Adan didn’t want to give in. All of his emotions told him to stay. He knew what betrayal felt like. He didn’t see how this was any different.
Regardless of what he felt, though, he knew Gavin was right. It was only a matter of time before the Developers found out that Gavin had been reactivated.
“All right. I’ll go. But I will come back for you—I promise.”
The tension in Gavin’s mind eased, if only a little. “Good. I knew you’d make the right choice. Now, in order to find out who we’re up against, you’ll have to go to the place I showed you and use the chronotrace.”
“The chronotrace? But I have no idea how it works.”
“It’s like any other esolace device. When you connect to it, your bioseine will tell you what you need to know.”
“But the memory you gave me happened yesterday. Can it go that far back in time?”
“Based on the versions I created before my life in the Vast, I would say no. But perhaps I worked on it more while I lived with the Welkin. Either way you have to try. It’s your only hope of finding out who captured me.”
The whole thing made Adan feel like he was riding that rickety cart back in the Basin again. But he couldn’t stay here until things made sense. The assessors had entered the prison sector now. He had to go.
“Where is the chronotrace?”
“I don’t know.”
Why had Adan expected anything different?
Gavin continued the thought. “They must have taken it when they captured me. But if you search for it in the Dev channel, you should be able to find out where they put it. Start with a scan of the security logs.”
The assessors were close to entering the hallway outside the cell door. Adan had to leave now before they got any closer. “Okay, I’ll find it. Anything else?”
“Yes. Once you find the chronotrace you’ll need to get out. There is a little-used emergency exit out of the Annex through the Developer’s quarters. It doesn’t show up on your schematic so I’ll mark it for you.” Adan saw what looked like a section of wall on the floor plan fade until it was semi-transparent. He could see through it now to a ramp leading up and out of the building on the other side.
“Since only the Developers know about it,” Gavin went on, “it shouldn’t be guarded. It will take you straight to the surface. But be careful. The Devs will be tracking you wherever you go now as long as you’re connected to the esolace. When you find the chronotrace, hopefully you’ll find my inhibitor as well. If you do, use it to take yourself off-system until you get to the place where you can run the trace—the place from my memory.”
Adan took in everything without questioning this time. He would have to sort out the details later. The patrol would be there any moment.
“Okay, I’m ready then,” Adan said. Somehow it felt more fitting to say good-bye out loud.
Gavin reached for the zoelith Adan had used to revive him. Placing it in his hands, he said, “I’ll see you again, my friend.”
He laid back down on the bed and closed his eyes.
Adan knew that he needed to hurry, but he hesitated. He could not get over the feeling that he was abandoning this man.
Slowly, he lowered the zoelith onto Gavin’s forehead and activated it. Gavin’s head lolled to the side. Adan took one last look at him. His face looked so serene. How long would it stay that way?
Adan stepped into the hallway to face the patrol. They were lumbering towards him in a graceless shuffle. The Developers had already seized control. Why hadn’t they waited until the assessors were closer? That would have been faster.
Their pace gave him a little extra time to check the Annex schematics. Beyond the prison sector, several assessors patrolled the hallways of the Developer’s quarters, but none of them were near the secret exit Gavin had marked for him. Once he got by the two assessors in this hallway, it looked like he would be able to avoid the other patrols on his way to reaching it. Of course he still had to find the chronotrace as well.
He tightened his grip on the zoelith, confident that he could take care of two assessors without much difficulty.
Neither of them were carrying zoeliths. He thought about rushing them so he could get it over quickly. But he decided to check the Com channel first to see why they’d sent two unarmed assessors after him.
The orders were spelled out clearly in the logs. Now he understood why the Devs had seized control of the assessors so early: they were carrying oscillathes.
According to protocol, such weapons were not normally issued to security forces like the assessors. They were only ever given to somatarchs since they were easier to control.
The Developers were not very trusting if they wouldn’t give weapons to their own security forces. Then again, they probably didn’t have too many threats running rampant inside their own facilities.
With most of the somatarchs out fighting on Virid Ridge, the Devs had been forced to issue oscillathes to these two assessors. They no longer wanted to simply deactivate Adan. This time they were going to kill him.
Forty-Two
The Inner Circle
Adan backed down the hallway.
Besides being a threat to his life, the presence of the oscillathes meant that he no longer had a way to safely neutralize his enemies. If he tried to get close enough to use his zoelith, they would kill him before he ever got the chance. And if he used their oscillathes against them, that would mean killing them. That was not something he could bring himself to do.
Hiding inside the cell would do no good. The evanescence wave would pass right through the door. He had to get the oscillathes away from them.
Suddenly he had an idea. Instead of using the oscillathes against them, he could take control of the assessors and just disarm them. Without their weapons, it would be safe to deactivate them with the zoelith.
Adan sent his mind once again out across the esolace, seeking the Developers in control of these assessors. But this time dozens of mental presences flew past him and none of them were the ones he was looking for. After a short time, he had exhausted every possibility he had access to. However these assessors were being controlled, it wasn’t through any channel Adan knew. It was as if the people controlling their minds weren’t connected to the esolace at all. But that was impossible; there was no other way to control the assessors.
His hands turned into sweaty rags that needed wringing. The assessors were getting close to being in range. He had to try some other way of accessing their minds. He raced through the Dev channels searching for anything he could find that might help. Bits and pieces flew by, but everything was as useless as the jumbled mounds of scrap piled inside Will’s barrels.
One particular detail caught his attention, though. On the location stamps of the mental trails he was following, most of the Dev events were originating from the same place inside the Annex, a large room known as the Administrative Command Center or ‘Com’, for short. Adan ran a quick check on the schematics and found a high concentration of Devs at that location. It seemed probable that whoever he was looking for would be there. But since the Devs he was looking for weren’t connected to the esolace, he would have to deal with them using some other, more direct means.
He sent his thoughts into the mind of one of the Dev’s inside the Com center. After passing through the disorientation, he found himself looking through the man’s eyes at the layout of the room. It was a dark place, its black walls, floor, and ceiling, made from the same glossy material as the streets of Oasis. Glowing lines ran along the edges of the walls. The circular chamber contained little in the way of furnishings, just three rows of polished black chairs arranged in concentric circles. All the Devs present were leaning back, resting comfortably in their seats. Though they looked as if they might be sleeping, Adan knew their minds were engaged in dealing with security threats to Oasis.
Remembering how he and Will had simply walked by the assessors in the streets of the city, he wondered whether or not the esolace
wasn’t holding something back from him here. The Devs in control of the assessors must be using channels he didn’t know about. If he disconnected the Developer under his control from the visual input he was receiving from the esolace, perhaps the room might look different.
But he had to be careful. If he disconnected completely, he would lose control of the man altogether. Isolating the man’s visual input from the esolace, Adan carefully shut it down.
Switching back to normal sight, he noticed that the room did indeed appear changed. The absence of light was the most noticeable difference. Before, the room’s lighting had been augmented through the esolace, much like the lentes did in the Viscera. Now he was forced to survey things in the weak, auxiliary lighting. He saw the same fifty chairs that had been there before, but there were two which were occupied now that had previously been empty.
The new Developers sat next to each other in the inner circle of chairs. From where Adan’s Dev was seated in the back row, all he could see were the backs of their heads. Knowing how difficult it would be to walk the Dev he was controlling all the way down front, he left the man’s mind and jumped into the thoughts of the person seated closest to them.
All the other Developers in the room looked more or less like the scientists Adan had met in the Institute, but once Adan adjusted to the new mind and caused his host to stand, he noticed that these new Developers looked slightly different. The one immediately to his left had darker hair and thicker eyebrows than the others. He did not seem to be nearly as pale or thin either. Adan recognized him from Gavin’s memory. It was Malthus, the head of security.
The other one had the same complexion as the rest, but his hair was thin and wispy and almost colorless, giving him an unnatural appearance. Adan recognized him as Darius, Gavin’s mentor and the senior memorant among the Developers.
Each of them wore a zoelith fastened to his waist. Adan forced the dev under his control to move, tottering awkwardly as he stepped into the inner circle. Adan feared he might fall, but he managed to grab onto the back of a nearby chair and stabilize himself.
The chairs were packed in close. After two jerky steps, he stood beside Malthus. Reaching down, he tried to grab the zoelith at Malthus’ side, but managed only to ram his Dev’s hand into the arm of the chair.
Malthus failed to notice the clumsy effort. If he was indeed one of the Dev’s controlling the assessors, his mind was no doubt consumed with moving his assessor down the prison hallway.
Adan tried for the zoelith a second time. This time he grabbed it. Raising it up, he brought it down slowly towards the unsuspecting Dev. But instead of connecting it to his forehead, it smashed into the man’s cheek. Again, Malthus gave no indication he was aware of what Adan was doing. Neither did anyone else in the room. Adan paused, tightening his focus on controlling the zoelith and shutting out everything else. After a moment of intense concentration, the zoelith pressed against Malthus’ forehead and activated.
To tell whether or not he had succeeded in halting the advance of one of the assessors, he let his awareness of the room fade just long enough for him to check the prison hallway. As he had hoped, one of the two men advancing towards Adan had stopped where he stood. The other continued shuffling forward. He was only a few steps from being in range; Adan had to work fast.
As his awareness returned to the Com chamber, he marshaled all his focus on the difficult task of maneuvering his Dev towards Darius. He paused, looking into the man’s drawn face. He looked weary even with his eyes closed.
Darius’ eyelids flicked open.
It gave Adan such a start that for a moment he nearly lost control of his own Developer. The cunning gleam there would have made Adan shudder if he had been inside his own body. That look told him in an instant that Darius knew exactly what he was planning to do.
Darius rose calmly from his chair and moved towards Adan’s Dev. Adan realized two things then: that Darius was going to deactivate him and that there was nothing Adan could do to stop it. But then Adan realized something else. If Darius was moving his own body, that meant he was no longer controlling one of the assessors in the hallway.
Adan abandoned his Dev and jumped into the mind of the other assessor in the hallway. He adjusted to the new body after a brief moment of confusion and seized control of the man’s movements. Now at last he was able to do what he had intended from the start.
He tossed the assessor’s oscillathe as far as he could down the passage. It grazed the wall and skittered across the floor, finally coming to a stop about halfway between Adan and the assessor.
Turning his attention from the man under his control, he attempted to pass into the mind of the other assessor to disarm him as well. It was closed. Darius must have already seized control of the assessor.
Adan would have to find another Developer and attempt once more to deactivate Darius. He just hoped there would be enough time and that Darius didn’t wake up to stop him again.
But as he sent his mind out across the esolace, Adan came to a startling realization: there were no minds left in Com for him to go to. The Developers who had been there a moment before were no longer present. He could not find the mental signatures of the Devs anywhere on the esolace.
With no one left for him to possess, Adan panicked. If he couldn’t shut Darius down, he would have to use his own assessor to wrestle the final oscillathe from his enemy. Though controlling the physical movements of the assessors was easier than controlling the Devs, he did not like his chances with the most experienced memorant in Oasis.
Lurching forward, he forced the new body to take its first, unsteady step. Though he staggered against the wall, he pushed off and took another step towards his adversary.
Then the other assessor did something unthinkable. He paused, raised his oscillathe, and pointed it directly at the man under Adan’s control. Adan wanted to scream, “No!”—to save his assessor somehow, but it was too late. His enemy calmly fired the weapon. The whisper of death tore through Adan’s ears, straight into his very being. As low as it was, if someone had screamed it could not have shaken him more violently.
Adan snapped back into his own body just in time to see the crumpled gray jacket fall to the ground. Something clattered onto the floor in the midst of the robes, but he couldn’t see what it was.
He stood facing the last of his enemies alone in the hallway.
For a moment, he stared at the pile of clothes in stunned silence. Will had told him the Devs could kill indiscriminately like this, but it was another thing to see it with his own eyes. If his enemy could dispense with a member of the Collective, there was no doubt he would do the same thing to Adan.
The other assessor resumed his advance.
For some reason, the clattering metal sound echoed in Adan’s mind, bringing him out of his shock and terror. In an instant, he realized it must have been made by the assessor’s extractor; all of them wore one. At first, the detail meant nothing, but then he remembered that, like the extractor, he could use his bioseine to connect to almost anything inside Oasis. What if there was some other device, something along this hallway, which could help him?
Through the esolace, he could see inside each of the rooms. Each was furnished identically: a single bed made of shiny metal and nothing more. But they weren’t just beds, they were also mobilized carts used for transporting prisoners. Once he realized what they were, he saw his chance.
He reached out to the doors, simultaneously commanding all of them to open at once. Controlling them was trivial compared to manipulating the mind of a sentient person. A soft hiss swept down the hallway as the doors slid into the walls. The assessor was a step away from being in range.
Adan took control of all the carts except the one in Gavin’s cell. Nineteen shining carts shot out into the hallway in one massive swell. Because the doorways were staggered on either side of the passage, they came out in a perfect line.
The carts just missed knocking the assessor down. Adan collapsed the
carts in on him, pinching him between two of them. The assessor strained forward with the oscillathe. For a moment Adan wondered if he had misjudged the distance, but the assessor faltered. No matter how desperately he stretched, he was still a sliver shy of being able to fire his deadly weapon. Adan had him now.
He hurled the carts down the hallway, dragging the immobilized assessor, along with the metal train, in a shiny, unstoppable exodus.
The carts hummed off around an intersecting passage until they disappeared from view. The last assessor was gone. It was time to find the chronotrace.
Taking Gavin’s advice, Adan scanned the security logs to see if there was any record of his belongings. He found the location of Gavin’s things almost instantly. All high security prisoners were processed at the same location. Their belongings were kept in a small storage hold across the hall from the prisoner processing center. Even better, the room was on the way to the hidden exit Gavin had told him about.
Whatever Gavin had done to cure his exhaustion, Adan had no difficulty pushing himself now. He flew down the hallway and into the next one. Opening the door to a room about halfway down, he passed into a long, narrow chamber with slide-out lockers, four high, all the way up to the ceiling. Gavin’s gear was in a container near the entrance, on the top row. The box slid out from the wall with a thought and floated to the floor. Inside Adan found three items.
The first was the most important—the chronotrace. He studied the strange circular device for a moment before tucking it under his arm. The smooth metal was pleasant to touch and the crystal panel on top glittered as if the device was already active. For its small size, it was exceptionally heavy.
The second item was Gavin’s inhibitor. For the time being, he would need that even more than the chronotrace. On the schematic the assessor patrols continued to zero in on his location, but with the inhibitor, he would hopefully be able to escape their notice. Of course, once he put it on he wouldn’t know their positions either, but it was a tradeoff he would have to make.
The Chronotrace Sequence- The Complete Box Set Page 31
