What’s this?

A humanoid he first took to be an ophidapt grabbed a questing tentacle and shoved back the soldier it was originally groping for. The tentacle proceeded to inject nanofilaments into the reptilian body. The humanoid should have been instantly paralysed. Instead it fired a proton weapon into the wall, frying the substructure from which the tentacle extruded, then it flung down the severed tentacle and incinerated that too. Thellant focused intently on a recording of this event—replayed from one of the many computers spread throughout the Jain architecture like grains of salt. He discerned that Jain nanofilaments had instantly come under attack, managing to penetrate no more than the upper layers of the reptilian’s skin. In fact some kind of viral assault shot back up them, paralysing the structure in the wall just instants before the… Thellant consulted other sources… before the dracoman incinerated it. So, not just Polity AIs—he must contend with these things as well.

‘Thellant.’

What, what now?

The source of that flat voice disappeared even as he groped for it. Perhaps some program injected from that dracoman, now propagating back? Gone now, yes. But it was also time for Thellant to disappear. The area opposite him was secure for him now. He stepped into the open and headed across the bottom of the trench. The Jain substructure they might be able to hold back, but he intended to slip past.

On the other side he passed the black pit of a mineshaft plummeting down into the bedrock. Spilling out of this, like silver worms, were foot-wide peristaltic pipes issuing from the robotic boring machines far below. Some of these pipes were split open, spilling slurries of powdered haematite, bauxite and malachite. All of them entered a pumping machine, and from that normal pipes of half the diameter ran down one side of a maglev tunnel spearing into darkness. Parked in the mouth of the tunnel, a boring machine lay like some massive steel grub with a cylindrical head overly endowed with teeth. Thellant walked past this and on into the tunnel’s darkness. All around him via the substructure he observed further disquieting scenes.

The substructure was attempting to return soldiers it now controlled to Coloron’s forces, but the dracomen spotted them instantly and destroyed them, for it seemed these creatures could detect Jain growth even at a distance. Elsewhere, Coloron’s drones or Golem soon detected other returnees and their fate was the same. Fortunately no dracomen were searching in his current vicinity. He reached a curve in the tunnel and halted. Because the substructure spread through the wall cavity beside him, he knew the enemy awaited ahead.

Five arcology monitors and four drones occupied the tunnel, armed respectively with proton weapons and pulse-guns. A proton cannon floated above the maglev rails. It fired one shot, lighting up the tunnel, and demolishing a section of affected wall. They were now retreating, targeting the larger masses of growth as they went. Thellant pressed his hand against the wall, injected filaments from himself to make full physical connection. He halted all local growth, causing it to curl up and apparently die. He began shifting energy and resources to an area twelve miles to his left instead, and started a massive push there. This sort of thing had been happening for some time, as the substructure constantly probed for weaknesses. The opponents ahead ceased retreating—with the brute growth occurring elsewhere they could now recoup their resources. He waited five minutes before breaking into a trot and rounding the bend.

‘Hey!’ he shouted. ‘They’re coming!’

None of those already controlled by Jain tech spoke, which gave him an edge.

‘Hold it there!’ one of the monitors ordered.

‘They’re coming!’ he shrieked.

Seconds only before the cannon swivelled towards him, but by then he drew opposite the blast hole in the wall. He stepped into it, fast, then accelerated along the wall cavity. Ducking below masses of fused optics, he ran faster than any normal man could run when upright. Behind him, red flame exploded along the cavity, pulse-gun fire punching machine-gun holes everywhere. He was hit five times, but only his human body suffered and he did not let that affect him. Proton flame seared the skin on his back. Then to his right: another wall hollow, cutting up through numerous levels. He climbed. Fire now below him, then tracking on past. Two levels up, he stepped out through a service door and into an empty corridor on the other side of Coloron’s main line of defence.

Thellant paused and inspected himself. His back was totally charcoaled, the rest of his naturally dark skin mottled with still darker patches, as if bruised all over, and hard metallic masses pushed against it from the inside. Also his electromagnetic linkages to the substructure hazed the air around him with energy spillover. He began to make cosmetic alterations: withdrawing the tech deeper inside him, repairing the damage to his human façade. Eventually he stood unflawed, with a skin tone like that of his healthy negro ancestor, no fat on his body, his musculature less flabby than at any time since his youth. He reached up, peeled the dead Dracocorp aug from behind his ear and cast it aside. Moving on, he searched for and eventually found a suitable corpse, which he stripped of clothing to replace his own damaged garments. However, he did not yet feel ready to break his link to the main substructure. First he needed to learn the disposition of Coloron’s forces.

The dracomen were nearer now: five of them just a mile to his right and three levels above. He already knew how fast they could move and felt them to be too close, so took the first exit to his left and headed down one level. Other dracomen occupied levels far above and some far to his left and higher still. What lay ahead, outside of the current purview of the substructure, he did not know. He would take as straight a line as possible, lose himself in the general population, find a way to escape. Now was the time to make the break.

It was so hard to cut himself off, almost like fighting an addiction. The electromagnetic transceivers inside him fought against his will like rebellious adolescents, and would only cut his connection when he physically used the structure inside himself to sever their power. Even then they tried to reconnect themselves until he killed each one remaining inside him. Thereafter came an agonizing hammer of withdrawal, dullness of mind, blurring of his senses. Stubbornly he fought this too and tracked down its root causes. These feelings he experienced were a human thing. It seemed that his breaking of contact with the main substructure had pushed much of his awareness back into his organic brain and out of the grain-sized computers lodged inside him. He forced awareness back, regained clarity and enforced a straight neurochemical reprogramming of his organic brain, and filled it with nanofibre control systems. This achieved, he realized how he was no longer that petty being Thellant N’komo, but something else entire.

The hologram displayed a section of the arcology, transparent, shimmering four feet off the floor like something fashioned of glass. In this, a handsbreadth away from one ragged edge of the circular trench cut down into the arcology, appeared a blinking red dot. Surrounding this, and closing in, were twenty-one green dots. The red dot the bad guy and the green the good guys, supposing Scar and the other twenty dracomen could be described as good.

‘He just broke with the main substructure,’ said Thorn, relaying a message from the HK program routed through Jack. ‘The HK can’t track him any longer.’

Scar replied, ‘Closing now on his last location.’

‘Jack,’ enquired Thorn, ‘does the HK have any idea of his intentions?’