by Skyler Grant
Anna was talking about blowing a hole through the floor and bypassing all the traps to go directly to a lower level. I'd had enemies do that to me in the past and it ruined a few very well-laid plans.
"We can, but there are going to be traps there too. Especially in Hydroponics. I've been working on a lot of carnivorous plants lately. Amy would have that resource," I said.
"Why?" Anna asked, "Were murderous people not enough?"
"I wanted to see what happened when people had to fight for their salads. The results were really interesting."
"This is what you get up to in those towers of yours?" Anna said, with a grimace. "I don't see a better option. I'm not going through all those traps."
Even if she did the Hydroponics deck would be waiting for her at the end of it anyway. When I'd occupied this base I'd done my best to make every level a killing field.
Anna was pacing back and forth with a hand scanner, looking at the readouts. "It looks like she reinforced the floor a great deal."
I couldn't access her scanner directly, but through cameras I could see the screen. Amy really had. It had been a vulnerability I'd tried to handle back in the day, but Amy had done a better job of it. Better wasn't perfect.
There were storage and mixing chambers for the acid sprayers—a flaw that could be exploited. I gave Anna instructions and she assembled a drill from parts of her armor, boring a few carefully placed holes. It breached both holding chambers and left them to mix in an uninsulated pocket.
Thick caustic smoke began to billow up and Anna took a step back.
It took over half an hour for the acid to do its work, but then with a few swift kicks aided by kinetic amplification Anna was able to bash a hole in the floor to reveal the level beneath. It was totally dark, another trick I'd once used to confuse and weaken my victims.
"Any ideas what’s waiting down there?" Anna asked.
"I'm shielded in this room. I can ride along in your suit systems, but I won't know what we're facing until we're there," I said.
"Then let’s go for it," Anna said, jumping down into the darkness. Anna never lacked for boldness.
When Anna hit the floor, I gained access to new systems and rushed to connect.
A stumbling pale figure holding a club advanced on Anna. Anna drilled a hole through his skull and pulled back. The wound knit in a moment.
That was fast, that was really fast.
This level was filled with people just like that. Hundreds of them in close quarters. No care had been taken to make them comfortable, the floor was coated in an ankle-deep layer of feces and urine .
A woman sprang on Anna's back and tried to drag her into the filth. Anna snapped her neck with a skilled motion and threw her away. The swarm of people kept coming, awkwardly shambling towards her as the dead woman arose almost at once.
That healing factor was too fast. A secondary effect shouldn't be doing that. These had to be Ophelia's people, those infected with her blood who also carried somewhat weaker versions of her healing factor. But why were they attacking Anna? Ophelia was still on our side and her people should inherently know that.
Anna's shields flared blue as a man howling incoherently flung himself at her. Metal implants were sticking out from his elbow. Of course, internal metal frames. Amy must have implanted new electronically controlled skeletons in all of them. The meat that covered them might heal back instantly, but the control of them, however crude, had been handed over to Amy.
"Not loving this, Emma," Anna said, knocking another woman into the filth. "I can't even scan the floor through all this muck to look for another weak spot."
"Amy is controlling them," I said.
"Can you knock out the local network hub?"
"You'll lose me."
"If you knock out the local network hub I won't need you," Anna said.
I hated to get knocked offline and I hated not knowing what was going on, but Anna was right. This crowd wasn't something she could defeat otherwise, they would just keep coming. If I could deny Amy her control then Anna should be able to escape this level on her own.
I found the local power regulator and sent a surge towards the network core. The last thing I saw from the cameras was a spray of sparks before everything dissolved into static.
It was another twenty minutes or so before I got a new feed, my connection restored to Anna's suit as she entered the third level of the complex.
Anna looked exhausted, her shields dim.
"You look like you could be used to floor the previous level," I said.
"I hate your family," Anna said. "I gave them the tools to disable their controllers. When they've all been cleansed they are going to make their way for the surface."
"They'll hit the traps," I said.
"They'll live," Anna said.
It was so pragmatic I didn't have a response. One wasn't needed.
A vine lashed out from the shadows and wrapped about Anna's foot, dragging her into the darkness.
This level was a bit like the complex entrance. There were millions of feeds demanding my attention, but here some were fading and others appearing.
If the real systems were constantly changing identifiers this would be almost unhackable. That wasn't Amy’s intent, so there had to be something else at work. I scanned for the static addresses. There were still a daunting number of those and again the multitasking ability came in handy. I began to work my way through the lists searching for the lights.
I activated them.
Anna was surrounded by severed vines and fighting a plant by using her welding torch.
"Please tell me the creepy-ass hentai vines are your sister's idea and not yours," Anna said.
"Tower experiment Three Nine Seven Two," I said. "It is supposed to be completely consensual. I was trying to create a world entirely without men based on the nature goddesses of the Divine."
"We are having a long talk about your experiments when we get out of here," Anna said. A blast of flame ignited a petal and she used the distraction to run for the nearest stairwell.
Anna caught several blasts in the back from beam roses, the biological energy weapons having come a long way. Still, she made it to the stairs on her feet and descended to the next level.
The Reactor level. It had changed quite a bit, now a vast chamber with more steps leading down in the center. The rest was devoted to beam weapons, quick bursts firing from almost all directions on a regular basis. It must have been blinding to the human eye and looked nearly impenetrable.
It was a maze.
"This looks awful," Anna said.
I was still running the numbers. Anna's shields were too low to take much more damage. With her healing factor she would survive maybe one more blast. With the constant barrage of lasers she'd wind up taking far more than one.
Human reaction time wouldn't do.
"Head back upstairs. We're going to need to completely rip out the control systems and stick it inside of you," I said.
"You are not replacing my bones with a slave frame. Think harder," Anna said.
Why did she have to be so disagreeable? It was like she was turning into Ophelia.
"We can externalize it. You can't respond fast enough. I can get you through it, but we need a way."
"I can do it," Anna said.
We lost another three hours off the clock as she devised her solution. A crude exoskeleton slid on over her armor and gave me control. We tested it for another half hour before finally daring the maze.
The maze was punishing on the human body, sliding low one moment before leaping in a midair twist the next to spring forward for several seconds, then a full stop and a leap backwards.
I got Anna through. Towards the end a servomotor for one of her legs gave out and she took an energy blast that tore away the last of her shields. By then we were almost through and seconds later came to a rest at the staircase.
Anna's armor was now largely useless with the shields exhausted. She took a few minut
es to remove the exoskeleton before heading down the steps.
If we were truly going to where it all began, this was it. This level had housed my consciousness and my central core. This level was where Anna first awakened me.
There were no traps. Nothing waiting to kill Anna. The walls were lined with visuals of our time together. Images of her crouched beside my core as a man advanced on her, the destruction of this facility, the crashing of the Sword of Light.
It was a homage in a way, a temple, and it was creepy as could be.
Anna made her way through all of this to the room that had housed my core.
Amy hadn't lied.
A massive glass cylinder surrounded by a force wall was in the center of the room. Inside the cylinder on a pedestal was the Agate, with three smaller crystals surrounding it. I recognized one of them as the Amplification crystal. The other two were unknown. There was also a raised dais made of crystal with wires running through it.
16
There was a painful buzzing, my senses were off in an odd way. Amy was hacking me. With my processes taken from Aefwal and moved into the local core I wasn't completely sure I was the real Emma anymore—or if I was simply some sort of instanced, copied version that would later sync with my mainframe. Whatever the case, my senses were restricted to this chamber and all links cut. I couldn't communicate with the shuttle or even the sections of the base we'd already been through.
The cylinder had thick walls and electronics visible both above and below. Speakers on the wall came to life.
"Congratulations for getting here. The final test, the final trap," Amy said.
"What is she talking about, Emma?" Anna asked.
That was a very good question. I didn't have a clue. My role had been limited to that of an observer. I could see little more of this room than Anna.
"Do use that tiny undeveloped little organ you call a brain and stop depending on me for all the answers," I said.
Amy said, "Emma doesn't know either. I've always been impressed with my sis, but there is just one thing that never made any sense to me at all. Her human colleague with the delusions of grandeur mixed with the refusal to actually take possession of the powers needed to make them a reality. My sister deserves better," Amy said.
"Anna fears the insanity that comes with crystal usage. You can hardly blame her for that, she is quite awful enough already," I said.
"Thanks for the voice of support. So what is this?" Anna asked.
"First of all, understand that a coded transmission was sent to Queen Vinci as soon as you entered the room. It will take her a bit of time to crack, but when she does it will reveal this location and that of the powered-down Aefwal," Amy said.
I had no way to confirm that and no reason to doubt it. Without question Amy was capable of something like that—this entire scenario proved just how much she was capable of.
"But that isn't what you want to happen, is it?" Anna asked.
"There is a damaged console within the cylinder and an engineer like you would have no problems in getting it operational again. Doing so will activate a teleportation gate between here and Aefwal, and you can keep all these shiny prizes out of Queen Vinci's hands," Amy said.
"At what cost?" Anna asked, giving the cylinder a hard look. "Does it fill with nerve toxins? Acid spray? Just what horrible method of death have you devised for me?"
Amy laughed. It was a broken, maddened sound. She was beyond reason and well beyond sanity. "Oh, we are past killing you. We’ve done all those were tests and you succeeded, you're almost worthy of my sister."
"You're hoping I absorb a crystal," Anna said.
"Power crystals respond to any instability in an object. The Agate releases an energy that makes anything and anybody in its vicinity increasingly unstable. You might be able to finish the repairs, but I wouldn't count on it. Whatever, it is up to you two now. No more questions, no more taunts. Fix the console and escape, or lose and let Vinci control the world," Amy said.
Anna started to pace around the cylinder, studying the console from all angles. "It looks like everything is running through a power junction and even from what I can see here things are scrambled. How much time do you think we have?"
I said, "Amy doesn't intend for Vinci to win. The threats are to make sure you go through with it. That said, I believe the threat is probably real, but we are likely have some time to be smart about things."
"Then hit me with options," Anna said.
I'd been trying to come up with some. I was still locked down. If I were able to reach beyond this room there was a lot I could do.
"You might be able to slow down the effects of the Agate with energy manipulation. You already have the upgrade."
"I can throw the power crystals outside the chamber as soon as I enter," Anna said.
"If the key is the junction box, we might be able to bypass it."
"None of the output ports are labeled. We might be able to shave some time doing that, but if we didn't get it in the first few it would be an overall loss of time," Anna said.
"You should be able to use your scanner to isolate the various layers of the junction box. It will take awhile, but should lessen your time in the cylinder," I said.
Anna nodded at that. A tap at her ear and a visor slid out over her eyes.
"Would it truly be that bad? To absorb a crystal?" I asked.
"I'm fully aware of just how ruthless, conceited, and power-hungry I am even without one. I try to be a good person because there is a really terrible one hiding inside of me," Anna said.
"You've declared yourself Queen of the World and become one of the Scholarium's fastest-growing powers. In truth, you hide your dark side like that armor hides your figure," I said.
"Making my point for me," Anna said, circling around again to get a look from a new angle. Every so often she paused and lowered her head as if trying to commit something to memory.
"We know how to get the crystals out of someone. We've done it before and we can do it again, even if you do absorb one," I said.
"If I would allow it. A part of me wants to praise your sister endlessly for what she’s set up here. For forcing me to confront those parts of myself that would hold the rest back," Anna said.
"I wish I'd known that all this was lurking inside of my sister. I always knew there was something wrong with Amy."
"We all knew something was off with her. It was inconvenient to address and we always left it for another day."
"If she has really abandoned Aefwal, I wonder where she'll go?" I asked.
"Wherever she’s gone, it won't be far enough," Anna said and took a deep breath. "I think that is it. The diagram is a mess, but I know what I need to do."
Anna was a great engineer. She was almost as good at fixing things as she was at breaking them.
"Good luck," I said.
Anna nodded and hesitated outside the chamber. Taking several long and deep breaths she limbered up and ran inside. The first thing she did was hit the crystal rack with her fist, cracking the mounts and sending the crystals flying towards a door.
A doorway already closed. Thick heavy slabs of crystal dropped down to seal Anna inside the instant she passed the threshold. The crystals bounced off and fell to the floor, gleaming in the light.
I hadn't studied the impact of the Agate on humans at close range. Given the massive energy output I'd assumed it would be negative and result in the typical symptoms of high radiation exposure.
Anna knelt down before the crystal pedestal and opened the junction box, peeling aside the first layers to reach the bottom. She started to rewire. Even knowing exactly what needed to be done it was a tedious process.
"Can you still hear me?" Anna asked.
"I can. Shouldn't your need for meaningless banter fall second to your need to hurry?"
"Talking helps me to focus. It is hot in here, so hot."
I could see that. Sweat was beginning to glisten on her face.
"So getting t
he crystals outside was a failure," I said.
"Stopped by the brilliant invention of a door," Anna said, as her fingers wound a thread of wire around a connector. She started work on the next. The power crystals on the floor were starting to show unusual signs of behavior. Sparks of energy were flickering around them and arcing in Anna's direction, not quite closing the distance.
My sister really was on to something. Usually direct physical contact would serve as enough of a connection to absorb a power crystal, but it wasn't always successful. Some people just couldn't bond with some crystals.
I'd never seen a power crystal emitting energy like this, drawn towards a human like a plant seeking out light.
"I find it truly offensive that a quickly-made copy of me has had more success with traps in this place than I ever had," I said.
Anna grinned at that. "We had a good run. It didn't always work out as we planned, but it always worked out."
Anna was halfway through wiring a layer when a bolt of lightning struck her. The crystal it came from was the purest black, as was the lightning that hit her.
Anna screamed, her body twitching violently, and she collapsed to the floor as energy coursed through her. The crystal had vanished.
The discharge at least seemed to be a release of some kind. The other crystals no longer sparked.
Anna rose shakily back to her feet.
"That looked like a Darkness crystal," I said.
"It was," Anna said, as she knelt before the panel once more. "I'm now far stronger at night than in the daytime. Physically, I mean. I don't even know how I know that. How do you interact with your abilities?"
"Menus, status screens. Whenever I want to upgrade something I just pull up a screen and make the necessary adjustments," I said.
Anna laughed, a humorless sound. "Yeah, mine doesn't seem at all like that. Damn it. We'll get it out later. I'm halfway through."
The crystals were starting to spark again.
"Unless you want a second power to go with the first, I'd hurry," I said.
Anna glanced backward and said, "Really? If it’s such a pain to get a second crystal to bond with someone you'd think that it wouldn’t even try. Do you think the next would be the Amplification crystal?"