Taking another step back when nothing further happened, he stopped around six feet from the generator’s open panel. The physical shock hadn’t been hard enough to cause more than a lingering dull pain in his joints. Even so, the emotional shock hadn’t worn off. He looked around at the walls and floor of the machine room, then at the green mirrored ceiling overhead before letting his eyes rest back on the darker green of the control panel.
“What the fuck?” he muttered.
Looking up, he scanned for surveillance cameras with his eyes, wondering if the shock had come from somewhere else.
He couldn’t feel any people though. Human or seer.
All he felt were organics.
He could feel organic lights seething all around him, actually. More than what his eyes could account for as he glanced around the tiled room.
Reaching out tentatively with his light, he felt over the floor before exploring a portion of the nearest wall.
It shocked him again.
Revik felt his jaw harden. He checked his watch.
Forty-four minutes, forty-one seconds…
Standing there, feeling those strands weave around his light, he knew.
Somehow he knew.
Fear slid through his light as the realization sank in, vibrating his skin.
“Fuck,” he muttered, staring at the floor.
The floor rippled a bit, as if in agreement with him.
“I am sorry,” he said, aloud to the machine. “I made a mistake.”
The machine didn’t answer him.
He knew though. He knew he was right.
This whole damned complex was connected to that thing in the room. In fact, that thing in the room was this complex…its brain at least. Which meant the fusion generator wasn’t going to turn on for him. That AI wasn’t going to help him melt down the core of its own goddamned fusion reactor so that he could try to kill it.
He gave himself another span of time to consider options.
Forty-six minutes, four seconds…
It would take him another twenty-five to thirty to get back to the surface from here. It could take as much as twenty more to get past the main gate. That was assuming no real problems, which might be unlikely given that the heaviest fighting between Shadow’s people and the Lao Hu had been near the Tiananmen Gate.
He had a secondary exit if he didn’t make it to the square in time. He could find his own way to the airport, meet them there within another two hours.
His light twisted in a harder knot as he thought.
He didn’t want to miss that first window. He didn’t know why; he couldn’t really justify the flush of fear that came over him at the thought. He knew it might be purely emotional, a fear reaction to his realization about the AI being connected to the reactor and the walls and floor of this room.
He didn’t much care. Nor could he untangle his own feelings well enough to know for sure the truth of his motivations.
He had about a minute to decide. One minute.
After that, the decision to go for the second exit would be made for him.
Assuming the room would let him leave.
He frowned, fighting to think, to stay rational.
The thing hadn’t tried to kill him yet. He had no concrete reason to believe it would. All he knew at this point was that the room itself…meaning the brain itself in that distant room…had once thought seriously about killing him. It hadn’t killed him though, even then.
Moreover, Revik wasn’t in that room now.
Even if he could surmise that the organics in probably this entire underground complex were connected to that room in some way, that didn’t necessarily follow that the level of sentience or sophistication in the organic matter would be the same. Like a foot or a hand could be controlled by a singular intelligence, these rooms and machines might be, too. They also might be equally limited in basic form or function…differentiating them from a liver, for instance, or one’s kidneys or even a heart beating in a seer chest.
The thought reassured him.
But not very much.
Forty-seven minutes, thirty-two seconds…
He knew what Allie would say.
She would tell him to get the fuck out of there. She would tell him it wasn’t worth the risk, that they could try and take this thing out from a distance.
He wasn’t even sure he disagreed with her.
In fact, after a few seconds more, he realized he didn’t.
Forty-seven minutes, forty-eight seconds…
Yeah. He was getting the fuck out of here.
He might still make the pick-up in Tiananmen. If he hauled ass.
Backing away from the raised panel as the thought solidified, he turned his back on it entirely when nothing happened.
Then he began moving a lot faster.
Walking straight to the edge of the dais, he jumped down to the main floor, about two meters down. Without a pause he crossed the organic tiles to the nearest dead-metal ladder and grasped a rung just above eye-height. He began immediately to climb, making his way up rapidly but steadily, controlling his breathing…not looking down.
He would have to run up those fucking stairs. He needed his lungs for that.
He didn’t look back at all until he’d climbed past five separate catwalk floors, reaching the original walkway he’d taken into this room both times he’d been here.
Exhaling in relief, he glanced down only then. When he felt no reaction in the Barrier space around the machine, he began walking, fast, back the way he’d come.
He felt something in his gut begin to relax as he did.
When he reached the other side of the organic wall, he didn’t hesitate, laying his hand on the panel and asking to be let in.
Politely.
Maybe borderline submissively polite at that point…but Revik didn’t much care about that, either. All he wanted was for the thing to let him through.
Whatever the appropriateness of his etiquette towards the living machine, the door opened without any kind of stipulation.
Walking across the length of the room, Revik spoke directly to the wall mechanism as soon as he’d reached the other side, again keeping his light carefully polite.
Friend, I would like to enter the next room, please.
Silence. The door did not move.
Revik bit his tongue, hard enough for it to hurt. Even so, he didn’t change the tenor of his light, keeping it overtly calm. Peaceful.
He addressed the green room again.
I wish only to leave. To go in peace. Will you not open for me?
Silence.
Revik glanced around at the four walls, aware suddenly that the thing felt a hell of a lot more awake than either time he’d walked through this room before. His heart started beating harder in his chest, even as that feeling of the walls closing in on him grew more intense.
Fifty minutes, eight seconds…
Revik glanced around the room again, his hands on his hips. Contemplating things he might offer the room, he exhaled in a sigh.
Please let me out, he sent. Please. I won’t be back.
That time, there was a pregnant-feeling pause.
Revik tensed as the room seemed to move in some distant part of his light, confusing his aleimi. He glanced up, right as the dark green ceiling rippled directly over his head. He followed the motion with his eyes, seeing the organic material begin to pool and thicken along a different segment of wall.
“No,” he said aloud, frowning. He tapped the wall in front of him. “No. I want to go out the way I came. Take me back to the other room…the one with the vats…” He hesitated, then had another thought. “...Or take me up. Back to the surface. That would be best. I would be most appreciative of that, friend...”
There was another pause.
Then the organic reconfigured again, pooling this time in front of where Revik stood.
The door in front of him began to open.
Relief flooded Revik’s light. He
stood there, shifting his weight from foot to foot, ready to bolt through the opening as soon as it was wide enough.
At that point, all he cared about was getting out.
Even if the elevator had taken him back to the room with the vats, everything beyond this door would be simple organics. Doors with locks he could break easily with the telekinesis, even if the organics themselves refused to cooperate with him.
But his relief died as soon as his eyes focused on what waited for him on the other side of that opening.
It wasn’t the cavern with the giant vats.
It definitely wasn’t the area of lawn by the horse paddocks.
Low-ceilinged, most of the room lay in darkness, outside of his visual range.
In front of him stood a round, raised platform, dimly lit and with a panel on a stand, what looked like a handprint scanner.
“No,” Revik said, clenching his jaw. “No, I won’t go in there…”
But the walls of the sentient elevator were already reconfiguring around hm. They didn’t push him out through the opening. They instead melted that opening around him, withdrawing and reconstituting the wall behind where Revik stood, with him on the other side of it.
When Revik turned his head, moving back in that same direction, his palms and fingers and eyes met only a flat, blank wall.
Around him, the presence pulsed, waiting.
“No, goddamn it!” he said. “Let me out!”
Silence greeted him, pregnant but still.
Revik felt his heart start to beat louder in his chest. Audibly that time. Pounding against his ribs, catching in his throat, making it difficult to think. Clenching his jaw, he looked around at the dark room. His gaze returned to the single beam of light which fell down on the handprint scanner in the middle of that raised platform.
After another breath, he realized he had no choice.
There was no where else to go.
Once his foot landed on the edge of that platform, the lights slowly rose, illuminating the long, rectangular room he remembered. The lowered wash of floor appeared, brightened first by those lights, then by a different glow emanating from the organic tiles themselves. But the similarities with that initial view ended at the bare dimensions of the room itself.
Those brushed metal manhole covers no longer dotted the mirrored floor. Instead of being flush with the dark-green material, the cylinders were already up. Moreover, someone had smashed the glass casings around every single one.
Bodies spilled across the floor. Vacant stares.
Gauged out faces and mouths.
Ripped out intestines and organs.
Bite marks. Pieces missing.
Limbs that had been ripped inelegantly out of sockets.
“Gaos…” he breathed, fighting to control the panic that wanted to spill over his light. They weren’t alive, he knew that, but something about the brutality he could see, the base animalism of what had been done to them, caught in his throat.
“Gaos…” he repeated, hoarse.
He fought nausea, a sudden desire to empty his stomach.
He hadn’t eaten anything though. His stomach didn’t really do squeamish very well anyway. He’d never been able to throw up easily, even when he wanted.
He stared around instead, fighting to level his mind, to make sense of it as his eyes and light took in the full contents of what covered that floor.
Bodies…fucking everywhere. Not a single one appeared to be untouched, but Revik didn’t see many that had suffered the same fate, either.
Throats cut. Limbs in unnatural positions, positions they could only be in if the bones inside were smashed and broken beyond recognition. Faces cut and slashed. A few of them burned. Someone had defecated on one of them. Revik found himself thinking from the positions and the body secretions on some of them, that at least a few had been sexually violated, too. Fingers and hands and genitalia in mouths and on the floor. Eyes gauged out. Spines crushed. Skulls that looked smashed, as if by some blunt object…torsos that had been gutted like some Japanese samurai sword ritual, spilling cold white intestines and other organs over the floor, covered in coagulated blood and in a few cases feces from being cut open.
Very little actual blood made it to the floor, he noticed, probably because the hearts hadn’t been pumping when the flesh and bones had been ripped apart.
“Gaos…” he muttered again.
He gripped the handprint podium, fighting that panic that wanted to worsen.
He looked back at the sentient elevator, trying to decide if he should try to force his way back inside, see if he could convince it to take him back to the surface.
But he already knew it wouldn’t. This thing didn’t answer to him.
Nothing down here did, nor was it likely to.
Too much time had passed anyway. Too much fucking time…
That is true, brother, yes… a voice whispered. Very, very true…but time is always so precious, is it not?
Revik tensed, his hands once more gripping the podium.
For those few seconds, he couldn’t breathe at all.
And I may not answer to you, the voice added softly. But a part of me is a part of you, is it not, brother? I am partly your design, am I not…?
The voice confused him again.
Melodic. Polite.
Not the machine as Revik remembered it, but based on the words, he had to assume that’s what addressed him. He couldn’t remember now if the thing ever spoke to him before. Perhaps it was simpler here, outside the smaller room.
Perhaps here, it knew ways to interact with him. Protocols.
That is one way to see it…yes. The machine sighed, a near softness to its voice. Yes. That is one way…not the best way. But one.
It might have been funny, in a different context.
Did you do this? Revik said, frowning. Who killed all of these things? Was it you? Or was Dragon here? Did he do this?
He stared at the very seer-looking or possibly human-looking shit on the bare stomach of one of the bodies, feeling a sudden flicker of doubt.
…Was someone else here? he asked again.
That is not very important either, brother, the voice told him, making a faint humming sound like a gentle rebuke. But you have not answered me, and I wish to know. This system of transport…this comes from you, does it not? It is you I have to thank for this?
Revik cleared his throat, feeling his heart grow loud again, more strained.
I don’t know, he sent truthfully. Hesitating, he added, Can I leave, brother?
No.
But I wish to leave. I apologize for coming here, I had concerns––
You did not come here to see me, the voice said.
Revik fell silent.
The thing phrased the last thing it said as a statement, but to Revik, it sounded more like a question. He turned over its words, trying to decide what to say. Was there a right answer here? Did the thing bring him here because it was bored? Curious? Maybe it really didn’t know why he was here. Maybe it didn’t know what he’d intended with the reactor.
The voice murmured, softer,
…Or perhaps…perhaps you did come to see me.
Revik fought to blank his mind.
I apologize, he said again. I had concerns…
Do you not still have these concerns?
They are no longer relevant. I wish to return to my––
Your wife, yes. But you are here on your own. Why, brother? Why would you not bring her? Do you not fear leaving her alone?
Revik fought confusion again.
Allie. Why was it talking about Allie?
That fear shivering through his light intensified.
All around him, Revik felt tastes of what he remembered.
It wasn’t as strong of course, not like that dark green room with its alien life…the one that wanted to pull him apart like a lab animal as soon as he ventured into its lair. This wasn’t the same, but it still felt like that consciousness. It seethed
around him with a resonance that set his teeth on edge, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. It gave him that same feeling he remembered, too…like an animal with a gun sight painted on its body.
He grew more conscious of that animal fear as he thought it, of the alienness there, the touch of light and mind…
Yet there was something…something…
What did it want with Allie?
Dragon? he sent.
The thought startled him, even as it grew more sure.
Dragon? he repeated. Brother…is this you I am speaking to?
The thought came with an emotion that edged strangely towards relief.
Are you here? Revik prodded again. Are you in this place with me?
Inside that dense seething light, what flickered around the nearly bloodless bodies and the podium with its hand scanner and the blank, pulsing walls…Revik felt a clicking, purring kind of sigh. He felt what might have been sadness in it, too.
I am this place, brother, the voice told him. ...It is me.
Revik felt a denser understanding, even as the consciousness around him grew sharper, bringing back that wash of nerves, making him feel again like an insect pinned under glass.
You cannot let me go? he said, swallowing. Why?
The silence deepened.
Then Revik felt more than heard the being sigh.
I think you had better come to see me first, Dragon said.
Revik fought his light neutral, fought the part of him that really hated that idea, more than he could formulate into words. But he couldn’t think of a good way to refuse. Not with the exits locked, not with the clock ticking faster all around him.
Not with this machine that wasn’t a machine seething through his head.
“Where are you?” Revik said, speaking aloud that time.
An image formed.
Immediate. Stark.
It showed Revik exactly what he knew he would see.
An image of that dark-green room.
Revik felt his fear return in a cold pulse, coiling back into his intestines. Swallowing harder, he stood there for a few seconds more, stalling, fighting to think, or maybe reminding himself of the limits of his options…maybe trying to force his limbs to move, to carry him to the other side of that gristly floor covered in corpses and body parts so he could get this over with.
Dragon: Allie's War Book Nine Page 66
