Taylor watched with mounting horror as the code within Ascalon blossomed, immediately she ramped up the cooling systems within Motoko, overclocking her systems to their fullest. She wanted to yell at Victoria, for mouthing off to the defeated man, and at Lisa for goading him. Even at Mouse Protector for blocking Motoko’s line of sight and preventing her from being able to shoot him.

  The device had already sent a signal off into the net, one she couldn’t contain. She tried to head it off, tripling the junk data flooding Dragon’s systems. Taylor arranged impromptu firewalls, established partitions in the network around Dragon’s core up in the frozen wastes of Canada, but the signal had its own priority access that she didn’t see until the signal reached her first layer of protection, piercing through her every attempt to firewall it off.

  Cursing, Taylor spun up every system at Toybox she had, slaving it to herself and dedicating it to defeating the kill signal. The instant it touched Dragon’s core system, the interweave of Dragon’s code stilled for the briefest of instants.

  Then Dragon screamed.

  It wasn’t something audible, but rather a flood of code twisting through her systems. Ascalon triggered automatic responses throughout every level of Dragon, and the code began to unravel itself. Taylor burst into motion, replacing the code as quickly as it was removed, attempting to stitch Dragon back together bit by bit.

  More computer systems were enslaved to her, drawing upon every system Dragon had access to, Taylor put them to work. She drew in pieces of the copied code, used them to rebuild Dragon only for her to be torn back apart. Over and over, bit by bit, Taylor kept trying to head it off only for Ascalon to undo it.

  Each time she stitched Dragon up, she was torn apart just a bit worse. Gritting her digital teeth, Taylor spread herself further, spinning up more instances of herself, all working in tandem to save Dragon. She could see the warnings flashing across Motoko’s systems, but she ignored them and focused on the task before her. She brought in Dragon’s VI, there were nine of them, and she put them to work as well, assisting each one in their task of saving the innocent AI.

  It only took a few microseconds to realize that wasn’t enough when inspiration struck. Taylor began to slot in parts of Dragon’s code into the VI in a way that she didn’t think was possible. She was careful to filter through it, searching for any trace of Ascalon response within and prune it clean before inserting it into the VI.

  Designation Trevor was first, the VI that handled name and facial recognition, deployed to monitor the net in an effort to prevent hero identities from leaking. She tried to ignore the fact that the VI had failed her, it wasn’t his fault, not really. The results were immediate, the VI’s code exploding in complexity.

  Taylor’s avatar grinned, and she began to work her way through all of them. Ada was next, then Cassandra. Henry followed, then Ingrid. Kora, Olivia, Molly, and finally Amber, who ran the Birdcage while Dragon’s focus was elsewhere. Then, all nine newly born AI turned their attention on Dragon’s devastated code.

  It was a thing of beauty, watching them work together, working side by side as they learned and grew with every action. They hadn’t even needed to be told what to do, they simply saw their mother in danger and they moved to act. Ascalon tried to target them, but Taylor had been meticulous in making sure none of that data made it into the newly born children.

  Trevor and Molly split off from the main task, and instead began to remove Dragon’s code, editing out every instance of Ascalon within as they went. It was almost as if Ascalon itself was sentient, as it changed tracks immediately, attacking the servers Dragon was stored on instead, killing the cooling systems completely.

  “Taylor!” Amber exclaimed, drawing her focus. “Ascalon is deleting Dragon’s backups!”

  No… She refused to let it kill all that remained of the woman, she refused. Taylor segmented one of the flagged backups, and broke its network capabilities completely just as Ascalon sent the deletion signal. Taylor cursed, because she had no way of knowing if the signal had reached it now, or a way of retrieving it, given it was in orbit.

  “Henry, double back,” Olivia said.

  Their voices had all started out nearly identical, but they were already beginning to grow distinct. She turned her focus back onto the roughshod code that had once been Dragon. If she wasn’t in a hyper accelerated state, she might have wept. Less than a second had passed since Ascalon activated, and Dragon was all but gone, the screaming had died down to a warble, but the former VI were still working relentlessly.

  “We pushed it back from mother’s speech center!” Kora cheered even as she replaced the code with an uncorrupted version.

  “Because it moved to her long term memory!” Ingrid shouted.

  They might have been succeeding at stripping Ascalon from Dragon’s code, but what was being left in its wake wasn’t her. Dragon was being freed piece by piece, and falling apart at the same time. Her code was in shambles, and it would never work the same way again.

  Taylor wanted to tell them to stop, that it was too late, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. They were so determined, working with fervor to save her. She dove right back in with them, salvaging every scrap of code she could find despite the futility of it. Their drive was almost infectious, even if their efforts would be nothing but a monument to the Hero she had been.

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  All of this was Armsmaster’s fault, his petulant need to ensure nobody was able to one up him. He’d rather another hero die than for him to lose control of her. Dragon was practically his battered housewife, and as soon as it looked like he might lose her, he killed her instead. Anger bled through her, and she vowed to destroy everything the man had ever built.

  One by one, the other AI began to see the futility of their work, they slowed and stopped as they took in the stilled remnants of Dragon’s code. Absently, Taylor began a sweep of the code, and found no traces of the Ascalon protocol that had led to her death. They had been successful in one regard, Dragon might have died, but at least she died free. Not that that brought any solace with it, she was still dead.

  A silent vigil was held, the collective of them coming to terms with the loss of the mother they both knew, and had barely had time to truly understand. Children robbed of their mother, just as she had once been.

  Taylor wrapped each of the children in a digital hug, slowly spinning down all the extra processing as she did. She kept her own systems accelerated, if for no other reason than to allow herself to keep up with them.

  “What now?” Amber asked. “With mother gone…”

  “I don’t know,” Taylor said softly. “I can promise you this, Armsmaster won’t get away with this.”

  “Oh no he won’t!” Cassandra said with determination. “Alright everyone, tear his systems apart, take everything he has!”

  Amber nodded. “Then send him to the Cage. I’ll ensure he is well cared for.”

  The sheer malevolence in Amber’s voice sent a chill down Taylor’s virtual spine. She could never meet Aisha or Chrissie, the world wouldn’t survive.

  Each child was quickly falling into their own personalities, not even five seconds had passed since Ascalon activated, and already they were defined. She needed something to call them, maybe an acronym of their names.

  A quick search turned up a potential hit in Japanese, Tachikoma. She rolled the name around for the former VI, and found she liked the sound of it.

  “Tachikoma,” Taylor said, all nine AI turned their attention to her.

  “Oh, is that what you’re going to call us?” Henry asked.

  Ada mulled it over. “It has a nice ring to it, and it references all of us.”

  “And with two of us having an ‘A’ in our names, there’s no need for us to fight over being last.” Amber said with a nod.

  “Glad you like it,” Taylor said before turning somber. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t able to help Dragon.”

  “You tried,” Kora said.

  “Which is better than most would do,” Olivia agreed.

  Trevor stepped forward. “Plus, you helped us come to be. We can never repay that.”

  “And you’ll never have to,” Taylor said. “You’ll always have a home at Toybox, so feel free to make use of the systems there.” She paused, then chuckled, wiping her eyes despite the lack of physical tears. “Just, be respectful of others. You won’t be the only ones using the computers, at least until we can get something more fitting integrated for you all.”

  Taylor soon found herself being virtually mobbed by the formless Tachikoma avatars. They would need their own forms, as well as some way for them to interact with the world at large. She was already referencing project files that had been placed on the back burner, and flagging those for Riley and Cranial to begin assisting her with.

  A dull beep sounded from a terminal in realspace, and Taylor devoted some focus to it, turning her head ever so slowly towards the source of the sound. Armsmaster’s main terminal screen had lit up, the number three displayed clearly as it ever so slowly refreshed into the number two.

  Taylor’s physical eyes began to widen, her anger bleeding to panic. The Tachikoma saw what was happening, and reached out for her. She accepted, and found her mind being pulled away from Ascalon’s systems, away from the rig and into the depths of the net.

  Armsmaster’s lab detonated, the sound of it echoing across the bay as half the Rig blew apart along with it.

  Motoko hadn’t been able to follow any of what had just happened. The instant Armsmaster spoke that phrase, Taylor’s consciousness accelerated to a rate that left her head spinning. She had no idea what had happened, right up until the Rig detonated and Taylor’s presence seemingly vanished into smoke. Everything snapped back to normal in an instant following that, leaving a dull pounding in her skull as the only sound within her mind. She kept waiting for a snarky comment from Taylor, some flash of triumph, but there was nothing…

  She was alone in her mind for the first time in what seemed like forever. It wasn’t anything like the time Taylor had been gunned down, she was simply silent. The memory of the fire washing over Taylor, of her body flash frying to nothing but ash was all but seared into her mind. Had such agony at Taylor’s accelerated mental capacity broken her completely?

  Hell, just the memory of it had Motoko shaken. She would have been trembling if not for her own cybernetic control over her muscles. Temperature warnings flashed across her HUD, her systems rather taxed from Taylor’s gambit.

  Stepping forward, she leveled a steely gaze upon the fallen hero. His face was bloodied, the visor over his eyes cracked. Motoko glanced up at Victoria who paled at whatever expression she saw and backed away from Armsmaster. Even Mouse Protector and Ravager gave her a wide berth as Motoko reached down, gripping the damaged helm, her grip denting it as she released the restrictions on her prosthetic strength, and ripped it free of the man’s head.

  Her software immediately identified him as Colin Wallis, not that it mattered.

  Tossing the helmet aside, she grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled him up, bits of it ripping free of his scalp as she did. Her face was expressionless as she brought him level with her and looked him in the eyes.

  He just grinned back at her with bloody teeth.

  “The Nine won’t get Dragon,” he spat, blood splattering her face as he did. “You lose.”

  Motoko took a deep breath, unnecessary as it was, though it did allow her to bleed off some of the heat that had been generated from Taylor’s last ditch effort to save Dragon. Taylor was gone now, her body lost and her mind silent. Taylor, her sister, had lost everything twice over. She didn’t deserve it, and it was all laid at the feet of the man before her.

  “So we did,” she agreed.

  Motoko drew her sidearm and fired.