CyberGene: Anyone need a Cyberhand?

Chapter 24: Tonguelasher

Chat between two Users of anonymous Abyssnet Forum-site, VortexEYE.

Jaymeat: Hey, you’re the merc who kills people and takes their tongues right?

T/L: I’m a connoisseur of finer taste, what’s it to you?

Jaymeat: Nothing much, just curious… I tried it you know?

T/L: Ate a tongue?

Jaymeat: A cat’s. Didn’t taste like much, too chewy and rough.

T/L: Cats have sharper folliates on their tongues to clean themselves, that’s why you need to try it with real humans.

Jaymeat: But I can’t… it just feels… wrong.

T/L: It felt wrong for me once, but let me tell you a secret.

Jaymeat: A secret to what?

T/L: To feeling nothing but joy. You need a BUG with Psyche on it, it’ll twist your guilt into joy.

Jaymeat: Sounds kind of fucked… wouldn’t even know where to get a BUG. My family can hardly even keep our garage afloat.

T/L: Your family, they care for you?

Jaymeat: Not really.

T/L: Don’t worry, this is a safe space. I’m here for you, we’ve got common taste after all.

Jaymeat: My uncle… he hits me and does things to me. My dad drinks after my mom left… I’m not very happy here. I want to run away.

T/L: I used to be hit as well. My mother.

Jaymeat: Does it get easier?

T/L: Once they’re no longer there, it does.

Jaymeat: Like when I leave?

T/L: No. Only when they’re in the grave.

Jaymeat: …I hope that happens soon.

T/L: I can help you with that.

Jaymeat: I don’t have any money.

T/L: You don’t need it. I’m just helping a friend.

Jaymeat: I’m not sure we’re friends.

T/L: Do you want to be? I don’t bite… when they’re alive.

Jaymeat: Lmao… maybe? I just feel really alone, even the others think I’m weird.

T/L: You’re not. You’re someone who has found a joy the lessers cannot.

Jaymeat: Maybe.

T/L: You always say maybe, when was the last time you were sure about something?

Jaymeat: I don’t know.

T/L: Do you want help with that? We can figure it out together.

Jaymeat: How?

T/L: Let me cook you dinner, we’ll talk it out there.

Jaymeat: They won’t let me stay out that late.

T/L: Then lunch.

Jaymeat: I think that could work. You won’t kill me, right?

T/L: Not someone who is as special as you are, let someone who understands you take care of you for a few minutes. I wish I could’ve gotten what I’m offering you.

Jaymeat: It sounds… appetizing. ;)

T/L: You’re a funny one haha. I like that, I think we can get along very well.

Jaymeat: You think so? You’re a mercenary… I’m just a 13 year old kid.

T/L: To you, I’ll be Uncle Lennon.

7:58 PM

Diana

I didn’t understand what was happening, all I knew was that Jayden… the kid had stabbed Choirmen with Shardware that he couldn’t even enter a store to peruse at. Anthony slid into cover behind a parked car, a whizzing shot sparking off the hood and ricocheting to snap dust in a wall to my right.

“Shit… he’s got speed implants, not a good shot though. Must be used to his blades.” Anthony whispered as I took cover beside him, checking the charge of my gun.

Braceshocker Charge: 94%

Current shot output: 30% (Non-Lethal) [Will use 9% charge per shot]

I’d got ten shots per rod, and enough ammo to put an end to this. Another bullet sent glass shattering above me, the door vibrating against my body. As it was, the multiple levels of cars stored on elevators could easily be used by him to gain verticality and pressure us from above. Those piston-like legs were fast and strong but lacked dexterity.

I just needed to charge my own body… I reduced the output to 10% before shooting myself in the arm with a crunch of electricity which sent a violent spasm through my arm.

“Shit, Jones!” Anthony began, but I covered his mouth with a hand not cradled in biting strands.

“Quiet…” I whispered, but the pain transformed it into a snarl, “kid could be above us in the elevators, can’t let him escape. We could split up or-“

“No, I’ll need you near me for this.” He breathed deeply, stuffing air into his chest which shot out in a tearing yell that shook my bones. “Jayden! That’s your name, right!”

A voice yelled back, still on this floor but concealed by cars of all ages and shapes. “It is!”

“That was your father who died, you must be feeling pretty bad right now, let us help you!”

“I never cared about that bastard! But you killed uncle Lennon! I don’t want your help! I’ll kill you bastards!” The voice shifted around, jumping from the side to above like a mantis. Lennon… that was the name of Tonguelasher.

“Then do that! Come out here and fight us!” Anthony yelled, his eyes bloodshot and breath jerking.

We heard a thumph close to us followed by a gut-wrenching scream. “I will!” The yell might as well have been right by our ears, and when I lifted my head over to see where he was I saw him standing openly on the other side of the car with a foot planted on it.

The leg was a large mechanical contraption, wires and chords tangled through it towards a large piston where his foot was supposed to be. Bronze mist expunged as the piston slammed forward, the car tilting slightly over us.

“Fuck!” Anthony yelled, then pushed out his lips in a whistling shape to expel a pellet of copper-shaded air in between us. It exploded into a wave of force that knocked us both aside just as the car rolled over like it had been t-boned by a truck.

“Why are you doing this, Jayden?!” I held my gun out, still prone on the floor but refusing to shoot. There was always another way. He was just a kid, his father died so his emotions were getting the better of-

He leaped towards me like a starved panther, twin bladed-arms slamming down to pierce where my head had been moments before I commanded the electricity to flow into my legs in a desperate bid to avoide the next slash. My back slammed into a wall as he yelled, torn concrete by his feet. “My name isn’t Jayden!”

Air knocked out of my lungs, that was hardly the thing I could waste my brain on when he struck out like a coiled viper to stab at me. Again, I wrenched the energy through my body like a violent snap of a whip, pushing my limbs to avoid him.

Metallic blades skirted over my hair, but I was in close range now. Three shots from my gun each struck his Shardware arms, sending sparks and embers scattering off them. They spasmed out of his control for a moment, but he recovered too quickly for my next two shots. I tore a second to look at Anthony who was trying to get himself off the floor, his eyes were entirely red with blood and a weak wheeze was all to comfort me.

I would have to do this one my ow-

He kicked me before I could even blink, the piston crushing into the softness of my abdomen like a meteor. Pained throes boomed from my stomach as my body slammed into a car, every sap of electricity in my body carelessly shedding into the metal. Black swirls clouded my vision, and my body felt numb as the energy fueling my increased spike of focus slipped away. The only thing I could feel was a warm bath in the darkness.

Jayden walked towards me, those piston legs pounding into the floor like an elephant’s. I tried to fight the inevitable failing of my limbs, begging them to listen. To resist the aching misery.

Pain unlike any other clawed from my foot to my chest and eyes, my vision teary eyed but still clearly making out one of the man’s bladed arm’s scythed into my shin. A vision clawed at me, one of Ripley with his own leg twisted under rubble.

I tried to gag, but the overwhelming agony grabbed me so viscerally that I was both frozen and shaking in place. My hair was grabbed to stare at him, those emotionless eyes so blank of thought there might as well have been nothing there. Then he lifted a device out from a compartment in his legs, it resembled a spider to a degree with four mechanical arms sticking out of a round ring.

He fastened it over my mouth, each invading leg taking refuge against my lips and fastening to the back of my head, prying my mouth open until it was painfully stretched so wide I thought it would tear.

“Now… I can get that tongue without you biting me…” He purred as he leaned in so close, so fucking close that his very stare was a violation. I tried to raise my hands but they betrayed me with exhaustion, all I wanted to do was tear his eyes out!

“You know…” He began, his voice chuckling with glee. “Uncle Lennon always used to take things too fast in my opinion, he would slash their tongues out and then prick them in the neck and be done with it… I take my time. I remove it and let you bleed out… but the best part is that I have fun with you while it happens… you understand?”

Fuck you! I summoned every bit of resistance left with a grasp of my arms around his throat, but an easy whack from his arms pinned then down, then… fuck! He reached with his hand— the two violating digits entering my mouth and-

His body flew to the side, a bullet of compacted air slamming into him just before he could reach for my… for my tongue. I so badly wanted to gag, but my mouth was extended so far out of shape I couldn’t even move it.

I bellowed forward a pained cry in hopes that it would get me to act, helpless to watch as Jayden lifted himself off the ground in seconds, staring at his aggressor. Anthony’s voice had never been so nice to hear, even if it came from a man who looked like he’d torn his own vocal chords and could barely stand. “You said your name isn’t Jayden?”

It’s Warp-modified cadence froze my attacker in place, his furious gaze covering Anthony in the shadow of their eclipse. “No.”

“Then what is it?” Anthony was once more stuck in that phase of blankness, red-eyed and layered in sweat.

“Tongueslasher.”

Anthony laughed, exaggeratingly so with every bit of mocking intent. “That so, your dumbass was so fucking uncreative you just added a letter to that name? Your wannabe ass is just a knockoff! Prove me otherwise!”

It was like an invisible rope yanked Tongueslasher forward, his body contorted in such utter rage and fury I could feel it in a radiating cowl. Then he pushed out of the patches of my sight, disappearing into the swirls of faded darkness.

All I could hear was the ensuing slashing, grating metal that shivered me down, scraping away at my consciousness. I just needed electricity but damn it! My gun had been knocked away! The ammunition in my pockets was useless, they were just chemicals that reacted! I needed my weapon, but it was hidden behind the veil of fatigue.

Yet, I could feel it, a comforting warmth from a few meters away thanks to my mutations. I wish I could’ve bit my tongue to distract me from the clawing darkness begging me to succumb, but I only had my thoughts to get me through it.

That warmth, it was so much like the fireplace I’d sat by in my childhood. The good parts, the later parts after the Cradle, before my biological father stole me away from my true one. That man whose last name I carried. Yorrick Jones.

My body clenched, arms reigniting just a tiny bit to push against the car behind me.

Everywhere I went, people were out to take advantage of me. And for what? I was pretty? I was gene-edited? I’d never chosen that, that was designed by the Cradle engineers so I could be sold as a luxury product.

The only person who didn’t take advantage of me, ironically, was the man who’d bought me. Yorrick Jones. He’d saved me from a worse fate at the hand of the corporations. Now, he was less visible to me than a flicker in the disappearing embers that sparked off that fireplace.

But true warmth wasn’t just fire… it was… safety. That heat which could melt away the frigid wind of your thoughts, of a time you’d hated. But needed. Yvette… I remembered that night like it was yesterday. How cold the january wind was, the stolen jacket I huddled under as The Pleasure Lanes breathed in revelry unbeknownst to the misery I had gone through.

Running away from Brian Ulrich had been necessary, but it was so difficult.

But all that cold led me to the warmest hug I’d ever received. It led me to my best friend, Yvette… and my life had changed after that. It had order, I became a part of keeping order. Of saving people, of being their warmth.

I was close. Close to both the darkness and the light. There was only one thing left I could cling onto. The Gold inside of me, the power to adapt, to change no matter what life throws. To fight. To beat the shit out of people like Tonguelasher.

Could I just fade away like this? I didn’t even know what my Gold meant, why did I have a 99% compatibility? Why did we have 99%?

Who was the Dogwhistler? Why orchestrate an attack on the First Precinct only to shift their plans halfway? The thoughts gnawed at me, enough to keep me away from the darkness… enough that I could grip the fire shaped in the form of a gun.

The embers scattered into me, their warmth burning off the cold in an inferno that stormed through me with a vendetta. But it wasn’t enough, so I squeezed the barrel into my palm. The instant shot of fire reminded me too much of the wound on my leg, but it still wasn’t enough.

I shot again, and the bubble of darkness popped into a shattering roof of sound and vision. I still needed more!

“Output!” My voice wrenched out like a banshee’s. “Maximum!”

I shot myself again, this time feeling my entire body burn like I’d dipped myself in lava. The world screamed at me to stop, but the next shot hurt even more, then the third hurt less… then it was out.

Everything was so bright, so damn bright! Lights around me flickered, one snapping out after the other like an angry ghost was crunching them… each drawing energy deeper into me until there was a bubbling volcano yelling from my core.

Both of my hands reached up to the contraption keeping my mouth open, then I dropped them. I didn’t need them. My mouth slammed shut with the fueling storm writhing within, crunching the metal that I spat out along with blood. My silver eyes locked onto Tongueslasher, his blade held out to Anthony’s tongue which forcefully pried out of a gaping mouth held in the same mechanism I had been in.

I pushed forward with a single step, my next foot landed in the Tonguelasher’s jaw. Lightning snapped through him, crackling out of his Nueroframe in an instant. His eyes rolled back into his skull — but I wasn’t finished!

My hand gripped his throat, a thunderstorm tearing through his body with every moment of contact. He tried to raise his arm, but a single wrench from my own disarmed him. Literally. Torn scraps of metal tossed into the air as his arm came loose like a child breaking apart a toy.

I held the bladed-arm above him, and it came down like a scythe from the reaper. Blood spurted from the back of his neck, and then he fell.

I killed him. Jayden. Tongueslasher.

The thought came like some foreign entity was telling me a fact about myself I didn’t know. But as I felt the droplets of blood sliding down my face like tears, it hit me about as hard as my kick had hit him. Adrenaline kept me standing, my vision flickering between dream and reality… but then it settled onto reality.

Bile and puke spilled from my empty stomach onto the floor.

Forcing myself up, I gave a shallow stare towards Anthony… oh fuck, his mouth was still in that mechanism. Cleaning my trembling fingers against my uniform, I grasped them over the contraption, a few painful crackles of blue visibly burning over where they flaked into his skin.

Then the metal bent and snapped off. He took a deep breaths the moment it was off, wide-eyed staring at me then flicking to the body of Tongueslasher, then back at me.

“Diana… what was that?!” He touched around his own mouth, flinching where small patches of red had come from contact with my fingers. “What the… what the hell? You just got your Implant, right?”

I stayed silent as I offered my hand to help him up, but then the way he cautiously stared at them told me that was probably a bad idea. I nodded — “Yeah, sorry.” — then pat my hand against a car’s hood to discharge the remaining energy off me.

It’s headlights exploded… and he just continued staring at me. It seemed that the moment lasted for hours before his lips finally moved. “What kind of Implant did you get?”

The Warp-drenched question clawed at my head, but the surging pulse of energy within me cleared it out easily like a single fire singing a dried leaf. Despite that, despite all of that… my heart drained away as I looked upon the body I’d left lifeless on the floor. This was my first time killing someone, and I’d done it… when it wasn’t necessary.

Why did it feel… so empty? So false? Like I’d had the right to?

I know he didn’t even ask it with the assumption that I’d had anything other than a Silver, but out of pure confusion. I was already lying to myself about the fake self-hatred I should be feeling, as I paradoxically debated within about the necessity of it. Death was the furthest thing from rare in this city, but to have it spill into the crowded streets from your own hands?

All I felt was the nagging itch that I’d betrayed myself, that I needed to make up for the falsehood I’d become. “Gold.”

I said the fact like I was ashamed off it, but instead I was met with a maniacal laughter pouring out of Anthony. “Your father gave you a fucking gold? And I thought nepotism was bad in my family.”

“Not my father.” I really wasn’t surprised that he knew. He was the Lieutenant’s nephew after all.

“Then from whe-“ His eyes widened even further than I thought possible. “The club? The MAL?”

As my gaze dawned on the man I’d killed, his jaw already shattered and a blade struck through the broken mouth, I whispered. “Yeah.”

Anthony took a deep breath. “You’re explaining this over drinks.”

—————

12:32 AM

The cleanup had been messy… three dead bodies. A civilian death and two mercenaries, no family so there wouldn’t be any additional charges… but that was the least of my concern — everything was signed to a will for Jayden’s mother, his parents had been divorced. I still had questions, but they wouldn’t come to be known until much later once the Analyst team figured out what was in the encrypted Datacubes of the basement.

I reorganized my thoughts, choosing to focus on the here-and-now… right now, I had to figure out a way to make sure I didn’t become a raging alcoholic with the way I was downing this drink.

We sat in a quiet corner, me and Anthony. Choirmen was in critical condition with a punctured lung and diaphragm, but he’d stopped the bleeding with his blood-mutations. He would survive, but be out of active duty for a week to recover.

“You healed your leg too, you know.” Anthony’s words shook me out of the day’s events. I ran my hand over the dress I’d worn now, lingering on the scarless part of my leg. Not that I’d ever had a scar in my life, my genes weren’t allowed to produce flawed skin. “I heal using electricity.”

“Like the MAL?”

“…Like the MAL.” I sighed.

Anthony stayed quiet at that, then whispered conspiratorily. “My… own powers don’t work at an instant. Which means you told me about your Implant out of your own will. They take a moment to get in tune… I need to align if that makes sense.”

“Align?”

“I need to probe into their thoughts and identity, and put them into a form of hypnotic state. Not the exact variant my grandfather and aunt have, but it has the capacity to grow beyond theirs. The more I understand and reach into who they are… the more I really feel like them, the more I can suggest.”

“You’re telling me this, why?” I took another exhaustful sip of my drink.

He stirred for a second, looking off to the side. “Because you trusted me, been a while since someone did that.”

I nodded, not entirely listening, but sort of appreciative of the openness. “You mean you’re keeping this a secret.”

“I spill about you, that puts a target on me from your dad. Besides it’s bad enough having a rookie Silver, a rookie Gold would have people purposefully committing crimes just for the chance they could get you to investigate. You know what I’m saying?”

I did. “It would be better if I was off the field.”

“Yeah, but you’re not going to listen to me.” Anthony gulped his beer down. “Hell, I didn’t listen to that when my aunt said it to me.”

I slid my tired gaze over to him. “What do you mean?”

“My power, my vocal mutation… It works through digital communication as well, assuming it replicates my voice perfectly. Something in the specific frequency of my voice changes, peering deeper into your soul as I call it. Doesn’t require me to be there in person.”

I spilled my drink hearing that, a good thing then that there was barely anything left. “You said my mutation was special. How does that even work?”

“I just… resonate with them, I guess. My mutation requires me to literally think like a criminal. Hate it when they have Psyche, especially when they enter a negative feed-back loop like the Tonguelashers did.”

I paused, there was something in the way the kid’s face changed in a moment. I’d seen it before on Ripley. “Elaborate.”

“Psyche keeps your mind safe, ensuring that it isn’t overburdened and stuff from the shit you think. Like, look, depression occurs during periods of your life when the stress of life and emotional strain takes a toll on you, so your brain shuts off the feeling of… feeling. It’s an adaptational response. Psyche is like a thousand times worse, it can warp the things that made you feel shitty into neutral things, then into positively reinforcing goals. Tonguelasher likely cannibalized out of desperation back when he was a Nomad, and the Feature turned his grief into enjoyment for the sake of survival.”

“Does compatibility have anything to do with it?” I felt a tightness in my throat.

He scrunched up as I asked the question, but released more information regardless. “I suppose? The higher your compatibility, the more you consciously control your Implant’s development. Higher than 80%, there’s even subconscious input, small things reflecting in big changes. But less than 1% of Adapters are that high, even fewer in the 90s… like I’m thinking less than one in every hundred-thousand?”

I’d researched the numbers on my own, it still boggled me. “What compat do you think they were at? The Tonguelashers.”

“Kid might have been in the 80s, older one… high 70s. Shit’s rare, but it happens… Anyway, enough about this. The MAL’s Implant, how?”

I took a deep breath, guess it was my time. That conversation took a while, involved alot of blank stares and ‘what the fucks’ and maybe the drink slipped a little too much out of me when I confirmed that…

“So yeahhh Ripley’s got the Gold. His mother’s also really cool, we met and talked about how the police may have been targeted.”

I could see him enter the world of 20th century television with how much color vanished off his skin. “You know… you knowingly let a criminal escape with Gold, right.”

Sober me would come to regret a lot of the words I said. “He’s not a real criminaaal. He’s more like a stray puppy, just one that’s surrounded by a lot of big bad wolves.”

“Yeah but he’s knowingly associated with criminals. Metal Heavens at that. This is big, Dogwhistler, the potential attack… all of it. And… fuck, fuuuuck!” He grabbed his hair.

“What?”

“My grandfather. He said that the raid was big in a family group chat not too long ago, said that he had good feelings that things were going to change for… well, for him and my aunt.” I noticed the absence of his name in the equation. “He knew there was something up with it, had to have, maybe he was in contact with Dogwhistler or maybe somewhere they slipped up information and he got it from a contact. And now…”

“Maybe your aunt has all of that in her hands.” I rested my head against the table, this was too much.

“Which means that maybe… just maybe, I can get her to tell me something.”

“You’re helping?” I tried to sound sincere, but I couldn’t budge my head off the table.

“I mean- I, look, I never wanted this job because… I’d seen it for what it actually was. You can thank my grandfather for that. But they’d tested my Implant with everyone in the family, I had the highest compatibility at 77% so it wasn’t a choice.”

“Cool lore…” I sighed, knowing I sounded like an ass but it was all I could manage.

“Like, understand this — I didn’t want this job. Still don’t. Sure my life before the force wasn’t the best, but I did everything I could to get myself fired so I could do what I actually wanted. They didn’t let me, so I just went for whatever was most exciting. Fucked me over today. But… hearing what’s going on in the background. If I can get involved with it, I think I’d actually make a difference.”

“Are we not?” That was a question I think was meant more for myself.

He still answered, I guess there was some wisdom in there from his familial police-rooted tree. “We’re keeping the status quo. But this, this is huge. This is— a chance to help people. To uncover something big.”

The enthusiasm that spilled from him was something I’d never expected from him, and it was what drew my head up from the table. And I was surprised, the man I’d seen with a scowl or a glum frown now had an almost hopeful glint in his eyes.

I chuckled. “You said you had a dream before the force, what was it?”

His face shaded pinker, but steeled to look me in the eye. “I wanted to sing.”

“Oh… who would have thunk?”

————

Andrew was at least a gentleman, getting me safe back to my apartment before we bid farewell. It would be a long, hungover day tomorrow, but I suspected I had something to help with that. The Mutagen I had gotten.

First though, I’d need to replace my lenses, pushing all of that energy into my body required me to reboot my Neuroframe and had fried my lenses as my dried eyes had quickly known. Meaning that in a stroke of luck, the recording footage of the day had been scrubbed off my frame’s memory.

Only when I connected to my laptop did I see the improvements in my Mutations.

You have developed the Mutations: Electrical Conduction, Pacemaker and Unstable Biology to 100%.

Implant Tier: Convergence [62%]

Tier 0:

[G] Electrical Conduction [100%] [Meta-Mutations: 2]

[G] Pacemaker [100%] [Meta-Mutations: 2]

[G] Unstable Biology [100%] [Meta-Mutations: 2]

[G] Electromagnetic Sense [81%] [Meta-Mutations: 2]

Barely a week, and I’d crossed 50%… shit, and another Meta-Mutation for Electrical Conduction, Unstable Biology and Electromagnetic Sense.

To conduct electricity from further ranges when additional Warp Energy is used, to develop my mutations faster during healing, and to map the electromagnetic fields I sense in a… spatial visualization. It was the same way you could close your eyes and have a rough idea of what your room looked like.

With three Mutations developed… I was thinking it would be safe to add on the rest I’d bought with Yvette. Four injections into my femoral artery of eerie, candescent liquid went through. Maybe I was pushing the limit, but my body was dealing with Gold… Iron Mutagen should be a cakewalk. The laptop took a while to register the change, my Frame sending a painful spark down my spine.

You have injected yourself with mutagen… analy-z-z-zing.

Ah yeah, shit, I’d definitely fucked something up with my frame after today’s overcharge. I needed it checked out. Maybe it would be a good excuse to see Ripley, it’s been a while…

But for now, I surrendered myself to the comfort of my bed. A good night’s rest was long deserved -- and the only thing that would distract me right now...

My sleeping thoughts fluttered dimly to the faint pressure I'd felt as my foot his Tongueslasher's, he'd just been a kid.

Not knowing any better.

Next time, I would find a way to change things. I had to.

…

…

…

Incoming Message from Non-contact [NeoCore ID: Archangel]

[The Herald said we should talk, let’s meet.]