by Hodden, TE
He wore a fedora over a light jacket and a painfully colourful shirt. She wore the same jacket over an equally garish cocktail dress. They were not singing along. They barely moved. They just stared ahead, down the road, smiling a creepy, plastic smile.
Echo blinked.
Creepy?
That thought rested awkwardly in her thoughts. She reached into her pocket, and flicked out her compact, holding it up to inspect her own reflection. Or Elois Croft’s. Echo had shorn her hair short, and died it a copper she liked. She wore glasses, and a quilted leather jacket that was not quite the armour she liked in the good old days, but was close enough. It was more her, than Elois.
Speaking of which… “Creepy?” Echo whispered. “Are you still in there little girl? Are you going to try and fight me? Oh… I hope so. I really do.”
Asshole! The little voice at the back of her head snarled. I am going to stop you!
“Oh, Elois,” Echo sighed. “How do you think you are going to do that?”
I’ll find a way to hurt you.
Echo chuckled. “Good. I want to see you try!” She snapped the compact closed. “How long?”
“Forty minutes,” the Thrall woman said.
Elois leant back and watched the coastline rolling past.
*
Eventually they rounded the edge of the coast, and the Tombstone came into view.
The Ultimate Security Facility (as it was more correctly known) was a monolith of pale stone, that rose out of the bay, from the squall of emerald waves, up to the clouds. It stood taller than the cliffs. It was connected to the mainland by a long, narrow, bridge.
The Thrall woman pulled up at the security checkpoint, before the bridge, and handed over their papers. The guards checked their (fake) IDs, and waved them through.
Echo sat up, and straightened her plaid shirt under her jacket, and put on her glasses.
They were checked again at the far end of the bridge, where the guards wore body armour over their uniforms, and were armed with shotguns.
They were waved on again, into the monolith, to the parking structure. They followed the painted walkway into the building, through the checkpoints and scanners, the many layers of security, before they were allowed into the visitor’s centre.
Echo was guided to one of the Visitation Rooms. She and the Thralls sat at the desk, by the window onto the other side. It looked like glass, but was three inches of laminated bulletproof polymer.
The other side of the room was lit by the cold blue light of the Psionic Dampening Field, that suppressed super powers within the facility.
The door hissed open, and a rangy, beaky, figure shuffled up to the counter.
Scratch Wormwood wore an orange prison jumpsuit, and was bound by heavy chains. The guards closed the doors behind him. He glanced over his shoulder, then gave Echo and the thralls a long hard look with his blank stone eyes.
Echo could feel his gaze.
He smiled, with crystal teeth. “Now this is… curious. Two of you are blanks, with nobody home, and one of you is… Something far too big for that little body, which… Nobody seems to have noticed is the dead daughter, of a dead President. Now I don’t know what to ask first… How you survived being blown up on Air Force One, or how nobody notices whose face you wear?”
Echo smiled. “Human minds are weak. I am not.”
Wormwood leant forwards. “Try again, without patronising me.”
Echo tapped her lips. “To exist on this world, and move unnoticed, I have to hide in mortal flesh. Properly prepared, it can anchor me to this reality. Reality does not like me here, even in this body, and it tries to protect its people from… seeing me for what I am. That makes the universe around me a little bit…mercurial.”
Wormwood chuckles. “It lets you be impossibly fast, or strong, or….”
“It let me,” Echo whispered, “hunt the Yeomen down for my master. Sixteen hundred of them, over countless generations.”
“You,” Wormwood said. “Or…an echo of your greater being?”
Echo laughed.
Wormwood smiled at the Thrall. “And these are your properly prepared friends?”
“So to speak,” Echo said.
“And what do you want from me?” Wormwood asked.
Echo placed her hand on the glass. “Put your hand to mine.”
Wormwood placed his palm to the glass. His hand was scarred, a coin burned into his flesh.
Echo felt his presence through the glass. She stretched out a little of her will, letting her aura bleed into his. She let him feel the heartbeat pulse that pounded and drummed on the moon. “Do you feel that?”
“The drums of war…” Wormwwod muttered. “And who do they call?”
Echo showed him.
For a moment they looked beyond the walls of the room, and they saw the future.
New York lay in ruins. The skyscrapers pummelled to rubble, their metal skeletons exposed to the rain. Ragged and haggard souls lined the street, watching from the ruins, as the truck rumbled past, dragging behind the dirty, bruised, tattered, and ragged bodies. The Praetorian, the Scarlet Knight, the Osprey and Martian, dead and unmoving chained to the tailgate, ploughing furrows in the dust.
The crowd surged forwards as they passed, kicking, spitting, and throwing stones at the bodies. Screaming until their throats were raw, scratched by the dust and ash in the air.
They screamed one word louder than all else:
Traitors!
“Impressive.” Wormwood croaked with laughter, and drew back his hand. “What would you have me do?”
“No,” Echo said, leaning close enough for her breath to mist the glass. “Ask again.”
“What,” Wormwood purred, “would you have them do?”
Echo let her veins blacken and her muscles swell. She clicked her fingers, and a long, tuning fork, of a greenish-greyish metal appeared in her fingertips. She blew gently against the prongs, and they sang in a low, warbling note, that made the air around them bend and ripple.
She tapped the fork against the window.
The note instantly became as sharp as a dagger. The layers of lamination in the window cracked and shattered, falling about her in a cascade. The lights popped and went suddenly dark, in fountains of sparks.
The dampener spluttered and dimmed, then went dead.
Wormwood gasped, and drew a deep breath.
“There,” Echo said. “Is that better?”
Wormwood let his chains drop from his wrists. He looked at Echo. “I don’t suppose you have my swords?”
“They are in my car,” Echo said. “Sorry. Security.”
He shrugged. “Oh well.” He hopped through the shattered window. “Shall we?”
Echo put a hand on his chest, to hold him at the door. “I counted twenty six guards between us, and my car. Impress me.”
Wormwood smiled. “As you wish.”
00011
The jets of ruby fire lanced out into space from the surface of the moon.
Matthew flew through the void, as fast as his aura would carry him. He swept down from the stars, and skimmed across the lunar desert, kicking up a cloud of dust that hung and lingered in the low gravity behind him.
The moon base rose over the horizon, belching the broad beams of scarlet from one of the underground structures.
Beside him Doctor Summers was keeping pace. She wore a suit of ceremonial Martian armour, and carried her staff. A bubble of energy surrounded her, protecting her from the ravages of space. These days she tended to be referred to as the Last Martian.
Matthew tapped his earpiece. “We are on our final approach now.”
“Understood,” Angel reported, from the Bumblebee. “We are prepared for an evacuation, and will be with you as soon as possible.”
She and Catherine were a few hours behind, making the best speed the shuttle would allow.
Summers watched the jets of fire pulse again. “Interesting.”
“Something wrong?” Matt
hew asked.
“The pattern,” Summers said. “If the Cascade Generators are failing, why aren’t they just venting in a steady stream? If the internal fields are failing, why is it so… regular?”
Matthew frowned. “An SOS of some kind?”
“That is my worry,” Summers admitted.
Matthew and Summers touched down on the landing pad. The lights in the station were dull, there were flickers of red emergency lights behind some of the windows.
“Huh.” Matthew looked around. “That can not be a good sign.”
They walked to the nearest airlock. Matthew tapped at the control panel, but nothing happened. There was nothing but a blinking cursor on the panel’s screen.
Summers touched her staff to the screen, and Martian runes fluttered over the screen. The airlock hissed open.
Matthew nodded, and they stepped inside. The airlock cycled up to pressure and the inner doors opened.
Within the station all was dark, still, and silent. Dull emergency lights did little to drive back the deep shadows. Matthew drifted down the passageway. The gravity was still low, a sixth of earth-normal.
The whole station shook, like an earthquake.
“The cycle,” Summers said, “is pulsing again.”
“Are you okay?” Matthew asked.
She frowned. “Something is wrong here.”
They continued. There was a dead body slumped against a window.
Matthew checked the body, and shook his head, glancing at the smudge on the window. “They must have hit their head in one of the tremors.”
“No.” Summers winced. “This feels wrong. This feels like… murder.”
Matthew considered her. “You mean that?”
Summers nodded. “I can’t describe it, but… yeah.”
Matthew nodded, and moved on. “Their operations floor is this way.”
At the next junction, they found more bodies. Beaten, broken, dashed against the walls.
Matthew glanced over them. A lump formed in his throat. He glanced at Summers, afraid to ask. She looked away.
They continued to the operation’s room, and found more bodies. They were slumped over their desks, or on the floor.
Matthew glanced at the screens on the consoles. “They’re all showing that blank cursor.”
Summers put her staff to one of the computers. It stuttered, and booted up. The lights flickered back on, and the air vents groaned as the life support picked up. Gravity kicked in a split second after.
“Summers?” Matthew asked. “Was this all some kind of…”
“Virus?” She asked. “Somebody wiped their traces. The logs are all gone. The last week has just been wiped. Communications, emails, activity logs, security camera footage, everything.” She tapped the screen with her staff again. “Only the controls for the core are still running. Everything else was shut down.”
“The core?” Matthew asked.
“The internal fields are set to… repeat their pattern.” She frowned. “The tremors would have killed anybody still in the core, but…other than that, it is no danger.”
Matthew pinched his nose. “Then why murder so many people do achieve that? Why murder… everybody?”
“No.” Summers gasped. “Not everybody. I think somebody is alive.”
“Where?” Matthew whispered.
*
The security measures around the core had been closed down. The doors were wide open at each end.
Matthew and Summers flew down the passage, past the deactivated spheres, and into the control gallery. The windows were cracked, and the scarlet fire was blindingly bright.
Matthew stopped.
Padmaja Saketha lay against the control desk, struggling to breathe. Her body was mottled with bruises, and there was blood dribbling from her nose and ear.
“Padmaja?” Matthew whispered. “It’s okay. We are here. We’re going to get you help.”
“Cybernetics,” Padmaja whispered.
The generators pulsed.
It shook the control gallery, like being on the inside of a ringing bell. It shook Matthews bones in his skin, and hit his core like a wrecking ball.
Summers’s staff surrounded them in the sphere of energy, dampening the effects as she adjusted the holographic controls.
The shaking stopped. The generators stabilised.
Padmaja choked and gurgled. It took Matthew a heartbeat to realise that the sound was a laugh. “Thank you. That was driving me crazy.”
“Are you okay?” Matthew asked.
Padmaja shook her head. “No. But I’m not dead…” She winced. “Over engineered my body when I rebuilt myself after the crash. Guess he didn’t know that.”
“Who?” Matthew whispered.
She stared at him. “You don’t know?”
He shook his head. “We saw your signal, the pulse. We thought there was an accident of some kind…”
“Meant to think that,” Padmaja whispered. “Meant to think it was a disaster, an accident, but he killed them. He…”
Matthew nodded. “Who?”
Padmaja closed her eyes. “I thought he would have told everybody it was an accident. Do… Does anybody know he was here, or did he change that? Control the narrative?” She sighed. “He’s President. Guess he can do almost anything.”
Matthew’s heart missed a beat. “Allistaire?”
Padmaja nodded. “Not my signal. He did this…”
Summers gasped. “Oh no!”
Matthew looked at her. “What is it?”
Summers stepped back from the holographic display. “This is a message, but not for us. It… That pulse could be heard across the universe, like… a dialling tone, or…”
“A lure?” Matthew suggested. “Who… Who could it have contacted?”
“Seen it once before,” Padmaja whispered. “Once. In old file.”
“How old?” Summers asked.
Padmaja glanced at Matthew. “A little older than him.”
Matthew grimaced, as the words touched a nerve. “My… Origin?”
Padmaja nodded.
Matthew tapped his earpiece. “Cathy? Assemble anybody you can. As of now, we have to assume Legion is coming.”
00100
Harris tracked Magic out of the core shaft, and back across the chasm, to the more comfortable and less crowded surroundings of the outer structures. She walked into one of the hotels as though she owned the place, and strutted her way straight to the desk.
Harris lurked at one of the self terminals. He watched as she spoke to the concierge, and was directed to take a seat, while the concierge made a call. They spoke for a few moments, glancing up at Magic a few times.
And then nothing for a few long moments.
Harris completed his booking, and the terminal spat out a card for his room.
Across the lobby an elevator arrived. One with a keyhole instead of a call button. The elevator for the penthouse.
A woman in a finely tailored trouser suit stepped out, and said something sneering to Magic. She answered, smiling confidently as she spoke, and followed the woman into the elevator.
A few minutes later Harris was in his room. He set his bag on the bed, and took a scanner from his pocket. There were no cameras, bugs, or blackmail devices in the compact, efficient, room. His window looked out over the cavern. The lights of the city barely reached the far side of the trench, just catching on the ridges of rock.
Satisfied he wasn’t being watched, he stripped out of his mercenary clothes, and pulled on his Scimitar armour. The visor powered up. He let out a long breath, and scanned the room again.
Nothing.
He listened at the door, and scanned the corridor.
There was a security camera at the end of the hall. The stealth field adjusted to counter the camera.
Harris stepped out of his room, and walked quickly to the door marked ‘private’ near the elevators, and tickled the lock with a pick-gun. He let himself into the service corridor, and moved q
uickly, ducking back around a corner as a maid trundled past with her trolley.
He stepped out and made his way to the fire escape stair well, and cycled his flight pack to save himself sixteen floors of stairs.
He touched down quietly on the top level of the hotel, and placed a hand on the door. He tapped open the microphone in his gloves and listened. All was quiet beyond. Nothing showed up on his visor. He crept through the door, into a small lobby with a staff elevator, a store cupboard, and a utility room. He crept to the last door, the service entrance to the suite.
He tapped on his visor to see through the wall, into the spacious, strangely empty lounge beyond.
Magic was stood with a bundle of cybernetics, that had to be the woman in the suit, taking to what looked to be a solid metal sphere on a pedestal.
Magic addressed the sphere. “Look, she said it was the word Misrule, and she was scared. I only ever heard that word whispered a few times before, and it was the by the guys supplying that submarine, that docks at your private pylon. Now, if she was that scared, it means this information has value. It’s worth you knowing, right?”
“Perhaps,” a voice agreed. “What is it you want?”
Magic shifted. “Out of here. A way to the surface. The way I hear it? Your ship is something close to paradise.”
“And who,” the cyborg woman asked, “told you that?”
Magic toyed with her hair. “Nobody who knew I was listening.”
“And,” the voice from the sphere said, “can you find these two… curious visitors?”
“I don’t need to,” Magic said, with pride. “I know where they will be. She didn’t tell them, did she? They will be watching her. And I know where to find her.”
The cyborg was about to say something, but the sphere cut her off.
“Indeed?” It asked. “Very well. Miss Em will assign some friends of hers from Hornet Squad, to go and find your spies. You will go with them, and identify the pair to her. If you have lied, and wasted my time, they will ensure you regret it. If, on the other hand, this is of value, you will be rewarded. Em, do you understand?”
