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kemendin · 3 years ago

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Deeper Than Chaos

Self-indulgent introduction to my reluctantly Dragon-aligned hacker agent, Cypher.

Cypher is a rather different twist on one of my main OCs, Seeker/Caspian, and I've been greatly enjoying the exploration of his character (of note, he is NOT one of Gaia's Bees). Most of Cypher's story will probably take place in RP and never make it here, but @jacksothereye who got me obsessed with this game had written a great intro to his own character, and I was inspired to do the same. Thanks, J!

Read on AO3

I never used to believe in magic, funnily enough.

Not in that ‘what you see is what you get’ way, not ‘this is the real world, mate, grow up’. I’m not as thick as all that. Unlike so many twits out there, my mind’s not nailed shut. I know there are things we can’t see, can’t touch, can’t understand.

But I’m a scientist, and the way I see it, if we can’t make sense of something, it’s just because science hasn’t come far enough yet to find the truth of it. That’s what science is, isn’t it? Looking for that truth.

At least, that had always been my perspective. Until I started finding it.

I’ve always had a knack for getting into where I shouldn’t be. Finding things out that were supposed to be secret. Especially in this day and age, when computers make it so bloody easy. People feel so secure behind all their layers of encryption that they can’t seem to grasp how a sheaf of papers stashed in a safe is, a lot of times, the better option. You can’t pick a lock from halfway across the city.

To be fair - the internet is such a massive place that you can feel it’s easy to hide there. You figure you can add some passwords, some encryption algorithms, and then you count on the simple, overwhelming vastness of the world wide web to do the rest, washing you away until you’re buried in a distant corner of the digital sea. Lurking on the bottom, where it’s dark and dangerous and nobody would go looking unless they already knew you were there.

What you don’t count on is somebody like me. Somebody who not only makes a hobby of plumbing the darkness, but is uniquely equipped to do it. And I do mean literally. That’s what happens, you see, when you find yourself waking up in a filthy back alley of London with a) barely a memory of who you are and b) one hand amputated and replaced by something that still looks like a hand, but it’s fashioned of metal and magic. Coming to after the worst hangover of my life would have been preferable. They probably heard my cursing over half a square mile.

Truth is, it took me a while to even realise that it was magic, what I could do with that hand. There are still times when I have to question if it is. Sometimes it feels like more of an instinct than a power. It’s not as easy to define as spinning up a fireball without getting burned, or stepping into a cemetery and summoning up the dead. That’s what we think of, right, when someone brings up the idea of ‘magic’?

But it’s something rather different, with me. It’s an ability to throw my mind into a universe that's purely digital, to explore the world’s cyberscapes like an immense lucid dream. I can follow trails of data, see the patterns they create - and manipulate them, given a touch, a few minutes and a bit of effort.

So, predictably, I started tapping into those streams of information. Just for fun, at first, because I could, and because I was curious. It was a lot of nonsense for a while - sensitive emails about corporate rackets, compromising photos from ill-advised shags, the usual rubbish. Probably worth a fortune if guided into the right (read: wrong) hands, but not much more than background noise to me. I’m not interested in blackmail. For the most part.

It wasn’t long before I started getting a feel for what I could do. I found myself slipping past the detritus on the surface and into the undercurrents below. Into the spider’s webs of power, where men who are never seen cause the world to shudder as they shape it.

That was where it started to get interesting. I had always known that at the highest levels, the people in control were all the same, interested only in the same few things - power, wealth, influence. The ancient story that’s been echoing through civilisation since civilisation had a name. Puppet masters of the world, tugging on a million strings to make the rest of us dance to their discordinant tune.

What most people don’t realise - what I didn’t realise, until I delved deep enough - is that the puppet masters are puppets too. With strings around their necks like invisible nooses, dangling them from the unseen precipice of another world. A secret world.

I could only find scraps at the start. Shadows with barely enough movement to leave a ripple I could latch onto. I chased whispers that faded as I got closer, followed threads that had been so deliberately tangled it seemed impossible there was ever an end to them, or a beginning. But I was stubborn, and intrigued, and I kept at it, burrowing down through the filth of the digital underworld.

That was how I found the truth. That magic, magic is real. That legends are far more fact than fantasy. That gods are sleeping below us, and among us, and quite probably with us, in more than a few cases, if the myths are to be believed. Which they are, apparently.

This was also how I found the Dragon.

They seemed - a bit surprised, honestly, when I made contact, though it’s hard to tell anything with them. They said I wasn’t part of their original models. Frankly I’m not sure if that makes me a bonus or a mistake. Seeing what they were, who they were, I asked them flat out if they were the ones who’d fucked me over. Though clearly interested in my, ah, asset, they denied having anything to do with putting it there in the first place - and you know, I believed them. The Dragon are many things, but they’re not liars. They’ve no need to lie. They don’t want you to know something - they just won’t tell you.

Anyway, they knew what it was, I didn’t. A lot of things made more sense once they’d explained a bit (probably the only thing they’ve ever actually explained to me, come to think of it), but there were also a lot more questions now. And very little in the way of answers.

So, whether or not my finding them was a mistake, the next part, that definitely was. I offered to join them. Use my considerable talents to help them out, and in the meantime maybe figure out who’d replaced my bloody hand with a relic from another Age, and why.

That was two years ago, and - well. Let’s just say it hasn’t worked out quite the way I’d intended. Since then I’ve done everything they’ve asked - ordered, rather, because they’re never requests. I’ve gathered thousands of terabytes of data for their fucking models. Risked my neck, not to mention my mind, on dozens of occasions. And what have I gotten in return? Crypto-bullshit. Thrills, alright, maybe - but crypto-bullshit. I’m no closer to knowing what happened, why my life went wrong, than I was waking up in that alleyway. And the Dragon, they’re no bloody help. All they care about is what I do for them. And it’s not as though I can just say no. They’ve got a hold on me and they’re not about to let it go.

So this is my life now. I quietly insert myself into the data flow of the world and sift out the important bits for faceless fucks who won’t even tell me what the info’s being used for. Sometimes it’s actual field work, but otherwise, all I need is a computer.

There’s one of those new age, slightly aesthetically unsure cafes down the street, and that’s often where I’ll set up. It’s an easy, unquestioned facade to work under - just another guy at a table in the corner, with his coffee and his laptop. I went there even before I got involved with this whole Secret World business. Told them I was a freelance cybersecurity consultant, which was close enough then and not so much now, but it just seemed less complicated to stay with the same cover.

The guy who runs the cafe - Leo - he’s a nice bloke. Not bad on the eyes either. He’s smart enough to know when somebody’s out of place, and smart enough to not ask too many questions of it. He’s about as close to a friend as I’ve got these days, I suppose. We’ve even shagged a few times, but that’s all it was. Physical, hit and run. Maybe we could have been something more, at one point, but the way things are now… I can’t afford any close relationships.

On which subject - my family. My parents, in particular. You’ve no idea how disconcerting it is to discover that you’ve got a mum and dad who remember everything about you, and you can’t remember shit. I didn’t tell them that, of course, when I realised. But I did do a whole lot of prying into who they are, what they do, their history and their emails, virtually everything I could find out about them, and it became obvious very quickly that the last thing I needed on top of magic and amnesia was my parents trying to get involved.

So - I faked it. I told them I’d been mugged - not, in my opinion, a lie - and that I’d been in hospital for a bit, but I was alright and just needed some time to myself to recover. They’re in Cairo, so at least I could be fairly certain they weren’t going to show up on the doorstep of my flat at a moment’s notice. I managed to stave them off, anyway, and in the meantime researched enough of them - and myself - so that I could maintain a reasonable veneer of normalcy.

Still, it’s an odd relationship, when the memories remain groggy. I try to keep communication as sparse as possible without alarming them. I’ll send them letters, mostly - the old fashioned type. My mum seems to like that. Sometimes we’ll use MSN, but it’s always text. They’ll ask why we can’t video chat, why they can’t hear my voice, see my face. “Internet’s a bit spotty here,” I’ll tell them, sending the message along from a little cafe on what’s probably the most stable and secure network in the whole of London. I had to give Leo something.

So I make up stories about my job, and the idiots who keep letting viruses into their computers, and the guy at the cafe who’s definitely sweet on me, but oh, I’m not sure if I should say anything. And I don’t tell them about the Illuminati agent I murdered last week, by blowing up the microchip in his spine.

They don’t usually say it, but they know I’ve changed. Leo mentioned it too, casually, just the once - said it was like I disappeared for a few days and came back all hardened over, like metal that’s been heat-treated. Maybe they’re right, I don’t know. There’s still so much I can’t remember of my old life. My old self. I get the feeling that was the point of it - whoever did this to me wanted me to start over. No attachments, no loyalties. Just another blank cog to be set into the machine.

Well, whether they’ve realised it or not - whoever they are - this cog’s got teeth. I have to be careful about showing them, but this whole arrangement with the Dragon is becoming less tolerable by the month, and I’ve been caught in it long enough to start probing the weak spots. Testing the restraints to see how tightly they hold. It’s probably not the brightest move, but I’m hoping that works to my advantage. I’m too clever a guy to even think about rattling my cage, right? Too clever not to realise the far-more-than-potential consequences of defying the syndicate. Don’t they wish. Chaos moves in all directions, after all.

It does help that on the whole, the Dragon’s been a bit… edgy, lately. Something’s going on out there - in the ash-choked alleyways and the forgotten forests and the cubicles locked around drone-faced sycophants. Patterns are starting to emerge from the deepest recesses of the net, and they’re shaped like desperation and honeycomb. Something is moving through the subspace of reality, and maybe it’s always been there, but it’s only in the last few months that we’ve all started to become really aware of it. Whatever the hell it is. Or are.

Not coincidentally, I expect, my dreams have gotten - I won’t say worse, because they’re not the worst - but more potent, since I got involved in all of this. I’ve always been prone to odd, unsettling dreams, even when I was a kid, but moreso these days. The hand is amplifying them, I’ll bet you anything. Most of the time I can’t remember what they are, I just know I’ve dreamt; but once in a while a niggling little image or sensation lingers after I’ve woken up. The feeling of falling, a song I can’t quite hear, the terrifying void of a black sun. More than a bit offputting, let me tell you.

Anyway, I don’t know what it all means. I’ve got vast data networks at my literal fingertips, spanning the entire globe, and I still can’t see the whole picture. Most of humanity’s already blind to it, but I know it’s out there - the reasons, the answers. If I could just get the sun out of my eyes and find a pocket of air that isn’t choked off by the coils of the Dragon’s smokescreen - maybe, maybe, I would find what’s hidden.

They’re sending me off again soon, for my next assignment. To America this time, so that’s just thrilling. Some miniscule island off the northeastern coast that has a peculiar habit of managing to fall off half the maps of that area. I can’t say I’m looking forward to it; it’s likely to be cold and raw and damp, and you’d think I’d be used to that given where I’ve lived for most of my life, but I can’t help longing for Egypt.

And on top of that, they’re not even letting me go solo on this like usual - they’re making me tow another agent along. A djinni. I’ve heard stories of them, naturally, but I’ve never actually met one before, let alone worked with one. So this should be… interesting.

Maybe it will be good to travel a bit, stretch my legs and my senses. Maybe I’ve been holed up in the city for too long. But I don’t know. They’re being incredibly cryptic about this one, even set against their usual standards, and I don’t feel easy about it. I think - think, mind - it’s something to do with the Illuminati this time, if the island’s history is anything to go by. But beyond that? I’ve got no bloody clue.

Well. I suppose I’ll be finding out soon enough.

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