Reward: Unknown
Reward: unknown
Reward type: Extraordinary promotion
To claim your reward, please visit the nearest Stellar terminal.
I felt irritation seething within me. Just like earlier on, my cogitor seemed to be forcing me into a particular course of action. The mission she’d just formed went totally against my own intentions. I knew nothing about the circumstances of Alice’s demotion. “Dead or alive”! What if she’d been the victim of a tragic accident? Or a hostage caught in Stellar’s turf wars? I really had to look into it before rushing to any decisions. I needed allies, not new enemies. And considering the fact that we had the Possessed on our case in hot pursuit, this mission was absolutely pointless...
“I can sense what you’re feeling, Grey. You shouldn’t allow yourself to be so easily led. This creature is extremely dangerous. There can’t be any mistake about this. No one gets the Dead or Alive status by accident. Her arms must be covered in blood to the elbows. If you don’t kill her, she’ll use you, then she’ll just kill you herself.”
“We could use her too, Miko. We need to get to a transmission station, don’t forget.”
“Yes, but this would be a very risky option, Incarnator. I’m obliged to remind you that the failure to complete the mission will result in your first reprimand. I suggest you attack ASAP. This is a perfect opportunity!”
Alice stood motionless with her back to me with her half-removed jumpsuit hanging around her waist, lifting her hair up with one hand. A perfect opportunity indeed. I could whip out my Fang, simultaneously pouring a Flash of Light into its blade, then bury it under the creature’s left shoulder blade, right into that seductive curve of her smooth bronze back...
“Look. The mark. The Undying. Understand now?”
“Incarnator, attack! You might not get another chance!”
Oh no. I might have no idea who or what I’d been in the past, but I could now distinctly sense the inklings of a vague picture forming on the blank sheet of my memory. You just didn’t do this sort of thing. It would tarnish me forever. With due respect to Miko, Alice might be a murderous monster in the flesh — but whatever lofty goals Stellar claimed it served, stabbing someone who trusted you in the back was a contemptible thing to do.
Having read my emotions, Miko breathed a sad sigh and hid her face in her hands folded as if for a prayer.
“I sure do,” I told Alice out loud. “And what’s this?” I asked, noticing a small tattoo behind her ear, right under the heavy knot of her braided hair. A thorny sprig of some plant topped with a stylized black bud. Its shape looked eerily familiar. A rose?
“Black Rose. Zealots!” she suddenly swung round, hissing furiously, then turned to me. “Your Voice. Wants to kill me,” her eyes lit up with a wild green glow. “Mission. Renegade. Stellar System. True?”
I didn't reply. Still, she seemed to know it.
“Don’t. Don’t even try. You can’t,” she bared her teeth. “I can’t be killed! Understand?”
“No, I don’t. Can you heal any wound? Regenerate? Any wound at all?”
“Yes. No. Not Alice. The beast. The beast inside. Can’t be killed. Many tried. Many times killed. Many times died. Still didn't die. I can’t be killed. I can’t die. Look.”
Before I could notice anything, she’d whipped out Fang from its sheath on my hip. Immediately her hand began to smoke as the artifact heated up in a stranger’s hand. Ignoring it, Alice buried it up to its hilt into her solar plexus: in the exact same place that Miko had marked as “the Source’s vulnerable spot”. That’s exactly where you were supposed to aim your Azuric weapon in order to exterminate an Incarnator’s ethereal body.
I gave a start of surprise. The weregirl hissed with pain, her face distorted by an ugly grimace. A thin trickle of blood ran through her fingers over her stomach.
Slowly she pulled the knife out. The lethal wound closed within seconds; the ruby red streak of blood got soaked back under the skin. Not a trace left. Unbelievable regeneration. And the most incredible thing was, the direct hit to her Source hadn’t seemed to have caused her any obvious damage. So Miko must have been wrong, then.
The next instant, Fang was back in its sheath. Alice zipped up her jumpsuit and showed me her open hands. No trace of any burns she’d sustained, even though the stench of scorched flesh still hung in the air.
“You can’t kill me. Just can’t. Understand?”
“But this goes against all laws of nature! Biological immortality is impossible! There’re plenty of ways to exceed one’s regeneration threshold. But the fact that her Source doesn’t react to Azuric warfare is extremely interesting...”
“Yes, I understand,” I said. “They can cut you to pieces and still you’ll survive. Is that correct?”
“Yes. Help. You help me?”
“How? How can I help you?”
“Alice was human. Before. Now Alice is a beast. Azure. Genes,” she said slowly. “The Moon. The beast. Inside me. Makes me kill. I kill. I can’t die. I feel bad. I hurt...”
“I think she’s trying to explain that all the uncontrollable Azuric mutations have altered her body beyond human, Incarnator. The alien genes have changed her appearance and damaged her mind. Alice isn’t human anymore. I think she’s insane.”
“How can I help you?” I asked.
“Stellar. I want it back,” she breathed, looking me in the eye. “I want Richie back.”
I understood. She suffered from not being able to control her genetic modifications. Miko had already made it clear that renegade Incarnators were subject to spontaneous transformations whose effects were random. Unable to die, doomed to regenerating non-stop, all Alice could do was helplessly watch her own transformation into an Azuric monster. How torturous must it have been for a fellow human being to know they were turning into a murderous beast!
“Do I understand it correctly? You want to have your body control system back, together with your cogitor and your interface?” I asked slowly, weighing up every word. “I thought you said Stellar was an enemy?”
“Yes! Yes! Stellar....” she hissed furiously. “You’ll soon find out. Stellar. Darkness. Bad. Very bad. Alice need a body. A new body. New start. Human. Like you. Understand?”
“I think I do. Can you have your interface back?”
She nodded. “Yes. Missions. Alice complete missions. Lots of missions. Together. You and I. Combat group. Understand?”
“I think she hopes to reverse her mental transformation by getting a new host, Incarnator. In order to reincarnate, she needs to get her interface back — and in order to do that, she needs to clear her past by atoning her reprimands with new commendations. And there’s only one way to collect them, by completing system missions. She’s offering you to create a combat group. Technically it’s quite possible, otherwise renegades wouldn’t have been able to atone their crimes. Stellar’s rewards are distributed evenly between a group’s members; it will also allow you to complete more challenging missions.”
“So what do you think?”
“I can understand where she’s coming from. My prognosis will be, this whole setup is unpredictably risky. Still, we have to agree that in case of your refusal there’s a high probability of her killing you, end of story.”
Alice kept her eyes firmly locked with mine. Her inhumanly bright almond gaze betrayed anticipation, a hidden fear and... hope? It could have been the first time in many years that she’d finally met someone in the capacity to help her.
“I’m prepared to help you,” I said slowly. “But I need your help too. I need to get to the nearest transmission station and spread the word about the Possessed in the area. Think you can help me?”
“Yes. Transmission. I can help. But you go first!” she sniffed. “Combat group. Make it. You first.”
I found the combat group tab in my status. A new message flashed open:
Would you like to register a new combat group?
Please enter the c
ombat group’s name
I paused momentarily. With a faint smile, I sent a mental command to enter into the flashing line: Amnesia.
New combat group created!
Name of Group: Amnesia
Commander: Grey
Rank: Recruit
I focused on Alice, waiting for her augmented-reality stats to reappear, framed in crimson. After a few seconds, new icons materialized next to her:
Bio
Required clearance level: Allarch
Ranks and Awards
Required clearance level: Allarch
Phenotype and abilities
Required clearance level: Tribune
Combat Group: none
Would you like to invite Alice van der Heiden to join your combat group?
Warning! A group’s commander accepts full responsibility for the actions of his or her subordinates. He receives equal punishment for any misdeeds committed by any of his group members.
Aha... so the commander received his share of both commendations and reprimands issued to other group members. Which made group creation a rather risky undertaking, requiring a close-knit team of tried and tested comrades. Although I couldn’t say any of that to Alice, my gut feeling was screaming, pushing my hand to the button.
Alice van der Heiden has been added to your combat group.
For the first time, I saw her smile: the squinted grin of a happy cat which brought dimples to her high-cheekboned face, completely transforming her. Her stern-featured mask had momentarily melted away, revealing the carefree young girl beneath.
Gently, as if wary of hurting me, she squeezed my proffered hand in her hard hot palm. “Alice, Grey. Warrior. Enchanter. A group. Good. Plan? Got a plan?”
“Oh yes. Our plan is to get to the nearest settlement with a transmission station. Plus, we need to go to the Monolith.”
“The Possessed. They will look for us. Need to run. Quick. Far. Run first, transmission next.”
She was right. First we needed to confuse and shake off our pursuers. I doubted very much that Gnarl would let us be. We needed to make our way to safety first; only then could we lay a route to the settlement Commander Knox had told me about.
There was one more thing that worried me. When Alice had told me her story, she’d mentioned Miko’s name among other cogitors...
My ever-watchful neural network immediately jumped in:
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, Incarnator. I might be a unique sub-identity – but not that unique, I’m afraid. There were 144,000 of Alpha-Plus cogitors made in total. Each one of us was built with a particular personality type in mind – but as you might have guessed, the number of existing human personality types is way below that number.”
“Do you imply that some other Incarnators could have had their own Mikos?”
“Bingo! I must have had at least a few thousand sisters at the time. So the probability of Alice having met you in the past is vanishingly small.”
“Well, you did disappoint me, I have to admit,” I said, unable to contain myself.
“If you absolutely need to know, we evolve alongside our Incarnators as we receive new information and experience. So all Mikos are different, yes sir we are!” she stuck out her tongue at me and made a sulking face.
Suddenly Alice sniffed the air noisily. She glanced up at the ceiling, its cracked dome letting in the dimming rays of the setting sun. Slowly she pressed a finger to her lips, then darted up the crumbling staircase, disappearing in one of the gaping holes.
She must have sensed something. I grabbed at my Crusher – but before I could do anything, I heard some rustling above, followed by a noisy struggle. Then a dead body dropped to my very feet.
A giant rat – or a Rattus, rather, as I could tell from the abnormally lanky proportions of its bony frame overgrown with reddish hair. The creature was still convulsing. Judging by his gnarling muzzle turned to one side, Alice had broken his neck, as simple as that.
I gingerly touched its body. Empty. Alice must have received all of its Azure.
After a brief while, she jumped down — from a six-yard height — landing deftly and almost noiselessly on all fours like the lithe predator she was. Her every movement was mesmerizing in its feline precision. And she hadn’t even changed to her animal guise yet, performing all these stunts in her human form. Does that mean that I too would be able to do these sorts of things one day?
“All clear. This one alone. A runner. A scout.”
Her words could only mean one thing: the morph she’d killed had belonged to the pack’s avant-garde. The pack which had stricken an alliance with the Rogues. Which meant that instead of bothering with humans, Gnarl must have set rats on our tracks. Somehow I doubted there could be two rat packs in the area.
“We go. Quick. The pack is near,” Alice snapped, pointing at the black mouth of the cargo monorail road.
Moving along the dark half-flooded tunnel wasn’t at all easy. The water level kept rising; if at first we could run along the surviving monorail, trying to keep our balance, soon it too disappeared under the black surface. Now we had to wade thigh-deep through the stagnant water which soon reached our waists. I summoned a Speck of Ra which cast an uneven light on the heaps of junk, the ribbed bundles of cables that ran along the ceiling like rusty snakes, and the stenciled inscriptions on the blackened walls, barely visible under the thick layer of mold. According to Miko’s map, the nearest station was twenty-one miles away.
But we were Incarnators. We could run for a long long time without stopping for a breather, mercilessly exploiting the abilities of our improved bodies. That’s exactly what this gift of inhuman strength had been meant for, allowing us to squeeze it for every drop in an emergency.
Still, the next few hours showed me just how weak I actually was, with Alice pushing me mercilessly beyond my limits. I might have been stronger than a regular human but I was still much weaker compared to an average Incarnator. This was an exhausting obstacle race with your own life as the main prize. I was giving it my all, but my physical body had its natural limits. Alice would have been able to move so much quicker without me — but a group is only as fast as its slowest member.
It took us several hours to finally reach the next terminal — which was basically a lake. The monorail tracks and the cargo platforms were completely flooded, so that we actually had to swim the last leg of our journey. In the weak light of the Speck of Ra floating in the air above us, I could see that the terminal’s vaulted ceiling was cracked and crumbling, permeated with bundles of knobbly roots. The station looked more like an enormous underground cave than a manmade object.
Suddenly Alice perked up, alarmed. “The baddies! Close! Quick! Over there! Hold on tight!”
She unceremoniously forced me to cling to her, then picked up speed until the water seethed all around her. We climbed up onto a flooded platform where the water was waist deep, soaking wet and shivering with the cold, while Alice slowly turned around, studying the water surface.
“Who’s that? The rats?” I asked.
“No. The Baddies. They live here. Over there,” she pointed at the stagnant depths. “They’re coming! They’re close!”
I sent the Speck of Ra up higher, increasing the circle of light.
I saw black silhouettes rising to the surface from the deep. A few moments later, the water parted in foaming circles, as the inhabitants of the flooded tunnels came out, disturbed by our visit.
Holding Fang in a reverse grip, I slowly retreated. The serrated spinal crests that appeared from the water promised nothing good. We’d been lucky to have climbed onto the platform; had we stayed in the deep, our chances would have been even slimmer.
The first black shadow darted up to the surface, aiming for Alice. I noticed the long jaws like those of a crocodile, clawed webbed feet and the translucent crest that ran the whole length of the creature’s back.
My interface promptly classified it:
Newt
A-Morph
>
Type: Logos
Warning level: Blue (considerable danger)
The Logos were regular Terran creatures without any paranormal properties, just slightly “upgraded” by the energy of Azure. They did resemble newts that had somehow grown to the size of an alligator, turning those harmless little amphibians into veritable monsters craving fresh blood.
One of them went for me. I met him with a desperate swing of my Fang but lost my footing and dropped into the water. I could feel the monster’s teeth close around my shoulder, ripping through the protective fabric of my Fox suit. I hit him blindly again and again, but Fang’s blade could barely pierce his bumpy skin.
Water closed above my head; I choked on water in a desperate surge of adrenaline which was more like a rush of panic. These creatures were highly dangerous — and they were so many!
“Incarnator, don’t breathe! I’m highlighting his weak points! Stab him upward in the stomach!”
The Enchanter (Project Stellar Book 2): LitRPG Series Page 10
