Deep Hydra

by Michael Formichelli

  “Meia, respond.”

  I’m fine, just thinking. She looked ahead and saw the tower looming off to the right. Her UI showed none of the signals in the ultra-low frequency that Sanul told her would reveal the spy grain.

  The tower grew larger and the taxi banked again, inserting itself into the narrow stretch of air between Cosmos Corp and the Keremann Industries Tower. She focused on the window in her UI, watching it parse out the various radio waves penetrating the vehicle. The taxi leveled off and the tower whipped past on the right. Meia turned around enough to watch it begin to recede down the block.

  Nothing. Could the grain be destroyed or deactivated?

  “Affirmative, that is a possibility. It is also possible that the tower itself prevents its signal from leaving the building. There was a directional drop in radio signals when you passed by.”

  Meia turned back around. How did Sanul check it?

  “I believe there is a public access lobby on the North-West side. Once inside the building you may be able to pick up the signal.”

  She nodded. “Taxi, drop me on the northwest side of Revenant Tower.”

  “Affirmative,” the cab’s AI said and the vehicle banked.

  Meia watched the towers of the Business District scroll sideways and up beyond the windows of the cab. It dropped down at the tower’s front entrance with a gentle thud on the sidewalk.

  “Thank you,” she said to the AI and got out. Carina’s account was charged for the ride.

  “Have a nice day Ms. Starblood,” the AI responded and the cab lifted into the air behind her.

  Four glass doors interrupted the smooth black surface like a rectangular maw. Two massive statues guarded the entrance. Beyond them lay the black marble and white walls of Baron Revenant’s lobby. Each statue appeared to be a heavily muscled man over three meters tall holding a trident. It could have been her imagination, but she could swear that their eyes were actively watching the people coming and going through the doors.

  Anything? she sent as she joined the crowd headed inside. Several people going the opposite way bumped her shoulders as she walked, jostling her back and forth in their rush to flee from their place of employment.

  “Negative,” Iapetus responded.

  The hammering of her bootheels became a click-click-click as she stepped onto the marble floor. Although wide, the lobby was not as deep as she was expecting. As the crowd thinned she found herself in plain sight of a white-skinned artificial sitting behind a tall reception desk.

  “May I help you ma’am?” The two black dots of its pupils locked onto her. It was modeled to be female wearing a dark gray business suit with the silver comet of Cosmos Corp on its lapels.

  Iapetus?

  “Negative, stand by.”

  “Ma’am?” the artificial asked again.

  “Ah, yeah. I was wondering if there were any job openings?” she said, scrambling for some excuse to be there.

  “Job openings? Ma’am, please apply for jobs via our cyberweb address. I will be happy to transmit it to you if you like.”

  “Ah, I’m sure I can find it on my own.” She made to turn away from the desk and paused. “Hey, do you know Baron Revenant? He’s quite handsome, don’t you agree?”

  The artificial stared at her, no doubt processing the unexpected input before responding.

  Iapetus, suggestions? Can you hack her?

  “Affirmative, however, there is a risk of setting off local security measures. Suggest you find a place to use your invisibility.”

  That’s right! The armacorium could make her invisible for short periods of time. She just needed a spot to vanish that was out of sight.

  “Ma’am, my apologies but I am not programmed to engage in small talk. If your business is concluded, please depart the premises.”

  “Of course. One more thing, is there a bathroom here? I really gotta go.”

  “Ma’am, the bathroom is not for public use. Please depart the premises.”

  “You’re going to have a puddle on your nice marble floor if I don’t get to one soon.” Meia crossed her legs and bounced in place. “Please?”

  “Ma’am, please depart the premises.”

  She frowned at the passive expression in the pale face and wracked her brain for ideas. There were no pillars in the lobby, no kiosks or other large items she could slip behind to activate her armacorium without being in full view. This mission was going to be a failure.

  “Hello, ma’am, what’s the issue here?”

  She looked up to the source of the voice and stifled her shock. Beak-nosed, with unkempt black hair, Suman Rega was staring at her with piercing brown eyes. The black suit he wore slimmed his already thin body down to almost skeletal levels, and there was a slight odor coming off him that seemed a combination of unwashed human and laboratory chemicals.

  “I, ah, need a bathroom,” she said.

  “Not a problem, ma’am.” He smiled at her. There was something off in the gleam in his eyes, but she made herself smile back.

  “Sir, use of the bathrooms on this level is restricted to Cosmos Corp personnel,” the receptionist stated.

  “We’ll make an exception in this case. This woman, um, Miss?”

  “Carina,” she said.

  “Miss Carina, the bathroom is right over there.” He pointed across the lobby to a door by the lift bank.

  “Thank you, um—”

  “Suman Rega,” he said. “I’m on my way out now but why don’t you come by tomorrow. I would very much like to treat you to lunch Miss Carina.”

  Stifling the laugh that threatened to bubble up out of her throat, Meia broadened her smile and winked at him.

  “That would be lovely.” She headed off to the bathroom before he could respond. To her relief, the door slid open at her approach.

  Like I’d ever do that, she thought and slipped into one of the stalls. At her command the armacorium shifted. Her clothing melted and slid over her skin, then formed nanostructures to redirect light. A counter appeared in her UI; she had four hours of invisibility before her power source failed.

  Meia stepped back out into the lobby in time to see Rega exit the building and start talking to a tall, thin woman with a pointed chin and dark eyes beneath a mane of raven hair. A tingle ran down her spine as she looked at the woman, and she had an idea.

  Iapetus, anything?

  “Negative, you will have to get closer to the top levels.”

  I have a hunch, I’m going to follow Rega.

  “I advise against this course of action, Meia. The mission is to acquire the spy grain data.”

  We’re not having much luck here. Perhaps I can get Rega to give me a tour of the building later. This is a chance to get more intel on his activities.”

  “Acknowledged. Be careful, Meia.”

  She moved as fast as she could without running and flowed out of the building with a group of laughing businessmen. An air taxi dropped down to the street before Rega and the mystery woman and they both got inside. The door folded shut and it lifted off.

  Meia charged the cab without thinking and leaped up, activating her armacorium’s stick-skin function as she landed on the trunk of the oval cab. Her eyes grew wide as she realized what she just did. The street fell away beneath her and she felt the damp wind whipping around her body.

  This could be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done, she thought to herself. The cab raced forward through the canyon of towers. The wind became a gale which strained her arms and tried to rip her from the cab’s surface but her armacorium held fast.

  It turned a corner, banking hard, and Meia felt herself slide several centimeters. Her heart skipped a beat as gravity and inertia clawed at her body as though they were living things hungry for her to fall. Half a kilometer below people looked like dots moving between the towers.

  “Fuck fuck fuck,” she chanted, staring at the spot on the taxi’s trunk where her invisible hand pressed against it.

  The cab leveled out a
nd started to drop. She panted, waiting for it to touch down, and when it did she gratefully detached herself and flopped over onto her back on the street.

  Rega and the woman got out and headed into a restaurant with an old wood veneer. It projected a holographic sign in her UI that read “Fried Delectables.”

  She blinked. All this to watch him eat?

  The cab lifted off and she forced herself to her feet. Afraid of losing them, she hurried up to the restaurant and slid in as the door closed.

  The interior was dark and full of the noise of lunch-time patronage. The walls were carved with high relief of scenes of Cleebians and Achinoi building the city. It struck her that the style and subject choice matched that in the Palace, which spoke of how old this restaurant must be. Wooden tables crowded the floor with barely any space to walk between them, and a long bar with more bottles of spirits than she ever saw in one place was against the wall on her left.

  Rega and his companion moved through the maze with barely a break in their pace. The staff, mostly Achinoi with bright-colored quills on their shoulders and heads, didn’t twitch an eye to acknowledge them, but seemed to be moving out of their way at just the right moment as they headed for a set of double doors at the back.

  Strange, she thought and followed, though she found it much harder than they did to move through the crowded room. She kept stopping to allow people past lest she bump into them and reveal herself. By the time she reached the doors Rega and the woman were on the other side. She waited two seconds, then pushed into one and followed, hoping that no one noticed the door opening.

  The next room was the kitchen. It bustled with activity as brown-scaled Achinoi cooked a variety of dishes from the worlds of the Confederation.

  Her eyes scanned the room, seeking her targets. They were nowhere to be found, and the only other portal in the kitchen was a large metal door leading into a freezer.

  Meia licked her lips, tasting the metallic armacorium. She worked her way up to it, dodging around waiters and busboys carrying large trays of filthy dishes. She placed her hand on the handle and looked around, waiting for a moment when all eyes were busy elsewhere before pulling the door open and slipping inside.

  Cold hit her when she stepped into the small metal room. The door clicked shut behind her as she looked around at the various frost covered boxes on the shelves. Where could they have gone? She moved forward, reaching over the cartons of food to press her hands on the metal walls behind them. She knew they didn’t just come into a freezer and vanish, so there had to be some kind of hidden switch somewhere.

  Iapetus, I need penetrating radar.

  “Acknowledged.”

  The walls of the freezer became transparent and the world beyond turned light-gray. She looked to the sides, then up, and then—there it was. A hidden stairway beneath her feet. She found wires leading from its hydraulics to the trigger mechanism behind a carton of turned meat known as Kluut. She sent an electric pulse into them with her finger.

  The mechanism hummed to life and a narrow strip of floor slid to the side. Meia pulled her Growler from her hip and headed down into the dark tunnel at the base of the stairs. She felt the rough surface of cut stone beneath her feet and noted the striation marks in the rock around her.

  This looks familiar. The tunnel was wide enough for three people to walk abreast. The smell of damp rock scratched at her sinuses.

  “I extrapolate that it is part of the tunnel network that the Gaians were hiding in,” Iapetus responded.

  She nodded and started forward with her gun raised. Her auditory implants were picking up a faint rhythmic signal ahead—two individuals walking at a brisk pace.

  The altimeter in her UI ticked down as she went, and as the darkness closed in around her she was forced to switch her optics over to infravision to see. She was almost a hundred meters below sea level and five-kilometers from the restaurant by the time the tunnel’s incline went to zero. The humidity increased as she went, and the walls of the tunnel grew thick with water and the slimy biofilm of micro-organisms. She could feel it on the soles of her feet thanks to the sensory transfer of her armacorium, and the cold, slick sensation worked its way up between her toes.

  “Warning: Power nearing depletion,” Iapetus sounded in her head. With the invisibility active, and the somewhat ill-advised adventure on the taxi’s trunk, she was draining it fast. With a curse she deactivated it and opted for camouflage instead. Her armacorium turned mottled black and the power drain lessened.

  There was no telling how long this tunnel went on for. An hour had passed, and if it was much longer, she would have to re-absorb her armacorium and wait for it to recharge before proceeding. If Rega and his companion turned around, or if there was some kind of unexpected surprise ahead, she would be vulnerable.

  Another twenty minutes went by before she heard something change. The tip-tap of footsteps came to an abrupt halt and she heard the sound of metal grinding on metal. Meia slowed her approach, creeping ahead on quiet feet with her gun raised. She froze when a light ignited ahead of her, pressing herself against the slimy wall.

  Doctor Rega and the woman stood before a door in the cul de sac at the end of the tunnel. He was busy turning a large crank, inching open a stone door with a symbol like an old Earth octopus on it. The woman watched the darkness of the tunnel beside him. She looked slimmer than she did when Meia saw her at the tower. Frowning, she zoomed in with her optics and slammed her hand over her mouth to stifle the gasp.

  The woman was gone, and in her place stood a creature with gray skin and an inverted-teardrop head with a long mane of black hair. Her eyes were oval and angled down toward a diminutive nose above the slit of her mouth. Gone, too, was the woman’s smart business suit. In its place was a network of circle and line tattoos covering pale, reptilian skin. Her dark eyes seemed to pierce the blackness, and Meia pressed herself harder into the wall. She had the distinct impression that the woman was aware of her, though it had to be her imagination. Even with augmented optics her armacorium’s camouflage would make it neigh impossible to make her out against the dark.

  “Coming?” Rega asked when he finished turning the crank. Past him Meia could see a well-lit tunnel continuing on to an open chamber.

  The female VoQuana paused by the doorway and scanned the tunnel with black eyeballs. After a pause she moved past Rega, who let go of the crank and followed.

  Meia rushed forward as the crank spun backward and the stone door ground shut. She just managed to slip in through the narrowing doorway before it sealed itself with the thunderous sound of stone hitting stone. She froze just inside the door, pressing herself into the shadows as Rega and the VoQuana continued on ahead.

  “Are you getting paranoid, or something?” he asked her.

  Meia waited until they were seven meters ahead and started to follow.

  “I suppose you’re right,” he continued as they entered the chamber. “One never can be too careful, but I don’t think anyone will be able to figure out the entrance in the restaurant.”

  She moved up to the end of the hallway and pressed her back against the stone. She could see now that the chamber was vast, more of a vaulted cavern than a room. Off to one side was a series of containers with wide bases that narrowed to a tube at the top. At the center was what looked like lab equipment on a bench.

  The sight of it reminded her of Sanul’s fleshrider feed and she checked her GPS location—she was beneath the Palace! This was the Siren factory!

  “What? What is it now?” Rega said, then turned in sync with the VoQuana toward her.

  Oh fuck, she thought.

  “Gotcha,” the female said.

  Meia’s equilibrium shifted without warning. Her gun fell from her hand as she pitched forward, unable to feel her body. The ground rushed up and she grunted when she hit it.

  “Still need the bathroom?” she heard Rega say.

  She couldn’t feel her body.

  “No, I don’t know her,” he cont
inued. “She was in the lobby of the tower before we left.”

  She smelled powdered latex a moment before the female VoQuana rolled her over.

  “Hello,” she said with the small, lipless mouth.

  Meia felt a wave of dizziness again. The sensation of pressure against her head preceded the feeling of something long and slick flowing inside.

  “She’s been looking for you.”

  “Really?” Rega chuckled. “It must be my good looks.”

  “And she knows about Allatu.”

  “What? How?” Rega’s mirth faded.

  “You humans are sloppy.”

  “Well, we’ll have to get rid of her then.”

  “She’s the Premier’s personal bodyguard. She will be missed… but I have a better idea.” A smile appeared on the VoQuana’s face.

  Paralyzed, Meia could do nothing but twitch as colors danced in her vision. Something was shifting around inside her skull. She felt the pressure build again—

  And then everything went dark.

  Chapter Twenty

  The Barony, Ikuzlu City, Kosfanter

  J2400:3274

  Nestled in a cove within Ikuzlu Bay, the domed Barony building dominated the watery landscape around it. Built to impress, its massive white walls reflected the light of the sun across calm waters, turning the whole milieu into a dazzling spectacle meant to belittle all who saw it.

  Cylus couldn’t remember the last time he was behind the large, varnished desk in his office. When he came here in the past it was almost always with Sable and Sophi, and he always went straight to his barony box in the grand chamber above. Four statues of ancient gods stood carved in naked stone on pedestals in the corners of the room. Between them were draped large brown and white tapestries depicting the seven-pointed star of Keltan Securities. The tableau was illuminated by the light pouring in from the Gothic window behind his seat. The design was his mother’s, and his father was loathe to change anything she touched in the years after her death.