by Ramy Vance
Sarah’s voice softened a little. “Thanks, that means a lot to me. I’m still pretty pissed about you being a dick, but thanks. Better late than never, I guess.”
Anabelle liked Sarah. Anyone who talked to Myrddin like that was someone she could respect. “You said you wanted me to get you in touch with Myrddin. Why are you so surprised that we called you?”
Sarah’s voice crackled a little over the comm due to the strained signal. “I mean, I said it, but I didn’t think it was actually going to happen. I didn’t even give you my name. But anyway, what is it? Are you calling about the Dark Gate? Because I got a story for you. You might want to grab a beer or something. It’s a doozy.”
Myrddin conjured two dark stouts onto the table, picked his up, and leaned back. “We’re all ears, Sarah,” he said as he sipped his beer.
Chapter Twenty
Sarah began her tale. She had come to the gnomish world after her boyfriend Kravis had been abducted. Both of them worked for Middang3ard, Sarah, in the role of assassin and Kravis as a double agent. It had only been a matter of time, but Kravis had been found out.
As with all double agents, Middang3ard HQ wouldn’t intervene. It was the risk you took when you went undercover. But Sarah couldn’t let Kravis just disappear. She’d lobbied to get Myrddin to help, but the wizard stood by his initial decision.
Sarah decided that wasn’t good enough. She rigged the hadron collider to transport her to the gnomish world and swooped in to save Kravis.
The problem was that the gnomish world was much worse off than Sarah had been led to believe. Horror didn’t do justice to the conditions that the Dark One had reduced the planet to. It became very obvious why the Dark One had worked so hard to keep communications from coming back up.
Kravis had been able to send precious little information concerning the plight of the gnomes.
Here, Myrddin interrupted Sarah. “I understand the pacing of your story, but I need to hear how the gnomes are doing now. How bad is bad?”
Sarah sighed and drew a deep breath. Still, it took her some time to answer, as if remembering was too large of a task. “Astera doesn’t exist anymore,” she said at last.
“What do you mean, it doesn’t exist?”
Anabelle was lost. She didn’t know much about gnomish geography. Actually, she didn’t know much about gnomes. They were a very private race. She was honestly surprised that any gnome would be open enough to date a human. “What’s Astera?” Anabelle asked.
Sarah answered, “Astera used to be the capital. It was a beautiful city, showcasing the gnomish ability for crafting and organization. Their crown jewel.”
“What happened to it? How did it just stop existing?”
“First, the Dark One took over the capital. He rounded up all the gnomes who were living there and put them into slave camps. Then he started digging. Legend had it that Astera was built on a giant mineral deposit. Guess he wanted to find out. He forced the gnomes to burn the city down and gut it. There’s nothing left but holes in the ground. He worked the gnomes to death.”
Myrddin and Anabelle exchanged glances. This was the worst situation any homeworld had faced so far. The gnomish world was the only one to be taken over by the Dark One. Small invasive squads and skirmishes were all the other worlds had to deal with so far.
Anabelle was determined to find out just how bad everything really was on the gnomish world. “That’s just one city, though,” she argued. “Sure, it’s horrible, but it can’t be like that on the entire planet.”
“No, it is. Anything the Dark One’s forces haven’t burned to the ground has been converted to mines. The gnomes who aren’t enslaved are living in shantytowns that the army constructed, but even those are few and far between. The army is a husk of what it used to be. It feels like everyone is just waiting to die.”
Myrddin jumped in this time, his eyes fiery beneath his white brows. “And what of the resistance?”
“Our ranks have been thinned. There’s a few of us left, with Kravis and me leading them.”
Myrddin leaned back in his chair, thinking as he stroked his beard, his eyes deep and pensive. “I’m sorry, Sarah. I had no idea the situation was so dire.”
“Let the past be the past. Honestly, if you had known the gnomish world was a lost cause, I doubt you would have let me come.”
“And you think it’s a lost cause?”
Sarah laughed, but there was no humor in it. “I think it is, but Kravis doesn’t. Can’t drag him away from this place. Guess we’re going to go down with the ship.”
Anabelle remembered the initial reason they had called Sarah. “You said you knew how the Dark One was making those gates when I first saw you,” she blurted. “How’s he doing it? Those things are becoming a real pain in our asses.”
When Sarah spoke, her voice sounded lighter than when she’d been talking about the gnomish world. “That’s the Dark One’s new invasion strategy. It’s how he managed to take down the gnomes—tons of Dark Gates opening up over the world. His soldiers can slip in undetected. Set up shop. Start building out, and then they attack. Worked perfectly.”
“Okay, so we know what they’re doing, but how are they doing it?”
“They built a hadron collider.”
Myrddin scoffed as he shook his head. “Impossible. We created the collider and have kept it under wraps since.”
Sarah laughed sarcastically. The sound was abrasive to Anabelle’s ears. “You’ll get a hoot out of this one, Myrddin. File incoming.”
The holoprojector showed Myrddin received an email. He opened it. There was a photograph of the Dark One’s hadron collider. It looked nearly identical to the one on Earth. Another photo showed two orcs working the machine, the Middang3ard insignia etched into it.
Anabelle couldn’t keep herself from laughing and blushed when Myrddin stared at her. “I’m sorry, but you think they would at least have removed our logo from the thing,” she managed to get out. “If I were stealing something, I would.”
Myrddin was still thumbing through the photos Sarah had sent. There was no mistaking it. The Dark One had their collider. “How could this have happened?” Myrddin murmured, still reeling from this loss. Myrddin couldn’t believe how advanced the Dark One was. “These were under such high levels of security.”
Sarah’s voice came through the comm. “Same as over here. You got spies. So does the Dark One.”
“But how does it work? The collider here uses very specific minerals from Earth. It is meant to only work on Earth.”
Anabelle snapped her fingers as she said, “That’s what all the mining was for. They’ve probably been looking for something to use on the gnomish world that’s comparable. Maybe they exhausted whatever they had before.”
“That would not be a bad strategy. Burn through everything you needed to get to the New World. Then ravage that world to prepare more Dark Gates.”
Sarah interrupted Myrddin’s train of thought. “Hold on, it gets better. So, this Gate, the one on the gnomish world, only works with the Gates being built here. I think they’re improving on the original design. Instead of using the collider for big teleportation jobs, what they’re doing is hooking it up to as many smaller gates as they want. Gives them more options.”
Myrddin’s brow furrowed. “That is an improvement and one we could use. Sarah, what are the odds that you could get that tech to us and disable the gnomish network?”
“I’m working without arms out here. No tech, no weapons, nothing. You get me the supplies, and I can take care of this. Give it a week, and the Dark One’s whole operation will fall apart. You remember what I did in Russia?”
Myrddin nodded as he thought back, smiling slightly. “Deal. Find a place you can receive a package and get ready to start.”
“Gotcha. I’ll start making preparations. Good to be back in business. Talk to you in a bit.”
Sarah hung up, leaving Myrddin and Anabelle in silence. “Was she serious? Toppling the invasion
of an entire planet?”
Myrddin stood and stretched as he continued to look at the photos. “Oh, yes, she is quite serious. And capable. Sarah may be the most dangerous person in the nine realms. My issue with her leaving wasn’t that she was incapable. It was that I couldn’t risk the Dark One getting his hands on her.”
“What happened in Russia?”
“Let’s just say you’d need to get a master’s degree in political science to even begin having the conversation.”
“Damn. Well, glad she’s on our team.”
Anabelle went back to visit Roy in the medbay. All the lights were off, but the television was still playing. She let herself in and sat on Roy’s bed. He was snoring softly, drooling into his pillow. Anabelle had never seen him like this.
Vulnerability wasn’t something the elf understood. She’d never had any need for it. Her training as a Traveler had been about everything other than vulnerability. The hard shell she’d created in her youth was as much a part of her as anything else.
When she began working for Myrddin, vulnerability would have been a threat to her job. It would have killed her ability to manipulate as she needed. It would have put her in danger.
Now, sitting here next to Roy as he slept, Anabelle felt like she was safe for the first time in a very long while. And all it had taken was for her to watch someone she thought she cared about while they were sleeping.
If only things were always that easy. But nothing had been easy for a long time. At least now, she was starting to enjoy it a little bit.
Anabelle stayed in the medbay, watching junk tabloid television and flipping through the news when that bored her. She listened to news anchors theorizing about when they were going to see Terra next, and how long she was going to last in the hellish prison.
The humans were talking, which was just what Anabelle had wanted. Another form of manipulation. But at least this time, she’d been using the truth and knew the purpose behind the act. Humanity was waking up. It was only a matter of time until they were arming themselves.
Roy stirred in his sleep, and his good eye popped open. He looked around the room, jerking awake.
Anabelle had already slipped into the shadows. She watched as Roy settled back down and went to sleep. Then she kissed him on the forehead and left him to his dreams, wondering if she ever made an appearance. She laughed as she walked down the hallway. It was such a stupid question. How could Roy not dream of her?
Chapter Twenty-One
Abby was back in the lab first thing in the morning. She arrived before Creon, her breakfast balanced on one hand—a feat she would not have been capable of a week ago.
All the departments in the lab were empty. The sun hadn’t even risen yet, but that was okay with Abby. This was about the time she would have woken up to let the goats out of their pen. Even her Pa had thought she was an abnormally early riser.
The early hours had always afforded Abby two things: time to think, and time to investigate things that might get her into trouble. When she was younger, she would sneak off the main farm and go down to a creek that ran between her home and another ranch.
If anyone had found out about those early morning swims, Abby would have been grounded all the way through high school. The owner of the creek hated Abby’s family, and, in turn, Abby’s parents couldn’t stand him. It was such a nice creek, though. Would have been a shame to let it go to waste.
It had been a few hours since Martin and Abby last spoke. She still wasn’t certain about the extent to which Martin had inserted himself into the nanobots. Was he connecting to them through a network, or was he part of Abby’s body now?
Those were things Abby wanted to figure out. The gravity of what she had done was finally starting to settle in on her. From everything she knew about the nanobots, they were practically living creatures. Not as high-functioning as a person, but definitely on par with a cell.
And Abby knew what happened when your cells got out of control. Cancer. Autoimmune diseases. She wasn’t sure what would happen if the nanobots got out of control, but she wanted to have a rough idea for a worst-case scenario.
Abby sat at her desk and studied her reflection in her phone. It looked like if she were to peel her skin back, there would be metal. Just like her nightmare.
Better to push that away for now. There would be other times to be scared. Right now, it was breakfast time. Abby dug into the plate of scrambled olin eggs, a goblin specialty, that was mixed with something that reminded Abby of her mom’s cooking. Since getting to Middang3ard HQ, Abby had been mostly living off goblin food. She couldn’t get enough of its salty, meaty flavors.
As she chewed her food, she turned to the holoprojector. “Martin, can we talk?”
Martin popped up instantly on the projector. “You’re lucky I don’t sleep. Who the hell is even up this early?” he asked.
“We need to figure some stuff out.”
If the AI was only mimicking human emotions, it was doing a great job of looking bashful. “Okay, okay, I know this isn’t what we thought was going to happen. But it is kinda cool, right? You got to get out in the field. Bust some heads open. Get your hands dirty.”
Abby couldn’t disagree with that. The feeling of flying had been beyond her wildest dreams. Though she was put off by how little of the air she had felt. Which reminded her why she needed to talk to Martin. “I’m gonna need to know what’s going on with my body,” she said. “More than you’re telling me.”
Martin’s paperclip body raised its hands. “Not because I’m trying to keep secrets or anything. We just haven’t had a chance to talk. And my personality is developing in such a way that I’m not in the habit of explaining myself. But I guess now’s as good a time as any. What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
Martin’s body exploded into an image of Abby’s, complete with a breakdown of her neurological and cardiovascular system. A complex web of mathematical formulas was on the side of the projector. “Okay, there’s some stuff I don’t know that I’m trying to figure out as fast as I can.”
“Tell me what you do know.”
“So, when the nanobots entered your bloodstream, they began to connect with your DNA and RNA. They didn’t rewrite anything, but they did code themselves to your DNA, pretty much, becoming a part of you. Obviously, they’re multiplying since that’s what they do. That’s something we’re going to have to keep watching.”
Abby looked down at her wrists, at the veins beneath her skin. “Why do we need to keep watching?”
“Because we don’t want them to replace all your white blood cells. I don’t know what happens if that happens. And next, since the nanobots have bits of my personality programmed in, my consciousness got linked to yours. And because I have such a sunny disposition, I don’t want to reprogram them. There’s no telling what I would do to keep being me. So for now, I assess that it’s best that the nanobots are left alone to keep learning too.”
“Okay, for a second, pretend I didn’t graduate from MIT.”
Martin smiled as he spun around, wiping away Abby’s projection. “Means the nanobots are learning as fast as I am and connecting to whatever they can. And means you have access to me more than anyone who wears those exoskeletons you downloaded me into. It also means that those nanobots have a vested interest in keeping you alive because you are, for lack of a better word, their host now.”
Abby was starting to make sense out of what Martin was saying, even if it sounded unbelievable. “So, you and me, huh?” Abby considered what that meant. More precisely, what she could do with Martin being a part of her. “ If I can use you and the nanobots can connect to anything, I could probably control my drones without a remote, huh?”
Martin’s smile grew even wider. “As easily as you move your hand.”
Abby looked at the drone. She didn’t quite think, not the way you put together a thought, but more like the way you reach for a cup of water.
Gertrude levitated,
its thrusters firing as it floated. “Part robot, part AI, and part human,” Abby muttered. “Unreal.”
“You don’t sound excited about all of that.”
Abby shook her head as Gertrude powered down and settled back on the table. She scooped a spoonful of eggs and chewed, taking her time. “We need to keep watching everything. I-I had a nightmare that scared me a lot. I was…pretty messed up.”
Martin already seemed to have lost interest. “Yeah, right, whatever,” he mumbled. “I’ll make sure you don’t go into cardiac arrest or anything.”
That was probably the most Abby was going to get out of Martin. It was a lot of information to deal with. Abby wished he had been fused to her brain so she could have processed it all faster. There would have been other complications, though, and frankly, Abby was still happy that part of her was a hundred-percent human.
Now that Abby had a better idea of what was going on with her body, it was time to turn her attention to something else. She had been brought on to avenge her father. Fighting was only one part of that. She’d been thinking about it all night.
What would Pa have thought would bring some meaning to his death? The answer had been clear enough. Helping other people. And there was someone in dire need of help at the moment.
Abby turned on the tracker drone light-years away. It was time to figure out how to get Terra out of that arena. As Abby brainstormed her options, the door of the lab opened. “Morning Creon,” she said without looking away from her computer screen.
The voice that replied surprised Abby. “Morning to you too, kid.”
For the first time, Abby saw Anabelle looking like a regular person. The elf was wearing Middang3ard sweats, and her hair was pulled up in a messy bun. She hadn’t bothered putting on makeup and, even though she still seemed ridiculously young, she looked very tired. “You guys have coffee in here?” Anabelle muttered as she collapsed into the seat next to Abby.