What would happen if she failed to protect Elysium from the forces of destruction? Then, quite suddenly, everything would become a race against the clock to recreate the afterlife in some way, lest she be consigned to the void on death.
She reached out to her ship. Cherry - the technophage is something in the blood?
I am not certain. The traits you know as gifts all are.
How can I see them?
Electron microscopy would be the most efficient way of doing so.
I have no idea what that means.
Some machines are coded with the ability to examine extremely tiny objects. These primarily had medical uses. There is such a machine in the small medical facility in these ruins, in fact, and it appears to be intact.
Why in the world would there be an intact medical facility in this place? What interests did the ancients have in examining their own blood, aside from the gifts?
“Ada? Are you here?”
Sam was waving a hand in front of Ada’s face, but it was the words that startled her, even as Cherry started tracing a path in her sight. A ghostly image of the machine she should look for appeared too, superimposed over Sam’s face, so Ada shifted her eyes a little.
“I’m fine, I… Okay, I can try, just for a few minutes. But I need you to get something for me. There’s a machine - it looks like a weird box with a cylinder cutting through its width on one end. It’s white, and it’s in a room that’s one floor above us, that way.” She pointed to the location Cherry had identified. “Get me the box, and anything nearby that looks useful, and bring it back. No promises.”
The ghosts exchanged glances, and Sam seemed almost relieved, squeezing Ada’s shoulder. “Thank you, Ada. We’ll be right back.”
She scowled and shooed them. “I really don’t have time for this. Go!”
They rushed off into the facility, giving Ada some time to look the boy over. He was sweating, pale, and his skin was cracking to reveal raw pink underneath. It looked like his nose and eyes were bleeding slightly, and his breathing was ragged and uneven. Once the whelm set in, there was nothing to be done to stop it.
He opened his eyes, just a little, and made eye contact. In a moment of nervous surprise, Ada squeezed time to a standstill. She didn’t like the eye contact; inspecting him without needing to return his gaze felt much more comfortable.
Then she remembered, to her great frustration, that her eyes were a part of the real world just like everything else. She couldn’t move or avert her gaze in any way, only think about things faster. Their eyes were locked, frozen together, and she suddenly felt even more uncomfortable than she had before. She let her mind slip back into the normal flow of time, and looked away.
“Who are you?”
The boy’s question was tattered and bloodstained, and she didn’t want to touch it, but she felt little choice. “Ada.”
“Are you an angel?”
“Depends.” She bit her lip.
“Can you fly?”
She smiled. “I love flying.”
“Are you here to take me to the gods?”
Her smile faded again, and she glanced up at the door at the end of the room, hoping to see Sam arrive with something she could make use of. She wondered how to answer that question for a long moment, then realized she had been silent for so long that there was no point in trying to answer it anyway.
She looked down at his frail form and cracking skin and sighed. “This shouldn’t happen, you know. This is cruel. It’s pointless.”
“I’m sorry.”
She felt a sad sinking feeling. He sounded pathetic and wistful all at once, and it was all completely and utterly pointless. She felt an urge to reach out for him, but that wouldn’t help. “It’s not your fault, kid. Somebody killed you. Somebody killed every child who’s ever been overwhelmed. I want to know who, and how. Maybe one day, in the next world, you’ll find out too.”
“What’s the afterlife like?”
She looked back at the crystal room and sighed. “Not great. I think -”
“Ada! Is this it?”
It was Sam, carrying the exact object Cherry had shown her. On one side was a command console, and the cylinder on the other end was a hollow space.
“Yes - give me that. Just let me -” Ada set the object down on the ground and squeezed time close to a standstill, and set to work. The spindles of dark code emerged from her fingertips, apparently unconstrained by time, and she connected them to the command console like fingers. With some poking and prodding she found the connection that turned the machine on, and it lit up quick enough to feel instant even in time dilation. It displayed a strange, slightly frayed grey image that she couldn’t make sense of, along with a fair amount of text. The hollow cylinder in the machine lit up with a blue light.
She read the words on the console, parsing their ancient meanings and figuring out what needed to happen next. It all seemed simple. She let time slip back to its normal speed.
“- do this.”
“Holy shit, that was fast.” Sam’s eyes went wide. “I’ve never seen code like… was that magic? What did you do to it?”
“Not magic.” She started fiddling with the machine with her hands. There were three controls on the side, and when she turned them the view moved, and everything she saw through the console seemed to change in size. She made it shrink and shrink until she realized what she was looking at - the flat surface on the inside of that hollow cylinder. “Oh, I see. Okay, er, we need blood. Sam, got a knife?”
“What? Um - here.”
Ada took Sam’s knife as the other ghosts watched, mesmerized, as though she really were performing magic. Sadly, it would be nothing of the sort. Ada kneeled beside the boy and took his hand. “This is going to hurt.”
He winced as she cut into his palm, spilling blood and, more importantly, getting it on the blade. Then introduced the bloodied blade into the cylinder; droplets of blood began to stream off it, collecting suspended in a tiny sphere in the air, and something new was visible on the console. She set the blade down and experimented briefly with the controls, and then started zooming in. Soon everything became alien and strange, a world of lumpy, shapes that looked rather like seaweed.
What am I looking for? She subvocalized, zooming further and further.
Cherry’s response was flat. Increase magnification. She did, until Cherry spoke again. The smooth, round ring shapes are human red blood cells.
Blood cells?
Cellular biology is not immediately relevant here. There are smaller, irregular shapes between the cells - try to magnify one of them.
She saw what Cherry was talking about, and carefully guided the view towards them with the controls on the sides, increasing magnification. She noticed several clusters of small objects that, in an eery way, looked remarkably like small starships.
Is that the technophage?
You will notice four different kinds of nanites. One is what you would call the hunter’s gift. Two of the others are similar to gifts, but less easy to explain to you. They are known as the immunosupplementary and cellular maintenance… gifts. The final kind is unknown to me. It may be your technophage. I will document it and run nanomolecular simulations.
Cherry, through the suit, highlighted the one she was talking about. It was a bit smaller than the rest, and looked remarkably smooth in comparison to the others, like a child had tried making a sculpture of Cherry out of mud.
That must be it. That’s the thing that’s holding human civilization back?
It may be. I have no records on it and cannot yet be sure.
“What is that?”
Ada jumped. Sam was staring at the screen, so Ada pointed at the technophage. “That’s what’s killing him. This one.”
“Can you do anything about it?”
Ada frowned. Why isn’t it killing me? Can you analyse my blood?
Not in such detail from this distance, no.
Ada signed. She reached for the knife, then s
uddenly stopped, pulling her hand away. She didn’t suffer from the technophage right now, but if she cut herself with that bloody knife she might suddenly get it in her blood. She might suddenly and traumatically lose her memory, her ability to read - it would be monstrous. She didn’t dare. She was almost afraid to touch the hilt of the knife, even though there was no blood on it.
“Get me another knife.” She extended a hand, trying to keep her expression neutral, and another ghost handed her once. Ada pricked the inside of her left palm, introduced the sample where it floated into a separate bead alongside the first, and took a deep breath. It was the moment of truth - did she hold the weapon within herself, too, or had she eluded it?
She aimed the view at her own blood and counted. A strange new gift - probably her coder’s gift. Two more that were identical, no doubt those strangely-named ones Cherry had mentioned. And finally… nothing else.
The different gift in your blood is your coder’s gift . That much had been obvious, but Cherry said it anyway.
“So… I really don’t have the technophage inside me?” She saw the ghosts stare at her, as though she expected them to answer.
Not in this blood sample, at least .
She looked over at the dying boy - dying, or was he already dead? Being killed by something she didn’t have in her body. What if she touched him? Would an agitated technophage kill her as well?
She looked at the ghosts. Gods; they, too, were infected. Every human had this tiny poison in their blood, every one except for her. She took a sudden step away from the machine, from all of them and the weapon in their blood. A cold chill seized her heart.
Sam’s look of alarm grew as Ada stepped away. “Can you help him?”
Ada looked back to the room with the holographic crystal. She could help him - by giving him a place to go when he died. But she couldn’t save his mortal body. She didn’t want to go anywhere near him. She whispered. “No.”
“What do you mean, no?” Sam demanded. “You know what’s killing him -”
“I can’t get it out of him, it’s in his blood.” Sam stood up and reached out her hand, as though to grab Ada. A hand infected. Ada flinched and stepped back. “Don’t touch me!”
Sam’s eyes widened. “What’s going on?”
“You’re infected!” She was shouting. “All of you! Everyone except me.”
“What? Infected? We’re not animals, Ada, we don’t -”
“This is our disease. Trust me, I - I can’t help. Get away.”
The boy’s voice broke through the rushing chaos, despite its frailty. “Water?”
Ada shook her head. She looked away, raised a hand. “Get him out of here. Get him to the woods. Let him remember the woods after he goes, not some basement. Go.”
“Ada -”
Ada pulled out her gun and, in a snap, fired off an incendiary shot directly at the ceiling. Fire bloomed and roared. It died quickly without anything to cling to and burn, but it still got the point across. She lowered her gun and aimed it straight at the infected.
“Get out of here now! If you want me to help you, to make sure he can go to a good place after he dies, get out of here. If you come any closer -”
“Okay!” Sam raised her hands in obvious alarm, the scowl on her face now twisted with fear. “Okay, get the boy out of here. Ada - don’t shoot - it’s fine. We’re leaving. We’re just -”
“ Go! ”
She watched them scurry out of the room, leaving the two bloodied knives side-by-side on the floor, alongside the machine and its perfectly suspended beads of blood.
Ada breathed heavily, waited a few seconds with her gun pointed to the door, and started stepping away. She couldn’t be too careful - gods, the number of times she had exposed herself to other humans already! Across twenty years! She couldn’t imagine how she had escaped infection.
“Shit.”
She ran her hand through her hair, turned towards the stairs, and climbed back up towards the holographic crystal. Exposure. She had exposed herself to humans so, so often.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
Ada had always been whatever she was. There was no traumatic break in personality or mood or memory. And yet she had bled in this world; she had shared kisses and beds with other humans, all of whom were presumably infected. She had drank the world’s water, eaten its fruit, breathed its air. The omnipresent technophage, in everything and everyone around her, was continually failing, every second of every day, to infect her.
Ada was not pure or untainted; she was immune. Untouchable.
She had had nothing to fear from them.
She keyed the door shut behind her and threw down her pack. The boy was going to die, and she had cast them off with rage and fear. She slammed her back against the door and breathed heavily, trying to forget it, trying to pass it off, dragging her trembling fingers through her hair, squeezing her temple. It was fine - she wasn’t here to save people or make them feel good. She was here to rebuild the afterlife. What did it matter if she chased a few people off at gunpoint? If she lost her cool?
Focus. She tried to focus on the task at hand. They were tiny, the gifts - tiny little shards of power, tiny little curses. Here, instead, she was staring down a massively complicated tangle of code, and she wondered just how many tiny little bits of her gift were lining these walls.
She had sent the boy off to die. Of course she had - there was an afterlife, he would go there, she would fix it, all would be well. That’s the way it had to be. She couldn’t fix the whelm. Save the infected.
And once she had fixed Elysium, if she even managed that… humans might destroy it anyway. She slowed her breathing, looked up at the ceiling, and started thinking. She needed to get this crystal somewhere where ignorance could never touch it. She needed to get it off of the Earth, away from people.
But first, she needed to fix Elysium.
She whispered between breaths. “Cherry.”
Yes, Ada?
“Help.” She blinked, straightened herself out, and walked over to the command console that controlled the afterlife. She tied her hair up above her head, keeping the jet-black strands from getting in her way. She looked where her ancestors had started their work, and put her finger on that old, inert code. “I need help. Let’s start from the beginning.”
Chapter 15
Isavel could tell the ghosts were doing their very best to stall for time. They were neither approaching nor letting up. Their hunters and guns were pelting the army from as far as humanly possible, and heavy weapons splintered trunks and branches between the two forces, their operators barely able to see their targets. The dragons were firebombing the area from so far away that anybody could step out of the way of their shots, though that still allowed the dragons to corral people into the ghosts’ lines of fire. But despite the conflict, the ghosts were playing it safe.
That unsettled Isavel. She remembered looking into their eyes as they died, and seeing how little they feared death. So why play safe?
She and the others fired back into the woods. The ghosts were stalling for time because Ada needed that time. There was no way around it - that was the only explanation for all of this. Everybody who knew anything had warned her about Ada, and it was clear as day she was working with the ghosts. Ada probably was a ghost herself, for all that she might not be as rabid. And now they were all keeping Isavel from the mountain.
Or rather, they were trying. Reluctant to get too close, the ghosts folded and retreated when pushed hard enough. Isavel’s forces - they were hers, she decided, insofar as they were an instrument in accomplishing her divine mandate - had chased them to a broad valley, carved into the world by an inconspicuously small and winding river.
And it was here, it seemed, that the drones from Hive finally lost their usefulness. Here, in the foothills of a mountain Isavel would have to scale under constant fire, the majority of the drones suddenly turned around to retreat.
She shouted at the nearest drone. “What�
�s going on?” It was resting on a hauler, unmoving but still apparently active.
“They’re out of power.” Aren’s voice came the drone, sounding irritated, tired - bored, most likely. Children were not meant for managing military campaigns. “They have to come back or they won’t make it home. I can keep one here to talk, but I can’t fly it around, and it’ll have to go soon.”
“Can’t we give them power somehow?”
“I don’t know.” The young Mayor sounded exasperated. “Maybe.”
Isavel gritted her teeth. She didn’t strictly need the drones, but they were useful, especially the ones with guns. She looked up at the mountain foothills infested with ghosts, and the great white peak looming beyond. That peak stared right back down at her, daring her to climb. She pointed at it, hoping the drone could see.
“I need to get to the northeast face of that mountain. Aren, your drones can carry me up there.”
“They don’t have the energy -”
“I’ll find something to power them.”
“Okay.”
Thankfully, if nothing else, Aren would do more or less as told.
She caught herself and frowned. She took a deep breath, held it, and let it go. She wasn’t that sort of person. Not really. She was just focused, completely dedicated to the task at hand. There would be time for sympathy after… everything. After whatever would happen had happened. Until then, of course she wasn’t her. She was who the gods needed her to be, so she could win.
She looked around for someone who might know more about ancient relics than she did, and waved the elder coder over. “Elder Tan, can you power these drones?”
Ren and Zoa stepped in behind him, looking curious, but Elder Tan just looked baffled. “We can’t just do whatever we want, unfortunately. I don’t know of any sigils that would do such a thing.”
“Do you have any ideas as to where we might start?”
“Hm.” He walked in closer to inspect the drone, its stocky body flanked by four disk-like protrusions. Those were, as far as Isavel could tell, the things that made it fly. “Many ancient relics are powered by lightning. Electricity. Some are powered by light.”
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