Poland. Warsaw. One of the city's mercenary bars.
"Master Tony, I will have my revenge," Omnissia thought, her lips curling in dissatisfaction as she plotted a "terrible vengeance." And yes, she now had lips, and a face. It was a minor cosmetic modification installed for better communication during the various tasks her selfish master piled onto her shoulders. What was the reason for this robo-girl's current mood? Well... there was a whole list.
First and foremost, she was displeased with Tony's wastefulness and his readiness to throw everything away. Poland served as an excellent place to start his own corporation, with the potential to eventually absorb the state into the structure Stark created. Essentially, he could have transitioned from a company head to the unofficial head of state in Europe. These were massive prospects for her foolish master, prospects he wouldn't find anywhere else. Only here was the situation frozen in the precarious balance of a political crisis; only here did the head of state treat Tony Stark with loyalty; and only here was there access to a shadow market where one could obtain anything from antiques and experimental prototypes to nuclear elements and slaves specially bred for sale. America, meanwhile, was in a post-war state. The war of restoration waged by Militech was, in fact, a forceful takeover of the states and their resources. It had stalled at Night City, which had called Arasaka into its gates. Years had passed since then, but the tension had never dissipated. It was obvious that the first sparks of a new Corporate War would ignite there, and her foolish master, for his own visible reasons, was dragging himself right into the heart of the storm. Not just to America as a continent, but to the future eye of the hurricane. Was it stupid? Surprisingly, after thorough analysis, Omnissia was forced to acknowledge Tony's reasons for heading to that specific city-state, but the risks... in her view, the risks were completely unjustified. And for what? For Kusanagi! The little cat was a promising asset, showing potential as a genius in programming, hacking, and network security, but in Omnissia's view, her value did not exceed everything Tony had sacrificed to pull her from Arasaka's dungeons. Make no mistake, Omnissia could behave however she liked with humans—she could even love and value them—but her primary goal was the safety and development of Tony Stark. Everything else in the world was secondary. If the choice came down to the destruction of all humanity or Tony's life, she would choose her foolish master without hesitation.
The second object of her dissatisfaction was Tony himself, or rather, his persistent desire to jump into the fire. His single-handed assault on Ryu Kusanagi's convoy alone was enough to make her turn gray, if she were human! And now he had decided to lead an assault at the head of a mercenary squad. Was he not a fool? It was a good thing his father had hammered the basics of small-unit tactics into him, and that he would be sitting behind the backs of hired specialists... he would be, right?
And the third reason for her displeasure was...
"Hey, baby, don't you want to shed that hardware and have a good time?" For the thirtieth time that evening, a drunk mercenary who thought himself irresistible approached her. An armored fabric coat, a tactical visor, a bald head covered in Eastern-themed tattoos, military trousers with knee pads, and heavy combat boots created the image of a retired soldier who had served with the Chinese long enough to soak in their culture. However, everything was ruined by the foul, sour stench of stale sweat and the rot on his breath—signs of either a serious stomach illness or a heavy drug addiction eating him from the inside.
"How would you like me to answer: with words or with action?" Omnissia cursed her master's artistic talents once again for crafting her such an OVERLY attractive face and figure, yet she still tried to avoid conflict.
"Let's say with action. I love girls who don't talk, but act," the man said, making a lecherous face and reaching out toward her face—the only "exposed" part of her body—uttering a completely unoriginal phrase.
"Action it is, then," Omnissia nodded. With a sharp movement, invisible to the naked eye, she severed the hand the unlucky suitor had extended toward her. An arm-mounted blade appeared and disappeared just as quickly, the heated edge flashing for only a fraction of a second. There was no blood; the high-temperature plasma had cauterized the wound instantly.
"Aaaaaaaaah!!!" the mercenary wailed.
There was no significant reaction to her actions. The bartender only lazily glanced at the fallen limb—it was far from the first one that evening. No blood meant no mess. Some of the patrons, who had been there long enough, began whispering and passing money to the winners of bets. Two bruisers detached themselves from the walls and pushed toward the groaning Don Juan, aiming to get him out before a scandal started. They had already dealt with the first two failures who got their heads kicked in by management, but since they didn't dare cross a person clad from head to toe in armor and armed with clearly elite blades, it was her unlucky suitors who paid the price.
And yes, that was the third reason for Omnissia's dissatisfaction.
In a single evening, she had seen more freaks, monsters, drunks, and junkies who sincerely believed they were irresistible than she had seen in ten years on the streets of Warsaw. And that was saying a lot.
"Well, at least I tested the blade," the AI consoled herself, slightly rotating her hand. Analytical programs found a tiny error in its construction, causing an increased wear rate of 0.84 percent in that specific area.
As one might guess, over the years, Tony had not neglected the only surviving member of his family. Having gained almost complete freedom of action, access to impressive accounts, and a mountain of free time (no longer occupied by a study program due to the death of his central teachers), he had given free rein to his imagination and busy hands.
First, Tony focused on the material of Omnissia's main platform, replacing it with a gold-titanium alloy. He first built a high-pressure furnace with directional magnetic influence to densify the resulting alloy and give it the necessary structure. After almost a year of calculations and only three months of work, Tony produced a unique piece of equipment and a guardian that a tank shell wouldn't even dent—at most, it would scratch the paint. Next, having settled Omnissia's defense, he turned his attention to her combat potential. He chose not to build repulsors simply due to their inefficiency. Back when he was Iron Man, operating globally and primarily in open areas, he needed maneuverability even at the expense of firepower. Omnissia, however, operated within a single city, albeit a large one, and her opponents were mostly not ordinary humans, but cyborgs—often heavily armored ones. Instead, he integrated thermal blades that cut and melted through almost any modern personal armor like a hot knife through butter. He added a system of miniature smart missiles in the shoulders (one hundred units) and holsters in the thighs for extremely powerful pistols—one electromagnetic, the other essentially a sawn-off shotgun. Both had such recoil that a human would need to replace their arms with high-strength military chrome, metalize their skeleton, and replace their spine to use them; otherwise, these "babies" would shatter bones and displace spinal discs. Stark's creations in the field of weaponry were that lethal. Though he had stopped producing weapons for sale, the skills remained, and his knowledge had grown significantly since then. The rest of the upgrades were for Omnissia's maneuverability and speed. Magnets in the limbs, back, and chest allowed her to manipulate inertia like Spider-Man. Replaced wiring increased her speed, and the rebuilt internal hardware—this time consisting not of repurposed outdated military implants but of sophisticated mechanisms designed by Tony himself—made Omnissia one of the strongest combat units in the city, capable of taking on a squad of full-borgs alone. She only lacked area-of-effect attacks for complete satisfaction, but unfortunately, nothing more could fit into her platform.
"Finally," Omnissia thought with relief as the bar owner, a retired Solo, emerged from the back rooms and nodded to her.
Omnissia had come to this bar with a single purpose: to meet several fixers to place an order. Assembling a small army of mercenaries on short notice was an extremely difficult task, and finding someone who could turn that crowd into even a semblance of a full-fledged military formation was even harder. It required not just talent and brains, but a corresponding reputation in their circle. Omnissia had only one chance to accomplish the task: turn to the city's top fixers.
Entering the negotiation room, she stepped into an enclosed space lined with black glass that blocked sound, vibration, and heat. Inside was a circular sofa and several tables where three people of extremely... expressive appearance sat. A girl—or rather a child who didn't look a day over twelve—sat closest to the exit, happily munching on French fries. She had pink hair in two pigtails, squinted pink eyes, a manicure matching her eyes, and two scraps of cloth for clothes. The image (whatever she was trying to project) was only ruined by sharp teeth capable of vibrating at ultra-high frequencies to tear through metal, and a cold gaze that betrayed the "child's" true age. The second guest resembled a wet crow, dressed entirely in black with long greasy hair, pale skin, and eyes with black sclera and red irises. The third was a lean old man in an expensive suit, a bowler hat, with a cane, a monocle, and a magnificent curled mustache.
"Glad to see you all," she said, drawing the attention of some of the city's most influential people. Without stopping, she sat at the head of the table. "Our time is short, so let's get straight to the point. I need an army. Three hundred people, better yet five hundred. And not just street trash, but full-fledged dogs of war with chrome, years of combat experience, and good equipment."
Silence followed. All three processed what they had heard. In their careers, this was the first order of its kind. Their surprise was understandable; rarely does a new but clearly extremely wealthy client walk in and ask you to assemble several hundred elite gunmen. Fixers usually solve delicate tasks: stealing documents, finding evidence of infidelity, killing, rescuing, robbing, or conducting sabotage. Now, they were being asked to raise an army—and an elite one at that. It wasn't that it was impossible; the three bosses of the mercenary world present were giants of their trade, but they were used to operating small forces for surgical tasks. Yes, in theory, they could assemble a much larger crowd of armed people, even if of lower quality, but the last time they had to pull off something like this was during the Corporate Wars with the backing of a powerful corporation. Now, they were being asked to do the same using only their own resources. Anyone would be cautious. Imagine an unknown figure in incredibly advanced armor arrives, carves up several dozen average mercenaries with universal boredom during the wait, and has been seen in the company of someone close to the President's office. Uncomfortable questions and assumptions about the target of this army arise naturally, along with the question: will they be killed immediately after, or tortured first?
"Ahem," the oldest fixer recovered first. "I would like to know the details."
"We need to fight our way into a corporate facility and hold it for thirty to sixty minutes. However, due to the high level of defense, high coordination between squads will be required, with orders executed precisely to the minute. Otherwise, the entire operation goes south."
"Phew, that we can work with," the pink-haired girl exhaled in relief, resuming her brutal assault on the fries. "You had me scared for a second," she grumbled aside.
"Commanders are on us as well?" the long-haired man asked the most important question.
"Yes. The general plan of the operation is developed. Blueprints of the facility with its defense systems are available. The client is going with them." That last detail was crucial.
In the Solo world, the risk of a client "betrayal"—where a mercenary squad is used as a bargaining chip—is part of the professional risk. For example, six months ago, an information dealer, pursuing his own personal goals, hired a promising five-man squad to hijack a SovOil convoy. The task promised to be easy: two trucks, a standard amount of sub-par security consisting of ten soldiers. Five chrome-heavy mercs attacking from ambush should have been more than enough. Initially, it was; the guards were killed, the cargo was seized and delivered. But before they could even exhale, an entire squad of full-borgs was sent for them. Borgs! As it turned out, another squad had been waiting at the transfer point to ambush those very borgs, killing the hired Solos in the process. Only one survived, who revealed they had unknowingly stolen a highly valuable next-generation reactor passing through Poland to the East. Thus, having the client right there during the job automatically reassured the mercenaries, turning even the craziest missions into transparent ones. And when you know exactly what you're dealing with, especially in such a murky environment as the shadow world of metropolises, you can have at least some confidence and hope of returning alive.
Negotiations heated up. The three fixers discussed candidates for the lead role in the future "mixed bag," discarding one candidate after another, but generally, they saw no problem in fulfilling the task. Especially once they were shown a briefcase with three million in cash and promised twice as much for each upon completion of the operation.
Lucy lay on her bed, curled in a ball. Yesterday another one of her friends died, and she had taken a serious hit herself. Another excursion into the Old Net, more risks for data and technology, bought with another's life. Everything was supposed to be fine. It had to be! They had been going past the Blackwall for over a year. They had learned a lot, memorized the habits of wild AIs, and learned their hunting methods. The price was ten lives, traded for "priceless" experience.
Lucy gritted her teeth in helpless hatred.
"Priceless experience," "acceptable losses," "all for the good of the corporation," "they were doing their duty." She had heard this nonsense so often she felt sick every time the handlers opened their foul mouths. It wasn't them risking their lives entering the net! It wasn't them losing comrades time and time again! It wasn't them being sent against their will to the slaughter, trading THEIR lives for technology they would never have access to! In the end, it wasn't them watching the bodies of friends who died in agony being incinerated!!!
Lucy squeezed her eyes shut.
The last dive into the net had been difficult. The wild AIs were hunting in pairs, and that was how they got caught. While one lured them into its trap, the second wove a new web, which they fell into. Yesterday, out of fifteen who successfully passed the training program, five were alive. Today, only four. And it could have been three, as Lucy had also fallen into the trap, managing to escape only at the last moment. She had already felt the malicious program invading her mind, searching, assessing, preparing to forcibly tear out her soul and devour it. But she got out. She managed to run, though she left pieces of herself on the other side.
"I can't do this anymore," Lucy realized with crystalline clarity. She couldn't go past the Blackwall again. She couldn't gather more data and hide from wild AIs. She just couldn't.
the past year had been a continuous torture for little Kusanagi. Rare flickers of fun among friends increasingly resembled the fun of the terminally ill joking about each other's diseases, because they had nothing else left. Despair, coupled with the clear realization of their impending deaths, had settled in the children's minds—something that should never have happened to them. Lucy missed her family, her home, the old days, and even something as simple as the sky! She was tired. Tired, burned out, and she almost didn't care anymore. If before she had held on solely through stubbornness, now she moved more by inertia, as she had no other choice. Every day they woke up early, ate tasteless but nutritious sludge in the common dining hall, and went to their stations where they remained all day, scouring the Old Net for new technologies or valuable data. Then they exited, ate another portion of sludge, and went to sleep. Such a schedule was horribly exhausting mentally, especially since in digital reality, time flows faster due to the equipment they were given. Not significantly, but subjectively, they spent over a day in the net per session. Even a flexible child's psyche couldn't withstand this, and when added to the regular deaths of friends...
It was especially hard for Lucy. Not just because of her father constantly appearing on the periphery, his mere presence a reminder of how things used to be, but also because of the eternal trips to the lab. She gave samples every month—sometimes especially painful ones, like spinal fluid. Thus, even the little free time she could spend with friends was taken away, forcing her instead to lie on a medical couch and listen to doctors mutter about her development, blood markers, and the estimated time when they could begin harvesting her eggs.
Ryu Kusanagi was pleased with his daughter's results, planning to use her samples to breed an heir, or perhaps several. Fortunately, now that he had climbed so high, access to advanced genetic equipment had become much easier, along with the best scientists to fulfill his whims. But Lucy herself did not satisfy him. Japan maintained extremely patriarchal views to this day, which had only worsened since the turn of the century due to terrible overpopulation and unemployment. He needed a son, as Ryu, raised in this environment, did not see a daughter as an heir. But besides questionable traditions, there was another, far more pragmatic reason: Ryu's position had changed. When he ordered the procedures for his daughter, he was a promising but overall unremarkable head of a fledgling project. Now, having headed Arasaka's entire European branch, he had opportunities simply incomparable to his former ones. So why settle for the first "test" specimen when he could have a better model, designed not by basement shadow-rippers in crude conditions, but by full-fledged scientists using equipment worth hundreds of millions of eurodollars? It was an overtly monstrous, inhumane logic of a natural sociopath, but one not devoid of the grain of common sense aimed at career growth. It was precisely because of his daughter's participation in the project—and her subsequent use in extracting valuable knowledge that gave Arasaka a strategic advantage on the world stage—that Ryu was able not only to take his place but to keep it. Every time Lucy brought back trophies from behind the Blackwall, the name Kusanagi appeared in the reports. Every time the main office checked loss statistics, they saw the remaining project participants, among whom was Kusanagi. Every time Arasaka's financial departments and scientific luminaries opened new labs to study the obtained technologies, they saw exactly who had retrieved them. And often, very often, it was Lucy. It wouldn't be an understatement to say that half of all the project's achievements were her credit. She was smarter, faster, sharper—simply better than all the other children, succeeding where the others could not. Moreover, she protected her friends, detected traps and ambushes, and almost sensed the approach of new AIs, leading her squad away from their hungry gaze. Had Lucy not been in the project when the necessary protocols for working behind the Blackwall didn't yet exist, the current team might have been entirely wiped out six months ago. But with her, the speed of their adaptation and the development of strategies and methods for acting in a digital reality full of demons appeared with surprising speed, rarely requiring adjustment. Lucy, without even realizing it, had become the unspoken leader of their small group, completely oblivious to her vital role. She simply did what she could, contributing to their collective survival, just like all the other children caught in this terrible trap. But just because she didn't notice it didn't mean that such a burden didn't take its toll. Being a modified human and a genius trained from early childhood, she could do much more than the others, working for nearly three people. Even for an enhanced body, this was excessive. It was no surprise that she eventually broke down, simply unable to cope with such extensive loads. If anything, it was surprising she hadn't snapped sooner.
And so, while Lucy was stewing in her own thoughts, she was drawn by a loud voice ringing out from the general announcement system. A familiar voice.
"Testing, one-two. Can you hear me? Of course you can," a cheerful, carefree tone, with charming notes and the unmistakable timbre of a self-confident jerk, immediately pulled the girl from her heavy thoughts, bringing a spark back to her eyes. "It's a bit gloomy in here, ladies and gentlemen of the corporation. We need to fix that!" And as the last sound of the speech faded, the entire base was shaken by a massive explosion, the echoes of which reached even them. "Ready or not, here I come!"
---
100 power stones= 1 Bonus Chapte
advanced chapters available on{P@treon/Anna_N1}