by M. S. Farzan
I felt my heart quicken as we entered the dock perimeter, a long pair of piers crossed by a breakwater and protected by a retractable gate, which stood closed. Our plan would live or die by our ability to operate the gate.
Alina slowed the cruiser, decelerating as we entered the piers and letting the vehicle drift up to the gate. A lone guard was visible in the small building adjacent to the entrance. I used the console to hail the guardhouse, indicating to Alina that she should do the talking.
“NVC two zero eight one, you’re not scheduled to return from patrol for another thirty minutes,” the guard said through our console.
The Pitcher cleared her throat. “Orders to return to headquarters by Daypath Marguerite Liu,” she said, giving Talia Watson’s identification code again.
I could see Gloric’s little fingers typing away furiously in my lenses’ video frame, linking Madge’s security clearance with some bogus return request. The gnome would take control of the gate himself when he, Vasshka, and Buster made their move, but we couldn’t contend with the added attention at the moment.
“Clear to proceed,” the guard said at length. The gate moved slowly apart with a mechanical whir, giving us entry to the island proper. I waved at the guard house as Alina maneuvered further between the piers, and saw the outline of a person waving back.
The piers continued for a short distance, leading to several other docks that were mostly empty for the time being. A few light and heavy cruisers floated here and there, but the majority were out in service of the city battle. Five guards were visible in front of the facility’s rear entrance, two large reinforced doors that led directly into the base of the main building and underground.
The Pitcher cruised us into an empty space and turned off the engine. I grabbed a ceridium capsule and made sure my weapons, although damp, were ready.
“Wait here,” I said to Alina, and used the capsule to create a shadow shroud. There was no way that our disguises would hold up to visual identification among the guards, so I would have to do it the old-fashioned way.
I crept out of the cruiser and onto the dock, a shadow against the dark pier. Several lights illuminated the area at regular intervals, but I clung to the darkness and quickly reached the cement platform that led to the entryway. Crouching behind a stone railing, I sent a message to Madge, hoping that she was able to give the camera crew something to do for five minutes or more.
“I’m going,” I breathed, seeing the air in front of me turn to frost. It was considerably cooler out in the middle of the Bay.
“Starting the timer,” I heard Gloric’s voice, and saw his camera shift as he tinkered with his backpack.
Two of the guards stood close to me, on either side of the centermost ledge that led to the piers. Another two flanked the entryway, with the extra guard pacing interminably up the central path and back to the doors. All of them were visibly armed, their ceridium assault rifles strapped across their shoulders and chests.
I reached down over the platform, grabbing some loose soil from the ground beneath and placing it in my pocket. I then pulled a couple of tranq needles from my wrist pouch, placing them lengthwise in the grooves of my palms in between my first and middle fingers.
“No one gets killed,” I remembered cautioning the group as we put together our plan coming back from Reno. “They’re all just trying to do their jobs.”
“You know what I do, right?” Vasshka had said through the speaker system.
“We’ll get you some non-lethal bullets,” I conceded. We hadn’t. I wasn’t sure how that was going to work out.
I waited for the patrol make her way onto the pier, then vaulted myself over the stone railing behind the platform guards, who were facing the ocean and away from the building. I landed silently in plain view of the man and woman guarding the entrance, their backs against the stone wall.
What they saw in that moment would have chilled most people to their core, bringing their darkest nightmares of murderous shadows to life. These two were seasoned guards in the NIGHT corps, used to seeing all manner of magic at the service of Nightpaths, Daypaths, and Inquisitors. They squinted in the fluorescent light, confused.
If they had put together any cogent thoughts about my appearance, they did not have time to voice them. I stood from my crouch and fanned my hands outwards, flinging the needles in their direction. The one on the right clutched his neck, and the left, her cheek. They both slumped to the floor, the night wind and distance muffling the sound considerably, but unable to block out the clattering of their weapons.
One of the platform guards began to turn, alarmed by the clamor. I closed the distance in an instant, spinning to gain momentum and leaving the ground. My boot met his jaw with a crunch, and he tumbled over the platform’s railing and onto the dirt below. I bent my knees to cushion my landing, stepping in the direction of the other guard and thrusting my hand in my pocket.
He looked at me and his jaw began to drop, eyes widening. I tossed the dirt from my pocket at his face, preempting any sound or scream. I moved swiftly around him to place my arms around his neck in a three-pointed choke, dragging him out of the light and away from the platform. He struggled against my grip but soon relaxed, unconscious. I turned his head to the side to make certain he wasn’t going to swallow any more dirt, and pressed myself back against the stone railing.
The patrol finished her round, walking back towards the platform. Halfway up the gangway, she noticed the prone forms of the other guards, and turned her walk into a run, holding her rifle in one hand and reaching for her digitab with the other. She would press a button and sound an alert, bringing more guards on top of my head.
I didn’t give her the opportunity. I drew my stunner and steadied it against the railing in one swift motion, firing an electrified round at her moving profile. It wasn’t my best shot, and hit the reinforced padding of her uniform, startling her but not attaching to her skin. She turned around, looking for me, and grabbing again for her digitab.
A bolt appeared from nowhere, sticking like a dart in between her nose and lip. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she wavered, falling back against the railing and then forward to lie on her face.
I looked in the direction of the NIGHT cruiser to see Alina standing behind the prow, still looking down the holoscope of the sniper rifle in her hands. She held the position for a moment, and then looked over the weapon at me, raising a hand.
“Thanks,” I said. I spoke a word and dispelled my shadow shroud, returning the gesture.
“Ayup,” her voice said into my earpiece.
I waited for the half-auric to put away the sniper rifle, idly watching Gloric type. Alina joined me after a moment, and we walked towards the building.
“Hope these things work,” she said, pulling up the NIGHT cruiser guard’s stolen profile on her digitab.
“They’ll work,” Gloric’s voice reverberated in our ears.
We walked up to the entrance, using our digitabs to verify our clearance to enter. They worked without a hitch, silently swinging the reinforced doors outwards.
“Hold up,” I said as the Pitcher took a step forward.
I bent and grabbed the door guards’ simple caps, offering one to Alina and putting on the other.
“Keep your hat low and eyes forward,” I instructed. “And walk like you own the place.”
There would be a small number of personnel about, officials and staff mostly, with the lion’s share of combat-ready agents on the front lines. No one would question two guards on their way through the facility, particularly if their access codes checked out. It was unlikely that anyone would notice the sleeping guards outside before the camera crew came back online, giving us about four minutes to reach Tribe and locate the data drive.
I looked up at the line of holocameras overhead as we strode through the doors, hoping against hope that Madge had been able to do her magic, and that we wouldn’t run into any other agents on our way. I wouldn’t know whether to fight or
reason with them, and either option would take too much time.
The NIGHT facility was exactly as I had remembered it, plain whitewashed walls with simple blackened chrome trims along the baseboards and door frames. Digital notices scrolled automatically in holodisplay monitors recessed within the walls, all currently projecting location information about the impending war. The air smelled like paint and rubber shoe soles, with the faint metallic aroma of ceridium weaponry. I felt a strange sense of cognitive dissonance, a homecoming in someone else’s house.
The area we had stepped into was a secondary checkpoint, a short hallway that opened up into a larger room with a square booth in the middle. Reinforced glass walls that blocked entry and exit flanked the kiosk, uninterrupted save a door panel that had been cut into either side. The booth itself was concrete up to waist level, and glass all the way to the ceiling. A guard sat behind a desk in the kiosk, watching a holodisplay report on the state of the battle.
“Karen,” I said under my breath to Alina, recognizing the guard.
We walked up to the entrance wall, using the stolen profiles to verify our identities against a freestanding console next to the door. The computer beeped in authentication, waiting on the guard to provide confirmation.
The guard, absorbed in the report, pressed a button without looking at us. The door slid open against the glass wall, and we walked briskly through.
“Thanks, Karen,” Alina mumbled, keeping her head forward.
“Yeah,” the guard said, ignoring us.
We did our best to keep our pace normal, striding down the hallway past the checkpoint and into a large reception area with several passageways leading off in different directions. Two booths protruded from the left-hand wall, housing a number of dispatchers who were busily coordinating responses to assaults around the city. I raised my hand to scratch at my face, trying to prevent anyone from giving up my cover.
I needn’t have worried. The dispatchers paid us no mind, and the place was otherwise deserted. I took us through the centermost hallway, quickening our walking speed as we passed room after empty room, coming eventually to the large central concourse of the facility.
The Gressler Atrium, named after the first Inquisitor General, was not-so-mute testament to the seat of NIGHT power. A white stone dome one hundred feet across hovered protectively overhead, concentric circles of reinforced glass giving glimpses of the night sky above and relieving some of the oppressiveness. Banks of metal chairs sat bolted into the marble tiled floor, glittering under the fluorescent lighting. Potted ferns and other plants were scattered about the room, giving some color to the otherwise minimalist room, and four enormous monitors filled the walls on the ordinal directions of the atrium, displaying information about agent shifts, battle updates, and other reports.
Free-standing consoles stood about the room at regular intervals, available for agents and visitors who had need of accessing network functions not provided through a digitab. Having entered the atrium through the east corridor, we stood next to a few vending machines that glowed with AR displays of different foods and soft drinks. Another hallway opened across the concourse from us and to the left and right on the cardinal directions, and rows of framed pictures and honors lined the walls beneath the monitors and in between the hallways.
I heard Alina catch her breath next to me, and understood her emotions at that moment. The Gressler Atrium captured the NIGHT ethos perfectly in its architecture; it was spartan and imposing while still being technologically modern. Its creators had spared no expense in its construction, and it had a dark beauty in its simplicity. Although pictures of it were used in most media propaganda related to NIGHT activity, they were no substitute for seeing the facility in person for the first time.
The room felt cold and sterile to me, a monument to the government’s willingness to spend countless funds on technological advancement to support a primeval xenophobia. I can’t say that I’d ever put too much thought into what the NIGHT leadership stood for, beyond some vague discomfort at my own involvement in whatever underrace oppression resulted from our activity. I normally viewed the world in more simple terms, applying my skills where necessary to keep the city safe from revolutionary terrorism.
The Destroyer’s words about the status quo nagged at me, disturbing me more than I’d liked to admit. I was no longer sure who needed to be kept safe from whom.
“Three minutes, folks,” Gloric spoke into our earpieces. I could see him and Vasshka preparing to leave the NIGHT cruiser’s storage compartment.
I led Alina swiftly into the atrium, keeping a low profile as we skirted the northeastern wall. The room was quiet, with only a couple of night shift workers cleaning the area and a some off-duty officials occupying a cluster of chairs, watching the reports on one of the monitors. We followed the curvature of the wall to the nearest hallway, passing by several framed pictures of the Inquisitor Generals, from Gressler all the way to Karthax.
Just as we reached the north entrance, a squad of agents came bustling through, their combat boots clicking on the marble floor. An Inquisitor led the group, speaking instructions over her shoulder to three Daypaths and one Nightpath. They crossed directly in front of us, turning in our direction to take the east exit.
I quickly spun Alina towards a nearby console, fiddling with my digitab and coughing to cover my face. The Pitcher reached up casually to adjust her hat, keeping her back to the advancing agents. I could hear brief bits of the Inquisitor’s orders to her subordinates as they passed behind us, instantly recognizing the names and ranks I heard. I felt a conflicting set of emotions, camaraderie and familiarity warring with anger and vengeance. I had to remind myself that none save a few of my former comrades would have had anything to do with Karthax’s betrayal and my attempted assassinations.
The agents exited through the eastern door, and Alina and I continued along the wall past the north entryway and into the western one. A hall identical to the one through which we had come led away from the atrium and into another maze of corridors, but we took an immediate right to a set of huge elevators that led up into one of the headquarters’ three towers, and down into the bowels of the island. I used my digitab’s stolen profile to activate one of the elevators, Gloric’s enhanced access codes giving us clearance.
“Five agents coming your way,” I said to the gnome, who had taken the helm of the NIGHT cruiser and was preparing to steer it out of the harbor.
“We’ll get a move on,” Vasshka replied for him as the technomancer starting the engine, still typing.
The elevator opened with a chime, empty. I said a silent thank-you and we stepped inside, taking it to the third belowground level, which housed the VPen subject rooms. My stomach flew into my chest as the high-speed elevator took us into the earth, opening a moment later into a small antechamber.
If the upper levels of the facility seemed cold, the VPen was an unemotional wasteland in comparison. Concrete walls and ceilings pressed in claustrophobically, a reminder of the hundreds of tons of building and rock above and around us. A reinforced glass and metal entryway was the only concession to the basic stonework, along with a simple linoleum floor. A security console stood next to the VPen’s entrance, but the adjacent guard booth was empty.
“The hell?” I said out loud.
“Problem?” Alina asked, looking through the glass at the cells beyond.
I shook my head, perplexed. Even with the war going on outside, there should be at least one on-duty guard in attendance at all hours. I looked up at a security camera to our right, wondering if Madge had also cleared the checkpoint to help us.
“Gloric,” I said, “Can you get me a read on Tribe’s cell number?”
“Kind of busy here,” the technomancer announced, steering the cruiser in between the piers. He would have to override the gate’s security to get out of the island’s perimeter, which would alert the gate guard and start the chain reaction that would send the NIGHTs’ remaining forces after them and
away from us. They would hopefully assume that the gnome was responsible for the unconscious guards, who would be spotted at any minute by the camera crew or the group of agents we had passed. Still, he was able to pull up information about the VPen’s layout and give us a cell number.
“Fifty-one C,” he said. I could see the eastern gate swing open in front of them, the Bay cold and dark ahead.
“Thanks.” We used our digitabs to gain entry to the VPen, passing through the security wall and making a beeline for Tribe’s cell.
The VPen subject cells were no more than adjacent rooms built into small concrete bunkers within a larger, open air worked stone cavern. Each room was affixed with a metal, digitally-operated door and would have basic living accoutrements within. The VPen’s inhabitants would spend most of their waking hours with their headsets enabled, enduring whatever virtual punishment their sentence required, and given breaks for exercise, sleep, and some personal time. Tribe’s cell was in one of the larger sections, which made me suspect that they had him locked up with other revolutionary interrogees.
We found the room without incident, and I used my digitab to disable its security system. The locking mechanism beeped, echoing hollowly in the silent cavern. The only other sound I could hear was Alina’s breathing, and a distant alarm through Gloric and Vasshka’s microphones as my companions left the island behind them.
I slid open the door, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness in front of me and relying on my lenses to tell me the rest. Two chairs sat back to back in the middle of the room, their occupants fastened in place with security clasps. Tribe’s form was clearly visible even without my lenses, his head resting low over his chest and his hair hanging stringily over a VPen visor. Several pieces of basic furniture framed the room, with a simple washing station and toilet in the corner.
“Tribe,” Alina breathed, seeing the auric’s miserable shape. She pushed past me to rush to his side, and I followed her into the room.
