by JM Guillen
Complying.
A scarlet fissure appeared beneath the unconscious Stone. It immediately pulsed with a violet thrumming as some Designate at Facility Prime used it to create a conduit.
The moment Stone fell through, the conduit vanished.
So we can link within The Spire now? I peered around the darkened chamber. Last time I was here, my Crown was about as useful as an abacus.
You’re literally coated in human blood. Wyatt’s link came, unbelieving. Five minutes ago you were chewing out some guy’s throat, and now, your first official act is to question technological capacities? Wyatt shook his head. Hoss, that was fucking terrifying.
He’s fine. I couldn’t decide if Anya’s certainty was based upon hope or fact as her eyes bore into me. Catalyst Du’Marque has restored much Crown functionality within The Spire. I couldn’t tell if she had the least worry that I was coated in human blood.
Correct. Gideon’s link held a tangle of emotions, relief being primary. That is the one gain that we have made since you left, Bishop. We have Crown communication at full functionality onsite.
Communication, packets, even Lattice access. Wyatt ran his fingers through his beard, as if trying to see how much of it he could salvage. No optics though. I wouldn’t even try if I were you.
I remember. I understood that things had degraded since we left? I rubbed my hands together, trying to get the blood off my skin.
Anya reached into one of her pouches and pulled out a half-liter of water.
I mouthed “thank you,” as I began to clean my face and hands.
Delacruz apprised us of your situation and the things that you discovered. Much of this might have helped us if we had known earlier. Gideon’s link felt frustrated but not specifically at us. Regardless of that, we now understand far more about our situation here. More importantly, we understand how to resolve it.
Yeah? I glanced at Wyatt. This sounded like the beginning of a mission.
“Fuck.” He mouthed the word softly at my glance. He had come to the same conclusion. After all, the Designates had seen fit to ship Stone out.
Not us though. We were still live in a status four hot zone.
I tried to gauge the status of my cadre. We weren’t exactly fit to engage any more hostiles. Neither Anya nor Delacruz appeared any better off than Wyatt. Anya had a series of bruises all across her face and heavily favored her left side. Delacruz had bled through part of her shirt. I couldn’t see the wound, but it obviously hurt her.
I, on the other hand…
I knew I had been wounded. Hell, I had been hit a lot. I patted myself down, remembering a half dozen stab wounds, a spike I had taken in my shoulder, bruises from all the body armor shots I had taken before the bullets started counting…
Not a single wound remained. Status green.
Hell, more than green. If I didn’t know better, I would say I hadn’t been on a dossier at all. I felt like I’d had a few cups of coffee after a full, restful night’s sleep.
The situation is fairly simple, Gideon went on, as if unaware of my cadre’s condition. Sadhana has used that rift to provide constant supplies and support for their operatives. Currently, our estimation shows there to be between three and five teams of Sadhana mercenaries in The Spire.
We are not in a position to favorably engage hostiles, Catalyst. Anya linked what we all thought. Just making our return has severely depleted our resources.
There are other Assets onsite. I felt Gideon’s nod over the link. We do not require you to engage any opposition.
More than that, Rachel broke in. If at all possible, you need to avoid doing any heavy lifting. You are all pretty roughed up, and I’ve got your viral mecha working nonstop just to keep you as pain free as possible. She paused. Except for you, Bishop. It looks as if you’ve been responsible for once. Proud of you, buddy.
Thank you, Rachel.
Wyatt, Delacruz, and Anya simultaneously gaped at me. Various expressions of disbelief, irritation, and incredulity assaulted me.
Bravely, I ignored them.
So, if we’re not going hunting assholes, what are we doing, Catalyst? I poured the rest of the water Anya gave me onto my hands and scrubbed my face as best I could.
You have all been apprised that The Spire is an emanation point for several key Facility frequencies. Many of the most important projects researched here involve what is known as Hyper-Rationality.
We are familiar. Wyatt’s link sounded wary.
I understood why. It felt like every time we accomplished something on this dossier, there was another hoop to jump through.
Hyper-Rationality emanates from the bottom of The Spire, approximately twelve stories below your current locale. There, a series of relays known as the Hyper-Rational Matrices create and amplify the axiomatic configuration. During the events of November 15, the matrices underwent spontaneous adjustment.
Understood. I nodded as I linked and gazed into the Breach between The Spire and Ar’Ghosa. Occasionally, I saw one of Sadhana’s men as they took cover from the eruptions or rode away on one of the FAV’s. Their actions appeared comically sped up, moving approximately three times too fast.
This is our core issue, Gideon went on. If Hyper-Rationality were properly engaged, that rift would close. The symbiont would be expelled from Rationality. Furthermore, the Sadhana operatives that are onsite would find their technology disabled. Only Asset packets should be capable of altering axiomatic readings onsite.
So you need us to adjust the matrices, Wyatt stated.
No one else can get as close as you already are, and Delacruz is the only Gatekeeper onsite with access to that aperture. The symbiont has infected a great deal of the site, and Sadhana holds several key points. He paused. If the matrices were reengaged, those situations would change as a matter of course.
I assume that you have the frequencies and settings required? Anya seemed a bit uncertain. I cannot give my cadre telemetry, Catalyst.
Not now, perhaps. Gideon felt certain over the link. However, you will. We have a patch that will go to memory. It holds all the required settings. In your case, Anya, it will load directly through your Preceptor neuralware.
Delacruz turned to me as the patch was mentioned and raised an eyebrow, suggestively.
Oh. Right, a patch. I needed to make some room.
Memory was never actually deleted out of a Crown, it was simply offloaded. I trolled through my Crown, clearing out several bits of memory I no longer needed. It was simple with the Lattice.
I wouldn’t sign off on you going into combat. Rachel came over the link, even though it seemed odd that she should apprise us. This truly is a matter of going downstairs and just fiddling with things. We discussed another cadre simply using Sofia’s aperture. However, we need them up here to hold position.
Fine. Delacruz leaned against the wall, and her hair fell across her face like the wings of a drunken raven. It’s below our current location, right? She wobbled over to the edge and peered down. [Simple]. I can make that shot, you patch us what we need to do, and then we [get the hell out of here.]
The plan in the patch is fairly specific. Gideon sounded a touch apologetic. You can use an aperture to get down there, but you need to douse it once you do. Guthrie will need to use the tangler to set localized axioms at the parameters given by Petrova.
And afterward? I’d gotten my face and hands fairly clean, but there was no saving my shirt.
Afterward, return to this location. Delacruz will initialize the Gatekeeper, and we’ll extract you.
Sounds ridiculously simple. Wyatt eyed me, his slight scowl letting me know he thought it would be anything but.
It truly should be, Guthrie. Gideon felt unfocused for a moment, as if something else had drawn his attention. I’ll send the patch. When complete, link us so we can arrange extraction.
Understood, Catalyst. My eyes flicked to each of my cadre members. I hoped, for their sake, that this would be as simple as it sounded.
/> I just didn’t know how much more we could take.
60
Aperture clear. Delacruz stepped through first and peered into the shadowy darkness.
Right behind her, I held both my disruptor and my katana at the ready.
Simple, right? I cocked my head at her. Nothing had been simple so far, so I didn’t imagine things would change now.
Right. She peered ahead.
As Gideon had indicated, much of the complex patch was made up of axiomatic specifications and, therefore, might as well have been written in Babylonian as far as I was concerned. It did, however, have a diagram that showed the layout of the Hyper-Rationality Matrices, as well as the locations for over two dozen spikes.
It figures that optics is the one thing that hasn’t been restored, I grumbled as we stepped into the darkness.
It could be pitch black as the devil’s asshole, and I could still lay these spikes. Wyatt actually seemed a touch enthusiastic. If this is all we have to do, then we’re practically home.
Looking up, I saw the Breach and the shaft of half-light that shone from it. It stretched down approximately three meters over our heads, but even that light did little to illuminate the room.
How did you even open the fissure? Being able to see was one of the prerequisites for being able to place an aperture.
Skill. She favored me with a stoic glance and winked. All part of being good at what I do.
Bishop doesn’t know anything about that. I felt Wyatt’s half-smile through the jibe.
Teasing or not, it was damned impressive. The fact that Delacruz had been able to do it in such low light was just another indication of her skill.
Look at the floor, Hoss.
The floor was not the omnipresent metal of The Spire, but appeared to be a shiny black stone, mirror smooth.
Maybe some kind of granite? No sooner did I link than I knew it wasn’t true.
It seemed far closer to black, featureless glass. As I peered at the floor, azure light materialized in front of us, approximately ten paces away. Startled, I glanced up, expecting to see some monstrosity or perhaps a group of Sadhana mercenaries.
It’s one of those little sparkly things. Wyatt stepped closer, the light twinkling across his oculus. Like the assholes were wearing on those devices.
How could it have gotten here? Suspicion ran strongly through Anya’s link. Unless Sadhana has been down here already.
We stood in the darkness and stared at that furious spark of almost-violent light. It let us see further around the base of The Spire, but after a fashion that made things seem worse.
Um, where did the walls go? Gripping my weapons tightly, I turned, getting a concept of our position. I saw the blue gem of brilliance hanging mysteriously in the air, and its light illuminated a good fifty meters. A whole lot of nothing surrounded it.
No ceiling above either, Anya reported.
The Breach still hung there, its edges boiling away at reality, but we saw no trace of The Spire itself.
Spatial vectors are within typical parameters. Delacruz gazed first at Wyatt and then at me, one eyebrow raised. For anyone interested in that kind of thing.
Fuck. Wyatt spat. Nothing for it. Let’s get this done.
Like children in an enchanted forest, we crept forward into the dark. The only thing within sight was that stunningly blue mote, and we made for it as if it were a beacon.
We halted almost directly beneath it as a second one burst into viridian brilliance thirty paces to the right. Its light both complemented and warred against the light of the first, their combined shine driving back the nyxian darkness.
“Stone.” Sofia’s one word echoed against nothing but the darkness. “He was bringing them through the aperture.”
He had forty or so of ’em, didn’t he? Wyatt turned to Anya and then to Delacruz. In that little case of his.
It was unaccounted for. I glanced at Anya. If you could read telemetry, I’d bet those things would be very interesting.
The first one felt like a primal concept. She turned her head from me toward the azure glow. As if one could use chemistry to distill the elemental force of Sound.
Let’s keep moving. Wyatt’s link came uneasily, as if it had occurred to him that things might not be as simple as we hoped or as safe as we presumed.
According to the patch, the first spike needed to be set approximately thirty meters in front of us. However, we hadn’t traveled another twelve steps before a third tiny star of brilliance erupted into ruby red being several meters above the first two. We hardly had time to acknowledge that one before a fourth appeared, burning with the deep gold of an aspen in autumn.
Their positioning must be significant. The fingers on Anya’s left hand plucked and twitched almost automatically, as if she had forgotten that telemetry was impossible here. I cannot believe that they are simply at random stations, hovering for no reason.
They’re not mentioned at all in the dossier, Wyatt groused. I noticed that he limped, just a touch. I don’t think Gideon knows they’re here.
As he spoke, Wyatt began to input calculations. The tangler whirred, a sound that echoed hollowly in this wall-less place.
Three more meters, Wyatt. Anya’s tone was a touch distant as she began to access the axiomatic calculations in our patch. I’m sending specifications now.
This seemed simple, for me at least.
Delacruz was here to escort us back once all spikes were in place. Wyatt was here to create and modulate the spikes, according to Anya specifications.
As far as I could tell, I was here to look pretty.
But of course that couldn’t be true. That disturbed me more than anything about this particular plan, set my teeth on edge. The Facility wasn’t known for overkill. Assets were selected and put into play with what sometimes resembled computer-like accuracy.
Everyone on this little side-dossier had a very specific purpose.
Except for me, the Asset who wasn’t wounded and was spec’d for combat.
WHUF! The cascading echo from the tangler sounded somewhat muted among the deep shadows. Even though the floor was constructed of an unknown substance, the tungsten spike buried itself easily, as if fired into soft cheese.
The spike threw off sparks.
“What?” I turned and stared at the spike, then Wyatt. I’d seen him shoot thousands of the things, but never had I seen a spike react to its surroundings. But that was exactly what this one seemed to be doing.
It sparked again, cobalt and green light leaping.
That’s some shit. Confusion leaked through Wyatt’s link. What the fuck do you suppose that is?
Um, what do you suppose that is? Delacruz wasn’t watching the spike.
Her confused gaze focused in the distance behind us, where an image rippled like a mirage off a sunbaked stone. In the bent spectrums of light that shone off the motes, a great monolith rose. Black as the ground beneath our feet, it arched up gracefully. Though the far end of the structure looked to be something close to two hundred meters away, its arch was severe enough that it looked as if it should eventually hang over our heads.
Except it faded into nothingness, as if the end of it wasn’t quite real.
Disturbing. I turned to Delacruz. A structure that isn’t there until Wyatt lays down his spike? I would call that disturbing.
Next spike’s fifteen meters north by northwest. Wyatt glanced at the phantom archway and then back to me. I don’t care what it is. I don’t care what it does. I don’t care what it means. I just want to get this job done.
I clapped him on the back but didn’t say a word. I understood exactly how he felt.
WHUF! Wyatt laid the second spike, while Delacruz and I warily watched the distant darkness.
The spikes seemed to take all of Wyatt’s attention. Typically, he would input his calculations, lay the spikes, and then all was done.
Not here. Even after the initial insertion, he peered at the silvery locus, his talented fingers input
ting calculations that I couldn’t begin to guess at.
There. Delacruz pointed.
I turned and eyed a second gigantic archway at a thirty-three degree angle to the first.
I see it. This one had no terminus touching the ground. Instead, it hovered high above our heads before fading into nothingness on either end.
That’s higher than the dock we stood on when we first made the Breach. I furrowed my brow as I stared. Is that right? Can that be right?
Spatial vectors remain stable. The Crown augment on the back of her head shone softly as she accessed its settings. As far as the Gatekeeper is concerned, we’re sitting at Rationality zero.
Really? That unnerved me. There was no way that was the case.
Yet, I had no reason to doubt her.
The next spike, located almost underneath a brilliant violet spark that had appeared from nowhere, had a similar affect, as did the next. Each revealed a different segment of a complex series of arches.
There’s writing on them. Delacruz peered straight up, her brow furrowed. Do you see this, Bishop?
Maybe. I blinked and furled my brow.
The light from the miniscule bits of shiny brilliance wasn’t quite enough to truly see the bottom surface of the arch. But it was possible, and it looked like there might be inscriptions on the structure, thousands of tiny, unknown letters.
WHUF! WHUF! Wyatt had absolutely no curiosity regarding these structures. He and Anya focused diligently upon placing the axiomatic spikes.
Halfway done. The link sounded gruff.
Copy that. I turned in place, trying to estimate the size of the structure that gradually appeared around us. It seemed apparent that the arches would meet in the middle, but so far not one of them touched another.
I’m tracking twelve of those little pulses of light. Delacruz paused. No, fourteen. Over there. She pointed.
I saw the new ones, each an off-shade of scarlet, approximately fifteen and twenty meters away respectively. As I noted them, a thought occurred to me.
The symbiont. I gave a tiny headshake immediately after I used the word, noting Sofia’s frown. Ar’Ghosa, I mean. Above, it’s all through The Spire. But not here.
