Aberrant Vectors: A Cyberpunk Espionage Tale of Eldritch Horror (The Dossiers of Asset 108 Book 3)

by JM Guillen

  “I’m going to have bruises,” I grumbled.

  Facility body armor, while looking like standard gear, had some astounding properties. A passive defense, it functioned similarly to my kinetic disruptors. In this instance, the body armor had countered the kinetic force of the bullets before they even struck me.

  Well, most of it.

  I rubbed my shoulder, wishing that it worked as well for Facility spikes.

  “Ow. Ow. Ow.” I winced bravely as I touched my side, hissing with pain. Shots would tumble off to the side, but typically some measure of the bullet’s force still leaked through, which is why my ribs felt as if they’d been worked over with an iron pipe.

  Unfortunately, such defenses could only be triggered once. After the initial burst, the body armor might as well be a paperweight filled with hyper-advanced technology.

  “Still saved my life though, didn’t it?”

  Groaning, I sat up and peered about the dimly lit hallway. My head pulsed with muddy pain, and it honestly took me a second to apprise myself of the situation.

  Once I had, I wanted to apprise myself again. Maybe I would get a better answer the second time.

  With another agonized groan, I fumbled through my thigh pocket, looking for the correct class of viral mecha. On the third try, I pulled out a vial that would help with pain and augment my healing process. I wasted no time getting it into my system.

  “Now, to stand up.” I grunted as I pulled myself to one knee.

  Oh, now that sucked.

  Honestly I spent a moment wondering if I should try to give the mecha more specific instructions, but ultimately decided against it. With my reputation for being clumsy with mecha, I’d better leave that to the professionals.

  I had dropped my katanas, both of them, when the men had shot. Agonizingly, I reached out for both as I stood. It would probably be a bit before I felt up to any more sword fighting, so I sheathed them.

  Straightening, I wobbled a touch but remained standing. “OK. Good.”

  I drew my kinetic disruptors and then checked the location indicator for the conduit. The Telemetry Relay Station still rested far beneath me.

  For a long moment, I considered the door that my two “friends” had gone through.

  “What are you fellas up to, anyway?” I frowned as I thought. Certainly nothing good. Designate Taylor hadn’t specified that I chase down invading assholes, but still…

  The more I thought about it, the more I thought that following them might be a bad idea. Those two had already cleaned my clock once. Then, when I added the symbiont into the mix…

  Just the thought of that awful thing, with organs pulsing within its semi-transparent body, made me queasy.

  “My boys said they’d been on the floor below though, didn’t they?” I mused softly. If they had been lower in The Spire and they hadn’t come up this symbiont-infested stairwell, evidenced by their surprise at it, then they’d used some other path.

  That sounded fine by me.

  I turned away from the door and crept forward in the flickering, blood-red light.

  With all this weirdness I was more than a little tempted to check in with Anya. But simply the idea of hearing those bizarre numbers…

  I shuddered.

  The other-worldly way the woman spoke unnerved me. More than that, the senselessness of the numbers, the alien awfulness of it, burned cold and stark in my mind.

  Heroically, I stumbled down the corridor, glancing behind me every third step to make certain my friends hadn’t decided to come back for another round.

  “This time we won’t play.” I set my disruptors for quick bursts. Even if the men did have dampening grenades, my disruptors didn’t rely on altering basic Rationality.

  “How did the likes of you come by dampening grenades, anyway?” I frowned as the thought occurred to me.

  I didn’t exactly know who those gentlemen had been, either. When I thought back over the snippets of conversation I’d heard, they didn’t make much sense.

  “Except that it seems like those thugs might actually have a handle on what’s happening here.” Annoyed by that fact, I combined that idea with how easily they had took me down…

  Wait. That one deserved some thought.

  We stood in one of the Facility’s sites, a secret one as far as I could tell, one I’d never heard of. I imagined it possible that three thugs could come by dampening grenades while in one of our compounds, but—

  “But who taught you how they work? How did you know when to use them?”

  The dampening grenades bore some resemblance to typical grenades, sure. But the Padre had held the grenade calmly while triggering it.

  He knew exactly what the device would do.

  “And he knows what the Facility is. He knows what we do.”

  That thought disturbed me.

  51:11.

  I frowned at the time, a trickle of concern beginning to set in.

  Somewhere in the world, a loud-mouthed Alabamian asshole waited for me. He knew more about my mission than I did, and until I got him here, I might as well be tied up and bent over.

  If I didn’t find Wyatt in less than an hour, then I had a very long wait indeed.

  Speeding to a trot, I ignored my certainly bruised ribs and throbbing shoulder.

  “I bet Blake Runner would know what to do.” I groused as I ran past a door marked Radial Terminus.

  Blake Runner had it easy. The hero always found easy answers, beat the bad guy, and took home the beautiful girl.

  I, on the other hand, would be lucky if I didn’t end the day with symbiont ichor seeping through my face.

  7

  It took ten minutes for me to wend my way to the next stairwell. The empty hallway beyond curved off to my right, studded with various doors at the sides. Each of these had plaques labeled with cryptic things like Topiatic Planography and Designate Modeling: System Seven.

  “Interesting.”

  I couldn’t help thinking of Wyatt and his conspiracy theories. The secretive nature of the Designates never quite sat well with the big guy, and he constantly regaled me with theories that the Designates served as masks for some Illuminati or gray aliens.

  In a place like this, those ideas became a bit easier to believe.

  Eventually, however, I realized such thoughts just wasted my time. Curiosity be damned, those doors didn’t have anything to do with my dossier.

  Maybe we could swing back by before the mission is over. I smirked. Wyatt could take some souvenirs.

  I pressed on, noticing that the indicator for my destination gradually got closer until it pointed almost directly beneath my feet.

  Stopped for a moment, I looked down. My right hand twitched on my disruptor as I had a thought.

  I wonder how many blasts with the kinetic disruptor it would take to create a hole in the floor?

  No. Probably a bad idea.

  In a few more minutes, I found the next stairwell, this one with its door gaping open, hanging by one hinge. This door sat slightly closer to one of the flashing red lights, and so I could easily peer inside. As I did, I saw more of this stairwell than I had the earlier ones.

  Finally. Something goes my way. Confidently, I stepped inside.

  This time, the light shone far enough for me to dimly see all the way to the next floor. Once there, I briefly engaged the Spectre, poked my head through to secure the hallway, and then opened that door to light the rest of the way down.

  Easy.

  In three floors, my indicator beacon rested horizontal to my position. Telemetry Relay lay ahead.

  “Not that there’s a sign,” I muttered as I glared at the door.

  I engaged the Spectre and cautiously peered through the door into the hallway beyond.

  “Oh, fuck me.” My heart fell.

  The hallway beyond looked positively infested with the symbiont; thick, oozing colonies of the aberration hung on the walls and ceiling.

  I disengaged the Spectre. For a long
moment, I stood and thought, trying my best not to notice the pulsating organs and sacks of bile in the semi-transparent creatures.

  Perhaps I could engage the Spectre and just charge through. But things seemed thick with the creatures for a good long distance. What happened if the system failsafes began to kick in so I had to disengage? Then, I’d find myself in the center of them, without the capability to reengage the Spectre until the system refreshed.

  Which, naturally, took an undetermined amount of time that hinged upon Lattice signal strength, system coverage, and my fucking luck.

  It definitely appeared to be a punch through situation, but I needed to hold the Spectre for an emergency.

  Instead I geared up the Adept. I had no idea what the symbiont might be capable of, but I knew that if I felt threatened, I wanted to be able to react.

  Then I drew my disruptors, opened the door, and stepped into the hallway. The distinct odor of ammonia struck me, making my eyes tear up, and I had to shake my head.

  Memories of the man wearing the rebreather taunted me as I wrinkled my nose against the scent.

  “Is this why you need the mask, chum?”

  Certainly a sobering thought. That crew obviously knew things that I didn’t. What if the symbiont let off airborne spores? What if I were breathing them in, even now?

  Couldn’t be. The Facility had the foresight to have me equip Spectre, so certainly they had some idea of the threat. If I had needed a rebreather or specialized mecha to deal with the situation…

  But I did grab Viral Mecha. I had used one; the rest sat in the pocket on my right thigh. During the cold boot, the Facility controlled my choices and actions. Could some of them be intended to combat the symbiont?

  Surely not. I would have been apprised.

  I frowned. I couldn’t afford the time to second guess every decision. I’d read the labels on three, and none stood out as useful here.

  Carefully, I stepped forward.

  There must have been a dozen of the symbiont colonies, most far larger than the ones I’d seen upstairs. If they grew together any more, they would resemble the singular organism in the stairwell, but for now, they still moved as separate creatures, rippling grotesquely.

  Offhandedly, I wondered if my friends above had been referring to this when they discussed having seen blossoms throughout the corridors. A good enough word, I supposed.

  With my disruptors drawn and my breath held, I crept stealthily past.

  Two of the blossoms clung to the left side of the hall like grotesque artwork. One of them had oozed all the way up to the ceiling. Each one looked more than twice as large as the splatters of ichor that I had seen in the hallway with the telemetry orb, and they seemed slightly more aware of me than the others as well. Short tendrils grasped at me, writhing in my direction as I approached.

  While slow and far too short to actually be a threat of any kind, I prepared to activate the Spectre. Even though I had been irritated by having the packet assigned to me by a Designate, I realized now that it had been a brilliant move. The moment that some symbiont touched me, I could simply engage it and move on unaffected.

  If I turned it on in time.

  I still had no idea how one of them infected a human after all. For all I knew, they had the capability to move blindingly fast.

  When it came to Irrational aberrations, nothing would surprise me.

  These thoughts drifted through my mind as I crept past the pulsating patches of ichor and alien organs. I had focused my attention so firmly on the symbiont that I’d almost passed them entirely before I saw what waited in the passageway ahead.

  Fuck. I froze in place.

  There stood a silhouette of a man, his head bowed to stare dully at the floor. He swayed there, a rhythmic motion that reminded me of something out of a cheesy zombie flick.

  Only headshots won’t work

  A silver glow illuminated his outline in the darkened room, hovering at his feet and hands alike. In its light, I saw his tactical gear as well as the triple sets of short blades that rotated near his wrists and hovered near his feet. They hung there quietly, attached to the man through axioms of bent gravity and fundamental forces.

  The Asset was geared with a Raptor packet.

  Fuck me, I swore to myself again, unsure of what to do next.

  The Raptor packet meant business. I had never geared it myself, primarily due to my distaste for the long-term effects. Highly aggressive, Raptor had been designed for insertion into volatile situations, similar to the Seraph or the Titan. The Asset “lucky” enough to equip the Raptor more than a few times often had…

  Issues.

  The effects started small, like slightly elevated testosterone levels, meaning semi-permanent increased aggressiveness. Ultimately, however, this often cascaded into severe control issues. The Facility often had to keep tabs on them, even in torpor.

  “This is going to be a problem.”

  I ground my teeth, thinking. I hadn’t remotely prepared for this.

  Suddenly far less interested in the pseudopods of the symbiont that writhed around me, I crept forward. Every last drop of my focus fell on the silhouette of the man. The Raptor moved as fast as the Adept, if not more so. As soon as he sensed me, this could be over.

  I had one concern: had this Asset been taken by the symbionts as the Artisan had been? If not, then I had an ally. If so, however…

  36:17.

  Time ran short. I peered at the display, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in my chest. I really needed to skate my way past any more difficulties.

  “Not likely.”

  As I got closer, I realized the truth.

  The pulsing symbiont adhered to the man all along the back of his head and running down his left arm. As he stood in the hallway, swaying as if listening to a catchy song from a lost and distant world.

  Damn it.

  No avoiding this. He was too close to the conduit; I had to face him.

  My eyes narrowed as I peered into the hallway, trying to estimate distance.

  Regardless of what had worked with the Artisan, I would fail against the Raptor hand-to-hand. I had seen how quickly those guys moved. A disruptor shot from close range, however, might destroy his knee. Then it probably wouldn’t matter how fast the Raptor could move. He’d go down, and when he did, I would draw my blades. Just like that, I’d end him.

  I took a deep breath as I drew my disruptors, setting the force to maximum and the field to a pinpoint. Then, as if I were Blake Runner himself, I charged.

  8

  At six strides away, the Asset turned, revealing his hideous face in the dim light. The symbiont had covered most of his head, leaving only a space for his dead white eyes.

  I couldn’t help but gape in horror.

  Then the Asset screamed, a muffled gurgling

  The Raptor leapt toward me, all blades and deadly grace.

  Shit. I fired and fired, cursing.

  Avoiding my shots, the Raptor leapt backward, jumping impossibly far. He must have covered ten horizontal meters in one smooth motion.

  “Why can’t things ever be easy?” I spat.

  He gurgled a wet, almost animalistic challenge even as he thrust his chest out, bringing his arms far out to his sides. He wore four metallic bands, one around each wrist and ankle. Four wickedly curved blades hovered within orbit around those bands, an extension of the Raptor’s will.

  He charged me.

  The Raptor held more than just speed and grace and hovering blades. It also contained a particularly nasty set of gravimetric algorithms, pure poetry to behold. The packet altered the Asset’s weight and mass, allowing incomprehensible speeds, which made the Asset all the more deadly in combat. Airborne he might have the approximate mass of a piece of paper, but if one of his fists connected, it would weigh as much as a cement truck.

  “I don’t have time for this.” I leveled my disruptors squarely at him, firing center mass.

  Yet my target dodged.

&nbs
p; I gaped as the Asset leapt toward the wall. The two blades at his feet gouged into the walls like enormous crampons, bursting with a brilliant, silvery light.

  The Raptor ran along the wall for a few strides with nothing under his feet, but I knew that the electromagnetic force between his bands and his blades supported him.

  “Now that’s no fucking fair.” I took two steps backward when he dropped in front of me.

  The Asset stood less than three strides away, which left me with few options. As he raised both hands, the glow about his blades intensifying, I sprang toward him, flipping the Spectre on as two eighteen-centimeter long blades serrated the air where I had just been.

  Then, bravely, I ran away.

  The Spectre, as noted, doesn’t give invisibility, nothing close to it. There is a tell-tale blur as it is engaged, the kind of thing that once seen, can’t quite be unseen.

  The Raptor hadn’t been fooled by my vanishing act. As I dashed past him, he spun. He slashed twice at my blurred form, his weapons a cool sensation as they shredded thin air.

  He missed. I ran.

  I needed to power down the Spectre. It would serve me better if I didn’t push it until its failsafes started chiming in.

  But of course, that sounded insane. The moment I became tangible, the Raptor would acquaint me with the more interesting aspects of his cutlery.

  So I continued to run.

  For a good ten steps I actually believed it might be a good race. After all, the Adept augmented my speed, and I truly knew how to bleed it for every little scrap of grace.

  As I hammered my non-corporeal feet forward, however, I caught a shadow looming behind me, created from red, guttering light and silver brilliance.

  The Raptor sailed straight past me, completely through me, as he leapt down the passageway to land about five meters ahead.

  “No way.” I never had Blake Runner-levels of luck.

  I toggled off the Spectre and brought my disruptors up again. This time, I only halfway attempted to aim, instead hoping that a flurry of kinetic blasts would be enough to hit him with at least one.