As she drew near to the point below her father’s bed, Cassandra saw that it was located somewhere on the other side of the door to room #12. And she could see with her connection to the ZPF that there was someone sleeping inside that room.
Cassandra grimaced. Even if she could get that person to let her in, how would she explain the need to cut a hole in their ceiling? She had to find another way. Maybe she would have a chance to infect her father tomorrow.
But there were no guarantees of that. She needed to get him alone and pin him down in one place long enough for the canister’s timed release to let the virus out.
Cassandra continued down the corridor, checking the surrounding rooms for occupants with her Awareness. The room two doors down was empty. Cassandra tried the door controls. The door swished open, revealing a bed and a closet. She stepped inside and shut the door. The room looked unused. She went to check the closet and found it empty. Glancing up, Cassandra used her Awareness to figure out what part of her father’s room was above her...
She saw a luxuriously appointed bathroom and smiled. Perfect. When he got up in the middle of the night, or the next morning, the nanites would sense him and do their job. Unfortunately, he’d be awake so he might see a glimmer of nanites in the air. There wasn’t much to do about that. At least he wouldn’t be able to sense them in the ZPF.
Cassandra placed her hollowed-out data cube on the bed and shut her eyes, reaching out once more to guide herself to a point directly below the garbage can that sat between the sink and toilet. Opening her eyes once more, she found herself standing right in front of the door. She drew her sword and summoned a shield to enhance the blade. Hopefully, it wouldn’t make too much noise as it cut through the floor....
* * *
Darius saw the exact same scene unfolding again, but this time he saw it from a disembodied, third-person perspective. He saw the crowds screaming, falling, scattering, and he saw the shimmering clouds of nanites undulating in the air. He saw himself put on the helmet that he’d arranged to be hidden inside the lectern on the speaker’s podium. His bulky black and gold ceremonial robes hid the fact that he was already wearing a suit of power armor and an oxygen tank. The helmet was all he needed to add in order to properly isolate himself from infection.
This time as the shimmering silver clouds raced toward him, Darius saw himself stand his ground, waiting for them to arrive. Even before the nanites reached him, he collapsed in agony, just as he had in his previous vision. Just then his daughter came striding out from the back of the podium. She was wearing a suit of armor like him. That wasn’t strange by itself. He probably would order her to wear a suit in order to avoid infection. Cassandra walked up to him, but she showed no signs of concern over his thrashing, or for the screaming crowds in the courtyard. She just stood there, watching as he died.
“It’s okay, Dad,” he heard her say. “It will be over soon.”
It wasn’t until his glowing green eyes rolled up in his head and his back arched with a final spasm that she began to show signs of distress. “Dad?” She dropped to her haunches beside him and shook him by his shoulders. “Dad! Answer me!” When he didn’t even twitch, and the last stragglers in the courtyard collapsed in spasming heaps, Cassandra looked up and slowly shook her head, surveying the massacre. “What have I done?!” she asked in an anguished voice. “Tanik!” she screamed. “Tanik! You lied to me!”
Darius woke up with a roar and burst out of his bed. Whispering voices chattered urgently in his ear. The air seemed to tremble around him. A second later he realized that he was trembling, not the air.
What had he just seen?
Darius wasn’t surprised that Tanik was behind the virus. What surprised him was that his own daughter was also involved. Moreover, somehow Darius’s planned countermeasures were not going to be enough. Could the virus eat through his armor? But no, that didn’t make sense. Cassandra hadn’t been affected by it, and in his vision she’d been wearing a suit just like his. There had to be some other explanation. Maybe he was going to get infected by the nano virus before he put on his helmet, and if Cassandra was involved, then she might be the one who was going to infect him.
As that thought occurred to him, the whispers returned, but softly. Confirmation? he wondered.
Darius reached out with his Awareness, trying to sense any lurking threats in his quarters. He couldn’t detect anything immediately wrong with his surroundings, so he reached out further, searching for his daughter...
But he couldn’t find her anywhere in the palace. He expanded his awareness to search the entire city, but he couldn’t find her beyond the walls of the palace either. She had to be hiding her presence from him again. Where was she and what was she doing that she felt the need to hide?
“Lights, 25 percent,” Darius said, glancing around quickly as a dim golden hue suffused the room, peeling back the shadows. There was no one in there with him that he could see, and he could still sense the guards posted outside his door. Furthermore, his door was locked from the inside, and he was the only one who could open it to let Cassandra or anyone else in. His quarters had to be secure.
The whispering voices of the Sprites returned, but this time he heard them retreating from him rather than echoing in his ears. He turned toward the sound and saw a faintly glowing tendril of light trace a path toward the bathroom. He started in that direction.
But after taking just two steps, those whispers became urgent shouts, and the tendril of light raced away from the bathroom. Darius got the message. There was something in there. Something dangerous. A shimmering cloud of nanites, perhaps?
Darius considered his options. He could open a wormhole and leave immediately, or simply go out the front door and sleep somewhere else, but if he did that, he might alert Cassandra to the fact that he was on to her, which might scare Tanik off, too.
No, there was a much simpler solution. He crossed over to his closet and opened it to reveal his ceremonial robes and the accompanying set of power armor. He put the suit on and then went to the front doors of his quarters and waved them open. The guards turned at the sound of the doors swishing open. “Give me your helmet,” he said to one of them.
“My helmet, Lord?”
“Now,” Darius snapped.
The guard twisted his helmet off, revealing short red hair and pale blue eyes. Darius took the helmet and quickly slipped it over his head. It sealed against the collar of his suit with a faint hiss. Darius mentally pressurized the suit and opened the valves to the oxygen tank on his back. Now safely isolated from the environment, he turned and went back inside. Shutting and locking the door behind him, he set out to investigate whatever threat was lurking in his bathroom.
Chapter 40
Cassandra used the ZPF to float the canister containing the virus up through the hole that she’d carved in the ceiling. She placed it in a shadowy corner behind the garbage can in her father’s bathroom, and then beat a hasty retreat from the room before the nanites could activate and hone in on her. They weren’t programmed to be discriminating. They would infect the nearest person, whoever that was.
Once Cassandra was back in the stairwell, she took a moment to check on her father with her Awareness. He was up and moving about. She saw his luminous silhouette walking through his room. It looked like he might be heading for the bathroom, but it was hard to be sure. Cassandra thought about using her Awareness to cast her mind into the room with him and see what was going on up there, but with her father awake now, it was too risky to do that. She would just have to trust that her plan would work. Maybe Gatticus could confirm that for her later, after his scan was completed—if it was finished before the ceremony, that is.
Cassandra turned and hurried down the stairs to her room. She’d been out long enough already. It was time to get back to bed before she attracted more attention to herself.
* * *
Trista walked up to the palace gates in her exosuit, pulling a power-assisted trolley with two hund
red kilograms of dormant nanites in a metal crate. The crate was actually an agricultural unit that she and Tanik had purchased earlier that day, using what little funds and credit she still had to her name. It was designed to spray fertilizer or pesticides, but it would work just as well for micro machines.
“Halt!” the nearest guard said as she stopped in front of the gates.
“Hey there,” Trista said, trying to sound casual rather than kakking-her-pants nervous.
“Turn around. This area is restricted.”
Trista wrinkled her brow. “Ah, I’ve got a work order to spray the courtyard with pesticides tonight—something to do with a weaver bug infestation?”
“I don’t have any record of that,” the guard said. “I’ll have to call it in. One moment.”
Trista smiled and held her breath. Tanik was supposed to be lurking somewhere within earshot of the gate, standing by to work his magic and get her past security. After a few seconds, she let her breath out in a sigh and glanced around, as if bored by the wait.
Tanik... where the fek are you?
“Everything checks out,” the guard said. “Stand by for a scan.”
Trista nodded as a fan of blue light flickered down from the top of the gate. Once it reached her toes, a green light snapped on, and a pleasant chime sounded. The gate rumbled up into the tower above it, and both guards nodded.
“Proceed,” one of them said.
Trista grabbed the handle of her trolley and pulled it along behind her into the courtyard. Moonlight gleamed on the flagstones. Here and there light glowed in the windows of the palace. She hoped no one was watching the courtyard, but even if they weren’t at the moment, someone was bound to glance out a window in the next hour and a half while she seeded the courtyard with nanites. She hoped Tanik was up to the task of blinding their eyes, as he claimed.
Pulling her trolley into position at one corner of the courtyard, Trista took a moment to survey how much ground she had to cover. The palace was actually a sprawling complex, with dozens of buildings rising around the central I-shaped structure. A miniature city within the city. The courtyard itself had to be at least a couple of hundred meters on each side. She ran the numbers through her extra-sensory chip and came up with an area of about 40,000 square meters. That was a lot of ground to cover in an hour and a half. She was going to have to hustle.
Trista activated the sprayer, and a water-based solution of nanites sprayed out onto the flagstones to either side of the trolley. She grabbed the handle and turned the trolley to push it in front of her. Setting a brisk pace, she walked down the side of the courtyard. Even with the trolley’s power-assist, it was tiring work. Within just a few minutes she could hear her breath echoing raggedly inside her helmet. Her lungs and muscles burned. She glanced up at the palace periodically, hoping that Tanik would be able to handle his end of things. He had assured her that he could blind the eyes of any number of observers—with the exception of the emperor himself.
Trista took a short break in the shadow of the steps leading to the palace. Her heart hammered in her chest as much from fear as from the exertion. She peered up at the towering structure and tried to guess which of the handful of illuminated windows belonged to the emperor. She hoped none of them. Tanik claimed that he was sound asleep.
Sucking in a quick breath, Trista grabbed the handle of the sprayer and went back to pushing it through the courtyard.
* * *
Darius stood in his quarters, safely encased in his suit of armor. He’d already found the silver canister in his bathroom. He’d seen the faint shimmer of nanites in the air, and found the hole in the floor under the garbage can. Now he stood at the wall of windows in his living room, using up the air in the oxygen tank on his back while he tried to decide what to do about this development. Cassandra would pay for her betrayal, but he couldn’t confront her about it. Not yet. He had to wait and pretend he was none the wiser if he wanted to catch Tanik, too.
A hint of movement in the courtyard below the palace caught Darius’s eye. He frowned and closed his eyes, casting his mind out and using his Awareness to get a better look. In his mind’s eye he floated just above the courtyard and watched as someone in an exosuit pushed a metal crate along. Liquid was spraying from the sides of the crate, wetting the flagstones and making them gleam brightly in the moonlight.
So this was how the nanites he’d seen in his visions had gotten into the courtyard—yet another part of Tanik’s plot revealed. He could sense that the person in the courtyard was a woman, and not a Revenant, but Tanik had to be somewhere nearby in order for her to have made it past security.
Darius thought about trying to flush him out now and hunt him down, but that wouldn’t help him deal with the other Revenants. He needed Tanik’s plot to wipe them out first. Besides, now that he’d found the means by which Tanik and Cassandra had planned to infect him, there was no longer any danger to himself.
But Tanik needed to believe that Darius was also infected, or else he would run away and hide again. He would have to pretend to succumb to the virus.
Darius’s lips curved into a cold smile. He would lure his enemies out and kill them. Cassandra was now one of those enemies. It was ironic that he’d spent so much of his life trying to keep her alive, and now he was going to kill her.
His smile turned to a scowl. She could have had everything. Instead, she’d chosen to throw it all away and join his enemies. What a brat she had become. Her betrayal cut deep. His whole body trembled with rage just thinking about it. Somehow he had to keep a lid on that anger until the ceremony. He resolved to avoid Cassandra as much as possible. The less he saw of her, the better.
Chapter 41
Back in bed, Cassandra stared at the ceiling. She couldn’t sleep. Not after all her sneaking around. There was too much going on and too much at stake. If her dad didn’t get infected by the virus, he was going to stay the way he was. She might never have another chance to reverse the damage that the Sprites had done to him. And even if her dad did get infected, there was no guarantee that it would work. They hadn’t tested the virus on Revenants.
And then there was the added problem of the soldiers she’d run into at the Data Center. What would they tell her father in the morning? They could get her into big trouble, or worse, make him suspicious enough to investigate what she’d been up to. If he found out about the virus she’d planted in his room, he’d kill her.
Cassandra took a deep breath and let it out in a ragged sigh. She shut her eyes for the umpteenth time and tried to will herself to sleep.
A metallic thunk sounded somewhere in her room. Cassandra’s eyes flew wide. What was that? She strained to listen, but all she heard was the quiet whisper of air cycling into her room from the climate control system.
Thunk, thunk.
Cassandra sat up and reached out with her Awareness, searching for the source of that sound. Within seconds, she found a small, crouching presence up near the ceiling, behind an air vent in the wall beside her bed. That presence was familiar. Cassandra got out of bed and walked up to the vent. Peering up at it, she whispered, “Buddy?”
“Heya, Cassy,” he whispered back.
“What are you doing here?” She stood blinking up at the vent in confusion.
“I came to get an update.”
“Tanik sent you?”
“Yes.”
Cassandra snorted with annoyance, thinking about how she’d had to cut a hole in the floor of her father’s room in order to smuggle the virus in. And all this time, Buddy could have snuck it in through the vents! But thinking about it some more, she guessed that Tanik hadn’t given Buddy that task because he wasn’t a Revenant. He couldn’t hide his presence, and her father would have sensed him coming.
“So? Have you got anything to report?” Buddy prompted.
Cassandra filled him in with all the recent events, and how as far as she could tell, she’d been successful.
“Great,” Buddy said. “I’ll be sure to
tell Scarface the good news. Anything else before I go?”
“There is one other thing,” Cassandra said. “Gatticus is not going to be there for the ceremony. He’s still being scanned, and I don’t think he’ll be reactivated until after it’s all over, so if the timer doesn’t work, Gatticus won’t be around as a backup.”
“Got it. I’ll tell the others. See you.”
“Wait,” Cassandra said. “What about Trista? Did she manage to do her part?”
“She did. She’s already back at the Harlequin, making plans to run for it if this doesn’t work.”
Cassandra nodded. “If it comes to that, I’ll try to join you.”
“Great! Good night, Cassy.”
Cassandra smiled, wishing she could give his head a pat. He hated that, but his reaction was too funny. She could have used the comic relief right now. “Good night, Buddy,” she said, but she could already hear him scampering away through the ducts—thunk, thu-thunk, thunk...
* * *
Tanik sat in the galley of the Harlequin, smiling as he listened to Buddy’s report. He especially liked the news about Gatticus being out of commission. That meant he wouldn’t have to wait for the Keth to take the android out before he could come out of hiding.
“Good work,” Tanik said. “You’re sure no one at the palace saw you?”
Buddy shook his furry head and blinked huge black eyes. “No one saw me.”
“Someone probably sensed or heard you,” Tanik said. “But they probably dismissed you as harmless vermin. You’re lucky. It’s a blessing to be so easily overlooked.”
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