Chapter 295: (Daxin) (2/2)

”We can't allow us to be used again,” the newcomer said, sitting down on a rock. He waved at the rocks surrounding the fire. ”Remember when we used to sit here and talk with Him, Dhruv?”

Dhruv nodded. ”Yeah, I do, Dax,” he said. He sighed. ”You want me to figure out a way to remove control from the Immortals System?”

Dax nodded, the firelight gleaming off of the heavy cybernetic plugs embedded in his temples. ”Mankind can't be trusted with us.”

Dhruv sighed and rubbed his face. ”I think I can do it. Not completely, we'd still be reborn, but I might be able to figure a way around it.”

”Kalki wants to be put in slumber. Wants to dream of his wife and children and family,” Dax said. He picked up a pebble and threw it. It bounced off the rusting hulk of a ground car and clattered into the darkness. ”I'll gather the ones who will follow. We'll take His Holy Code Fragments with us.”

”Where will you go?” Dhruv asked, using a stick to draw equations in the dirt.

”Bellona said she foresaw a Hellspace rip, a big one. I'm going to take the Enraged Ones and the Martial Orders out there now that the Crusade is over,” Dax said.

Dhruv nodded and stood up. ”I better get to work, then.”

”You still owe me, Dhruv,” Dax growled. ”You owe me for turning me in to the Imperium.”

Dhruv nodded. ”I know.”

Dhruv snapped his fingers and vanished with the fzzt of a mat-trans.

Dax sighed and stared at the fire for a long moment.

”I just want left alone,” he said softly.

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The memories of an Immortal twisted and writhed, pounding at the man inside the Immortal, trying to strip him away, reform him as the Immortal protector of TerraSol and Humanity. Tried to strip part of him away, add more parts, and the man screamed in rage and denial.

The master control computer was normally up to the task, but corruption in the ancient network that had started recently was making things difficult. The Subject's mind had been changed, reverted, changed, the safeguards built into his genetics and brainscan missing. The corrupted code twisted and locked into place.

soft warm safe

The master control system hit a fatal error and rebooted.

It spit out the Immortal in the default location.

--------------

Aspen.

Once a skiing playground for the rich and neuvo-rich, it had been targeted directly by the Extinction Agenda Attack by the EarthOnly! eco-terrorist group.

During the Green Death Years it had been repurposed as a camp where prisoners fought against the hateful foliage. Only the worst prisoners were sent to the Aspen Reeducation Camp, and their lifespans were measured in days or weeks rather than years.

Less than a ten minute flight away was the Cheyenne Mountain Military Research and Development Black Site.

Some prisoners had been moved from the Aspen Colony to the Black Mountain.

That was neither here nor there.

Aspen was abandoned after the Mantid Attack. One of the few places untouched by Mantid orbital strikes or the fighting, it was a place that was covered in a dark stain. During the UnGlassing the Elven Queens refused to go near there.

It was a dark and evil place soaked with blood, within sight of the Black Box Mountain.

Time had not touched Aspen. The structures were still there, the plants were still dangerous and deadly. Despite nearly ten thousand years passing, the structures were still there as if the Extinction Agenda Attack had just happened only a decade or two before.

Even the bones of the dead were still there, despite having been cleared multiple times before.

It was raining. The night cool and chilly despite being the edge of summer and the early edge of autumn.

It was there that there was a Hellspace rip that vomited up a burly Terran wearing the heavy plated power armor of a Terran Combined Military Forces Heavy Assault Drop Infantry trooper. Before the rip could close a heavy assault chassis model FIDO bounded out and stood in the night air, heat roiling off of the warhound.

The figure went down on one knee, then slowly straightened up. The figure looked up to the cloud covered sky, closing his eyes, letting the rain wash his face.

The memories of the place twisted and flowed through the figure's mind and he shuddered.

--Home Daxin! Home!-- the FIDO barked.

”It's... it's been so long...” Daxin said. ”I had forgotten...”

He stood there, letting the rain wash his face, his eyes closed, breathing slowly and steadily. In the back of his mind he could hear the error codes flowing. His brain met the checksums, but barely, and the charge in his chest cavity disarmed.

Daxin looked around. The parking garage was still intact, against the ravages of time, and he slowly moved over to it, FIDO bounding along beside him, wagging his tail.

Inside the garage Daxin flexed and then relaxed a muscle had hadn't used in millennia.

His armor beeped and unfolded, unlocking from him, leaving him standing there in a power armor pilot undersuit.

Daxin stood there for a long time, running fingers of flesh and bone on the cloth jumpsuit, feeling the coolant tubes beneath the ballistic and kinetic sleeve covering cloth, feeling the stitch of the cloth.

He unzipped it and looked at his own flesh.

The tattoos were still there, even though he had dumped the tattoos when he had abandoned his flesh, had it cut away to deny the Immortals program.

He looked at his fingernails. He had forgotten what it was like to have fingernails.

The fire pit was still there, as if over eight thousand years had not gone by. A circle of large smoothed rock around the fire pit.

He could almost see the Digital Omnimessiah, almost see his brothers, sitting around the fire.

Daxin and FIDO took the time to gather branches, twice the trees tried to kill him but failed, and came back. Daxin broke up the branches and slowly built a fire. He ignored the fzzt he felt and kept scraping off wood shavings to act as tinder.

The flint and steel were right where Dhruv had left them the last time they were here.

The fire was stubborn but finally lit and Daxin sat down on the stone he had chosen himself all of those thousands of years ago. FIDO sat down next to him and he reached up and scratched the cyborg canine between the ears.

”It's been a long time, boy,” Daxin said.

--FIDO miss glowy Father-- the cyborg barked.

”Me too,” Daxin admitted. He looked up. ”I know you're there. Come out.”

He was slender, brown skin, bald, his servitor bar code on each cheek.

”Hello, Dax,” the brown man said.

”Hello, Dhruv,” Daxin said. He pointed at the rock. ”Sit, brother.”

”It didn't work,” Dhruv said. ”The Case Omaha in multiple systems overrode whatever it was I did all those years ago.”

Daxin shrugged. ”I think it's more than that,” he looked up. ”Did you hear it when you got rebirthed?”

”The song?” Dhruv asked. When Daxin nodded he nodded too. ”Yeah. Barely. Right before the system errored out, hard locked, and rebooted. It kicked me out right here.”

Dhruv pointed up into the sky. ”I'm up there, fighting, but I'm right here too, only different. I'm more like the Legion of old, back when we walked with our brothers.”

Daxin nodded.

”It's been a long time since I've seen you with that much flesh,” Dhruv chuckled.

”Not since I waded through the molten... hell, you know the story,” Daxin said. He gave a shake of his head. ”I've never forgotten how that felt, having my cybernetics melt away and flesh replace them.”

”I've never forgotten how it looked,” Dhruv said. He looked around. ”This place never changes, does it?”

Daxin shrugged. ”I don't know. I haven't been here since the fall of the Imperium.”

”How'd you end up getting rebirthed?” Dhruv asked.

”One of the Lanaktallan panicked. Hit my ship with a planet cracker. I shouldn't have mattered, I should have reentered this reality right there aboard my ship,” Daxin said. ”Instead, it kicked me our here.”

”Where it all began,” Dhruv said.

Daxin shook his head. ”No. Close, though,” he pointed off into the darkness. ”Black Mountain is where it all began.”

”The Immortals, yes. I mean, this, us, all of us together. Before we were the Immortals,” Dhruv said.

Daxin made a sound of wry amusement. ”In a way it started, for me, right here. The Aspen Penal Colony.”

Dhruv winced. ”I can't imagine what that was like.”

”Better than how we found you, you poor bastard,” Daxin said. He picked up a pebble and bounced it off the rusted hulk of a groundcar, the pebble clattering away into the darkness.

Dhruv made a face. ”Don't remind me,” he looked off into the darkness, toward the Black Mountain. ”The First Immortal,” he said softly.

Daxin shrugged. ”I thought I was going to die. Hell, I wanted to die. Out of all of the prisoners taken for medical experiments in the Black Mountain, I was the first to survive Project Stepladder.”

Dhruv picked up a small stick and started drawing patterns in the dust at his feet. ”We don't have a good relationship with mankind, do we?”

Shaking his head, Daxin picked up another pebble and flicked it into the darkness. He could tell by the way it felt in his fingers it was the same one he'd just flicked away a few moments before. ”No, we don't.”

”I'm part of a Black Box project again,” Dhruv said. He looked up. ”They've got me doing the same research you had me do. I'm close to a breakthrough.”

”How close?” Daxin growled, the memory of his wife and daughter reaching for him right before the world dissolved into white fire raking at his soul.

”I managed to fix the dogs and cats,” Dhruv said. ”I think I know how to fix the Sleeping Ones.”

Daxin sighed. ”I don't know about bringing them back, Dhruv. Maybe it's time to let them go.”

”Can you? Can you let them go, Dax?” Dhruv asked. ”They're having me work on fixing the SUDS network right now. It's all interlinked, all of it.”

”I'll need to think about it,” Daxin said. He picked up the pebble and flicked it. It bounced off the rusting car and clattered away into the darkness. ”There's people who need me, Dhruv. Need the Enraged Ones to spend themselves protecting them.”

”I'm not going to tell you what to do, Dax,” Dhruv said, standing up. He looked down at the equation he'd drawn in the dust. ”Whatever you choose, be well.”

”Be well, Dhruv,” Daxin said right before the thin man vanished in the fzzt of a mat-trans.

--we go?-- FIDO asked.

Daxin picked up a pebble, flicking it away. It bounced off a rusted hulk of a ground car and clattered off into the darkness.

”No. Not yet. We're going to sit here for a bit, boy,” Daxin said. He reached out scratched between FIDO's mechanical ears. ”Humanity will just have to get along without us for a little while.”

FIDO laid down, his heavy robotic head on his front paws, staring at the fire with unblinking cybernetic eyes that glittered with reflected flames.

Daxin picked up the pebble again.

”I just want left alone,” he whispered.