Thirty-Eight
The Annex
“What just happened?” Will’s thoughts came rushing back into Adan’s mind, laced with panic. “It felt like I lost my connection to you for a moment. Is everything okay?”
Adan reeled as the embedded memory fused itself fully with his present reality. The terrible truth of Gavin’s words burned inside him. He was hurt and angry and scared all at the same time. He wanted to run away and let the desert bury him in sand, like one of those strange machines scattered across the Vast that had served its purpose and been cast off.
“Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter. I’m back in control again.” Will’s mind seemed so intent on the task ahead he wasn’t paying attention to the emotions ripping Adan apart.
Yes, back in control.
“I’m ready,” Adan answered, trying to stay focused, to narrow his thoughts the way Will had done in order to hide the truth. Whatever else happened, he was not going to let Will know what he had found out.
Thankfully, Will’s mind went dark again. Adan felt himself pitch forward, resuming his journey down the hall. He passed the awful emblems in the walls and the door at the other end grew larger and larger. He longed for the release that it offered. On the other side of that door was freedom. Freedom from Will, freedom from treachery, freedom from life and all its terrible pain. Death beckoned him from beyond the door and he found himself eager to run to its embrace.
From Adan’s perspective it seemed as if the door was marching towards him and not the other way around. It plodded onwards in erratic starts and stops, until at last it rested in front of him, a step away from the end of torment and misery, a step away from liberation.
Will’s thoughts came back. He sent Adan all the details he would need to know about the Annex and the plan for getting to the viand kernel and disseminating the virus. As with all thought transfers, it only took a moment.
“Follow the template and you’ll be fine,” Will instructed. “The template works almost the same as using your bioseine to suppress pain. Just give it control and it will do everything for you. After you neutralize the two guards by the door, it will guide you to the viand kernel where you’ll deliver the virus.”
Will seemed anxious to get this over with. So was Adan.
“Any last questions?” Will asked, but he didn’t give Adan much time to respond. “I know you’re a little on edge, but don’t worry. The plan won’t fail as long as you follow it exactly.”
The thoughts barely registered with Adan. He remembered their parting in Axis Prime. Were the emotions then just an act, a function of Will’s bioseine, like the way he talked to the Waymen? Adan guessed there would be no heartfelt good-bye this time, or if there was, he would see through it. He was not going to be taken in by illusions anymore.
“I’ll be putting on an inhibitor and going off-system after you pass through the door, so you won’t be able to contact me.”
And so the virus won’t kill you.
“I guess this is good-bye then,” Adan replied, struggling to mask his growing sense of resentment and despair.
“You’re worried about what you’ll face in there.” Will seemed only to be catching the most superficial aspects of Adan’s thoughts. Both their minds were half closed. Neither one really knew exactly what the other was thinking. But Adan didn’t need direct access to know Will’s thoughts anymore.
“You just need to follow the plan,” Will told him.
Trusting in Will’s plans was all he had ever done, Adan thought bitterly, then shoved it to the back of his mind as quickly as possible.
“After today, the Werin will be free and the Developers will finally get what they deserve,” Will concluded. “Good-bye, Adan.” And with that last thought, Will’s mind went blank.
With the closing of the mental link their friendship ended as well. Adan was certain he would never see Will again, perhaps he would never see anyone again. But that really didn’t matter to him now. Once the door opened and Will pushed his body into the Annex, Adan would be free at last.
Adan regained control of his body. And yet, like waking from a dream, for a moment or two he was so disoriented he could not move or make any sense of his surroundings. But the world gradually stabilized and things became clearer.
The room he found himself in had the same gray metal walls as the hall outside. There were two passages going off at angles to his left and right. A trail of ensconced lights glimmered where the walls met the ceiling.
Two dark-robed assessors stood in front of square metal columns a few steps beyond the entryway. One of the sentries nodded towards him, acknowledging his presence.
They can see me.
The thought collided with Adan’s mind with an almost visceral force. He swayed and caught himself on the wall. When he had headed through the door, a quick capture and a memory wipe were all that he wanted. He was ready to forget his life and start over again or even face death if that was what the Devs had planned for him. And yet, on this side of the door, he was not so sure. Now that he was in control again, he found himself backing away from that conviction. He was no longer sure he could simply throw his life away.
One thing he was sure of: he couldn’t stay where he was. He needed to get away from these assessors. He needed time to think, to figure out what he should do. On his own, he would have had no idea how to get past these men, but the template he had been given would solve that. He just hoped that following Will’s plan would not take him so far he wouldn’t be able to turn back.
He gave the mental command and let the template take over. He felt no numbness, like when he gave the bioseine control, but he became an observer inside his own mind, watching his actions play out as if he were someone else.
His mind crossed over into the Dev security channel. He was immediately bombarded by overwhelming amounts of information, like being in a place where everyone was talking at once. Following the template, he ignored everything and moved onto the Com sub-channel. This was where the communications with the assessors took place and this channel was much quieter. A few Devs were monitoring the progress of the building scans out in the city, but Adan’s mind set a filter to look for thoughts which might pertain to him. He soon found that two of the Devs were discussing something about a security breach in the Annex.
“I finished checking all the registries and there is no one who was authorized to enter the Annex during the flat-line,” came a message from one of the Devs.
“Well, I don’t see how anyone could have come in through the Institute unnoticed,” replied a second Dev, “I’d put it on surveillance to fail before our systems, but just to be safe, have the two assessors stationed at the entrance investigate the situation.”
“Right. Malthus is not going to like it, but I don’t see that we have much choice.”
The two assessors started towards Adan. The template reacted immediately. He focused on the assessor to his left. Though he wasn’t quite sure how it happened, Adan left his own mind and found himself inside the mind of the assessor. Just like when he had returned to his own body upon entering the Annex, it took him a moment to recover and reorient himself. But it was even worse this time. Everything inside this person was so unfamiliar. It was dark, like the Viscera without much light. Hints of things flickered in the blackness, but they were hazy and far away.
He had to concentrate intensely just to understand how to connect the man’s thoughts with his actions. The longer he focused on something, the more solid it became. The nebulous flickering turned into balls of light running off in different directions like pulsating paths. Somehow he knew intuitively where they led and he followed the one that would give him access to the man’s vision. Still, he had to fight not to be overwhelmed by the mental noise inside the man’s brain. Nothing came automatically. If he did one thing, he had to neglect something else. To make matters worse, the assessor’s own thoughts were constantly pushing in on his, like veils covering the balls of light. He kept havin
g to push them away to get to where he wanted to go.
At last he found what he was looking for. What the assessor saw burst into view. Adan found himself in the odd position of looking at himself from outside his own body. And yet, it barely registered that it was even him. It was more like looking at a total stranger.
In the few moments it had taken to assume control, the other assessor had continued to advance until he was nearly on top of Adan. Fortunately, the man noticed his partner falling behind and glanced back to see what was wrong. In that brief moment, Adan attempted to force his subject to take a step forward, to appear as if everything was normal. But even following Will’s template, all he managed was to cause the assessor to trip. He recovered in time to avoid falling completely, but was forced to drop to one knee.
The man’s partner sent a thought towards Adan’s assessor, but Adan was so focused on his assessor’s physical actions that it came through like garbled, incoherent nonsense. Adan could have gone back into the assessor’s memory to retrieve it, but that would take time. He had to act before the other assessor realized what was happening.
The man turned around and started back. Adan wavered. Somehow the script his mind was following hadn’t accounted for this turn of events. But as the other assessor extended his hand to help his partner back up, the template kicked back in and took hold of the man’s hand and yanked down hard. The maneuver caught the other man completely by surprise, bringing him crashing to the floor.
Adan pushed his assessor on top of the other one, wrapping his arms around the man’s upper body. Momentarily thrown into confusion, the other assessor failed to put up any kind of meaningful resistance. Convoluted mental messages shrieked in the back of Adan’s awareness.
The template directed the hands of Adan’s assessor around the neck of the other man. Suddenly Adan saw were this was going. He immediately shut the template down. He was not prepared to kill someone, no matter how desperate the situation.
Adan’s mind vacillated for one long terrible moment between the template and his own consciousness, but then he was back in control, though still not inside his own body, but inside the assessor’s.
The brief delay was all the other man needed to regain his senses. He rolled over, slamming Adan’s assessor onto his back. Adan managed to catch the other man’s thoughts this time.
“What is going on with you, Cam? Have you gone blank?” The thoughts blazed with anger. “You know I am going to have to call you in on this.”
Adan let go of the assessor’s mind. He simply did not have it in him to go through with the kinds of things that saving himself would require. Hurting someone, inflicting pain, even killing—these things loomed in his thoughts like the shadows in the Basin and the death cries of the Welkin echoed in his memory. He refused to be a part of the bloodshed.
A few moments after he relinquished control, his assessor came to himself again. He immediately let go of the hold he had on his partner. Adan could hear their communication coming across the Com channel.
“What happened?” Cam asked. “Why am I down here on the floor with you?” He sat up, rubbing the back of his head and staring in confusion at his partner.
“Are you okay?” the other man asked.
Cam rose to his feet. “Well, it feels like I’ve got a bit of a stinger in my knee. Did the intruder—” he cut his question short. Adan saw that two more assessors had been dispatched to their location. The two in this room were aware of it as well. The new assessors were coming to assist in dealing with the intruder, but their orders also included apprehending the assessor Adan had taken control of.
“I’m sorry, Cam,” the man told his partner, taking a step away from him. The sound of the approaching assessors could be heard not far down the hall. “It’s nothing personal. You know the protocol.”
“But you know I would never—it wasn’t me. You know me. How could you think that I—there must be some mistake.” Adan could tell from the expression on his partner’s face that there was no way out for Cam.
According to the orders of the incoming assessors, the protocol for dealing with someone attacking a member of the security force was to take that person off-system and deactivate them immediately. There were no exceptions. This man was headed for the same fate that probably awaited Adan: a memory wipe.
Adan focused on the two incoming assessors. He could see them in his mind marching down the hallway. One of them carried a device made of shiny, black plastic with a small, metal disc on one end. Its short, cylindrical stock bent at the top and tapered off elegantly back over the man’s hand. Adan had seen such a device before, in Gavin’s memories: it was a zoelith. That was what they were going to use to shut down Adan and Cam.
There was no way out for either of them. Adan’s attempt at resisting capture had only resulted in bringing another man down with him. He turned back to the door he’d just come through. He should have been able to open it with his mind, but he couldn’t sense it at all. Panicked, he took a step forward, thinking he might try and run past Cam’s partner while he was distracted. But at that moment the other two assessors entered the room and he checked himself. He could not get by all of them.
The new arrivals paid no attention to Adan, instead moving directly towards Cam. Though he begged and pleaded with them that he was innocent, Cam did not attempt to flee or resist. His partner and one of the other assessors moved to either side of him and grabbed him by the arms.
“No, listen, check the logs. I’m innocent. I didn’t do anything wrong,” Cam insisted.
The assessor with the zoelith held it out, ignoring the man’s pleas. As the disc on the end of it pressed against Cam’s forehead, his body collapsed and the other two assessors lowered him to the floor. Their first task complete, the three of them turned to face Adan. They approached slowly, having been warned by the Devs on Com that there was something irregular about the intruder.
There were three of them and they had a zoelith. There was nothing Adan could do to save himself now. He was next.
Thirty-Nine
Asking the Right Questions
With Cam deactivated, the assessors turned their attention on Adan.
He backed up against the door, pressing himself against the hard, unyielding metal. The zoelith glinted in the assessor’s hand. Adan remembered how Will had used one on him during the initialization. It had only felt like he went to sleep and woken up a short time later. But there would be no waking up this time, at least not as himself. He would be back in the Institute. The few memories he had would be gone. For all he knew, that could have happened to him a hundred times before, each time leaving him to reawaken to a new identity.
Two of the three assessors moved alongside him and grabbed his arms, just as they’d done with Cam. The remaining one stepped forward and raised the zoelith level with Adan’s forehead.
At that moment something inside Adan snapped.
All of those torturous moments alone in the Institute, wondering who he was and what was happening to him came rushing back. He had been so desperate then to find out who he was then, but here on the edge of oblivion his need to discover the truth was greater than ever. He needed to find out if he had a family like Senya’s, or if he belonged to a Wayman thral, or even if he was some member of the Collective who had gone deviant. If he let himself get taken now, he would never know. He couldn’t throw away his life like this. He had to save himself somehow.
In a flash of insight, he saw the way out. He sprang into the mind of the assessor holding the zoelith. Having made this kind of mental jump before, Adan got past the disorientation a little more quickly this time. He was desperate to act before they realized that something was wrong. This assessor’s mind was very much like the first. Adan seized control of his host and swung his arm to the right, aiming the zoelith at the forehead of the assessor standing there. The awkward attempt failed miserably and Adan only managed to slam it into the man’s shoulder.
The attack startled t
hem, though. One of them let go of him. Scrambled messages streamed into the mind of Adan’s assessor. As before, he was so focused on controlling his host’s physical movements the messages were indecipherable.
Ignoring the mental static, Adan’s assessor lunged towards the same man again in another clumsy attempt to connect the zoelith to his forehead. As before, he was too slow, his movements too uncoordinated; the other assessor, who was on his guard now, easily dodged.
Perhaps seeing how sluggish Adan’s assessor was, the others realized he was less of a threat than he seemed at first. They dove towards him, one wrapping his arms around the upper body, the other going for the torso. Adan could not react quickly enough to avoid them both. They brought him down hard.
One of them grabbed hold of the zoelith. Adan poured all his focus into maintaining his assessor’s grip, grasping it with both hands, but even still, he was no match for two men at once. The device slowly slipped from his fingers.
The zoelith came down onto the forehead of Adan’s assessor, jettisoning him from the man’s mind.
Now Adan stood, back in his own body, before the two remaining assessors. One lunged at him. Backed up against the door, Adan had nowhere to run. His opponent spun him around and pinned both his arms behind his back, positioning himself between Adan and the wall.
The one with the zoelith approached cautiously. Adan started to panic, but then realized he still had a chance. He leapt into the mind of the assessor holding the zoelith, taking control of him mid-stride. The man’s momentum carried him forward and he collapsed onto Adan’s body, sending all three of them crashing to the floor.
Adan hadn’t been able to deactivate the assessor with the zoelith the first time. He doubted this time would be any different. But he saw now that he didn’t have to.
His assessor rolled over on his back and placed the zoelith to his own forehead, thrusting Adan back again into his own mind.
The Chronotrace Sequence- The Complete Box Set Page 28
