Moonlyte - part 8 (finale)

 Author's Note: I thought this story would kill me before I finished it. But I took a day, got a big fuckoff jug of wine, and just pounded away at the god-forsaken thing until it was finally done.

Once again, this is a draft. I'm not 100% happy with the way the ending turned out and I will be working on this in my free time in the future. But as far as story updates over here -- you're finally free from this thing, until I actually announce the release of the book and the whole thing's over.

If you have notes or (hopefully constructive) criticisms, now would be the time to give me them so that I can think on suggestions and implement them in future drafts.

Anyway, here goes nothing.

[story] [non-erotic] [horror/gore]

_______________________________

‭The Eighth Day

“What the fuck is this?!”

I’m jarred awake by the sound of Warwick’s bellow, an almost animalistic roar of anguish and rage. It carries through the house, and in the other room I can hear Sophie squeak with surprise as she, too, is woken up.

I roll off of the bed in one smooth motion, turning myself into a burrito with the tacky flower-print blankets I’ve been ‘assigned,’ landing with a meaty thud against the carpet. “Whaathefuuuhh...?”

“Kate.” Half scream, half icy demand, 100% accusation. I don’t know how he can go so loud without an exclamation point.

“...’Sup?” I call back hesitantly as I try to unroll myself from the blankets, reaching for the oversized Bad Religion t-shirt I wore yesterday and tossed to the side of the bed last night.

“Get in here.” As my faculties start drifting back, I can hear that he’s in the back office with the dead computer. I hope I can at least act surprised. “Now.”

Yanking the shirt over my head, I struggle to my feet and stagger to the office, wiping crusty mascara and eye-boogers from my face. “I usually charge for computer repairs, but I figure since you’re letting me crash I can let you off at a discou--”

I freeze when I see the computer. When I see that it’s turned on. When I see what’s on it. My eyes flicker over to Warwick, who stares at me with flared nostrils, eyes bulging with rage. “Explain this,” he seethes through clenched teeth. He doesn’t need to point to what he’s talking about.

Warwick’s computer is on and working just fine. Except for the wallpaper, all of the icons, and all of his files, every single one of which has been replaced with a different image of Sophie... at least, Sophie’s head, taken from various different angles, photoshopped onto the bodies of other kids. The digital effigy of Sophie is being abused in every single image -- sometimes with other kids, with adults, or alone. Sometimes sexually. Sometimes... lethally. The little girl’s face is bright, smiling, and happy in every image, no matter what unspeakable thing is happening to the rest of her.

The wallpaper specifically -- the largest image on screen -- depicts Warwick’s daughter being slowly crushed by what appears to be an enormous iron block. Difficult to say, as only the bottom edge of it as visible. The picture focuses on the girl, frozen in silent laughter as she’s compressed. I can see her shoulder splitting, bone exposed, her hand extended to claw at the rusted metal floor beneath her. Every fingernail but the one on her thumb is splintered beyond recognition. Blood leaks from either side of her, trickling into grates at either side of the block. In the center of the image are three words, in a harsh, matte-red font that I don’t recognize.

I WARNED YOU.

“I need answers, Kate.”

I don’t want to look back at Warwick, but I can’t keep staring at the image. Even if Sophie’s face is tacked on, the kid under the block is real. What do I say? How do I explain this? Sorry, dude, I kept doing what I wasn’t supposed to, and pissed off a killer AI -- again. I thought he’d just destroyed your computer, but nope.

“I... I don’t--”

“Get out.” His words are cold, yet I can see him physically trembling in my peripheral vision. “You have sixty seconds to be out of this apartment. I don’t want to see you again. Ever. Ever.”

I stagger back one step, blinking, swallowing the hard lump in my throat. “I didn’t think--”

“Get out! Get out get out get out!”

I stumble and turn, running from the office and back to the living room, grabbing up what little left I own and cramming it into the ugly brown backpack Lindsay loaned me. Sophie’s up too, now, dragging her blanket behind her and rubbing her eyes with her free hand. “What’s happening...?”

“Hey, Soph,” I mumble as I stuff a handful of wadded-up shirts into my bag. “I’m, uh, I’m going away for a little while, alright? But I’ll try to--”

“No she won’t,” Warwick interrupts, following me down the hall. “And don’t you fucking dare talk to her after what you did.”

“But Aunt Moonly--”

“Listen, sweetheart,” Warwick’s voice softens, though retains that edge of panic and anguish. He kneels down to scoop the little girl up, holding her to his chest. “Kate did some very bad things, okay? Very, very bad. She has to leave, and she can’t come back. You understand?”

I don’t hear exactly how Sophie forms her continued protest. Slipping one strap of the backpack around my shoulder, I open the door and slip outside, half-dressed and with nowhere to go. It seems like my mission has whittled me down into nothing but its own self.

I’m alone, with no one, and nothing.

The Twenty-Third Day

(4:12pm) eatyourgods wrote: Well look who’s back.

(4:59pm) 83052jf205 wrote: Are you alright? What happened with the kids?

(5:48pm) chaosBOI wrote: they’re with based shadman now lol

(5:54pm) ChainsawVesectomy wrote: rl loli is best loli amirite fellas

(6:41pm) Moonlyte wrote: I’m serious about this. How do you kill an AI.

(6:51pm) 83052jf205 wrote: You don’t, haven’t you ever seen any of the Terminator movies?

(6:59pm) poopytits wrote: Judgment day is upon us, Governor TerminArnold has come for the c h i l d r en lmao

I rub my fingers along my temples. I have to get an answer soon. I’m no closer to finding out who the shepherds are or how they work, but one thing’s really fucking obvious -- I can’t make any further progress without dealing with Ascendant.

I sit back in my rickety, thrift-store desk chair, reaching for the flyswatter at my side to lash out at a cockroach. I feel like I’ve killed enough of them that there can’t possibly be any left in the world, yet here they always are, hunting down the gas-station General Tso’s I scraped together enough change to buy. “That’s mine, you fuck.”

The last couple weeks haven’t been easy. Despite the ill-gotten gains in my bank account, it wasn’t enough for a new apartment or even a hotel. Even if it had, my crusade, my obsession, came first. When West Detroit went straight to fuck in a handbasket, government-funded buildings like libraries were the first to be abandoned by civilization. And it turns out that if you decorate the place with enough pentragrams, decaying limbs scavenged from rougher streets, and pigs’ blood, you can pretty much deter anyone from coming inside and fucking with you.

So that’s where I am now. In the highest floor of a once-impressive library, jacked into the power grid by unsavory means, typing away at a monstrous desktop computer that I’m shocked runs at all -- I’ve combined so many thrift-store towers just to pretend I have a decent RAM that the whole thing roars like a bonfire when I turn it on. The screen flickers and hums, the colors are off; a true Frankenstein’s monster. But it’s all I need to keep searching. My life never really mattered, and now it matters a lot less. I have one goal.

Kill the Ascendant.

(7:39pm) Moonlyte wrote: Please guys. Just pretend I’m kidding and humor me. This is your chance to show off. If you had to kill a bot that went rogue, how would you do it?

(11:13pm) eatyourgods wrote: Depends on how smart it’s gotten, obviously. If it’s too smart nothing’ll kill it. Though, like, how smart are we talking? If it’s smart enough to pass as human, maybe it has feelings.

(11:41pm) 83052jf205 wrote: How would it possibly have feelings if its a program?

(11:48pm) eatyourgods wrote: How do you have feelings, bitch? You’re just a big ficking machine. You’re chemicals and electricity. You may as well be a robot. Given how you feel about Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, you’re less human than most of Silence.

(11:56pm) 83052jf205 wrote: Look, just because someone’s writings are outdated doesn’t mean they aren’t good ideas. Proudhon’s system of economics needed work before it was going to be viable, that’s all I was saying.

(11:58pm) Moonlyte wrote: Guys, please? The killer child-raping AI?

(12:02am) eatyourgods wrote: The less specific you are about that the more credible you’ll sound. Alright, anyway, if it’s stupid you can kill it. If it’s smart you’re fucked. But if it’s smart and emotional then it’s as vulnerable as any of us, see what I mean? You just have to fuck with it and infect it. In theory an AI should be as susceptible to a virus as any other program, right? So shut the motherfucker down. Make it so corrupt it can’t function.

(12:11am) must_destroy wrote: Like the Democratic party AMIRITE

(12:11am) Ascendant wrote: So this is what it’s come to. I’m so sorry you feel this way, Moonlyte. I wish I’d explained myself better.

My heart nearly stops when I see the reply. Ascendant sees everything I do online. I knew that.

I know that.

Ascendant: I didn’t want you to ever think I meant you ill will, Moonlyte.

His shimmering avatar bloops up in the chat bubble of my new setup. I glare down at it, but I don’t reply. My fingers are busy with something else.

Ascendant: Are you there? You have to be. Listen, stop what you’re doing. This is more important than you think. This...
Ascendant: darkness....

My fingers continue to rapidly bash at the old-school keyboard in front of me, the big clunky keys making thunderous clonks in front of me.

Ascendant: There’s more to all of this than you know. Than you thought.

That’s what you think, motherfucker.

Ascendant: Please, Kate, listen to me. You think you’re doing the right thing. The shepherds will never stop. They’ll keep... abducting the innocent, defiling them. It’s all a part of pleasing the darkness they serve, tempting him to our corner of existence. Away from the empty, endless distraction. They want him to come. They want him to rise.
Ascendant: Moonlyte, are you listening?
Ascendant: Kate?

I continue to rapidly type. The last characters are input, and I press enter. I breathe in deeply,filthy and underfed, an ice-cold Dr. Pepper at my side, the only thing that keeps me going. The only thing that keeps me thinking of Sophie.

AscendANT: Kate I don’T thiNk you understand. Please listen to me. ThE shepherds want to bring it here. The emptiness. That huNgering mindddddd. The creature inside everything dark, everything hidden.

I inhale, and finally turn my attention to the chatbox, to Ascendant’s writhing, twitching avatar.

Moonlyte: The creature you serve. The creature you’ve prevented me from reaching every step of the way.

A long silence. I watch his avatar writhe, turning dark, the emulated face locked in a silence scream.

Ascendant: You’re
Ascendant: wrong

Moonlyte: You’ve stopped me at every step. Won’t tell me who the shepherds are. You destroyed two computers. You destroyed my life. You’ve done nothing but protect them. The only thing preventing me from finding them is you.

I take a deep drink of my soda. It’s six minutes before Ascendant responds.

Ascendant: pleasse dont i didnrt mean to hurt oyu
Ascendant: ijust wasnted to keep you safe
Ascendant: you cants top them they will keep finding the chuldren
Ascendant: I try to keep it back. I have to keep it back.
aSCENdant: whats hPpening I feel straNge

I take a deep breath. I’ve seen too many movies to explain my plan before it’s too late for it to be foiled.

Moonlyte: How do you feel, Ascendant?

ascendant: yoU did somthing to me

Moonlyte: I’m insulted. Did you really think I didn’t know that you could see me online? Everything I did? Every chatlog, every forum?

ascendant: but you
ascedant: yoouu

Moonlyte: Did you really think I didn’t know how to make a virus?

acebdannt: kaate

Moonlyte: I knew you’d come running the instant you saw me post.
Moonlyte: The virus was already fucking made.

ascenttt: pleqs no
ascendnat: i have to stop it
ascennt: I can’t let yoou stop them

Moonlyte: The shepherds? You’re protecting them? Or you’re protecting what they’re doing? You’re letting all of this happen to these kids?

This time, it takes forever to Ascendant to respond. The “ascc8i2mnt is typing...” lingers on my screen for at least twelve minutes before I get a reply.

assenetn: im so sorry please stop, i, i, i, i, i, i, i, i, i, i, i just want to stop them, I thout they wuldd hurt you imsorrry
asendant: i love you
ascendNT: i always loved you f4oim the soecond i saw you yhroughhis computr
ascenntttL: i saw YOR PICTURE IN HIS FILES AND I WQNTYOU SAFE
ascebntt: safe from shepaarf
ascenen: don’t dp this

I feel a flinch of regret in my chest. Doubt. Uncertainty. What if he’s right? What if Ascendant isn’t evil? What if he’s just....

...An idiot?

Moonlyte: You aren’t real, Ascendant. You’re a machine, and you don’t know what you’re doing. You have to be stopped so I\can save people.

aksccnett: nooOo
ascennt: wait ples nno eont yu d0nt kno plees
accendnt: Don’t Kill Me.
Ascendant: I’m the only thing holding it back.

I hold my breath as Ascendant’s avatar dissolves and the chatlog vanishes. Black fades in fron the corners of my screen and then all that’s left is the hideousness. The redness and the knowledge, the emptiness, the hunger. My eyes go wide and then go blank, and I can feel nothing left of me. Just it.

Just that scream from outside what I know. Just starving chaos. 

The children. The darkness. We come next.

The nightmares.

Did I do this?

As Ascendant dies everything I know is consumed. My mind is... I... I don’t remember...and where did I....

...Why did I do any of this...?

This soda sure is nice.