by Adam Thielen
He walked over next to Lane’s body and took his com, then searched for the pendant using his Ether sight. He spotted it underneath a chunk of foamcrete debris and pocketed it before leaving the suite. In the hall, he felt his hold on Kate coming loose.
“I’m sorry, Kate,” he said. “I tried. I love you. Come back to me. You can make it out of this.” The mage put his back against the wall then slid down to his butt and rested his eyes. His aura detached from Kate’s body and drifted away. There was no longer any guiding light, just darkness with nameless stars. Without a sense of direction or any landmarks, he could spend forever roaming about without ever coming close enough to his body to sense it. Taq let the darkness take him, submerging into the Ether. While the time required varied from hours to days, eventually his consciousness would reconstitute itself in his original body.
By the time Kate opened her eyes, men had cuffed her hands, grabbed her by the arms, and dragged her down the stairs. They took her through the lobby as the other guests stared, and then lifted her into the side of a van. Its wheels chirped as it pulled out of the parking lane. High above, fire-fighting helicopters sprayed water against the building.
* * *
The factory was still smoking when Tsenka arrived for the second time. There were no open flames, and that was good enough for her. She did not want to strain her internal rebreather or circulation nanites, so she grabbed a filter mask out of a small locker and pulled the elastic strap around the back of her head. Cho moved to the cockpit where Drew made a quick flyover.
Cho activated a manual reboot of her HUD by resting her fingertip on the lens of her electric eye for a few seconds. It made a beep audible only to her, then began its startup sequence. With any luck, the shock that shut it down did no permanent damage.
“See anything down there?” she asked.
“Negative,” he replied. “But we are not stealth capable, so I would expect a response from Ping Interests Group within an hour of touching down.”
Tsenka ran her hand through her hair. “I doubt scouring this husk will take me half that long.”
“Do you wish to tell me what you think was down there?” asked Drew.
“Hmm,” considered Tsenka. “Do you want to tell me why you didn’t want to return to the hotel?”
“Yes,” said Drew. “But it can wait until you return.”
“Same,” said Cho. “Let’s park out of sight from any vehicles coming down the road.”
“Roger that,” said Drew, diving toward the rear of the burned-out building. As the feet protruding from the saucer-shaped craft touched the ground, Drew turned to Tsenka. “I’m picking up some EM noise nearby. There may be someone inside already.”
“Anything specific?”
“The signals are too garbled to discern more.”
“You coming?” asked Cho.
“This neighborhood is a bit rough to leave our vehicle unattended,” replied Drew.
Tsenka grinned at the thought of a street gang attempting to jack Kate’s monocopter. She turned and descended a short ramp. A sliver of dull orange peeked over the horizon. Chemical fumes and smoke choked her nasal passages at the first breeze. Cho moved the breather over her mouth and nose, and moved toward a small rear doorway. Much of the masonry surrounding the door had crumbled from the extreme heat, and if she wanted, she could hop through one of a few human-sized holes. But she decided to try the door first.
It was an older design, with a knob and hinges. Tsenka’s HUD warned her that the knob, the door, the bricks, and everything else were still dangerously hot. Most of her original nerve endings had already died in a fire, and her new skin did not burn at the same low temperature as the old. Cho grabbed the knob and yanked. The hinges came loose, and the door fell to the ground as she moved to the side.
Drew heard the noise from inside the cockpit. “Not particularly sneaky, Ms. Cho,” he said over their com channel.
“Oops,” she replied, stepping through. Like before, there wasn’t much to see inside the remnants of the old factory. She made for the wide staircase she had seen before. An inch of soot and ash covered everything. Occasionally as she stepped, a small flame licked at her heel. At the top of the stairs, hot air billowed out. Tsenka stepped carefully down and began to feel the temperature push under her skin. She could feel it sapping her strength but continued forward. Her HUD switched her optics to night vision, and infrared panels on her suit emitted a glow invisible to the naked eye.
The stairs continued downward, never twisting or turning, but continuing at a steady angle. Cho realized there would be no natural ventilation in this underground facility. Any air circulation system would be destroyed as well. She imagined that without her mask, she would have no oxygen. Between that and the creepy black and white imagery conveyed by night vision mode that only extended ten meters in front of her, anxiousness crawled up Tsenka’s spine.
“How are you faring, Ms. Cho?” asked Drew, breaking the silence with an attempted whisper that came out like a low-pitched growl.
Tsenka shuddered. “Jesus, Drew! It is scary enough down here already. I’m taking my time.” Cho pulled her gun, her palm automatically disengaging the safety. “And now I heard something.”
“I apologize,” said Drew. “I will listen for your voice but remain otherwise silent.”
“Probably for the best,” she whispered, reaching the bottom of the stairs.
In front of her lay the ruins of an expansive facility. The wide stairs had turned into a wide corridor with several security gates bent and broken. Charred human bones rested upon the ground in various configurations, no grouping of which completed a set. Made of poured cement, the walls of the basement survived, dividing the premises into rooms on each side of the corridor. The entire site was a simple, long rectangle.
Tsenka peeked inside the first open door and saw a dull black shape hanging from the ceiling using multiple thin legs that stretched over a meter long. It had several lenses on its body with cameras inside of them, jerking about, searching. One of those eyes darted up at Tsenka. She moved out of the doorway, trying not to shriek.
The creature began to move, rolling its body backward and flinging more legs in front of it while releasing its back legs from the ceiling in a fluid motion, resembling the floatation of an anti-grav engine without the energy expenditure. It ceiling-walked out of the room and down the corridor, emitting a zwip sound with each movement of its legs.
“Drew, did you see that thing?” asked Cho.
“Indeed,” he answered. “Colloquially named spider-bots, they are a fairly advanced reconnaissance machine.”
“Someone else is searching for something,” reasoned Cho.
“They could belong to Ping,” said Drew. “Perhaps they hope to learn something from the incident, or recover data.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “Think they are dangerous?”
“I do not have a full spec sheet, but I believe these are autonomous systems designed with few offensive measures,” said Drew. “However, if you have not been discovered, you will be soon. We cannot stay long.”
“Understood.” Tsenka peered into the room again. Inside was more ash and a metal bed frame crumpled inward. A burned-out terminal protruded from one of the walls. Tsenka caressed the surface.
“Think we can extract any data from these terminals?” asked Cho.
“Any data would be centrally located, if on-site at all. It would not be on the terminals,” explained Drew. “Look for a server room or closet.”
“Right,” said Tsenka. The vampire felt eyes upon her and turned to face the corridor. A woman, naked, beaten and bruised, stood in the hall staring back at Cho. The girl looked to be in her twenties, but the emaciation of her body, baldness of her head, and gauntness of her face made it difficult to discern. As soon as Tsenka locked eyes on her, the girl vanished.
“Drew, did you see that?”
“Nothing noteworthy since the spider-bots,” he reported. “Something w
rong?”
Tsenka initiated a replay of her optics recording of the last minute, played at ten times speed. Then slower. The phantom never appeared during her replays. What the hell? she thought. “Hallucinated a woman,” admitted Cho.
“Perhaps the heat and electrical noise are affecting your optics,” suggested Drew.
Cho shrugged, moving to the next room. When she arrived, it was already occupied by another spider. It appeared dormant, and the vampire spotted nothing else of interest. She skipped that room and went to the next. On the floor of the third room was a pile of bones, shattered glass, and several destroyed cots. Tsenka turned away, took a step, then turned back. There were two skulls amongst the remains. She crouched down to get a better look, then carefully picked one of them up, examining the teeth.
“What does this mean, Ms. Cho?” asked the AI.
“I don’t know.” She continued down the hall and came to a large room that housed a large jail cell with more bones inside, along with a toilet and a hand-powered water pump in one corner. A spider hung from the ceiling of the cell, peering down at the remains.
The vampire continued down the hall, spotting a door made of thick metal bars, with disfigured steel boxes strewn across the floor. Above it was another bot. This one had a few of its long arms attached to the tops of the boxes.
“I think I found something,” said Cho.
“Those do appear to be server enclosures,” replied Drew.
“This creepy bot looks like it wants them,” said Cho, slowly opening the door. “Think there’s anything recoverable?”
“Impossible to say. Depends on the storage medium, the fire rating of the case, and physical trauma. If there is data, it will likely be encrypted.”
“Hmm,” considered Cho.
“We are running out of time,” said Drew.
“I think I’ll grab them.”
“You should probably leave them.”
“Yeah…” said Cho. “I’ma grab 'em.”
She holstered her gun, then reached out and touched the tendril attached to one of the data boxes. It flexed as she pulled on it, like a guitar string. At one end, it split into a star-shaped hand grasping the metal of the server case. Tsenka could not tell if it was using magnets, micro-hooks, a vacuum, or some sort of adhesive medium. As she plucked the leg, a red light appeared on the bot and it made a menacing buzz that lasted a split second.
“I don’t think it liked that,” said Cho. Without waiting for Drew to protest, she yanked one of the boxes off the ground, stretching the leg with it. Both the leg connected to the case and the legs attached to the ceiling stretched as Cho pulled. Again the bot buzzed a warning, but Tsenka ignored it, pulling harder, eventually ripping the metal free of the tentacle.
The bot’s buzz increased in pitch until it was a whine that carried throughout the underground facility. This whine alerted the other spider-bots that it was time to attack. Each of the four bots rotated along their tendrils, zwipping their legs out to grab ahead of them, then pulling them back in as they rolled along the ceiling, converging on Cho’s position.
Tsenka spotted them and dropped the case. “Shit.”
“You need to depart,” urged Drew. “I read an incoming craft on radar.”
“I need these servers,” replied Cho.
“I’m throttling up,” said Drew. “I will wait as long as I can, but this vessel is not made for battle. Please do not make me leave you, Ms. Cho.”
Cho pulled her pistol and fired a single bullet at the spider-bot she had enraged. It bounced off harmlessly, so she fired again. The round metal shell of the creature repelled the projectile, but the force knocked it back. Still attached to the ceiling, it swung away from and then toward Cho. As it did so, two of its legs zwipped onto the vampire’s body, attaching to her right forearm and her stomach, the latter covered by her combat suit.
She felt a sting where it attached to her arm and became afraid that perhaps these things could deliver toxins through their appendages. She pulled her arm away, but the star-shaped foot held fast. Her skin stretched and the bot swung forward with her tugging. Cho raised her gun again, aiming it at one of the lenses. She fired several quick shots until the fifth one shattered the lens and a bullet tore through the spider’s internal circuitry. The tendrils released their grasp, both from her and the ceiling, and the bot clunked to the ground.
The other bots surrounded her and each flung their legs at various parts of her body. Two on the right leg at the thigh and knee, one on her back, one on her chest. One almost hit her eye but she moved and it latched onto her right temple instead. One attached to her left hip, and another on her left forearm, again. She tried to shoot at them but their movement was erratic, and the tendrils pulled her off-balance. The final one grabbed her right bicep. Each of the four spider-bots pulled their legs taut, lifting Cho from the ground and limiting her ability to move her limbs.
She hung in the air a few moments, pondering her predicament. She thrashed around but the flexibility and strength of the tentacles held her firmly. Tsenka closed her eyes, and when she opened them, released a high-pitched yelp at a throng of starved-looking men and women, almost ghoulish, standing two meters in front of her. Their appearance and demeanor resembled that of the first hallucination, though half of the group wore the rags of plain white t-shirts while the rest were unclothed. Two still had hair on their heads.
The group shuffled toward her, and an indecipherable muttering grew inside her eardrums. Again, Tsenka squirmed and struggled to wrest herself free, but it was futile. As the zombie-like people neared her, they opened their mouths, revealing long, hungry fangs. She clenched her eyes shut, moaning in fear. The sound in her ears quieted, and when she opened her eyes, they were gone.
“Drew,” sang Tsenka. “Something is fucking wrong here.”
“More hallucinations?”
“A bunch of them were just in front of me,” she said. “Vampires, but weak and ghoulish and fixing to eat me.”
“Ghosts of this place?” offered Drew.
“Don’t be patronizing,” she snapped. “But that’s what it felt like.” Tsenka looked at the legs attached to her from all angles. “Could be some sort of drug. I need to get out of here.”
Her HUD showed two bullets left in her magazine. She could aim at the one grasping her bicep but would need some luck to even damage it. Cho placed the barrel against the leg, keeping it nearly parallel. She tried to instruct her neural com on what she wanted to do, in hopes that it could help guide her shot, but it didn’t understand. She fired the first shot and it came close, dinging the spider, but doing no damage. She adjusted her aim slightly and fired again.
This time the bullet ground against the leg, then dinged the bot again. While it didn’t sever the tendril, it did cause it to release the hold it had on Tsenka. The vampire dropped her gun and reached behind her head, drawing her sword. She swung a wide arc, cutting first the leg that gripped the middle of her back, then twirling the blade at her side, cutting the appendage that held her hip, then the ones on her left leg, and finally the leg attached to her face. The bots emitted a shrill alarm and LEDs on their bodies began to flash red.
“Ms. Cho, the pulsing of the lights is quickening,” warned Drew. “I believe these things may be priming to explode.”
“Well, of course they are!” she shouted, slashing the appendages attached to her left arm and her chest. Her feet hit the ground and Cho stumbled back, but caught her balance, putting her left foot behind her and sheathing her blade. She bent down and grabbed the storage case she had wrested earlier and launched into a sprint toward the stairs. The excited spider-bots gave chase, but with fewer limbs to move with, they could not keep up.
When the ceiling angled upward for the stairway, the bots were slowed further as they made multiple attempts to extend their legs in the right direction. The four of them clumped up near the foot of the stairs as Cho vaulted past the halfway point. The first one made a steady beep then explo
ded, rumbling the remains of the building, and setting off the other three. Their combined blast created a shock wave that pressed Cho’s body against the stairs and caused the upper level of the factory to start tumbling down.
Large clumps of brick and concrete crashed down around the vampire, joining many others already fallen. Tsenka raced to the top of the steps then dove server-first through a hole in the nearest wall. Drew had lifted off and began circling the building as longer segments of masonry threatened to tip over on top of the copter. The AI lowered the ramp to the passenger section, matching Cho’s velocity. She stepped onto the ramp and grabbed the lift cable with one hand while the lone recovered server box rested under her armpit.
As Drew pulled the craft up into the air, Tsenka watched the rest of the factory implode. Gray dust exploded outward, creating a thick cloud over the dark, dry dirt field that thinned as it expanded. On the ground below, she saw the girl she had hallucinated first. The cloud engulfed her and she was gone.
The vampire shook her head, then closed the ramp behind her and took her new box to the cockpit. “Success!” she proclaimed loudly.
“You have retrieved one of several servers,” observed Drew, swiveling his seat to face her.
“Better than nothing,” she replied, admiring the chassis.
“Where’s your pistol?” he asked.
“Dammit.”
* * *
The men had placed a Faraday cage hood over Kate’s head before chaining her waist to an iron bench inside the van and fastening her hands behind her back. They performed all this while the van sped through town.
The mesh of the hood was made of tiny loops, and as she regained consciousness, Kate could only see a dim light filter through the metal. It prevented her from communicating with the external networks.
Shortly after securing her, a wild-eyed man with a smooth metal crown atop disheveled hair entered the cabin from the driver’s section. He sat on a bench opposite the hacker with one of his thugs next to him. Roland gazed at the woman, his eyes traveling up and down her body. His right hand rested at his hip holster with the thumb caressing the tip of his gun's hammer.