Myst and Ink, Book 1

by HD Smith

  “Got it. Let’s get in there and find out.”

  I dropped several spider bots on the ground to maintain surveillance on the perimeter. These would notify me of any activity going on outside. Each linked with my VF. I transferred control to Dexter, then prepared to jump.

  I’d downloaded the K12 Lab’s schematics into my Link and had a firm picture in my mind of how I’d enter the building. The JumpNav tech was a two-part process. Step one created an opening, which allowed access to a space I thought of as the void; step two opened a portal back to normal space.

  While in between the two portals, your mind guided the second portal to open in a location of your choosing. But it had to be real and accessible. Opening inside a solid wall wasn’t possible, so any fear of materializing into a block of concrete wasn’t realistic. If the portal opened at all, the door would be blocked; therefore, the only way out was your door in. The end result was a jump that didn’t work.

  In early House Vance tests with Peacekeepers, if the rider lost focus, the mech would disappear and the rider would die. We discovered that human travel didn’t have that problem—it was impossible to be stuck in the void or exit a portal into an object.

  That didn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous. I could visualize myself in the atmosphere around the planet, for example. With enough myst, JumpNav would take me there, where I’d promptly die from exposure. But it wouldn’t put me inside a wall.

  “I’ll text when I’m inside,” I said.

  “10-4, radio silence until we’re secure,” Dexter said.

  I pictured where I wanted to go and stepped forward, materializing inside the K12 Lab’s main warehouse. The air was stale, causing me to cough.

  LIAM: Did any alarms go off?

  DEXTER: Negative, all clear

  I dropped six spiders to give us a better view of the area. They’d connect to the building’s internal security and provide us extra vid-feeds and motion monitoring.

  I surveyed the darkened space before me. My night vision adjusted to account for the security lighting, making the entire area visible. The warehouse itself wasn’t huge: three times the size of my loading dock. Using Dexter’s size comparison, the space could have easily held three or four shipping containers.

  He was right—they hadn’t used boxes. Unfortunately, the barrels I assumed they did use were empty.

  I switched on my environmental scanners, which barely loaded. At least now I knew why the air felt so stale—I couldn’t find any significant trace of myst in the room. I coughed again. It felt similar to landing on Old Earth, which meant I might have trouble jumping out of here.

  “The bots are all connected, but the feed is weak,” Dexter said. “They’re spreading out into formation now. I should have vid-feed soon. What does the payload look like? Did we secure enough space?”

  “We have a problem,” I said.

  “How’s it packaged?”

  “It isn’t. Or it was in barrels. Now it’s gone, and I’m not sure there’s enough residual myst in the building to jump out.”

  “How the hell is that even possible?” Dexter asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Okay. I’ll see if I can’t reconfigure the systems filtration parameters and increase the draw from outside. That should increase the myst levels enough for you to jump,” Dexter said. “Who took the CME? Do you think Donovan hired someone else? Or Byron’s guys came early?”

  “The containers are here, covered in a thin layer of bluish dust,” I said. “There’s at least a hundred, and all have their lids removed. If it was Donovan or Byron’s crew, why would they bother transferring the product to different containers?”

  “The feeds are coming online now, but they’re choppy,” Dexter said.

  My VF flashed as surveillance screens activated.

  “Umm, we might have a problem,” Dexter said.

  “What?”

  Dexter enlarged one of the surveillance feeds on my VF. He enhanced the image, zooming in on two people, one of them a naked female, her hands raised straight up in the air. The other person lay prone on the ground, their face turned away from the camera.

  “Do we have any readings on them? Is the body on the ground dead?” I asked.

  “I’m barely getting a vid-feed, but the filtration settings have been shut down. You should start feeling the myst return soon.”

  “Where are they?” I asked.

  Dexter called up my schematic of the building. He drew a line from my location, which he marked with an X, to an area at the front of the building near an employee break room.

  “The warehouse leads to the chamber where all the CME generating pods are, then to a lab, then to the main entrance.”

  “I see the path.”

  My environmental levels showed a slight increase in the amount of myst in the room. There wasn’t enough myst to jump, but my breathing had evened out.

  I made my way through the building, holding just inside the lab.

  From here I could see the naked woman from behind. Her brown skin glowed as if illuminated from within, making her and the surrounding area more visible. Her deep burgundy hair hung just below her shoulder blades. She held her hands high above her head, unmoving. I tasked one of the spiders to get a shot of her face.

  “Naked Barbie hasn’t moved yet,” Dexter said. “Myst saturation level is improving. I’m gaining access to systems. I’ll have vid-feed history soon.”

  My spider dropped down from the ceiling to snap a vid of our Naked Barbie. It then dropped further to get a full view of the person lying on the ground at the naked construct’s feet.

  I could see now that the figure was also female. Her honey-hued skin was illuminated, similar to Naked Barbie’s, but her most striking feature was her long, dark pink hair.

  “That’s Zar Pink,” I said, referring to our Sleeping Beauty’s hair.

  Sleeping Beauty’s scrubs and lab coat looked to be of elite quality. I took a snapshot of her face for Dexter to ID and directed the spider to her wrist to get a scan of her chip.

  “No shit,” Dexter said. “What do you think that means?”

  “That someone wants us to think she’s a royal from House Zar, I guess.”

  “Do you think she’s got the eyes too?” Dexter asked.

  I shrugged. “We won’t know until she opens them.”

  “Myst saturation has returned to a reasonable level for most sensors to function normally,” Dexter said. “Which is how I know Pink is sucking it up as fast as she can. The illumination on both their skin is brighter, and it looks like she’s about to spike.”

  No sooner had Dexter spoken than an arc of blue energy buzzed between the two women.

  “I’m going to move closer,” I said.

  Another arc of blue energy flared.

  “I have movement detected on Pink. Stay sharp.”

  I chuckled. “Dexter, I’m on highest alert right now. If a myst-weevil scurried across the floor in the back corner of the warehouse, I’d sense it.”

  “You think that place is infected with myst-weevils?” Dexter made a disgusted sound.

  “They’re just hairless, half-pound insectazoid mammals. What are you scared of?”

  “Stop. I can’t think about those. They freak me out. They have like twelve legs and four eyes. And they can cloak. No, thank you.”

  I laughed. They were pretty vicious, but rarely attacked humans unprovoked. Plus, most buildings had myst-weevil bots that eradicated any before they could breed.

  I cautiously approached the women, glad the flares of energy didn’t appear to be increasing in frequency or intensity. Up close, I could see how inhumanly perfect Naked Barbie’s body was. The flawless skin and perfectly formed features fit into the Known Worlds standard idea of beauty, but perfection was often overrated. There was beauty in perceived flaws.

  With the evidence before me, it would have been easy to assume this was an F-Series mech. They weren’t allowed to make Fantasy series look too
human, but that didn’t mean there weren’t those that tried. Only this wasn’t an F-Series.

  Mechs of any kind had a weight to them. They often were described as looking solid or heavy. The body in front of me looked real. Perfectly formed, but real. Considering I could sense absolutely no signs of life, I knew I wasn’t looking at a human. It was somehow engineered. Everything from the perfectly formed irises in an unbelievably rich purple to each individual hair on her arms and the curve of her hips. She was stunning, and so far advanced I wasn’t sure what to call it.

  I turned my attention to Pink. Pushing her hair out of the way, I could see a partial name on her lab coat: G. Har. I texted it to Dexter.

  I’d never seen anyone in real life with Zar Pink hair. It had to be spelled. No one with naturally pink hair had been seen in person for almost twenty-five years. The rich pink color was a genetic adaptation of House Zar, similar to House Windsor’s genetically perfect darker skin or House Vasilli’s ridiculously vibrant blue eyes. Zar royals were known for their dark pink hair and violet eyes with gold flecks. I couldn’t see her eyes yet, but if her appearance was meant to fool someone into thinking she was a Zar royal, I expected them to have the right look.

  Of course, all royals were believed to have been on Aratus when the planet disappeared during the Great Cataclysm. If her hair were spelled, it was the best spell I’d ever seen. Most who tried to imitate the look ended up with cherry red hair or baby pink. A non-natural dark pink was virtually unheard of. They just couldn’t capture the rich magenta that had been genetically engineered over several generations.

  So, unless this girl was a long lost descendant of House Zar, then she was a master spell caster or knew someone who was. Had she been the one to create Naked Barbie?

  I checked the spider bot to see if it had read her chip. It failed, because the chip was shielded. I cast one of my House spells and partially deciphered the data. One row was good; the other was unreadable garbage.

  [Genevieve Harlow, female, 23, T1, A10, Wanderer birth, House Cortez, Product Overwatcher at M13]

  [RO91t^99d%32%88E92hho*%32%nHu921* %32%cce13*%32%99ao*%32%99oh* %32%092*goU*%32%ot,,6^* %32%’rllRN8*@]

  “According to her chip, our pink girl is Genevieve Harlow, Wanderer-born,” I said. “See what you can find.”

  “I’m on it,” Dexter said.

  Wanderer-born—another impossible piece to this puzzle. Looking again, I also realized her rating was T1. Odd.

  A blue arc flared, causing me to step back. This close, I could see that the subtle pulsing glow to both their skins was linked together. I switched to my infrared overlay for a second to take a look. The glow radiated with heat; I could see it coming from both of them. The blue arc, however, was a few degrees cooler.

  “I’ve got a hit,” Dexter said.

  An employee ID flashed up on my VF. The picture looked nothing like the girl at my feet. I could believe the girl in the photo was Wanderer-born.

  “There’s no way this girl is our Genevieve Harlow,” I said.

  “Yes, she is. I’ve matched the facial with her badge and footage I took from a House Cortez Reassignment center. The cheekbones don’t lie.”

  “This isn’t adding up,” I said. “You say she was at a reassignment center?”

  “Yeah, she was a lab tech at the K12 Lab until last Friday. Monday she was summoned to the reassignment center, where she was somehow reassigned to an overwatcher position at M13.”

  “Okay, run down what you can about M13 and anything else you can find about Harlow. Other than the obvious, that she used to work at this lab, I’m not seeing a connection. Everything we know so far is random.”

  “Nothing’s ever random,” Dexter said. “We just don’t have all the info yet. If she is a Zar, then maybe that’s how she’s connected to the guild.”

  “All we know for sure is that she’s House Cortez and she has what looks like Zar Pink hair, but that doesn’t mean she’s somehow linked to Harko Royale. Conor and Ezra have both been dead longer than this girl has been alive.”

  One of the spider bots crawled onto Genevieve’s leg, and an arc of blue energy flared up, knocking it off and frying the bot.

  “Oh-my-Lucy,” Dexter said. “She’s House Cortez.”

  “We’ve established that. So?”

  “You know—where the Blue Angel blew up a hospital room this morning?”

  “These blue arcs aren’t exactly flames,” I argued. “And you’re making a huge assumption that the girl from the vid-feed survived.”

  “House Cortez isn’t sharing any information. Even the video, which surfaced right after their statement went out, proved it wasn’t a chemical leak. DS sources say the girl survived and is on the run. What if this is her?”

  I didn’t want to consider it; there were other problems. “How fast is she consuming the myst?”

  “The room you’re in is running at about 22% myst saturation. According to the facility’s environmental controls, the warehouse has at least 30%.”

  “Enough myst to run bots, security, and sensors, but not enough to let our girl here go full supernova.”

  “That’s my theory,” Dexter said. “You have to admit it’s possible.”

  “All things considered,” I said, “yes, it’s possible.”

  This girl could be the same girl. But why was she here? No matter what was on the Dark Stream, I couldn’t imagine House Cortez letting her leave their care. And how exactly had she gotten into the lab? Had someone dumped her here?

  “What are you thinking?” Dexter asked.

  “None of this makes sense. How long has she been here? Who left her here?” I looked back at the front door, which was covered by a metal security gate and enough wards to block most average magic users. “She didn’t come in that way. And what about Naked Barbie?”

  Genevieve Harlow moved. Her head turned, causing her body to roll onto her back. I crouched down to check on her. She was breathing normally.

  “Is she waking up?” Dexter asked.

  “Maybe. Have you retrieved the security footage yet?”

  “It’s still downloading, but it’s picking up. Myst saturation has ramped up as well. The lab has a fairly sophisticated monitoring app, which shows the saturation as it relates to air movement. The higher levels are getting to the front because Genevieve is pulling it to her. It’s almost 40% now. Enough for me to holo in if you want?”

  “No,” I said, just as a pair of white pumps came into view. “Funny.” I looked up, expecting to see Dexter in a skirt.

  “What the Lucy-damn-hell?” Dexter said, but it wasn’t coming from the holographic in front of me.

  I scrambled to my feet and took two steps back. “Who are you?” I asked, but there was no response.

  The holographic looked just like Eleanor Delicious, a character from the Mason Murdoch show. She was petite with dark straight hair, and wore a polka dot navy dress, a navy blazer, and white heels. She stood staring at Naked Barbie with a perplexed look on her face.

  “For the record, I would never wear white after labor day, boss,” Dexter said.

  “Cute,” I said. “What is it?”

  “As far as I can tell, she’s a fully functioning holographic. Maybe a bot to introduce people to the lab? I don’t know. Talk to it.”

  “I think I know how this works,” I said, “but this is no welcome bot. She looks like Eleanor Delicious from Mason Murdoch.”

  “Whatever. Get over being star struck and talk to it, because security bots that we thought we didn’t trip are back online now.”

  Shit, he was right. I considered jumping away, but my connection to that power was still weak. I might make it, or the door might not open and I’d be using resources for nothing. Plus, there were too many strange things about this situation to leave without knowing what the holographic’s function was.

  “Interface. What are you?” I asked.

  She blinked and turned to look at me. “Overall, I am unhappy with the progres
s.”

  “Okay,” I said, confused. “Who are you?”

  “I am prototype holo—I’m Susan9. Can you explain something to me?”

  “Perhaps. What is your question?”

  With her hand stretched out toward Naked Barbie, she said, “Why does this construct not resemble Miko Rosenblume?”

  LIAM: Figure out who Miko Rosenblume is

  DEXTER: On it

  “I don’t know,” I said, deciding a simple answer was best.

  Susan9 sighed. “I did everything as instructed. I had the formula. It should have worked.”

  “Why don’t you sound like a holographic?” Dexter asked, his voice now projected through the building’s internal systems.

  “Genevieve gave me permission to speak freely,” she said.

  I needed more information. “What should have worked?” I asked.

  “I built Miko an MHC so that his data core would have a place to live, but this is not Miko.”

  “What is an MHC?”

  “It is a Morphable Human Construct,” Susan9 said.

  “Where did you get the formula?” I asked, not liking where this was going.

  “Genevieve’s data core,” she said.

  “Did you have permission to access Genevieve’s data core?”

  Susan9 sighed again. “Genevieve gave me permission to complete my standby directives. I have a standing command to save Miko. Now, if you know why it didn’t work, explain so that I may learn.”

  DEXTER: You’re talking to an AI. You need to get your ass out of there and call the WLA to investigate

  Dexter wasn’t wrong, but walking away without understanding what was going on seemed dangerous. If I left these two here and anonymously called the authorities, and Genevieve and the MHC were still here when the WLA arrived to arrest them, I would be next. Susan9 or whatever it was wouldn’t sit back and cooperate. I wasn’t fearful of AI as much as I was cautious. A holographic couldn’t have brought Genevieve Harlow here on her own, which meant Genevieve brought herself here. The holographic was tied to Genevieve.

  “Susan9,” I said, “how did you know to ask Genevieve for permission to speak freely?”