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

by JM Guillen

  “So how come I feel like choking myself on your behalf?” I narrowed my eyes at it, but before I could do much more than glance, a whuf pulled my head around.

  A metal toothpick stood upright, buried in the tile floor half a meter from my foot.

  “Fuc—!”

  Half a second later, my chest hit the floor as I fell inexorably toward the tiny metal spike projecting gravity several times that of Earth’s. Flattened instantly, I gasped for breath, unable to draw it.

  Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!

  Out of the corner of my eye, I watched two drones sail serenely into the room.

  “Aw, shit.” Caught. Check mate, game over.

  Either one of the glittering dragonflies could terminate me at any second. Or they might just wait and watch me die of suffocation. Unless of course the gravitational pull caused me to lose blood-flow to my brain.

  That might be more pleasant. I’d pass out quickly.

  Dammit! Not even Spectre could help now. Even out of phase, as long as I had proper connectivity, gravity still affected me.

  I floundered, thrashing my limbs like a caricature of someone drowning as the two drones circled above my prone body.

  My hand holding the katana brushed my pocket, and I bared my teeth triumphantly.

  One move left, bastards.

  I twitched my fingers as hard as I could.

  Click.

  My thumb had managed just enough pressure to set off the dampening grenade.

  Whoomp! A tsunami of rampant Rationality stormed through the room. Gravity returned to Rational levels, and I could breathe again. The moment that the ripples died down, I engaged the Spectre.

  Then, heroically, I continued to lie on the floor, gasping with relief at the ability to draw air into my lungs.

  The drones, of course, pounded the tile underneath me with all manner of missiles, but thanks to Spectre, I didn’t care.

  I could breathe.

  An infinity of hateful laughter burbled over to one side, and I turned my head to regard the unpleasant aberration as it pointed at me and laughed.

  “Oh, ha ha, fuckface,” I grumbled, getting to my feet. I scrutinized the equipment readout above its head. “I’ve had just about enou—”

  Click.

  No. Not again.

  I whirled on my heel, dropped my katana, shut down Spectre, and scooped up the dampening grenade recently deposited by the drone in one graceful motion.

  Continuing my spin, I activated Adept and hurled the axiom-reasserting thing, not at the jackass aberration, but at the copper and crystal prison which held the violet mist.

  Faster than thought, before the katana had clanged to the floor, I aimed my disruptor, pulled the trigger, and aimed again.

  Once more a drone exploded into ten thousand glittering pieces.

  Whoomp!

  I smiled grimly as the world wobbled on its axis. The dampening grenade took effect. A cry of triumph echoed in my mind, an eternal wail that rang along a vast and endless chasm.

  The aberration and the attached violet mist vanished as Rationality took hold over the odd device that had imprisoned the creature.

  Two birds, one stone. Drone and aberration gone, all I had to deal with now—

  Whuf, whuf, whuf, whuf!

  I ran through the door, Spectre reactivated, before I could blink.

  The final drone followed me, diving through the hole, firing furiously.

  I shot back and missed, creating a crater in the hallway wall.

  Dammit!

  With a snarl I shoved the disruptor back in its holster and pulled the second katana from my back with both hands. Holding it over my head, I charged toward the quicksilver drone, screaming like a madman.

  It peppered me with missiles. Every single one went whuf!

  Half a step later my legs locked up like a stutterer at a national spelling bee. I started to topple forward as the numbness in my legs raced up my body. In an instant, my lower back seized, locking in place.

  I pushed the Adept, hard. That bought me one last, deep breath as my chest stiffened, immobilized. As my last act, I thrust the katana just before I took a header into the floor.

  “Urp!” I cried magnificently.

  An electrical bzzt! announced the drone’s impalement. It made two wild, clanking noises, and I squeezed my eyes shut—

  Just as I engaged the Spectre.

  The drone’s bits hit the floor, and its armament went off. Silvery stasis fields popped around me like the world’s largest bubble wrap. Electric sparks hissed and fizzed, arcing over, around, and through me amid more traditional explosions. The air rippled and howled through the corridor.

  Click. I grinned at the sound. A dampening grenade had never sounded better.

  Whoomp! The raucous party thrown by the axioms of physics immediately died down. Spectre disengaged.

  I smiled and picked myself up off the floor, hurting in my everything. I scooped up my katana from the drone’s wreckage and headed back to Quantum Chronodynamics to fetch its twin.

  God, I better get to the Telemetry Relay Station soon, I thought as I walked wearily to the abused door. I need a cigarette.

  However, I knew the truth. The Spire, whatever it might actually be, seemed to be in serious trouble. With all the Facility resources here, it couldn’t fall to Irrats. With that, I also realized, no matter how exhausting this had already been, more incredible bullshit had to be coming down the pipe. As soon as Guthrie showed up, I would find out something ridiculous, like we had to clear the entire Spire, floor by floor. Or perhaps the entire Facility had been infected with symbionts, and we had to capture them all… for observation.

  “Just my luck.” I sighed as I headed toward the relay station.

  I could hardly wait.

  11

  Telemetry Relay Station 0090

  I read the small plaque and leaned one hand against the door, panting. The blue reticle hung squarely in front of me, its crosshairs pulsing softly.

  The conduit lay less than two meters in front of me, just behind the door.

  “Come on, if you’re there.” I peered down the hallway, back the way I had come. This, of course, would be the moment for some Facility slaughter-drone to swoop down on me or perhaps fill the atmosphere with weaponized viral mecha.

  But no. Perfect quiet filled the scarlet-lit hallway. The unnatural light fizzed and flickered overhead, but as far as I could see, there weren’t even any of the aberrant blossoms near this door.

  After a few moments of caution, I touched the pad at the side of the door, laying my palm flat against it. I knew better than to hope to hear the system acknowledgement in my mind.

  Yet the door slid open with a soft hiss.

  The Telemetry Station had slightly curved corners, although it was still basically a cube. Gigantic, vintage, steam-radiators or, more likely, things that just resembled them, stretched from the floor to the ceiling along two of the walls.

  “Weird.” I scratched my head as I examined the devices. I’d never seen the like.

  Constructed of thick glass, I easily saw the neon-blue liquid that boiled and bubbled within them. The entire apparatus vibrated, humming with an odd and haunting song.

  I took in the rest of the room. Several tables had been pushed together along one wall and each held what looked like eighteenth-century typewriters with keys in an alien tongue. Several of those keys blinked, as if awaiting input. Glass tubes full of that same boiling and steaming blue liquid attached to the back of each typewriter.

  The room smelled of ozone and mold.

  “Straight out of sixties sci-fi.” I stepped closer to the devices, but other than noticing that the lights blinked in eerily uniform patterns, I couldn’t determine what they could possibly mean.

  “Doesn’t matter.” My eyes fell on the metallic semi-circle of the conduit. “Not what I’m here for anyway.”

  I switched on my comm.

  This is Michael Bishop, Asset 108, access
code iota-six-three. I have made Locale One and have cleared all Irrational targets from the vicinity with—I checked the reticle—one minute twenty-two seconds to spare. Please appraise.

  No official response came. Instead, that haunted chant began in my mind again, the woman who sounded as if she spoke from across some great and terrible void.

  Niiiine…Twow… INit-eeeating See-gma… FiffTEeen…

  I’m going to switch my comm off again. I can’t be on point while listening to the interference. I paused. Makes me want to scratch my skin off.

  I turned it off and sank into one of the chairs that sat with the desks. I let out a long, exhausted breath. Hopefully, the worst part of this was over.

  The Spire, thus far, had been a carnival of horror.

  I lay, still fiercely relaxing, when the metallic frame of the conduit pulsed once, an intense verdant light, and the space around it swelled and bent.

  “Oh. Company.” I had always thought it an oddity that each conduit gave off different spectra when used, but today it could have been a vomit green with traces of bruised lavender, and I wouldn’t have taken note.

  I sat up, watching the lights dance.

  CRACK! The conduit emitted a deafening sound and culminated in a burning flash that seared my retinas.

  A bear of a man stepped through, a hazy residue swirling around his head.

  Broad shouldered, Wyatt Guthrie stood almost a head taller than me, with brown hair that he kept shaved close. The same could not be said for his beard unfortunately. Guthrie bragged about being a proud Alabamian barbarian and didn’t care much for Facility appearance codes. Thus his bushy facial hair took up most of his face.

  “Hoss.” He nodded at me, the flickering light in the room glinting off the blue lens covering his replacement left eye. Before he finished nodding, he winced and glanced up at the ceiling in irritation.

  “Kill your comm.” I nodded sagely. “That’s the only way to shut her up.”

  “Damn. And I thought yer mama could yap.” He sighed, and I watched him perform the tiny tick that indicated he had toggled some function of his Crown.

  Then his talented fingers began dancing at the crescent keyboard that hung at his hip. As he peered around the room, his T-90 Axiomatic Redistribution Algorithm I, or the tangler for short, began to hum and whirr on his back.

  I frowned at him, prodding, “My apprisal?”

  He didn’t even look up. “Stabilizing the conduit.”

  “Here I thought you were bringing my update.” I folded my arms, gazing at him. “Instead, you look like a man who’s getting ready to dig himself a ditch.”

  “I do have some work to do.” Wyatt turned to me, and I read the shadowed grimace on his face. “We’re in what you might call a fluid situation.”

  “Yeah?” I sat up straight. “If I didn’t know your Crown were off, I’d patch you my last hour. Then you might see what—”

  The conduit began to warble and sing again, and space bent around it like spun sugar.

  Wyatt leveled his gaze at me. “Fluid.” He glanced at the conduit.

  The conduit cracked again, bending space and shining with brilliant, azure light. I shielded my eyes before looking away.

  Then Gideon Du’Marque stepped into the room.

  He nodded at me, and I nodded back.

  “Yeah.” I sighed. “Fluid.”

  “Bishop.” Gideon strode toward me, a grimness pulling at the edge of his lips. He extended a hand.

  I took it. “Hey, Gideon.” I gave him a short nod, only just then realizing what he wore.

  Or rather, what he didn’t wear.

  Gideon didn’t have any next-gen weapons hanging at his hip or a glowing Crown augment hovering near the side of his face. He had no shining Seraph blades attached to his forearms.

  The man didn’t even have a gun.

  “Yeah.” He caught my glance and gave me an almost sheepish smile. “I’m Designate support on this one. They’ve got me geared with a Catalyst.”

  “Catalyst.” I harrumphed a bit, teasing him. “Classy.”

  “I’m Alpha-on-site, but I doubt I’ll be leaving this room.” He leveled his cobalt eyes at me. “There’s a lot to coordinate.”

  “Fluid. I heard.”

  WHUF. Behind him, Wyatt levelled a tungsten spike into the floor, his clever fingers calibrating as he did. The air around that spike shimmered for a moment, like heat over a highway, before fading away.

  I gave Gideon a long, level gaze. “By ‘coordinate’ you mean that you aren’t going into the field on this one.”

  “That’s not exactly true.” He vacillated one of his hands and made a show of staring up at the ceiling and then glancing to the side where Wyatt worked. “I am in the field now. I would say we are both in the field.”

  “You actually sound like a Designate.” I chuckled. “I am a little tired of the cloak and dagger bit today.” I massaged my neck. “Can you just tell me what’s going on?”

  “Actually, that’s the plan. Strangely enough, patching you your dossier is next to impossible. I’m sure you’ve noticed that you’ve lost significant Crown function.”

  “Yeah.” I scowled. “I noticed.”

  “Guthrie has a little bit of work ahead of him.” Gideon glanced over his shoulder at the large man and then back to me. “We need to reestablish control of Locale One. While he lays some groundwork, I’ll catch you up.”

  “Perfect.” I leaned back in my chair. “Can I at least have a cigarette while I listen? I’m dyin’ here.”

  Gideon chuckled, reached into one of his jacket pockets, and pulled one out. He handed it to me along with a lighter, and after a moment I sucked down sweet, sweet death.

  I grinned at him. “If you ask me, being able to smoke is one of the best reasons of all to have nano machines in your bloodstream.” Then I took another long drag.

  Gideon shook his head with mirth and then took a seat, spinning it around so the back of the chair covered his chest.

  “The problem is, Bishop, this is the exact kind of dossier that I always hate.”

  “What, with the blood monsters?” I tilted my head, more than a touch condescending.

  He ignored my barb. “As the Alpha-on-site I am supposed to be confident and in-charge as I direct Assets across the playing field.” He shook his head slowly. “But this is all kinds of fucked up. What it comes down to is we’re cleaning up someone else’s mess.”

  “Whose?” I leaned forward in my chair, my hands folded together.

  “I’ll get to that.” Gideon waved one hand. “The first thing you need to know is the most important and quite frankly the most interesting. This particular dossier has something to do with you as well. In fact, just like the last little soirée that you and I went on together, what has happened here is a long-standing shadow of that little adventure that you and Wyatt went on together.”

  “Dossier K91-1998.” Of course. That little privy dance had taken place well over a year ago, but it had been one of the more significant events of the past decade, for the Facility, at least.

  Well. And for me also. My Crown hadn’t been right since.

  Alien tentacle monsters kidnapped me and issued me a first-class ticket to a world beyond some bent and twisted stars. The entire party led up to a grand climax where my friends and I had assaulted the sacred breeding grounds of an alien species.

  In the end, we had discovered evidence of an invasion.

  “All in all, those are not some of my best memories.” I took another drag on my cigarette.

  “Yes.” Gideon nodded twice. “I understand.”

  “Is it the Vyriim then?” I leaned back in my seat, its front legs rising off the ground as I folded my hands behind my head. As far as I knew, the Vyriim hadn’t poked their tentacles into Rational space for well over a year.

  “Not exactly.” Gideon cleared his throat. “At least, not as far as we can tell. The thing is it seems as if they might have friends.”

 
I raised an eyebrow at that but didn’t say anything.

  Gideon held up a hand as he continued, “I’m getting ahead of myself. You know how, typically on a mission, there are all kinds of little details that are easy to forget?”

  “Right.” I narrowed my eyes. “Especially when tentacled nightmares are attempting to use your body for a meat-suit.”

  “Yes.” Gideon twirled his wrist, a gesture of capitulation. “But not just that. There are ten-thousand tiny details in any one dossier that can easily be overlooked.”

  “True enough.”

  “One such detail that you might not have given much consideration was those odd metallic hatches.”

  “The bank-vault doors, right?” I thought for a moment. “Set flush with the floor. Other than that, they looked like props for some old black-and-white movie about bank robbers in the old West.”

  “True.” Gideon nodded. “What concerns the Facility, however, is the stamp upon the doors, worked into the metal itself.”

  “Okay, that I don’t remember.” I thought for a long moment. “Wait, a logo of some kind, right? Some kind of ‘Made in Taiwan’ stamp?”

  “Yes. ‘Sadhana Corporation.’”

  “That’s right!” I sat up straight as Wyatt fired another spike into the floor, approximately four steps to my left. “I remember thinking it bizarre that someone had constructed doors that weighed a thousand kilos and then dragged them into an Irrational topia.”

  “Well,” Gideon gazed at me, his voice soft. “You can’t possibly imagine that the Facility wouldn’t look into something like that, can you?”

  “Of course they would.” I took a long drag on my smoke. “Hell. I imagine that by now the company couldn’t interview a new janitor without the Facility creating profiles complete with the applicants’ genetic codes.” I grinned at the thought of a confused man staring blankly at his mop after the Facility was through “interviewing” him.

  “The Sadhana Corporation is a vast entity with offices scattered all across the globe. Their holdings and resources are private, of course, but…” He shrugged.