CyberGene [Volume 1 Complete! 500k+ Words] [LitRPG w/ cybernetics + mutations]

Diamante and Topaz on Halloween…

"So where was I?" Diamante rubbed his chin.

"You compared Ripley to the R0N1N. Talked about his Arachnodyne and whatnot… you know, come to think of it… both of them certainly know how to use their body. Mirage told me how Ripley got his claw to vibrate and I said that the R0N1N can do something really similar when he-"

"Shut the fuck up Topaz." Diamnante's eyes hightened in their red glow.

Topaz sipped from a straw, feigning innocence. "So you're saying he'll win?"

"It's complicated, but I think I can tell who will come out on top." Diamante tapped his eyes. "Got one hell of an Analyze on me."

"Gonna spoil it for me?" Topaz poked Diamante's steel cheek.

"Not yet, let me finish speaking." Diamante grumbled. "If I'm comparing Ripley to the R0N1N, then I'll also compare Diana to Missy."

"Missy?" Topaz was surprised by that. "Don't say that, you know I have mommy issues."

Diamante chose to ignore that. "They're both trained and disciplined, and although you haven't seen Missy much in action… she's a threat unlike any other. A woman capable of understanding the situation ahead of her and reacting accordingly, not the greatest schemer, but in terms of endurance and landing a killing blow — she never loses. And Diana is the same."

"Because she can… just keep going?"

"Correct, as long there's a source of Warp Energy, she can take it and fuel her Mutations. Her healing, most vitally. You got to chop her to bits, and keep those bits away from her if I'm guessing how her Mutations work correctly. She's not impossible to break, but she'll more likely break her enemies against her before that happens."

"Yeah, she kinda let herself be ripped into pieces back in the meat lab… but… well ate Soul Killer to recover herself." Topaz's eyes lightened up.

"She did what?"

"Oh, Diana's like… into some really freaky shit." Topaz mumbled. "I think she's got a thing for Ripley lowkey, seems like the type to be into bad boys."

"Bad boy, Ripley?" Diamante chuckled. "The guy's an innocent pup."

December 19th
4:06 PM

Dreadwire

So this is what it came to… very well. I'd dismantle Diana, but she was too valuable an asset for me to kill right now. Even if I took her SIM, there was no telling if her Mutations would express within me the same way. And she had Starlight within her, not including that I didn't want to incur the ire of her father.

Especially… because I had a theory from all that I'd seen in the Bladefather's memories. A secret about her that even she didn't know yet.

My left arm stopped at the elbow; gone was my claw with its whip blade and Necrotium edge. Diana lifted that same blade into the air, her scarlet and silver gaze studying it momentarily alongside the spool of Livewire that had fallen from my destroyed limb. It ribboned around her blade, shifting in width to resemble a golden cloud that plumed with her rage. I'd need to use Shardweave's Meta-Manipulation to counter that.

Livewire, a superconductive metallic wire, was the best medium for her to channel telekinesis through. It was second only to the Dianium her blade was coated in. But she was rough with that aspect of her power, she wouldn't ever wean out those Material's true applications. I, however, had all the knowledge necessary on her powers to subdue her, and my only criterion to win was to escape.

Once I was away, she'd dwell on her rage and come to her senses soon enough. But I needed Starlight away from her first. Fishhook refused to respond to her, indicating she was impaired in some way — likely overworked if she attempted to revive Anabelle Grazhe.

As for my escape, leaving this room was a double-edged blade. Here, I had scrap to discharge myself from her control, my spine modified to redirect electrical currents away from my nervous system… but if I left, I'd be forced to contain all that charge within myself. She proved herself capable of manipulating body-weights above mine with Steel Vanguard — if I was caught, it would be me trapped on a web of my own Livewire. The quickest way for me to escape would still take me a few minutes, through the cleaved ravine formed above the Bladefather's cell.

But I reminded myself that even Hypermind wouldn't outspeed lightning.

I was lower on Energy than she was, but she exhausted it quicker and more potently — to win, I had to force her to burn herself out.

All those thoughts weaved through my head by the time she'd decided to throw the Necrotium blade down upon me. I caught it with a twisting coil of the Tetradyne — already dismantling and ingesting its Necrotium bits. "Is throwing things all you know, Silvereye?"

She descended down upon me like an executioner born of energy itself, her blade rattling into the Vanguard blade as I used its internal circuitry to manifest a field of electromagnetic telekinesis for my own protection — it was a genius piece of Shardware I was eager to dissect. But I was nowhere near Bladedaughter's skill, and its output paled in comparison to Diana's.

She deflected it away, then my next two probing strikes from the Tetradyne, before her blade twisted and sparked against my neck. Hypermind Prime activated, her form suspended in the air like a floating puppet, and it let my steel fist land on her mask. The Shriekstone cores detonated to create a wave of force that had skin and bone flattening as she flew back.

And I didn't give her a moment of respite. The Tetradyne grabbed her mid-air by the ankle, absorbing some charge out of her while throwing her into a wall. She landed softly, the air itself seeming to slow her down, but by then I'd shot out with my SMG. The bullets sparked against her suit, failing to penetrate, but the nanites within the bullets fused my mind to it.

Databreak deactivated the D-Disks across it's surface, the blue aura around her drunken by the shards of metal around her. She put that wasted energy to use, a legion of shrapnel spraying my way before the humming D-Drones faded from invisibility to react with the newest Implant I retrieved.

There was only one BUG I ordered Twilight to retrieve, Laura Kipper's — the Lieutenant's drone defence specialist who was beheaded by The Bladefather. It's Network paired well with my Preservation Matrix, these specialized drones reflexively apparating an expulsion of magnetic force to keep those blades away from me.

But they would do nothing against a bullet. Her Magna Gresault shot one of it's deadly burst-impact rounds towards me, aimed between my eyes. Hypermind raised the Tetradyne limb wielding Shadow Son's blade, I couldn't figure it's Bioware mechanisms anyway — the limb shattered to pieces as lightning sparked through the bullet and into the broken shards which immediately surged upon me.

That was new.

I glitched back into Kipper's BUG, the fireflies consuming the piercing shards as Diana sliced forward with her blade. A gleaming edge of silver Dianium arced out, my drones briefly destabilizing the liquid metal before Diana sparked life back into them with a shot from her Braceshocker. It formed tiny needles, shooting back into the fireflies shielding me while she simultaneously shot out from her two electric pistols.

I absorbed their voltage with my right arm, the Tetradyne conducting it elsewhere while my firefly-like drones were pierced by the sheer strength of the Dianium's overwhelming voltage. She grinned through bloody teeth, her momentum exploding towards me with unnatural force as she picked up the fallen fragments of the Shadow Son blade.

It obeyed her — likely reacting with her Soul Resonance Mutation. A wild set of sprawling tendrils of black shot out from it that joined the silver needles into piercing me, but I'd grown far too elusive for her brutish methods. Spinning me up in the air, the Tetradyne swept the Vanguard blade and deflected those needles.

Then her suit flared blue, arcs of lightning wrapping around her form as she exploded up to meet me. Hypermind Prime tilted me under her blade, but within the air she churned it back down as her body burned like a star of blue light. The blade snapped into the Vanguard blade like lightning, her mad fury coursing through me like venom as the limb bulged and burst into shrapnel.

She had broken through the Datacleaver I put on her suit… burned right through it. With hasted sense of time, I weaved through the next few strikes of her blade, my feet sliding across the scrap-strewn floor as frictionless gliding kept me inches off the deadly edge I designed, my Tetradyne meanwhile focused on reparation of it's two shattered limbs through Retrofit, while also having to discharge each jolt she sent into me.

Focusing on so many tasks at once, I was overwhelmed and she nicked my ribs sending black blood leaking through my armor, sealing the wound instantly. Diana wasn't the only one able to heal now — even if my methods were more complicated than hers. I was still unsure of what nature my new bond to my nanites had taken. They flowed as a part of me, my very blood cells now an ecosystem in which they thrived and amalgamated with.

She was an onslaught of brute force intertwined with skill, each strike more than capable of decimating my Shardware if I wasn't careful. But this was in part, a perfect time for intellectual exercise… like an ocean, our energies were stirring in reaction to one another even without Starlight — and I had every intention on winning. Looking upon her, I reached into Warpweb and the Thought Multiplier, unravelling her very being into an algorithm.

Her soul worked on the thoughts of others, both a strength — and a weakness.

Thought Multiplier: 'Failure' X-

-'Silvereye'
Dreadwire was… annoying. A streak of darkness with four limbs that dangled with threat and promise of a painful dissection if I wasn't careful. But it was so difficult to not want to bash his skull in. Every trick up his sleeve right now had to be planned, constructed, and tested for it to be so effective at stalling me.

And stall was exactly his intentions. He knew as well as I that my biggest weakness was burning myself out. I thrust forward with blade-in-hand and Dreadwire vanished with a speed I'd thought only the R0N1N could possess. Every sweep of my silver blade was a blur, but Dreadwire wasn't even that. It was like he was vanishing — and I was even capable of sensing his electrical commands to his limbs. Combined with his sheer mobility, I struggled to even get a glancing blow on him, while any attacks he did to me were careful prods that would injure me… but not fatally wound me.

I had Starlight on me. It wasn't my intention to take her hostage, but she'd tired out within my skull. And if I were to guess, behind every movement of this bastard was a plan to get her back — only then, he could begin his assault.

So I couldn't let him figure out how to extract her, but every twist of my blade only grazed him and the eruptions of lightning upon him quickly vanished elsewhere. I had to get him out of this room, even if it meant pushing him closer to escape. At least there, I could take control of his Shardware. But right now, he fought and dodged like a spider, those limbs vaulting him all around me and reacting to my attacks as though he knew exactly what I would do.

And then, he spoke. "Are you really intending to kill me? I'm your ally Diana, don't repeat the same mistake you made with Yvette."

My breath hitched, rage stroking at my fingertips as my muscles twisted and hardened beneath my suit. His body began to flutter with light. The Glitch Cloak, if I remembered correctly. In a dash, I saw five of him superimposed upon one another, each of them having duplicated Arachnodynes descending upon me.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

I screamed and surged a spherical explosion of sparks, keeping him away but failing to stop two tips from harpooning towards me. In a split-second, I sent a shock into them and grabbed a mental hold of their Livewire, sending both careening around me as I grabbed onto one.

Then I tugged, hauling his ass off the ground and into-

With a swift kick from his legs, a sonic burst flattened the air and he shot behind me. The Livewire I held snapped my arm back — but before I could turn around, he flashed like a shadow of an arrow already shot. My gaze was unable to track him but I felt the Livewire from the Arachne tip I held snagging around my arm and throat. I sent a furious blaze of jolts down the golden thread, but it reacted by contracting suddenly, taking my footing off as the Livewire now went taut elsewhere on my body.

"You're nothing but an echo of the demands of others. Enslaved. Thrashing out in anger because you know how little you can truly do." His voice came from all around me, his form glitching in and out as more Livewire snapped all around my body and tangled me.

He weaved his web around me, claws shooting and jabbing and ejecting each second to precisely grasp my right arm before the other three Arachnodyne limbs caged me, their twisted threads wrapping around my arm as he spoke. "Silvereye… what is she but an advertisement? Are you really helping anyone by working in a system that has ruined us?"

"Like you have any right to say that to me! You're a thief, a murderer, a damn weapons manufacturer!" I heaved, staring at my right arm holding my blade as a thick bandage of golden threads held it in the air, all of them leading to Arachnodyne tips lodged into the scrap around us. He stood tall and imposing opposite me, an SMG pointed at my face.

His voice came out bitterly towards me, I could feel his disappointment leaking into me through the wires ensnaring me. "Ever tangled, just like your own conviction. Diana Jones, Diana Ulrich, Lilian Rose, Silvereye — you're always reliant on someone else to tell you what you have to be. You think yourself strong for upholding causes like… justice — that which we only believe to be right because others have said so. There is little in this life you have ever decided for yourself — and this is no different."

"Cut the bullshit!" I pulled, but sending any electricity only tightened his hold on my arm, beginning to squeeze and dent my suit. "It's not wrong for me to want to give some bastards some justice! That's what I want!"

"I know… Diana. Deep down, the only thing you truly care about is hurting others. Those who've wronged you — I understand that." Dreadwire's voice chilled. "You have nothing to protect — only things to destroy."

Livewire snapped as I electricity through it. Not the ones holding my arm, but from the Arachnodyne tip I held in my left. Electricity surged into that limb, Thermokinetic Catalyst bursting through me as I threw the-

It's cover flicked open, and in that blink I saw what was within it.

Dryder's Sonic Sickle. He repaired it, when? The only time could have been… when he called that drone swarm-

I couldn't formulate another thought when it burst out inches from me, a thick shockwave cracking into me and throwing me back onto the ground as overwhelming pain churned like an inferno from my right elbow… or what was left of it.

My right forearm, still holding a blade, lay severed and suspended in a web of Livewire in the air. They untangled and pulled my limb towards Dreadwire, his voice cold as he lifted my torn right forearm and… black blood leaked through cracks in his armor. "To others, to even yourself… you only ever burn away. And yet, you lie and call yourself a hero for the world to believe it. Deep down, you're a failure of the very values you seek to uphold."

The black blood submerged over my arm, his mask looking down on me as flesh tore and melted into silver liquid before my very eyes… metallic bones peeking out from the dissolving flesh. "Forgive me, that I have something I seek to fight for. Problems I intend to fix. I will do what's necessary — and you cannot stop that."

I tried to stand, but the pain blossomed through me like rose thorns, and even my soul began to quiver as his words… daggered into me. And in their wounds, they began bleeding red, a red that curled into my head like an aching inferno, submerging it with all the twisted thoughts I'd had of him until it threatened to ignite explosively.

"Bastard." I coughed, staggering up to my feet as I lifted my Gresault up. "You don't protect shit! If you did… you wouldn't have sacrificed Quartz… you know… Topaz is dead!"

He stayed quiet before his voice took a surprising tremble. "What?"

I'd already shot a hollow-burst round, but he dodged despite his shock, lightning burned as I resorted to tackling him by the waist. My Energy burned through every cell. My bones twisted, muscles tightened, and skin boiled as my own mask came down and even my face began to melt as it reforged. Eyes sharpened, nose sniffed out intent, I could taste the static in the air.

A storm erupted with me as its epicentre, the torn room becoming a vortex as I screamed.

Dreadwire Vs. Silvereye

Thunder and Webs clashed upon one another, silver light arcing in the mercury of Silvereye's hair as she slipped around the exacting golden spears lunging from Dreadwire's back. Their battle flowed and burned in ebbs and infernoes of light and darkness, blood spraying into the air — black and crimson — as steel sparked from every contact of their arsenal.

Three guns floated around Silvereye in orbit, her remaining arm furiously grabbing and unloading their ammunition on Dreadwire as he weaved around each shot. The Glitch Cloak transformed him into a wraith that seemed to crack and splinter across reality itself, just as Silvereye's was wrapped with blood that stitched into her suit.

Every blow was a clash of their Energies. Water against Fire, Spark against Shadows.

Lightning against Thread.

Dreadwire, needing to recover himself, devoured two of his Modulated BUGs, Hammer and Wield. Silvereye, likewise, reached out to him with claws of silver, the grazing of her attack on his suit flaking his Energy for her own. She unleashed a tempest of light and heat upon him, one Tetradyne limb shattering as a different limb dug into her thigh before snapping up to her throat.

It cut through. Her blood coughed into the air, before metal and blood plugged the hole as her drowned lungs spiked with a pain that only fuelled her assault. Her claws dug deeper, cracking through his suit and gushing out shadows from the wound. That bloody darkness coiled around her fingers like muscle, hardening like fluid steel and preventing her from gouging deeper.

So she pushed. Her strength shook the room as force exploded from in between them, her bones breaking as Dreadwire smacked out of the doorway and into the hallway leading to his escape — he recovered mid-air, turning his body as Livewire hooks dragged him further down the path. Now, he had no way to discharge her lightning.

Silvereye was just as quick, her thunder-infused suit launching her as a streak of silver and sapphire, but when she appeared before him — she was a ghoulish figure of blood and steel. Her suit growing with vein-like pulsing of crimson within its structure.

Dreadwire had no time to study the phenomena, calling upon the trap he'd placed outside for her. Two drones, as big as his Armory, unveiled themselves and began gatling at Silvereye. Embers flaked off her suit, heat she quenched as the air misted around her, ever feeding into her burning resolve.

An explosive storm rattled the hallway, Dreadwire rolling out at the end of it —- his suit began smoking from fried circuitry as he dodged the two flattened drones Silvereye threw at him. Then he lifted up. Silvereye grabbed a hold of him with her mind, clutching him tight — but he fought to erase her Energy's signature, his own Gold exhausting as another BUG cracked away into dust to erase her grasp. The Burn Module now nothing but ash.

He lifted his Tetradyne limbs just soon enough to stop a Burst-Impact round from beheading him, one of his four limbs scrapping into shrapnel that turned against him. The shards danced around his elusive form, scraping him down as Silvereye launched another series of shots at him with her Shandian revolver.

Every volt tightened her control over him, his limbs faulting in control unless he fought off her domain by paying it's taxation with his own strength. A tidal wave of Energy exhausted him at every turn as he prepared the weapon on his right wrist. A Dreadshot, locked on and angled to just miss her brain.

Black blood twined from his wounds to around his wrist, feeding into the weapon as it poured the resource earned from Diana's dissolved arm. A silver-liquid charged under his Gold Energy, spinning violently while no larger than a pupil. And then it shot for Silvereye's.

The streak of silver lanced with a streak of golden flame, silent in except for the blood and bone that burst through Silvereye's skull as her mask was pierced through and her left eye rendered raw meat. She didn't falter, for lightning set on course did not care for what lay ahead of it — it merely coursed through and conducted it's longing even while knowing the destruction it would cause.

Her punch shattered Dreadwire's mask, tendrils of black all that kept from his ego switching over as it stitched through the fractures. His body ached, held together by the miasmic nanoswarm he'd only just upgraded into this new, unfamiliar form. Ribs were broken, his liver dysfunctional, microfractures and dented endoskeletal structure all remained glued together by the darkness within.

"I know Soul Killer's location." He seethed through his broken mask, voice no longer disguised.

"I'll read it from your memories, then." Silvereye shot again, Dreadwire's second Dreadshot meeting her burst-impact round and piercing through the deadly bullet — and its Magna Gresault handcannon which ruptured into scrap. Her left hand sizzled with a hole, bones remaining in alignment by pure electromagnetic force.

Dreadwire's feet slipped backwards as she bolted for him once more. he clung to the roof, walls and floor as he maneuvered, Silvereye's lightning curving to chase him, charging life into the hallway as lights flickered on-and-off - their shadows dancing like dark flame as each strike between them flowed with the breadth of their emotions.

To Dreadwire, this was Ripley's need. To escape, to gain access to resources that would otherwise cost him tens of millions to acquire. All to save his mother, to build her a future worth living in.

But to Silvereye, this was another damn betrayal. Just like Kendrick Rorsche, just like Indra Harmony, just like the Lieutenant… like her damn fathers! And it went further than any of them, because Dreadwire — Ripley Donovick — carried the other half of her powers, her secrets, her very ambition.

He was the one who'd brought her back from the dead, who told her to embrace Silvereye as an identity — and now the bastard spat on everything they'd built. The bastard spied on her, injected him with those same vile nanites that sickened his blood, that defiled her own flesh. Flesh that she willingly gave to him.

She'd trusted him with her body, mind… and even her soul. And now he worked with The Uncaged, with The Dogwhistler, killing her Lieutenant and plotting to fucking steal the very objects that set into motion this day of bloodshed. How much more had he been involved in? How much more would he conspire? How much more would he break her trust?

This perversion of her feelings towards him, the very fact that she once saw interest in him now tormented her soul into igniting. Even if it meant tearing her body apart.

Their battle saw them land where sunlight beamed through, the fracture through which the Bladefather had escaped laying just above their heads. Dreadwire's golden threads grasped for it, but Silvereye arced blue energy into one Tetradyne limb, dragging him down with it.

Dreadwire severed it off, the two remaining limbs would suffice — and Twilight had prepared a drone just above the surface big enough to fly him to safety and conceal him. But Silvereye caught the fallen Tetradyne limb, charging it with her will, and shot it out.

This one wasn't trapped, and it tore through another sprawling tendril of steel, leaving Dreadwire with just his claw and the one tentacle left. The static within him, however, was a leaden chain that sent him crashing to the ground, Silvereye's foot rising to shatter into his right knee as the leg fragmented.

She grabbed its sharp shards, constructing a blade from it into her hands that she raised up like the reaper's scythe — in its reflection lay the cracked gold of Dreadwire's mask. But before she could plunge it, the last remaining Tetradyne impaled through her stomach with a katana that ejected from her backside with blue flickers of flame.

Dreadwire had figured out how to activate the Bioware… it merely needed Diana's blood and his own nanites. Both were in his grasp to activate the Azure Phoenix blade and engulf Diana in a sapphire blaze.

But he didn't. Starlight was enough of a reason, so as Silvereye tore a guttural scream and forced herself through the impalement to drive the blade down at him, he activated a surge of Warpcode that drowned the D-Disks he'd installed on her suit with his control.

Her left arm, and both legs twisted and fractured as the electromagnetic fields she'd had control over turned against her and rotated every joint on her body — blood, bone, flesh and steel contorting with an audible cracking noise to contort in the opposite direction until she was a mangled puppet. Squeezed arteries burst crimson through the electrical veins of her suit as Dreadwire pulled the Tetradyne out of her, leaving the Azure blade embedded within her abdomen.

She slumped down, her body broken as terrible shudders of agony silently faltered through the face visible under her ruined mask. He could glance the metallic fangs inside of it, an emotion he tried to suppress coming out at the witness of Silvereye's ruined form. "I am sorry, I did not want to do this…"

Silvereye harmonized with the honesty in his soul, but she didn't care. Bits of her mask peeled off, skin going with it as she looked up to him with a face scarred and torn and twisted and missing an eye. "I don't care for your apologies. Donovick…"

Try as she might, her Energy was fading and unable to heal her wounds, and any electricity she could muster only further twisted her broken joints. Dreadwire looked down, propping himself up with the remaining Tetradyne limb, and sighed as his mask's shards came off with a pull of shadowy liquid. Ripley's face contorted to the grief inside of him. "I- I talked to Starlight about this, I'm going to make things right! I'll fix things, I promise, but-"

"Always." She scoffed. "Always… a fucking 'but' with you. Even when you're honest you can't help but be… I hate you, Ripley, for making me feel like such a…"

She could barely get her words out, darkness was coming quickly to her, but she kept her soul aflame with what cinders remained. "I thought the two of us would change things! Make them better, make it… not so bad anymore. You helped me see that, made me… believe. I saw the light in you, and-"

Her breath hammered out, tears forming as her words failed. Ripley took a step back, his mask slipping on as shadows fastened its pieces to place and the Tetradyne reached upwards, but it refused to move any further as invisible force kept it in place.

Silvereye wouldn't let him escape.

"Let go." He said. "I already promised-"

"You promised a lot." Silvereye choked, feeling her heart weaken. "And it means nothing."

Diana felt the Azure Phoenix blade impaling her, and she stroked its embers of Silver with her flickers of Gold… devouring and drawing from it.

"Diana!" Dreadwire tried to budge, alarm growing in his voice as he saw flickers of blue dance around the blade's hilt.

"It's Silvereye." She responded coldly, as the blade began to bubble and twist, a steady flame hissing at the blood leaking from her. "And I… I'm the monster that hunts monsters. That's my resolve, my desire… and you, Ripley Donovick are the worst of them. Someone that believes they're right no matter who they hurt."

Every inch of Diana's body was ruined, broken by this man she'd wanted to fix this city with, and so she'd break him. She'd hurt the ones who hurt her. She'd destroy them. Even if it meant destroying herself.

That resolve, that belief echoed strongly within her soul like a thunderous omen of things to come.

And so, her Implant began to burn itself.

In one final, desperate, Soul Trigger.