by J D Huffman
Yanking it toward him worked like a charm: the elevator stopped immediately. But then, the doors slid open again. There’s just no way around that, is there? Must be a safety feature. He pushed the plunger back in, hoping no alarms were tripped by his actions. He rode up to 21, took on a few more passengers, went all the way back down to ground level, then up and down to various different floors, and thought for a while about what he could do next.
I’m trying to make this too easy, he realized. Sometimes problems are hard, and the only solution is the hard way. Consulting his PMD again, he looked to find a floor that didn’t appear to serve an obvious purpose. He could safely stop the elevator there, and it wouldn’t matter that the doors were open. Then I can climb my way up to 20, I hope. He did not look forward to such a trek.
Once he determined the 8th floor was his best candidate—marked unassumingly as “MAINTENANCE”—he lifted his head to see that guy staring right at him again. It came to his attention that he was once more on 19. “Excuse me,” the man said, his lips moving in an exaggerated fashion as if to express his irritation. “What the fuck have you been doing in this elevator all this time? I’ve had it with you. I’m going to call your manager. Or, better yet, I’m going to call security.“
As the doors slid shut, Devon saw the man reach for the security call button.
“Wait!” Devon called out. “Look, I’ve been working on this issue for a while. I’m pretty sure the problem is on the 20th floor. I’ve eliminated everything else. But there’s so much red tape involved in getting access to that floor, we’re going to be down all day if I go through the proper channels. You could take care of it, right?” Devon waited hopefully for an affirmative answer.
“The 20th floor?” the man echoed skeptically. “Only one reason you’d want access to that.” He went for the security call button again. With that, Devon only had time to consider his immediate survival. And so, with a swift shove of his hands, he rammed the man’s head into the elevator’s wall panel.
He expected that to put the guy right out. It didn’t—it only dazed him. He stood upright, blinking in confusion. “What are you..?” he mumbled. Devon grabbed him by the lapels and swung his adversary around, slamming him into the rear wall of the elevator. Devon let go and watched as the man slumped against it. Devon didn’t pause to think. Savagely, he kicked his foe in the head once, twice, a third time. Then, he stomped two times for good measure. The man twitched but made no noise, and soon enough the twitching stopped, too. Devon couldn’t remember hearing a specific crack or anything to indicate the moment of death. He wasn’t even certain the man was dead—and he was afraid to check. He realized the elevator was still on its way down, and gave the stop plunger a good tug right at the boundary between the 8th and 9th floors. The doors stayed shut. He tore down the ceiling panels and made for the hatch, which fought him for every inch it opened, as if it hadn’t been operated in ages. Soon, out of breath and with quite sore arms, he stood on top of the elevator. Turning his gaze upward, he sighed at the lengthy climb ahead.
He didn’t know how long it took to climb the emergency access ladder. He tried to focus on counting the floors as he went. He couldn’t guess at how long it would be before someone noticed the elevator had “malfunctioned,” before the man’s body would be discovered, and before he might be found out—or possibly crushed by a re-activated elevator. The latter seemed almost merciful at this point, but he’d come so far, he just had to know what this was all about.
By the time he reached 20, his entire body was on fire. Every muscle protested his movements, and he ignored them anyway. If he stopped, he would collapse into a pile of goo and never reach the end of this journey. An electronic panel next to the door-controlled access, and that’s where some of his less commonly used skills came in. Like all SINAI devices, the panel had a maintenance mode, and all he had to do was access it via his PMD and tell the doors to open. A few minutes’ worth of work, and he was in.
There were no lights turned on, and Devon didn’t notice any obvious switches, so he used the flashlight built into his PMD to illuminate his way. With the benefit of some light, the 20th floor turned out to be one large, unpartitioned room, lined with endless rows of filing cabinets. He pulled open one of the drawers on the cabinet closest to him, and saw file folders stuffed with yellowed parchment. Carefully extracting one and examining the contents, there was no mistaking it: they were written in a language not just foreign to him, but surely alien to this world. Its elaborate strokes and swirls resembled nothing he’d ever seen in an Earthly language, and he’d perused a little bit of everything in his time working for SINAI. He put it back, unable to make any sense of the text.
After a seeming eternity of aimless wandering, he found cabinets marked with (English) letters, and hunted for one with an “M”. That letter took up several, so he headed for the end of that lot, right before where “N” began. Digging through drawer by drawer, he finally came to where “Mu” fell. He found a thick, promising folder, and began to open it—but a noise startled him and he nearly dropped it. Shit. Shit. Shit. Someone’s here.
He quickly shut off the light on his PMD and heard footsteps approaching. Hunched over, he shuffled away with the folder in hand, hoping to find a nice hiding place to look it over. Footsteps grew closer so he changed direction. Then he heard another set—and another. At least three people were searching for him. He was almost certain he even heard a fourth person walking around nearby. He ducked between cabinets, trying to evade any way he could, but he just couldn’t seem to get far enough away from them, the footsteps growing louder and louder all the time. Somehow, as if by magic, he was stopped dead by four shadowy bodies surrounding him. Abruptly, a bright line shone down on him, hurting his eyes and making him squint and strain, trying to see who’d caught him. He held up his hand, cowering. I was so close. I was so close to knowing.
“It’s Engels. The troublemaker from Chicago,” one of them muttered.
“Did we get the authorization?” another wondered.
“Oh, yes. We’ll add him to the fleshwork,” the third rasped.
“It’s the only thing for him, really,” the last one said, almost sounding resigned about it.
Something came at his head, and Devon as he had been was no more.
Chapter 39
Ambivalence
Numb. William was numb when he returned to the cargo ship. Arkady’s people—the Totality that, oddly enough, he felt he could trust more readily than his own mother—were busy patching up the damage the Order troops had wrought through their reckless deception. William, for his part, retreated into the office that was supposed to be his yet he still found haunted by Sasha. Would any of this have happened if you were here? he thought, chastising himself for ending up in this situation in the first place. For the sake of these people, he had to do his mother’s bidding. But it’s really for the sake of my own conscience, isn’t it? I despise the Totality, in general. They’re easy to hate, as a concept. As a formless entity. But as people? There are people right here, on this ship. People who’ve done me no harm, who’ve gone out of their way to be kind to me. My mother will use them as leverage over me, and she knows it will work. I doubt she understands why. Somehow, she caught on to the fact that I care about these people. I don’t know them. Not in any real sense. But they’re people to me, one way or another. I know that much. And now I know the Totality had nothing to do with Trepsis. I’ve been hating the wrong folks all this time. I can blame them for what they did to Transcendence. My mother claimed not to have any information about Linda or Kina—the Totality are responsible for that. Or are they? None of this would have happened without Zotz and my mother scheming together. I wouldn’t be here except for them. I’d still be on Trepsis, doing my job. Ava Rios and I would have come to a decent understanding by now. I’d have that planet running smoothly, especially since I had Andrew in custody. But now? My mother says
he’s helping Zotz bring down the Totality from within. Hard to imagine that—him doing anything to help anyone besides himself. Nobody is who I thought they were, apparently. Except Linda, wherever in the whole fucking universe she might be. If she’s even alive.
William was unprepared for company, staring blankly at the chronicle on his desk, waiting for words to come into his head that felt suitable to write, pen in hand. He hardly cared to dump out his thoughts about his mother, Trepsis, Zotz, or similar. He was deeply discomfited by the notion of putting his tenuous fondness for the Totality on the ship to paper. He feared that would make it real, somehow—a commitment. A promise. He didn’t know what he could promise them, if anything. So, a knock on his open door arrived to force his hand.
“Angel,” he acknowledged. “Come on in.”
“It’s Namshi now,” she corrected, with a quiet confidence he would have more readily associated with Angel than whatever inhabited her body now.
“Namshi,” he echoed. “Have a seat,” he said, gesturing to the ratty, unsteady chair on the other side of his desk.
She did so, not shying away from William’s gaze. “I’ve heard that you’re working with the Order.”
He nodded. “I am.”
“The Order hate the Totality, don’t they?”
“I think that’s putting it mildly,” William scoffed. “But yes. The enmity between the Totality and the Order runs deep, and goes back a long, long time.”
“And I feel like I’m just now being born. I just wanted to tell you… I’m worried? Anxious. Nuesh has been helping me understand who and what I am. And I know the Totality have done terrible things. He explained that to me. I know why you hate us. But I am asking you not to destroy us. Not to destroy me.”
“I don’t know how much control I have over that,” William admitted, resting his pen on the desk and flexing his hand. “In order to protect everyone on this ship, I have to help the Order take over the Dominix. Decapitate the Totality hierarchy, at least figuratively. Literally, if I have to.”
“You mean you’re going to kill Cylence.”
“If it comes to that,” William agreed. “A lot of things are in motion right now. I’m not entirely sure of my role yet. But whatever my mother demands of me, I’ll have no choice but to perform. If I don’t, she’ll kill all of you.”
“Do you believe she really would?”
“I don’t know what I believe about her anymore,” William sighed. “I can’t take the chance that she’s not bluffing. Not when all your lives depend on it.”
Namshi leaned forward and spoke more softly, as if she worried someone might overhear. “Nuesh told me there are… there are rumors going around that the Order have some way to defeat the Totality permanently.”
William scrunched the corner of his mouth at that notion. He’d heard no such thing. Where is this Nuesh getting his information? As if he’d tell me if I asked. “I’m not aware of anything like that. All I know is that Cylence is working on some really dangerous stuff out here, and we have to stop him while we have the chance. My mother is worried about what he might accomplish otherwise.”
“But what if Nuesh is right, and the Order know some way to… remove all of us? It might not affect Elena or any of the other exiles, but I’m not one of them. I’m one of the ‘normal’ Totality, as strange as it sounds for me to say it. I’m not bound to my body the way Elena and Nuesh are to theirs. So, if you succeed, you would be killing me, in a way.”
William didn’t know how to respond. Killing, as an abstract concept, was certainly not foreign to him. Killing in the course of his duties, while not an everyday occurrence, had come to him a few times in his career. There was also Nesto Marks, which he still felt guilty about, despite the man’s death essentially being an accident. But here, he had someone looking him in the eyes, all but begging him not to kill her. What could I even say? He decided not to argue the broader philosophical issue—how could he? He went for the underlying facts instead. “I’ve not heard anything like this, Ang… Namshi. I think Nuesh is telling you stories to scare you. Maybe he likes doing that. When I met with my mother, she was clear that the goal is to capture or kill Cylence. There’s not been any indication that the Order have any kind of plan or capability to permanently destroy the Totality. I don’t even know how that would be accomplished. So, all I can do is tell you I’m not involved with anything like that. You don’t have to fear your own destruction from me—I have no part of it.”
“But what if it is what your mother is planning? And you’re going to help her. Unwittingly, maybe, but you’ll help her.”
William inhaled sharply, irritated that she continued to debate him. “What do you want me to say? Is your life worth more than everyone else’s on this ship? And, need I remind you, if you were gone from that body, we’d have Angel back. That doesn’t sound like a terrible bargain to me. And if I refuse to do what needs to be done, my mother will kill everyone here—not just you. How would you make a decision like that, if you were in my place?”
She paused, chewing her lip in contemplation. “I… don’t know,” she finally said. “I’d find another way.”
“If you know another way, now would be a great time to tell me. I’m more than happy to consider options here.”
Unfortunately, she had no such advice. “I’m practically a child,” she reminded him. “I don’t know the universe the way you and the others do. I don’t understand much of anything. I just don’t want to die.”
“I don’t want to die, either,” William said, trying but failing to hide the flicker of vulnerability that escaped his lips. “But we might all die by the end of this.”
Namshi stood, taking steps toward the exit. She stopped and lowered her head. “At least you got a chance to live,” she muttered before making her way out. She pushed past Fred, who must have been waiting just outside the office for his turn.
“I assume you have a plan,” the troll said plainly as he took a seat, not bothering with the formality of waiting for an invitation.
“Make yourself at home,” William scoffed, leaning back in his seat. “It’s not my plan, but it’s a plan.”
“Well, what is it?”
William recounted the preliminary briefing his mother had given him. “The primary target is Cylence himself. Capture or kill. Secondary objective is to take control of the Dominix. If it can’t be subdued, it’ll be destroyed. The nerve center of the Totality is going down, however it needs to be done.”
Fred didn’t look at all surprised by the plan, though William imagined he was impressed by the sheer ambition. “What is my role?”
“You’re going to stay here,” William said, getting straight to the point. “I need you to look after these people. Janus and Katerine are the only other regular humans left. I’m not comfortable leaving Janus in charge. Sasha never trusted him, so I’m not sure I should, either. As for Katerine—nothing against her, but I hardly know her at all.”
“I would like to point out that I am not even the same species as anyone else aboard.”
“You’re also older, wiser, and more level-headed. You’ll make good decisions. I don’t know Elena well enough to gauge her judgment. Doubts about Janus. Everyone else, who the fuck knows? That leaves you. I don’t have a choice. I can’t have you going in there with me.”
“So, your mother is sending you, personally? By yourself?”
“Sort of.” William recalled the details from their discussion. “She said there’s a disused docking bay on one of the Dominix’s lower levels. She’ll insert a strike team there. Me? I’m heading in through some auxiliary access port near the top. She said it has defenses but they have a way to sneak me in undetected. While the Totality believe there’s an assault coming up from the bottom—which there is—I’ll be making my way down to Cylence’s sanctum. Hopefully catch him off-guard.”
“You’ll
never take him alive,” Fred said matter-of-factly. “He’d never allow such an indignity.”
“His ego can eat shit,” William swore. “If he’d rather die, so be it. I just want to get this over with.”
“What will happen after?” Fred wondered aloud. “Am I to understand that your mother has blackmailed you into this course of action?”
“I don’t think it’s technically blackmail to prey on my sense of right and wrong, but I guess you’re right. She’s not going to let any of us go unless I do her bidding now. She certainly has the firepower to back up her threats.”
“Would she murder her own son?”
“She made me believe the Totality had abducted an entire colony. I think she’s capable of anything. I just need to know that I can count on you. Whatever happens, you have to get these people to safety. Somewhere in the Fortress, somewhere outside—I don’t care. Just look after them, would you?”
Fred gave a solemn bob of his head. “I am true to my word, and you have it.”
“Oh, and you have to promise me Janus will get that haircut. I’m tired of not being able to tell whether he’s got his eyes closed through those ridiculous bangs.”
Fred grinned. “I shall trim him myself, if need be.”
Chapter 40
A Personal Touch
Steel swung, smacked, and sparked not far from Sasha, who watched Cylence spar with Martan. For a man of his size, Cylence moved with a surprisingly deft grace. His body rotated and curved fluidly, after what Sasha imagined to be many years of practice. She’d seen the swords in his office, and she’d assumed they were all for show, that the Totality despot simply liked to display instruments of death in his private space. She imagined they made him feel powerful, in a way that commanding remote fleets to obliterate rebellious slave populations did not.