by Adam Thielen
“Cripes,” he cried. “All of Grapeseed knew?”
“I don’t think so,” Koch theorized. “We are missing something. Those three were at Grapeseed when this happened. The mage and Matthias both have had dreams. I think there’s some connection.”
“We will have to silence them,” Green growled.
Angela snorted. “I doubt it matters. Anything they say would sound absurd. I’m a little more concerned about stopping them from acting on it again. Start calling them, we have to find them.” She took a deep breath. “If necessary, we need to explain to them what is at stake.”
* * *
When Matthias opened his eyes, he was back at the safehouse in Reno. It was only three in the afternoon, but his com was buzzing at him incessantly. He remembered his earlier episode and fear gripped him. Not fear of the fiend, but of his own mind. Memories he thought he had destroyed were now fully reconstituted, and the person he was before their culling had been resurrected. He was neither his old self, nor his recent self. His body shivered as he answered the com.
“Matthias, this is Koch, are you at the safehouse?”
“Yes, trying to sleep actually,” he said, trying to impersonate himself.
“We’ve been poring over this data,” she started. “There’s a machine that’s of interest to us. Did you come across any strange computers or devices at Neuroscape?”
“No, but I didn’t explore the place fully.”
There was a pause. “While you slept, did you dream again?”
Matthias wanted to cooperate, and he thought he would be delivering some good news. He revised the story a little, summarizing that a fiend or some sort of creature attacked him and invaded his mind, but that he fought free of its grip.
“Okay. Okay. Matthias,” Angela said, her breath audible. “I need you to stay awake until we get this sorted out. As soon as the sun sets, get on a tube back here.”
“Roger, boss,” he said, a little disappointed with her reaction to his achievement.
A strange warmth flowed over the vampire, and a mixture of relief and sadness both pulled at him. His mind was in a haze, fatigued from his trial.
His com buzzed again.
“Matthias.”
“Tamra. What happened? Is everyone okay?”
“We are alright,” she said. “But I can’t talk long. I have some questions about vampire history.”
“Sure,” he said, snapping out of his reverie. “Let me get onto the archives here.”
The warden wanted to know about long-dead vampire rulers. Matthias gave her what the archives provided. She said she would contact him later and disconnected.
Still in bed, Matthias’s mind was exhausted, but his body yearned for exertion. He swung his legs over the side of the bed. It would be at least a few hours until he could leave. He craved power, remembering how he felt when he matched the fiend. He sought out the fitness room hoping to push himself further than before. Finding the weights trivially light and the punching bags too weak to withstand his abuse, he went to the garage instead, taking food, protein, and blood with him.
With fewer barriers in the garage between his body and the outdoors, he felt the drain of the sun upon him, even with no visible light. He rationalized that the challenge might be helpful rather than harmful and started using the cars as weights. He moved from compact cars, to midsize, then finally to a utility vehicle. Anger, fear, loathing, and hope all fought for control of his mind while he replayed the dream in his head. He then delved into more memories of his past that had been unlocked, but he knew it could not be all of them. Drew would help him reclaim the rest, he decided.
Matthias was not yet sure if he could live with himself, despite his decision to leave them behind in the dream. It would have to be decided later. It occurred to him that perhaps none of it was real. Matthias had no other memories to contradict it, and this missing time was something he never noticed, like a blind spot in his awareness. Perhaps it was all fabrication by the AI or the fiend. What could he trust?
Within a couple hours of cycling through improvised lifts, Matthias was spent. A car almost trapped him under its weight, and he decided he had done enough. Out of blood reserves, he set an alarm and disobeyed his superior by falling asleep on the concrete floor. He hoped for even one more glimpse of Maria and Shawn.
* * *
Tamra took a long drink from the glass in front of her. All eyes were upon her, and she didn’t know if what she was going to say would sound at all sane.
She cleared her throat and began by explaining what a fiend was. She provided them with material deemed classified by Noxcorp, including their search and subsequent battle with the Winter-fiend. She then fast-forwarded to the end of her Grapeseed incursion.
“While searching for Kate, Taq and I came across a strange machine that had been detailed in decrypted data from a Grapeseed proxy named Neuroscape.” While that statement sunk in, she uploaded the schematic to the holo display on the table. None of it would make sense to them, but it at least made for a nice presentation.
She continued, “After dispatching ghouls who seemed entranced by the machine, a voice spoke to us. It claimed to be a machine itself, tasked with operating the machine you see in front of you; a secret technology developed by Neuroscape.”
Several council members seemed overly distracted by the image, so she removed it. “This AI calls itself Drew. This is the same name as an… entity within a dream world that both Kate and Taq have experienced on multiple occasions.” She waited for laughter, there was none. “This machine was developed as a way to connect minds directly. It uses polonium, other elements, and what Drew said was a gravitronic matrix to interact with the Ethereal plane in order to achieve these connections.”
“I don’t know that any of us understand,” a councilwoman said.
“I don’t know the precise metaphysics,” Tamra replied. “We know of the ether, but not its nature, and somehow this machine is able to manipulate it. Multiple independent reports of a shared dream world corroborate the phenomenon, suggesting that it has existed for at least a month.” Tamra uploaded a study composed by Drew on net communities and blogs sharing experiences of their dreams. A few council members thumbed through it.
“Okay,” said a man behind the nameplate ‘Charles Wu’, “So why the connection only in dreams? Do we have that connection?” He referred to MESS officers with polonium implants.
“Everyone has some sort of connection, but for most it only happens while they dream,” she confirmed. “No idea why. I do not believe we can experience it, due to the polonium interfering.”
As the man seemed satisfied, Tamra continued. “The AI claims to have the ability to connect to minds that enter the dream. Through those minds he can utilize the dreamer’s neural implants, allowing him access to sensitive data stores and control anything the dreamer could control with their own synaptic signals,” she paused for another drink. “So he… it used those resources to learn everything it could. Drew’s circuitry is immense and connected to a large quartz storage system. When the mage named Winter was turned into a monster, Drew saw it happen, in a sense. It tried to investigate directly within the dream, but the fiend was able to harm the AI’s code through the… uh… ethereal connection.”
The councilmen were rapt, but Tamra was struggling recalling all the bits in an order that made it coherent. “I know right now this must sound fairly absurd.”
“Take your time,” Parsk replied. “If nothing else, it’s one hell of a story.” A few others chuckled nervously. Then began questions. “Why hold back this information? Is this somehow connected to the ghoul transformations?”
Tamra waited for a pause. “I haven’t gotten to the important part yet. You see, Drew, though slowed, was still able to continue investigating the source of the fiend. Winter indeed became that fiend, but Drew witnessed another presence within the Ether possessing him during the change. Because only mages turn into fiends according to vampire lore,
Drew started delving into university data stores and transmissions. And since it only happens to mages who are turned, and there is only one corp openly run by vampires, Drew began investigating our patron, Noxcorp.”
Parsk cleared his throat but stayed silent, looking expectantly at Tamra. She continued. “The AI claims that he found a sub-order within the vampire council that communicated rarely, but did so just before the council sent Matthias to hunt down Winter. It claims that this order has kept three ancient vampire mages in stasis for at least a thousand years.”
“Because,” she said, before anyone could speak. “Mages with the concentration, will, detachment, senses, and recovery of a vampire are considered the gravest threat to civilization in the eyes of the order.”
“What does that mean, ‘in stasis’?” one of the members asked. “But why keep them then,” asked another.
“They are alive, in an induced coma, always unconscious, dreaming. However they appear to be semi-aware, based on dream accounts, and they want to be free. They naturally sense through their constant connection to the Ether when a compatible host has been created. Those hosts are newly turned mages, like Winter was.”
“Impossible,” said Parsk. “You are telling us the council caused these fiends? Why would they unleash such terror, especially when they then so fervently try to hunt them down?”
“Only some of the council knows,” she explained, “and they do it because they fear the alternative. Fiends are powerful, dangerous, scary. However, they aren’t intelligent. They run and attack on instinct with no attempts to blend in or formulate long term strategies. They can be cunning at times and even use spells, true enough. But it only took four of us to take down Winter. Hardly a global threat.”
“The threat sure seems global right now,” a man on the council quipped, referring to the ghouls. Others nodded and muttered various agreements.
“Drew believes the ghoul outbreak is a direct result of the neuralnet hub. The slumbering mages are joining with everyday people through a dream world that has become persistent; its current state continually passed from mind to mind as people awaken and others fall asleep.”
“Why doesn’t this AI destroy the machine?” asked Parsk.
“It can’t; such acts are not permitted by its hardcoded policies. Even if it could, someone else would eventually create another one, if they haven’t already.”
“So you say the ghouls aren’t directly related to Winter, but to ancient mages and a machine?” a woman on the council scoffed. “What is this worse alternative, then?”
“In vampire lore, these three weren’t just vampire mages, they were conquerors revered by many vampires as gods. Such was their power that together they decimated entire armies. They also destroyed their own kind in vast numbers to quell rebellion. Eventually they were defeated. Vampire literature does not reveal how.”
“So these mages try to possess other mages, rendering them harmless by comparison to an intelligent vampire mage,” said the woman.
“That’s correct,” Tamra nodded.
A gruff voice asked, “Why doesn’t the possession work?”
“I would have to speculate… which I realize I have had to do for some of this, but in this case I don’t think it matters why.”
“So this vampire lore, is this history only as the sub-order knows it, or would other vampires know it too?” another voice asked.
“The general history is available to all vampires,” she answered. “However, it’s edited in specific ways. The vampire conquerors were not mages in the official history. And obviously, the story told today is that the three were killed, not imprisoned. Most vampires know little of their own history. But this tale is well known to the vampire leadership and a mythology developed many centuries ago regarding the existence and danger of fiends. Turning mages is a grave violation of vampire law.”
There was a moment of quiet that stretched for a long time. Parsk looked around at the other council members, then to a display on the table, then finally up at Tamra. “Is there anything else, Redstone?”
“I believe we should make an attempt to verify this information, without Noxcorp’s awareness.”
A younger looking man on the council hit his palm onto the table and muttered under his breath. Others were visibly frustrated, but silent. She was able to make out “god dammit” from the lips of one of them. Parsk held a hand up.
“Let’s take a break,” he said. “Tamra, have the page bring us tea. The council must discuss this, but please stay in the hall for now.”
Exasperated muttering began before the door closed behind her. “This will be the end of us!” and “Bullshit.” stood out.
* * *
“No fucking way,” Robert yelled in defiance. He paced around the circular room. “We destroy the machine. Then we are done.”
“Robert, come on,” Koch chided. “These protocols existed long before this chamber, and they’ll exist afterward. We simply have to do it.”
“You know there is an even greater risk moving these things than if we stay put,” he accused. “You know it!” Green threw up his arms.
Angela Koch sat cross legged in her chair, leaned back as if enjoying a show. She waited until he stopped pacing and ranting. “In a few hours, the sun will go down. Chaos in the streets will continue, and the world’s attention will turn to coverage of the summit. The cold site is being prepped right now. There won’t be a better time to move than tonight.”
Green started pacing again. He considered attacking her and furtively eyed the shotgun sitting a few feet away, such was the importance of this decision. “If I wanted to flush our secret out, to make us vulnerable, then I’d do what you suggest! Besides, you said Matthias did it.”
“True enough, but he was also hiding something,” she said with a scowl. “I don’t believe Redstone got out and left Taq and Kate behind, either.”
“Admittedly, it does not inspire confidence,” Green conceded. “But at least this place is fortified, hidden… and a move hasn’t been done over a century.” He rolled a small office chair from a console to face Koch and sat down opposite her.
Both sat for almost a half hour in silence while the displays around them continued to monitor the vitals of the mages, even the one that had been effectively lobotomized. A call came in on Koch’s com.
“Speak,” she commanded. Then, “I see. Uh huh. Yes. Find out more. Good bye.”
Robert looked at her and waited while Angela slowly slid her com back into her pocket.
“Redstone requested a special MESS council session,” she reported.
Despite what Koch expected, Green did not stand up and pace. “Well… shit.”
“Yup.”
“Do you have anyone on the council? Maybe it’s just about the ghouls,” he asked.
“Acquaintances, yes. Spies… no. They might tell me the truth; they might not.”
Green sighed. “Looks like we are moving after all.”
* * *
The conference table was a large circle. Tamra’s seat, now empty, was on one side, and the seven seats of council members on the other. Charles Wu was the newest member of the council. At forty-four years old, he was almost the youngest. Like many other council members, he worked his way up the ranks, acting as a captain for over a decade before being offered a seat a year ago. His descendants were poor farmers in China. His parents took him to America after the collapse, leaving his grandparents behind.
During the discussions it became clear that no one wanted to alienate, let alone make an outright enemy of, the university’s patron corporation. The idea of bringing in MESS officers from another territory was floated and shot down. Wu stood and walked to the front of the table.
“Noxcorp may be sitting on a bomb,” he started, with several members sighing at the hyperbole. “We can’t ignore it. We can’t choose to do nothing. We just can’t. We’d like to. Ignoring it… won’t make it go away. And I believe… each one of us will have a nagging
feeling every day going forward if we don’t investigate. Every day, wondering if we did the right thing, a feeling that won’t go away until we find out that we did not.”
The other council members stared at the table. “Personally, if Redstone came to us with this information under different circumstances, I would table it. Actually, I would open a dialogue with the vampire council in hopes of an information share. But the ghouls, this machine, the dreams… I don’t think we have that luxury. A tough decision must be made. Ignoring this is not the tough decision. This is our duty, and if anything is sacred, it is our oath to protect mages from the world and the world from mages.”
“We should just see what the summit produces tonight,” said one of the men.
“Our concern is with the possible vampire mages. It’s not the ghouls,” Wu rebutted. “In fact, tonight we have an opportunity. With Noxcorp attending the summit, it would not be difficult for two of our agents to conduct an inspection of their headquarters.”
“They would never allow it,” said Parsk.
“They are compelled to under article six of our charter and the MTC pact. We are allowed access to any facility where that access is necessary to fulfill our directives, even when we only have probable cause to believe we need it,” he argued.
“It’s a bit of a stretch.”
“In this climate, who would dare refuse and call attention to themselves, especially if your entire race is already feared?” challenged Wu.
“I thought the idea is to investigate without them knowing?” asked a woman at the table.
“I think,” he reasoned, “that we don’t want them to know what we may know. Remember, it’s likely only a few of the council even know about this supposed sub-order. Under the guise of an inspection, reasoning that we must ensure all houses to be in order and given the current state of crisis, I believe we can keep the secret order blind. We must simply ask the right council member for permission.”