This is a story written for the contest being hosted by @bobthebuilder2, the details of which can be found here.
They had been living in the house for a few years the day the world changed forever. Nothing could have really prepared them for what was about to happen. Sure, they were told that if a disaster ever hit that they'd just have to hide in the basement and put on their gas masks...that everything would blow over quickly. But that's not exactly how it happened.
She was sweeping the floor in her kitchen, occasionally glancing out the kitchen window to catch glimpses of the green hillsides and to enjoy the singing of the birds nearby. With a ponytail and whispies falling at her cheeks, her three little children were playing in the living room. It was at this moment, while she was leaning against her broom with a sun-splashed warmth coating her dress and apron, that she saw a flash of light. Almost immediately there was a plume of green and purple smoke shooting up with an orange tinged halo near the origin of the flash.
"TO THE BASEMENT!!! NOW!!!"
Dropping the broom and grabbing her phone, @xawi dashed into the living room and scooped up her five-year-old, heading immediately for the stairs. Her kids didn't understand what was happening but the fear in their mother's voice left them no doubt that it was time to move.
Just as they reached the bottom of the stairs what sounded like a freight train hit the house and everything went dark as the blast-wave flattened the building on top of them.
That was 20 years ago, today. The anniversary of that brutal day always seemed to bring it all back like it was yesterday. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how one viewed the current world, only her eldest, @forexbrokr, had survived. He was 25 now with the same haunted look so many had these days; the same look she saw in the broken mirror every morning. But today she was going to set about changing that. Today they started to fight back.
Limping out of the one-bedroom apartment they called home, Xawi headed for the stairs. Forex was already in the lobby waiting for her. As she reached the bottom her son just looked at her.
"Mom, where are we going?" he asked.
"Where we should have gone years ago," she replied determinedly. "To see the Doctor."
A hint of life seemed to rekindle in his eyes as she watched him. Could it be hope?
@taskmaster4450, aka "The Doctor", was the underground leader of the resistance. Before the "Wasting", as they called those events of 20 years ago, he had been one of the foremost experts on neurology in the entire world. His work with robotics and prosthetics was cutting edge at the time and, despite the Wasting, he had only continued to make advancements. Only now, it was out of necessity.
He had lost almost the entirety of the right half of his body to the blast, including an eye, an ear, and his right arm past the elbow. Only the fact that he had been working in a hospital at the time of the explosion had allowed him to survive. After months of recovery in which he could barely move, he had finally risen from his bed.
And started giving orders. For while his body lay there in shambles, his mind continued to work. Using himself as a case study, he set about replacing the functions he had lost, until now, 20 years later, he had a new eye, ear, and arm, all made with some custom enhancements.
But he didn't stop there. Once he had perfected his craft, he set about improving the lives of those around him. Within a few short months, he had built, literally, his own little army and had carved out a small corner of the lawless city in which he now lived.
Next, he focused on finding other highly educated doctors, engineers, and others; physicists, chemists, biologists, botanists, you name it. If they were educated, he wanted them by his side. While the world struggled with anarchy and glorified thugs trying to take control, he quietly scoured the planet for the best minds he could find and gathered them in.
And now, it was time to hit back.
Xawi slowly limped into the burned out remains of a coffee shop. She completely ignored the handful of shifty, unkempt individuals surreptitiously studying them from across the street. Her son didn't though.
"What are we doing, Mom?" he asked nervously. "This place hasn't been touched for years and I don't like the look of those people staring at us."
She ignored him and she made her way deeper into the dark, abandoned shop. Moving behind the counter and passing through a couple swinging doors that squeaked loudly as she pushed through, Xawi could dimly make out a freezer in the back. The door was latched but she grabbed the handle and wrestled it open. Motioning her son inside, she shut the door behind them.
"Mom, what are y...."
"Shush," she said calmly as she cut him off.
Then, into the complete blackness she said one word: "Cryptomaniacs."
Immediately the floor beneath them started silently vibrating and a sliver of light grew as a portion dropped away to reveal a doorway at the bottom of a short flight of stairs. It looked like the door to a vault. Or a crypt. Either way, it silently swung open and a man stood in the opening eyeing them suspiciously.
"What do you want?" he asked. "You obviously knew how to get here but that still doesn't mean you get to come in."
"@jongolson, if you don't let me in this minute, I'll box your ears!" Xawi said firmly.
"Who are you and how do you know my name?" he asked cautiously.
"Don't make me bring up Ethereum," she replied with a hint of humor in her voice.
"Xawi? It couldn't be. Xawi! It is you!" he shouted as she made her way down the stairs and into the light.
"It's been a long time, Jon," she said as she stood in front of him. "Too long."
"What are you doing here?" he asked.
"It's time," she said as she slid past him into the tunnel beyond the doorway.
She stood at the entrance to "Quadrant 4", the most notorious of the 32 neighborhoods (if you could call them that) in the city of Psyber. Flexing her cybernetically enhanced hands, she contemplated the road that had brought her to this point. After reuniting with Doctor T, a former lover in a different life, in a different time, she had volunteered to "test" his latest advancements. To call them a success would be putting it mildly.
She had worked her way through 31 of the quadrants in the city and now she stood here. Survive today and she would be ready to take her army on the road to truly start fighting the war. The war that mattered that is. Every day was a war in Psyber, but until it was secured, there could be no leaving to go after the real enemy: the thug politicians and their machines. After today, if things went the way she planned, her training would be complete and the real mission could begin.
She punched the button on the wall and the door slid open revealing a burning, smoke-filled, wasteland of wreckage. Glass on the streets but not in the windows, cars upside down and burning, drones buzzing through the air sliding in and out of the smoke like wraiths from hell, their searching target beams lighting up the fog in multicolored beams like some heavy metal rock concert from a time all but forgotten. She took a deep breath and sucked it all in as the adrenalin started pumping through her enhanced veins.
"Ahhh, my latest victim has arrived," said an ugly looking giant of a man as he stepped out from behind an overturned car pointing his automatic weapon at her. "Call me @bobthebuilder2. I just want you to know who it is that is taking you out. A small favor I like to provide my targets as a parting gift. No one likes to die without knowing who killed them."
Just then another man stood up off to the side pointing a rocket launcher their direction.
"Allow me," said Xawi as she whipped out her laser rifle with one hand, locked onto the target with her cybernetically enhanced eye, and gunned him down in a fraction of a second. "We wouldn't want him to spoil your fun," she said calmly.
Punching a button on her wrist, Xawi turned back to Bob pulling a 10-inch @dagger212 from her belt. "Now, where were we?"
Bob immediately opened fire but the bullets just ricocheted off her chest as her No Remorse perk kicked in. Stabbing him through the heart she looked him in the eye. As the gun fell from his grasp and he slowly sank to the ground he whispered, "Who are you?"
"Call me Psyber.......X."
This is obviously a fictitious story about the possible world of #PsyberX. All names in the story are intentional as they are part of the rules for the contest. However, they are obviously not meant to convey any meaning to real life. Although, to be fair, @taskmaster4450 could certainly be considered a Doctor of Hive, @jongolson definitely is not a fan of Ethereum, and @xawi could easily play the part of a cyber hero with her incredible prowess in Splinterlands. @Forexbrokr is a good writer who I thought might enjoy trying his hand at something like this and @bobthebuilder2 is the host of this contest. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder so I have no idea if he's an "ugly looking giant of a man" or not. :-)
The images used are from the PsyberX game itself and are used with their permission with the exception of the first one, which is sourced from Pixabay.