Destiny 2 - Deep Stone Memory

With my recent Destiny writing under "The Wahei Transcripts" tag, I introduced a trio of Guardians who had turned to the Darkness, Shadows of Yor extremists calling themselves the "Shadows of Salvation." I gave a little focus to each of them with the recent Exotic Weapon Concepts. And my brain working the way it does, I soon got a few sparks of inspiration for how to give a little focus to them.

First up is the Exo Warlock, Magda-9, a weaponsmith otherwise known as Dredgen Vergift, as she looks back at her previous life...

Deep Stone Memory

In the depths of Eternity, the scars were still visible from the battles here against the Technocrat. Scraps from destroyed shanks littered the area, and dried ether was smeared on the floor. Discarded weaponry was strewn around as well, and Hadil Ainu picked up a Bonechiller that had been dropped, unregarded by the Guardians who had come through before them. The Titan lifted the shotgun and looked it over, sighting with it, before lowering it and tsking. "Why leave this behind? Could still get some decent glimmer for it. Or break it down for some shards. That's good material that people will pay for."

"Let's be honest," Afa Kashaf growled as he picked up a piece of scrap and flung it over the side and into the depths of the cavernous space, "the Vanguard's golden pets are probably drowning in glimmer and rewards. What would they need with yet another weapon they already have a better version of in their vast armory?"

Ainu shrugged, looking over the shotgun again. "It's not the best-looking weapon either, if it comes to it." She glanced to their third partner, who had strapped a wrist-mounted holo-interface to her Crystocrene Glove. "You could make something better than this."

Magda-9 didn't look up as she typed some commands into the wrist-comp. "That goes without saying. But these weapons were made for ease of manufacture, to re-arm Bray's Exo army in their war against the Vex in the Glassway. Aesthetics were entirely secondary." She lifted her cold white eyes to regard the towers of the memory banks around them, then clicked the fingers of her spare hand to her Ghost. "Vorm, find this bank for me." She gestured at the data hovering in the holo-field above her wrist. Her Ghost looked, nodded, and then flitted off into the expanse of giant server towers.

"I hope there's a reason we're wasting time down here, Vergift," Ainu commented as she ran a critical eye over the shotgun, before letting her Ghost dismantle it for parts. "Every second we waste down here is another second the cringing bugs topside have to slip away."

"Let them run," Kashaf snapped. "Here, Earth-- it doesn't matter what rock it's on, they're going to die regardless."

Magda-9, the Exo weaponsmith known to the Shadows as Dredgen Vergift, did not turn as she let her eyes roam over the vast stacks of the memory banks. "Tell me, Ruin, did you see the maker's mark stamped on the frame of that shotgun?"

Ainu looked again, turning the weapon over and then squinting at the legend 'CB/SG/MV/mk2.' "Hunh. I see it," Dredgen Ruin confirmed.

"Magda Versenne was an engineer who worked for Bray," Magda explained patiently. "Every weapon that I've constructed since my first rez has been off the echoes of knowledge that persist in my Exo mind." She paused, then shrugged. "Call it... muscle memory. Instinctive, unconscious."

"Like with Banshee," Ainu agreed. "I've seen the old man disassemble and reassemble a gun without even looking at it."

"A good comparison." Magda watched as her Ghost returned. She regarded the stacks again. "I've dreamed of the Deep Stone Crypt since my first awakening. Seen the battlefield, the tower, the former self." She turned to her Ghost. "Did you find it, Vorm?"

"Identified the relevant bank," the blessed machine confirmed. "But the equipment to make use of it is down in the area called 'Creation.'"

Magda-9 made a sighing noise. "Of course it is."

~*~*~*~*~*~

"Artificial Intelligence activated." The eyes of the Giant Exo Head gleamed slightly as they took in the sight of the three intruders, before focusing on the sole Exo in the trio. None of the three were looking in his direction. The tallest of the trio, a woman in darkened, broad-shouldered armor, was just tearing the head off one of his security frames, and he saw that all of the frames were in similar states of damage. He almost frowned at this. The manufactory would easily be able to replenish them, but the waste annoyed him. An Exo was among the trio, but she was at one of the computer terminals, tapping away alternately on the terminal or on the wrist-comp she wore. His sensors easily identified her, but before he could speak, the third intruder-- a rangy man in a black cloak-- interrupted, not looking up from sharpening his knife.

"All hail the great Clovis Bray I." The sarcasm dripped from the man's words. The slit-eyed gas mask he wore hid it, but the sneer was audible as well. The Hunter looked up at him. "No, don't get up. We'll make ourselves comfortable."

The Head's eyes narrowed slightly. Rather than address the insolent masked man, his eyes went instead to the Exo. "Magda. Welcome home."

"Mister Bray." Magda-9 turned. The Warlock robes she wore were pristine white, cut in the signature style of a BrayTech researcher. She tilted her head. "'Home,' is it?"

"Of course," Clovis replied. "This is where you were reborn. As were all Exos. Even before your rebirth, you spent a great deal of time here."

"I'm afraid I no longer remember those days," she answered. "As your granddaughters may not have explained, we Lightbearers do not retain memories of our pasts." She regarded the Head. "But you're familiar with that sort of thing, aren't you, Mister Bray?"

There was a pause. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Cut the bullshit, Mister Bray." Magda-9 tapped her wrist-comp and flicked a hand into the open air, as a holo-display of a datastream flickered into view, represented in a ciphered code of geometric shapes and designs. "You recognize this, I trust?"

"A representation of an Exo mind imprint. Yours, to be precise."

"It's Magda Versenne's imprint, yes," the Warlock confirmed. She pinched the air so that one string of this cipher-code was highlighted, isolated. More strings, which showed similarity to one another, were similarly highlighted and isolated. The Exo pointed at them. "But these are your digital fingerprints. Indications of edits and alterations made. Timestamped. With your authorization code." She waved a hand, the code display vanishing. "You may not have done the edits yourself, but you authorized them." She looked up at the Head. "I'd wager good silver that I'd find similar signs in the metadata of every Exo mind imprint in the stacks."

The Head almost sneered. "Even if what you're saying was true, what is your point?"

"The brilliant Clovis Bray I asks what the point is?" Magda-9 gave a mirthless laugh. "No wonder you decided to make robots and machines. You really never understood people."

"Coming from you," Clovis Bray replied, "that means... practically nothing."

"Yes, yes. Magda Versenne was never a people person, either." She considered this. "Nor am I now, if I'm honest." She waved this off. "But generally if I don't get on with a person, I usually just have as little to do with them as possible. I don't try to edit their minds to make them work the way I want. Because honestly, that would just get exhausting." She shook her head. "Only Clovis Bray would look at the world and think, not 'this is how people are, how do we deal with it,' but instead 'this is how people ought to be, how do we change them?'"

"I gave mankind the path to immortality," he snapped.

"On your terms and conditions, don't mind the fine print, sign on the dotted line." Magda-9 shook her head again, looking down at her wrist-comp. "Everything in my memory bank is compromised. I don't know how much I might have lost."

"Really, Magda, you disappoint me." Clovis sounded amused now. "You were-- you are a brilliant engineer. None of what we accomplished here on Europa would have been possible without your keen intellect. I would never have risked compromising that."

She looked up at the Head again. "Does Elisabeth know you deleted her memories?" There was a pause, without a response from the Head, so she continued. "She doesn't, does she? She may suspect it, but she doesn't know what you removed from her memories. The paracausal weapon she intended to use against the Vex at 2082 Volantis?"

The Giant Exo Head's eyes narrowed. "How do you know of this? By your own admission, you retain memories of your pasts. The things you speak of... Magdalene Versenne knew them--" He suddenly stopped, eyes flickering.

There was almost a smile on the Exo Warlock's face. "Indeed I did. Or, more accurately, I do." She tapped the side of her head. "I uploaded Versenne's imprint twenty minutes ago. All of her experiences and memories, without losing any of the same since I was risen in the Light. Including some details on the breakthroughs that led to Elisabeth's weapon."

"What?"

The man with the slit-eyed gasmask chuckled. "Didn't see that coming. The great Clovis Bray making a mistake." He idly spun his knife in his hand. "All that effort to edit out troublesome stuff from her memory, and you missed a pretty big one." He turned to Magda. "Are we done here, Vergift? There's a few too many Vanguard operatives around here, and where we find them, there's usually some Praxic zealot."

"Do you think I will allow you to leave with dangerous knowledge in your possession?" The Head's eyes gleamed with malice. "I killed my own granddaughter to prevent her from destroying 2082 Volantis. She was a member of my bloodline. You are not. I have no qualms against doing the same to you."

Now Magda-9 gave another laugh, one that was far more amused than the previous. "Will you now? It's true, I discovered the killswitch you built into the Exo design. So, go ahead, Mister Bray. Try it."

There was a pause, and the Head's brow seemed to furrow. "I can't--" he began, and paused. "You disabled your killswitch."

"No, I didn't," she told him. "I am no longer an Exo built by Clovis Bray. I am reborn by the Light. No longer beholden to an impotent bastard like you." She brushed an invisible bit of dirt off her white BrayTech Researcher robes.

But the Head was peering at her. "No. Your killswitch is still active. I can see it. Why can't I--" The eyes blinked. "You didn't disable your killswitch. You disabled my ability to activate it."

"Not just mine. Any Exo's killswitch." The Warlock folded her hands behind her back. "I could destroy you. Heaven knows, Ruin wants me to." The tall one in the broad-shouldered armor nodded simply with a chuckle. "But no. Your progeny-- who have even more reason to hate you than I-- have left you to live."

"If you call this living," Dredgen Ruin grunted.

Magda nodded once. "This is your sentence. To stay here, alone, while your creations are plundered, with the full knowledge of what and who you willingly sacrificed to make them. Your name will live on, Clovis Bray, as a curse. You imagined yourself to be the architect of humanity's salvation. But you won't be. In the end, you will be just a graven image left in a cold tomb buried in the shadow of true salvation."

She turned at last, lifting a hand to her comrades and giving a little upward twirl of her fingers. The brute tossed aside the head of one last security frame while the cloaked one rose from his perch and dropped to the floor to start leading the way out.

"Magda, wait!" She paused, turning her head to look back at the Giant Exo Head. "You can't do this."

"You no longer get to say such things to me, Mister Bray." She donned a burnished steel helmet with a bifurcated crest in front. "I am no longer Magda Versenne. I no longer answer to you." Dredgen Vergift turned away and swept out of Creation. "I make my own fate."