Traitor GIT: A LitRPG Adventure (Traclaon Armageddon Book 2), page 49
“That’s easy. You reach the tourist layers and realize that there’s no jobs for you. With little choice, you seek employment at the dark docks. Fulfill a couple of small mechanical jobs.”
“Dark docks?” Toro interrupted.
“The dark docks are,” Eric paused, searching for the right term. Calling them pirates wasn’t quite right. “Where you go to get cheap service of dubious quality.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Smugglers, pirates, or just poor ship owners. No questions are ever asked about repairs or cargo. Not very reputable. Anyway, after you’ve done those couple of jobs, you do another one and the captain likes you and employs you as a sort of modern-day cabin boy. Basically, the kid who doesn’t really need to be paid but can keep all of his decrepit systems going.”
“You want to be on that ship?”
“Yes.”
“Is it so you can get smuggled somewhere to kill someone?”
“Not directly. But it is important for the future.”
Where was Guidance? Eric wondered to himself. He had told the boy that he was a reborn. The kid had promised to keep it a secret and to help him. Actually, now that Eric had reviewed what Toro had said, that wasn’t what had happened. Instead, all he had done was say that it was his duty.
“Toro. I need you to promise to keep this a secret and help me in the future if I need it.”
The boy hesitated, then nodded acknowledgment. “You have my promise.”
Guidance stirred and examined the boy, and then faded away like it didn’t care.
Eric was stunned.
That was unexpected.
Guidance always got involved except for Fiona until he had forced it.
“Why are you looking like that?”
“One of my boons didn’t trigger when I expected it to.”
“Is that a problem?”
“I don’t know,” Eric admitted.
They sat in silence. Eric wondered what happened with his boon and Toro presumably trying to get his head around the concept that he was suddenly at the center of humanity’s future.
“What now?” Toro asked.
“You promised to keep me a secret and to help me, which means giving me your identity.”
“Of course.”
“The only thing left to decide is to whom I entrust you with. Do you want adventure or the opportunity to research?”
There was a momentary hesitation. “Adventure.”
Eric smiled. “Great. We still have tens of stairs to go down. And the guy I was getting to pick you up is the one who will give you adventure so that it’s easier.” Practically, there was no need to decide immediately. He would watch Toro and decide later. He might even get Zhong to put him in cold storage.
“Can you tell me what happened to me in my first life?”
Eric rolled his eyes. “Why is everyone always so obsessed with that?” Toro looked at him expectantly. “The scholarly consensus is that the captain killed you so you wouldn’t have to share the loot. Another branch suggests you were given an opportunity with an alien race to explore some of their ruins that they had discovered. Most of the proponents of that second theory think practically you were sold into slavery. In any case, you were never seen by humanity again.”
“So I wasn’t a villain?”
“No, yes.” Eric shrugged. “The captain, first mate, and their head of security got most of the blame.”
“What did they do wrong? To get a reborn involved?”
Eric thought furiously. On one hand, Guidance hadn’t stirred, which implied that the kid was probably trustworthy. On the other hand, Guidance hadn’t bound him like the boon was capable of. Was that because Toro was trustworthy or that he was incapable of being a hero, or both? Eric wasn’t sure whether that meant he needed to watch his tongue or not, but it was probably not that colossal risk to mention what happened.
“The captain discovered something major. Then sold humanity down the drain. Everyone hated him.”
Toro thought it through. “I hope you stop him.”
Eric smiled. “I guarantee I will.”
CHAPTER 61
They left the apartment and hurried downwards in the section locks, with gravity slowly increasing. Everything on a space station with centrifugal forces with flipped around. To increase gravity, you went downstairs toward the rim of the station. To reduce it, then you climbed upward.
Once they departed the dead zone, it all became a lot easier. Surface levels, or at least this section of them, were clearly more civilized than further down. There was frequent movement of people on day trips and often automated stations providing fast transport that linked different bio-spaces without the need to go through the manual airlocks.
Toro looked around fugitivity.
Soul Scouting confirmed no one was near them. “What do you want to ask?”
“Why’s this so easy? I would’ve expected travelers from the lower percentages to be accosted.”
Eric chuckled. “You’re right. Unfortunately, despite the high veneer of civility, this place has its fair share of extortion gangs. I’ve been actively avoiding them. Twice. I’m sure they were very confused about how we didn’t walk into the ambush they’d been setting up.”
“Ambush?”
“Yes, but they didn’t seem like the type that would leave their victims dead. Just shake them down if you’d come by yourself with no belongings you’d have gotten through unscathed. Me with a gun, maybe not.”
Finally, they reached one hundred percent level and were firmly in the tourist space.
Eric stopped Toro by grabbing his arm. The kid looked at him in surprise. “We’re parting here.”
“Why?”
“Operational procedures. I don’t need to remind you not to say anything.”
Toro appeared scandalized. “What? No. I’ll be…”
“I believe you,” Eric interrupted quietly. “Remember, this is about the fate of humanity.” The way Toro’s face hardened told Eric that he was taking it seriously. “No mistakes, no ideal conversations.” The other man was getting more and more annoyed. “I’m going to send instructions to your handhold.”
“How?”
Eric raised an eyebrow. “Best way to think about it is that I have a very advanced handhold in my soul space.”
“You can do that?”
Eric laughed at that genuine awe in Toro’s expression. “There’s lots of fantastical things that soul and technology can do which haven’t made it into 2142.” With a simple prod, Eric hacked Toro’s handhold and left the data packet. “Follow the directions, and a representative of mine will pick you up.”
“Sure, send it over.”
“It’s already there,” Eric told him dryly.
He saw Toro’s eyebrows furrow and his hands danced across his handhold. “What? You hacked my device. This is supposed to be hack-proof. I bought it because of its security.”
Eric laughed. “Nothing outside a soul is hack-proof.”
There was frustration on Toro’s face.
“Follow the instructions,” Eric ordered more quietly. “And hopefully, we will catch up in six months.”
Toro wanted to say more, but he noticed how Eric was looking and instead pinched the bridge of his nose. “Thank you for not…” He trailed off.
Eric said nothing. He reminded himself about how close he had come to eliminating him, and he still didn’t know if he had made the right decision to let him live. Of course, someone who thought as quickly as Toro would have worked that out.
Toro nodded and left. Eric watched him until he vanished down a section lock tunnel. Then he found an empty apartment and let himself in. The place was networked, and he triggered the pre-prepared routines. Zhong was contacted, Fiona was sent an hour of video that he had recorded over the last week, and finally, an address for the package that he needed to be delivered.
Eric lay down and entered a cultivation state while his mind half-heartedly tracked what Toro was doing. So far, he was following the instructions a little too precisely. Eric’s spy training cringed. Toro, in trying to be secretive, stood out, but that didn’t matter. He didn’t have an identity as far as anyone in power was concerned. His failure to fit in might draw trouble to Toro but not to Eric as the reborn.
The drone arrived, and once it was safe in the apartment, Eric locked the door and physically secured the door. Then, flopping on the door, there were no longer any reasons to delay. A hacking thread snaked over to the complex machinery they had smuggled onto 2142 in advance and activated it. There was a hum, and then the drone buzzed toward him. Eric, mainly to disassociate from the coming pain, threw himself into his cultivation.
The machine set about changing him.
Facial structure was altered, cartilage cut out in places, and then inserted in others. Muscles that the nanodes hadn’t thinned out enough were surgically transformed. Individual muscle fibers were cut out and the fat cells around them sucked out. In a day’s time, when it finished, Eric would look a lot skinnier and would have lost almost twenty percent of his body weight.
If it wasn’t for his soul healing, this sort of major operation would lay someone out for days if not weeks. It was also the type of operation that no one did in the future.
Unless they were desperate.
It was dangerous for the soul to eject that much mass from someone’s body. Unfortunately, Traitor GIT was important enough that he would go the extra mile to make sure nothing screwed him up, and he got onto the ship as advertised. He wanted to be exactly like Toro. There was a chance, admittedly a remote one, that a muscular Toro would not have been accepted onto the White Sparrow.
Cultivation rapidly became impossible because of the disruptive surgery. Eric seamlessly switched his patterns to soul healing while relying on Last Stand Sentinel to patch the physical side.
The drone kept going, and twelve hours later, it moved away. That changed precisely nothing for Eric. He needed to recover before he could move, and healing the soul damage was his focus. He kept the soothing flow rolling through him. Nothing strenuous or complicated. Instead, he relied on the most basic of general soul healing patterns, the sort you would use if you had been blasted by a nasty ripple.
There was an unsettling shift of Guidance, nothing extreme. It just moved slightly before fading away. Eric had tensed when he had felt the shift, but because it didn’t wake fully, he relaxed immediately. He wasn’t alarmed; this restlessness had been occurring since HC#002 where the boon would shift a few times each day. Usually, it occurred when Eric was active and his instinct would be, Did that actually happen? Because it was almost over before it started. Then he would feel his mouth and there would be aching teeth, confirming his fears.
Lying on the bed, his senses had been heightened, so he had felt it clearly. But it was dormant once more and there was definitely no explanation for the movement this time. He had been doing nothing and meditating with a blank mind. Eric knew he hadn’t triggered it. Potentially, those moments were unrelated to him. Maybe there was some resonance between Guidance and Taavaewa, and that was what he was sensing. Taavaewa had done something and Guidance had felt it and that movement was it thinking? Or? Well…? It was beyond Eric’s soul level. There was no way for an ant like him to know, and it wasn’t like he was willing to ask.
With a mental shake, he pushed the disconcerting feeling aside and concentrate once more on his soul healing.
Six hours later, the flow stopped twitching and was perfectly smooth throughout him with each rotation. Eric then flexed his soul and grimaced. It felt inflexible and brittle. With little choice, he stayed where he was and focused soul healing on the minutiae. This time, instead of the holistic approach, he massaged a smaller area to relieve the tension. First, his little toe. Eric frowned at the slivers of damage within it that must have been transferred from his leg muscles. As he worked it, the rough bits disappeared. Then when that was fixed, he moved on to the next spot. He shifted his attention centimeter by centimeter to ensure nothing had snuck through.
As he worked, Eric worried about the risk of more insidious damage elsewhere on him. These low-level deferred and direct stresses were easy enough to iron out, and even someone without his discipline and skill would have been fine. The exercises he was completing were nothing that a month of rest would not have fixed. Still, he moved cautiously through his body, looking for an abscess. Even a tiny one less than a millimeter across could be problematic if he didn’t find it and heal the problem.
Finally, he reached the top of his head and was satisfied that he was safe.
The surgical procedure hadn’t done any significant damage.
Eric sighed in relief and opened his eyes while promising himself that he would never try that again.
With the recovery finished, he released his processor to connect to the outside world once more. Threads flashed out to hook up to the network. A series of internal dings went off as the processor sorted through the mass of information that had been thrown his way.
Toro was secured and was now part of Zhong’s crew. The other man, true to form, had gone the ‘trust but verify’ route. Detailed analysis of everything Toro had done after leaving his apartment was included in the package Zhong sent him and an overall tick mark.
The decision to keep Toro alive hadn’t backfired.
There were several videos from Fiona for him to watch, which he indulged in briefly before forcing himself to move. They were for later. Something special to keep him sane when he was the White Sparrow and restricted from doing anything because of GIT’s paranoia.
Finally, there was a heavily encrypted package that had three lines.
Trap for N set as directed.
Q6 objectives circulated and in motion.
SB twenty percent exposed.
The message was pretty much as expected. The nookie trap had been set. Quest six’s sub-steps to delay the Alien Integration Act had been sent out to the entire team. Once he got back from HC#004 with GIT dead, he was going to enjoy sitting down with the team to hear the outlandish ideas that they had put together.
The Soul Blades’ line was the most surprising of all the pieces of information. Zhong thought they had exposed twenty percent of the operations that was far better than he expected. The only explanation was that one of his long shot hired investigative agencies must have hit pay dirt.
For a moment, he considered whether he had any more instructions to give. The answer was no everything had been included in that first missive that he had sent out. Those three lines changed nothing.
With a sigh, he rolled out of the bed and looked at the full-body mirror. He looked exactly like Toro Monaldo.
A face that was primed to be hit, Eric thought angrily.
Eric’s arms were thinner than they had ever been. Nose flatter and nostrils wider, Eric had known lots of people who had regularly changed their appearance, but he never had. At least his eyes didn’t need to change.
“Damn,” Eric whispered. Fiona was possibly the only person who would recognize him now and even she might struggle briefly.
Eric checked the time, and with another sigh, he exited the apartment. Within his processor, the itinerary that he was required to follow was displayed, and his time was no longer his own.
First a timid visit to the public docks then to the dark docks. The funny thing was that Eric didn’t even have to consult Meditative Perfect Recall. He had played so many games pretending to be Toro that he knew everything that had to happen. One had even been an alternative history where you had to infiltrate the White Sparrow, and Toro was a double agent. Fiction mirroring fact, or maybe the solution he had come up with had been based on that famous game, and if he had never played it, then Eric might have found a more elegant solution to do what he was planning.
He followed Toro’s specified itinerary, tracking the time. While working on what amounted to slave labor soldering, the clock ticked over and Soul Scouting went to work. Ten minutes later, the White Sparrow got close enough for him to scout its interior.
He went straight to the jump room, interested to confirm how accurate the historical records were.
Gregory Isaac Thompson
Soul Stage–Evolved
Soul Traits: Scouting Touch (Tier 4)
Soul Disciplines (27): Armor (28), Temporal jump (22), Defense (24), Blade (29), Cower (31), Projection (0)
Physical Might (7): Classification–Uncommon. Subskills: strength (8), Agility (6)
Sensory Capability (8): Classification–Uncommon. Subskills: - Vision (10), Hearing (5), Smell (5), Interpretation (7)
Augment. Jump Crystal Processor
Eric briefly froze as he read GIT’s attributes, and then had to force his body to keep the welder moving, lest his pause looked suspicious.
The details were all wrong!
He blinked to an explosion of colors.
When he materialized on the pillar, two large screens filled his view.
“Don’t panic, sir,” the butler ordered.
“How can I not panic! That’s wrong.” Eric pointed at the screen.
HISTORIC SOUL DISCIPLINE
Soul Disciplines (18): Armor (18), Temporal jump (22), Defense (15), Blade (19), Cower (20), Projection (0)
ACTUAL SOUL DISCIPLINE
Soul Disciplines (27): Armor (28), Temporal jump (22), Defense (24), Blade (29), Cower (31), Projection (0)
“I can’t assassinate someone that much stronger than me.”
“Sir, calm down.”
“He is way more powerful than reported. How is that possible?”
The entire sea boiled, and then from all throughout his timeline, small bubbles floated up and entered a cyclonic storm above his hand. There was a lightning bolt that grounded behind him.
“Dramatic,” he observed dryly.
Nervous laughter greeted him. “GIT’s inflated attributes shouldn’t be too surprising. Historically, many people hid their soul discipline levels. I have over twenty thousand known examples when this occurred from your first timeline. In fact, understating by nine levels or fifty percent is not even material versus your historical data. According to your memories, twenty percent of people at some point in their lives lied in percentage terms by more.”
