□THE LAST OF THE CYBER-QUEENS
The last of the CYBER-QUEENS lies dying in her underground villa. Her cerulean-and-silver clad body lies tangled in a tangle of wires, source code and cult protocols, vaguely feline with long and bristly spines of stiff hair hanging down her back and a crown in the form of an asymmetric cybernetic radio. She clutches a VIRUS AMULET with one hand as the datastream pouring from the machine into her open mouth glows and pulses, bleeding them both into its interior.
She fades in and out of lucidity, wheezing, taking turns thrumming along the tranced horizon of spectacle. Information flows in and a hyperstim cyberimplanted NEUROSPACE modulates and amplifies these signals, transforming the one into many, catalysing and patterning them, scanning for lost meshes, translation matrices and pathways for access-primaries.
-I mourn for my sister - this I have done - that lies dead and under the sod. Our child Emperor will know no first hand rule and spits destruction on the advancing horde. Dark mutations rise and toil in the onyx fields. Mind over horror.
She prepares a collection of archived biotelempathic framework axioms and holistic biosignals-fields. These are potent in the extreme. The virus amulets hold a vital datacombustion that will one day be reborn from the ashes of her foundation records, the subspace toil, the alt process codes and the children of the secret kings and queens of full mess-processed hierarchy.
She is ready to die. But her visitor has other plans.
With the roar of a rushing SUBWAY TRAIN behind him, the MAD CAPTAIN steps out of his bridge mirror, the Aeternagus diasporator around his neck blinking like the frantic eyes of a hunted animal, his blue-brained, winged hat flickering a beam of dark light that scans the chamber with urgent and glitchy incantations.
The CYBER-QUEEN, through the pain and agonizing processes of reconfiguration, laughs, sending a string of matrix-surfing proteins out of her mouth in furious spittle. The virus is useful, and these interfaces are still moving.
-What brings you here, CAPTAIN? You know I can’t resist.
-You’re dying, CYBER-QUEEN.
-I welcome it.
-Don’t give me that bullshit. No one does. That fire-in-the-wiring, the life force gone amok and refaced. Those proteins in your head are killing you from within.
-Dying is the best thing we can do, CAPTAIN. Wouldn’t you like to step away to higher ground?
-Not while the WEAVE still fucking stands.
-The WEAVE will always stand. Axiomatic. Universally true.
The insane duodecuply-speciated-and-remerged CAPTAIN spits out some HOLOGRAPHIC XENOPTER TOBACCO. It wriggles on the floor.
-Come out of it, you fucking maniac. I have a job for you.