The Dossiers of Asset 108 Collection

by J M Guillen

  “What?” I sat up and stared around.

  Vibrate. CLICK.

  CLICK.

  Current packet again interfaced. ADEPT, synching.

  Current packet again interfaced. WRAITH, synching.

  Current packet again interfaced. MAGUS, synching.

  “Oh, good.” I cackled with abandon as I smashed my fist into his jaw. “At any moment now, I’ll be able to continue beating you, only I’ll have my packets engaged.” I punched again and shattered some of his teeth.

  Just like I’d promised him I would do.

  Mecha Dialogues, engaging.

  Lattice connectivity, engaging.

  Latent signal, engaging.

  Bishop! Rachel bawled in my Crown. Got you, I got you!

  Status, cadre? I smiled wickedly as I shattered Amir’s nose.

  All present and accounted for, Hoss.

  Here, Mike.

  I have your weaponry, Michael, Anya linked. Honestly, I do not understand how you continue to lose it.

  I’m just irresponsible. I started to link something else when I noticed that I couldn’t move. I still breathed, my heart still beat, but every muscle I had wouldn’t so much as twitch.

  “Aaarrrgh!” Amir sputtered, noting I’d stopped beating the living fuck out of him for ten seconds. He wriggled to one side and scrambled away.

  After a few seconds, warmth flowed through my body like warm caramel trickling through my veins. My muscles warmed with it, and I could move again.

  Oh. Oh, God.

  Sovereign prerogative alpha-nine engaged. The system prompt sounded heavy in my mind, much like the secondary comm. Initiating now.

  Bishop, Michael. Alpha of the Citadel. Engaged.

  Petrova, Anya. Preceptor Second Tier. Engaged.

  Guthrie, Wyatt. Artisan of the Citadel. Engaged.

  Delacruz, Sofia. Gatekeeper of the Citadel. Engaged.

  It’s in here! Even at the speed of thought, I couldn’t communicate everything I needed to quickly enough. Frantically, I assembled a patch.

  A Variance in Rationality has been detected. Standard protocols are being initiated.

  I felt it then. A shadowed horror loomed behind me, an unnamable shape. It felt like a snag in reality itself, not quite a thing per se, but a hole where Nothing existed.

  A hole through which screaming madness came.

  Patch incoming! I sent them everything that happened, everything with the aberration, everything with Gideon. In an instant, my cadre and I were on the same page.

  Oh! We stopped the Frog-a-clysm? Rachel linked.

  Then Nothing fell upon me.

  Nothing sliced into my mind. Nothing devoured everything I was.

  I began to scream and I knew I would never stop.

  3

  None could ever know. That incongruous, ominous darkness, the winged, filthy, excruciating miscarriage…

  4

  I bled then. I bled worms, blackened tendrils that still lay within me. I bled slithering discord, unfolding into a nauseous deranged…

  5

  The greasy feathers sprouted from my skin, pushing through with insistent fury. They tore at me, blackened, making me scream as they burst through.

  Mriswul, the Scarlet Star.

  I burst.

  In the sky, a hateful star burned, its light shattering me, sundering my mind. I burst into nine pieces. Into ninety-nine pieces.

  A star? That couldn’t be right. I couldn’t comprehend it, couldn’t track what I sang.

  Was it a balloon? A red, screaming balloon?

  I rocked in place, singing.

  6

  You and I in a little toy shop

  buy a bag of balloons with the money we’ve got

  Set them free at the break of dawn

  ’Til one by one, they were gone

  Back at base, bugs in the software

  Flash the message, “Something’s out there”

  Floating in the summer sky

  99 red balloons go by.

  99 red balloons floating in the summer sky

  Panic bells, its red alert

  There’s something here from somewhere else

  The war machine springs to life

  Open up one eager eye

  Focusing it on the sky

  Where 99 red balloons go by.

  7

  “Got him!” Delacruz crowed. “I don’t know what the [fuck] is going on over there, but the Temporal Corona almost lost him.”

  99 dreams I have had, I linked as I gazed up at her. I lay on the ground and trembled, my eyes wide.

  Whose blood was this?

  “Time to get up, Hoss.” Wyatt extended a hand and I took it. “Anya’s already in it.”

  “In this dust that was a city…” I shook my head. I didn’t even understand what the words meant.

  “I have your Stilettos.” Rachel handed me the weapons. “Although I think Anya has your katana.”

  “Anya’s already in it?” I turned around to search for her, all but frantic.

  There.

  Anya walked toward the boiling darkness like an automaton. Her right hand stretched out, and she struggled to step forward, as if she waded through thick syrup.

  A brilliant shine erupted from her outstretched hand.

  Hyper-Rationality.

  “Okay.” I shook my head to clear it. “Okay.”

  “I’ve got to start laying spikes.” Wyatt trembled, I noticed, like it took everything he had to simply stand still. “I’ve got the coordinates. I know what to do.”

  “Do it then.” I nodded. “I don’t think we need to worry about—”

  “Michael Bishop!” Those words sounded wet, filled with rage. “I hope you didn’t believe we were finished?”

  Amir Cadavas stood amidst the throng of seated thralls, a wild and haunted light shining upon his brow. The moment he had my attention, he cackled with insane, broken glee.

  “I have brought an old acquaintance!”

  Behind him, the undulating horror of the amoeba-like aberration gyrated toward us, acidic sludge oozing from the surface of its body. Steam billowed from it. The air reeked of death and otherworldly rot.

  “Ew.” Delacruz wrinkled her nose. “What [in the hell] is that?”

  “It’s one of his go-to summonings,” I replied with a scowl.

  The abomination had no true visage or solidity. As always, I could make out the partially digested figures within it. Yet now, I knew that thing hadn’t taken Gideon. It might have attacked him right before Amir pulled his little parlor trick, but my mentor hadn’t died a slow death within this gelatinous creation.

  “Wyatt?” I turned toward the large man even as he started to step away to perform his task. “Remember when I said you gave me an idea?”

  “We were fighting some of the Phothu-nacyi.” He nodded. “Sure. I wondered what it was at the time.”

  I hurled a small patch into his Crown, directly to memory.

  I’m the Alpha. I can be rude.

  “Ha!” Wyatt smiled. “I even have it on quick trigger.” With that, he turned toward the ameba-ination and quickly toggled his keys.

  WHUF! WHUF! WHUF! WHUF!

  The spikes tore into the creature.

  It roiled and drew back, as if burned. Somehow, the thing squealed. Agony and terror laced that inhuman sound.

  And it began to freeze.

  Its body cracked and lurched, as it frantically tried to escape. In a matter of moments, the thing had hardened into a solid mass.

  “What?” Amir cried in a spasm of impotent rage. “What have you—?”

  “Not done, fuckface.” I took a step, Stilettos in hand. I smiled as I fired and fired and fired.

  The globule shattered, bursting into slivers of frozen ichor.

  “Rise!” Amir screamed, his shattered voice a wail of terror and fury. “Rise for the Unfathomable! Rise for the Names of Lamentation!”

  Around us, the shambling, muttering thralls began to sta
nd.

  Okay, cadre, I linked everyone. Here’s the play.

  I’m so fucking glad there’s a play, Delacruz linked.

  Wyatt, you’re our heavy hitter, but you’re busy. Can you at least spare the bandwidth to watch your own back while you set spikes?

  Roger that, Alpha.

  WHUF!

  I need Rachel and the Stinger at Anya’s side. I grinned, though grimly at the Caduceus. Puts you close to the Variance. Watch yourself. Keep the masked assholes off her.

  Okay, Bishop, she linked nervously.

  “I’m gunning for Amir.” I glanced at the rest of them. “It’s me he wants anyway. If I stay with you, I’ll just put you in harm’s way.”

  What about…? Delacruz gestured at the copper-masked miscreations. It didn’t seem as if all seventy-eight had stood, but I imagined there might be sixty.

  They’re for you. I nodded at her.

  What? She shook her head, stunned. Mike, how do you expect me to—?

  Did you do your homework? I raised an eyebrow at her.

  Ah. Yes. I didn’t realize.

  Sofia broke out laughing.

  Death is but a Doorway

  In that moment, everything fell together. Again, my cadre moved as a well-oiled machine.

  I’m with Anya, Rachel linked. All’s well. Establishing a ten-meter buffer.

  I hope she didn’t mind me grabbing some gear off her. When I went to Anya to retrieve my blades, I took some other equipment, but she hadn’t even noticed my presence.

  Head down and eyes forward, she simply moved inexorably toward the darkness of the Variance, which boiled and burbled at the far side of the room.

  Despite her focused concentration, a hint of a smile graced her face.

  As when any Preceptor had her Sovereign Prerogatives engaged, her eyes had gone pitch black. Upon her outstretched hand, one of her relays burned with furiously brilliant Hyper-Rationality.

  I didn’t think she’d even known I was there.

  The Variance had no power within the brilliance of Anya’s radiant fury. Hyper-Rationality held sway. That darkness could only retreat, only weaken in its presence.

  It wailed like a child.

  The sound boiled and burbled within my mind

  I mean, I think things are well regarding Rationality, Rachel clarified. She continues to advance. I notice that the Variance wants nothing to do with her.

  I just hope Rationality is stabilizing.

  Didn’t Anya patch you a readout?

  Well, yeah. I paused. But then Amir McFucko crashed my entire system.

  Oh. I felt her realize. Yeah.

  I suppose I should be thankful, I linked Rachel, as I thought. If Amir had only uncoupled my packets, you’d have had to soft sync me back together.

  It’s a lot more devastating, having your Nexus offline. That cuts everything.

  I’m going to try to keep him from doing it again. I’ve noticed that, when he starts his bullshit, attacking him with our packets is a bad ploy.

  I can believe that.

  I couldn’t see Amir and that concerned me. As I ran barefoot through the ritual chamber, I peered into every shadow I came across.

  As long as 3302 remained unaccounted for, we weren’t safe.

  I turned and started a second loop around the room.

  Fuck! Wyatt cried out through the link, a panicked exclamation.

  WHUF!

  Artisan?

  Thralls. They slipped over along the—

  WHUF! WHUF! WHUF!

  Cursing, I sprinted toward him, my Stilettos out. Before I got halfway across the room, I saw the problem.

  I’d always thought the copper-masked ones were stupid, animal-like. However, this group had decided to form together in a cluster before picking off the Asset who had drifted furthest from the cadre.

  It’s okay, Mike, Delacruz linked. I got this.

  Two different apertures opened, both in front of the charging thralls. As I watched, Delacruz repositioned them carefully, orienting them just so.

  Fucking shit! Wyatt fired into the throng, first one spike and then another. Two stasis fields unfurled into silver brilliance in the shadows.

  Delacruz grinned.

  The intensely heavy statues we’d seen back on the balcony tumbled into the crowd through her apertures at somewhere close to the speed of sound.

  She’d indeed done her homework on the Facility slingshot.

  The first reptilian pagan statue CRASHED against the far wall, mangling half a dozen copper-masks in its wake.

  The plan had been simplicity. She’d left quarrels, while I’d been trying to read Sumerian orbs. Now she linked those quarrels to cannon-apertures, ones that altered the rate of angular momentum.

  CRASH! Another of the obsidian things zipped through the room, spinning wildly. It bowled into a throng of the copper-masked creatures, liquefying them in its wake.

  Alpha—! Rachel cut off.

  Anya shrieked.

  It always shocked me when I heard Anya scream. I rarely heard her normally dainty voice, and I could count on my fingers the times I’d heard her cry out.

  Now her wail carried agony.

  Terror.

  Delacruz, you gotta handle these guys yourself.

  I already told you I could!

  CRASH! CRASH!

  Right, but now you have to. I triggered the Adept as I turned toward Anya and sprinted across the room. I felt shadows burn there, a darkling shimmer of madness.

  Anya crouched, one arm upright. Hyper-Rationality still shone from her palm, but those shadows crowded closer.

  I ride the winds between worlds, mortal. An unfamiliar, raucous voice burned my mind.

  “Rachel.” I slid next to Anya and gazed up at the Caduceus. “What happened?”

  “The Variance surged.” She shrugged. “I think. The darkness suddenly pushed back, and she fell.”

  “You cannot stand against the Harbinger, Michael Bishop.” Amir’s voice came as little more than a croak.

  I glanced up as he limped forward, surrounded by that seething darkness. Amethyst light burned on his brow, and he smirked at me, gloating.

  Just a glance at it made my head ache, my eyes burn. The swirling tentacles of mist and darkness roiled from the inside of the van. Accompanying them was an odd whispering sound like something the mad might whisper in the dark hush of night. I could see eyes, furious eyes that burned with a feral hatred as the wisps of darkness coursed along on the wind.

  For a moment, they looked squarely at me. I could hear the whispers more clearly then, words of hatred and sharpness. I reeled backward from the force of it, dropping one of my guns.

  “The Equation is not complete.” The venomous words made my ears bleed. I almost stumbled from the weight of them, crushing me. “It is because of your kind, Manling. You shall know Lamentation.”

  Then, the abomination that had been Bill Iverson swarmed around me, and the entire world was hollow darkness and fanged mist. Every place it touched my skin was a cold, empty twilight, and the wailings of ten thousand madmen sliced at my mind.

  “Wait.” I pulled back from the memory and felt space bend as I shook my head. That wasn’t—

  “You are children playing at the shore, ignorant of how deep the water can get.” Amir chuckled wetly. “Perhaps you should be shown.”

  The shadows rose. They burned at my—

  —Guthrie screamed. “They’re crawling on me!” I heard his frantic wails. “Oh fuck! Not like this—”

  —Rachel’s wailing as they ate their way into her body. They took her mouth, her ears, her nostrils, and her sex. Insectine, they came by the—

  —love every second of it.” Delacruz’s throaty purr fell into a strangled gasp as the crustacean sliced away—

  No. I shook my head and bit the inside of my lip. This isn’t. I sent the link to the entire cadre. It’s the Variance. It softens reality; it creates from memory and nightmare.

  No response came.
>
  My link sat quiet. Dead.

  2

  In that instant, I turned to Anya.

  She still held her arm up, but it had developed a fine tremble.

  Rachel stared into the shadows, lost in some meandering darkness.

  Wyatt and Delacruz battled the throngs of thralls, a fact confirmed by the occasional crash and sounds of gibbering madness.

  “Let us see what happens when your little Preceptor fails, shall we, Michael?” Amir seethed. Through his shattered teeth, past the severe mauling I’d given his throat, Amir began to chant.

  Numbers. Fuck.

  I’d learned what it meant when he began those twisted, horrific numbers. Every time it’d happened, he’d fucked around with our tech.

  Could he uncouple the Preceptor? It had certainly seemed Isabella could. What had Anya said?

  The Irrat disrupted key frequencies to my Crown’s engagement modules. If she had not been stopped, I would have permanently lost consciousness.

  The sounded an awful lot like death.

  We’d declared a moratorium on dying.

  Amir cast the misbegotten numerics forth with the wrath of a madman. Those integers scorched my mind, bent the world around me.

  I stood and glared at Amir, steel in my eyes.

  “No forethought. No reflection.” Amir moved his hands as he shaped the forces he’d gathered. “Tell me, Asset, do you never learn? Have you not seen what happens when you bring the strength of your Facility packets against the lore the Wayward One brought us?”

  “I have actually. And sometimes I learn.” With that, I brought up the automatic pistol, the one I’d taken off Anya when I retrieved my katana.

  I shot Amir Cadavas in the stomach.

  And in the lungs.

  And once in the neck.

  The diadem of power upon his brow went dark.

  When that happened, the dark shroud, which had hung over him went absolutely wild with fury.

  I’d wagered on this, hoped for it. In the middle of everything else, there was an important detail about the situation, something we’d forgotten.