“We have to go. Now.” As soon as Dastou said that he turned around and started walking – fast – towards the exit.
“What?” asked Nes, keeping pace with the Saint toward the double doors between the benches. The Stone-State Council, if somewhat put-off by the bringing up of a taboo subject, were likely incensed at this sudden desire to exit very soon after. It didn’t matter, not as much as the need to get out of this place and back to somewhere... safer?
Dastou shoved open both doors, and as the honored guests were walking out into the hall, a small earthquake struck as if waiting for the best possible timing. Barely enough to shake what little dust had accumulated in this new building, the Council members could nonetheless be heard standing up, half-panicked voices asking several variations of “what is happening?” The Saint asked himself the same question while rushing out and away.
*****
Dastou hurriedly opened the door to his office and entered. Nes, still right behind him, closed the door. The click-click of the hidden magnetic deadbolt meant that the corporal had swiped his thumb on a black plastic strip next to the door to activate the security feature.
Saan-Hu was leaning against the desk, and the Saint could see she had some questions lined up and ready to go. Her dumbfounded look also revealed that if she could turn pale, she would have. He had assigned Saan the task of hacking the security camera feed that the Council thought was their secret in order to record the meeting. She must have seen his abrupt exit right before the minor earthquake and been in this office as soon as she could get inside.
“How...?” she began to ask.
“I don’t know,” interjected Dastou as they walked towards the middle of the room to meet. “Something felt off, weird. All I knew was that we had to leave there immediately.”
“At least we gave them an interesting little meeting,” added Nes as he joined the other two.
“The end of which featured an apparent psychic prediction,” said Saan.
While it did seem that way, Dastou had never heard of one of his kind being able to predict something like what just happened. “Honestly, that was a coincidence. I left because of Tryst acting strangely. I think he received a message while I was speaking at the end.”
“Well, sir…” Saan said, crossing her arms. “That was rude of him, yes, but not worth upsetting the council further.”
“It wasn’t Tryst’s actions that made me leave, it was instinct, reflex. Something about the way he was acting combined with the meeting. I just felt like I had to leave, go somewhere protected. Don’t ask me why, because I have no idea.”
Nes laughed. “You say that like we’re not used to you doing weird stuff with little explanation.”
Dastou sneered at him, but what Nes said was true. Lately, the Saint had become secretive. He was having fits, near-seizures like the one that drove him back to Silverline Sharp. He also had a tendency lately to disappear, go somewhere in the Academy or Caravan and come back in two or three hours, having no clue as to what he did with the time. He kept it to himself, not wanting to reveal all of it without knowing more, even if that was irresponsible of him.
“Speaking of explanations,” said Saan, “should I assume you’ll want to contact a science team to come here and research the seismic activity after we leave?”
The science team would be standard operating procedure, but this was a strange occurrence considering the history of the lands on which Stone-State was built. He shook his head at Saan-Hu’s question.
“No, we’ll use the Caravan and stay with them. I want to be here in case the volcano has become active again.”
Nes and Saan looked at each other, apparently confirming that neither of them had missed a step in this conversation.
“Hey, uh... you did that thing you do sometimes,” Nes told Dastou.
“What?” replied the Saint.
“You mentioned something that you think we know. Something about a goddamn volcano.”
Ah, yes. Of course they wouldn’t know about it. Not unexpected considering where the information was recorded and where it came from.
“Right. Sorry. Let me show you what I’m talking about.”
Dastou moved towards a shelf in the middle of the wall to his right. It took a moment to find the book he wanted, Anchor River of the West, Geological, just below eye level, and he slid it out. Leather with dark green dye and yellow leafing revealed who the author was before Dastou even read the name: Saint Avrazi Keymeign, from three generations back. She and another Saint, her husband Breddis Gosch, decided to explore one of the “future build” locations on this continent, the largest landmass on the western hemisphere.
Future build locality types were where a Saint figured a major Social Cypher construction project would soon begin due to population expansion. The climate in this area is comfortably warm for most of the year, so the couple was basically on celebratory holiday for their twentieth anniversary, scouting only after they had their rest and relaxation. Keymeign did the work of creating maps in as much detail as she could, and Gosch studied the flora and fauna for a companion volume.
Dastou walked back to the desk while flipping pages to find what he needed. Saan moved the wheeled guest chair out of the way and the book was laid down on the desk, opposite the Saint’s usual seat. He turned a few more pages, and nodded when he found what he was looking for. The manuscript was opened to show an immaculate, hand-drawn map of the river bed and surrounding area. Stone-State was built on those lands starting in 397 VE, forty-two years ago. Saan and Nes looked over Dastou’s shoulder, almost certainly focusing on the clearly important words “dormant volcano,” which were scribbled neatly and dead center of a border drawn in dots of ink.
“It’s been dormant for ten-thousand years or so. Don’t ask me how I know that, it’s in the Null Bank,” said Dastou.
The Null Bank is the name the Sainthood gave to a mass repository of knowledge all of his kind could access at will upon their awakenings. To put it simply: it was an encyclopedia of immeasurable depth in each Saint’s brain. They must learn to limit access to it early on or lose their minds to an overabundance of data. That level of on-hand information and a Saint’s typically excellent skill at thinking quickly is how Avrazi Keimeign explored an essentially wild, forested area so well that she could consider it a vacation before creating the maps. Saint Breddis Gosch was able to keep from poisoning himself too badly while collecting and examining samples of the local plant life. He did describe, in great detail, the color and viscosity of his vomit after finding a root that smelled like well-done enta-bull beef, but tasted like a spicy tea additive he found on another continent. It was also mildly toxic. He never did find a good use for that root.
“If the Null Bank is mistaken and this volcano is a danger, we need to know. And be here in case evacuation is necessary.”
The three of them stayed silent, knowing exactly why they’d have to stay and help. Five years ago, a city was hit by a hurricane, and the citizens in its direct path of destruction perished. There are no Social Cypher triggers for natural disasters, so floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, and so on are all ignored by the state of emergency infrastructure. Yes, the damage afterward is repaired by mass-hypnotism, but that’s all. Thousands of lives could be saved every year with proper evacuation practices.
“I also don’t want these politicians kicking out the researchers,” elaborated Dastou, adding to the unspoken agreement that they would all join this mission. “They might not think of a small tremor as a matter of importance, so some unarmed researchers would be easy targets for exportation to teach us some kind of lesson about respecting borders. Either way I expect to have to deal with Jandal Tryst again soon enough – he won’t be happy when we return, even if he now knows why.”
“Fantastic. I always said I can never get enough vaguely hostile bureaucracy.”
“Hmph,” muttered Saan, agreeing with the corporal.
“We’ll pack light for when we come back a
nd sleep in the barracks with the security contingent if it ends up being an overnighter,” continued Dastou. “If possible...”
He froze in place again, but this time everyone knew why. The Saint’s words were cut off by an explosion at the window.
Chapter 3
The sound of the blast was not very loud, but it was sudden and unexpected. The Saint made sure to appear unruffled, but Nes had drawn his sword and was in front of the unarmed Saan-Hu before he must have realized how pointless his actions were. She was as well-trained as he was, maybe more so, and would probably be offended by his brotherly protective instinct. Plus, the window was actually made of a twenty-centimeter-thick substance Dastou and his mentor invented that only looked like glass. The material’s properties were kept from the public, and it was far too resilient to be damaged by anything that wasn’t also developed by a Saint.
“A rocket,” said Dastou, hiding most of his outright surprise. “If this was one of the other windows in the building we’d all be dead or severely injured,”
“Who in the hell would do that!?” asked Nes, putting his sword away with a hand that he almost completely kept from shaking.
Dastou walked around the desk toward the window and Nes went around the other side of the furniture to get to the viewpoint as well, even if thick black smoke made it impossible to see anything for the moment. On the way the Saint looked at Saan as she pressed her thumb against a hidden finger-print scanner on the desk, masked to perfectly match the dark-brown wood. A short beep could be heard before a thin monitor began to unfold from the flat wood of the desk in such a way that Dastou, normally seated on the other side, would be able to use it; the Saint had an affinity for hiding things in plain sight.
The monitor featured a full ball-joint swivel and Saan turned the screen to face her. A bright-green holographic keyboard was projected on the desk in front of her from a tiny projector on the bottom edge of the monitor, part of it on top of Keymeign’s guide. She grunted in annoyance and shoved Anchor River of the West, Geological aside. Saan did all this in the three steps the Saint took to get closer to the window, but now he put his attention to the view again now that he was closer to it.
Dastou and Nes arrived at the window simultaneously, and by this time the thick smoke outside had been mostly cleared by a light wind. Residue of whatever explosive was in the rocket was smeared over a lot of the not-quite-glass, but there were plenty of cleaner spots to look out from and see the results of the brazen daytime attack.
A few dozen panicking citizens on the sidewalks of the downtown road were the first thing Dastou noticed. Many of those people, particularly those close to the embassy, were holding their ears. The sound of the blast, muffled by the protective material of the window, must have been deafening to those poor folks. The only people not panicking were two blocks away, in the middle of the wide two-way street and right on top of the trolley tracks that split the road. There were three of them, all men, and they were busy.
One of them was putting down a single-use rocket launcher, having already unleashed it’s payload, next to a big duffle bag at his feet. Another was in front of an identical bag, picking up an identical weapon, this one armed and ready to fire. The third man, between the other two, only had binoculars. Clearly the spotter or scout of the group, he was looking right at the Caravan office window. He was probably hoping to see the extent of the damage in order to call the shot for the next rocket or the lack of need for it. Instead he saw some soot on a pane that could not quite hide an outwardly calm Saint Cosamian Dastou and an all-around pissed off DSF corporal.
The Saint made absolutely sure that his appearance was that of pure, calculating serenity. Sometimes it was the image of someone who was always in control and prepared for anything that helped him achieve a goal, so he kept his composure. It was an incredible feat thanks to a hatred that grew stronger by the second for these criminals.
“Them. It’s them,” said Nes, stating the obvious because there was little else to say.
The scout waved at his comrades and said something, but never stopped looking towards the embassy. Distance and soot kept Dastou from being able to decipher their words. It was easy to tell, though, that the scout told the second rocket-carrier not to fire at their previous target. He spoke again, and the response was a stunned look from the other two. The scout, his actions showing him to be the leader of the small group, stopped spying through the binoculars and took a long look at each of his comrades, speaking to them once more. The others nodded. The one who fired the first rocket put his used and recyclable launcher in the duffle bag, then picked it up.
The attacker with the still-armed weapon shouldered his armament and took aim. Dastou looked in the general direction of where the ordnance was pointed, and for the first time in a long time, his mind went absolutely blank with horror.
*****
The rocket was aimed at a pipe running up the side of an apartment building, the closest edifice to the Stone-State Embassy on the Saint’s left. That wrist-thick pipe carried siopane, a liquid fuel that is used throughout modernized cities. Unfortunately it was an invention of the Sainthood, a collaborative effort from all living members of the organization a couple of decades ago, meant to take advantage of untapped natural resources. As such, the Social Cypher hypnotism that creates and maintains infrastructure made no room for it, so piping was designed for the outside of buildings, with smaller tubes leading to a single valve on each floor that citizens could use to refill pressure-sealed containers. When the rocket hit the fuel pipe, which ran from under the building all the way to the roof, it created a cascade of violence that was too fast, too intense for even Dastou’s unique mind to completely follow.
The rocket hit the pipe and exploded, sure, but the siopane fuel that was ignited created a massive follow-up detonation. The blue-green light of the burning fuel made the road immediately in front of the embassy look like a monochrome midnight carnival. During that fraction-of-a-second light show, most of the street-facing side of the apartment building the pipe was attached to blew apart. Rubble shooting away from it was like cannon fire, and the shockwave from the explosion was far worse than the earthquake a few minutes prior. The sonic blast shattered every piece of real glass within view, creating a deadly rainfall.
The blown away debris hit people, cars, and the buildings on the other side the street. Most people hit with a piece larger than a fist died instantly; the rest were knocked unconscious, severely injured, or both. Cars, all parked thanks to a halt in traffic due to Dastou’s arrival in town, were battered or toppled. The sounds of metal crumpling, crunching, and screeching were so loud, so abrasive they could be heard through the thick window. The structures closest to the targeted building, including the embassy, were pelted with some of the high-speed rubble projectiles, but the stone construction of those places stood strong despite the bombardment.
The intensity of the incident was over in what barely counted as a long moment, and Dastou and his cohorts were already surveying the horrific results down below. A fog made of pulverized concrete was in the air, making it hard to see, but the culprits were still visible if one focused – and Dastou was focusing very hard. The three criminals ran westward, through an alley on the same side of the street as the building they targeted, and out of sight.
“I’m gonna kill them, I swear it,” promised Nes in anger. The corporal had barely turned his head away from the view before being rebuffed.
“We can’t chase them down immediately, the Cypher is starting up,” cautioned Dastou.
Nes looked back down at the disaster area and saw it. Anyone on the street who was not injured too badly started moving with precision, purpose. It never ceased to amaze how well or how quickly mass-hypnotism worked – it turned everyone involved into machines, incapable of doing anything but their assigned task and doing it extremely well. As the dust from pulverized concrete and bricks literally settled, it became easier to see that the deaths were far fewer than the
various injuries, and a triage area was being cleared. Siopane has a short life span in open air, thankfully, so there were only a few instances of a blue-green flame attached to one object or another, all of which were dissipating quickly.
The problem with the incredible focus exhibited in a hypnotism event is that anything not directly involved with it is ignored, so the DSF has explicit orders to avoid Social Cyphers at all times other than emergencies. When they record information, they do so from a distance, with high-grade cameras and other such equipment. This, however, was not a standard event: it was an attack. Dastou pondered his next action, knowing that the criminals would get away without him breaking his own rules about interference. Nes’ next words snapped him out of his thoughts.
“What are they doing? She needs to be moved, too,” said Nes, pointing at who he was trying to draw attention to.
Dastou found the abnormality without much trouble: a woman, injured and out cold, was being wholly ignored. The other victims near her were starting to be efficiently separated into areas for the dead and two intensities of wounds, severe and minor. But not her. Hypnotized citizens walked around her as if she didn’t exist.
“I can’t tell how badly hurt she is, sir,” said Saan-Hu, having found the woman via exterior cameras. “If she is bleeding internally, she may die without the same medical attention others are getting.”
“This is a strange enough occurrence as it is,” mentioned the Saint. “Anything else out of the ordinary may give us clues as to what happened. We’ll go and take care of her ourselves.” He looked away from the window and at his comrades again. “Saan, bring medical supplies with everything you think will help. Nes, arm up just in case.”
“And the Interference Clause?” asked Saan.
“We won’t do much, just help that girl. With this big a mess I don’t think we’ll really be in the way.”
Saints of the Void: Atypical Page 3
