The Next Moves
Lyra and Sura dropped down next to the others, their eyes instantly falling to Marsh's prone body—a defeated, synthetic shell.
"Time to move everyone. Holding point C." Dax's voice was rough. He looked back down at the defeated agent. "We take the cybernetics with us."
No one questioned it. No one gave it a second thought. This was the reality of their world, a truth sharper than any energy blade: flesh was disposable; cybernetics held the value.
Sura stepped to Marsh and pulled back a panel on the double agent's shoulder—the syntho-skin parting easily. She input two tight commands. The system paused, verifying viability, and the steel-grey cybernetics began hissing and whirring, violently decoupling from what remained of the flesh.
Lyra and Sura carefully collected the components. In the end, all that was left of Marsh was a quarter of a head, a portion of the torso, and her left arm—a gruesome, wet pile.
Jackie looked at the remnants, and an unwanted image flashed through her mind: what would be left of her? BDJ spoke—unbidden, its voice now laced with a cold objectivity.
BDJ: Jackie Cannon is unique. Flesh and cybernetics have begun to integrate on a molecular level. There is minimal separation between cybernetics and flesh. Currently there is no longer true separation between flesh and cybernetics.
Jackie's head buzzed with the analysis. 'Not much separation?!' She didn't want the data. She slammed a mental partition down, silencing BDJ before the AI could respond.
The squad moved swiftly through the grit of the inner city. The neon pinks and greens blared around them, a jarring facade over the city's corruption. They reached a cramped, poorly maintained service tunnel and disappeared into it one by one.
Dax received an A-SSS level message—a secure flash from Command—just as they reached a thick, ancient security door. Lyra immediately deployed Tally to crack the sequence while Dax opened their comms.
"Listen up. Our orders are updated. A-SSS Level Protocol. We are now tasked with breaking into the Nexus Breeding facilities on New Andes, Stratus Bastion, and Aegis Nexus—destroying the program from the inside out."
He paused, the comms hissing the delay.
"Here on New Andes, we're dealing with the mainframes, data backups, and raw research. The core data center. On the battle domes, it's more of the same, but those sites hold the biological assets: cyborg fetuses, bio-tanks, and children."
The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by Lyra's rapid code-building protocols. The ancient door groaned, then quietly hissed open, revealing a cavernous, dark space. Their temporary base was quiet, massive—a three-level beta data lab with direct access to all of New Andes' systems.
The squad spread out. Lyra, Sura, and Jackie each secured a terminal and went to work on access and purging. Dax, Mikael, and Aiden moved with practiced efficiency, securing the room, setting motion traps, and deploying long-range surveillance.
They worked centrally, intending to set synchronous data worms that would detonate in tandem, ensuring a total mainframe wipe without triggering any countermeasures.
Jackie's ocular implant spun, reading and manipulating the data stream. She began dropping dormant worms in strategic places, spiraling outward from the core network.
Tally's voice was crisp: "Jackie's worms are placed. Hidden in plain sight as common data streams. This technique will smoothly disrupt and destroy the systems we are targeting, while the failure appears to be a cascading, system-wide collapse across random systems. Untraceable."
"Good, Jackie. Wrap things up." Dax's voice was now rougher, commanding. "We have been assigned transport—a military strike drone—going up to Stratus Bastion. You have 30 minutes before we head to the lower air docks."
The team flinched collectively at the name of the next destination. Sura worked faster, but her mind strayed. She thought of the logs—the ruptured uteruses, the twenty deliveries—and wondered if her father, an influential pillar of the Taniths, knew what the Simms family was really doing. Lyra's sharp voice cleared, refocusing Sura instantly.
The squad finished the wipe, cleaned up their traces, and moved out. They didn't have time for ethics. They had to move, secure, and change the world