A red progress bar slid across my vision, slowly creeping forwards until it completed, with the world going dark once more.
A second later and I materialised into existence, my bare feet landing on a small floating platform.
The void around the platform writhed unpleasantly, dark red tendrils of code spasming forwards in a futile struggle through the inky blackness of must be empty cyberspace.
It was incredible to look at, and yet the more I looked the sicker I felt.
I brought up a hand to my forehead, a sudden headache wrenching me away from the childish sense of wonder I had been feeling.
[Error detected in data migration, recalculating]
That didn't sound good.
[Solution theorised: forcible partition of primary matrix. Beginning implementation]
PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN.
I screamed.
It felt as if my brain was melting, my alter's yells of pain and confusion layering on top of my own, exploding outwards all at once.
My mind was on fire, and I snorted wetly as a stream of white-hot blood begin dripping from my nose, splattering onto the platform below.
I pinched it shut, feeling the scalding hot liquid build up in my nasal cavity; thinking furiously about what the text had contained.
Data migration failed? Had it not been able to transfer my consciousness correctly?
Another wave of pain and my head hurt too much to think any longer, my cognitive ability utterly failing me as my virtual avatar glitched from the unstable connection.
The pain lessened slightly, and I watched in apprehension as my limbs split outwards.
I had six alternate duplicates of my left arm now, all of them attached to my left shoulder and yet only in control of one.
I split again, this one far more violent than the last.
My vision blanked for a moment, and scatters of blueish code weaved themselves across my sense of sight.
The pain receded just as fast as it had appeared.
I gasped for air, reading the new message through my watery eyes.
[Process executed. External loading of Secondary, Tertiary, Quaternary, Quinary, and Senary matrices complete]
I blinked rapidly, clearing my vision and staring around at the now cramped platform, which was already expanding to fit all of its new inhabitants.
I had been clone somehow; with six of the child Judas now standing on the platform next to me, each one wearing a different facial expression.
My mind felt oddly lightened for some reason, moreso than usual in fact. The painful headache had fully disappeared too, which seemed to be the only silver lining in sight so far.
"No fucking way." Said one, his face lighting up with a gleeful happiness unmatched by any of us. He removed his hand from the terrible nosebleed we were all sporting, which caused a weighty surge of blood to explode out of his nostrils, staining his shirt red. "This is impossible."
"W-what's going on?" Another hissed, quickly backing away from the rest of us, an obsessively paranoid expression etched onto his young face.
The other three of us stayed silent, simply observing everyone else in either confusion or suspicion.
What the fuck was going on?
The happy one spoke up again, striding forwards. "C'mon, figure it out already, you can be oh-so-slow sometimes. Here, look." He covered his face with both hands before removing them again.
The clone's eye color shifted from its regular dark gold to an unusual bright orange after being revealed again, his newly morphed catlike pupils dilating as they focused on me.
I leaned back untrustingly, not particularly comfortable with having this unknown entity so close to me, but ultimately staying still and letting the clone do as it pleased.
He grinned evilly, before leaning forwards, placing a small hand on my shoulder and whispering gently into my ear. "Pride speaking."
I waited. I waited for my Pride to speak up in outrage at the imposter's ridiculous claim, or laugh cruelly at the poor impersonation of himself.
But there was only silence.
'Pride?' I questioned, only now recognising just how my glaringly empty my mind was.
"What?" I said in complete disbelief.
Had the chip managed to separate us?
"An impossible feat wouldn't you say?" He said, smirking in a way that was so annoyingly familiar. "Or maybe just an improbable one now."
Hold on, that meant the other four were…
"This can't be real." The words burst from the scared clone's mouth as he stumbled backwards to the edge of the platform, very nearly losing his footing and falling.
Another clone strode over and grabbed him by the front of his shirt before he managed to fall into the black abyss of cyberspace below all on his own; forcefully yanking him back onto the platform.
This newcomer was clearly brimming with excitement and like Pride, he didn't try to hide it at all. "But if it is real, then this is the best thing EVER!"
This honesty was not something I would not expect from myself, which made me even more suspicious.
I was knocked from my reverie as the patchwork skybox of red and black surrounding us quickly disappeared from view; as what I assumed was the training simulation started to build itself all around the platform.
We now stood in the middle of a well lit, grey colored room than seemed to stretch on for as far as I could possibly discern.
A robotic voice spoke directly into my mind, seemingly emanating from every single direction at once.
[AI assistance level MAX, training room difficulty {Error-nAn0}, Welcome Recruit]
"An error huh. Did Judy buy defective product? Or is it something else." Mused an Alter to my right, his eyes now a dull unmoving grey.
"Ah right, I forgot we had these implants." Said the excitable one, quickly flicking his own to a sickly yellow.
"Yes, quite. Although it seems some of us lack a proper sense of decorum." Yet another Alter spoke up, his voice a tinge more feminine than the rest. I looked over to see his pink, heart shaped pupils.
I winced, okay I believed this was real now. Nobody knew about this side of myself except us.
Pride spoke up, clapping his hands authoritatively, having had enough of our disjointed interactions. "Alright everybody shut the fuck up, attempting a six way conversation is a retarded enough task to do with normal people, let alone having one with six different versions of ourselves."
I had to agree - it was hard enough dealing with one of them at a time.
Having all of us here would simply make this task a whole lot easier, after all I couldn't imagine this chip being designed for six people at once.
"How does the AI interface work?" I asked the room at large, only to jump internally as a featureless human avatar spawned a few metres in front of me.
[This Militech training module supports a total of three combat oriented courses: Unarmed, Armed, and Firearms training. Will the participating recruit please select what they wish to train in]
A basic blue interface popped up in front of me with three options listed.
I tapped on the bottom one, as Judy had wanted us to pass the firearms training.
[Selected Unarmed x3, Armed x2, Firearms x1 {Error} . Do you wish to proceed?]
We could all choose courses to complete? Wait a damn second…
Pride snorted loudly while I glared around in annoyance.
I jabbed a finger at them accusingly. "She said firearms training, what the fuck are you all doing?"
"Eek." The Skeptic, who had now donned a set of purple eyes, jumped skittishly behind the yellow eyed Brash.
"Come on, you'll pass that with no problem - let us have some fun yeah?" Brash offered me placatingly, all while still wearing that idiotic grin of his.
These fucking…
"Proceed." Said Love, completely ignoring our petty squabbles and talking directly to the assistant.
The thing turned to face him immediately, replying in the same dull robotic voice as before.
[Confirmed - Generating field, {Generation Error} // Attempting regeneration]
The environment started to warp, the terrain glitching unnaturally as the AI tried to generate all six of our conflicting courses at once.
Grey blocks began to flicker in and out of existence, along with a large number of metallic humanoid figures spawning that clipped through the rapidly changing landscape.
I had definitely jinxed this with my comment earlier, so much for it being easier with more people.
"This fucking shitbot…" Muttered Brash, who was slowly edging back towards where the centre of the platform had been. "I do not want to find out what happens if one of those spawns directly onto us."
Neither did I.
Feeling the sort pain created by being fused with a solid object wasn't something that was very high on my to-do list.
Love's doll-like face crumpled into an irritated glare. "Cancel generation."
[Unable to cancel field generation, terrain backend looping detected. Compensating.]
"Fuck." He cursed crossly, copying Brash and backing away to the center.
A heavy weight suddenly jolted my right hand downwards and I felt the familiar shape of a handgun slide perfectly into my childlike hand.
"Oh, brilliant, just what we needed." Said Love, his girlishly sarcastic tone getting more and more annoying by the minute. "This is going to help us a load isn't it?"
Both he and Pride carried small daggers, which, given their small stature, looked more like a pair of machetes.
A gunshot rang out and Cold's grey eyed, avatar falling to the ground dead, a small bloody hole located in the side of his temple.
We all whipped around, collectively seeking out the source of the ear-splitting noise.
Three adult sized training bots sprinted towards us, one holding the same gun as I was, with the other two clasping a dagger and a pair of brass knuckles respectively.
"Well shit." Said Brash, staring at another group of two knuckle-bots along with a knife-bot that were making a beeline for his side of the platform. "Wait- I chose unarmed, what the fuck?"
He was right, this definitely wasn't adding up, this was far too difficult to be meant for our age demographic.
I didn't ponder on this thought for long however, refusing to wait for a second shot from our attackers and bringing up my own pistol to nail the knife user in its faceless head twice with a quick double tap, making it fall back and clip through the floor beneath us.
I heard a scream to my right as Skeptic sprinted away from another dagger wielding bot, somehow outspeeding the thing by a good amount despite only being half its size.
At the same time I killed the first one; Love quickly hoisted the dagger he had been given, sending it flying at the gun-bot which tilted its head of the way of the spinning blade just before it was deactivated.
The thing then readjusted its pistol at at an inhuman speed and pulled the trigger, with Love barely letting out a half of a curse before he fell down next to me, dead.
I darted to the right, watching in slow motion as the bot turned and locked onto my position with an accuracy and speed that was downright unfair.
'Shit.'
"Alright, that's enough. Cancel simulation."
The training world froze, the corrupted map around us stopping dead in its tracks, the gun-bot's finger poised over the halfway pulled trigger.
[Request confirmed, do you wish to exit the training simulation]
"Of course I fucking do. That's what I just said didn't I?" Snapped Pride, looking at the newly spawned avatar in front of him dismissively.
[Beginning exit protocol, thank you for choosing Militech]
'That irritating bastard, he could definitely have done that from the start." I thought, shaking my head ruefully.
As the world fell away around us, I caught another brief glimpse of that red and black eternity that seemed to stretch on forever.
Now then, how were we going to beat this?
(A/N: Were you all expecting this to be easy for him? Tut tut, well too bad because I like making my characters suffer. Still, he dropped one with ease so don't be too upset with your incorrect prediction.)