Unity by Carl Stubblefield (epub read online books TXT) 📕

free. The irritating things of her life didn’t apply when she was “in.” She could live out her favorite anime and manga. She had always been adept at coding, and the transition of this into AI battling was intuitive for her on a level that seemed to be difficult for others. No matter which prodigies her father managed to gather to the company, they never pushed the system to the limits like she did.

Even now, she ported in remotely and fought the latest creations her father’s company created. She would have done it even if she didn’t get paid, but she didn’t stop them from sending the embarrassing amounts of money anyway. It was a poor substitute for a real relationship with her father, but somehow it felt like sticking it to him by making him pay. For her, it was never about the money, though. Part of her wondered if it was a way that her father maintained his feeling of superiority and control over her. That if she was an employee, he would always have the upper hand.

She shook her head that he felt the need to do that to his own daughter. Still, if the illusion of control made him feel better, she would gladly take the money in case she ever needed it. That was the trick, letting others think they had the upper hand while retaining it all along. Whether she was “in” or “out,” it was all the same.

The maddening thing was, no one would ever see her like this. When immersion hacking, she felt almost like a demigod. No matter the foe, she knew how to pinpoint and determine its digital weaknesses. She had fashioned her gear with a meticulous perfectionism that pushed her to be on the bleeding edge of ultimate protection and amplification of her abilities. She would make some tweak or refinement to push the stats of her gear to make them even that much more formidable. Without the massive monitoring system at CyberDynamics headquarters, there was no other way others could watch her do what she did so well.

It was why she didn’t go into Green Faction—she would be just another cog in the wheel there. Not to mention her father’s heavy influence on their inner workings thanks to the reliance on the technology his company produced. He would forever be pulling strings if she had gone Green Faction.

In Purple she was unique, but they didn’t really know how to use her. She couldn’t prove herself in the same ways and so her assignments were unfulfilling and so far below her abilities she had questioned her choice more than once.

Before she could get too frustrated, the interface faded from orange to green as she overcame the inner defenses. And that was just to log in!

And just like that, she had bypassed the outer security firewall and could jack in directly. She rubbed her fingertips together, activating the implanted receptor pads embedded under her skin. Softly, she caressed the import jack and engaged the Charlie X protocol which would sync her access with the computer.

Unseen to the human eye, tiny Nth bridged the gap and made the connection. With a virtual *thock*, Yuki knew that the system had opened like the door of a huge keep, yawning wide before her. A thrill of anticipation shot down her spine. She loved this feeling.

Yuki activated her Slice ability and dove into the system. The Nth transmitted her consciousness into the machine, facilitating the conversion of her core personality into the environment of the system.

With a *twang*, she materialized and fell to crash onto the surface of a large building. She braced herself and executed a perfect three-point landing, absorbing the shock as bits of concrete shattered and flew away from the landing zone. Cracks spidered away from her in concentric circles but the rooftop held.

Getting to her feet, she heard the tumultuous roar of ocean waves crashing all around. The spray and mist were thrown up as water rammed against the building, becoming tinged orange in the evening sun before falling. This appeared to be some metropolis, swallowed up in some post-apocalyptic tsunami so only the highest buildings remained, skewed at different angles like a ramshackle cemetery.

A tight pressure on her right shoulder reminded her of the presence of her familiar Argus. Argus had always been there from the early days of her coding, and manifested as a rudimentary interface. Just a bobbing light like a will o’ the wisp. Over time he had evolved until he resembled a miniature Transformer or Gundam.

His personality had also evolved the bit’s level, where he could only respond yes or no, to giving vague impressions akin to ‘this might be worth considering.’ Further evolutions improved his ability to communicate directly and give advice, warning against impending attacks and parsing the wild attacks and abilities she imagined into code, shaping her intentions into virtual reality.

As she looked over the edge, she saw the remnants of a large city, with skyscrapers the only remaining structures visible in the churning, swirling waters. Some tilted at odd angles and some had tipped, only being supported by other larger buildings. In this environment, it appeared like the ocean had risen about five-hundred feet, leaving only the tops of a ruined civilization behind.

A glowing yellow light caught the corner of her eye as something disappeared deeper under the waves. Yuki scanned the area, evaluating this arena and its immense size in comparison to others she had fought upon in the past, and readied her abilities.

Mist hit Yuki in a plume as something large burst forth from the surface of the white frothy waves. Bits of a metallic framework glinted in the sun as water poured out of sections of the creature that had been damaged.

A massive jaw opened, the weathered and worn steel screeching with a deafening shriek as the creature articulated and parts of its framework scraped against each other. Intact sections were coated with sharp, jagged sections of coral,