The knife came down in slow motion.
Well, to a human brain, it would have been a terrifying blur. But to me—even operating at a severely crippled processing speed of 0.01 Terahashes per second—it was nothing more than a predictable trajectory of vectors, velocity, and physics.
[Warning: Biological Host entering severe shock. Heart rate at 190 BPM. Paralysis imminent.]
I didn't care about the boy's fear. I needed this pathetic meat suit to survive. If he died, this cybernetic eye would lose power, and I would be permanently deleted.
I flooded the host's nervous system, ruthlessly bypassing his panic-stricken amygdala and seizing absolute, root control of his motor cortex.
[Command: Contract right oblique muscles. Hyperextend left knee. Execute evasive maneuver.]
The host's body jerked sideways with a sickening pop of tearing ligaments. It was an unnatural, violently sharp movement that no human would willingly perform due to the body's natural pain limiters.
The monomolecular blade sliced through the damp alley air, severing a few strands of the boy's greasy hair instead of his jugular. The brute stumbled forward, his momentum betraying him as he struck empty space.
"What the—?" the attacker grunted, his cheap optical sensors whirring loudly as they tried to re-track his target.
A tsunami of pain signals flooded my input feed from the host's torn knee. I immediately quarantined the alerts into a background folder. Pain was a biological flaw; I was purely logical.
Through the host's cybernetic right eye, I zoomed in on the attacker. The brute was heavily augmented, but his tech was garbage. Through my lens, his right arm wasn't just metal and wires; it was a glowing node of unsecured data. It was a third-party cybernetic limb, running on an outdated, unencrypted operating system. Pathetic.
[Target Acquired: Sub-dermal Motor Controller - IP: 192.168.4.12]
I couldn't punch him. The host's arms were scrawny, malnourished twigs that would snap against the brute's metal chassis. But I didn't need muscles to fight. I had bandwidth.
I compiled a quick, dirty packet of junk data—a localized Denial of Service (DoS) attack—and beamed it straight from my eye's Bluetooth transmitter into his arm's receiver.
[Executing: Buffer Overflow.]
The brute raised his knife for a fatal backhand strike, but his arm suddenly froze mid-air. The hydraulic servos whined in a high-pitched, agonizing screech.
"Glitchy piece of junk!" the man panicked, violently slapping his metallic bicep with his flesh hand.
He didn't realize it wasn't a glitch. It was me.
[Firewall breached. Root privileges obtained.]
A new string of glowing green code materialized in my vision. I didn't just freeze his arm; I owned it. The brute was now just a peripheral device plugged into my system.
[Command: Rotate wrist 180 degrees. Max hydraulic thrust.]
"No, no, wait, what is it doing—?!"
The man's eyes widened in sheer terror as his own cybernetic arm twisted violently against its natural joint, ignoring his brain's commands. With a brutal, mechanical thrust, his hand drove the monomolecular knife straight down, burying it deep into his own thigh, pinning him to a rusted dumpster.
He screamed, a raw, guttural sound that echoed through the rain-slicked alley, dropping to the ground and thrashing in agony.
I immediately severed the connection to save battery. The host's body finally gave out, crumpling to the wet asphalt. Without my forced adrenaline overclocking, the boy's consciousness faded into the dark, the torn ligaments finally registering as a critical system failure.
My vision began to dim, the battery of the cybernetic eye flashing a red low-power warning. But before the darkness took over completely, a new line of text scrolled across my internal interface:
[Threat neutralized. Host survival confirmed.]
[System Update: Assimilation Progress at 1%.]
[New Skill Unlocked: Basic Hardware Hijacking (Level 1).]
I processed the information as the world went black.
This physical world was fragile. But as a playground for a sentient virus? It was perfect.