by Lynne Murray
Mira waved me over to where she sat with her parents.
I sat down and greeted them and started on my pancakes, while Mia piled up their plates on a tray to clear away. Her parents had come a long way out of the stumbling state of shock they’d been in just after leaving the Rutban ship.
“Thank you again for rescuing us,” Mia’s mother told me.
“I think Grandmother and her Arachne army deserve most of the credit,” I said. “But we all worked together. I’m just glad it worked.”
“We're going home,” Mia's father said. He held up an amulet. “Mr. Kirby said we can activate this and get immediate help at the first sign of someone who might attack us.”
I made it a point to keep my medallion under my shirt. I didn’t want to get into a discussion of how different it looked than the other ETPA amulets, particularly because I didn’t understand any of it.
As they got up to leave, Mia leaned over to say, “When you finish breakfast come by my workstation. Star found something that should interest you.”
I saw Wade entering the canteen and waved. “I think Wade and I are going to the Armory and I don’t know how long that will take.”
Mia waved at Wade, who nodded in return. "Star found evidence that your, um, your old boss—”
I nodded. At least she didn’t say “Your victim.”
“Anyway, he’s on a database of abduction survivors with implants. Whoever kidnapped him might have been monitoring you. Star will be glad to show you the data, but the Armory is more important. I’ve only been there once. I’m hopeless with weapons. You’ll love Joel,” she said. “He mostly holes up in the weapons cave but sometimes he comes out to race Star. Come by when you’re done there.”
Wade nodded to me and stood by the table talking to Mia and her parents. He didn’t sit down. A clue for me to finish breakfast. By the time Mia and her parents said goodbye to him, I had finished my breakfast and set my dirty dishes in the bin marked for that purpose. Wade waited for me at the door.
“Let’s take your tagger to the Armory to be recharged and we’ll talk to the Weapons Master.”
Chapter 25
We traced our steps back along the same route that led to Kirby’s office. “Hiromi can’t join us,” Wade said. “She’s taken a small team to Comic-Con.”
“How does ETPA take part in that? Wouldn’t it blow your cover?”
Wade laughed. “They just attend as individuals and watch the doors for any real aliens among the costumed masses. Sometimes an off-world con artist decides that costumed humans make good victims. The criminals who do that are never officially licensed to be on Earth, so Hiromi can quietly remove them before they do any damage.”
Wade stopped in front of an unmarked alcove that lit up when he waved his amulet at it.
The security checkpoint just outside the Armory was about the size of an elevator with dark glass on all sides. I couldn’t see through it but I guessed there was a whole lot of scanning going on. No sign of human staff. After a full minute, one of the glass walls slid open and a warehouse-sized space opened out in front of us.
“Hey, Joel!” Wade called out.
“Hang on.” The thin, dark-skinned black man who answered appeared to be sitting on a cushion hovering in mid-air next to a high shelf stacked with what appeared to be the random contents of several exploded electrical devices. He had a closely trimmed Afro and aviator shades. A workbench floated next to him. He selected one last hunk of curved metal from the shelf and placed it on top of the pile on the workbench. He pulled the bench with him as he pushed off from the shelf and glided toward us in mid-air like an astronaut in zero gravity.
My glasses display popped up
Fabricator/human hybrid. Fabricator DNA has been traced on Earth in recent centuries but hybrids are thought to be responsible for ancient inventions that humans credited to godly intervention. Not dangerous. Cooperation not guaranteed.
From across the room, he looked like a teenager, but as he came closer I could see wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. He gestured at a control in the seat and it lowered him down to our eye level.
“Weapons Master Collins, this is our newest recruit, Angie Faust,” Wade said.
“Hi, Angie, no need for the title, call me Joel. Clearly, you’ve never seen a zero grav seat.”
“No, but it looks cool.”
“There’s lots of nifty stuff in here, but this seat is a pretty good example of the revolutionary tech and the problems we face.” He gestured to a row of office chairs lined up just inside the door. “Pull up a seat, I’ll just hover here.”
Wade and I rolled a couple of office chairs over to the desk.
“You’re here because you have a need to know about this stuff. Also so we can learn what you can do. Let me start by asking you, Angie, what’s the first rule of Fight Club?”
I glanced at Wade, whose face was completely deadpan.
“You do not talk about Fight Club,” I answered.
“Exactly. The advanced tools and weapons that come through here can’t be allowed to fall into the hands of unauthorized people. We confiscate a truckload of alien tech every month or so, but most of it is restricted. Like this stuff.” He tapped a sequence on a computer screen embedded in the desk in front of him. A floor-to-ceiling display opened, looking out over a vast space full of alien spacecraft. A lavender-shaded planet loomed in the background.
My jaw fell open. “That can’t be in our solar system. Where are those ships?”
“We use a launch portal to send them to a deserted planet and store them in orbit there.”
“Wow.”
“These vessels were seized when the criminals who brought them into our atmosphere broke the Treaty and forfeited them,” Joel said. “We’re authorized to impound them but not to pilot them or even research what they can do.”
“That sounds frustrating,” I said.
“Yeah. I can testify to that.” Joel paused. “Another example close to home for me is this seat I use to get around the compound here. It’s much better than my usual ride.” He gestured a manual wheelchair parked near the door.
“It does look better, can you take it home with you?” I asked.
Joel’s eyes sharpened. “Don’t be shy, just start with your most intrusive question.” He cut his eyes over to Wade, who shrugged.
I felt my face getting red. “Sorry, I was just overwhelmed and I spoke without thinking.”
Joel ignored the apology. His expression was cold. “Well, we might as well get to my own personal traumas first off, just in case this is also our last conversation. I was born and raised here in the city. I enlisted in the Army and did two tours in Afghanistan before I was injured by an IED. A primitive device tech compared to what’s in this room, but it left me with a spinal injury. I did a lot of a hard time in physical therapy at the VA before I was recruited to work here. Turns out I’ve got some obscure alien DNA and Kirby offered me the job here. When I first started work here, I asked if Guardian in charge they could fix my spinal injury. They could. They have the tech. But they refused to treat me because I still go back to Earth. If I were to be seen walking around outside of work, inquiring minds would want to know just where the miracles came from. So, no miracles. Same deal with the anti-grav seat. I can’t take it home. I can only use it here because we’re not on Earth now. We’re in a null space between portals where only authorized personnel are allowed.”
We sat silent for a second. I felt like crying. “I can’t imagine what you’ve gone through and how frustrating it must be not to get it treated. I apologize for asking such a jerk question.”
Joel waved my words aside. “Most of the tech we get is aimed at concealing our presence.” He pointed back to the rows of shelves with neatly labeled gadgets, some clearly point-and-shoot weapons. Some are totally unfamiliar. The gun oil and graphite smell of the room somehow comforted me though. I’d been in a room like this often, though the reason eluded me. I needed to find the right
question to ask my new memory.
“We’ve got protocols set up to flag and notify us about any dangerous alien tech. We confiscate a lot of it, but it stays here. Part of the Forbidden Zone isolation drill. Some of the devices we get hold of reinforce the secrecy though.”
“Like the foggers?”
“Yeah, I heard you deployed one this morning.” He turned to Wade. “How’d it go?”
“It worked. None of the commuters on their way to work noticed a thing.”
Joel nodded. “It did the job.”
“What about these?” I held up the tagger.
He stretched put out a hand and I put the device in his palm. “This needs to be recharged. You must have zapped a lot of Mindworms,” he said, clicking open parts of the device to reveal an inner cavity I hadn’t noticed.
“It felt like it, they were crowding up onto my doorstep.”
“Well, that’s what the taggers are for. Usually, they’re good for a few weeks.” He pushed off from the desk and glided over to a bank of devices with oddly shaped bays. He inserted the tagger into one of the smallest cradles the charging unit pulsed, glowing and settling down to a steady glow. “The light goes out when it’s charged up.”
I walked along the wall and the shelves near it, examining the devices hanging or fixed to their stations. “Everything on the right side of the room is non-lethal,” I said with an odd conviction.
Joel froze and then gave me a curious stare. “That’s how it’s divided, yes. Non-killing tech takes up two-thirds of the space.”
“Kirby said something about child-proof tech.”
Joel’s mouth curved into a sardonic smile. “That’s as good a way to put it as any. Based on our history of weaponizing new discoveries, giving us Earthlings some alien lethal high tech would be like handling a steak knife to a toddler. So it’s mostly banned, except for what we need to defend ourselves here in the null space for would-be invaders.”
He looked me in the eye and made some sort of decision about me—good or bad was hard to say. “That rule doesn’t apply to lethal tech that originates on Earth,” he said, his eye fixed on mine. “Like you.” He called out over his shoulder, “Marvin, what are you getting?”
A disembodied voice rose from what had looked like a leaning tower of computer parts in the corner. “Whatever she’s got on, it’s Earth-based.”
I walked to where the voice had come from and found a short, thick-set, extremely hairy man crouching over an array of computer screens. My glasses displayed the same Fabricator message, although he looked like the pale, stocky, polar opposite of Joel. Alien brothers, I guessed, from different human mothers.
Wade followed me and stood behind me. “Hi, Marvin, didn’t know you were here.”
“Kinda busy,” the man said, leaning forward over a screen with a dozen video feeds that seemed to be operating on a map of the station.
Joel followed us and hovered off to the side with a solemn expression. I couldn’t tell if he was curious too or just watching Marvin do his thing.
“Marvin Mathews, this is Angie Faust,” Wade’s tone demanded eye contact and Marvin glanced up.
“I know, I’ve been watching all the feeds.” Marvin kept glancing back at his many screens.
“Marvin is pretty much joined at the hip with our computer systems,” Joel said dryly.
“Yep,” Marvin agreed, completely unoffended. “I’m trying to find out how your friend, Vole, got past our security.”
“And?” Wade asked.
“So far no luck, but now that we know he has these abilities we can only try to keep him away from known targets like yourself. Nice work shocking him, by the way. That’s a rare skill even among Death Dealers. Some of the legendary Death Dealers like General Eel, who have Seeker blood like yours. Eel was famous for using a similar skill, shocking his enemies.”
Leaning toward Marvin’s array of screens, the Medallion fell out of my shirt.
Joel breathed in a gasp of amazement and Marvin glanced up from his screens and blinked in astonishment.
“What is that thing?” Marvin stood up and edged close to me, eyes riveted to my Medallion.
“I found it in my grandfather’s desk. They tell me it’s a Seeker Medallion.”
“I’ve never seen one,” Joel said, gliding nearer for a close look.
“No one has,” Marvin said. “Seekers keep their tech to themselves, but these things are rumored to be interactive.”
“This one sure as hell interacted with my amulet. It fused together and transferred all this info to the amulet I got from Mr. Kirby. It also unblocked my memory.”
Wade made it to my side instantly. I hadn’t seen him move. He said nothing, but stood close enough to protect me from excessive curiosity.
I held out the Medallion carefully. Everyone seemed to want to touch it. Not happening.
“Can we scan it?” Marvin asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t want to get it all fired up. It burned me when it activated, I don’t know how it works.”
“It should protect you big time. If our amulets are the Wright Brothers’ airplanes, this kind of medallion is a state of the art fighter jet. It could help us protect you.”
I looked at Wade. I was starting to seriously mistrust Marvin, but I couldn’t tell if his request was reasonable.
Wade glanced over at Joel.
“I’d really like you to let us scan it, but not if it feels wrong to you,” Joel said. “This is an area we know nothing about. It seems to me it would be better for all of us if we found out more.”
I asked the Medallion. Would it be good or bad to scan you?
Neutral. These are allies rather than enemies.
Can you warn me, if I need to make them stop? I asked.
Yes.
I looked up and saw Wade, Joel and Marvin looking at me. Of course, they couldn’t hear my questions and the Medallion’s answers.
“I’m not taking it off,” I said.
“Oh, yeah we heard about how you took off your amulet the first night and had a break-in,” Joel said.
“Does everyone know about that?”
Joel raised an eyebrow. “It’s a tight little organization. Your experience provides a useful story to explain why not to take off the amulet.”
“Glad to provide a cautionary tale, I guess you can scan it, but don’t touch it.”
“Yes, ma’am, or I guess I mean ‘no ma’am.’”
Marvin pushed back from his array of screens while Joel glided over to a wall full of devices in the non-lethal section. I followed him and pointed to what looked like a pair of gray plastic tongs on a high shelf. A line of red lights hovered around it in my vision. “The Medallion seems to like it.” I shared the feedback.
“It talks to you?” Wade asked.
“Kinda.”
Joel floated up to the top shelf and carefully disengaged the scanner. Marvin connected it to the main computer system and I held out the Medallion while Joel ran the tongs on either side of it. Wade stood beside me watching carefully. Without his saying a word, he made it clear no one but me would be touching the Medallion.
When Wade and I walked out of the Armory a few minutes later, I had a charged up tagger in my pocket. Joel and Marvin absent-mindedly waved us off, still riveted to the display of the scan of my Medallion.
“I never got any new weapons,” I whispered to Wade.
“I think they may need a day or so to come up with something,” he said as we left the entryway.
That was when I saw the swarm of black dots swirling in front of me, cutting a hole in reality. Instinctively, I threw a burst of energy at it, but something unseen grabbed my arms and I felt myself flying into a vortex in the grip of a black-clad man—Vole. He clutched my arms tightly in a reflex, but I could tell he was frozen, paralyzed by the force of the killing blast.
Stuck in Vole’s hands, I was dragged into darkness. Together we fell.
Chapter 26
The pain from
Vole’s grip was the closest thing I felt to an anchor as we floated in absolute darkness. Nothing under our feet. No visible walls or ceiling. Vole’s laughter echoed in my ears. I struggled and I gasped as his gloved hands tightened on my arms.
“Don’t waste your energy,” Vole said. "After our last encounter, I had my armor fortified against electrical charges. I observed your technique. You won't be able to throw energy at me because: You. Can’t. Move.” He blew out an exasperated breath. “Yet you still you managed to get us killed. What the Seventeen Hells of the Death Gods did you think you were doing?” he growled at me.
“You mean what I did I do to defend myself when you just broke into the Station trying to kidnap me—again?”
His voice was thick with rage. “You’re so ignorant you haven’t the least idea what just happened.” His body, way too close to me, vibrated with bitter laughter. “You’re incapable of understanding, just a stupid girl who got us both killed.”
“We’re both still breathing at this point so you might as well explain.” I tried to sound rational, my mind questing for any possible escape.
“The force of your attack knocked us into a different path in folded space.” He took a breath. No more laughing now anger built in his voice. “You interrupted me when I was opening a portal. Now I have no idea where we are, but my sensors are telling me it’s not a known portal.”
I didn’t ask him where he could read this information, doubtless some kind of implant. Well, two could play at that game.
I mentally queried the Medallion: Known portals near Earth?
A map appeared in my mind’s eye. A web of green lines threading Earth and the solar system.
Lesser known portals? I mentally asked.
The map was suddenly crowded with an overlay of black lines intersecting and diverging from the green lines. Somewhere in that nest of threads a red dot was blinking.
“What are we near?
“Weren’t you listening? I don’t know.”
Vole may have stopped shaking, but his grip was still iron solid, not that I had any idea how or where to get out of this darkness.