by J M Guillen
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—found that 99.875% of Assets could not gear the Gatekeeper and the Wraith at once. The configuration creates cascading synch errors between the two packets and neural burn resulted.
Gatekeeper requires certain processes to run continually in the background, but upon ignition, the Wraith interrupts those processes, leaving the Asset with an overflow error. In 65% of cases, those errors resulted in excessive production of norepinephrine by the A5 nucleus with the corresponding mental difficulties.
If Asset 217’s capability to equip these two packets can be replicated, then the Facility will possess the means to send Assets into hostile territory unseen, and then create a conduit for reinforcements with little to no danger.
Until then, Asset 217 is one of the greatest weapons we possess. When equipping these two packets, she shows no cascading errors and maintains A5 production within normal parameters, making her the perfect Asset for stealth incursion.
I have made an intense study of the Asset’s holotecture and axial nodes, making use of over thirty different RM scans. To date, I have not been able to rep—
_____________________
I stopped the playback, my mind racing with the possibilities.
Every Asset knew about ‘the unseen gate’ problem. A Gatekeeper could only access locations that they themselves had previously accessed or within their visual range, with the distance limitation being different for every Asset. That made incursions tricky, as an Asset might have a difficult time slipping into hostile locations.
Wyatt liked to bitch about that to no end.
The Wraith and its invisibility presented the perfect answer to the problem, but it didn’t play nice with Gatekeeper. If Delacruz could gear both of those packets, then Delacruz became “the perfect Asset for stealth incursion,” just as the Designate said.
Of course Stone would want her.
Working closely with Delacruz, he would have been able to place spikes all through the Ryuu building, making further incursions and rapid extractions possible. Together, they could have moved through areas of the building that no other Asset could penetrate, and the intel they sent back to the Facility—
I almost leapt out of my skin at the bark of gunfire. Not close, but the sound gave me pause.
I needed to hurry this along. I looked back at the index heading titled Dossier I88-1998.
Maybe I just needed to skip ahead a bit, get past all the early parts.
Crown command: Increase playback 4.0
Compliance.
I let the data whirl by, until I saw the Designate.
That was a good start, I thought.
_____________________
—morning, Delacruz.
The Designate, a fair-skinned, kindly seeming man with cool blue eyes, rode beside her in a black Facility sedan.
I felt her remembered nervousness.
This will be your last task regarding Dossier I88-1998. It requires the vector coordinates that only you possess.
I see. Her bitter disappointment felt like iron in my stomach. Stone had told her that things were coming to an end, but she hadn’t thought it would be this soon.
Liaison Stone is in possession of several key pieces of technology. They are quite volatile, and we need to extract him as soon as possible.
Understood. She glanced at the Designate. Which vector will I be extracting him from? She had active locations all over the building, so the extraction should be simple.
Seven-alpha four. The Designate looked her squarely in the eye. He’s below the Seal.
Her surprise came suddenly, like a flock of birds bursting into flight. How had Stone bypassed the Seal without her?
She chuckled. He always surprised her.
Due to the incredible volatility of Stone’s package, he will be extracted to a Facility location not typically used by Assets.
_____________________
I found no reaction in Sofia’s mind regarding “Stone’s incredibly volatile package” no matter how hard I looked. Maybe it hadn’t been included in the patch. That made more sense, I decided. Who could pass on that joke?
_____________________
Where is this location?
It is codenamed The Spire. The Designate paused. It is of the utmost importance that you never speak of this location nor imply its existence.
Chills ran down my spine at the Designate’s stern proclamation.
Of course, Designate.
In an out of the way warehouse somewhere near the inner District of Mexico City they stopped. It was often simpler to create conduits in out of the way places.
Delacruz stepped toward a door that looked as if it went nowhere. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.
We have arrived.
Then she realized that the Designate intended to accompany her through the conduit.
I felt her frown as clearly as if it were my own. Typically, the Designates simply apprised us of our missions and then left us to it. Having a chaperone felt a little uncomfortable.
Ms. Delacruz didn’t receive the full tour of The Spire. Instead, with a violent, violet burst, the conduit opened somewhere deep in the bowels of the structure.
So dark. Sofia couldn’t help but wonder if the place had ever seen the light. She squinted at something…
In the center of the room, stood a graceful curving arc made of lapis lazuli. The stone ran with veins of gold and white against a sea of brilliant, primal blue. The column itself stood approximately six meters tall, square at the base, but curved strongly to my right.
It was gorgeous; a sleek piece of stone that looked as graceful as water.
You may need to make some vector alterations. The Designate’s voice felt like melted wax in her mind. This location was chosen for a very specific purpose. The base of The Spire is an emanation point for Hyper-Rationality.
She trolled through the settings of her Crown augment, trying to determine if she had preset parameters for this dossier. I don’t have any specifications for Hyper-Rationality.
You will discover that Rationality is quite firmly anchored in this building. It is an emanation point for several key Facility frequencies. This location has been selected in the hopes that the Hyper-Rationality might counteract the dangerous materials that Stone is transporting.
I can’t exactly make perfect vector alterations on the fly. She glanced at the Designate, and I felt her prickly irritability. If I don’t have the specifications in the gatekeeper, how am I supposed to modulate my apertures?
It is unknown what effect Stone’s package might have upon your aperture.
The Designate somehow linked this hilarity with a straight face.
That is why I am present. It is possible that the Hyper-Rationality Matrices will require adjustment during this process. The Designate paused a moment, as if uncertain what to say. However, when he continued, his words seemed certain, as cool and professional as ever. Simply target the appropriate vector and watch the readings on your packet interface. If there are difficulties with the emanations, I shall modulate them appropriately.
Will comply.
On the Designate’s mark, she ignited the fissure.
Scarlet song filled the air as it opened. There, on the other side, she could make out Stone, wearily shuffling forward. He held a case and had a second figure in tow.
Who is that? She linked him, playful and teasing. Did you pick up a lady frie—?
With a darkling brilliance that shattered its way into her Crown, the aperture shifted, boiling over with colors that hurt both our minds.
Delacruz screamed, frantically attempting to modulate the Gatekeeper’s settings but quickly lost control.
Stone’s case burst with a multicolored sundering of singing darkness. That light grew, overwhelming all things.
_____________________
The visual was abruptly swallowed in horrifying, sibilant blackness.
2
No sooner had
that portion of the file ended than Delacruz linked me, Hey there, Mike. You aren’t dead, right?
How could I be dead? I smiled through the link. I had some kind of Gatekeeper/Wraith superweapon promise me she had my back.
Okay, here’s the play. She ignored the jibe. I sent you an image of a bunker. That’s where we are now. There’s only light security onsite because they never expected that we could hit them.
About that. I peered down where a trace or two of my sick remained on the floor. The guard that I bravely puked on seemed to think I might have taught some locals how to shoot guns and beat perimeter defenses. I paused. Know anything about that?
Yes. And you will too when you finish the packet. Let me update you so that can happen.
Will comply. I rolled my eyes at her through the link.
I told you earlier we had about twenty minutes; current countdown is right at nine.
I glanced at the packet I perused. I think I’ll be done by then. What happens in nine minutes?
Well… I felt her grin, fierce and feral. Sadhana keeps weapon stores at this transportation hub. These ladies may understand how guns work, but they’re short on supply.
Gotcha.
This isn’t the only storage depot, but there’s a gap in the perimeter patrol. If we leave in nine, we’ll hit it.
I assume you’ll share more of your brilliant plan then?
You’ll get a lot of it in the packet. Delacruz sounded a bit irritated. That’s why I patched it to you—I can’t update you every five minutes.
Fine. I’ll finish up.
Good boy. Her smile dawned like sunlight in my mind. See you soon.
So far, the packet had mostly been a different perspective on things I already knew. Although, I supposed that no one knew what had happened at the end there, not really. I suspected that her phaneric node had overloaded and she had been unable to record sensory input.
But what had triggered the backlash? Stone had implied that it might have been Subject X, but…
“Did he though?” I frowned. Hadn’t I actually suggested that and Stone simply agreed?
Did Stone want me to believe it was Subject X?
The Designate seemed to have a healthy respect for whatever Stone was bringing back in that case of his. But Stone hadn’t described the canisters as ‘volatile’ when talking to us.
If they were volatile, however, and they hadn’t reacted well to the conduit or Hyper-Rationality or even the Ad’uun woman creating a conduit of her own somehow…
“Conjecture.” I shook my head. I didn’t even know if it mattered.
Skipping over titles like Biological Observances and Possible History of the Ad’uun, I looked to the timeline and found the closest entry after the event of November fifteen…
Topiatic Locality: Ar’Ghosa.
That sounded about right.
“No skipping,” I muttered as I cracked my knuckles. “Let’s get this done.”
_____________________
I felt the ground beneath her and smelled the moldy, musty fragrance of the bizarre plant life as Sofia awoke beneath one of the treacherous, alien willow trees.
Black eyes bore into her own as a woman she had never met screamed nonsense into Sofia’s face.
I felt her startled recoil.
“[I will shoot you in the eye, bitch!]” Sofia shouted in Spanish, frantically backing away while waving the gatekeeper wildly. She struggled to figure out what the hell had happened, why she felt so catastrophically dizzy, and where—
“[ŴƎƝ Ɣ nj èƧƝƟDŽ!]” The bald woman shouted louder and louder, but Sofia’s Crown could make no sense of her tongue. “[ǮǤdz ƝƟDŽ €Ɍ ɎȦ Ɂʮʔ!]”
The woman had absolutely no hair, only some kind of growth that pulsed and sang with a yellow light on her forehead, a twin to the growth currently on Sofia’s brow.
Fascinating though that might be, Sofia focused on the woman’s rage as she launched herself at Delacruz, her fists raised.
Sofia blocked it easily, but the woman simply howled, “[Ɍɧ ɎɔƪƢⱷὢ!]”
Whoever baldy might be, she just didn’t seem to know when to stop. Sofia blocked another swing and growled at her, “If you don’t want to play nice, then I don’t have to play nice.”
Without moving a single muscle, Sofia used her Crown augment and ignited an aperture approximately a hundred meters behind the screaming woman, four meters in the air. Then she triggered a second one beneath baldy’s unsuspecting feet.
As the screeching woman tumbled feet over forehead, Sofia engaged the Wraith. Instantly, the cool shadows of invisibility settled over her. Her visual faded to monochrome.
She got to her feet and ran into an Irrationally twisted landscape of nightmares and horror.
Behind her, the muted cries of “[ύƟDŽƩƢƼǟǷ!]” slowly faded into the distance.
_____________________
Long hours in the darkened jungle followed then, most of which she’d fortunately condensed. Delacruz had seen far more of this place than I had and treated me to a rapid series of brief memories, like cards being fanned as a card sharp shuffled his deck:
Birds with beaks as long as my katana, great black wings, and an array of eyes that hung from their faces by dangling strands flew overhead.
The unclean water gave off noxious fumes as it boiled with salt and sulfur. Visceral fear knotted Sofia’s stomach as she worried she would find nothing to drink.
Once, she came upon a great field filled with billions of tiny flowers wrapped in thorn-like nettles as long as her pinky. Nightmarish monstrosities like alien jellyfish floated in the air as long, barbed tendrils dangled beneath them.
Shrines had been scattered throughout the warped jungle, small temples crafted from stone and fragrant wood. Universally, corpses had been left there, bound hand and foot to gigantic rocks. The postures left no doubt they’d been alive and left to die.
Many pyramids studded the jungle cavern, not just the one. Delacruz had studied history at UACM and had developed a theory: the constructions’ origins were definitely Mesoamerican. While researching these—
Subject X
Everything around me burst with a sudden, rumbling blast. I felt it in my bones before I heard it. The walls shook, and I fell to the floor.
“That seems bad.” I muttered as I stood.
A second thunderous explosion rocked the bunker with the tearing of metal accompanied by cries of pain far closer than I thought they should be.
Delacruz? I forgot all about the packet. Tell me we’re still good.
Only silence greeted my query.
“Dammit!”
I drew my Stiletto and crept around the corner, peering down the dim hallway.
It sprouted off into a T approximately fifteen meters ahead. Detritus lay all across the left branch, and one large steel beam had broken through from above to block the way. Clouds of dust billowed in the hall, though it had started to settle.
I triggered my optics along with the Adept. I felt a little naked only having one packet, but I supposed it had to do.
With my weapon in front of me, I crept down the hallway.
Advancing. I had no way of knowing if Delacruz could hear me or not, but if so, I needed to keep her updated. I cannot hear you. I assume you are either unconscious or tech adrift. I will update you as I can.
Petulant silence responded.
Cries sounded ahead, but a little too distant for me to make them out. At the end of the hallway, I peeked around the right corner.
Clear.
The left-hand hallway also looked secure, but here I saw more evidence of damage to the structure. While the electric lights dimly flickered, other light shone, eldritch and pearly. Ahead, I made out another place where a steel beam had broken through the top of the ceiling.
The soft glow of the ghost light shone in from above.
Like the crack of a whip right next to my ear, I heard the barking cough of a pistol nearby. A cry accompanied it, sharp
and savage words that my Crown couldn’t understand. “[ᾋὶ! ɔήζϘ!]” The woman’s voice echoed oddly with primal, raw hatred.
“Fucking bitch!”
The sound of a firearm came again.
“This sounds far better than studying.” I sprinted forward, drawing my katana.
With one weapon in each hand, I leapt some of the rubble, but then I saw a solid steel door, one that the fallen beam had mostly destroyed. Within the room it had once sealed, a young woman fought for her life, the same young woman who had screamed in Sofia’s face in the packet.
Two soldiers flanked her, one cautiously rising from the floor, a hand touching his bleeding forehead, and a second who swung his semi-automatic weapon toward her.
It barked, spraying bullets.
He handled the thing professionally, sweeping it from side to side to ensure he would catch her.
But he didn’t.
Like an acrobat, the woman leapt high into the air, above his spray. She held a curved blade in each hand, and slashed toward him in a wide, vicious arc.
“Filthy—!” His words cut off as she caught his shoulder, spraying the wall behind him with an arc of scarlet blood.
Oh. I stared, entranced. The fractal wonder of it spilled out in front of me, a composition of bestial desire.
Impossibly far away, I felt a low growl, so quiet that it rumbled in my chest. The back of my neck began to itch.
Beautiful, I thought. A scarlet song of sweetness written in the veins of every…
I shook my head.
“Quit it, asshole,” I muttered.
In the shadows behind my mind, I heard that growl again.
“I mean it. You’re going to get me killed.”
As Sadhana Fucktard Two stumbled back, gaping in horror at the blade buried in his deltoid, his idiot friend stood up behind the young woman.
She didn’t see him, being too busy screaming “[ɔⱷϩД Ϯγ ΘÞÙçğΞ πξ!]” at the top of her lungs.