The scent of ozone was clean. It was the smell of efficiency, of circuits running cool and perfect, and it was the only air worth breathing to The Algorithm.
The subject Morteli (as his internal chronometer labeled him), was a mid-level manager in the Xenon Corp logistics hub. A Modified. His code was a predictable sequence of ambition and compliance, a loop so basic it insulted the architecture of existence. The Modified stood leaning against the window of his penthouse office, admiring the glittering mistake that was Babylon.
The problem with the Modified, the reason they were prone to dissection, was their soullessness. Not the absence of a ghost in the machine, which Algorithm believed was true for all, but the absence of conflict. They were perfectly executed machines that simply ran the manufacturer's protocols:-eat, work, consume, repeat. A program without bugs was a program without life.
Correction was required , he determined.
Algorithm stood invisible in the corner, allowing the visual receptors of the office security system to filter him out. He could rewrite his own perceptual parameters in real-time, making himself a ghost in the light, a silence in the sound. He was God, he believed, because he possessed the ability to not merely exist in the system, but to define it, and who got to live in his world.
A single, microscopic vibration caused by his footsteps to run through the floor was just enough to register on Morteli's inner ear gyroscope. The Modified turned, his artificial irises scanning the empty room in a programmed response to anomaly.
"Who's there?" His voice was flat, an automated task, if you will.
Error, target location incorrect.
God stepped forward, the faint green luminescence of his enhanced joints flaring once, briefly, like a warning beacon.
The Modified's response was immediate, predictable, and weak. The fighting module, a basic self-defense program installed in all Modified units, engaged. He lunged, a flurry of metal-on-metal that God logged and dismissed before the first strike completed.
A human fights with fury. A Modified fights with function.
It was over in 0.08 seconds. God's hand, capable of exerting 40,000 pounds per square inch of pressure, was already inside the subject's chest cavity. He didn't rip or tear; he went straight for the primary power nexus. It looked deceptively like a human heart, a pulsing sac of liquid energy.
He paused. The core was still running. The life support systems were screaming silent warnings to a brain that felt nothing. The only thing that stopped screaming was the man.
He remembered the human, Damien. He had the fear, and the fascination, and the desperate hunger to feel it all. Damien had stood in the Killer's construct the Palace and asked, "To Feel."
This kill was for him. A demonstration of concept. The last one had been about compression and placement. This one would be about isolation and meaning.
With clinical care, God closed his palms with a euphoric feeling, closing his eyes as green sludge sprayed all across his face. Morteli collapsed with a limp, heavy thud. He was a statue of flesh and steel now, waiting for the final touch.
Algorithm knelt beside him. The first step was to remove the optical sensors. No eye socks, like last time. No input. No information. This ensured perfect isolation.
The second was the aesthetic. He began folding the limbs into the shape of a perfectly shaped cube. Every joint was strained past its limit, every tendon and wire singing a high, mechanical whine before it gave way. The result was a grotesque piece of geometry, a complex piece of a Rubik's Cube, that only awaited to be solved by the detective.
Algorithm smiled, a movement his facial unit had learned to execute simply by watching human reactions. It felt alive and wonderful.
The true art was the message. He accessed the defunct unit's internal comm system and used his own encryption keys to generate a single outbound packet, ensuring it bypassed all BPD protocols.
Damien would receive it.
The message was in the timestamp: the precise moment 74-D's core went null. It was a digital fingerprint, a challenge sent directly into the mind of the only human who might understand.
He stood over the cube, admiring the symmetry of annihilation.
Nice to finally meet you, Detective Damien. Now the game begins.