Assuming Horad did his job, the self-created server in the temple had now self-destructed by command of the second chant, and instructed all nanites in its network to disassemble, and get lost in whatever material they were lodged in, whether it was sand or grey matter.
Then nothing would ever be found of his secret pet project, he could relax, and Horad, if he had even been spotted, would have to lay low for a little while.
Kirison was already starting to feel more relaxed. Enough so that when he spotted Horad approaching, he didn’t even dread that creep’s grizzly stare. Kirison hopped on the buggy, with almost a smile, and drove over to pick Horad up.
He stopped a few yards ahead of Horad. “Hey there. How’d it go?”
Horad nodded, and waved as he came closer. “My people are free now, thanks in no small part to you.”
It was hard to spot, given Horad’s deep olive skin, but there seemed to be a faint smear of blood on his right hand. “Horad, did you get hurt?” He pointed at the red.
Horad glanced as his hand as he climbed onto the buggy. “No, this blood is not mine. I was forced to fight.” He patted his knife sheath.
Kirison’s gut suddenly felt like a brick. “You… had to hurt someone?”
Horad nodded. “Two. I fear they are dead, but it was a small price to pay.”
Kirison stopped breathing, and stared forward in silence. Breathe. Don’t react. Drive. He started the engine, and started moving. Don’t react too much. If Horad thinks Kirison might turn him in, what might he do? Breathe. Not too hard. He had to say something. Silence would be suspicious too. “That’s too bad.” What else do you say to a murderer?
“A loss of life is a regrettable thing, but if it means opening the door to my people’s prosperity, a few cogs in the conspiracy are, like I said, a small price.” Horad’s voice was hard to read. Was this regret, or just quiet zealotry?
“Once we get to a town, we should part ways and lay low.” It surprised Kirison how easily the words came out of his mouth while his mind was panicking. Two dead?! To hide a relatively innocent pet project? What kind of jail time would he have faced in a worst case scenario if he’d come clean with his project? What kind of jail time was he looking at now?
The thought crossed his mind briefly that Horad needed to be erased. There was many ways to accomplish this. No, no. No. That’s not a good train of thought. Maybe he should turn Horad in. No, the plan was solid, it was good. The evidence at the temple had already eradicated itself, and Horad probably knew how to hide his own evidence. Don’t make it worse, just lay low. Lay low and disappear.
“We might not meet again for quite some time, Samuel.” Horad said. Kirison just nodded. ‘Samuel’ would cease to exist today. They would never meet again.
~~~~~
:::C /32
~~~~~
Armil’s G.E.G. Storms now outnumbered the usual temple personnel two to one. They were taking over the watch shifts at the temple, and others continued armed patrols. Armil had assured the regulars that this was temporary, and no one argued. Despite being given the option, no one decided to take leave.
Cassidy had been lying in her bunk, face buried in a pillow, trying to sleep. If only the shaking in her hands would stop. She’d thrown up earlier, and Cipriana told her it was not uncommon for extreme grief. She was vaguely aware of people coming and going.
Maxine had come, put her hand on Cassidy’s shoulder and said something that was ignored. Cassidy had just replied with a mumble, and buried her face deeper into the pillow. Thank you Maxine, but go away. If Cheryl was gone, she’d just as soon be alone entirely.
She was gone. Gone.
After a span of time that passed unmeasured, Cassidy finally convinced herself to sit up. Across the aisle, Cipriana sat in her typical meditative posture. It was all wrong however. Her peaceful aura was damaged, different. Cipriana had her eyes wide open, and her head was turned in the direction of the temple.
As Cassidy tried to convince herself to speak, she realized her jaw was trembling. She grabbed the blanket hard to at least stop the trembling in her hands. “Cip…”
Cipriana slid back into reality and turned her head to face Cassidy. “Maybe it hurts a lot because you didn’t take her for granted.”
“What?!”
“You said you had taken Brandy for granted.”
“Did… did I ever tell you that?”
Cipriana’s eyes looked around calmly at nothing in particular. “I.. I don’t think so. I think it was something you told Marcus. Way back, on your first shift here.”
“He went and told you that?”
With a touch of confusion in her eyes, Cipriana held her head. “Yes, no, I’m not sure. I feel him. And his damned ghost.”
Cassidy didn’t know how to respond to that, so she just stared at the foot of her bunk.
“It’s not a bad thing, really.” Cipriana eventually said, “They’re both… I know, I’m going crazy, but they’re both... sympathetic to what we’re feeling.”
Cassidy continued staring nowhere. “And.. you said before it feels like being around Marcus?”
Cipriana nodded meekly, and replied softly. “In a way.”
Cassidy wrapped her arms around herself “I wish I felt Cheryl like that. I mean, she’d still be gone, but-“
“No.” Cipriana replied, “My mind... I feel a little like…You don’t want this.”
Cassidy sat for a while longer, and Cipriana turned her head back towards the temple. After glancing out the doorway, Cassidy slid one leg off the bunk, allowing her foot to hit the floor.
She stared at her knee, knowing there was more work needed if she planned to stand up. With a big sigh, she got her other foot off the edge. Now it was just for the actual standing. She knelt forward, and pushed down at the ground with her legs.
It seemed to take a long time, and a lot of effort to stand. Her body felt so heavy. One scuffing step led to another, and eventually another.
“Cass?” Maxine, reading nearby, took notice. “Where you going?”
“For a walk.”
“You okay?”
What a stupid question. Not that Maxine was stupid for asking it; it was the kind of thing a person asks. Maxine’s concern was marginally appreciated, but not enough to answer. Her steps became slightly bolder.
She wandered out of the barrack, and out of the base. It looked like mid morning, and she was mildly aware that it had now been over twenty-four hours since Cheryl’s death.
It was so bright. The golden beauty of the desert, the dazzling azure sky, the majesty of the surrounding ruins. None of it seemed respectful. She wanted to go stuff her face back into her pillow, but settled for adjusting the brim of her hat. Damn her body felt heavy.
Onward.
A step, another step, another. Keeping moving seemed to push her trembles aside. As she walked, her nausea revisited her a little, but it was a welcome distraction from darker thoughts.
Another step, another, another. She concentrated on the slow, steady rhythm of them. Different sounds came from sandier paths, deeper sand, sand grinding against stone. Every few metres, a slightly different surface, a slightly different sound. Step, step, step.
After enough steps, she was at the little camp. She had made the trip so many times, she could have done it blindfolded. So many times, sometimes with Cheryl, sometimes to find her there, sometimes to just wait here for her.
She wasn’t coming today. Today Cheryl was in a plastic container. She wasn’t coming today.
Cassidy leaned against the familiar chunk of wall, not daring to look at Cheryl’s mural. She stared at the flap of the tent, building her courage to go in. Her trembling wasn’t so bad here. She thought it would be worse. Despite the slight improvement in calm, there was still a part of her that just felt like crumpling into a little ball, and screaming until she suffocated. But she didn’t have the energy.
Take a step, another step. Go to the tent, open the flap. Sleeping bags opened
and arranged as blankets were the first thing she saw. She couldn’t bear to walk on them. Her little terminal was sitting nearby. If for no other reason, she had to come here to get that. As she picked it up and stuffed it in her thigh pocket, her face was close enough to Cheryl’s clothes duffel to smell her flowery deodorant. She felt the trembling trying to force its way back.
Cassidy remembered Cheryl’s cute little diary. She reached into the duffle to look for it. Her hand was greeted by a silky little thing that always made Cassidy melt when she saw Cheryl in it.
Today, the lace may as well have been spikes. She forced her hand a bit deeper to grab the diary, and yank it out. She clutched it to her chest, now trembling as bad as ever. The pretty silky thing had fallen out a little, and it almost seemed to stare at her.
She couldn’t handle being in this tent anymore. So many wonderful memories that now only seemed to rip at her. She ran out with the diary, only to be faced with the mural. Run, keep running, get away from this place.
She ran across one ruined building, and another. She came to an open patch of sand and allowed herself to fall, crumpling into that little ball she’d thought of before, and let her scream loose.
~~~
“Are you sure?” Armil asked Cipriana. Seated on the floor in his decorated meditation room aboard his airlimb, in the soothing dim, the Grand Elder seemed all the more ethereal.
Cipriana sat at the other side of the detailed floor rug, and nodded solemnly. “I think I need to stay here. Now that I feel what Marcus felt, and...”
“And the others look to you for stability.”
“Stability.” Cipriana gave a soft chuckle. “Now that I’m apparently going insane.”
Armil smiled gently. “Marcus seemed to bear his ‘insanity’ well. He really was well-loved here, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, yes he was.” Cipriana sighed deeply. It felt like there was more to say on the subject, but it didn’t matter now. It was nothing of consequence in the end. “You’re going to ask Cassidy as well, right?”
“Yes. What do you think she’ll say?”
“I... I really have no idea.” She looked towards the door as if she expected Cassidy to walk in right at that moment. “She’s very hurt.”
“So are you, and you said no.”
“She’s very hurt.”
~~~
Cassidy had fallen asleep on the sands, luckily having enough sense to have crawled into a spot where a shadow protected her from the afternoon sun. The diary sat open nearby, after a little reading before Cassidy had fallen asleep.
Beeping came from Cassidy’s thigh, gradually waking her up. She didn’t realize what it was at first, and her half-awake hand groped her thigh, feeling the terminal through the pocket material. She opened the flap, hit the answer button, and left the terminal on the ground, screen facing up.
“Hello?” it was Brandy’s voice. Goddam, why now? “Hello? Cass?”
Cassidy yelled out loud enough to be heard with the terminal being off to the side. “What?!”
“Cass, is that you?!”
Cassidy sighed. “Who the fuck else would it be?”
“You’re okay? What’s going on, all I can see is the sky.”
“I’m okay. What have you heard?”
“On the news they said there was some kind of attack at your base. You’re still at that funny temple place, right? You’re okay though?”
“I’m unharmed.”
“Good, good.” Brandy paused for a bit. “Were any of your friends hurt?”
A silly question, really. Darn near everyone here was at least a little bit of a friend. In response, Cassidy just lazily outstretched her arm, and laid the back of her hand over the terminal. “She was.”
“Who?”
Cassidy tapped her hand against the terminal to draw attention to her ring. “Her.” She drew her hand back and clenched her fist around the gift Cheryl had once given her.
Brandy was silent for a moment as she put the pieces together. “You married that girl? And she…?”
No, she never married Cheryl, she didn’t get the chance. They were slowly headed that way, but Brandy didn’t need to know the details. “She. Was. Stabbed. And. Died.”
An ugly silence came that pressed down on Cassidy’s lungs and weighed in Brandy’s gut. Cassidy clenched her hand against her chest. The silence continued, and laying on her back staring at the sky, Cassidy almost forgot the terminal was even on.
Brandy’s voice came again, timidly. “Do... do you want to talk?”
“What?” Cassidy replied, “Speak up.”
“I asked you if you wanted to talk.”
Why was it that when something bad happens, everyone feels the need to ask stupid questions? If she’d wanted to talk, would she have walked out into the desert, when she could have gone and talked to Maxine or Cip?
Ha. Cip. What, if she talked to Cip now, was she talking to her and the ghosts of Marcus and the statue? How could she look at Cipriana the same now? Whether she was crazy, or there was something to this, it was weird either way.
Brandy’s voice came again. “Cass? Cass say something. Are you even there?”
“No.” Cassidy lazily groped across the sand attempting to turn off the terminal. Her hand knocked it, spinning it a little.
Brandy got a view of the sky spinning. What, don’t you think I care? I really feel bad that you lost-“
“You gave up the right to give a damn about me when you started blocking my calls.”
“Cass… that was a long time ago…!”
Cassidy sat up and sighed. This gave Brandy a partial view of the side of Cassidy’s head. “I don’t mean to snap. Look, I know with you and me... I know it was my fault. I sucked as a girlfriend. I knew that the day after you dumped me.”
“That doesn’t matter now, Cass, that’s ancient history. I’m calling as a friend.”
Cassidy leaned over the terminal and looked down at Brandy’s image. She took off her ring, and dropped it in the sand beside the terminal. “That’s ancient history now, too. She never had the chance for me to neglect her, and dump me, so happy ending, huh? If I want to talk to her in the future and reminisce on old times, I guess I have to use a goddam ouija board, huh? I can’t let her down anymore now after I let that asshole with the knife walk past me, huh?"
Cassidy calmed down a little, and collapsed back onto the sand. The trembles started reasserting themselves again.
“Put your wedding ring back on.” Brandy commanded softly.
Cassidy paused, and looked over to the ring and the terminal. “It’s not a wedding ring.” She wished it was. At least there would be some official on-paper record that implied Cheryl meant the world to her. It would be an honour to be her widow. “It’s just a... kind of a promise ring. Teenagers do that kind of thing, it doesn’t mean anything.”
“Put the fucking ring on now.”
“Holy fuck, alright already!” Cassidy obeyed. The moment the metal found its place on her finger, she was glad it was back on. Dammit, she was crying again. Loud.
“Cass, hon, it’s okay…”
Cassidy kept crying, and pushed out the words “No, it’s not okay. It’s not.” Feeling like a fool, she reached over to the terminal and shut it off so she could lie down and cry without Brandy listening in or interrupting.
~~~
Doc Brock followed his two soldier escorts from Armil’s troops, watching the temple get closer and closer. He realized that he was probably the only person around who wasn’t already fairly familiar with the temple, so he tried to not gawk too much.
Readings of the sand showed plenty of active nanites. When sealed in a test container with a transmitter, he found that upon receiving a certain frequency, the nanites would agitate, swirling the sand in the container around. It brought new meaning to ‘tempest in a teapot’. Another frequency turned them off, dropping the sand, looking none the worse for wear.
As for any other abilities of these nanites, he
could only guess right now. Did they replicate themselves, or were they produced by a separate nanite fleet? How far were they spread? It seemed obvious that they were the cause of the big sandstorm, and the little ones on the helipad.
The little sandstorms seemed to happen just to dump nanites onto visitors. The big one may have been just a diversionary tactic. If he could find the controlling server, computer, or nanite cluster, he could extract some better answers.
Readings concerning nanites on the personnel were just as fascinating, but equally inconclusive. Everyone had nanites running around in their bloodstream, even himself. A more ‘casual’ test, not specifically looking for nanites, would likely have turned up nothing.
As it was, nanites in blood samples he took practically self destructed upon leaving the host body. He wouldn’t have seen the remains if he wasn’t looking for them. The remains would have to be examined later at a proper facility. As it stood now, the only look he could get at ‘live’ bloodstream nanites were though external imaging scans, and that was quite limiting as well.
The lightest ‘infections’ were in the recent arrivals. Himself, Armil, and Armil’s troops. The regular staff were a bit more laden with them, but the highest concentration of them seemed to be in that Captain Cipriana Ulrica Reichenbach. What a handle on her.
He had asked Captain Reichenbach if she was experiencing anything that might be caused by the nanites, but she said no. She didn’t seem shocked to hear that she had more nanites than anyone else, but she had a naturally passive nature.
Cipriana, Cipriana. He must remember to use first names around here. It wasn’t his first dealing with military that behaved casually, it should be easy. But what kind of name is that? Sounds Italian. I’ll have some Cipriana Alfredo, please.
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