A Treason of Truths

by Ada Harper

  The underworks shuddered like a forest of steel and rust as Lyre retreated from the shuttle bay. But oh, she could run. It was almost enjoyable, flying through sewer tunnels, rabbiting up cramped chutes, only stopping when a patrol passed within a hair’s breadth of the pulse thundering in her chest. She only half saw the vines that reached, half smelled the perfume of tumorous flesh-eating flowers and beautiful leafed monsters that marked her passage. Her mind was on the map. The underworks was a mystery even to Vault inhabitants. But the past forty-eight hours had expanded her internal map of the place. More than that, she had an understanding of it now. One she could have never gotten as a native child or a terrified soldier.

  Now she knew the underworks wasn’t a sewer, it was a body. It had a pulse, a breath, a logic all its own. The monsters down here didn’t survive, thrive, evolve by chance. They built a network, an ecosystem, a body you could traverse, like fingers up the spine, as long as you knew where to go.

  The Vault was a city built on the corpse of an old world. A living corpse, which was just horrific enough to make perfect sense for the Cloud Vault. Lyre had walked over enough corpses to manage. She could see the path in her mind. Sylvere wouldn’t have kept Cian down here, but he wouldn’t have risked parading Cian through the surface city either. Not if, as Lyre suspected, he was acting rogue to the rest of the Vault.

  That left a place where Sylvere’s lackeys could easily travel to and from the underworks, yet reasonably private and within Sylvere’s realm of control.

  The best realm of control for a scientist was their laboratory.

  Lyre emerged topside near the loading docks to the research wing. It was the closest she could get without risking stumbling into any alarms Sylvere might have set. The light was blinding after her mad dash through the dark, and revealed just how filthy the underworks had been. Pollen and muck painted fat swaths over her clothes. Her pant legs were permanently discolored by sewer water. And the very specific perfume of the underworks followed her out of the hatch.

  A little—okay, a lot of—dirt didn’t bother Lyre, but she couldn’t exactly slip through the labs unnoticed like this. Fortunately, no lab dealing in biotech was complete without a sanitization station every other door. Lyre scrubbed the stench from her hands and face the best she could and found a hazard suit her size. It would cover her clothes and, if she ran into anyone familiar, the tinted mask would hide her in a pinch. It would also unfortunately lock her in with her own smell, but there was nothing to be done for that.

  She grabbed a blue perma-plast bio-container on the way out, which completed the disguise. No one questioned a transport tech moving specimens between labs. Trolley mechs worked just as well, but some scientists were so paranoid about their research that they made their minions do it. And if this minion smelled a little rank—well, that was the kind of work done on the Vault.

  The halls were surprisingly orderly, despite the shuddering and swaying of the flotilla. Lab coats passed in groups of two or three, noses too deep in their data slates to pay attention to the emergency lights blinking red and orange over their heads. Which was...odd. Even for the Vault.

  “If this drill upsets my phylum samples I will speak my mind to Dr. Khait, I swear.”

  At Khait’s name, Lyre slowed her pace to trail a pair of scientists as they passed.

  “He’s been shut up in his labs all day. Besides, what’re you gonna do?” The shorter tech said with an elegant shrug. “Altitude descent routines. First time they’ve done it since I’ve been here.”

  “No one remembers running this drill before. I bet it’s that nasty security committee...”

  Lyre stopped in her tracks and pretended to steady her nonexistent samples as the two disappeared around the corner. A drill, of course, would have been exactly the kind of excuse to use to hide the failure of the engines or strange security movements throughout the flotilla. She’d expected that much. But the specifics of it, calling it a descent drill gnawed at her.

  It had to have been an empty threat to Sabine. Lyre didn’t believe Sylvere actually intended to crash the Vault. That was stupid. Not because it would kill a lot of people, but because it would kill things. He might want to create a diversion to get his daughter out of the Syndicate, but he also was a Vault scientist. Genius types, in her experience, came in two flavors. The ambitious, who would never tank their ticket to fame and power, and the true believers, who would never destroy the one remaining library of so much accumulated knowledge. It didn’t matter which one Sylvere was, he wouldn’t crash the Vault.

  Then why specify it was a descent drill? The only reason to get that specific with a cover story was if you knew what, precisely, might make people suspicious otherwise. But the Vault wouldn’t descend. Sylvere likely intended to randomly kill this engine and that, make the underworks creak and groan, sway and snap, until Sabine turned herself over to him.

  But Sabine was off and away. Surely Sylvere had detected an emergency glider gone, hopefully without the ability to shoot them out of the sky. So he had to know Sabine was gone.

  But the city was still groaning like a buckling ship.

  Lyre picked up her pace. Because it occurred to her that she’d left a factor out of her equation. Sylvere was a Vault genius. But Sylvere was also from the Syn. Living in the Syndicate didn’t make you evil, as the nobles thought. It didn’t even make you untrustworthy, as Sabine thought. Living in the Syn made you self-aware. Aware of your price, aware of the cost of every transaction—that everything was a transaction—aware of the precise value of your own desperation. Olivia had that same kind of awareness, wielded like a blade and mostly against herself. Lyre half admired it sometimes. Personally, she preferred clear-hearted lies, but that kind of honesty could turn alley cats into war heroes. Or men of science into monsters.

  I accept the cost, Sylvere had said on the comms. Lyre had to hide the new urgency in her steps.

  She knew from her earlier expedition that Sylvere shared a lab with Dr. Khait. It was a botany and nanotech lab, but it didn’t take her too long to hotwire the retinal scan and slip inside.

  People always had wild ideas about spy work. Vast martial prowess, nighttime assassinations. Truthfully, the beauty of being a spy was systems. People relied on systems. Believed in them more than their so-called gods. Expected them to keep them safe. So when you circumvent a system—like, say, show up in a supposedly restricted lab in proper science drone uniform—you barely warranted a second look.

  Systems were a spy’s best friend.

  The outer labs were a haze of activity, but thanks to systems Lyre managed to walk right through with a bored expression. Past the inner labs, there wasn’t a soul around. No surprise. Lyre had counted on the fact that Sylvere wouldn’t want his research assistants around while he committed war crimes.

  Lyre expected to find Cian subdued somehow. Cuffed, drugged, caged. Granted, Cian was skinny enough it wouldn’t take much but his mind alone made him a tricky prisoner.

  So finding him in a stark white room devoid of locks, bars, or restraints was a surprise. A single chair sat in the center of the room, over a grate. It was occupied by a familiar thin figure. Stained Syndicate jacket. Drumming fingers at his thigh.

  “Cian,” Lyre said once she was certain she couldn’t be mistaken.

  Cian didn’t so much as turn or tilt his head. He kept his eyes closed, deep set into a face a little too pale. There was something wrong with the way he held his shoulders and it set Lyre’s nerves on edge.

  “Spy,” Cian said with a wispy sigh. “I’d calculated your appearance at twenty percent likelihood. I must be working with inaccurate data.”

  “I didn’t come here for you,” Lyre said, which was patently true and false at the same time. She’d come for Cian. But she was here for other reasons. She approached, still a little wary of a trap. Cian’s wrists were bruised but bare. “Where’s Sylvere? You h
aven’t even tried to escape. I didn’t peg you as a collaborator.”

  “Our host is out, I believe seeing to his survival plans. I wouldn’t guess to his return.” Cian’s voice was calm, even though his cheeks looked flushed. He licked his lips and left a faint tinge of blood behind. “I suppose I wasn’t considered much of a flight risk. Considering.”

  “Considering.” An unease seeped up the back of Lyre’s neck. Not from the possibility that Cian was here because he’d given in, but was here because he didn’t. His coat hung loose on his shoulders, over some fresh black clothes he hadn’t been wearing before. His wrists lay heavy in his lap, and the fine skin of his hands were speckled with the same rust-red dots that colored his cheeks. A glance said it was everywhere. His breath was shallow and eyes still closed.

  “You didn’t collaborate.” Lyre let out a slow breath to prepare for the answer. “The nano agent. What’s he done?”

  “A practical application of malnutrition. I think he hates the Syndicate too much to just kill me.” Cian winced, as if his throat pained him, but then he smiled. His gums were scarlet. “Selected a vitamin, seeped it from my cells. Solinate. Essential to ligament growth, collagen production. Very clever.”

  “It’s only been a few hours, at most.”

  “Nanite technology. Has no need of natural progression.”

  Lyre considered. Solinate was a basic vitamin, and the only cases of malnutrition she could recall were from poverty-stricken areas where modern supplements hadn’t caught up with a dwindling citrus supply. The effects...weren’t pretty. She reassessed Cian again, the still way the awkward man held himself. The rust speckling on his cheeks. “You’re bleeding internally.”

  “Collagen is a crucial material in healing and scar formation,” Cian said distantly. “I’m not a medical doctor, but before our host left he explained the fascinating process. Did you know without a constant replenishment of collagen old wounds can reopen, even years later?”

  “No scar is forgotten,” Lyre murmured. It was an old Imperial saying, hinting at the long memory and grudges between Houses. She’d never considered the literal and grisly roots of it. “How bad?”

  “Let’s just say that it’s fortunate I lead a bookish life, and my battles were not the kind fought with guns.”

  “Good. We’re getting out of here.” Lyre grabbed an elbow to haul him up, stopping just as quickly when a strangled squeak deflated out of the man. “You said you didn’t have many wounds.”

  “I don’t.” Cian wheezed, patting at his waist gingerly. His fingers came away wet and wine-dark with blood. “I did, however, engage in the best assistive data technology that the Syn had to offer.”

  Implants. The rich of the Syndicate didn’t have to use slates or bands to interact with the information feed of the pulse. They had interfaces implanted directly. His fucking implant surgeries are reopening. Lyre couldn’t decide to laugh or curse. “How bad is it? Can you walk?”

  Slowly, Cian opened his eyes. Even Lyre had to flinch. The whites were mottled with red and wept a pink liquid. His ocular implants. “It will be a slow, painful death, if that’s what you’re worried about. Long enough to drag me out of here.” Cian appeared contemplative. “Or put me out of my misery before Sylvere returns, I suppose.”

  “I try not to shoot men when they’re down.” Lyre stepped forward and helped him up with more care this time. “The empress gets terrible disappointed when I do.”

  “You value her opinion,” Cian observed. “I was working with incorrect data.”

  Lyre groaned and aimed them for the door. “Oh do shut up, you—”

  Dr. Elias Khait stood in front of the only door out of the room. Arms crossed and expression made of stone. The impulse was there, to drop Cian and throw herself toward the back wall, where she’d tracked a grate large enough to squeeze through when she’d entered.

  Instead, she came to a calm halt. She knew where the grate was. It would be there. She wouldn’t give it away by looking at it. “Doctor. I was under the impression you had a drill to run.”

  Dr. Khait reacted as if she hadn’t spoken at all. “I told Sylvere you’d stick around. He didn’t believe me.”

  “Even geniuses can be wrong, some of the time.” Lyre didn’t have a weapon, and even if she did, she’d never get to it in time with her hands full of Cian. The prime minister was barely conscious from the pain, and Lyre’s side had begun to feel sticky where he was pressed against her. But she always had words. She’d learned that from Sabine. “You didn’t strike me as the type to endorse torture, Doctor.”

  Khait’s gaze clouded. Lyre caught a flicker of movement there, like a rumble of air before the storm, disquieting everything. She clicked her tongue. “Unless you weren’t asked for your endorsement. I thought this was your lab.”

  “It is,” Khait ground out. “It’s not like you think. It’s not...” The words wilted on his tongue, as if just realizing he couldn’t go through with that denial.

  “Not torture? To attack a man’s body from the inside until he bleeds to death from his own scars?” Lyre tilted her head and Cian groaned, whether in pain or for show. “It’s, what, an experiment then?”

  “No!” Khait’s craggy face contorted and he tugged a hand through his hair. “Micha, he—Dr. Sylvere has been under a lot of strain.”

  There was something in his voice. The floor tilted again. Lyre didn’t have time to play coy. “Is Sylvere planning to destroy the Vault? Can he do that?” He was, after all, just one scientist. On a flotilla full of scientists. It shouldn’t be possible.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “Incomplete data,” Cian mumbled into her shoulder.

  “I don’t know. He’s got something on the executive. He’s—the summit was his suggestion. I think he’s been running the Vault for days.”

  Lyre’s thoughts raced. She shook her head. “Mother wouldn’t allow that.”

  “Mother’s offices have been empty for a week.”

  “The entire intelligence agency? That’s...”

  “Impossible. I know. I just... I don’t know what impossible thing Sylvere’s planning next.” Khait’s hands tightened in his hair. “I can’t find him.”

  “You can’t—” Lyre took a step forward. Cian felt like a dead weight against her shoulder right now. “You have to stop him.”

  Khait was already shaking his head. “I am not sure I can.”

  “He’s killing Cian.”

  “That...” Khait finally dropped his hands from his head. In a breath he was steadier. He turned to the console on the far wall. “That I can stop.”

  Lyre stopped. “You can.” She did a silent reassessment of her interactions with Khait. The grumbling, the reluctance the...concern. “You’re not here to stop us.”

  “Your deductive power continues to amaze, Scarab.” Khait’s fingers flew over the keys. “If I stop you, the prime minister dies. If the prime minister dies, that makes Dr. Sylvere a murderer. I won’t let that happen.”

  Except there was the small matter of a dead northern lord that was already on Sylvere’s body count. Evidently, that one didn’t count in Vault minds. Cian was getting heavy. Lyre set him gingerly back into the chair, still not quite taking her eyes off Khait. “Can’t have that. What are you doing?”

  Khait didn’t look up. “Rewriting the permissions for the agent.”

  The ground creaked. A new alarm took up chorus somewhere closer to the lab. They didn’t have time for this. “Suggestion: destroy the agent.”

  “Can’t.” A furrow formed between Khait’s brows. She hadn’t thought he could look any grumpier than his standard. “It’s a complicated bit of work.”

  “You told me you were the most senior mind in the field.”

  “And I also told you that Sylvere is the best mind in the
field.” Khait seemed grim, but not grudging of the statement. In fact, he seemed distantly proud. “This is Micha’s baby. And it’s magnificent.”

  Lyre distinctly did not have the time to try to unpack the complexities obvious in the scientists’ relationship. She sighed. “Rewriting permissions will stop the bleeding?”

  “No, but it will eject any old commands in the agent’s queue. Stop leeching him dry. The rest can be reversed once you’re out. And Dr. Sylvere will lack the authority to start it again.”

  “Who will have the authority?” Lyre could smell a clever con within ten paces.

  Khait kept typing. “You.”

  Lyre blinked. “I’m not a scientist. I don’t know how to muck about with nanites!”

  “No, but you’re Scarab, whether you like it or not. Vault bred and Vault trained.” Khait shrugged, as if he was commenting on the weather. “You’ll figure it out eventually.”

  “Statistically questionable,” Cian mumbled into her shoulder.

  “What he said.” But Cian was still conscious, and color had started to return to his cheeks, if only slightly. Then again, she could only make a vague estimation of how much blood he’d already lost. “Will this take long, doc?”

  “Done.” Khait whipped through a few more translucent screens until he appeared satisfied by what he saw. “I slipped the reversal into your Vault agents as well. These nanites update by proximity network. Return to your empress’s presence and her nanites will be disabled as well. That will buy her people enough time to purge them safely.”

  Proximity to the empress. She could save Sabine. Put her mind to rest. Cure her with a smile—no, a kiss. Lyre’s lips tingled and twitched into a grin at the thought of it. Her. A big damn hero after all. “Thanks, Doc.”

  Khait just nodded. He moved to the other side of Cian and helped shoulder some of his weight as they hobbled to the door. “There’s a research shuttle toward the back of the wing that should have been overlooked. I already cleared it. Apologize to the empress for me.”

  “You’re not coming?”