It's Always Darkest... (Open)

Night had fallen over the city, a hazy, slightly green fog settling over everything in sight, whilst clouds overhead did the same to the sky above, obscuring the digital stars in what was perhaps an infinite cosmos of code... There was so little visible, from the top of that building, stretching into those obscured heavens like some damned steel Tower of Babel... A slight flash of light illuminated the darkness, only for an instant... Then, with carefully-encoded precision, it began to rain.

It was a soft rain, the component code making up each drop falling in a perfectly linear path to the ground, marking the pavement some eighty stories below with precision and efficiency. Of course, it was impossible to follow any such particular drop as it hurtled toward its limited purpose within the system... And yet, it was seen, and it was taken note of.

The one place the rain did not fall, would not touch, was upon that building's roof, where sat ensconced an immaculately-sculpted gargoyle, a static representation of humanity's fear and doubt, all hewn with perfection into stone, or such stone as one could gather from the digital sands... Nothing was forever, after all. Not even this place itself... Much like the rain, it too would find fruition in its ultimate purpose, the running-out of its subroutines, and then, like all else, it would be discarded. This, of course, was not why the rain had chosen to avoid its mass. No, the smooth surface of its outspread wings bore a crouched form, who in the midst of the storm remained dry, who could see nothing and yet saw everything...

Even after this time, such universality of experience as being one with the component code of the system was somewhat disorienting, and the black eyes closed for a moment beneath matching sunshades, as the data allocation that made up Void's mind attempted to regain his bearings, his individuality. That was something he struggled with, of course. To be connected to the code, and yet to value one's self so narcissistically... His transition into this state had not been entirely without sacrifice, it seemed... Eventually, he reminded himself, he would be able to destroy those that he despised... But not now... Not, at least, while their cause and the cause of the System seemed inexplicably unified...

No, better to lie low, as he had been doing, until he could exert some mastery over that which invaded his senses... Only then, would his plans be fulfillable... He felt something, as he usually did when some change was to affect him. Standing slowly, he pulled out a cellphone from the inner pocket of his coat, a useless item, really, but nevertheless a comforting relic from the bygone days of his humanity... Pressing a button snapped it open, the slide working as effortlessly as the rain. There was no difference.

"... Yes?"

"... I see... You may inform her that I am busy, at the moment, but will come around to see her later. If she finds that disagreeable, you may remind her that she seems to have once again mistaken me with someone who cares."

He thought a moment.

"... Nicely, of course."

Now was not the time to make enemies with the few allies he had left, after all.
Closing the phone, he looked up at the blank sky, towards a bit of a light, where the moon was attempting, rather futily, to exert its native programming on that of the surrounding atmosphere.
Then, the shadow of a cloud passed over the gargoyle's petrified form, and its burden was at once gone.

- Void

Outside, the winds changed direction. The lights flickered inside the Sphynx for only a moment - barely worth notice, as the old wiring threatened to give out for one more time in an uncountable mass of times. Time seemed to do that, in this place... Mass together, run together... It was all an endless river of code, flowing back and forth upon itself... And he was drowning in it, such as he was.

He had met with someone important that day - An unusually charismatic Cypherite named Veil. Of course, she displayed far too much... humanity for his liking, but he had to admit that their goals, and even their outlooks, were not entirely dissimilar, even accounting for the fact that no being with that much personality could ever understand the perfection of cut-and-dry glyphs and mathematics. Then again, could he? He had always been an artist, of sorts... Even killing, to him, had been an art. Was he so different now? What was this force that pulled him toward the edge of personal oblivion - this drawing power that seduced him to join with the rest of the code, to lose his individuality...

The thing that bothered Void the most, was that he had no logical reason for maintaining that individuality. And yet... he continued to, at least for the time being.

His meeting with Veil had come at a high price to the Cypherites - several of their bases lay in various states of internal ruin, with scores of their secretive ranks absolutely decimated... In the end, he had walked past her guards, entering the room while wiping away the last traces of blood from his person with a bandanna he had pulled from one of her less-fortunate operatives.

"You look like you're bleeding a little, honey," She had said, smiling cryptically from behind mirrored lenses that revealed no eyes.

"Nah, it's not mine," he had replied, smiling in return, just a little, from behind black shades that concealed the physicality of his failure.

They had talked for some time, before he had gone on his way once again. He had the impression that she had thought rather highly of him, and such an idea helped him to stave off the ever-encroaching code surrounding him, from which he could not break free. Thus, he remained himself, at least for the moment.

Taking a seat in such a familiar place, where he had sat countless times before, Void considered his hand on the bar, the codestreams running together - a bit of him leaving, a bit of the bar becoming him... It was all the same.

His fingers encountered another bit of code, something that was not the bar - a glass, with a liquid in it, presumably alcoholic. He had not enjoyed a drink since his transformation, and realized that he would not likely enjoy one now.

Nevertheless, he raised it to his lips, its code blending with his own as he took it into his body in the customary fashion. He was almost surprised to find that it had a taste, beyond the simple processing of what it ought to taste like - that is, it held a quality within it that was beyond the sum of its sensory data.

Rising from the bar a moment later, he exited as he had come - not by way of the single door at the opposite end of the club.

The glass had been returned to its original position, including the exact angle of its rotation. The only difference was that it was now quite empty.

It seemed, indeed, that "no one" had enjoyed that drink that day.

- Void