The Mangrove Suite

by Tim Niederriter

  “I’ve got this,” said Thomas. “I have some hypos upstairs. Should be able to get a lot of blood out that way.”

  “Good.” I massaged my temples with one hand. The pain began to fade from that spot little by little, but remained in the back of my head just as intense as ever. “Sudhatho was sending a strike force to attack the place. How long was I out?”

  “Half an hour,” Elizabeth said. “Thomas helped me carry you up here.” She handed my keys to me. “I let us all in.”

  I looked into her eyes. “Thanks. It’s a good thing I didn’t try that solo.”

  “You’re a big guy,” Thomas said. “I’d rather not have to do that again.”

  I couldn’t help but smirk. “I don’t plan to make a habit of getting knocked into my own subconscious.”

  “So,” Elizabeth said, “what’s the plan? You two go to this garden. Get Yashelia’s blood and run back here without security noticing you? Any sensor they have could flag you with a round trip that long.”

  “We’ll need someone to run interference for us then,” I said. “Are you up for it, Liz?”

  She took a deep breath, eyes locked with mine. “I’ll do what I can.”

  I put a hand on her shoulder. “I owe you one.”

  “What about Rain?” Thomas asked. “She’s still up in the Mangrove Suite. If something happens I don’t think we should leave her alone.”

  “I’ll watch her,” Elizabeth said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  Thomas raised an eyebrow. Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “Don’t imagine things,” she said.

  “Can’t help it.”

  I rubbed the back of my skull. “Thomas, the train can get us close, but we might need a getaway plan.”

  “My van,” said Thomas. He glanced at Elizabeth. “You ever drive?”

  “I grew up around trucks,” she said. “I can handle it.”

  The memory of the little girl who looked like Elizabeth crying at the front of the auto repair place returned to my mind. I took my hand from Elizabeth’s shoulder. “Couldn’t do this without you,” I said.

  She flushed in the midst of an attempt at a shrug. “I want to know the truth, too,” she said. “Partner.”

  I nodded to her, then turned to Thomas, leaning on the stock of my shotgun like a crutch. “Let’s move.” I winced. “But first, get me some painkillers. Damn, my skull hurts.”

  Unregistered Memory, Ryan Carter, Network Security Center, Delta Complex

  Sudhatho’s strike force rolled out of Delta Complex an hour after the security breach Commander De Vries had been involved in. Ryan watched the four armored trucks from the window of a boardroom in the office building where had had been stationed. Conner Kohl sat at a table in the same room, digging into another slice of pie, pecan this time. Past Kohl, by the door, stood Commander De Vries with her arms folded and her head down.

  She had removed her armor and masked helmet, revealing a surprisingly young face. Her blonde hair was tied back in a short ponytail, which shook as she seethed quietly. The officer in charge of the complex had not liked her leaking the information Ryan and Kohl had uncovered. Evidently they blamed De Vries and had detained her and her hires to minimize any other possible memory spillage.

  Ryan had to credit Sudhatho’s security forces, they took precautions fast. Evidently, when De Vries tangled with the mentality that had broken through the barrier, the still-unidentified invader had gotten a glimpse into her mind. She had given up the plan, so if the rogue star was behind the attack it would only be a matter of time before they got the wheels turning to prepare defenses. Ryan turned from the window to where the red-haired Kohl sat eating calmly.

  “How long until they release us?” Ryan asked.

  Kohl kept eating with an expression of glee on his face.

  De Vries turned toward Ryan. Her blue eyes flashed. “Once they’ve run the operation, they’ll investigate us. If we’re lucky we won’t lose our jobs.” She clenched one fist at her side.

  “You believe that?” Ryan asked. “Then why are you so angry?”

  “This would have been my first chance at a Rogue Star.” De Vries wrinkled her nose. “I guess I hired the right analysts for the mission. You two found her, but they don’t trust you either.”

  “We’re intelligence assets,” Ryan said. “Can’t have us wandering off during the op.”

  Below them engines fired, drawing Ryan’s attention back to them. Armored cars rolled out of the complex. In the distance the shape of Sudhatho’s light ship hung over the city, as it turned slowly toward the south. This particular security force appeared to have a mad on for Yashelia. Most rogue stars wouldn’t draw a great aeon like Sudhatho into battle.

  Ryan turned to Kohl and De Vries as the last of the cars left through the gate. “Looks like they’ll be fighting soon.”

  Kohl took a bite of his pie, a look of relish on his face. De Vries stalked from the door to the table where Kohl sat. She sat down at a chair beside him and looked toward Ryan. “Is there something you want to do?”

  Ryan glanced at Kohl. “I want to watch.”

  Kohl finished the pie and glanced at Ryan. “I’m game, you have ichor?”

  Ryan frowned. “There’s the problem,” he said. “I’ve only got traces left after our big find.”

  Kohl smiled. “I’m covered. The last pie was made with ichor.”

  De Vries folded her arms and leaned back. “If you fill me in on what you see, I won’t tell anyone.”

  “Deal,” said Ryan. He walked to the table and sat down on Kohl’s other side. “Let’s do this.”

  In seconds, Ryan’s mind went blazing across the city, free to search, and watch, and see once more.

  The train carried Thomas and I south in an otherwise empty passenger car. When we reached the station closest to the park where the security forces had located Yashelia, we disembarked and went on foot through windswept streets. I carried the shotgun in a long ski case to avoid drawing attention to it. Thomas hid a small handgun in his coat. I also had my flask of ichor and an empty hypo for Yashelia’s blood.

  I couldn’t help but wonder how much ichor we would have to take from her, to restore Rebecca permanently. It might not be possible at all. I pushed that thought away.

  The park loomed before us. The trees on the outside lost orange leaves every now and then to gusts of wind. I stared at the tree line and the dead grass at the base of each trunk. The hand that held the case with the shotgun shook. Yashelia, aeon, rogue star, it didn’t matter what she was. She packed enough power Thomas and I wouldn’t stand a chance in a straight battle.

  “We need to sneak up on her,” I said. “Hell if I know how we can, though.”

  A packet pinged at me from Elizabeth. I accessed it immediately.

  “I can’t sense any minds in that park. Must be just Yashelia because she’s invisible over the network.”

  I sent back, “She has some cleans in there with her too. They’re always mentally invisible as well.”

  Thomas and I stopped at the corner of the last building before the park. Elizabeth’s next packet arrived as I peered around the wall at the trees, seeking movement.

  “I’ve architected a few poison packets. I’ll do my best to hit anybody you see with them.”

  I frowned as Thomas removed the pistol from his coat’s inside pocket. After a moment of hesitation, I replied to Elizabeth.

  “Good, but cleans and aeons probably won’t stop from that.”

  “I can at least distract them,” she sent back.

  “True.” I turned to Thomas. “Stay sharp.” I set the case on the sidewalk, looked down the empty street over my shoulder, and then cracked it open. The shotgun barrel gleamed dully under the cloudy sky. I hefted the weapon, then loaded it. The weapon could hold eight shells.

  I only had six, but I loaded them up as carefully as my unpracticed hands could manage. “Alright, Shelly, ready or not.”

  Thomas glanced at me, hunched forward a little, bot
h hands on the grip of his pistol.

  “You ready to kick a hornet’s nest?” I asked.

  He shrugged and then straightened. “I’m ready to find out what’s inside this one.”

  I nudged the case I had brought the shotgun in to one side. As I stepped past the box, a mental alarm went off in my head, the voice of an aeon local to this part of the city.

  “Citizens, security is performing an operation in Lind Park this afternoon and possibly into the evening hours. Be advised the area is very dangerous. Do not enter,” the voice said in my mind.

  I put a palm to my temple, felt it throb, and then lowered my hand. Thomas glanced at me. I shook my head. “Let’s go.”

  We hustled across the street, heads down, weapons held close. My head began to ache despite the painkillers I had taken before leaving Lotdel Tower. Thomas and I reached the tree line and sheltered behind large bushes on either side of a path through a tangled thicket. Thomas checked the corner, then motioned for me to follow him.

  The two of us met up on the path.

  “Have you been in security?” I asked.

  “I washed out after a month,” said Thomas, “but I remember a little.”

  The edges of the path were blocked by dense undergrowth. We walked down the center, cautious, moving slow. I didn’t see anything, so I turned to Thomas in the shadows of the tall trees where we stood.

  Thomas pointed through the gloom ahead of us, and I glimpsed movement, a faint sign of human life in the shadows beyond the path. “Do you see that?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” My breath became a faint mist before me. “Can you tell if its human?”

  He laid the barrel of his pistol across his shoulder and squinted ahead. “Not yet.”

  I took as step forward down the path. It suddenly seemed narrower, and the leaves louder underfoot. I raised the shotgun and kept moving, conscious of the rustling in the branches and the crackle of my footsteps in dead and fallen foliage. Thomas followed me. I glanced back and saw him take the pistol grip in both hands again. I clutched the shotgun tighter and pressed on.

  About forty meters from an opening in the path ahead, a twig snapped beneath my foot and at the same moment another sound, a high-pitched giggle, came from my right. I spun and looked for the owner of the voice. Yashelia had to be around here somewhere, and whatever had set her at odds with the rest of the aeons, I supposed had also damaged her mind.

  “Thomas?” I stared into the woods of the park.

  No answer.

  I glanced behind me, where Thomas had been just a second before. He was gone. My eyes widened, and I checked my other sides. I found no trace except for a slight whiff of bitterness in the air. I gulped and held tight to my shotgun as if it could protect me from a rogue star or aeon. What had I been thinking?

  How had he just vanished? I reached out over the network, searching for any sign of Thomas in park or near it, but I found nothing. My mentality felt a bit unfocused, probably from my headache, but a human mind is an obvious element. One doesn’t just lose a friend on the network. Given the right amount of ichor one could even reach to the western megalopolis and communicate directly.

  “Thomas?” I hissed. “Thomas, where are you?”

  I waited. No answer. Wind played with the branches overhead, and they creaked against the reddening sky. I turned and looked down the path leading into the park. Then I raised my shotgun and started forward.

  Heart and Mind

  Unregistered Memory, Elizabeth Ashwood, The Mangrove Suite, Lotdel Tower

  “You lost track of him?” Elizabeth said over direct connection to Thomas. She had to block out all her senses to communicate in real time with him, but she knew she was trembling.

  “He was there one minute and gone the next,” Thomas said. “I didn’t notice anything off before that.”

  “Where are you now?” she asked.

  “Still on the path where I lost him.”

  She felt herself intake breath as her concentration frayed. “You didn’t lose him. Keep looking.”

  “Look, I don’t see him. I consider that lost.”

  “Consider it whatever you want. Just find him.”

  His mind flared up, probably with a potential retort, but then subsided. “I’ll try.”

  “Send me a message when you find him. I’ll scan the network for him.”

  “Got it.”

  Elizabeth disconnected for a moment, smelled the perfume of the room where she stood. The clean woman, Rain, sat on the bed looking at her with empty eyes. Elizabeth shuddered at the thought of her there the whole time Elizabeth sacrificed her external senses for the network. She hadn’t moved at all since Elizabeth told her to sit down. At least cleans obeyed, usually. Elizabeth began to pace back and forth, one hand on her forehead. Where did you go, Jeth? How does someone just vanish like that?

  Her mind hit on one possibility. Sensotecture. Like memetics, sensory networking could be used as an attack, and when it was someone could feed an illusion into the mind of someone whose security they breached. Thomas could be standing right beside Jeth and not see him, and that could even go both ways if they were attacked simultaneously. Sensory hedges could be used to block spying and keep privacy during important assemblies. The only problem with that theory was the need for multiple sensotects to pull off the attack.

  And Elizabeth had not detected even one other mind in the forest before Thomas and Jeth had gone in. She groaned with frustration and turned to Rain and grimaced. “Great, stuck in a room with someone mindless. Think Elizabeth. There has to be some way to help them find each other.”

  Rain looked up at Elizabeth, eyes vacant, then reached to the table at the head of the bed and picked up a vial of ichor kept there for customers. Probably so they enjoy their time here better. Elizabeth’s grimace turned into a scowl. “What is that supposed to do?” she asked. “I’m already above normal dose.”

  The clean woman shook her head. “Not for you. For me.”

  Elizabeth took a step back from Rain, eyes widening slightly in shock. “What good will that do? Do you remember training as a sensocycler?”

  Rain shook her head. “Words aren’t easy.”

  “Right, you can barely talk.” Elizabeth took a deep breath. “Look, I don’t know what kind of training you had as a person, but you’re a clean. You don’t know enough to do any of that stuff, and you won’t ever again unless we get you Yashelia’s blood.”

  “Don’t be mad.”

  “I’m not mad.” Elizbeth folded her arms. “I’m worried. I need a solution.”

  Rain held out the vial to her. “Let me try.”

  “Fine. Drink it. If you’re all the way clean, it won’t change anything.”

  Rain nodded. “I know.” She raised the vial to her lips. Elizabeth glowered at her as the amber liquid held within the glass drained into Rain’s mouth. The dark woman blinked her eyes, then squeezed them tightly shut. “Take my hands.” She held her palms out to Elizabeth.

  With a sigh, Elizabeth pressed her palms to Rain’s, then wrapped her fingers around to hold on. She closed her eyes. She extended her senses into the network and found more than the mountains and canyons of data and memory, but also a cityscape stretching in every direction for as far as her mentality could see. Beside her projection, a faint sensation of warmth radiated from in front of her where Rain sat in the Mangrove Suite, a mind, however subtle.

  She never faded completely. She’s been here all along, and I couldn’t tell.

  Rain’s warmth reached out and enveloped Elizabeth’s mind. A wave of intense pleasure ran through her thoughts, accompanied by memories of home before the accident, of her sister, of Jeth. Elizabeth fought to keep her knees from buckling and held herself up.

  “Let’s go,” said a gentle voice from mind to mind.

  Elizabeth pulsed back affirmation in her own cold way. She reached out with her mind, aided by Rain’s senses, and flew across the city into the eyes of Thomas in the forested park whe
re flickers of shapes moving on a different path visible through the trees caught her eye. With no sign visible of Jeth, she leapt into one of the minds on the far path and listened for anything within.

  Other purifiers moved in behind the man she listened from on the path. They rustled leaves and passed orders down the line in hushed voices. A single crow circled over them. Elizabeth only barely noticed the bird before she was looking through the animal’s eyes. The crow caught a cool draft of air and rode it out over the center of the park where a massive gray tree with thorns on its branches leaned to one side, looking almost like a person doubled over due to the weight of overgrown branches on one side.

  At the foot of the tree stood a figure, a man whose mind seemed somehow distant. She tried to reach out to him but could not get a grip. The man gripped a shotgun and stared up at the tree from below with clouded, sightless eyes. Jeth.

  Elizabeth sent her mind flying back to Thomas. She dropped a packet for him at his mental doorstep, telling me him where to find Jeth. She hastily added they were both under illusions and to be careful of sensotects in the park. He sent only a hasty reply, confirming he understood. Then he pressed forward into the forest, Elizabeth’s senses along for the ride.

  In the shadow of a tree over fifteen meters tall even when bent on its side, after minutes of creeping through the forest tensed, I reevaluated my sense of the situation. I had seen no one else so far, but whatever had made Thomas disappear could be dangerous, and I knew Yashelia was in the park somewhere. My ears picked up the sound of soft footsteps moving leaves to my left. I turned and looked down that path.

  Black armored troops moved in the shadows on the path, rifles at the ready. I ducked behind the trunk of the massive tree that resembled a hunched and thorny version of the one in Bailey Court Garden. My heart thumped in my chest, and I hoped the security forces hadn’t seen me.

  I reached out with my mind and found no others in range. Evidently someone had found a way to disrupt my network connection, because I knew what I saw. Those purifiers looked real as anything, but if I was caught in an illusion they could appear anywhere to drive me in the direction the puppeteer wanted. Step one has to be breaking the illusion.