by A. Omukai
A. Omukai
Emergent
An Aes Sidhe Prequel
First published by A. Omukai 2021
Copyright © 2021 by A. Omukai
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
First edition
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For Narumi,
who got the worst Christmas present imaginable in 2020: Covid-19, followed by first an inflammation of her lungs, then of her heart muscle, and who still manages to smile every day despite not having recovered completely even after four months.
You’re a trooper!
Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’
Isaac Asimov
Contents
1. Makoto
2. Nadya
3. Daniel
4. Makoto
5. Daniel
6. Makoto
7. Daniel
8. Makoto
9. Nadya
10. Makoto
11. Daniel
12. Makoto
13. Daniel
14. Nadya
15. Daniel
16. Makoto
17. Daniel
18. Nadya
19. Makoto
20. Daniel
21. Nadya
22. Makoto
23. Daniel
24. Makoto
25. Nadya
26. Makoto
27. Daniel
28. Makoto
29. Daniel
30. Makoto
31. Nadya
32. Makoto
33. Daniel
34. Makoto
35. Nadya
36. Daniel
37. Makoto
38. Daniel
39. Nadya
40. Makoto
41. Epilogue
Author’s Notes
About the Author
Also by A. Omukai
1
Makoto
We entered the lift, first Ishida, then me, leaving the world for a short while, when the door closed behind us. Alone in our own little universe, and the only other person had to be him, of all people.
Not that I had strong feelings towards him — more that he seemed to hate me, for reasons unknown. Then again, Ishida was the type who didn’t seem to be fond of anyone but himself.
Elevators in Japan don’t have elevator music. No discernible sounds at all, but they have a distinctive smell, much like new cars do. The light was dim.
Ishida’s back spoke to me without saying a word:
“I talk, you shut up if you know what’s good for you.”
We don’t say it like that, but we understand it when we see it, even without verbal communication.
The building lacked a fourth floor, a relic of a superstitious past. We went straight from three to five, with the four on the display, pronounced the same way as “death”, being a dummy. The elevator even slowed down a bit to preserve the illusion of travelling past that floor.
We arrived at five, the door opened, and bright light from the corridor greeted us.
Ishida stomped ahead, a plump colossus, his bunch of keys making noise with every step. Whatever he may have needed physical keys for.
We went straight to the secretary’s desk. It was impossible to tell her age. Her face looked not a day over twenty, but the look of her eyes betrayed that impression. She was definitely not a human, but no fae creature either, as far as I could tell.
She looked at me, then Ishida, then opened her mouth to speak, but Ishida cut her off.
“We are to meet Mr. Uehara. My name is Ishida.”
She frowned for only a split-second, then put on a smile.
“Of course.”, she said. “Let me see if Mr. Uehara is ready to meet you.”
Her features went motionless for a moment, while she was in conference with the CEO. The talk didn’t take more than a few seconds.
Ishida shifted weight from one leg to the other. She nodded twice, did a little bow, then returned her attention to us.
“Mr. Uehara asks that you sit down in the foyer until he calls you in.”
Her smile sought to disarm, and it worked with Ishida. There was no need for it with me, I hadn’t expected her to lead us in right away.
I turned to look at the half-transparent wall that now disappeared and gave way to the 5th floor’s entrance area, where we had just come from. Only now did I notice the black seats and the glass table. There was also a vending machine integrated into the wall. I typed in the code for mineral water, while Ishida sat down with a groan.
“Suzuki, green tea.”, he said.
I nodded, entered the code, then carried his cup over to the table.
The yellow light in this room was bright but indirect. No light source was visible, it was impossible to know where it came from.
Very subtle sound floated through the air. Not actual music, more like ambience sounds with music, meant to make for a calming atmosphere.
The walls were white, with stylized cherry blossom petals dancing towards the ground in a soft breeze.
Ishida drank his tea with an audible slurp. Despite the mild temperature, his buzz cut was soaked with sweat.
There was no need for us to talk, but the silence felt awkward. I was also sure we were being monitored, and sitting here without saying a word would look suspicious — as if our relationship wasn’t the best. Maybe that wasn’t a bad thing though, any kind of relationship with other humans at this company would serve my cover. I just couldn’t come up with anything to tell him, so I shifted my attention inwards and opened a channel to Inoue in the lab.
“How’re things?” I asked.
Inoue looked at me, then back at her screen, then back at me again.
“All stable. It’s been up for nine hours now, all test programs on a loop with no anomalies. Just like when you left this room five minutes ago.” She smiled.
“Ah.” I said. I would look like an idiot.
“Killing time, I guess,” she said. A soundless chuckle in her eyes made me relax a little.
“We’re in the waiting room, no idea when we’ll be called in.”
“That can take a while.”
“He’s a busy man, huh?”
She shrugged slightly. “It doesn’t matter, really. Making people wait for their turn can be a form of communication, too.”
“I guess.”
“Want me to send you the data of the last test loop?” She cocked her head.
“Yes, please, that would be great.”
A small notification icon in the corner of my field of view flashed to let me know an incoming file had been received.
“Sorry for disturbing you, you must be busy.” I showed her a slight bow.
“Don’t worry about it. We’re all done here, just babysitting the system and waiting for your return.”
Her smile aimed to calm me down a bit, and only now I realized my sweaty palms and the butterflies in my stomach. This was my first mission, and I was almost guaranteed to meet an a
gent of the Winter Court soon.
“Thank you. See you later!”
She bowed and cut the connection.
When the display vanished, I looked directly into Ishida’s stare.
“I checked in to get the latest test data.”, I said.
“We’ve been running tests for the last days, why would the results be any different now?”
He stared at me, a bead of sweat slowly running down from his hairline to his eyebrow.
“Oh, I didn’t mean—”
“If there was even the hint of anything wrong with the system, we wouldn’t be here now, would we?”
“Of course not. I’m sorry.”
He sucked his teeth and grabbed his cup. It was empty, so he stared at me.
“I’ll get you a new one.”
He nodded and leaned back, following me with his eyes while I stood up and moved over to the vending machine again.
I hadn’t touched my water yet, when the face of the secretary appeared in my field of vision.
“Mr. Uehara is ready to meet you now. Please come in.”
Her smile flashed again for a moment, then the display expired and gave way to the tumbling cherry blossom petals.
Ishida let out a small grunt when he heaved himself out of the seat. He looked at me, then at the cups on the table. I hurried to grab them and put them on the tray of the vending machine, along with my still untouched water, while he passed me and walked through the secretary’s office again.
An ever so slight smell of sweat swirled in his wake.
2
Nadya
The control room of the Chinese computer complex lay in twilight. Warning signs written in complicated characters nobody on the team could read without their chips’ help all around them. There were no windows, no fabric on the seats. The room was dominated by black and blue. Everything was sterile, like a lab, despite the lack of need - this wasn’t a laboratory, it was a glorified office.
“I got it to go into a self-diagnosis loop. Think the alarm went off?” Nadya asked.
Tanya seemed to freeze for a moment, then shook her head. She stared at her with a question in her eyes.
Nadya nodded. “I’m done. We can go.”
Tanya stretched like a cat. “About time.”
Pavel would sit in the car outside the security fence now, and wait with his engine running.
Tanya’s gaze blurred for a moment, as she accessed her system, then nodded at her. “Countdown running, fifteen minutes. Go, go!”
She grabbed Nadya’s arm and dragged her with her. Nadya laughed. Tanya turned her face towards her, raised her eyebrows, then joined in.
“What’s so fucking funny?”
The rough voice in her head belonged to Dmitriy, the man with the gun.
She just kept on laughing, imagining him shaking his head. Something about all this was hilarious, maybe the ease with which they went in, got the job done, and were now about to leave without a problem. For all the weeks of planning they had done, this went down in less than an hour and felt like a walk in the park.
By now, all systems were clear. The computer laboured on, caught in a job it couldn’t finish. She double-checked the system message while running, then disconnected from the server.
A few steps ahead, the steel door led into a long corridor. It opened before they reached it, and Tanya’s grip on her arm got painful for a second.
A silhouette appeared in front of them, then turned into a familiar shape.
“We’re good for the moment, I sent the guards to sleep, but if you don’t start to run already, I swear—”.
He coughed, turned around and stormed down the corridor, his massive frame filling Nadya’s field of view.
“Yobany vrot! Down!” he shouted.
They dropped to the ground immediately, while Dmitriy opened fire. Something ahead of them banged against the wall, crackled and sizzled. Sharp smoke filled the corridor.
He ran again. “Move on. Hurry!”
Nadya checked the status of the facility network while they continued on through the corridor. The whole site was on high alert. Even with the guards out of the picture, the automatic defence mechanisms had kicked in, despite their preparations. Her network connections to the outside were offline. Something had gone wrong after all, but she couldn’t tell what and why.
She followed the alarm signals in her virtual overview of the system, to see where they originated. All the sensors she had shut down beforehand were still out of order. Whatever had activated the alarm was now offline, too. A subsystem of the computer itself, maybe?
Dmitriy stopped at a bend. She heard him cursing while shooting. Sparks flew and the temperature went up.
She couldn’t undo the alarm, but she had to stop those damn drones from popping up everywhere.
Behind her, Tanya opened fire, too. They came from both directions now.
She tried to locate the control centre. The security UI was in Chinese, which she couldn’t read, and her translation software couldn’t interface with the program to help her. Hacking it to do this would take time she didn’t have.
When she reached the security control hub, the UI confused her, but there was only one input field.
She considered running the code cracker.
“They’re too many.”, Tanya said.
Dmitriy coughed again and said something she couldn’t hear, as another drone exploded.
This would take too much time, but an idea popped up in her head. She smiled, then worked quickly.
The drones came in swarms, three or four at a time, and were about to surround them now.
Then the fire stopped. Silence hung in the air for a moment, but Dmitriy didn’t hesitate. He got out of the cover and reopened fire until all drones ahead were down. The air in the corridor was barely breathable now. Thick smoke also blocked their sight.
“They stopped coming, what’s going on?” Tanya asked.
“I’m using their own signal jam against them. Not sure how much time that’ll buy us.”
Tanya got up again and peeked around the corner behind her. One drone hung in the air without moving. It blinked, then it deactivated its weapon.
“Good job. Quick now.” Dmitriy moved forward again, and they reached the lift.
“Out of order, sorry. I had to shut down the entire block.”
He tightened the grip on his gun. “It’s okay. Stairs then.”
They didn’t have to search. The stairwell was just around the corner. They made the two floors in record time, then stopped again. Dmitriy put a finger on his lips. Silent. Nadya heard why. Footsteps ahead.
Hadn’t he put the guards to sleep?
Dmitriy shrugged apologetically. He signalled them to stay back and went around the corner alone. She accessed her system and put the map of the first floor on display now. Dmitriy was a small, red dot moving quickly. Around another corner, then another, stopping. Through a door. Gunfire, followed by his cough in the distance.
“Come up! The way is clear.”
When they reached him, she saw blood running down his leg. He caught her look and shook his head. No time for that now.
Nadya cleared her throat. The smoke still irritated her lungs, and her vision wasn’t clear. “We’re not done yet.”
“What do you mean?” Dmitriy gripped his gun so hard, his knuckles were white.
Footsteps answered the question for her. Multiple people, running.
“Can you see how many?”
She shook her head. “I can only follow you on the map. My access is very limited. I’d like to try something, get me some time.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know, a few minutes.”
He snorted. “Few minutes, huh?”
Dmitriy signalled them onward. He didn’t make any noise moving down the hall, and him opening a door in the wall didn’t cause any sounds either. They hurried after him into what looked like a small electronic maintenance chamber. No light, but their
systems provided night sight automatically.
The three of them took up almost all the space, but Dmitriy left as soon as the two women were inside.
“Stay here and do whatever you need to do. I’ll run a diversion.”
With these words, he closed the door, and they were alone in the relative dark.
Nadya was focusing on working her way through the network routing systems. The facility wasn’t set up for the AI — that would have required the program to have features for this task, and what it really did was, as far as Nadya could tell, raw sentience, with rather low amounts of data, and very rigid regulations in the code. She was an excellent hacker, but not a top-notch coder at the bleeding edge of AI development. This meant, however, that she was well-equipped to handle the systems the security teams had set up here.
She couldn’t get rid of the jamming without breaking into the central control program, and switching it off wasn’t a great idea anyway, with all those drones on their heels.
Or was it?
If they could, say, falsify the scan data of their robotic killers, maybe assign different values to what appeared on their biometric sensors… but getting this done would require her to get past the intrusion countermeasures that blocked her access over the net.
“Tanya!” she said, feeling around for her companion and touching her shoulder.
“Shh! Keep your voice down!”
“Let’s go to the control centre,” she continued.
A moment of silence, then the sound of Tanya inhaling sharply.
“Are you crazy? Going all the way back, and now with security personnel on the way?”
Tanya’s voice had a slight vibration to it, suppressed emotion, but Nadya had known her for several years now and could tell exactly what her friend was thinking about her idea.
“You don’t have to come with me, you know. But I have to—”