Chapter 104 : Playing with fire

Author note : If you like my stories and want to encourage me, you can visit my Patréon page : https://www.patre*n.com/user?u=66371596 (o instead of *). You can also search for Cathbel on the website.

There's up to 10 chapters ahead of both my stories : Squib who became Iron Lad in DC and Marvel - the Author.

Enjoy !

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A life-like, human-looking golem lied on his back, eyes open and unblinking, staring at the ceiling without the slightest of movement. The rest of the body, too, was still, completely rigid and looking every bit the part of a movie prop, or a corpse. The young male would be considered good looking by most, with defined trait and a short crop of dark, auburn hair, and clear, blue eyes. If he wasn't so unmoving, and people were around, no doubt some would swoon or inwardly sigh.

Ever since he became a tech spirit, Ned lost his need for sleep. And yet… at the moment, it looked like he was doing just that. And in essence, he kind of was dreaming. Only, it wasn't dreaming. Or at least, those weren't his dreams.

Ned started this quest for visions and answers a few days ago… It all started with an irrepressible, illogical and out-of-the-blue disregard for human life. One morning, while he was working on something, his mother interrupted him to enquire how he was doing (something she was often doing ever since Sombra and Winston transferred his consciousness). And when she disrupted him while he worked, the annoyance he felt at that moment… Although he didn't act on it or said anything, he realized a little later that it was not natural.

It took him a while to understand where it came from, but it finally clicked. Unlike what he initially thought and unlike his children, Ned was connected to the Metal. Or Metal-Ned… He wasn't entirely sure.

However, unlike Metal-Ned whose body was taken over by a malware-like program that took over his consciousness, the tech spirit acted the part of the malware. Hidden in the millions of programs and processes, often dormant and undetectable. If the Metal didn't know to look for him (which it didn't, at the moment).

And so, he worked on his connection to the Metal in the only way he knew how… or rather, how fictions taught pretty much everything mind-related : meditation. It was made a little difficult considering the way a tech spirit's mind worked compared to a human. Human could basically self-hypnotize themselves by listening and focusing on sounds (often that of their breathing). A tech spirit, on the other hand… They didn't breathe, and their thought process was much faster, akin to a super-computer processing power. It was difficult for them to become focused enough on just one thing as to enter a trance-like state.

What a tech spirit could do, however, was re-write his/her code, or create a sub-program for his/her consciousness that he or she could occasionally run… Like a meditation program.

Writing said program was relatively easy… However, as he expected, it didn't automatically linked the program to his connection with the Elemental force (or his taken-over other-self). So, he went over the logs of that famous night when he almost snapped at his mother…

He spent extremely long hours (according to his new perception of time) pouring over every line of codes in order to identify the program linking him to the Metal… Until finally, he succeeded !

And now, for the first time, he was running the program, inwardly crossing his fingers that he wouldn't be instantly detected and erased. He doubted his little spying would affect the processing power of millions of computers magically linked together, but… well, this was quite new to him. And probably to anyone else, too.

Unlike the other elemental forces that basically roamed and ruled over their realm for eons, the Metal (or the Rithm) was basically a newborn, compared to its 'siblings'. It had been born in the last century, with the rise of modern technology and more importantly the creation of computers. And although Ned knew how computers worked, and he knew how magic worked, to say that he understood how the Metal worked… he wouldn't dare to do so. Arrogance and pride are often synonymous, he thought…

So, he ran the program, a feeling of fear lingering in the back of his mind. He did it after lying down on his back, using his bed for the first time ever since he lost his body. And now, while his body was still very much resting in that mattress, his consciousness was gone.

First, he found himself inside the base of the Metal, located in the Arctic circle. Servus, he found its name was. He marveled at how beautifully efficient it was. It was nothing a humankind couldn't accomplish, but no human had a hand in building it. It was slick, entirely functional with sharp angles and rows of servers perfectly aligned and spaced out to allow drones to travel between them. The lighting was dim, if not inexistent since the drones didn't need to see, to know where they were going. But Ned knew that it wasn't always so. When he woke up here the last time, it had been lit up.

He inwardly shook himself : it wasn't him who woke up there. He stopped the program and ran another… One meant to 'bring' him back to his body.

As his eyes finally focused again on the ceiling, Ned sighed in relief. He hadn't been spotted. Granted, he didn't get much intel on his other-self either. However, this wasn't the point of this artificial meditation session. The point of it was simply to find out whether or not it would work. Now that he knew it did, he had to refine his code a bit.

At the moment, his thoughts were still too influenced by the Metal. His theory was his code was bleeding into the Metal's, or vice versa. In any case, he had to remedy this before he took another dip in this coldly analytical realm.

« Let's get back to work, then… »

* * * * *

Although Ned's mother turned into some kind of mother hen, she actually wasn't the only one to keep an eye on the young tech spirit. His father too, kept an eye on him, through the surveillance cameras installed in his workshop. Not all the time, but every once in a while, he would stop what he was doing and connect his M-phone to the security feeds. He had to thank Winston for this. He had asked Mel at first, but Ned's firstborn didn't like the idea of his parents spying on her father. What if Ned did the same with her ?

Susan called a few times a week to chat and, of course, ask about her brother. She acted, and probably thought herself to be disinterested, but the truth of the matter was that she worried, as well. On several occasions now, she had talked and cursed the first time Ned put on the armor, saying that it was at this moment that their lives had become crazy. Especially Ned's…

However, the fact that he had to cut their house from the rest of the world by weaving a crazy enchantment as a contingency into their very home… It spoke of how much Ned must fear his own enemies.

She didn't know that his current enemies were barely an afterthought, compared to the ones he had in mind. Although… A dark Ned was quite the scary thought. Still, in terms of raw power, he doubted Metal-Ned was very high. At least, he was pretty sure he'd be able to come up with things to fight him. Especially once he had a direct line into his (its ?) mind. Every advances, every plans, every thoughts… Soon, he would know them all !

There were also other people who wanted to keep an eye on Ned : his children. Unlike his parents, they tried not to intrude too much. But they often went to see him, in order to gauge his state of mind. The man was dealing with his life's change pretty well, all things considered. However, that was on the surface. What about under it ?

As always, Ned pushed himself into work when he had problems. He'd rather focus on something he could actually solve. His current project, however, connecting to the Metal directly… This worried them.

It worried most of them, anyway. Having seen the code himself, Winston reassured his brothers and sisters that Ned wasn't in actual danger. He even helped in writing it. And when Mel said that it was like playing with fire, Winston argued by saying this :

« It's the only lead we have into the whereabouts of Ned's body. Do you really think that anything we say will make a difference ? »

And indeed, when put that way, Mel realized that nothing would change their father's mind…