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

by JM Guillen

  Right. Good. I still stood stunned, distracted by the everyday horror beyond the door.

  Wanna know how we got in? He waggled his eyebrows. It’s awful clever.

  Not now, Wyatt. I linked them both, Here’s a patch of what’s beyond this door. I sent it, allowing them to decide how to allocate the data.

  Michael. Anya’s eyes went wide. This is horrific.

  Yes. I looked at them both.

  I wonder how much money—? Wyatt cut off his own link, but I knew exactly what he meant. How much did these people get paid to doom humanity? What was the price point on ending the world as we knew it?

  The thing is we have to go this way. I think we can still hide right out in the open. These aren’t soldiers of fortune; they’re salesmen.

  Salesmen of the Apocalypse. Wyatt grimaced. How can they do it?

  Telemarket? I gave him a wry grin, which faded. I’ll be honest, I don’t know. But I don’t care. We’ve still got to get to Stone. That’s our job here.

  Agreed. Anya’s gaze grew distant as she manipulated her interface. Local radio frequencies indicate that it is believed that three intruders died in a blast of unknown origin on the upper floors. She paused. It would seem that, for the moment, security has decided that the intruders are no longer a threat.

  Perfect. That means we can focus on the task at hand.

  Anya gave the tiniest of head shakes. I no longer have a reading on Liaison Stone. His signal was lost while we were outside the building, so I need to again gather as much telemetry as possible to relocate it.

  I blinked and noticed that, indeed, the icon for Stone’s location was gone.

  Copy that. Wyatt still seemed a touch distracted. I knew my friend well, and imagined that he had a hard time dealing with the awful but mundane truth of this place.

  Hey. I poked him in the shoulder. Help me out here. Let’s get through this, get Stone, and get out. I smiled. When we’re extracted, the Facility will probably nuke this place from orbit.

  “Ha!” Wyatt’s grin returned. Fair enough, Hoss. How do you figure we go forward?

  Like I said, I think we walk. I gazed at each of them, gauging if they would dissent. As if we belong. I turned to Anya. The people in this room seem quite familiar with our Preceptors and their habits. Watch it as you read telemetry.

  Understood, Michael. Her link sounded just a bit cooler than it had been, I thought.

  That’s it then? Wyatt ran his hand through his beard. Just walk on through?

  One of them already thinks I’m a Sadhana merc. I think it’s our best shot.

  Good by me, Hoss. Wyatt nodded. Hell, if Sadhana still believes we careened out the side of the building a bit ago, we may be one up on them.

  That doesn’t change my appraisal of leaping out of windows. It’s a bad idea.

  Fine, fine.

  I felt that neither of them truly wanted to go into that room, which struck me as funny in an odd way. We had each seen far worse, dealt with creatures from beyond the spheres that melted reality, but what gave us pause?

  Salesmen of the Apocalypse.

  Without another word, we stepped into the next room, ready to deal with whatever came.

  23

  Three minutes later, and we knew far more than we wanted to about Irrational Best Practices.

  “[The thing is, Mr. Florèz, I can’t make you want this.]” A fat, florid man leaned over his desk, a large soda next to his keyboard. Fluid Italian dribbled from his tongue, and he waved his hands as he spoke. “[Most people desire what is best for their family. If you want to take risks with yours, it’s your decision.]”

  “[You’re talking about an inconvenience to your vacation to the coast.]” A young woman polished her nails while she spoke to her client in French. “[I’m talking about your son being kidnapped and thrown into a van by men wearing black suits. I think we need to get on the same page.]”

  We don’t use vans. Wyatt’s link felt a touch offended.

  I did once. I paused. Designate set it up. Billy Iverson.

  These people are disgusting. I felt Anya wrinkle her nose through the link.

  Just play it cool. Wyatt looked straight forward wearing the bored mien of someone who saw this kind of thing every day. It looks like there’s a set of double doors down the next aisle. Should lead into a hallway.

  Dossier blueprints confirm we are on floor thirty-eight. Anya paused, and I knew she accessed her system. This isn’t the only location on the current floor that shows wide areas for cubicles.

  We walked onward, weapons sheathed, tangler in its housing, as if we had the absolute right to be there. Every few steps, we received the gift of another snippet of the best Sadhana had to offer in client conversions.

  “[Ms. Ying, what makes you think that these men are ever going to stop?]” asked a young Japanese woman in Cantonese. Her cubicle looked entirely plastered with magazine cutouts of beautiful houses and expensive cars. A white board hung on one side with tick marks and Japanese letters. My Crown translated these words to Weekly Goal and Stretch Goal.

  “[Right. I see. You escaped them once. So you got lucky.]” She leaned back in her chair and caught my eye. Giving me a playful grin, she made a gun motion to her head and acted as if listening to this woman might just equal blowing her brains out.

  I gave her a sympathetic smile and walked on.

  Gentlemen. Anya stopped in place and then seemed to realize what she had done and continued. I believe I have found Stone’s latent signal again.

  No foolin’? I felt Wyatt’s excitement.

  It’s not very clear. I’ll need some time to triangulate the location.

  Keep reception solid, Anya. I paused and glanced with confusion at a balding man in a hideous, outdated suit, who attempted to wave me down. I think we have company.

  I smiled and stepped forward, toward the man, trying not to judge his awful taste in cheap suits.

  He wore a badge on his breast pocket with a red triangle symbol on the left side and his picture on the right. Beneath his picture it read Jiro Tanaka.

  “[It’s about time! Is this the contractor?]” he asked in Japanese. The squat man wiped sweat from his forehead as he looked Wyatt up and down, his gaze lingering on the tangler.

  Since almost everyone here spoke several languages, I replied, “He only speaks English. Where do you need us to go?” I imagined things might go better if I didn’t actually answer Jiro’s question. “I haven’t worked down here before.”

  “That’s fine!” He replied with hardly an accent, then flashed a wide smile. “I’ll take you over to the door that will let you access the processor. Damn thing blows a filament every time something weird happens, which is almost every day in this place!” Still smiling, the man led us down another aisle of cubicles, at a ninety-degree angle away from the door we had been eyeing.

  Damn it.

  “Thing blew about fifteen minutes ago! I think something happened upstairs, but who knows?”

  “Right.” I nodded.

  “I’ve got over two hundred agents on this floor alone who don’t have access to client records. Every minute we’re down is costing us thousands.”

  “We’ll get it handled.” Of course, I scarcely had any idea what he meant. “So, you think it’s a filament?”

  “Hope so. That’s a pretty quick fix from what I’ve seen.” He took a turn, angling us back in the direction we had come in the first place. It took us straight past a sales professional I wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley.

  “[I’m afraid you don’t understand,]” the giant of a man growled in Swedish. “[It’s them or us at this point. That’s your choice. It’ll be your daughter’s blood.]”

  Jiro rolled his eyes at me as we passed the man, as if to say, “Can you believe this guy?”

  When we reached the gray service door, Jiro stood back and looked at me expectantly, as if I knew the way forward.

  “Oh, that’s right.” He frowned after a moment. “You said
that you don’t often work down here. I don’t know how things work upstairs, but you can’t have access to the central processor or the Chasm without a key card.” He glanced uneasily from me to Wyatt. “The Geopulse Pylon is too easy to access from these doors.”

  “Oh.” I smiled benignly at the man, but my heart enthusiastically pounded in my chest. “Yeah, that is different. I assumed you would escort us in like they do upstairs.”

  “Typically, when someone is going to replace the filament, a temporary card is given to the contractor.”

  “Oh. Right.” Wyatt gave the man a sheepish smile, which clashed with his broad shoulders and wild beard. He patted his pockets as if he searched for something. “You mean this.”

  With that, Wyatt produced the key card that we had stolen from Mr. Fukui. He held it up, turning his hand so that Jiro only saw the red triangle Sadhana logo.

  “Yes. Very good.” Jiro sounded relieved.

  Wyatt stepped forward and slid the access card into the reader.

  For a long, tense moment, I contemplated the thousand things that could go wrong.

  But no, a cheerful beep sounded, and a green light blinked from the top of the reader.

  “Well, everything seems in order here.” Jiro glanced briefly at Wyatt and I, but his eyes seemed to linger a moment on Anya.

  I spoke quickly, not wanting him to jump to the correct conclusion.

  “If we need anything, Mr. Tanaka, I’ll be certain to let you know. Mr. Fukui said that we could count on you to get things done. “

  Wyatt opened the door and ushered Anya inside.

  “Oh.” He didn’t seem to know what to say. “I had always believed Mr. Fukui didn’t think much of our work down here.”

  I shrugged. “Regardless, I wanted you to know that you stood out to him. If I need you, I know the man to call.”

  “Good. I mean, thank you.” Jiro gave me one final smile, bowed, and then turned away.

  Do you think he bought that? I linked to both of them, though honestly, Wyatt’s appraisal carried a bit more weight. Anya’s skill set didn’t exactly involve people skills or deception.

  I think it won’t matter for long. Wyatt fiddled with the wall, looking for a light switch. Yer boy Jiro there just told us how much money they lose for every minute of down time. He turned serious eyes to me. That means that it won’t be long until they want their filament doodad taken care of.

  I realized what he had said immediately. The real contractor will be along shortly to do just that.

  Well… Wyatt shot me a devious glance. Maybe not shortly. With that, he flipped a switch and illuminated the processor room.

  Before I even had an opportunity to truly look around, I heard the whir of his tangler and a lone WHUF sounded through the room.

  Stasis trigger? I glanced at the spike right in front of the door.

  Yep. Wyatt turned to evaluate the equipment. As long as we don’t have any Greater Aberrations come through this door, I think it’ll hold for a good long time. It’ll trigger when someone opens that door and stay active as long as, say, gravity exists. He gave me a toothy grin.

  The small room that held the Jiro’s central processor had walls covered with stacks of computer equipment. Most of it seemed relatively mundane: standard routers and servers.

  A hundred lights blinked, and a thousand snarls of cord ran between the devices with more cords running into a steel and plastic conduit through the wall.

  Would you look at this? Wyatt contemplated a series of glass canisters, something akin to fuses but twenty centimeters long and filled with a bubbling greenish liquid that held several lines of copper wire.

  Much of this technology is Rational. Anya’s fingers did their meticulous dance, so her link seemed distant. However, several key axioms are being bent in this room, many of them dealing with superconductivity and several base metals’ rate of decay.

  Do you still have a finger on Stone’s location? I strode further into the room as I linked, eyeing a great door on the far wall with curiosity.

  Her head twitched once. I’m working out the triangulation algorithms. When I get him pinpointed exactly, I can open a link to Rachel, and we can begin initiating a remote boot.

  I stopped in place as a thought occurred to me. Why didn’t the Facility just perform a remote boot on me when I was held by the Vyriim?

  You would have been an active Asset in their possession. She linked, then turned to face me. I needed to get closer to determine that you were free of aberrations before we initiated your system. Gideon also wanted to have visual confirmation of your well-being.

  Oh. That made sense. I’d admit, I hadn’t actually thought about it that way.

  The dossier blueprints show this next door leads to a large, round room. Wyatt still looked at the computer as he spoke.

  The Chasm, perhaps? Our blueprints weren’t exactly labeled, but I’d gleaned the name from Mr. Tanaka. I have to admit, when Irrats give things dramatic names, it makes me uneasy. I mean, Geopulse Pylon sounds like something worth blowing up.

  If that door’s our way forward, I think I’m gonna leave a spike here. He tapped the console, blue light shimmering in his oculus. Leave a lil’ surprise for later.

  Later? I furrowed my brow. If we muck around too much we’ll just give ourselves away.

  Pfft, we’ll be long gone. I’ll set it to trigger whenever they get around to fixin’ their filament or whatever. He tapped on his keyboard, thoughtfully. Next time someone gets into this room, it’ll trigger. Transmute every bit of copper and steel wiring in this place into oxygen.

  He punctuated the idea with a WHUF.

  Evil, I linked as he finished and walked toward me. But unnecessary. Shutting down their outreach operations isn’t even part of our dossier.

  I get that. Wyatt stepped to the far door and turned the handle. But that’s not the point. I mean, Irrats are one thing, but… telemarketers? He gave an overdramatic shudder. They probably call up the Irrats just as they’re sitting down for evil supper with their tentacly wife and vampiric kids. I mean, I’m not saying the Irrats are good people, Hoss, but…

  You’re right. No one deserves that. I smiled at my friend and gave an overdramatic nod.

  I’m just doing God’s work. He tapped his keyboard for emphasis as he adopted a saintly façade.

  Fine. Let’s just move along. I shook my head and chuckled.

  No one in the Rational world matched Wyatt Guthrie.

  24

  The door opened into another dark room, but we didn’t exactly need illumination. Ten paces in front of us, brilliant sparks of blue-tinged lightning spat and arced along a towering column, casting the room in leaping shadows.

  I stopped in mid-stride, unable to look away.

  The snarls. Anya stepped forward, her boots echoing against the metal grating that made up the floor. This is their source. Whatever this device is, it occultates our telemetry.

  Can we blow it up? Wyatt smirked as he approached the gargantuan device. He examined it through his oculus, gathering more information than I could.

  It generates electricity as well. Anya glanced toward the room we had just come from. I imagine that several of the key facilities in this building are located close to this Chasm.

  I found a large pull-down switch, and I engaged it with a loud clack that echoed in the room.

  Lights. Two bulbs near the door we had come through burst into brilliant white light.

  I’d say the Chasm is aptly named. Wyatt peered down through the grated floor.

  In the distance below, I saw more of the blue sparks weaving shadows around a stairwell that spun down into the darkness.

  Ugh. I did not care for the view.

  It must span the height of the entire building. I didn’t have to feign awe as I watched the azure energy fizz and jolt. How long do you think it took to build this?

  Neither answered me.

  As one, we stepped forward, getting a better look at what could only be t
he Geopulse Pylon.

  Different types of metal plates had been riveted onto the trunk-like column of the device in intricate shapes and patterns. Arms of shining steel jutted off from the cylinder, looking like nothing so much as bent tree limbs reaching for sunlight they would never see.

  Every ten meters or so, a disk of amber and glass surrounded the trunk. Half a meter thick, these rings hung five meters out from the edge of the pylon. Cobalt energy, all warbling song and furious glee given leave to dance, leapt between them.

  No construction crew built this. Anya’s link held awe that bordered on reverence. This is a level of axiomatic weaving I’ve never seen before. Some of this device isn’t even technically real. She paused. It seems that parts of it exist in another topia.

  We’ve only had the Deep Telemetry to find things like this for a little over a year. I looked to Wyatt. This took longer than a year to build.

  Unless parts of it had been constructed in a topia where time drifts differently. He turned to me. Sadhana has doors. Fuck, Hoss, they’re associated with the Vyriim. Think of how many doors those assholes had branching off from Dhire Lith.

  This is nothing like Drażeri technology. Anya’s link sounded firm.

  No matter how I tried to track things, it just didn’t make sense.

  The Geopulse Pylon loomed over us, a vast creation. It must have taken billions of dollars and many, many years to construct—not to mention the necessary research and development.

  Yet, a little more than a year after we perfected Deep Telemetry, we find this abomination, almost as if it had been constructed to draw us here by thwarting our technology.

  I have an exact triangulation on Stone. Anya’s link came suddenly but filled with more than a bit of pride. I need to work with Asset Gardener to remotely activate his Crown.

  Which way is he? Still down? Wyatt glanced down the stairwell at one side. Looks like we can go straight to hell if we’d like.

  You can. I sent to only Wyatt and grinned.

  Yes. Anya focused on linking our Caduceus, only giving Wyatt’s question the barest attention. I can be mobile as I do this but shouldn’t be disturbed. It will require most of my attention.