Covenants: Anodize (Hymn of the Multiverse Book 9)
Page 16
I followed her in. Despite the menacing exterior, the lobby looked exactly how I’d left it. “What did you say your Court was trying to investigate, again?”
“How the Committee made the rift, and how to close it,” she murmured, her eyes darting between the two doors on opposite sides of the room. “This is also the best place to be if I ever hope to get rescued.”
“Or killed.”
“Which way is the administration unit?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
Leid looked at me.
“I lived in the basement,” I said.
She sighed and headed for the leftmost double-doors.
Beyond the doors, we were met with an open area of tables and machines that held packaged items. Food for the facility workers, I thought. I’d never seen this machine before, but I recalled sub-level staff members holding packages that looked the same. Leid was already across the room, staring at a large board on the wall. It held a series of squares and other shapes, inscribed with tiny labels.
“This map only shows the floor we’re on,” she said, puzzled. “I counted fifteen from outside.”
“Eighteen if you count the three sublevels,” I added.
“This appears to be a common area.” She pointed to a square on the map, then lifted a brow. “There aren’t any markings of an elevator or staircase.”
I only stood there, watching Leid talk to herself. I’d already stated I knew nothing about this place.
She moved away from the map, heading for a corridor containing several doors. Beside each door was a thin, black strip. Leid muttered something under her breath, inspecting them. “Everything requires an access badge. That’s why the map is so bare. Any place elsewhere has a high-level access restriction.” She gave the closest door a sheepish look. “Which makes sense.”
I said nothing to her incomprehensible banter.
She backed away, smoothing out her hair. “Nibli, break this down, please.”
That I understood.
***
Leid—;
Four broken doors later, we stepped inside a security surveillance center. Having seen only room after room of custodial supplies, this came as a welcomed surprise. Surely there was a spare keycard in here, or perhaps a way to deactivate the doors.
Nibli lingered on the threshold as I combed across buttons over the control panels, trying to get a feel for their sophistication. For reasons unbeknownst to me I could still read all the TCS dialects, and there were quite a few inscribed on keys amid the various panels. I could still speak it too (obviously), but hadn’t wondered why until now. In any case, the different dialects attested to their private funding, having been supplied by numerous benefactors across the colonies.
Screens lined the walls, arranged in rows that stacked to the ceiling. None of them were active. There was no power anywhere in this building—;
No, that wasn’t right. If there wasn’t power, the digital lock mechanisms on the doors would be inactive. I looked over all the circuitry, unable to think of a viable solution. This situation really shined a light on how completely useless I was without attica.
“I could just keep breaking down the doors,” offered Nibli, sensing my frustration.
But every door the wraith broke down brought them one step closer to requiring another feed. There were no more cups of tea, either. I felt a looming clock over me, counting down to my inevitable demise. And it would be slow, miserable, maddening.
Get your shit together, admonished my thoughts, again in Qaira’s voice.
“Leid?” called Nibli. It’d been a full minute since they’d placed their offer, and I’d only stared at the screens in response.
“One minute,” I mumbled, returning to my investigation. I threw open the cabinets beneath the panels, rifling through its contents. They contained mostly translucent files—unreadable in this state, probably requiring a techno-parasol of some sort; attica would have translated them easily, damn it—but I then stumbled across a shard lying all alone in the bottommost cabinet.
It wasn’t in a natural state, having been cut and smoothed into a flat circle. There was an insignia embossed in the center. I’d seen it before, on the runes chiseled into bone piles outside. I snatched it, running my thumb over the surface. The room was dark, but the shard generated a glow that lit up my entire hand.
I was about to show Nibli what I’d found, but a biting shock made me open my hand, dropping the athanasian coin. Except the coin was no longer there; a sore red mark in the center of my palm began to swell.
Shit. How—?
My thought was interrupted when a deafening screech of feedback tore through my head. My hand felt numb as I placed it against my temple, wincing.
Nibli was wincing, too. The wraith could hear it.
Something flickered behind me, I turned and stared confusedly as a single screen amid forty relayed an image of a random room. The others remained dark.
The screen relayed a black and white image, which right there was utter nonsense, as TCS digitized capabilities had surpassed monochromic continuous spectrum imaging for five centuries now. The Committee headquarters building may have been ‘real’, but the interior was purely conceptual. And that was a frightening revelation. We were in someone’s dream and, judging by the aesthetic so far, it wasn’t a happy one.
The room was a business office, with an ornate, wrap-around desk and window view. There were pictures of people on the wall, though the video image was too crude to see them clearly. I stood there squinting, trying to determine why we were being shown this place in particular.
For only an instant, a figure appeared in the center of the room. In relation to the desk, they were small, child-shaped. I caught the blur of black on their bodies and a chalky-white face before they blipped from the image feed, as if never there at all.
Ding.
On one of the panels below the screen, a code labeled AC-1240 flickered red. I looked back up at the screen, but it was black. A second later, the code went dead as well.
Warning tingles danced along the nape of my neck. I felt perspiration on my upper-lip. “AC-1240,” I said to Nibli, whose eyes still lingered on the previously-active screen. “Does that mean anything to you?”
“No,” said the wraith, “but that was a pillar on the screen.”
I’d already concluded that. “AC-1240,” I murmured again, to myself. I began for the door and Nibli intuitively backed away.
I surveyed the corridor. There were three more doors along the way, all leading to an entryway blocked by a huge sheet of metal and another key-activated lock.
“I can’t break that one down,” cautioned Nibli, following my gaze.
“I know.” And then I thought of the coin. Above the entryway was the same insignia. I tilted my head, approaching the end of the corridor. The closer I got, the pricklier my hand felt.
Here went nothing.
I placed my swollen, prickly hand against the key-strip. A pressure formed against my palm, followed by the sensation of tiny insect legs skittering across my skin. I shuddered in response to the subsequent relief of scratching a terrible itch. The metal sheet slid open, revealing a cool, sterile hallway. This one looked far more analytical than casual. The first door on the right was marked by the label DF-0101. The one on the left was DF-0102.
I tapped my chin, sorting out the puzzle.
AC-1240 was on the twelfth floor. We needed a staircase. “Looks like you might get something to eat soon,” I said, motioning for Nibli to follow me through the darkness.
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Nibli, incredulous. “A trap has obviously been laid.”
Yes, but there wasn’t any other way to go. “Since when have you been apprehensive over the prospect of a meal?”
There was some hesitation from the wraith. Then, “When it places you in danger.”
I froze, looking back. Their divulgence was startling; the concept that they cared about my safety confused me. “
I’m not in danger.”
“Aren’t you? I can’t guarantee—,”
“You don’t need to,” I said quickly, side-stepping the conversation. “There are no guarantees here. So says my line of work.”
Nibli looked back toward the common area. “You said there might be a rescue coming.”
I saw where this was going. “Nibli, I’m not waiting. You don’t want me in danger, but pretty soon you’re going to get hungry. I’ll be in danger, then.”
The wraith was momentarily conflicted. It then lowered their gaze, wounded by the thwart of an attempt at my preservation, and followed me.
*
Nibli broke down DF-0102 and stood sentry on the threshold, keeping watch of both the room and hall as I continued my search inside.
This space proved to be the most interesting so far. Instrumentation of varying size and function rested on folder riddled desks. I could not tell what kind of instruments these were, all of my higher knowledge neutered without attica, but some of the reports gave me a semblance of their functionality.
EEG readings of delta and theta waves scrolled across columns from header to footer. Without attica, I couldn’t compare the numbers with others collected from a common group within the TCS psychiatric databases, but at least it was clear that brainwave measurements had been studied. On whom, remained a mystery.
All of the reports were labeled with the title Data Forensics.
DF. Aha. That meant the letters in the door codes were attributed to the business unit.
Business unit, floor, door number. AC-1240.
A master desk, the contents atop it suggesting it was for personal use rather than analytical, provided some notes of an overworked technician, whose entries and handwriting grew equally erratic the further I skimmed. My eyes lingered on a single passage, written on an adhesive note that was attached to a data report.
‘They’re changing the calibrations on their own — REPORT THIS TO ANOMALY CONTROL.’
Anomaly Control.
AC.
Eureka.
If only the poor tech had written a detailed map of how to get to the closest staircase. I looked through the rest of the room then, finding nothing else of importance. I needed a map.
“I need a bloody map,” I said, airing my frustration while returning to the hall. And then I froze, realizing Nibli wasn’t nearby any longer.
“Over here,” called the wraith, already at the end of the hall. They pointed to the door nearest them. It was wider than the others, with a circular window in the center that revealed a shadowy corridor.
My eyes adjusted to the darkness quickly; a rectangular indention, with a keypad welded into the frame, rested on the corridor wall. Elevator.
I couldn’t stop the wide grin from forming on my face. “Well done, wraith. Now, break it down.”
*
Lucky us; someone had already opened the twelfth-floor hallway entrance. We found a headsup device and keycard badge on the floor in the middle of the business unit. The badge belonged to a facility guard named Tefpli Ekaw.
“I saw him,” noted Nibli. “He went into the forest and was killed by the first pillar. … And then Nara ate him.”
I frowned in pity at the picture of the smiling Poekkan, pocketing the badge for later on. The headsup was useless to us, so I left it by the window where we’d found it.
The Anomaly Control unit was administrative, not analytical, so I was doubly happy. Administrative areas always kept confidential documents—the incriminating kind; the kind necessary to satisfy my moral code once I carried out phase 2 of my plan.
The unit was arranged as a large, open multi-desk area with two attached wings of more esteemed, private offices. I started at the right wing, skimming the codes over the door as I walked. I promptly realized we were at the wrong side, and hurried to the other. I hadn’t needed to skim this one—an office with the door left ajar caught my attention. ‘Lo and behold, it was AC-1240.
“Let me go first,” ordered Nibli, moving past me without my agreement, in turn forcing me further back to avoid their toxins.
As Nibli advanced for the door, I turned to face the open area, walking backward down the hall. I wondered if the remaining pillars expected Nibli to go first.
In such an enclosed area, Nibli’s toxins were unavoidable. I got caught in a plume (as they began proliferating whenever the wraith grew faint), and was afflicted with fear so paralyzing that I stopped dead in my tracks. All of the worst-case scenarios of our circumstances rifled through my mind like a flip-book. I staggered into the wall, clutching my chest.
Thud-thud-thud-thud—
My heart. My fucking heart.
Thud-thud-thud-thud—
I grew dizzy, and slid down the wall until I sat on the floor, hugging my knees.
Nibli felt my fear like a tweaking drug addict, turning in place to look at me after stepping inside the room. Their expression was twisted in grudging euphoria, the spines beginning to protract from their shoulders and arms.
“Leid,” rasped the wraith. “Hold your breath, don’t give in. Don’t—”
Through tears I saw a ghastly, unnaturally-long pair of arms snake out from behind the door and grab the wraith, pulling them out of view.
Silence.
I wiped my eyes, staring at the open door, waiting to hear a commotion.
More silence.
Thud-thud-thud-thud—
I screamed in fury, pounding my arm against the wall. “Nibli!”
Nothing, except for the door creaking halfway closed.
I snarled, battling the fear, forcing myself to my feet. The walls began to move around me as I staggered for the door, like they’d become elastic screens for spectators to stand behind and press their demented fingers against. I avoided their contours, stumbling over the threshold.
Something grabbed me, too.
The stumble had caused an unintentional downward pull and I wrenched free of the ice-cold grip, crashing into the corner of the wrap-around desk.
There wasn’t enough time to get a good luck at it. A blurry shadow; tall and lean, much like Nibli, with long arms and clawed hands that were already coming for me again.
So, this was how I’d die.
Thud-thud-thud-thud—
Reflexively, I held out my hands to shield the inevitable. My ears popped as a sudden magnetic shift rippled across the room. A blast of light came from my raw, prickling hand, sending the creature off the floor and into the hall. I cried out and fell to my knees, clutching my hand that had boiled to the third degree. By the time the pain subsided and I was able to gather my wits—what was left of them, anyway—the creature in the hallway was gone.
I stood there, panting, the toxins finally receding from my system. But it was too late.
Nibli was gone. The room was empty.
I was alone.
Get your shit together.
“Shut the fuck up!” I screamed, clutching my head. A fresh twinge of pain radiated around my right hand when it connected to my head. The skin was so burned that it had begun to blacken and slough off. It smelled like leriza. Too numb to think anymore, I sat on the floor with my back against the desk, staring defeatedly at the surrounding carnage.
A loose sheet of paper slid from the edge of the desk, landing on my head.
TO: DR. JETVI VENHSAAN, DIR. OF ANOMALY CONTROL
FROM: DR. TESGI HIROL, AVP, PROTOCOL COORDINATOR
AEGVI 3-5, 5039
PROTOCOL UPDATES: PROJECT ANODIZE
Updates to the project are listed as follows:
1) The six examinees have been calibrated. Psychographs have shown stabilization when crossed over. All six will be necessary to proceed with the liturgy.
2) The six examinees will be injected with tranquilizers three times a day. Two of the six have shown mental destabilization after calibrations and subsequent liturgic exercises. Psychoactive medication will not be administered, as it has shown to weaken liturgic effects.
Tokens of Power, enmeshed with the material of the transient-realm are offered to the four SBUs for the purpose of protection against physical and mental harm.
The Non-Intrinsic Bioactive Liquidation Integer (NIBLI) has been developed to eradicate examinees and nullify the project should it become uncontainable.
4) Waivers of Liability have been sent to staff. 65/80 have already signed and returned them to RF. Reminders have been distributed to the remaining staff. They will be terminated from the project if their waivers are not returned to RF by Aegvi 3-9.
See page 2 for action items regarding Project ANODIZE.
XXI
QAIRA
WE WERE STARING UP AT AN executive-looking business building that had randomly appeared smack in the middle of Nowhere, Eschatis.
It’d felt like a long time since departing from Laith’s hearth. I had run for a good portion of the way before tiring myself out, forced to use a marble. Zira had required another, because he’d chased me. Three left. I’d never heard from Leid again and was forced to concede that it’d been another trick of the mind.
We both slid to a stop when the building appeared. It was covered in shadow and smoke, and the grounds around it contained piles of shards and bones—;
And an electric-unicorn-creature-thing, eating the bones.
“Are you getting this?” I asked, bewildered.
Zira only nodded, the visor’s swirling, orange luminescence veiling his eyes.
Neither of us moved in the ensuing moments, watching the unicorn graze around the front of the building. “What the fuck is that?” I demanded; the question obviously rhetorical.
“A situation.”
The train of Laith’s augur went up the steps and through the front doors. “Do you think it’s hostile?”
Zira deactivated the visor, shaking his head. “Everything’s hostile.”