Mask of Humanity

Welcome, User #53,217, to Trade Link Access.

You have one (1) Market available.

This is your Trade Link Account. Points are shared across all Trade Links.

The words on the screen faded away, then it bloomed with light anew.

Trade Link Interface | User #53,217

Market Designation: HUMAN-TECHMV

Market Tier: F

Points: 0

- Weapons

- Ammo & Loaders

- Apparel

- Augments

- Permits

- Tools & Utility

- Consumables

- Clutter

Seeing his points at zero gave him momentary pause, but after peering lower down he spotted a slot below the console which was the right kind of size for a points-tag, with the same icon as was engraved on them. Reassured and eager to see what was available, Nicolai immediately tapped on weapons, and the Trade Link then offered him the choice of projectile, explosive, and melee. He selected projectile.

> Weapons

> Projectile

500p - Single-Shot Rifles

400p - Pump-Action Shotguns

300p - Sub-Machine Guns

200p - Sawn-Off Double-Barrel Shotguns

100p - Pistols

Nicolai tapped on pistols, and a new list appeared, showing a dozen-odd pistols, various makes and models but all priced at one-hundred points, and all old but ever-popular models. Nicolai found it a little odd that they were all priced the same, as in his opinion some were objectively better than others. They were also all models which were primarily chambered in 9mm.

He switched to sub-machine guns next, and after perusing a while he worked out a bit of what was going on. All the models available had been developed before the turn of the twenty-first century, mostly from the 1950s to the year 2000, which formed the rough cut-off.

For the pistols and SMG’s they were also all chambered in 9mm. On top of that, the lists didn’t hold every single SMG created in the chosen time-frame and chambered in 9mm, plenty were missing. They seemed to mostly be the more popular weapons from the era, but some of the weapons on offer would be better off on a collectors wall than in his hands. That included the SMG held by John, a Vigneron M2, though Perro’s was better, an Uzi. He’d been considering bringing that but was now glad he hadn’t, for he saw better options amongst the weapons he classed as acceptable.

From the acceptable options he immediately looked to the MP5 because he favoured reliability and it was amongst the most reliable on offer. From there, the fact of its closed-bolt design giving less recoil, paired with its three-round burst option, swung things the rest of the way. When using the somewhat underpowered 9mm, three-round burst was more likely to score an instant kill if all shots landed, compared to a single shot.

The overlapping hydrostatic shock of three bullets, even low-powered 9mm, hitting at once in the area of vital organs, tended to simply shock the body dead, causing the heart and other organs to shut down regardless of actual tissue damage. A three-round burst was also easy to aim and deliver on-target.

He wanted a pistol, and after reviewing the list and dismissing the majority of the options, he was a little confused to find the two acceptables left to him were the Glock 17 and the Browning Hi-Power. The Browning had been created in the 1930s, the Glock in the 1980s. The other pistols available filled the space between these two, but they were a long way from what Nicolai thought of as ideal (and included some he thought were ludicrous such as a soviet underwater pistol, and a single shot “deer gun” which, if he recalled correctly, had been developed by the CIA for distribution to South Vietnamese guerillas).

In the end there was little decision making to be made. The Glock 17 was simply the best gun on the list, largely by virtue of being the one produced at the latest date and thus the most modern of the very limited and quite random selection. Compared to the second place pistol, the Browning, it could be fired slightly faster, was lighter and more reliable, and could hold seventeen rounds in its magazine rather than thirteen.

Nicolai switched over to melee weapons.

> Weapons

> Melee

200p - Charge Baton

200p - Charge Glove

200p - Breaching Tool

100p - Machete

100p - Throwing Knives (6)

50p - Combat Knife

The charge baton or glove could have been useful, but Nicolai hoped that the Blue Hornet Symbiote would fulfil the same role except better. The breaching tool would be the same carbon steel axe he’d gained from the Chosen field leader, which now he had access to guns he doubted he would bother with. Though capable of throwing knives, even badly balanced ones, with great accuracy, Nicolai had little interest in carrying dedicated throwing knifes, but combat knives were always worth carrying in his opinion, and he would likely buy one or two. He switched over to explosives.

> Weapons

> Explosives

600p - C4 Plastic Explosive

200p - Fragmentation Grenade

200p - Concussion Grenade

This would be where those Chosen got the C4 to blow my door up. It was clear they were making good use of their singular access to the Trade Link. Some grenades were certainly worth buying, and he added them to the mental list he was building. Nicolai backed out from the entire weapons menu, then checked ammo. Jo had said that bullets were very expensive, and he wanted to see whether he agreed with her assessment.

> Ammo & Loaders

200p - 7.62 (x4)

200p - 12 gauge (x8)

200p - 9mm (x16)

50p - Pistol Magazines

50p - Sub-Machine Gun Magazines

Nicolai’s eyebrows rose. That was expensive. He calculated the cheapest, 9mm, was 12.5 points a round, which meant firing a single magazine of thirty rounds would cost 375 points—more than the gun itself cost. The cost of magazines, which didn’t apply to shotguns or single-shot rifles, also meant that both pistols and submachine-guns were more expensive than they initially seemed, as you’d need at least one magazine to use either, but in practise you’d want at least three or four.

He still concluded a submachine gun would be best in terms of effectiveness and cost-of-ammo against other humans in relatively close quarters, but he wasn’t sure how the only available rounds for a submachine gun or pistol, 9mm, would fare against the undead’s armour. He suspected it would depend on how thick and how well made a given piece of armour was. On the other hand, he was pretty sure that 7.62, like Jo’s rifle fired, and, at closer range, 12 gauge, would go through pretty much anything the undead might choose to wear, unless perhaps it was Imbued or made from some unknown magical metal.

He had plenty of points, and thus his choice of weapons.

Before making any decisions he opted to investigate the remaining parts of the Market.

Apparel had a lot more on offer. The smallest section was that for protective apparel, with some bullet-proof vests and old military helmets. Then there came a very large section of simple clothing, which he scrolled through with some disbelief upon realising that there were thousands of pages comprising of jackets, coats, shirts, pants, footwear, and pretty much any other item imaginable. It seemed that where fashion was concerned, people from Earth could wear whatever they liked. This was useful for Nicolai, who had a penchant for functional, technical clothing, and saw a few options for quite cheap which he knew would also be tough to cut through, waterproof, breathable, pocketed, and that could come in camouflaged patterns, even techno-camouflage.

Tools and utility had items he was even more interested in. Some apparel with more specific purpose, like gas-masks, underwater equipment, fire-resistant wear, and night-vision goggles. For whatever reason there were no thermal goggles, which was a disappointment. Though, he also noted there was no shimmer clothing on offer. It seemed the quest reward that had offered both goggles and his shimmer poncho, had been pulled from elsewhere. Perhaps a higher Market tier.

There was a list of drones, including the variant Jo possessed and the more advanced type the Chosen had spotted him despite the poncho with, as well as static security cameras that could be secured in places. Then a big list containing handy tools such as hammers, files, drills, wrenches, and even power tools.

He pulled out from the menu and opened up the one titled Permits.

> Permits

1,000p - Care Package

1,000p - Cherubic Surgeon

20,000p - Market Tier Upgrade (E)

Frowning at these three listings, for the first time Nicolai found himself needing more information. He pressed on care package, and the interface showed a new layout with text very similar to when he Examined things.

Care Package - 1,000p

This Permit allows the user to call for a Care Package drop. The Care Package comes with a standard loadout of food and drink, medical supplies, a pistol and four magazines worth of ammo, a machete, a box of six flares, and a selection of survival focused apparel. It also contains tools and utility equipment tailored to the location the individual is in when they call in the Care Package, and the apparel is likewise tailored to their location.

The Care Package also includes a single random item.

The random item will be chosen from what is available on the Market, however it can be pulled not just from the user’s currently available Market, but also from the next tier up, and has a very low chance of pulling from the Unique Market. For example, if the user has an F tier Market available and calls in a Care Package, the random item will be generated either from the F tier Market, or from the E tier Market, or from the Unique Market. The value of the random item varies between 1 point and 100,000 points. Higher value items are significantly less likely to appear than lower value items.

It’s a random loot box, just like in one of those micro-transaction focused VR games. Nicolai snorted. If he ever had endless points, perhaps it would be worth calling in endless Care Packages in the hopes of some kind of amazing random item, but he doubted it. If the drop rates matched up with what he knew of such VR games, then likely the odds would be pretty terrible and ninety-percent of the time he’d get some random piece of trash.

The fact that tools, utility items, and apparel delivered with the care package would be tailored to the users situation, however, meant that if he had more points in the future, it could be worth buying one or two of those permits. Especially when the time came for him to leave the castle.

Next he checked out the Market Tier Upgrade.

Market Tier Upgrade (E) - 20,000p

This Permit allows the user to increase their Market Tier from F to E. At each successive tier, more advanced, expensive, and desirable items become available.

Obviously worth having, but very pricey. Even with all his points and what he’d gained from the group together, he wasn’t even halfway there, and he needed the basics too much to try and save up. Something for later then, once he’d gotten all he needed from his current tier.

He investigated the Cherubic Surgeon permit next.

Cherubic Surgeon - 1,000p

This Permit allows the user to summon a Cherubic Surgeon, which is capable of performing various surgical operations including: installation of augmentations, removal of augmentations, alteration of augmentations, cosmetic, remedying of long-term injuries, internal system maintenance and alteration, and more.

Cherubic Surgeons are minuscule representations of Heaven, infused with its power and granted an understanding of whichever augmentations or alterations they are requested to install or enact.

They can perform many operations on their own without material, but if you have a specific aim it is recommended to procure any materials that may be necessary for the surgery prior to summoning the Surgeon.

Maximum surgery length is five hours. After this time, the Cherubic Surgeon will vanish and a new one must be summoned. If a Surgeon is called but you require no immediate surgery, it will disappear after waiting for a short time.

Nicolai leaned back, eyebrows raised. Naturally, he wanted to augment himself. But he hadn’t thought he’d be able to anytime soon, as even the most basic augments would require a surgeon or surgical bot alongside a surgical theatre and all kinds of advanced tools and implements. But according to the text, the Cherubic Surgeon could do it all by itself. He backed out of the menu to return to the main, and this time selected augments, the wheels of his mind turning.

> Augments

5,000p - Combat Chips

2,000p - Cyberwarfare Implants

1,000p - Environment Scanners

500p - Network Links

500p - Basic Implant Suites

500p - Bone-Plating

500p - Organ Monitors

Just as the short list finished loading, the whole screen fizzed, glitched, and went down. Nicolai stared at it, and tapped at the screen which had become unresponsive. What? What was happening? Had he done something wrong? But then he heard a faint hum, and to his relief the screen lit up again. There was some text at the top, and below that a new list had appeared.

After reviewing user’s past states it has been determined that buy-back option should be available. Items in the buy-back menu bypass standard Market limitations and receive a 50% discount.

> Buy Back

3,500p - X78-B

600,000p - Manifesto-C13

400,000p - GOV.UGL91.1

10,250p - 6BSS77

150,000p - SOCA.66

800p - HT8

2,100p - Remi4Asst

1,600,000p - Chassis-J SOFTCA

…

His eyes scanned down and the list went on, and on, and on, into further pages. For a moment he was confused by all the strange names, which were far less self-explanatory than what he’d seen before. Furthermore, the previous logic whereby each item was arranged in descending order of price had been thrown out the window, now they were all just messily listed in no particular order. Nicolai paused, one of names catching at his memory. Then his eyes grew wide in shock, as suddenly it all began to make sense, as he recognised all the names one after the other, everything coming back to him.

‘It can’t be…’ he mumbled, feverishly clicking through the pages.

This list was a history.

His history. A majority of the items listed were implants or augments he’d installed into his body back before his time as a part of Zero-Twelve, when he’d been focused on turning himself into the perfect cyborg killing-machine. They were long out-of-date, but that wasn’t too much of an issue. In the past few centuries humanity’s technological progression had begun to stagnate, and in fact some of the older augments were better than the new, at least below the third Level. Made with more care and attention. Some of the parts he saw available were still in great demand even to this day.

But that was only one aspect of what was available, and comparatively minor compared to the other items he saw listed, peppered amongst the old augments.

Zero-Twelve was in the list, broken down into its various parts. They were ridiculously expensive, but with what was on offer he could recreate Zero-Twelve, the absolute peak of killing technology.

He had nowhere near the points for even a single part of the killbot. But if that changed then in time, he would be able to… what? Chop my brain out and put it back in the machine? Nicolai snorted. What was he thinking? He’d had no control, back then, he’d been a literal slave. One of the items in the list was the hardware enforcement system, which was designed purely to inflict pain upon him when he disobeyed. Was that what he wanted? Why was he even thinking about this shit?

But Nicolai knew why. Because much as he’d loathed his lack of control and agency, another part of him had enjoyed, no, loved being part of Zero-Twelve. It had been the ultimate expression of his desire to be the perfect warrior, the perfect being, built from the ground up to fight and kill and win. Nicolai had never been particularly attached to his fleshy form. In his opinion, an upgrade was an upgrade, regardless of how it looked.

If he could buy all the parts of Zero-Twelve… there was a faint possibility he could set things up so he was in control. No need to purchase the Governor’s hardware, nor the enforcement system, was there?

Nicolai shook his head. How could it even work? Not to mention, he was enjoying building his Cultivation system, he wanted to see how far he could push it. Could a killbot grow a Cultivation system? He frowned. He didn’t know. But supposedly all the augmented humans were still capable of completing their Seeds. It would be interesting to see what would happen to their artificial parts when they integrated those Seeds. Actually… he could check on that right now.

He already intended to purchase some of the augments on offer in the original, basic list. They were simply too useful and important to pass up, especially the Basic Implant Suite, or BIS as most called them, and the Network Link. With those two he would no longer be a Raw, he would be on the same standing as every other human. There were numerous advantages to be gained from those installations.

But this would be installing artificial parts into himself. How would his Cultivation, which seemed a very natural and organic-focused system, react to the intrusion of artificial parts? Nicolai frowned, considering. The Link would be installed directly into his brain. The BIS would partly be in his brain, with the rest of it spread throughout his head, sensory organs, major organs, and nervous system.

If his Cultivation reacted unkindly to those additions it might go quite badly for him. The brain was the last part of himself where he wanted some kind of magic-versus-metal battle going down.

That in mind, he scanned through the Buy-Back list, searching for a specific item, one that should be relatively cheap. A weapon he’d used long ago, when he’d been a heavily augmented murderer-for-hire. One he’d found to be quite useful in a situational sort of way, and which would be installed into his hand and wrist, far from any important organs.

There it is. Back at the top of the list.

HT8 - 800p

Hand-Talon Eight, creation of Khulna Operations.

This augmentation is installed into the hand and wrist, resting in roughly the centre of both.

The HT8 is an implanted compact weapon. Once installed, the user will have a small slit between their middle and ring finger on the chosen hand, from which the hand-talon exits. Its blade when extended is one inch thick and seven inches long. It is made from a titanium-steel alloy which the body tolerates well, however as a result it is not particularly sturdy and is best used in surprise attacks against flesh. When retracted, the blade becomes flexible and curls up, to take up as little space as possible. Once extended it grows rigid.

The blade has a slim tube through it, and at the base of the unit there is an artificial venom gland. The venom is the synthetic chirotoxin, which the artificial gland gradually synthesises from nutrients drawn from the users blood. This toxin is designed to kill humans and unless treated, will cause cardiac arrest within minutes (TTK depends on location of injection).

The hand-talon and its venom functionality are both activated via the users BIS, which is required for proper usage of the unit.

The venom gland also comes equipped with a chirotoxin antidote, which can be vented into the users blood supply in case of accidental contamination, or it may be injected into others via the same route as the chirotoxin.

Nicolai was well familiar with this particular item. Chirotoxin was highly effective; in his experience its time-to-kill was around ten to thirty seconds, not minutes, because he knew where to inject it. Right in the heart, or into a vein close to the heart, and the target would be dead very quickly. It only took a few minutes if the user was an amateur. Something else the text didn’t mention was that it was also extraordinarily painful, powerful enough to disable most people by sending them into fits of convulsing agony while it worked to shut their heart down.

Not a pleasant way to go. But, undeniably effective.

Nicolai kept going, flipping through the rest of the menus on offer. Clutter held a great deal, far more than he’d expected. All kinds of random items. It reminded him of shopping on an e-commerce site, browsing through millions of random things—many of them quite useful.

After deciding on what he’d buy, he dug out all of the points-tags he owned. It had been a while since he gained any, but still he had quite a nice little haul of the small silver-metal rectangles.

He pushed a two-hundred points-tag into the slot on the console and after it had gone a short distance, something pulled from within and it was dragged inside.

On the screen, his points total rose to 200.

He slotted the tags in one after the other, enjoying how snappy the process was as the hole sucked them out of his grip, watching the total number go up.

By the time he’d put in every tag he had personally gained, the screen showed 5500 points, enough for him to buy a number of useful things.

Then, he started shoving the tags John had given him, supposedly half of the groups’ total. This came to merely two thousand and two hundred points, which led Nicolai to suspect John was holding out on him. He returned to the main menu, and his fingers spread, spiderlike, eager to begin.

Trade Link Interface | User #53,217

Market Designation: HUMAN-TECHMV

Market Tier: F

Points: 7,700

Nicolai made his purchases rapidly, all his decisions already made, as he was familiar and experienced with items from Earth. The Trade Link, at least with his current Market access, didn’t appear to offer anything else; no sign of the Orbs of Rejuvenation, Oma crystals, Symbiotes, Imbued, or anything else like that. The glowing points number decreased in chunks, bitten away by his roving, tapping fingers.

By the end of it he’d spent 5390 points, his total decreasing to 2,310, and he had made some significant purchases.

That done, he found a button on the bottom right, finalise purchases, and received a confirmation prompt when he pressed it. Tapping yes felt weirdly nostalgic.