Incorporated with DeepSeek
The rain over Nuremberg wasn't water; it was a billion-data-point mist, a grey static that washed the color from the world and left only the neon scars of advertisements and security strobes. It had been falling for nine days, turning the autobahn into a black mirror, reflecting the underbellies of corporate aerial transports and the desperation of ground-level traffic.
Inside the armored Siemens-Mercedes Panzerlimousine, CEO Jonas Vogler felt the familiar, weary satisfaction of another day consolidating power. The Erlangen HQ had been a fortress of efficiency, a three-hour session that greenlit Project Silent Cathedral—a city-wide infrastructure overhaul that would make every power grid, every tram line, every home router a silent partner to Siemens data-mining. He sipped a 30-year-old Scotch, watching the rain-smeared lights of the high-riser district, his gated community "Eden," gleam in the distance like a cluster of diamonds. He was four kilometers from salvation. Four kilometers from the biometric gates, the layered energy shields, the private security force that out-munitioned the local Polizei.
They called themselves "Rustkinder." Children of Rust. Their leader, a gaunt man with neural interface scars web across his temple, went by Mako. He watched the Panzerlimousine’s encrypted telemetry, bought from a disgruntled logistics AI for a suitcase of vintage lithium batteries, pulse on his retinal display. They were parked in the corpse of a decommissioned logistics depot, three converted electric pickup trucks around them, their beds holding launch cradles.
"Phase one. Rain is our friend," Mako whispered, the subvocal mic carrying to the team.
Above the convoy, slicing through the sonic-hushing of the rain, came a sound like angry hornets. Six micro-helicopters, no larger than eagles, descended from the low cloud cover. They were matte black, their shapes blurred by rain and refractive coating, each carrying a pair of MTR-3 micro-rockets. They didn't register on the convoy’s standard threat scan; they were too small, too cold, their signatures lost in the urban thermal noise.
The lead security car, a bulky Audi Quattro enforcer, saw them a second too late. "Contact! Micro-air, twelve o'clock low!"
The micro-copters fanned out. Their launch was not a roar, but a sharp, sequential *crack-crack-crack*. The rockets, designed for precision penetration, not explosion, streaked down. Two struck the Audi’s hood, not to destroy, but to fuse. Their shaped charges blew downwards, superheating the engine block into a lump of molten ceramic and metal. The Audi bled speed, hydroplaning into the crash barrier with a shriek.
Vogler’s world jarred. The Scotch glass flew from his hand, exploding against the bulletproof glass. "Evasive! Get us to Eden!" he barked, his corporate calm fracturing.
The Panzerlimousine surged, its driver a former special forces operative. But the micro-copters were already on their second payload. They didn’t fire rockets. From their bellies, magnetized barrels spun up, firing supersonic slugs the size of nails. It was a hailstorm of hypersonic tungsten. The rain itself seemed to turn to metal. The limo’s armor was rated for 7.62mm rifles and hand grenades. It was not rated for a concentrated, AI-directed stream of munitions moving at Mach 5.
The sound was apocalyptic—a continuous, deafening *spang-spang-spang-CRACK*. The windows crazed into milky opacity. The right-side armor buckled. A slug found the turbine intake, another shredded a tire filled with run-flat gel that vaporized into useless smoke.
The limo swerved, crippled. The second security car, trying to lay down suppressive fire with its roof-mounted chaingun, was targeted by the remaining copters. A rocket found its magazine. The explosion was a brief, sun-bright flower in the rainy gloom, painting the wet asphalt in fiery streaks.
Mako watched, his face a stone. "Phase two. Harvest."
The three pickup trucks, silent and dark, surged from a side road. They slid to a halt around the stricken limo. Figures emerged, clad in waterproof gear that shifted with the light—ghosts in the rain. One, call-sign Wraith, carried a compact thermal lance. She placed it against the limo’s door seam. The world went blue-white as it burned through molecular bonds, the shriek of vaporizing metal lost in the rain and chaos.
Inside, Vogler fumbled for the panic button. A direct neural link to Eden security. *Connection Failed.* The Rustkinder’s first digital strike had been a localized grid-kill, a bubble of electronic silence.
The door fell inward. Vogler saw a rain-drenched figure, goggles glowing with data, and the snout of a rectangular weapon. It was a "Stutter Gun," firing not bullets, but a rapid burst of pre-fragmented alloy that turned the plush interior into a cloud of shredded leather and synthetic fiber. The driver and front-sec officer ceased to be discrete entities.
Vogler, shielded by the partition, was hauled out. The cold rain hit his face, a shocking slap of reality. He saw his reflection in the goggles of the figure holding him—a pale, aging man in a ruined 10,000-euro suit.
"You have no idea what you're doing," Vogler spat, the CEO still in him. "The resources that will hunt you. You are dead."
Mako stepped forward, his voice modulated, flat. "Jonas Vogler. For the forced neural compliance of the Bremen workforce. For the Silent Cathedral you just approved. For the rust."
He didn't use a dramatic pistol. He used an injector, pressed to Vogler’s neck. A tailored neuro-toxin, fast-acting, metabolizing into untraceable byproducts within minutes. Vogler’s body stiffened, his eyes locking onto the distant, unreachable lights of Eden. He saw not diamonds, but the cold LEDs of a server farm. Then, nothing.
It was over in 97 seconds.
The runners piled back into the pickups. The micro-copters, their munitions spent, descended autonomously into the launch cradles. The trucks sped not towards the city, but towards the dark mass to the east: the Lorenzer Reichswald.
This was the key. The woodland. A contested, lawless green zone between corporate enclaves. The corporations owned the sky, the roads, the data. But the ancient, rain-sodden forest? That was no-man's-land. It was a haven for rust cults, bio-squatters, and ghosts. Corporate law ended at the tree line. To pursue, Siemens would need to contract a private military division, file permits with the Nuremberg Free Administration (which would stall for weeks), and then send men into a labyrinth where every hollow tree could hide a sniper and every puddle could be a memetic data-hazard.
The trucks vanished into the dripping darkness, their tire tracks fading in the mud. Behind them, on the black mirror of the road, lay the burning wreckage, hissing in the rain. The neon from a distant ad for Siemens health-monitors flickered over the scene, casting pulsing, garish light on the dead.
In his Eden penthouse, an alarm finally sounded, delayed by 122 seconds. A silent, sanitized alert. Jonas Vogler’s vital signs had terminated. A board meeting was automatically rescheduled. A succession protocol flickered into existence on a secure server.
The rain continued to fall, washing blood into the gutters, cooling molten metal, erasing all but the most stubborn traces. It was just another transaction in the city. An executive retirement package. A transfer of assets. The rain made all things equal, and all things clean, until the next shift began.
They would get them all. All Germans to have them rule never again anyone.
