Cryo Knight

by Tim Johnson

  Cryo Knight

  Lords of Valeria

  Tim Johnson

  To Michael R. Miller & Mary Ho

  Contents

  Awakening

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Join the Group

  Awakening

  Christian gasped, sucking in air for the first time in years. He staggered forward; his feet slipped on the slick surface of the cryo-pod, but he was saved from falling by two guards. For a moment he thought they were going to shove him back into the cryo-chamber. But instead he hung there, limply supported by their arms. Steam hissed around him. He shivered, soaking wet from the drained freezing fluid. One of the guards spoke, repeating something over and over.

  He clenched his fists. He was a soldier, not a criminal, despite how they might treat him.

  Slowly the world came into focus.

  “Just breathe,” the guard said. “In and out. That’s it, buddy, look at me.”

  The guard’s meaty face lifted into a smile. “There you go, big guy. You there? Good. Welcome to the year 2155. You have been defrosted after exactly two years. You have one hundred days left until your trial and your bail has just been posted. Congrats.”

  The guard’s breath reeked of tobacco. Christian tried to reply, but his lips could barely move. His teeth chattered so hard they felt like they might smash their way out of his mouth. Thoughts came to him in a jumble, one over another, as his brain slowly spluttered to life.

  I’ve been in cryo for two years. But I have no-one. Who posted bail for me?

  The other guard gestured to a wheelchair, with thick blankets folded over the seat. Christian straightened his back and managed to stand on his own two feet.

  “I can walk.”

  The guard shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  Christian stepped off the wet cryo-pod platform and his bare feet met the metal grate-floor of the jail. Through the gaps of the floor-grating he could see thousands of criminal cryo-pods glowing a faint blue as they fell away into the distance below. The air was thick with steam and smelled of freezing fluid.

  The second guard placed a thick blanket over his shoulders, as though Christian were a prize-fighter.

  In some ways he was. He doubted they had anyone else like him in here.

  Decorated soldier and disgraced murderer. That was him. Or so they claimed.

  Christian clenched his jaw to stop his teeth from chattering and slowly made his legs move forward, step by step. His brain warmed with questions as he managed to hobble his way towards his temporary freedom.

  1

  The lawyer stared at Christian over thin wire-rimmed glasses and smoothed down his shirt for what felt like the hundredth time.

  Christian stretched his neck which gave a satisfying crack. The lawyer fiddled with his pen. Perhaps he had never had a high-security prisoner like Christian sat before him, wearing the too small prison-issue gray hoodie and sweatpants that stretched across his muscular six-foot-two frame.

  Christian had never trusted these suits with their cocooned, comfortable lives. He could tell by one look that this guy had never held a gun; never watched as the life drained from a man.

  The lawyer’s eyes flicked over the scars on Christian’s face: one from a bullet that had grazed the side of his head and a second from a fist fight that had cut into his lip.

  He was used to these looks from civilians. He should take off his shirt and show the lawyer the two bullet marks that had earnt him his silver star medal.

  Instead, he stared back until the lawyer looked down.

  In Christian’s hands the e-paper glowed. He read over the document again.

  Dear Christian Lawson,

  Re: Estate of James T. Lee

  Our firm, T.C. & Sons LLP, represent the estate of your uncle, Mr. James T. Lee. Please find enclosed with this letter a copy of the last will and testament of Mr. Lee.

  You are the declared heir.

  Mr. Lee instructed our office to have him declared legally deceased should he be missing or presumed dead for a period of two years. Mr. Lee was reported missing over two years ago and remains missing today. We have obtained an order from the court declaring him legally deceased. As such, we are to distribute his property in accordance with his will.

  Should you be in agreement with the transfer of his assets to you, we respectfully request that you sign this acknowledgment.

  Sincerely,

  J. William Buchanan

  [PRESS YOUR THUMB HERE]

  The signature thumb-print tab on the e-paper flashed a light green.

  Christian’s memories of his Uncle James flowed through his mind. He had, in all honesty, thought his uncle had forgotten all about him by now. Uncle James had been involved in the tech sector and done well, so he’d often been busy. Christian hadn’t seen the man in a decade.

  As a kid, his uncle had been kind to Christian, and usually sympathetic towards his mother and her addictions. A distant, thoughtful man, big and broad like Christian but pudgy from office work. They shared their Asian-Caucasian ancestry and they had the same dark brown eyes and thick brown-black hair. Christian always wore his hair buzzed short though it had grown out now courtesy of the cryo-jail.

  From Christian’s recollections, his uncle had visited him on his birthdays or holidays and always brought him books. He also remembered how the visits got less frequent and shorter over the years when suddenly the memory of one of the last visits came back perfectly.

  “Think of the boy!” his uncle had begged his mother, practically crying and gesturing at Christian who must have been ten or so at the time. “For Christ’s sake if you can’t pull yourself together for you, please do it for him.”

  “Screw you,” his mother slurred.

  “Let me take care of him. I’ll give you whatever you need but you can’t carry on like this.”

  “I said get out. You won’t take my son and I don’t need your lecturing!”

  He used to hold resentment against all his mother’s family as she got worse. It had felt like they had done nothing for her as she spun down the well of alcoholism. As he got older, he understood how they’d tried and failed, though it wasn’t enough to warm his feelings for them.

  He, too, had eventually left her, taking up a gun in one hand and the flag of the republic in the other. He was sent around the world and used as a discreet blade of the republic. If he had wanted to be closer to her, he knew deep down he could have been.

  The lawyer cleared his throat. “Mr. Lawson?”

  Christian blinked, suddenly back in the little office and keenly aware of the annoying hum from the strip lights.

  I need to get out of here.

  He pressed his thumb against the e-paper and his uncle’s house, belongings and small savings became his own.

  “Thank you,” the lawyer said. He took an uncomfortable breath. “And welcome back. Due to Mr. Lee’s generosity you now h
ave a home and even some credits in your account, though you may want to consider saving that for your trial.”

  “What happened to my uncle?”

  “No idea,” the lawyer said. “Here one day and gone the next. Police found nothing. It’s lucky in some ways that you were in cryo, avoiding suspicion and all that. He didn’t disappear alone. Another biomechanical doctor from his former company disappeared with him. The whole thing is a total mystery.”

  The lawyer smiled at Christian thinly. “You know, I understand you have a lot to process. But if I may be so bold, my firm would be an excellent choice to use in your forthcoming trial. I recall your case very well. I mean, it was all over the news. Terrible what happened, all those poor people not to mention our soldiers. But despite that, we could represent you. You’re going to have trouble finding anyone else in the legal community that will touch you.”

  Christian swallowed hard. For just a second, he was back up in the Altai Mountains. His boots crunching in the snow as he stepped through the bodies, their fingers frozen like frosted, gnarled twigs, looking for the body of his love, Iryna. He took a breath, forced the image out his mind, and instead imagined how good it would feel to reach across the table, grab the lawyer’s tie and smash his face onto the tabletop.

  But he had no intention of going back into cryo so soon.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Of course. Here are the three items your uncle had in his lockbox at our firm.” The lawyer reached into his satchel, pulled out a small box and flicked it open.

  “This key-card is for the house. I presume this signet ring is some kind of family heirloom and finally this strange key. I am afraid I have no idea what it’s for.” The lawyer placed the three objects in front of Christian and flicked the box closed. He began packing his things away.

  Christian examined the small collection in front of him. The key was strange, shaped like an asterisk with eight small points. He held up the signet ring. It reminded him of the family signet rings some of the officers from older families wore in the military. The crest on it was a shield with a hammer and a sword crossing each other. But it was no family heirloom. He’d never seen this before in his life.

  Just what the hell did you get yourself involved with, Uncle?

  He slipped the ring on his right ring finger and it fit perfectly. He turned his hand to a fist.

  Every part of his life had been a fight. With the trial on the horizon, it seemed like that wouldn’t be ending anytime soon.

  He scraped the items off the table, shoved them into his pocket and left.

  2

  His uncle’s house was a sprawling mansion, set in an industrial district way out on the outskirts of New London. A former owner had probably lost a battle with the city as the pulse-train tracks were right beside it, the sound of which rose to a roar as it flew past in a neon flash.

  The mansion was gothic. Isolated. Close to a noisy as hell train. Not a house that he would have imagined his uncle choosing as a place to live.

  It had cost Christian a bunch of credits to get there, hailing an aircab from the jail. He had crossed the smoggy skies of New London while he dwelled on what could have happened to his uncle.

  Christian walked up the front steps to the house and pulled the police tape off the door. He let it trail from his fingers into the wind. He tapped the keycard against the scanner and the large door gave a small hiss and swung inward.

  Lights flickered on automatically, revealing the prints of police boots that tracked through the thick dust. As Christian stepped through, he had to push a cobweb out of the way. The house felt truly abandoned.

  Where are you?

  The door opened into a large foyer showcasing a majestic oak staircase that led up to the second floor.

  Christian let out a low whistle.

  In its time this would have been quite the place.

  Christian explored the huge house methodically. In each room drawers had been left open and their contents upended onto the ground. Furniture was knocked over. The police hadn’t bothered to clean up after themselves. Typical.

  The whole thing made no sense. Why did he leave everything to Christian exactly two years after going missing? That seemed like a very deliberate and calculated move. And why hadn’t he bailed Christian out sooner if he was in trouble?

  Another thought occurred. Perhaps his uncle had committed fraud and was relaxing somewhere, living off the profits. Christian imagined his uncle laying on a beach with this missing ‘biomechanical doctor’. While fanciful it was at least a positive outcome.

  Fake your death and give me this big old house to re-start my life. Thanks. Doesn’t explain this ring and the key though.

  He inspected the fancy ring again, hoping for some epiphany. No-one in his family had ever worn something like this. Frustrated, he continued to search the house and couldn’t fight the growing feeling of unease, an instinct developed from his time in the military. The sort of feeling that tells you something’s up two seconds before the bullets whizz past.

  The first thing that he noticed was that his uncle collected… oddities. He picked up a helmet that had been left resting on a coffee table. It was something like a knight of medieval times might wear. But it looked bizarrely new and it had an authentic weight to it; the metal was thick and heavy. As Christian turned it over, he saw how they had worked the metal inside into bracing for the skull. The front of the helmet was decorated with the same sigil that was on the ring – an ax and a sword crossing over.

  I don’t remember him collecting antiques.

  He set the helmet down. It quickly became clear that it wasn’t the only historical artifact in the house. Leather vambraces, boots made of plate mail acting as a doorstopper to the kitchen. There might have been weapons too but the police would likely have taken them.

  He went up the big oak staircase exploring room after room that branched off from the corridor.

  The upstairs hallway was lined with artwork and photos. It was the only place where you could guess that a person lived here, with a small collection of framed personal photographs – the rest of the house felt anonymous, like a museum.

  Christian looked at the photographs, seeing himself in a picture that was in the center of the collection. He was maybe six-years-old at the time. His mother was there, and his uncle James was crouching next to him. His late grandparents were smiling, arm-in-arm in their backyard. It had been one of their rare family barbeques, graced by his grandmother’s old Vietnamese recipes for marinated chicken. A happy day.

  He lingered on his uncle’s frozen face.

  Where are you? What did you want me to do?

  Then it hit him.

  The layout of this place doesn’t work – this hallway is too long.

  He stepped backwards, looking carefully at each end.

  He had been in every room yet there should be a decent section of the space unused. The hallway had no more doors to it, at least none he could see.

  He went back to the start and began pulling off the pictures and paintings from the hallway wall one by one and setting them down. He worked his way back to the very center – back to the family photo. He tried to pull it off, but it was stuck.

  Gotcha.

  He gently worked his fingers around the corner of the photo frame on one side and felt the indentations of a hinge. He gently pressed his finger on the other side of the photo frame, and it popped forward with a satisfying click.

  Well, well.

  The photo swung open. Set into the wallpaper behind it was an asterisk-shaped keyhole.

  Christian couldn’t help but smile. It had been so long since he had smiled, the expression had to crack its way up his stern cheeks, the scar on his lip pulled tightly.

  His uncle wanted him to find this. That was the only thing that made sense in all of this. Christian fished about in his pocket for the key and then pushed it into the lock, giving it a twist. The lock gave a pop and the safe door swung open to
reveal…

  A biometric hand-scanner.

  Well, shit.

  Christian hadn’t been expecting that. He stared at the black screen that had the image of a right hand outlined in green. The scanner certainly changed things. If someone but the intended owner tried to hack into it then it could be rigged to blow up and injure or kill a potential thief.

  All Christian had to go on was that his uncle meant for him to get this far. Why else give him the key? Hoping for the best, Christian slowly held out his right palm until it was parallel to the scanner. He pressed his hand down against its cold surface.

  For a second, nothing happened and Christian worried that his fear of triggering an explosive might come true, but instead, the scanner gave a small pulse and an affirmative bing sounded.

  “Ring of Valor detected. Entry granted”

  Ring of Valor? He looked again at the ring on his finger.

  It hid an access key. Smart.

  Then, an entire section of the hallway moved backwards and as it slid to the right, Christian had to almost shield his eyes, as lights in the secret room pulsed on, revealing a gleaming white laboratory.

  What the hell is this?

  The laboratory was twelve foot by twelve foot in size, with each of the three walls covered in screens, switches and keypads. A strange contraption, a white circular pedestal four feet in diameter dominated the center of the room. It had power cords snaking across the ground from it like roots from the stump of a huge tree, with the top made from thick white frosted glass.