266 Days to the Tournament
/~Arielle~/
The blood had dried on my gloves, but the scent clung to me like guilt.
"Delta Seven, this is Arielle of the Irish Valley strike team requesting immediate extraction from Sector V-43, West. Repeat, immediate extraction. Multiple casualties. Sending our coordinates now."
The wind from the broken tree line howled in my ears as I staggered over to Drex, his arm was torn and hanging by a tendon. I slapped my healing glyph over his chest, channeling every drop of energy I had left into him. He screamed, his body convulsing, but color returned to his skin.
"That's it...slowly breathe with me now..." I whispered.
I didn't even notice the tears falling from my face until they splashed on the edge of my sigil. It wasn't grief. It was sheer fatigue. I was tired but I can't give up now
My knees buckled and I dropped beside Contrario, who sat against a rock, face shadowed and still. His fists were clenched so tight, blood leaked between his fingers.
"Makete," he said quietly.
"Sorry, what was that?"
"I lost," his voice barely above a whisper.
"No one won," I corrected. "But we're alive, it's always like this everytime we come across the twins."
He didn't respond.
I turned to Renn's body which was lying on the ground pale, motionless, as if sleep had claimed him too deeply. I pressed two fingers to his neck. Faint. Fading.
"No... no, no, no..." My fingers traced a revival glyph, clumsy and half-blind with strain. "Come on, come on, not now..."
I pumped mana into him, enough that my own vision became blurry. He jerked once. Again.
Then coughed violently.
I sobbed in relief. "You son of a bitch, I hate how many close calls you get."
Renn cracked open an eye and smirked weakly. "Told you...It doesn't matter as far as I always bounce back."
I shoved his shoulder. "Yeah, yeah. Try not to flatline next time."
The hum of rotors echoed through the trees.
"Chopper's inbound!" one of my scouts called out.
I limped to my feet, signaling the team to gather. We found two others who hadn't made it. One had been split in half. The other was unrecognizable.
"Bag what gear you can carry. We'll honor them at base," I said, my voice hoarse.
Contrario stood. Still silent. Still burning.
"You're not coming?" I asked.
He shook his head. "I'll stay. Scout for the dead. Salvage whatever gear I can then I'll report back."
"You sure?"
He finally looked at me. That same fire in his eyes that once terrified me. Now it just made me trust him.
"Go. I'll be right behind you."
I nodded and turned to the others.
"Everyone on board!"
They moved like ghosts, wounded, drained, but alive.
As the chopper lifted, I kept my eyes on Contrario, shrinking in the distance, standing tall amidst the fallen.
Tired. But never broken.
—--------
/~Contrario~/
The chopper blades roared overhead, stirring dust and broken leaves into a violent storm. I shielded my eyes, teeth clenched against the sting, watching the others disappear into the sky, wounded, breathing and alive. At least that much was won.
Then I saw it.
A limping figure pushing through the haze. The figure looked very familiar. Too familiar.
"Renn?" I called out, my voice raw.
He coughed, raising a hand in salute, face half-hidden by the dust. I marched toward him, rage boiling beneath my skin.
"You were supposed to leave, asshole! What the hell are you doing here?!"
He winced with each step, blood dried against his shirt and a nasty bruise coloring half his jaw. "I don't leave soldiers behind."
"Shut the hell up! Renn, right now, you can barely stand," I snapped.
"I can still walk. That's enough!," he shot back. "We finish this together!."
I shook my head, breathing heavily. "You're an idiot."
"Probably. But I'm your idiot, so deal with it."
"Eww, sounds gay to me" I said leaving him and moving forward.
I let the silence stretch, then sighed. "Fine. Let's move."
We scoured the field, boots crunching over scorched earth and fractured steel. Corpses of friend and foe, barely distinguishable. We stripped the fallen of what we could carry, dog tags, cores, encrypted gear chips. I kept my eyes from the faces. They were just names now. Numbers. I couldn't afford to feel too attached to.
I moved through the battlefield with a trained eye, checking bodies, armor integrity and intact chips. My hands worked fast, but my mind was elsewhere.
Stray.
He'd taken too many hits during the last encounter. The core I'd been using to power him was starting to wear thin, it was low-grade stuff meant for mid-tier NPCs, not the kind of high-intensity clash we'd just faced. I needed a replacement.
No, more than that...I needed an upgrade. It's a wonder how I came this far
I popped open the back panel of a fallen opponent's tech armor and yanked the core. Cracked. Burned out. Useless.
Another body, another shot.
This one was intact, dull red, still humming slightly. I tucked it into my satchel.
"I see that look in your eye," Renn said, limping up beside me with a grin.
"What look?"
"The 'maybe this can juice up my pet AI and turn him into a murder god' look."
I huffed. "He's not a pet. He's a teammate."
Renn nodded, crouching by a corpse and sliding a chip out from the spine port. "You ever hear the rumor about dual cores?"
I raised an eyebrow. "Dual cores? No."
He smirked. "Some of the older pros used to say... if your avatar's coding is strong enough, and you insert two different cores at once, say like real opposites, like a fire and a shadow core, they might merge."
"Merge?"
"Yeah. Not like fusion, but a complete sync. A new core would be borne, stronger than both combined. Something no one's seen before."
I stared at him. "And how many avatars survive that?"
"None," he said quickly. "Well, not officially. Most just break down. Burn out. Corrupted beyond recovery."
"So....it's basically a suicide mission dressed up like a power fantasy."
He shrugged. "Or the greatest cheat code never confirmed."
I looked down at the red core in my hand. My thumb brushed over its glowing seam.
"I'm not risking Stray."
"Didn't say you should. Just...maybe if you find the right cores….." he paused, "....and if he's really built different...who knows what would happen?"
I tucked the core away and stood. "Let's find more. I'm not risking losing Stray but If there's a shot of a legendary core, even a whisper of a shot, I'm taking it."
Renn smiled, but his eyes were serious. "That's what I like about you, man. You never stop chasing the impossible."
I didn't answer.
Because deep down, I wasn't chasing the impossible.
I was preparing for the inevitable.
And then... we found it.
It was hidden behind a crumbled concrete wall, half of it was covered in moss and synthetic ivy. A circular hatch with old-world tech, with a faded symbol etched on its face: a broken eye, bleeding light.
Renn crouched and brushed his fingers across it. "What the hell is this?"
I froze.
A shiver ran down my spine. I didn't know what it was. And at the same time, I knew exactly what I was looking it.
It felt like a memory behind a locked door I never remembered closing.
"Let's go," I muttered. "Now."
Renn looked up. "Wait, it says here that this is an old memory-dungeon. You can tell by the architecture and the old writing. Some of it has faded but I can tell that much. These places store events, battle data, corrupted AI logs, stuff people don't want found."
"I said we're leaving," I snapped, voice sharper than I meant.
He stood slowly. "Contrario...you know this place, don't you?"
"No." My fists clenched. "I don't."
He didn't believe me. But he didn't argue. He just placed a hand on the hatch.
It hissed open.
Dim lights flickered on inside, casting long shadows over a spiraling stairwell that descended into a long scary abyss.
"You don't have to come," Renn offered.
"If you look deep into the abyss, the abyss stares right back at you and you get lost," I said. "If only you go in there, there's no telling if you might return"
We stepped inside.
The silence down there was loud. It wasn't just an absence of sound, it was heavy. Like something watching, waiting.
At the bottom, we found it: a vault-like room with crystalline data-nodes floating midair, each one flickering softly.
Renn moved quickly, eyes scanning glyphs. "This....this is ancient encryption. No one uses this anymore. This world is over 200 years old so this should be over 100 years old at least."
I tapped one.
And it glitched, buzzed, then displayed a single name across the projection wall:
[CONTRARIO WILLIAMS | PROJECT REVOKE | CLASSIFIED: OMEGA]
My breath caught in my throat.
"What... the hell is this?" Renn whispered.
More words flickered into view:
> Initiated Cycle: 7
> Subjects Terminated: 6
> Reboot Protocol: Incomplete
> Memory Seal Integrity: 62%
> CONDITION: UNSTABLE
> STATUS: MONITORED BY XXX
My vision blurred.
No.....this can't be…...
Renn looked at me, pale. "Contrario... are you even supposed to exist?"