Approaching Oblivion (Jezebel's Ladder Book 4)

by Scott Rhine

  “I like it,” agreed Red. “We’ll send it out for a vote.”

  “I was thinking Knossos Nexus, but this is better,” Sojiro said, composing the e-mail.

  “It’ll be hours before the latest scans of Ariadne are completed.” Yuki raised her prosthetic and said, “If you guys don’t need me, I think I’m going to fine-tune the settings on this thing down in the lab.” She’d decided that the Magi could see anything that happened in the saucer, in the open, or inside the caves of the Counterweight Mountain. She needed a man-made shelter to exclude the Magi. “I might borrow your airbrush to give the pads more of a flesh tone. I can take the paints to the barn when I’m done.”

  Sojiro nodded. “Sure. I’d appreciate that. I can stretch my shift a few hours till Park wakes up.”

  “Tell him I’ll be back to eat dinner with him. I’ll take my wristwatch to make sure I won’t be late.” She tapped the readout on the back of her mechanical arm. The prosthetic was becoming second nature to her already.

  “Aren’t you afraid of bumping into Nadia? She’s hunting snakes around the Hollow while it’s still too cold for them to move.”

  The idea of Tasering the other woman to test the new tools flitted briefly through her mind. “Not at all. In fact, I welcome any constructive encounter we might have.”

  The weather outside was still a bit brisk, but the residual chill gave her an excuse to run all the way to the computer lab with the equipment she needed. After tinkering for a while, Yuki successfully tested the jerry-rigged Taser on low power. Building up enough for a full zap would take another twelve hours.

  She managed to get the paint from the second gadget to shoot a couple meters out, but the force used every gram of paint and propellant. A light shade of café au lait now splattered the wall of the lab. “Sorry, Sojiro, it’s for a good cause.” She’d try to use as few of the color cartridges as possible.

  That night, Park fixed her shrimp tempura, complete with shaved onions, carrots, and broccoli. Lou called it a “full court press” when he smelled the food frying.

  “What do you mean?” she asked while Park was away borrowing something from Sojiro.

  Lou smiled. “Come on, Yuki. He wants to give you every reason to say yes to his proposal. He never cooks, and he was humming tonight.”

  “Before I can answer him, there’s some girl stuff I need to talk to Yvette about tomorrow.” Maybe she could force Snowflake or the robots into solving a few mysteries.

  Chapter 17 – Evidence of Things Not Seen

  Wednesday morning, Yuki kissed the sleeping Park on the cheek and crept from their room. She stopped only to pick up the picnic basket with her specialized gear and a few snacks. However, she was so nervous about the upcoming meeting that she skipped breakfast to reach the chapel ahead of Yvette. A little warmer in the habitat, there were signs of renewed life on this trip—rabbits, new grass shoots, and even a line of bumblebees crawling out of a crack in the barn rafters. She would have to tell Herk to smoke the insects out and move the hive somewhere safer. They didn’t want to harm the valuable creatures because they pollinated almost everything in the habitat. She even recalled a warning Einstein gave about protecting honeybees.

  A large tarp across the front door of the barn held the heat in and kept out the breeze. She admired the stacks of food alternating with Sojiro’s marvelous paintings, all badges of what they had managed to accomplish since arriving in Sanctuary. Yuki particularly enjoyed the rendition of Winged Victory with her face. A glance at her wristwatch told her that Yvette could arrive at any moment. The technician withdrew the pieces of her makeshift detector and weapon from the picnic basket, snapping them together in a few seconds.

  There was almost no chance that any robot had snuck in here, but she activated the pulse to make certain. The face of the chronometer turned emerald green, meaning she had company. In response to her signal, a soft whirring sounded above her head. She’d find the little sneak and capture it. Hands shaking, Yuki fired the paint apparatus. She was so nervous or the connections were so loose that all of the barrels fired upward at once. Oops. She worried about how she would explain the loss of so much paint to Sojiro. This fear transformed into panic as she saw polka dots of every hue dancing in the air above her. She dropped the paint gun and sprinted for the exit.

  She stopped counting at four pyramid outlines hovering above her. There were probably twice that many bumping angrily around the room. Turbines revved to chase her. No sooner did she reach the hard-packed dirt outside than the canvas cover billowed outward like a sail. She slapped the red button on her badge as she ran for her life. “Help! Yvette was right.” Her badge bleeped, disconnected from the habitat network.

  Between one step and the next, a couple floating objects lifted her centimeters off the ground. “The hand must not be seen,” a mechanical voice buzzed at her elbow. Other objects smashed against her, lifting her higher still.

  “I’m doing this to save Mercy. You like Mercy.” Her good arm was pinned between floating pyramids. The robot’s surface felt like the antigravity dominoes that lined the saucer.

  Snowflake’s reasonable voice explained, “The twisted one should save her if he remembers the hypothalamus.”

  The formation flew her headfirst toward a rocky outcropping.

  “You can’t kill me,” she wailed.

  “Appropriate injuries will explain your memory loss,” buzzed the mechanical voice.

  The robots tried to drop her, but she clamped the magnet onto one and wouldn’t let go. Her weight was too much for one robot to lift, but it dragged her over the loose shale at speeds high enough to hurt. Her metal fishing line was long gone. Still she wrestled with the invisible creature, while repeating the word, “Hypothalamus.”

  They bounced off the weather vane of the barn, but it still couldn’t dislodge her. After an impact with the ground, they skittered into chicken wire, which snapped but slowed them enough that the next impact stopped them cold. When the white cleared from her vision, she had trouble breathing, but the foul smell and feathers told her they were in a chicken coop.

  Fortunately, the clear pyramid seemed just as damaged as she did. The whirring had changed to the whine of an off-kilter saw blade. With her on top, the robot wasn’t going anywhere. As the cold weariness tugged at her, she worried that she might die before help arrived. Drawing her belt knife, she started writing a message in the dust.

  Before she finished what she was convinced would be her final words, she saw a thin probe extend from the point of the pyramid toward her forehead.

  Shit, no, Yuki thought. It would not fry her and get away. As the robot made contact with her, she shoved her prosthetic up the air intake at the bottom of the pyramid. She convulsed from the electrode at the same instant that the revolving blades turned into shrapnel.

  ****

  Pain bit her feet, but Yuki didn’t release her grip. Smoke and liquid crystal oozed around her left arm. Afraid of acid, she attempted to pull her arm free, and a large gem rolled from the hole instead.

  She didn’t know what she was doing on the ground, only that this glass box in her arms was important. When she twisted to look around, her midsection screamed in agony. How the hell did so many shards skewer my left side?

  The air shimmered over her as pieces of the weird device were sucked up and disappeared. It didn’t worry her until she saw her dagger float up a few centimeters and vanish. On the ground, she saw the scratched message under her dagger begin to smooth out like a Zen garden. The dust made her cough. Shouting for help, she clung to the bloody shell and rolled her body over to protect a few of the words. Moving only caused her vision to go white.

  Nadia was the first to arrive, layered with a month of dirt and discontent. “Damn you, ungrateful bitch. I put a lot of work into that battery, and you destroyed it in less than two days.”

  “Battery?” Yuki seemed confused until she noticed that the mysterious wind was gone. “The ghosts are afraid of you. God se
nt you to save me.”

  The power engineer narrowed her eyes. “Fool. I could let you bleed out and walk back into my old life. No one would ever know. This is my land. You don’t even have a badge. I could bury you here, and they would never find you.”

  “Don’t bury,” Yuki gasped. “Take the shell to the others. Read the words. I saved a few.”

  “This is new Magi tech. Where did you find it?”

  “I woke up with it. Important words: invisible zero, and Toby hypothalamus.”

  “Bah, you’re delirious,” Nadia grunted. “You are bleeding everywhere on my coop. I will call the doctor to clean up this mess.”

  Yuki grabbed her rival’s ankle with her good arm. “Please,” she said with a cough. “Don’t leave me. I don’t mind dying, but the ghosts will eat what’s left if you’re not here. You can have everything back when I’m gone. Stay.”

  As Nadia stared at her and the underside of the pyramid that Yuki hugged, her hate appeared to waver. Over her badge, she broadcast, “Doc, Yuki looks like she fell down the mountain. She took out the top of the barn and my coop on the way down. She has abrasions, rock fragments imbedded in her side, and a head wound.”

  The Russian woman made her own sweater into a pillow for Yuki and started cutting clothing away from the wounds with her snake-killing blade.

  Herk arrived at a run, and the nurse wasn’t far behind. “Put down the knife,” he ordered.

  “Shut up. See this.” Nadia kicked the almost empty, graffiti-covered, armor shell with her foot. “She discovered something on the mountain someone did not want her to find, and she almost died bringing it back.”

  Yuki could finally let go. She had beaten the ghosts.

  ****

  Seeing the extensive damage, Yvette realized that Yuki wouldn’t survive without her help. No one injury was fatal in itself, but there were so many. First, she collected blood from Park, who was the best match for Yuki’s type. When that wasn’t enough, she borrowed some of the blood Mercy had donated for the Caesarian section. Eventually, both she and Toby had to assist as Auckland performed surgery. Because the only room large enough to hold all the equipment and personnel was the Olympus storage room, the nurse had to concentrate on one instrument at a time to avoid her own internal screams.

  Standing for so long during the surgery had cost Auckland dearly. He collapsed on a crate near the patient. “I’m going to fall asleep with my scrubs on if we don’t talk to the planners soon. One of you should give the briefing, and I’ll just nod.”

  Yvette entered the command room but left the door to the storage area open so the doctors could hear.

  Zeiss decided to record the findings so the others in the crew could hear the facts without all the witnesses repeating themselves. Red pulled up a date and time stamp on the overhead bubble. When people gathered, she started the recording, listing the date, time, and those present. Cutting to the heart of the matter, Red asked the nurse, “Are we going to need to kick Mercy out of the freezer?”

  “Not yet. Physically, Yuki should be stable as long as there’s no infection. Mentally, it’s another story.” Yvette took a moment to gather her resolve. “There are burns on her forehead and mild swelling in her brain. The Magi device has a pseudo pod that matches the pattern of the burns. Nadia can attest that Yuki has developed a fear of the Magi, and I don’t blame her. At the time of the attack, she was on her way to meet with me. In her call for help, she said I was right about something. We’re hoping she’ll recover enough to tell us what. Herk is searching the mountainside for signs of the attack site or her badge. No word so far.”

  “What the hell was that thing we found with her?” Red asked.

  “Nobody knows, including Yuki,” the nurse replied.

  “The armor is translucent, like our windows in Olympus,” Nadia interrupted. “When I found the shell, it was clear and had a slight energy residue. Now it is dead.”

  “It changed states when the power faded,” Zeiss guessed. “How did it die?”

  “We need to analyze further, which is difficult without all the pieces,” Nadia explained. “Something erased most of the evidence before I arrived. It even pulled the fragments of the material out of her wounds. The one piece of glass we recovered was stuck in the wood of her prosthetic. When I first looked inside the shell, I saw energy trace moiré patterns consistent with one of my nanobatteries detonating. I’m guessing the bitch was tough enough to get in the last word.”

  “Sounds like you respect her a little now,” Red noted.

  “We Russians don’t always get along, but when someone invades our homeland, we pull together to make them pay. She took these injuries for our whole team.”

  “What was she fighting and why?” the commander demanded.

  Yvette said, “Yuki has no coherent memories of the Oblivion system or even receiving her new prosthetic.”

  “Traumatic amnesia?” asked Zeiss.

  “That, or the Magi gave her electroshock to erase something.”

  Red rolled her eyes at the paranoia.

  “Does she remember me?” asked Park, horrified.

  “It would serve you right to learn what it is like for someone to just forget you one day, too,” Nadia grumbled.

  Yvette put a hand on Park’s shoulder. “She asked for you earlier, but there’s been a side effect from infusing her with Mercy’s blood. Yuki was the only woman on the team without Collective Unconscious. She’s been resistant to the talent so far.”

  “I thought that was because my own talent was so weak,” Park said.

  “Being a spy, Mori chose someone with certain antigens to prevent casual infection. He didn’t want her sharing information with our team accidentally,” Yvette said carefully. “Forcing the talent into her by transfusion may have temporarily caused as much confusion as the head trauma. She’s raving with paranoia, and I didn’t want you to see her like that. We had to sedate her.”

  “The paranoia may not all be baseless,” Nadia said. “Yuki wrote an important message to make certain we would get it. I even had Herk take a picture. I carried the shell to the cart while we lifted Yuki. When I ran back to shut the coop, something had wiped the letters clean.”

  Red sighed. “It’s called wind, people. No conspiracy there. I’ll just pull up Herk’s photos of the scene.” Chicken tracks, and tiny stones covered every square centimeter of the yard except the space beside Yuki’s body. Here, the image on the screen was blocked by a close-up of Herk’s thumb. Red laughed nervously. “He used to make that mistake all the time.”

  “Not for years,” Zeiss said. “The last time he did that was for a group photo of his bachelor party.”

  Red changed directories and pulled up the picture her husband had mentioned. The thumb positioning was identical. “Coincidence.”

  “Getting rid of loose ends so the lab rats won’t suspect,” Yvette countered.

  “What did it say?” asked Zeiss calmly.

  Nadia shrugged. “Her writing was so smeared, I couldn’t tell, but she told me the important ones: invisible zero, and Toby hypothalamus.”

  “Was she warning us about Toby?” Red asked.

  “No. She ran them together in pairs. I believe the message was for him.”

  Facing the storage room, Zeiss said, “Toby, was Yuki helping you with any projects?”

  “Not since she hooked up with Park. I don’t think he trusts me around her,” the nanobiologist replied.

  “Duh,” Red whispered.

  The commander shushed her.

  Park pointed out, “Technically Yuki is alone with him now, and even that makes me nervous.”

  Auckland sighed. “I suppose we can move the patient to recover in the sick bay tonight. You and Lou can lift her. I’ll guide him.” The two men rushed to the storage area to assist.

  Zeiss asked, “Does the word hypothalamus mean anything to you? It seemed very important.”

  “The hypothalamus is a junction box in the brain. Among other thi
ngs, it handles reproduction, parental bonding, and insulin,” Toby recited.

  “What about invisible zero?” Zeiss probed.

  “No clue,” Toby replied. “Sure it wasn’t double naught? Those are the files I’ve been researching.”

  The volunteers lifted the entire cot, with Yuki strapped onto it, and shuffled out of the storage area into the zero-g region.

  Zeiss grew excited. “Yuki only knew about one double-naught file—the Heisenberg adapting panels.”

  “Invisibility,” Red echoed.

  “Show me the armor,” Zeiss demanded.

  “We brought it up in the elevator. I chained it to the railing.”

  The available planners and Nadia all rushed out to the patio, while Auckland shut the door to the storage area behind him. “We’ll be right back,” he assured Toby.

  Yvette followed Nadia, eager for more information.

  When Zeiss saw the pyramidal armor, he said, “It’s just like the ceramics in the docking bay. We’ll need Risa’s material tester to be certain. This material is observer interactive. Do you know what this means?”

  “The Magi are picking off people who get too close?” Yvette said grimly.

  Red said, “We have a way to hide from the aborigines we’re designing pages for. Something in this armor would be effectively invisible. The hand must not be seen.”

  “This could be the source of the fuel drain I’ve been tracking,” Zeiss said.

  “The deck is stacked,” Yvette insisted. “All along, the Magi have been hiding things we need and stealing from us so we can’t succeed. Now they’re actively attacking us. When are you people going to wake up?”

  Holding out his hands to calm the nurse, Zeiss said, “Don’t rush to conclusions. We have to verify this scientifically. Yuki said she had a detector that she gave to Mercy. Where is that now?”

  Park stopped midway through the room to answer the question. “In her wristwatch. Yuki got that back the night of Mercy’s fit.”