"ake... up..."
The voice filtered through the noise of creation, the algorithms of matter shattering as its words cascaded down onto his virtual ears. Wake up?, it questioned.
The full force of his situation came to bear, his mind realizing where, exactly, he was. He was not in the Waking Lands, his host unconscious a few feet from him. Ek'Ting was not on the Waking Lands. Everything blacked out soon after that.
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"Wake up, Mike! Get this rig off him now. Count of three, cut the connection. Mike Ashton's ebony skin glistened as beads of sweat formed on his face, his hair dripping the secretion. His eyes were closed tight, spasming as if there was a war going on in his mind.
"One, two," Donut said, pulling the cord from Mike's skull hard as he said, "three!"
Ashton's body convulsed, his limbs flaying slightly as his mind dealt with the sudden change of paradigms. The brain was a muscle like any other, and if it is was pushed too hard, it bruised. Pulling a user forcefully from VR had the same effect, the mental tissue bruising like a grape. Donut prayed he hadn't hurt the VR Gamer too much.
Donut had walked into Mike's apartment a half-hour earlier, finding Mike rigged up to his VR unit, checking out the additions to the ONYX interface Donut had made he assumed. That was when the light show had started. Colors of unimaginable brilliance surrounded Mike's body as he screamed out in pain, the chaotic patterns gyrating in time with his bellows of anguish.
Donut was scared, he'd admit later, too scared to know what to do. He was so scared he forgot that his eyes had long since stopped working. His brain hadn't processed color in years. Donut had just 'seen' a brilliant spectacle of light with a pair of eyes that did not work unless plugged into a VR machine. He called Manhunter soon after.
Manhunter kneeled down next to Mike's head, brushing away the thick cords of dreads on top his head. Using a damp towel, Manhunter wiped away some of the sweat form Ashton's brow, waking him up in the process.
"Where am I?" Mike asked slowly, squinting his eyes as if the little light in the room hurt him too much.
"Getting used to asking that question, aren't ya?" Donut half-joked, his nerves shot. "You just did your impersonation of a Lite Brite a few minutes ago, kid. I've never seen anything like it, even during the use of heavy psychedelics. You were screaming like a banshee out of hell, Mike. That's why I called Manhunter here. I didn't know what else to do," Donut finished.
Mike looked at the hacker and his employer. "Wait, you SAW this light show?" Mike asked suddenly.
"Yeah. Why do you think I called the missus? She sees crazy shit all the time. Me, I'm not supposed to see ANYTHING, much less you lit up like a Christmas tree," Donut said, bringing his hand to rest under his chin, propping his head against the appendage.
"Are you okay, Mike?" Manhunter's electronic-filtered voice asked, a hint of sincerity in her words. "Donut has a flair for the dramatic, but he was pretty spooked when I talked to him. I came by to see what was up. Care to help us fill in a few blanks?"
"Why are you here, to begin with?" Mike answered with a question, trying to get a grasp on everything that was happening around him.
"Oh. Nearly forgot." Donut pulled a datapad from his pouch, punching a few buttons before throwing the apparatus at Mike's feet. "Seems a mutual friend of ours has turned up dead. The back of her neck ripped apart."
The dumpster. The lifeless hand dangling from under its lid as police officers scurried around the scene of the crime. The scent of magic. Evil Magic.
The flood of images assaulted Mike's body, his muscles constricting as his mind was fed more and more data. Manhunter tried to hold him down, to calm him, although she had no clue what the cause of such a violent attack was. Donut just looked on, dumbfounded, lost as much as his partner was. Mike's breathing turned more normal, his heart rate dropping as the images subsided.
"Shit. The one in the dumpster," Mike said, to no one in particular.
"That's what I assumed. Remember AcEnSiOn? Well, that was her, dead as a doornail in that back alley you stumbled into. Or you watched yourself stumble into. I'm still really confused how that whole part worked. This spontaneous production of light from every orifice on your body ain't helping to clear that up." Donut looked at Mike, noticing he wasn't alone in his clueless nature.
"Well, turns out they found her with her plug ripped from her neck. That was the only wound, but part of her brain was taken out in the process, leaving our little friend in the non-mobile category. Did a little checking, and three more bodies have turned up with wounds following the same MO, one before the garbage incident, two after it."
"Mary. AcEnSiOn's name was Mary," Mike said.
Manhunter looked on from behind her mask, unsure how to comfort either of the men in front of her.
"Mary Adams, lived on then lower side of New Orleans. Top- Ranking VR Games Champ, same division as you, Mike. I know she was a friend of yours. That's why I came by. I hardly leave the cave I call a home, but I knew you'd want to hear this in person rather than over a teline. Seems this news is of little worth, considering what the hell just happened. What *did* happen, Mike?"
"I have no idea," Mike said simply. He was getting used to not knowing what was happening. The structured pace his life had always taken was being disrupted, and part of him seemed almost happy for something new. Perhaps this was the beginning of a new adventure, he thought to himself, as he remembered the ancient man screaming the name Ek'Ting. Perhaps this was more than any adventure young Ashton could have ever dreamed of.
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BLUE DEVIL:DCF #3
"Reckoning, or, Heroes Don't Always Win"
Written by: Alex 'BioHaz' Cook
Edited by: Jason Tippitt
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They are all dead. I'm all that's left.
The thought was a mantra in the young women's mind as her hands secured the cords to the VR interface in front of her. A flick of a switch later, and the binary lines of VR rushed to meet her. Her cheerleader avatar shimmered into place, replacing her stumpy round form with an athletic build and frame. Twin pompoms seemed to follow her wherever she walked.
They are all dead. I'm all that's left.
Then get to work, the other half of her brain answered.
"Computer, play model #45623.Alpha. Commence."
Ones and zeros swirled in the digital landscape around her, spiraling around each other to form a sickening bulge of flesh, its hide riddled with circuitry of all sorts.
"Beginning Phase Five. For you, Gramps," she said, the last part a whisper as she began working.
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They are all dead. One more to go.
The thought was one of gratification. It had nearly completed its quest. Soon it would be flesh. Just one more soul to devour.
Its furred fox paws ran the cyberscape around it, tracking its prey to the far reaches of virtual reality.
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Atkins stared at his screen dumbfounded. The NOPD mainframe had been hacked, a log of files being accessed and downloaded scrolling before Atkins' eyes. The hacker had stolen every single case file Atkins and his partner had concerning the serial killer they were hunting down. Mentally, one by one, Atkins verified each file accessed by the intruder. Sure enough, he was the owner of all the files. The hacker had attacked him personally, not just the NOPD mainframe. This meant war as far as Atkins was concerned.
He reached for the phone and rang up the Chief. "Atkins here. I need a VR intrusion team, stat. We've been hacked," he reported. Atkins vowed to hunt the little fucker down.
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"They are all dead? All five of them?" Mike questioned, reading the screen in front of him carefully.
"No. One is still unaccounted for. Seems this group Mary fell in with had some odd ideas on what virtual reality really was. This group was bordering on a cult, but they didn't have enough members. The odd thing, as if this wasn't odd enough, was the different occupations these five hailed from. First victim, bioengineer. Mary, VR specialist, sought out for her ability to code VR constructs. Third victim, twenty-something Goth kid, heightened intelligence, specializing in bionics as a hobby. Fourth victim, young kid, 14, who lists neuroelectrical interface design among his specialties. Seems these five were cooking up something. I've only found a few coded messages, and the little I've unencrypted is freaky," Donut answered, his voice ushered through the teline connection between his 'cave' and Mike's flat. The hacker thought back to how easy it was to access Atkins' computer behind the NOPD mainframe while Mike digested the information.
"So who is the fifth member?" Mike asked.
"JerriAnn Wight. AI specialist and bioelectrical engineer," Donut commented, pulling up whatever personal files his many connections on the Net could find. A few of those connections would have even Justice salivating.
"So we find JerriAnn, we find the killer," Mike said, preparing his ONYX interface for a little recon.
"Isn't this all coming together a little easily?" Donut questioned while transferring the pertinent files to Mike's ONYX box.
"Seems that way, but there has to be a correlation between my out-of-body experience and this series of killings. You have any other ideas?" Mike asked his hacker friend.
"I hate it when you make sense," was all Donut said as he cut the teline.
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They are all dead. All but one. Just one more soul, and it will be complete.
The scaled talons accessed the line of data as an afterthought, searching for any indication his opponent had found a host yet. The demon had been awake for a few weeks now, and the bastard should have risen as well. Hondu would be on the hunt, of this Ek'Ting was sure. The demon just didn't know how long it would take him to find out Ek'Ting was in VR and not on the Waking Lands. Finding no indication of his whereabouts being found, Ek'Ting left the cyberscape he inhabited.
Time to prepare the church for the coming of the Lord, the demon thought as he traveled elsewhere.
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"Jerri?" the blue devilish form called out into the quiet cyberscape, his words echoing in the digital landscape.
Blue Devil flexed his hand, a keyboard forming in front of him. His fingers plucked away at the keys effortlessly, a screen of data scrolling in front of his eyes.
Onto the next stop, Mike thought as his avatar faded from the cyberscape.
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ACCESSING.
ACCESSING...
ACCESSING.....
ACCESSING.......
AI ONLINE, V. 3.4562
DIAGNOSTIC CHECK COMMENCTING.....
"Yes!" the cheerleader, JerriAnn, breathed a sigh of relief. It was online. The code had worked. Now just a few more tests to see if it was all running smoothly, and she would be home free.
SUBROUTINE CACHE ONLINE, 100%
MOTOR SKILLS ONLINE, 100%
PERSONALITY TEMPLATE ONLINE, 99%
MAIN OS OPERATING, 100%
SYSTEM RUNNING AT OPTIMAL LEVELS
JerriAnn almost went to cross herself, but stopped with her hand half raised to her face. Its over, she thought. I finished.
"Not soon enough, dear," a voice in the distance said.
JerriAnn spun around on her feet in time to see a fox leaping at her, its mouth wide open, saliva dripping of its teeth.
The digital spirit made little work of JerriAnn's jugular, ripping at the cartilage as a child would pull apart its toys to see how much damage it could take. Its paws shredded the girl's avatar, ripping away the digital facade like paper. Screams of pain and fear were music to the fox's ears as it continued to feast, eating the very life force from the girl beneath its paws.
The Japanese glyph flashed with energy, sparks of power edging its form. The image spiraled around the fox as it continued to massacre the girl. Soon, the girl lost the will to fight, instead slipping on to the afterlife. The glyph disappeared soon after.
It's over, it thought. I finished.
"Not quite," a voice in the distance said.
Binary birthed forth from the ground, a reptilian shape left in its wake, a bloodlust gleam in its dark eyes at it looked at the fox before it.
"Ek'Ting," it growled, its haunches raising as the muscles along its back rippled.
Ek'Ting paid the spirit little attention, instead walking over to the construct JerriAnn had been working on before she was murdered. Brushing it gently, Ek'Ting could feel his champion was ready.
"You performed excellently, little fox. You followed the glyph around to the ends of the earth, and then into VR. You killed each of the five that bore your mark, just has you have for thousands of years," Ek'Ting commented, looking over at the fox.
"These where not my stock. I did not mark them," The Fox answered, wondering where this was leading.
"No, you didn't. I did. And you killed them all, just like I wanted," Ek'Ting said, its reptile-like face almost cracking as it smiled.
"I care little for your schemes, Eater. I wish to have a body, that is all. I have completed the steps according to the ritual; now fulfill your part of the bargain." Fox said, wanting to be far from here at that moment.
"Oh, I will. I will," Ek'Ting answered, his smile falling into a leering smirk.
Pain lanced throughout Fox's form, shaking him to his very bones, if he had any. Slowly, his form began to unravel, small patches of fur dissipating into binary strings of data disappearing into the cyberscape. The pain only increased. Ek'Ting's smile only increased.
"See, dear Fox, it was not you on the hunt for a body. It was I on the hunt for a soul. You just happened to be the most likely candidate. I needed a spirit with magical essence, but not one so powerful his destruction would merit any investigations," Ek'Ting informed the Fox.
Binary lines still ripped apart his digital form, the pain doubling and tripling with each passing moment. The ability to speak was all but lost. "This was... all... a... trick?" the spirit growled, not giving his opponent the pleasure of seeing him howl in pain.
"Yes. A trick to trap your soul in this," at which point he waved towards the grotesque construct his five followers had created for him, "facsimile of a human being. This world, this digital creation of man, limits me, binds me to its laws. I need someone on the outside, out in the Waking Lands, and you will become that person. You will become the spark of a soul that will allow this bioengineered thing to actually think and act."
The Fox's avatar was mostly destroyed; all that remained was his head, floating eye-to-eye with Ek'Ting's. "I will make you... pay... Eater..." it said, forcing the words past the pain.
"If you ever remember it, I'm sure you will," Ek'Ting said, waving his hand over the Fox's head, watching as the last remnant of his spirit disappeared from virtual reality.
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BZZZ BZZZ
Blue Devil reached to his ear, opening the connection to Donut's personal communication array.
"Yeah," Mike said as he traveled yet another cyberscape JerriAnn was known to frequent.
"She's dead. They just called in the report. Found still strapped into her rig, her body shredded from the neck down," Donut said, being blunt with the news rather then pulling his punch.
Blue Devil grimaced as he realized he had just lost the only lead he knew of to finding some answers about what exactly had been happening to him. Whoever had killed those five people had something to do with it all, and Blue Devil wanted to know what. He silently mourned JerriAnn's passing, apologizing for not arriving in time. This train of thought lead to others, but they were of little importance now. The grief of knowing Mike had lost was enough to keep his mind occupied.
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"Awaken, my warrior." The words came from no one within the burnt and scarred cathedral.
The soot and black marks of the flames passing still stained the sides of the house of worship, the burnt smell still hanging heavy in the air. This was a place no god would visit. A demon would, but no god.
PROGRAM BOOTING...
PROGRAM ONLINE, AI INTIATING....
The eyes opened, the dead soul behind them looking around its new home. Thin cords of flesh and tissue, with layers of electronics throughout it, fell from the ceiling, connecting with the new arrival's head, finding holes in scabs and pus-filled blisters. Lights of all colors came on soon after, more thin cords of flesh connecting to the man as he sat up in a battered pew toward the center of the church. He looked at himself, noticing the dead texture of his skin, the lack of hair on his body, and the amazing amount of power running through his new form.
Ek'Ting looked through his champion's eyes as it walked around the church, the Eater's talons accessing datanodes here and there to monitor the new arrival. The man looked up, following the cords of tissue until his eyes came to rest on the cocoon-like shape affixed to the ceiling of the church. Microchips and resistors of all sizes and varieties covered the surface, the transparent skin showing more of the same inside the beast.
"Instructions?" the undead man asked the air.
"All in good time, my pet. All in good time," Ek'Ting answered from his cyberscape in virtual reality.
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DIGITAL DREAMS
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All right, that's it, that's all. Not a lot of answers given, but that was the plan from the beginning. Blue Devil is a story about finding one's place in the world. Throw in a demon, virtual reality, and a few hackers, and then you have the basic premise of Blue Devil:DCF. However, this will not be an easy story to follow. I hate easy stories. Instead, this will be one of those multi-plotline bastards that people attempt to guess the outcome of.
The key players are still gathering their forces, as shown here. Mike Ashton is just now learning of his new partner in life, and they still haven't actually met. Clay is being transferred into a lizard's body as I type this. Ss'Ha is still out there, waiting to see Ek'Ting's next move. The one-shot and this LS are showing those moves, but I can promise you we are still a little ways off from where I would consider the beginning of this tale. There are quite a few things I have to set up first before I can get into the meat of what I have planned for this series.
Stay with me, though, and I promise you an awesome ride. This series will borrow and lend some elements to/from the new Wonder Woman:DCF series I'll be penning, so look for more clues over there as well. That's it, kiddies, thanx for reading, and let me know what you thought if you feel inclined to do so.
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