by Amy DuBoff
“No, and now that I’m in the security system, I can block their ability to pick up any traces of our stealth suits.” Nick’s voice hinted at a smile behind his opaque faceplate.
“You really are good.” Ava smiled back.
“Don’t stroke his ego,” Samantha cautioned.
“Oh, this is just praise for my unmitigated awesomeness,” Nick shot back. “Relevant maps and a real-time feed from the facility security system are being routed to your HUDs now.”
Samantha sighed. “Show off.”
Once Nick had returned the desk to look like how he’d found it, Ava motioned her team into the hall. She jogged toward the back entrance Nick had identified.
Fifteen meters down the corridor, she heard approaching footfalls and the faint scuffing sound of tactical gear rubbing against body armor.
“I think those guards are finally awake and back after us,” Ava warned her team.
“They can’t see us,” Nick assured her. “As long as we don’t run into them, we’re as good as invisible.”
“They can’t have gone far!” one of the guards said down the hall. “They disappeared from the feed in the chief’s office.”
The voice was getting closer.
Ava halted her advance and pressed herself against the side wall. A moment later, a group of soldiers came around the nearby corner, headed straight for her.
“Never should have let them make it inside,” another soldier grumbled.
“Their tech wasn’t supposed to be this good,” the first replied. “We’re not just dealing with the Alucians anymore.”
The six armored guards passed by, coming within half a meter of brushing against Ava. She kept her cool and waited until they were well past before she moved.
“Let’s get to the chancellor’s position,” Ava told her team while she resumed the jog toward their destination.
Upon reaching the supposed back doorway to the stairwell, Ava was unable to see the entrance. “Is this it?” she asked Nick.
“Yeah, must be a hidden panel,” he replied. He walked back and forth twice in front of the location. “This part of the panel is definitely narrower.” He ran his gloved hand over the surface.
“There have to be controls somewhere.” Samantha joined him in the search. “Ah! Here’s an access port.”
The two warriors used their interface tools to hack into the door lock. After thirty seconds, the wall clicked, followed by a hiss as the panel swung inward.
“Well, so much for keeping our location secret,” Edwin said.
“I tried to block the security notice, but no guarantees,” Nick said. “Better hurry.”
They slipped through the opening, and Ava pressed the control next to the door to close the panel. The stairwell was unadorned concrete with cast concrete stairs and a metal railing. It extended down at least five stories, but the motion-activated lights were off so Ava couldn’t see the bottom.
Their destination was the level above, though, so she sprinted up the stairs.
At the top, Edwin took the lead, his gun drawn and ready. He peeked around the corner. “I see two guards at the access door,” he reported. “No additional locks.”
The visual confirmed what Ava saw on her HUD. “We’ll need to get as close to the chancellor as possible without being seen. Once we have her in custody, we’ll have a bartering chip for getting out of here.”
“I see four guards inside with her,” Nick reported.
Samantha hugged the side wall as she crept forward. “There are more in the advanced room.”
“Take out the two soldiers outside with a sonic blast,” Ava ordered.
“Aye.” Edwin fired off two rapid shots, and the guards dropped to the floor.
“Go!” Ava ran forward with her team. They took up positions on either side of the door. “Let’s see if we can lure the others into the open.” She tapped on the door with the butt of her handgun.
A moment later, the door cracked open and a guard stuck her head out. “Is everything—”
Ava shot her with a sonic blast.
The woman dropped to the ground in the threshold, forcing the door open the rest of the way.
“Oh, shit!” Nick swore.
Ava’s HUD updated. The room on the other side of the chancellor’s chamber didn’t have four soldiers, but a dozen.
“Damn it, they must have been masked in the system and our suits couldn’t read them through the walls,” Nick said.
“Okay, so shooting our way in was a bad idea,” Ava realized.
Gentle footfalls approached the doorway, and Heizberg came into view. “If you attack me, Karen dies.”
Ava held up her hand for her team to remain motionless and silent.
“I know it’s you, Ava. I can feel you.” Heizberg stepped over the fallen guard’s body.
How do we get Karen? Ava slowed her breathing, even though she knew it wouldn’t make a difference to the suit. Her heart pounded in her ears, and the chancellor stepped within a meter of her position, looking straight at her.
“Your mind is very powerful. It’s a shame you won’t use it to its full potential,” the older woman stated. “Are you ready to embrace your new self, Ava?”
Ava swallowed. I will never become the monster she wants me to be.
A presence appeared in her mind. “Ah, there you are!”
Shit! Ava tried to block the alien, but she couldn’t force it back.
“At last we meet, Ava. No need to be scared now.”
In front of her, Heizberg smiled. “Perhaps you need some additional motivation. They’re here!” she shouted.
Inside the meeting room, two more guards entered, framing Karen. Her hair was mussed and her pantsuit was wrinkled, but otherwise she looked unharmed.
“If you value your associate’s life, you will show yourselves,” Heizberg stated. “I won’t ask again.”
Ava closed her eyes and took a slow breath. “We can’t let a civilian get hurt. Disable the stealth but don’t disarm,” she instructed her team over the comm.
She deactivated her own armor’s stealth, then immediately said over the external comm, “All right, Heizberg. Let’s talk.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Standing face-to-face with the chancellor, Ava could feel the strength of the alien presence within her. Anyone other than a true telepath could easily mistake that power for the magnetism of a natural leader, but Ava knew better. There was more to this woman than just charisma.
Unfortunately, to learn more about the presence within, Ava couldn’t play it safe. The being had allowed a temporary mental connection, but Ava had no chance of forcing her way into Heizberg’s mind without an optical link.
She reached for the release on her helmet.
“What are you doing?” Samantha hissed over the team’s internal comms.
“To take out the alien, I need to get to Heizberg herself,” Ava replied. “Telepathy is our only way out of this.” She undid the helmet’s latch and slipped it from her head.
A pleased smile touched the chancellor’s lips. “Ah, so now we can really meet.”
“I’m who you’re really after. Let Karen go,” Ava demanded.
“So you can shoot all of us and leave? No.” The chancellor shook her head. “The only way your team is getting out of here is if you stop treating me like the enemy, Ava.”
“Sorry, but holding civilians at gunpoint isn’t really helping your case,” Ava retorted.
“A necessity driven by your stubbornness. You say you are willing to hand yourself over in exchange for her, but you have no genuine intention of doing so.”
It wouldn’t take a telepath to know that much. No one who made that offer ever really meant it. The statement was a stall tactic. In any other negotiation, Ava may have been able to exert some small measure of telepathic influence to make the subject believe her. This time, whatever she said, the chancellor would see right through it.
Thinking back over her career, Ava r
ealized it was rare for her to be truly open and honest with anyone. Careful word choice and omissions were a part of any human communication, conscious or not.
Now, though, she wouldn’t have anything to hide behind. She would have to face the unshielded mind of this unknown enemy.
“Spoken words are never going to achieve a resolution to this standoff,” Ava stated, looking directly at the chancellor.
“At last, some truth,” the older woman replied. “Let us get to know one another.”
A presence returned to Ava’s mind. “Such wasted potential. You can be so much more.”
“Who are you?” Ava replied, trying to trace her way back to the alien’s mind. She could feel it in the distance, deep within Heizberg, but there was a wall around it.
“I am what allowed you to be.”
“That’s not an answer!” Ava shouted in her mind. “You want to lead me, so show your true face.”
A mental image of a landscape appeared. Ava didn’t recognize the world as any place she’d been, though the elements were familiar—forest over gently rolling hills, a lake, mountains in the distance. It could almost pass for Coraxa if it weren’t for an orange tint to the sky.
“What is this place?” Ava asked. “This doesn’t tell me who you are.”
“But it does,” the presence replied. “Open your mind.”
Hesitantly, Ava allowed herself to delve deeper into the image. What Ava had taken to be trees now looked strange to her. They were rooted in the ground and branched like the organic foliage she knew from her home, but these structures were too rigid. A breeze passed through, yet no branches swayed.
“These are mechanical,” Ava observed.
“Not quite, but also not wood. It is our… home.”
The mental image zoomed out, showing that the forest was arranged as a circle nestled within the valley. The trees formed an intricate pattern, almost like Ava was looking at circuitry. The forms were so familiar. She wracked her memory about where she’d seen the image—sometime recent.
“This is what we saw in Kurtz’s mind!” Ava exclaimed telepathically.
“Before, you saw the receiver. This is the transmitter.”
“It’s massive.”
“One individual is easy to control.”
Ava’s chest chilled. Their plan was always to build an army.
And, of course, there would need to be a way to control that army. With the right control network, one individual couldn’t only possess a remote target, a whole group could be under a single individual’s command.
Ava swallowed. “Why are you showing me this? Now I know what I need to destroy.”
“You will never reach it.”
“When are you going to get that you constantly underestimate us?”
The presence chuckled in her mind. “We are far older than you, and we have the knowledge of dozens of lifetimes. It is you who underestimates us.”
Regardless of which side was mistaken—or both—Ava needed to get answers. She could reasonably guess the world she had been shown was in the Gidyon System, but that didn’t explain what the beings were or how they operated. A biomechanical forest that doubled as a massive transmitter could point in a number of directions.
“Do you have bodies of your own?” Ava asked after a brief pause to collect her thoughts.
“Such simple vessels… so limiting,” the presence replied.
“I’ll take that as a no.”
“Your vantage is so narrow for what it is to be an individual versus one of many. The vessels we will create will bring the best of all forms.”
The image of the forest faded from Ava’s mind. “So, you are one of many… and one in the same?”
A sense of affirmation filled Ava’s consciousness. “A single individual can never compare to what we are.”
“But I met Nox. It spoke as an individual, just as I am speaking with you now.”
“Distinctions are never so simple. Even now, Ava, don’t you find yourself wondering where one ends and another begins?”
Ava’s surroundings distorted—first a flash, and then everything began to stretch away from her. She became but a tiny speck amid a vast network of minds. The powerful consciousness around her bore down, forcing her back into herself.
“You still think you can stand up to us?” the presence bellowed inside her.
Ava cowered within herself, unprepared to face a consciousness of that magnitude.
“Even a fraction of one of us can overtake you,” it sneered. “You will be our tool.”
The presence closed around Ava’s mind, gripping her in the way it had taken over Kurtz, Heizberg, Jared, and stars knew how many others. It had her trapped, and it knew it.
No. I’m more than this.
Ava stood her ground, forcing the entity back to the edges of her mind. She was still confined, but she was far from consumed. “Is that all you have?”
She drove her own telepathic spire into the alien consciousness, looking for clues about who it was and how she could manipulate it.
The walls Ava had detected around the enemy mind were cracking. She forced her spires through the weak points while taking as much care as she could to not cause permanent damage. Heizberg—the real Heizberg—was in there somewhere, and she had to find her.
Once inside, Ava began stripping away layers of consciousness, sorting the thoughts and feelings of the possessing entity versus the native mind. However, much to her distress, she found all of the recent thoughts had originated from the alien. Heizberg was nowhere to be found.
“Where are you?” Ava called out as she dug deeper. She received no reply.
But even though Heizberg was missing, Ava detected the core of the other consciousness. “Ah, there you are!”
The alien swelled in response to her direct contact, making itself appear as large as possible within its host. “This is only a part of me. You won’t be able to drive me away.”
“She’s not yours to control. Leave!”
“She has been mine for longer than she ever was herself. Do not meddle in what you don’t understand.”
Ava’s heart leaped. “How long has it been?”
The alien ignored her. “You are no closer to leaving here with your colleagues, Ava. Admit my superiority and I will consider letting them go.”
“After you’ve shown me what you are? There’s no way I can ever trust you.”
“Then I will make you.”
Ava was thrust back from the chancellor’s mind in an instant. A high-pitched scream rattled in her skull, seemingly coming from everywhere at once. The vibration seeped into her, crawling under her skin and burrowing deep within. The deeper it went, the stronger the scream became, until the vibrations became so intense it felt like physical bonds threaded through her.
They snaked their way upward and embedded in her mind, burning their way to their destination.
A fire ignited behind Ava’s eyes, searing her nerves as the burn radiated down her arms and legs.
The scream warped into a deafening buzz that overwhelmed Ava’s hearing. Her vision closed in around her. She had no sense of place or purpose, only rage welling within.
Kill. Destroy. Make them suffer.
She wasn’t sure if the thoughts were her own or were being projected into her mind.
Show them what you are now.
She was hungry, so very hungry, to feel the others’ pain—to drown out her own.
Her vision all but red, she rounded on the faceless forms around her. They stood in her way, but they wouldn’t for long.
* * *
The guards to either side of Karen froze with fear. They raised their kinetic weapons, but their fingers twitched on the triggers, as though held back from firing by some unseen force.
Karen stumbled backward away from them. What the…?
In front of her, Ava writhed in apparent agony. A snarl escaped her lips, revealing double fangs growing from her mouth. Her face distorted as it t
ransformed into a muzzle.
What the fuck is happening?! Karen’s back hit the wall. She shimmied sideways, not taking her eyes from Ava.
A mere three meters away, the woman she’d known since childhood was unrecognizable. Coarse hair now extended down her neck, and her armor had flexed to accommodate an enlarged, muscle-bound frame. The ends of her gloves had folded back, allowing fifteen centimeter claws to poke through like razor-sharp talons.
The creature’s luminescent orange eyes fixed on Karen’s position.
“This isn’t you, Ava,” Karen murmured. “It can’t be.”
She knew about the hybrid creatures NTech had experimented with, and that the FDG had Were warriors, but what stood in front of her… she couldn’t process what she was seeing.
“Get down!” a man shouted at her.
She ducked just in time to miss a sonic blast from one of the FDG soldier’s multi-handguns ripple through the air. The guards who had escorted Karen into the room dropped to the floor.
Dazed, Karen turned to see another of the FDG warriors advancing. His multi-handgun trained on Ava.
“Wh—what’s going on?” Karen stammered.
“Ava was exposed to the Hochste nanocytes,” the man explained. “I’m Edwin. I’m on her team. Get behind me.”
Karen tried to suppress her fear as she scrambled behind the large, armored warrior. She positioned herself between the wall and Edwin, her back toward the corner.
Ava pivoted to follow Karen’s movements. She kept her distance from Edwin, but she bared her fangs in aggression.
“Is she going to kill us?” Karen asked.
“Certainly looks like she wants to.” Edwin raised his weapon. “But we won’t let that happen.”
He took a step forward. “Ava, if you can hear me in there, you need to get ahold of yourself.”
“That’s not going to work,” a female warrior said, coming up next to him. “She lost herself this time.”
Edwin reached for a compartment in his armor and produced a compact syringe. “Help me subdue her, Sam.”
The Ava-Hochste leaped back from them, spinning toward a cluster of the frozen Nezaran soldiers. She closed the distance in a split second, moving so quickly it almost looked like she’d skipped through space. Before Karen could blink, the creature had backhanded the soldiers, knocking them to the ground, unconscious.