head. "Anything else you would like to mention from the lecture on code-red emergencies? I must have missed it." Suddenly two bolts of hot lead hammered down and into the glider's bonnet from above. "Stay in cover." She added quietly, fearfully frozen to the spot. "I take it your roof is bullet proof?" Roach asked. "Depends on what they're packing. Bring them down!"

Swift and into the flip-mode he was up three floors in an open room that had its front wall blasted out. Three wild looking, tribal warriors were watching, waiting for the pair to make their move and flee out into the open. Downtown central had now become just like Ghost City. One with binoculars then spoke in a language that sounded foreign as the sniper poised to take another shot. With adrenaline pumping, the lethal sharp edge of the battlefield they had now entered had powerfully awoken his abilities. A puppet-master, he merged swiftly becoming one with the largest of the three. A brainless almost subhuman breed, and with its animal strength he pulled the other two soldiers into hard choke-holds then dived up and over the steep edge, taking them all with him.

The bodies plummeted, falling down heavily around them, one smacking violently against the glider's side on impact. Gwent shrieked and recoiled away from her window instantly, the glass now cracked and smattered blood-red. "Shit, people falling from the sky! It’s a great start Roach!" She said breathing heavily trying to regain her calm. He was coming back around. "Hey wake up! Is it clear?" She asked, he nodded. "Okay we make a break for the sides, use cover, get into the alley-ways, keep our angles tight and get the fuck off this road!" She looked forward, a convey of armoured Isis Security vehicles approached, six-wheeled, thick steel plated, weaponised war machines, ready to make and ride big piles of rubble. "Shit! Now what?" "Stay cool, this is our welcoming party." He said surely. "Wait Roach!" Gwent remained edgy in her seat whilst he got out cautiously, this was the moment of truth, there was no way they could fight or escape this so now was the time to see if the Hidden really was going to keep its side of the deal. He took a deep breath as the earth shaking beasts rolled in closer, clouds of the buildings now laid to dust billowed up around them. The rumbling convoy pulled up close and the three armoured vehicles came to a halt in perfect synchronisation. Their large steel frames towered over them, shielding them from the emergency floodlights which now starkly lit up the city ruins. Gwent looked up and around, shocked by the utter destruction, smashed glass, crumbled walls and fires burning down the shops she had been to only less than a week ago. Buildings were burning engulfed in flame and smoke as the heavy scent of sulphur was thick in the air. The once colourful circus of the sales machine was now an inferno of ruin. This swift hurricane of carnage had long been planned and was now being perfectly executed by the Isis Security forces, blasting anything that moved as Ghost ambush squads slinked between buildings, cannily avoiding their explosions and bullets. Tanks had taken out entire floors just to get lone snipers whose bullets had barely made a dent in their tank's armour. It seemed that complete devastation was priority number one and attacking the vastly inferior enemy was just a convenient excuse to raise all hell. All with any sense had evacuated, yet were now lining up to be neurally tapped like lambs to the slaughter. An Isis Security soldier, like the ones Roach had met before, jumped down from the frame of the leading vehicle. Agile in his armoured urban camouflage he approached him with a graceful almost inhuman movement then stopped to give a poised salute. With this Gwent exited the glider, now assured of their loyalty. The thick steel plate door of the middle vehicle gave a hydraulic hiss, the soldier remaining bolt upright to attention as it lowered down to form the steps up and into the tank.

Down a ladder and into the large interior of the vehicle, they were greeted by a dazzling holographic montage of colours and shapes which covered the inner walls. The outside world was projected on all sides and above giving them a complete view and awareness of their surroundings. A centrally projected, multidimensional sonar also gave thermal readouts in the shape of a blue sphere, the surrounding buildings were vectored with green lines as the fires that burned, and the people within glowed as red heat signals, highlighting the potential dangers. This area had however been cleared, or more precisely, blown to shit. No hostiles remained alive and the heat they gave off would soon turn cold. "Wow you guys really did a good demolition job on one of my favourite parts of town, nice work!" Gwent took her place angrily in one of the two central commanding officers' chairs and pulled down a secure bracket over her shoulders that would keep her safely and firmly in place. Roach looked around admiring the un-before seen technology before joining her. Four soldiers sat around them all faced outwards surveying their own holographic readouts and the projected world outside whilst manning their controls. The leading one spoke up. "Awaiting orders sir!" Roach went to speak but Gwent beat him to the punch. "We are heading to zone A, twenty, for immediate evac. This is our main- priority. Do not engage any potential threats unless we give the order, move fast, be slick, oh and if you fuck with us, we kill you. Clear?" "Sir!" They all replied in unison. "So what are you waiting for? C'mon lets roll!" The convoy suddenly slammed forward at a great speed pushing the pair back hard into their seats.

Onwards they rode, heading North in the direction from which the convoy had arrived. Civilian bodies were strewn here and there amongst the metallic and concrete debris which had fallen from the sky, smashed up dead gliders lay dotted around as the convoy rolled over them, crushing them down with crunching ease. They passed the smouldering burnt corpses of a mother holding her daughter as they entered into the dense under-shadow of a toppled building. "Was this part of your prediction for our great future?" He asked, looking over at Gwent as she quickly wiped a tear from her eye not wanting it to been seen. A moment of silence passed until she replied. "We've all been played like fools... you know we had a big hand to play in all of this, we...how where we to know?" Her voice was frail and cracked as she turned and looked the other way, she wanted to cry, to weep a bitter sorrow, but she could not, not now. She had to remain strong, she had to try to detach herself as she had done before but now she could no longer justify herself. The guilt weighed down upon her, heavily sinking deep within her chest. Back and into the light, in the distance a large metallic object could be seen glinting, blocking the road. Roach zoomed in, it was a sky-train. Even the sky rails had been destroyed in the fighting and had come crashing down to the ground. "Halt!" He ordered, the convoy stopped abruptly, skidding on the road as the safety brackets gripped hard at their shoulders. "Tell them to slow down first, these guys don't take hints. They follow direct orders!" Gwent stressed. "I know, but you see that up ahead? Road's blocked, there's an ambush waiting ahead, I'd bet my best glider on it." One of their guards quickly confirmed it. "Affirmative sir, multiple heat signals, fifty possible hostiles on both sides, spread over three floors." "Well then, let’s see how hot the heat we're packing is!" Roach was eager to see what they could do. Gwent was less gung-ho for a firework display, she had enough blood on her hands already. "Hey, whoa there cowboy! I know you are desperate to see some big explosions but there could be civilians in there. So let's take a look first. What do you sense, can you feel anything over there?" He closed his eyes and reached out. "I can't reach them fully but what I can sense is mainly fear and anger, and they know we are coming." "That doesn't confirm much. I think the whole world is feeling like that right now." She then addressed the soldiers. "Send out a patrol of four. Go forward and scope it out, go!" From the sides of the leading armoured-v four troops mobilised, they dropped down and ran forward with a great swiftness, the team splitting off to both sides of the road. With two on each side now taking cover behind the broken walls and trashed gliders, they alternated between taking point and cover firing positions, thermal-scoped rifles cocked and ready. What they saw was transmitted holographically into the space inside the vehicles before them, alongside their pulsing biological readouts. One of the scouts spoke up. "We have movement, third floor on the left, awaiting orders." Suddenly there was an explosion in the distance and the projected images of the troops on the right side dissipated into nothing, they were gone. The remaining two looked over, the fallen bodies of their allies lay blasted and limbless amidst smoke and flame. "Fall back!" She instantly ordered. They turned to move, when a distant burst of cannon fire was heard, another went down, his visual feed gone. As the last remaining troop returned fire, they then saw through his eyes during his final breath. A large rag-tag, painted army of tribal freaks and animals jumping wildly on the train's roof, armed to the teeth with an unquenchable and manic hatred in their eyes, then the image was gone. The squad had been neutralised and now Roach was determined to go through with his original idea. "Okay, plan-B. I want a direct hit on that train with the biggest explosive you have. On my mark." "Hey wait a second!" Gwent interjected. "Fire!" The thrust of the rocket was felt through the steel walls as it violently shot out into the air and then dived down into the fleeing throng of would be bandits. There was an all consuming, blinding flash of white light as the earth quaked and their vehicles shook violently under a shock wave tremor. Flying debris smashed noisily around them as what sounded like a large piece of train crashed hard against their solid roof steel. Gradually as their blinded and aching sight returned, in place of the train was now a massive cloud of dust which softly diminished to reveal a mountain of rubble and twisted metal structural reinforcements, the madness now buried beneath. "That seems to have done it. Nice." "Nice!? You nearly got us all killed!" Gwent was pissed off. "And you just lost us four guys!" He retaliated. "I was being trying to be tactical, you just took out two shopping malls!" "And cleared the way for us to travel." He winked. "Okay, let's just try and work together on this, no more reckless over- reactions, please." "Ill try but this is a war-zone! Quick and reckless thinking may just save our lives." "Or end them!...Move on!" The iron beasts then rolled onward and climbed up the newly formed hill of urban wreckage. Up and over the other side of the hill, the sky was becoming less congested and visions of its night broke through widening cracks in the steel sky as they left the shelter of the Mid-Levels' ceiling. Bright pin-pricks of stars gave a feeling of hope, a knowing that they were now closer to their destination and their possible escape to a world beyond. Yet what type of world that would be they were as yet to know. Still, they had to contain their anticipation, as though the world of Six now had nothing left for them, the new one could be even more barren. Another land of broken promises and dreams. Survival was imperative, any other blessings could not yet be dreamt of. They passed under a large wall of shattered neon-green as it sparked and flashed sporadically above its ransacked apartment store. The way ahead was empty, dark and desolate. "I don't like it, it's too quiet" Gwent said. A heat signal then appeared on the radar a kilometre down the road. "Get us a visual on that target." She ordered quickly. A section of the front visual display instantly zoomed in and locked as the thermal vision kicked in. As the image came into focus they could make out a small child, a boy, his scared and quiet cries coming through the audio feed. Gwent suddenly felt a stirring in her heart, movements of compassion she had long hid from herself, in this child lay a possible chance at redemption, a chance to make things right. "Okay we have a refugee, who needs to be picked up. Get the convoy in close and bring him inside to us." They rolled in closer through the shadow of the night. Roach however was unsure. "I don't know about this, we are compromising our main objective, we may not have time." "You always were a selfish bastard." She snapped. "Are you just going to leave this kid out here to die?" "No, it's just there's something strange about this. What is he doing just stood in the middle of the road?" "Will you grow a heart. He must be waiting for someone to help him. His family could be dead for all we know. We are lucky we got here before the someone else did." Nearing closer the convoy came to a halt in front of the child. Gwent's voice then addressed him through the metal mesh of the external loud speaker. "Do not be alarmed. We are here to help you..." As she went on softly encouraging the boy to approach them, Roach let his paranoia get to him. It had kept him alive this long. He delved forward, then seeing the boy from behind he saw he wore an oversized adult's jacket.

Merging, into the boy's mind. He could see, feel, a heavy bulky weight strapped around his waist, and in his small right hand, a plastic box. His thumb poised on a metal ignition switch, it flicked.

A bright flash obliterated the leading tank, erupting in flames as the boy, a ghost child-soldier, detonated himself. Their cockpit was filled with the noise of sirens as their front visuals went dead and damage reports flashed red on all sides. A frantic manoeuvre to reverse was then violently greeted by another explosion, the trigger of strategically placed remote mines.

For a moment there was nothing, emptiness. As Roach came to he found himself on his back, he had been ejected from their armoured vehicle which was now upside down, heavily damaged and in flames, dead. He remained locked in the seat's bracket and releasing it he rolled out and onto the strip in great pain. He looked down to his leg, a large metal shard stuck deep in the flesh. He pulled out the bloodied end and screamed in agony, he was battered and burnt, beaten. As he lay on his back unmoving, the surrounding thick smoke rose into the now starry sky. Automatic weapons cracked in the near distance as the surviving members of their squad fought off the ambush of their unseen attackers. He was not yet sure of the extent of his injuries but he did not feel capable of getting up or going on, he just lay there looking up to the sky, as if in a trance. Soon the Ghosts would surely over-power their team and then they would be upon him, there was no hope left, a quick death was all he could now hope for. His eyes were on the verge of closing, to let unconsciousness grip him, then he saw it. A white winged creature, gliding gracefully in the sky! Suddenly a whole flock appeared, glorious in their flight, gliding in-between the buildings high above with a synchronised flow and beauty. He instantly recognised them from the history archives, they were birds, sea gulls! They sung and cawed with a sound of which he had never heard, and with it his spirit soared with them. Rico had done it! His plan had been followed through, put into action by his kindred believers and somehow the force walls had been brought down. Influx had won! Roach's resolve was suddenly renewed and he was filled with a fresh energy, now all could escape! Their vision had become manifest, and he had helped to bring it about. Then there was a voice, it was her. "Roach! Roach, where are you?!" He went to speak but found he could not. Then she saw him. "Oh my god! Are you alive?" He was able to give a slight nod but his vision was dimming, he felt faint and must have been losing blood. He felt her pull off his belt and use it as a tourniquet tight on his left arm to stop the bleeding. "Don't die on me, we can still make it! We have to move quick whilst they are fighting." She pulled him up to his feet as an agonising pain shot through his right leg. "Shit, I think it’s broken. How did you get out so clean?" He asked her. In the whole time he had known her she had never sustained any injury in the line of duty, like she was protected by some sort of guardian angel. "I pulled the ejector seat a second before you pulled yours, looks like it was a second too late, I guess you couldn't find the lever." "Lever? I don't know, I can't remember. I must of had a rough landing." "If you could look in a mirror you'd probably say that was the understatement of the century." He must have been all fucked up. "Okay now lean into me and let me take your side, there's a subway ahead, it will take us to the tunnel close to where we first met the Order. We are nearly there Roach, I believe in us. We can make it! " Her voice was warm and reassuring, they could still make it. They hobbled into cover, away from the fire fight, safer now in the shelter. Then moving up the patterned tiles of the wall they came to a large set of stairs which led down to the subway. "Okay now for the tricky bit." Yet as Roach went to grip the rail to assist his descent, a silent telescopic cross-hair lay poised upon their backs, the scope of an anonymous sniper. Breathing in, she squeezed the trigger. The violent bloody kick of a heavy calibre round hammered out of Gwent's chest, the impact causing them both to fall, to roll heavily down the many steps and smack hard down onto the cold ground below.

In silence, they lay, side by side, the inevitable now upon them, defeated. Now, close to death, Gwent tried to get her last words out of her bloodied lips between sharp and pained intakes of breath, before it was too late. "I...never....got....the chance..." She softly took his hand, "to...show..you..." Then suddenly there were no more words, no more breath, he squeezed her hand, there was no more Gwent. He could no longer tell if he was frozen from injury or shock. His grief was all, he wanted out now more than ever. There was nothing left, no chance, the end had come, destiny had finally fucked them, and if this was to be his destiny then so be it. He closed his eyes, wanting to join her, he willed death to take him, in the way he had taken life from others, with calm, in peace. He was nearly there as his spirit slowly, softly lifted up from its physical shell, ready to leave.

Then, fresh like a cooling breeze, there was the sound of a familiar voice, a familiar presence, one of light and cheerfulness, it suddenly brought him back down from death, to earth and into a lucid waking consciousness. "Not yet for you. Not yet for her." He then opened his eyes and was filled with awe, for sure enough there stood the monk of the Order. The guru whom had taught the thousands in the warehouse temple. He was youthful yet radiant with a millennia’s wisdom shining in his eyes, surrounded vividly by a glow of white, golden, crystallised light, and it was all he could see, all that was. His sheer radiance filled him once again with life and he could not help but sit up, energised by this powerful spirit stood before him. Adorned in white, golden robes of light he then knelt down beside Gwent and resting his hand gently upon her chest, closed his eyes. The light surrounding him increased in intensity with a clear high tone until it became too bright to look upon, too high to hear. Mentally focusing the power down his arm it then burst through his palm and filled her entire body with etheric energy, like a bolt of heavenly lightning, a divine kick start. She suddenly gasped loudly in a miraculous release as her back arched up and her eyes opened wide, the life-force now flooding back into her. Euphoric yet incredulous she came to, brought back from the brink. "Am I dead?... No, I am alive!" She exclaimed now sitting up seeing the monk for the first time, the bullet in the palm of his hand, her injuries now completely healed. Roach checking himself found that he too had been completely healed, he could scarcely believe it. "You!" She said in wonder. To this he gave a joyous laugh, and the feeling spread through them as they all laughed together, surrounded by his healing warmth. He was not, could not have been from a land like theirs. There must have been a better world out there, a world he could lead them to. He knew the way and they trusted him to lead them there, for they could now see he knew many mysteries of the path they had not been trained to follow, the path of light. "Now follow me, we shall be there soon."

In the sanctuary of his presence they walked, so bright was the light which surrounded him that they could not fully make out the walls of the place they were now in or where in fact it was they were going. Upon the walls, the carved archaic symbols of the like Roach had seen on his first visit to the temple could now be seen and in them resonated a deep pool, a myriad of subconscious realisations as their guide subtly attuned their minds to his way of being.

Now in this state, a vision of a tale told many times in many ways revealed itself. The rise and fall of empires, civilisations, worlds, unfolded in Roach's mind. The natural law of evolution, harsh yet beautiful in its perpetual dance of synchronised creation and destruction. The clockwork balance of darkness and light, day and night, life and death, past, present and future. All as One. Down from the macrocosmic heights of these celestial patterns he then entered into a clear vision. In what seemed like a split-second, a vivid flash of decades passed. He saw the original millions escaping the mainlands to the newly built islands, only to then build stronger and more advanced technologies around themselves. Digging deeper underground whilst building higher to the sky into greater unbounded joys and unseen sorrows. Intense and chaotic it spun and grew, speeding towards the Now, the unavoidable critical mass, the breaking point. The sharp peak of balance where all destinies now stood precariously on the brink. Awaiting the next step, a shift into a new era. Nothing would ever be the same. Then suddenly, quickly returning to his body, he found himself in darkness.

"Hey where'd he go?" She asked. The monk had disappeared out of sight and left them in a place without light. Then before them a strange elliptical shaped, transparent pod lit up gently, glowing with a mysterious and bright emerald, scarlet energy. Its radiance revealed a platform on which they were stood and a twelve foot high, cylindrical transport tunnel which extended out of sight. The pod's side wall then slid round gracefully, welcoming them inside to a padded space. It levitated slightly from the ground but remained firmly in position as Gwent entered and took her place. It was their ride out of there. "Are you coming?" She asked Roach, he was not fully aware, not sure if this was real or still part of his vision, like he was trapped in some strange dream. He took it in, he was leaving his world behind and stepping into an entirely unknown one, leaving Six to suffer whatever fate the Hidden had deemed fit. It was time.

"Okay, let's go." He got inside and took a seat facing her, she now looked at him with a beauty, a face he had never before seen, as she took his hands he felt her affection. She had hope, she was at peace and she loved him, that was enough to get them through, it had to be. Roach then remembered the words of Remus, they had to get clear of Isis before Ascension took them, before the Hidden Source took possession of them forever. They were not safe yet. The clear wall then glided back intuitively and enclosed them solidly inside. Like a bullet it then shot forwards down into the dark tunnel, however the force of this propulsion did not jolt them, as if their own gravity was contained solidly within, immune from the exterior force of its motion. As the fast rushing sound of cool air passed by he drifted again once more as a new vision engulfed and over-powered him.

A full and vivid awareness of the Now, enmasse, Isis was rising up to her final shift. The Ascension had already begun, he could feel its motion, stirring.

Topside, amongst the heavy night clouds, millions lay sleeping. In their homes or the new ones just assigned to them. From small pod-quarters to lavish top floor penthouses, all were soon to become equal. However even those whom were not sleeping were suddenly forced to. Those ignoring the curfew and burning the midnight oil were stopped in their tracks. Drinks spilled, smashing to the ground, as bars and upper echelon gatherings suddenly came to a halt. Couples out on late night garden walks froze as artificial birds crashed down to the ground, dead in their flight. Gliders stopped gliding and the sky-rail stopped grinding as their passengers' eyes closed, and in that instance the city had never known such stillness, such peace, as all fell under the spell of the Hidden's possession.

Then the next phase began to stir. Starting from the lowest level, all the lights and colourful motion of the city began to fade and go out, projected adverts phased into nothing, looped voices telling you what to buy became silenced, shopping malls became dark, media broadcasts went out like candles in a strong wind as all music became silence. The systematic shut-down worked its way up higher and higher plunging the whole city into a shadowed, powerless and cold state, a now dark island upon a moonlit sea. All light and motion was gone, save for the steady breathing, the neural fluxuations, the rise and fall of violet lights from beneath the skin, the glow of the temples. A unified, synchronised, synaptic pulse, breathing in, then out. All men, women and children were now linked like the cogs of a vast clockwork machine, to the beat of the one remaining source of Power. The pyramid shard, the peak of the great Synaptech tower, the highest point in Isis, its energy core now glowed more brilliantly than ever before with a vivid silver-violet luminosity. A radiant sphere of energy, it was now the brightest light for thousands of miles. Bursting with knowledge and life, pulsing with incredible power now building stronger as it grew brighter, transferring new energy, memories, intelligence and life into itself from the sleeping, hypnotised Children of Isis. Slowly seeping the life from them, to become them, to become more than them. Raising all to a new level of existence, of consciousness and creation. A new dimension was unfolding. A new dawn.

Back and into the speeding pod. Tears were streaming down her face. Roach was not waking, Ascension was taking him away. She had tried slapping him awake to no avail and was now holding him shakily in her arms.

"Wake up!" She sobbed. "I cannot do this without you!" She pleaded to deaf ears, gripping him tighter as the newly seen glow at his temples rose and fell in cycles, becoming faster and faster as they sped further down the passage, now becoming a steady silver-white, violet strobe. She then looked up and saw it, a pin prick of light came into focus. The light at the end of the tunnel was in sight.

"Look, we are nearly there! Wake up!" She cried, then screaming in a final desperate plea. “Wake up!”

Wake up AMETHYST SKY

Last night whilst sleeping I found myself walking in a forest I have never been to one and never will But there I was

The morning sun came down through the canopy cracks in the chill dawn air As something tugged at my hand

I looked down and a little girl holding a large white feather smiled back at me and a feeling moved me inside, She was precious to me and so was the life I lived

Yet it was not me It could not have been

I was glimpsing the life of another man One more fortunate than myself

The lives of a better world. The vast forest was in half-light, the dawn mist hung like a thick blanket over the treetops, tinted by a mysterious violet light that came from the horizon, the crystal mountain. The colossal and transparent gem-like stone glowed brightly as the dawn sun rose up from beneath and filled the once dark sky with its magical light. Suddenly the sun shifted behind the mountain, filtering and dispersing the light into vivid, mile wide beams of incandescent violets that cut through the clouds and dug through the trees. The once dark forest now drowned in the luminous haze. As the star rose higher behind the transparent rock, the beams shifted into seemingly random positions as the light refracted through the different angles of the mountain's side. The sun, now at the centre of the crystal peak shone forth an amethyst sky. Radiant and luminous before a vast and clear glacial lake. The summit froze over each night gathering moisture from the clouds and as dawn broke the mountain stone heated and the ice began to thaw. Droplets of water ran down familiar lines carved in the rock joining together to form larger channels of fast flowing icy streams. Eventually these many streams joined together at the foot of the mountain to form a waterfall causing gentle waves to lap at the lake's shore and at the side of a wooden fishing boat. A man awoke to the soft rocking of the early morning waves, he looked to his wife, beautiful as she lay sleeping then climbed the ladder to the deck. He pushed back the hatch and felt the cold morning air rush in. Clambering onto the deck, the wood wet beneath his feet, he closed the hatch door gently behind him. He woke up early every morning to catch the mountain at dawn, its radiance purified his mind, its energy cleansed his spirit and with each new day he felt reborn, he felt alive. He stood at the bow of the ship before the crystallised sun, the glistening lake, and allowed his mind to be empty, to be still, to heal himself, to let go of his past. For him this was not always easy but the mountain was overpowering and soon he became mesmerised by this pure vision, entranced by its natural magnificence. He drifted and a timeless moment passed, an eternal minute, then he was startled by a voice. It was her. "Come back to bed its freezing out here." "Hey you know I like to watch the sunrise, It's beautiful." He replied. She came over and held him gently from behind. The soft, newly formed bump of her belly pressed warmly against his back as she enveloped him in her soft furs. "Yes. It is" She said warmly. He turned around. "And so are you. I am lucky, perhaps more than I deserve." He paused for a second looking deep into her green eyes. "It’s all so perfect..I mean it’s just..." "Hey." She stopped him knowing what he was about to say, knowing his heart, his inner doubts, his fears and why he rose to the dawn everyday. She pulled him closer into her furs, her body warm in the fresh morning air and kissed him slow and long. Then with a loving compassion in her tone she spoke. "I love you... I was without love for a long time, we both were... But we made it!" She then looked up and gasped with a sharp intake of the chill air, suddenly silenced, she too now mesmerised, in awe of the majestic dawn light now breaking free of the mountain's peak, in the glorious splendour of the Amethyst Sky.

We made it. Children of Isis: Welcome to Mainframe 6

I thank you for sharing my vision of Isis: Mainframe 6. The concept originally came to me back in around '97. I decided to create a Utopian world juxtaposed by a Dystopian one. This gave birth to the Amethyst Sky followed by the introduction of Mainframe 6 as Gwent awakes from her dream. The story evolved from there over many years.

I would find my life reflect it and in turn the story reflect my life. Finding myself living in places such as San Francisco and Hong Kong helped to bring the vision to life in my own mind. Also my own experiences throughout the years have helped to write the story as I took events I had been through and amplified and reflected them within this parallel dimension.

The mountain on the cover is from a picture I took when trekking in Sierra Nevada. We were 11000 feet high and had been climbing for hours. I felt exhausted but when I glimpsed the Peak I recognised the vision from my story, I was instantly elated and re-energised. This truly was the land of the gods and we were only allowed to stay for a while as a thunder cloud soon forced us to leave.

The monk of The Order is based on the venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso who I thank for his blessings and wisdom.

There is magic in this story in the way it has enriched my life and vice versa. It is the mirror image of a world that reflects our own...or perhaps is yet to come. I hope you had as much fun reading it as I had writing it!

Mike kastoacha.bandcamp.com onebreaker.bandcamp.com