Chapter 6
For a moment, Second Lord Pallasophia could not decide which sight was more impressive. In the arena below them, the black-suited figure of Test Subject One Hundred finally toppled the mastigas elite. However, standing next to her, First Lord Tritogenes positively vibrated with excitement.
After several minutes of silence, he simply said, “she has done it.”
Pallasophia, beside him and with her eyes firmly riveted on the bright, sand-filled pit a dozen stories below them, simply nodded once. Seeing Tritogenes so excited was certainly a rare thing, but Number One Hundred was the truly fascinating sight.
She was aware, however, that what might have been tears glittered in the edges of her eyes.
“We have to get her out of there,” Tritogenes continued. “She will likely need medical attention. Not to mention the ceremonies that will have to be planned in her honor.”
Pallasophia finally tore her attention away from the window. “She has needed medical attention for days now. It seems knowing about the antiseptic properties of the mastigas's blood helped.”
Tritogenes nodded. “Make sure whoever had that idea received a commendation.”
She had already done so, several generations of test subjects ago in fact. Project Titan, while it was the most important of his affairs, was only one of Tritogenes's many operations and she could not fault him for forgetting the things that had already been taken care of. If he forgot to order a commendation altogether, she would have taken issue with it, but to simply be reminded twice was a small thing.
She looked back to the arena. Her Hexarch was right, even if he was just repeating something she already knew. Number One Hundred had to be taken out of the mastigas-infested parts of the facility as soon as possible. The only problem—truthfully, she thought, the main problem—was that after the Incident, the lower fifteen or so levels had not only been abandoned, but had been manually sealed as well.
The mastigas destroyed most of the communications equipment down there as well, which made getting a message in or out impossible. It was only Tritogenes's paranoid forethought that protected the gestation pods themselves from the mastigas. They were armored using the same sort of state-of-the-art material that went into frontline military warships.
Nothing could penetrate the exterior of the gestation pods, which was how not only Number One Hundred but many more before her had been born. So the Project continued, at least until now.
“How long until we can free her?” Tritogenes asked.
Pallasophia thought for a moment, noting his use of “free” instead of any other word he could have chosen just then. To continue Project Titan, even with the facility sealed, had been his express order. Nothing, he had ordered, was to impede its progress. Pallasophia had, at the time, raised considerable objection over that point, but in a rare display of rank, the Hexarch overruled her.
And then, she thought with a frown, he handed the Project over to her anyway. She ignored that sudden burst of frustration, pushing it down to be dealt with later. Pallasophia might have been comfortable speaking her mind in front of her Hexarch, at least in private, but that would start trouble she did not want to deal with.
“A day,” she replied, “perhaps two. I will have to organize a team to clear out the rest of the facility. The sensors we still have down there tell me that several dozen mastigas are still alive.”
Tritogenes paled. “How many, exactly?”
“It's hard to count, exactly. No more than four gigas, I think.”
“But the sophont is dead?”
Pallasophia nodded. “She killed it before taking out the elite.”
Tritogenes nodded and stood up. He smoothed the purple folds of his robe and reflexively adjusted the fall of his braid. Pallasophia stood a moment later, paying noticeably less attention to her outward appearance.
“Keep the retrieval team small,” he ordered. “And be careful. If we wanted to storm the facility with an army, we would have.”
Rather than turn her frustrated glare on Tritogenes, Pallasophia looked out the window as Number One Hundred cut apart the fabric making up the elite's clothing. “Of course.”
“The fewer people who know, the better, at least for right now. I need to go prepare to address the Council. I ought to stop by Katarraktes first.”
“Why there?” Pallasophia suspected she knew the reason. Despite a rocky start to their professional relationship, First Lord Enyalios, Hexarch of Katarraktes, had been one of Tritogenes's closest confidants and supporters since the beginning of Project Titan.
“Limani's orbit is fairly close to Katarraktes this time of year. It will be a simple matter to stop there for a short visit before continuing on to Prosgeiosi. Besides,” Tritogenes added with a small smile, “it will be good to see how his part of the Project is doing and to plan our next moves before we have to actually enact them.”
Pallasophia nodded. A moment passed and she said, “Tritogenes?”
The tone of her voice made it clear she was addressing him as her friend, not as her social superior. “Yes?”
“Promise me that you will treat One Hundred with humanity. Remember what I said to you before showing you the footage of Number Thirty's end.”
Tritogenes's face darkened and he turned slightly away. That had been a sore point between the two of them for some time. Tritogenes had been much more active in the Project in the earliest stages, especially in the first ten trials. However, their continued deaths—the events he referred to as “failures of the Project” to keep the wall between his feelings and the Project's needs—got to him. The Incident occurred after Number Nineteen's death, and Number Twenty was the last one Tritogenes oversaw personally.
Pallasophia took over fully from the Hexarch starting with Subject Twenty-One. By subject Twenty-Nine, she knew she had to bring him back in. She convinced him to watch the footage of Number Thirty to, as she explained, “better understand what might be improved in subsequent variations.”
As it happened, Number Thirty died horrifically by poison. At the end, his very organs had liquefied, but his mind was far gone by that point. The events sickened the First Lord, but he ordered her to press on despite that. The Project, he argued, was too important to the survival of the human race to halt.
Number Thirty-One was killed by a gigas, but Thirty's memories of poison, implanted via a process which Pallasophia herself designed, kept Thirty-One alive just a little longer.
“We owe a debt to our dead,” Tritogenes said darkly. He still refused to look directly at Pallasophia. “Now, I should go. If I hurry, I can schedule a meeting with Philip before I depart Limani.”
The Second Lord stood and watched him depart, carrying a heavy weight on his shoulders. She felt the same weight, but had no time to dwell on it. She wanted to hate Tritogenes for putting the entire Project on her shoulders, but she understood all too well his feelings.
She did, however, resent him for leaving Aphelion so quickly. Tritogenes should have stayed to meet Test Subject Number One Hundred, to stand beside her when they explained exactly why she had been subjected to the nightmare that was her life.
Eventually she followed Tritogenes out of the small room. By the time she did, the Hexarch was long gone. She took a deep breath and held it for a moment, hoping that everything they had done, all of their sins, would be worth it.
A gesture activated her computer's holo display. As with most, hers floated a few centimeters above her forearm. It only took a moment to navigate through the layers of menus until she reached her communication directory.
“This is Second Lord Director Pallasophia.” She spoke into a small pickup disguised as a necklace. “I need to meet with Strategos Glaukos at his earliest possible convenience.”
She nodded as the person on the other end of the line acknowledged her request and then deactivated her comm. Glaukos normally worked at what passed for the “night shift” in a facility where the binary suns were little more than brig
ht dots. It would likely be the better part of an hour before he returned her message, but that was just as well. It gave her time to return to the suite where she lived and make preparations for Number One Hundred.
***
Three hours after Number One Hundred killed the mastigas elite, Tritogenes boarded his personal shuttle, heading for Limani. Pallasophia still found herself with a bitter taste in her mouth over that decision, but three hours of voicing her opinion had not changed his mind. With little she could do there, Pallasophia threw herself into work again.
With luck, the First Lord would make it to Limani in just a few days. This time of year, his world and Aphelion were on the same side of the binary suns. That would cut down on travel time significantly. From there, Katarraktes would only be a day or two away. Depending on how long he spent at home, he could easily reach Enyalios's planet within two weeks.
After seeing Tritogenes off, Pallasophia returned to her suite. She wanted to sleep, but Pallasophia had a sinking feeling that she would not get a decent night's sleep until Number One Hundred was safe. Even then, that would only bring another set of problems to plague her schedule and keep her up at night.
Before the meeting she scheduled with Strategos Glaukos, Pallasophia had just enough time to wash and change clothes. She also took a moment to brush a blue streak through her short and otherwise featureless hair and apply a rough smear of black makeup that covered her eyes, eyebrows, and upper cheekbones.
Catching herself in the mirror as she left the suite, she had to admit she liked the look. Both added touches were in vogue with the Technocrat military, especially those stationed at Aphelion. It was good, she reasoned, to style things so that she fit in with the people she was about to be meeting with.
The facility's guard force nodded politely as she passed on her way to Glaukos's office. They obviously knew who she was, but a visit from “Facility Director Pallasophia” was very different from a visit by “Lochagos Pallasophia.” The minor changes to her appearance, including her choice of a vibrant blue robe whose hue was more in keeping with military tradition than the navy blue robe she had on that morning, made her “one of them.” She could have spoken to those she passed, but she had no business with them and so left them to their work.
Finally, after making her way through the armory itself, which did require an extra security check, Pallasophia found herself in Glaukos's office. In contrast to the utilitarian setup of the rooms outside, the Strategos's waiting room was rather luxurious.
An oversized cup of coffee steamed pleasantly on the table beside her seat, brought ten minutes before by a Fourth Lord who apologized for the delay. Pallasophia took another sip from the mug, not sure if it was the caffeine or the unreasonably bitter, military-strength brew that helped her energy level.
Probably, she reasoned, it was both. Still, if Glaukos did not show up soon, she was going to go back to her suite and sleep. That was not entirely fair to the Strategos, however, as it was Pallasophia who woke him up in the first place, and so she waited until Aphelion's Security Director saw fit to present himself.
She only had to wait a few more minutes before the door opened. A large man in a blue robe stepped through. He had close-cropped hair, though intricate designs had been freshly shaved into the sides. The folds of his robe draped around a large pistol at his side, one worn to be seen rather than the smaller weapon Pallasophia kept concealed in the folds of her own robe.
He closed the door with all propriety, nodding to the Third Lord working security outside, then turned. The neutral look left his face, replaced by something that was half grin and half mock-anger.
“Selene's Tits, woman! What do you think you're doing getting me out of bed in the middle of the day?”
Pallasophia, despite her attempts to the contrary, failed utterly at keeping her face neutral. She cracked a grin, then a smile, and finally resorted to a moment of full-blown laughter. She stood and held out a hand. “Nice to see you too, Second Lord Glaukos.”
He grasped her arm by the wrist. She did likewise, and they shook hands once.
He grinned, broad and bright. “What's this 'Second Lord Glaukos' nonsense? The door's shut. The other Twos won't hear us.”
Pallasophia's smile persisted. “Alright,” she said, slipping into the same sort of less formal language he was using. “If you insist.”
“That's better.”
“Strategos.” Her wink ruined the formal emphasis of his rank.
He laughed. “I suppose I deserved that.”
“A bit, yeah.”
“I'll take what I can get, Director.”
“As you should.”
“Anyway, what did you need?”
Pallasophia returned to her seat. She waved Glaukos to the other one, taking a long drink of her coffee as he adjusted himself in the oversized leather chair.
At his expectant expression, Pallasophia laughed. “Didn't you read the message I forwarded?”
He shrugged.
“Strategos.”
Glaukos laughed. “Stars, woman! Of course I read it. You were just vague, is all.”
“There's only so much I can say in a message that might be intercepted.”
Glaukos scoffed. “My staff's security is top notch.”
“No security is impenetrable, Glaukos. You ought to know that. Gods' sake, given what's at stake here...”
Glaukos's raucous laughter interrupted her, but he said nothing.
Pallasophia sighed. “Right.”
“It's too easy when you're tired, Director.”
“I'm about thirty minutes away from sleeping for twelve hours,” she said, “so I'm going to keep this as short as I can. The Project has finally paid off.”
His eyes went wide. That part had not been in the message she sent. “Paid off? As in...?”
“The test subjects...”
“The people,” Glaukos grunted, interrupting her.
Pallasophia nodded, looking away. “Yes, people. Ninety-nine dead, plus the personnel we lost during the Incident, and we finally have what we've been looking for this entire time.”
Glaukos's eyes went wide. “Don't tell me that someone's finally completed that insane series of trials that Tritogenes came up with.”
“Number One Hundred. She killed an elite with her bare hands.” Pallasophia chuckled. “Well, her bare hands, two large knives, and a metal club.”
Glaukos nodded. His eyes drifted around the room as his thoughts processed the implications of what she was saying. He sat back in his chair, crossed one leg over the other under his robes, and steepled his fingers in front of his face. When he finally spoke, he still used informal language, but his tone was thoughtful and measured.
“And now you need to get her out of there. We sealed up those levels for a reason, Pallasophia, and even though you and the Hexarch insisted on continuing the Project afterward, I don't know how easy it's going to be to unseal them.”
“It can be done.”
“Of course it can be done,” he said, then laughed. “Anything you can build or lock up can be broken with enough time. That's not the problem. The issue is going to be making sure it's safe for, well, normal people.”
“Number One Hundred...” she began.
Glaukos interrupted. “Is not normal. We both know that. Whatever she survived down there would have killed most people, even my soldiers. It's going to take more than cutting a door open to get her out safely.”
“Then give me a team.”
“Give you a...” he started. “You're not going down there.”
“You know, Tritogenes told me something very similar earlier today.”
Glaukos shook his head. “I'm sure he did.”
Pallasophia set her half-empty coffee mug down on the small table next to her chair. “She's my responsibility. Need I remind you that I do hold the rank of Lochagos?”
“And I hold the rank of Strategos,” he countered, “and I say you cannot go down there. It's too danger
ous.”
“Lochagos,” she said, ticking things off on her fingers, “Second Lord. Director. You can overrule the first, out-argue the second, but you cannot overrule the third, and that's the one I invoke, Glaukos.”
He eyed her for a long moment, then sighed. A complex relationship existed between Social Rank, where they were equal, Military rank, where he outranked her, and their actual job, where she outranked him. Finally, he acquiesced, “fine, but you're taking my best with you.”
She smiled. “That's why I'm here.”
“I know of two I'm sending down regardless. Did you want to request anyone specific?”
“I'll leave it up to your judgment,” she said. “Strategos.”
He gave a mock-exasperated sigh. “At least you leave some things up to me.” Seriousness returned to his voice and he added, “give me a day.”
***
Victoria awoke some time later. She had no idea how long she slept, but her bones ached from laying in one position for so long. With the doors closed and barred, the stench of the four-armed monster's former lair had quickly become overwhelming. Despite that, and the primal fear-reaction it elicited from her heart, she slept better and longer than she ever had.
The long sleep had done wonders for her mind. Fatigue crept up on her so slowly that Victoria had not realized how tired she actually became. Her sleep time and meal time were so irregular that she could not rely on them to log passed time. However, it was clear enough from the way she felt now that she had gone much too long without sufficient sleep.
Eventually, she realized, fatigue would have caught up with her and even one of the little green eyes would have killed her. At that, she realized exactly how lucky she really was that she encountered the beast when she did. Much longer without proper rest, and the four-armed monster would have torn her apart, just like it tore apart so many others.
She shuddered at that memory. It made her whole body hurt, even thinking about it. Muscles and joints being ripped apart, bones snapping, and the last few moments of life where the mind she remembered being clung to consciousness even as it realized nothing below its ribs remained attached.
Born in Darkness Page 10