by J M Guillen
Exactly, Ling responded. Hopefully, between these two actions, we shall determine all we need to know. In that instance your extraction shall begin within the hour.
Sounds good. I glanced back at the rest of my cadre. I’ll inform Petrova and Guthrie of our updated plan of action and then set out.
Excellent, 108. She paused for just a moment before giving me the signoff I’d come to expect:
As always, we wish you well in the days ahead.
3
In the darkness, the old silo building loomed over me, almost as if it might fall over. A significant portion of its roof had been blown away. Holes gaped where the windows had been. The front door hung askew.
As I approached the structure, I saw a sign. I toggled my optics to read it properly:
WELCOME TO SITE 451.
Please have all clearance documents ready.
“I don’t have those,” I muttered. “I hope being nigh invisible is enough.”
This is Locale One? Paige asked curiosity. Doesn’t look like much.
“Agreed.” I studied the building again trying to notice anything at all out of sorts.
“Of course, there’s that ATV,” I realized. I hadn’t seen it at first, not with my optics switched off. Now as I approached I realized the squat shape must be Firenzei’s vehicle, parked off to one side.
I found our asshole, I linked my cadre. Moments later I sent them a small patch comprised of my current visual.
If I remember right, Wyatt drawled, you’re not supposed to poke that asshole by your lonesome.
I’ll leave all the asshole poking to you, hillbilly, I retorted. Just keeping everyone apprised.
Thank you, Michael, Anya responded in distant distraction.
I’m stepping inside.
The single-story building had been abandoned long ago. So long that the shag carpet in the front room came right out of the Age of Funk. Dank, stale air wafted around me with each step, the musty scent all but overwhelming me.
Not what I’d expect, Paige interjected.
“Me neither.”
At first blush, the ruined building appeared small. I, however, had uploaded the schematics to my Crown. Reviewing my dossier, I saw the building extended far back into the mesa. Several small laboratories as well as three launch tubes were included. According to the government, it hadn’t seen active use in over twenty years.
The Facility had evidence to the contrary.
Anya, do you show any unexpected activity in here before I go inside?
I do not read anything. Anya’s link held a confusion I’d never felt from her.
What do you mean?
Previously I had only perused the local telemetry with a wide field of focus. In response to your question, I focused that field to ascertain your safety.
I appreciate that, I responded.
There is nothing there. Her eyes widened.
Um. Wyatt spat and peered around. So Locale One is at Rationality zero?
No. She shook her head. That is not it at all. I am not reading any Rationality levels, neither ambient nor artificial. No telemetry. No readings on the axiomatic weave. Through her link I felt the fingers on her left hand twitch spastically, as if she reached for something not there. There are no readings there at all.
Not good, Hoss, Wyatt linked to me alone.
As much as we enjoyed teasing Anya, she provided invaluable data. Every cadre of Assets retained a Preceptor for a reason. Without her, we’d stumble about all but blind.
I always hate agreeing with you, I replied to Wyatt. To both, I sighed. I’ll engage the Wraith and scout ahead. Do you want me to patch my visual to one of you?
Negative, Wyatt spat. I’ll set us a perimeter here, and Anya can keep trying to calibrate.
If nothing changes, I will contact the Designate, Anya linked. Dossier specifications may alter if I cannot take readings.
Understood. I nodded in agreement. I’ll be back before I have to disengage my tech.
Fifteen minutes. Copy that, Wyatt sent. Be careful, Hoss.
Cautiously, I walked inside. Detritus and shattered glass crunched beneath my feet. The interior of the building appeared as broken down as I’d expected. At one point, the front room had been a waiting area, complete with ’70s style rounded, plastic chairs and a spot behind thick plexiglass for security personnel. Today I noted broken windows, an old couch someone dragged in, and a fine layer of dust covering everything. One of the walls featured a mural of spray-painted graffiti. Later, someone tried to cover the art with a flat whitewash. Over time, though, the graffiti bled through.
A dark, empty hallway next to the security window appeared to be the only way forward. Several old magazines lay scattered on the floor, but the hall quickly faded into blackness.
It gets dark pretty quickly. Engaging optics.
Copy that, Michael. Anya’s voice sounded distant.
Our enhanced optics were a combination of night-vision and infrared. The Crown possessed the ability to read visual data, and it used both technologies to create an accurate picture of the world. It then used its connections to my visual cortex to provide the full picture, in the same way it added location markers or interface controls.
It also tended to give Assets a headache after a while. Like the Wraith, I couldn’t keep it on for long.
Once my optics activated, the passageway didn’t feel nearly as foreboding. It remained a mess, however. I crept forward, both Stilettos drawn. Broken bottles, folders of scattered papers, and stuffing from unfashionable cushions littered the floor.
I came to a doorway on one side and peered into an abandoned office. Remnants of a bookshelf and an old, broken desk remained, nothing threatening.
Still, I kept my guard up. Without Anya’s readings, an Irrat might lurk anywhere. Firenzei could jaunt in and have a bullet in my head, if I didn’t take care.
This place seemed like an odd setup for some Irrat headquarters. Why leave all the debris? To make it seem abandoned? If so, they’d done a perfect job. The air smelled stale and dust covered everything.
Let me know if you see anything I miss, will you? I asked the Adjunct as I rubbed my achy head.
Will do, Mike.
I stepped into the small office and peered about. If someone had been here, I’d see a footprint in the dust on the matted carpet, a clean patch on the desk, some indication.
No. The room remained simply a mess. A mess no one had touched in years. I glanced around and nudged a pile of papers with my foot. A series of inspection records met my gaze, all faded ink and yellowed paper. I peered about; even the smallest detail out of place might matter.
You need to come back, Hoss. Anya’s got news.
She’s got me beat then. I kicked over the papers. There’s nothing here. Floor and furniture’s all covered in dust. No one’s touched anything in ages.
I bet. Come on back, and we can account for that.
I turned, walked out of the musty ruin, and flipped off the Wraith. Color flooded into the world.
Hey. What’s that? As Paige linked, she drew a circle around something on my visual array.
I turned back to see what I’d missed.
Next to the security booth, before the dust got so thick, a wooden post had been installed. At first glance, one might assume it assisted in holding up the gaping ceiling, just as a safety measure. Engraved on this side of the post, though, an angry series of glyphs burned, shedding a faint orange radiance.
I’d passed right by it on the way in, but approaching from this direction gave me an entirely new perspective.
“What are you?” I peered closer.
Scrutinizing the center symbol, it appeared somewhat like an Egyptian eye, only wider, rounder.
It stared as if it gazed on things it couldn’t unsee.
Running analysis. It’ll take some time, however. Lattice records show literally millions of Irrational symbols.
“I get it, Paige. Thanks.”
I conside
red linking Anya but knew it to be of no use. After all, she’d already stated she couldn’t read anything in the silo.
I stared at the symbol a moment longer, hoping to give the Designates a good representation. Then I placed my hand next to it, for a size comparison.
My hand tingled, instantly, as if falling asleep.
I gaped at the symbol when the air around me collapsed against itself.
BANG!
The loud sound washed over me, and I stumbled backward, only to fall against a curved surface.
What?
Hoss! Wyatt’s link sounded muffled. Are you alright?
I… I stared around, somewhat gobsmacked.
A scarlet bubble encapsulated me, pulsing with a murderous crimson.
I don’t know, I sent rapidly. I think that—
Before I finished my link, the bubble plummeted down through the floor. It carried me with it in a rapid fall that made my gorge rise.
An infinity of shadows swirled around me.
Then the bubble vanished and I fell.
I heard lamentations, the wails of inhuman mouths. Around me, epochs drifted and my mind scintillated.
I screamed, exactly in the fashion of a ten-year-old.
Doors Upon Doors
On my way down, I had the good fortune to clip my head on a rocky outcrop. I hissed in a quick breath, preparation for a burst of expletives when I smashed into the ground.
The hard landing knocked all the breath out of me.
For a moment my head swam, my clock thoroughly cleaned.
Fucking OW! I linked out of habit more than anything else, but the awful truth hit me immediately.
It felt like I’d linked into a large, empty room and heard only my own voice echo back.
Alone. Adrift.
“Paige?”
Nothing. Without the Lattice, the Adjunct had no connection to my Crown.
“Good. Absolutely wonderful.” I pushed myself up and noted that, even though it felt as if I’d struck the ground with all the force of a falling dump truck, the ground here actually had a mossy, almost-but-not-quite soft texture. Just a little more padding than your average stone surface.
It hadn’t helped much.
I tried to blink the stars away from my eyes. Adrift from Rationality, a terrifying pang of claustrophobia ran through me. Forcibly, I slowed my breathing and tried to relax my tightened muscles.
This is Michael Bishop, Asset 108. I am currently tech adrift. Please respond.
Nothingness. Only the empty, hollow echo of complete solitude answered me.
“Dammit,” I grunted.
Of all the situations I could possibly stumble into, I hated this scenario the most.
As an Asset, I’d become accustomed to the constant connection to the rest of my cadre—or at least to a Designate on solo missions. Due to the existence of our Lattice and the Adjunct that helped us navigate it, Assets always felt an intimacy incomprehensible to baseline humanity.
Until one became severed from that link.
With a twitch, I switched my Crown’s communication channels to manual. Like a walkie-talkie, this channel didn’t need the Lattice.
This is Michael Bishop, Asset 108. I am present on reconnaissance and exploration of this topiatic locale. I am alive. This message has broadcast since [#system time] when I was located at [#system coordinates]. I continue my reconnaissance and await Facility contact.
“That might do.” I spent a moment setting the general-purpose broadcast for any Assets who came within range, put it on repeat, muted the outflow on my end, and changed channels.
Now it would play endlessly. Anyone with a Crown would see the signal.
“That’ll have to be enough.” I sighed and pushed myself up to glance around.
Darkness covered everything except for a haunted, glowing haze, which hung like death shrouds in the air. It pulsed softly with an unearthly, saffron color—a hue my mind struggled to comprehend.
The mist swirled, and the air became heavy and hard to breathe. The hidden danger of my deep, gasping breaths became apparent.
“Fuck.” I pulled my shirt over my mouth like a child trying to avoid a foul scent.
I had no means of knowing if the air here even contained oxygen. Breathing in glowing alien mist didn’t strike me as the wisest of moves. However, I didn’t exactly have Anya here to advise me on local atmospheric conditions.
“Okay, dingdong,” I muttered from beneath my shirt, “think.”
After a moment of paralysis, I realized it probably didn’t matter. I’d fallen here. Whatever clever passage the Vyriim’s servitors had contrived opened out somewhere distantly above this spot. I peered up, searching for handholds or some kind of climbing mechanism.
No such luck. The walls appeared smooth for the most part, although I saw a few outcroppings higher up.
A simple but elegant trap. I had no means to reach the door even if it were still open. The Adept might give me preternatural grace and dexterity beyond all reckoning, but it didn’t matter if I couldn’t climb up.
“Stuck.” I glared at the shaft I’d fallen down.
I decided it unlikely that the atmosphere would be poisonous. The Vyriim had, after all, allied with human Irrats like Firenzei. Who knew how many were infested by the parasitical horrors, but I had to guess at least a few. The Vyriim wouldn’t waste hosts in a topia where they couldn’t breathe.
“Seems reasonable enough,” I muttered to myself, knowing full well I grasped at straws.
As if to prove it to myself, I took several deep breaths.
I completely failed to collapse on the ground and writhe with seizures.
The atmosphere might be okay, yet I still found it difficult to breathe. To be honest, my head swam slightly. Now, I’d just taken a knock on the noggin, but…
“Better to be safe.”
I selected the tiny, scarlet dataglyph and opened the internal dialogue of my Crown. Instantly, a ring of dataglyphs appeared on my visual array, each corresponding to a different firmware packet within my system.
Grumbling, I cycled through them, searching for the port to my physical statistics interface. I didn’t commonly fiddle with my internals, preferring to leave that to a Caduceus. The vast sea of dataglyphs confused the hell out of me.
I found my metabolic indicators, as well as basic data regarding my blood pressure, white blood cell production, and respiration. That last one intrigued me, and I expanded the details. My visual array shifted to thirty different numeric indicators. Each displayed a meter to the side, color coded to show current status.
Nearly half of them had crept down to the yellow.
“Not good,” I grumbled.
I couldn’t know the nature of the mist. That made it nigh-impossible to calibrate my viral mecha against it. I mean, I could breathe, mostly, but that might not be enough.
To keep watch over it, I resized the dialogue and placed it in the upper left corner of my visual array. Then I pulled up the interface for my viral mecha. I rarely even peeked at their data, but today was one of those days. Fortunately, a good number of mecha went idle after they knitted up my earlier injuries.
Without a Designate or a Caduceus, I remained uncertain of what to tell them to do. Yes, I needed my oxygen levels moderated, but by how much? What rate of supplementation worked for the local axiomatic set up?
“Just impossible to know.” I stood lost, helpless.
A few moments of study led me to recall type III mecha were typically geared to detoxify the system. I opened a small sub-frame which showed how many were available and tasked them to remove buildups of lactic acid in my muscles and carbon dioxide in my blood.
I quickly reviewed the system standard entries on hypoxia and wished for a moment that, just once, I’d actually taken the Caduceus module.
Mecha engaged, 108.
The Crown’s response felt clunky and slow when disconnected from the Lattice, but for now I didn’t mind.
Any voi
ce provided more comfort than the silence of this place.
As a shot in the dark, I set several groups of type II mecha to produce oxygen. Typically, they augmented reflexes or manufactured hormones, but producing pure O2 required far fewer resources than those tasks.
“Okay.” I watched the system readouts for a moment. “That might be okay. I can adjust later if need be.”
I pulled a Stiletto with my left hand. I’d never been the best southpaw shot, but I had no idea what the local axioms might do to my kinetic weapon. Since I didn’t intend to discover my only weapon had become useless just as some gore-drenched abomination bore down on me, I drew a katana with the right.
Sharp pieces of steel tended to function almost everywhere.
I crept forward.
The spongy ground gave way to a pitted, metallic floor. The entire tunnel had been constructed of rusted iron or some other dark ore. Great plates of it had been fused together. While some places used precise welds, others held brackets and brassy pins.
The tunnel appeared octagonal at first, each plate fastened to the next at an unusual angle.
“But it’s not.” I ran my fingers along one thick plate and peered at the hall. The place tilted strangely, as if the world moved subtly beneath my feet, akin to the gentle roll of a ship but over more dimensions.
The nausea that resulted made counting difficult. I felt as if, unless I stared directly at a surface, it would shift.
“Seven,” I stated.
Blinking, I immediately realized I’d miscounted. As the world bent and tipped, I couldn’t track the sides of the hallway. I continually lost focus.
The sensation made me a touch dizzy.
I peered down the long, straight tunnel, but the mist proved problematic. Its spectral light obscured more than it revealed, and blanketed everything in a uniform, uneasy radiance.
I reached out and ran a hand along the wall as I walked. It both helped with my slight dizziness and made certain I tracked the hallway.
Very soon, the passageway branched off into several more tunnels.
“Five of them?” I peered at each, fairly certain of my reckoning. Yet each branch sat at right angles to the others. If true…