Synner

The man in the green suit sighs. This deal is going no where. The man in the blue suit shakes his head. He feels the same way.

The men look at each other. "Well. I guess we're handling this the messy way?" says the Man in Green. "Hmph. I guess we are. May the best man win." says the Man in Blue. They both disappear from the temporary space and return to their respective towers.

Assistants are harrassed. Calls are made. Shit rolls down hill, from department to department in each of the respective corporate towers, until they reach their respective...ah...let's be generous and call them 'security' departments. Freelancers are contacted and contracted.

An hour later a very nice car explodes. Two hours later the entire staff of a corporate monitoring station disappears. Does it matter which one?

Three hours later, things start to escalate. A beautiful, dark purple supercar, with pink neon lights (extremely illegal for the record) pulls into the parking lot of an office park.

The door lifts up and Syn steps out, in leather pants, boots, no shirt, and his lucky coat. His eyes glow with curiosity. He got a call, from a freelancer buddy on his way to the afterlife, to finish what he started.

'Ay, Syn...no point letting an interesting job go to waste.' There was a violent gargling noise and then the transmission went out, as the contract data arrived. "Hahahaha...Mark, you always paid it forward." Syn pours out some mezcal for his dead homie.

The freelancer strolls into the office building, where the lovely secretary greets him. "Hello sir...wow, I love your outfit!" She smiles brightly. Syn's heart almost melts. "Thank you babe, I love you too." He winks. And at the same time spits a tranquilizer dart at her neck.

He jumps over the desk in a single bound and catches her and lays her down under the desk. "I'm so sorry. I'll make sure you don't get in trouble for this." He pulls a cord from his wrist and plugs into her desk terminal. "Hah. Sub-basement. There's always a secret basement."

15 minutes later, our protagonist is in the sub-basement. It's about what he expected. Oh. Right, yeah he's being shot at. By like, 7 dudes. Syn pulls out his rail-pistol. Glances around the corner for a quick sec, does the math... Bullet almost takes his eye out. "Dicks..."

Syn tosses out a scrambler grenade which blinds and deafens everyone in the room. Rolls out of cover, and fires a shot at the wall. The electromagnetic gauss round ricochets off the titanium basement wall, takes off the heads of 4 guards, bounces again and kills the remaining 3.

"God DAMN I'm good!" Syn high fives himself and skips across the floor to the gigantic server in the middle of the room. He feels around until he finds the main port, takes a deep breath, and jacks into the server, in search of his quarry.

A psychedelic array of numbers, lights, symbols, colors assaults Syn's mind as he dives deep into the hostile corporate network. He is squealing with joy. "I LOVE THIS PART~~~~~~~~"

He finds himself in a room. White tiles above, below, all around. There's nothing in the room. "Huh. That's weird." Oh, now there's someone in the room with Syn. A young caucasian boy, no older than 11.

"RIDER PROTOCOL 0x1h8al092-SYN. YOU WILL NOW BE RECLAIMED." The boy opens his mouth and the phrase just kind of falls out. "Aw, Mark you piece of shit." It seems like Syn is kind of fucked.

Unfortunately for everyone, Syn is insane. "Well. As ever, the only way out is through." Syn grabs the program-child, pulls out his cable, and jams it into the program's 'ear' and screams "RIDER PROTOCOL INITIATE"

The ebon cyborg rides the program's data-stream further down into the corporate network, into the belly of the beast, in a last ditch attempt to save his ass from the trap he's caught in. Everyone in town apparently knows now that Syn can't resist a good time.

The two men appear once again, in the non-descript room. "Well played." says the man in the Green Suit. The man in the Blue Suit laughs. "'Know thy enemy' is a thing, you know. The fool would just kill everyone we send to capture him. The trick is to give him what he wants."

And what our lovely fool wants is chaos and adventure. So these powerful men, hunting dangerous, priceless prey, faked a conflict to draw him out. The Man in the Blue Suit summons the program-child imprisoning Syn's mind and calls the military liason who contracted them.

The Liason appears on a floating screen. "Confirming successful capture of Rider, in exchange for contract X-9557 to continue developing anti-Rider AI." The program child's datastream flows into the screen. The Liason visibly panics and cuts the feed. The execs freeze in place.

They look at the child. The child turns around and looks at them, and his eyes glow a violent pink and he begins to laugh. Those powerful men, drop dead, killswitch hacks streamed directly into their minds from connecting to the capture program.

The program child disappears. The men disappear. Syn reappears. He giggles. "That was in fact a good time."

Syn disappears.

THE END.

with Love, Genius, and Mischief anansi, the soul director master storyteller Syn will return.

Originally posted as a thread on X