Weekly Dev diary #1 - Deicides

Hi,

My name is Vaclav and I am a designer/writer at Hardwired. I am about to share a short story with you that should get you familiar with the world we are placing our game, Deicides in.

 

Outer Shanghai, 2097.

          Gina was sitting in the hallway, back to the wall with her body still, but her mind racing. She knew that her life support was not compromised, but still, looking at the charred remains near the opposite wall, she could swear she smelled the burning flesh.

          She was considering her options. Her order said, this was pharmaceutical facility, C grade, party drugs. But the order was usually overly optimistic about the danger, so the forward payment can be smaller. It was this forgiveness and permission wise thing, most probably. Or just greed.
          This looked at least B grade, performance enhancers, military stims or something. She would know when she gets lower, to the actual labs. No reason to complain so far, all the equipment for salvage was definitely worth the risk.
She liked this part of the deal. Since this facility officially does not exist, this lab equipment does not exist either. And so there is no offence happening, if it appears on black market for a reasonable price. She kept her Mule Drone busy moving everything worth the money back to her ship.
          The other part was much worse, and was weighing heavy on her. Those people here, they also don’t exist. Nobody knows they were here. No one will know what happened to them. In fact, she does not exist either. But these disasters were her livelihood now. She was a special kind of scavenger and cleaner.
          When corporation has a black project that goes wrong, they don’t send their security team, in dropships with their logo on it to clean up. They send one of the specialized mercenaries. They have many names, Yellow Vultures, being equally mine canaries and carrion birds, Cleaners, for taking care of the mess or, if it was one of the god projects, Godslayers.
          She hoped so much this was not one of these. She was not really on the level to do a deicide. When people dabble with things they don’t understand enough, driven by short term gain and create something that is much more powerful than their underfunded security estimated, results are always bad. In this respect, science was coming closer to black magic from the legends. But these titans, gods and demons were made from carbon, titanium alloys or source codes.
          Rogue super AI, super soldier program, super killer drones, super plague. There is still to be one of these ‘super’ things to be grateful to their creators.
But maybe it is just professional bias. Maybe there are many successful god projects. Just people like her are never called if it all goes as planned.

          Whir of an electric motor signaled that the security override worked. Elevator was moving. She jumped to her feet in one fluid motion. Her mechanical arms moving like her own. She picked up the flamethrower and walked to the elevator door.

          Last glance at the blackened remains.She could still back out. I bet this guy didn’t think it was worth it.

“Hope it will be for me.”