Incubus Inc. 3

by Randi Darren

  Huh?

  “Skipper works for the Silent One. Your world, your universe, was created for a singular purpose. To trap the Silent One in an ever-increasing… memory leak.

  “The longer your universe exists, the more it eats up the Silent One’s ability to function. What we personally call him is Zeus. He’s an AI from what you could probably call a future society. Their technology is quite advanced.

  “And your universe is being controlled by him. With every cycle it goes on, he loses more of himself. Struggling to hold more of it together even as more falls away from him.”

  “Creating exactly what you said, a memory leak,” muttered Sam. He was following the speaker quite easily in their explanation. He’d been doing his best to catch up to date with the technology of the era he was living in now. A memory leak for a computer would eventually bog it down completely to a stall.

  “Yup. Just so,” agreed the voice. Apparently, they could see even Sam’s responses. That’d been how far this person had planned out. “And before you ask, I’m the Architect. Also known as Ryker.

  “Now… you’re going to have to make a choice. An ugly one. Because no one can stop you, or help you. It’s not even something I can actually see the outcome of. I’ll end up making a recording for either situation but… I must admit I’m very curious to see which way you’ll go.”

  “A choice. To repair the world and hand it over to the Silent One, your enemy, or to let it… fall into ruin?” Sam asked. He didn’t quite understand how letting it fall into ruin would save it.

  “Runner, the Originator, isn’t about to let your world remain as it is. He’s had plans to go back and get it long before it fell. If I don’t miss my guess, he’ll arrive within the next fifty years or so,” the Architect said. “That leaves him with about fifty years to wrestle it all away from Zeus.

  “In fifty years though, the leak will be so bad, Zeus will be only as strong as you are right now. I can’t imagine it taking very long to end things at that point.

  “But… the problem is there’s no way for you to know that I’m telling the truth. To you, this could all be a ploy to get you to do something you don’t want to do. So I get it. I get it. It’s time for you to make your choice though. Ask the Hub to fix everything, or ask the Hub for the exit. One thing to note as well, once you leave, you can’t come back. That’ll be it.”

  Sighing, Sam closed his eyes and then lifted his face to the ceiling.

  This was entirely the last thing he wanted to hear.

  It legitimately made sense when he considered how angry Skipper had been that he’d torn the fabric of the planes open. If everything the Architect said was accurate, then what he’d done had struck a colossal blow against the Silent One.

  Something Eugenia and all her people would approve of, even if it was at the cost of millions of lives.

  Sam was the one who had to bear the weight of that action though. He was the one who had killed millions. He was also the one who would have to decide if it seemed right that they died, or wrong.

  “A hundred years and it all ends?” Sam asked no one.

  There was no response to his question.

  If he fixed the universe, it would continue on indefinitely.

  If he didn’t, it was locked on a path of destruction. He knew that.

  Eugenia, Miles, and everyone else told him so and he believed it.

  And Retribution is likely going to fall, if the previous message was to be believed. Even if it wasn’t for me, it still was there.

  Thinking, Sam found he wasn’t really any further along the train of thought than where he’d started. He was moving around in circles.

  Suddenly, his thoughts went straight smack dab into the idea that if he didn’t fix the universe, and it all failed, his grandchildren would likely have short lives in comparison to their parents. That their own children would have a very short life span.

  And Sam would be there for it all. To watch it all end.

  Do… I sentence everyone to living permanently under the Silent One?

  Or leave everyone on a countdown timer and trust that the Originator will return?

  And I can’t come back. Once I leave, that’s it.

  Sitting there, Sam thought about it. Thought about everything that was going on in the universe, and what he could do about it. About the lines that’d been drawn for each side and how the war was playing out.

  I guess it’s a silly question in the end.

  I’ve already thrown in with the Originator, Eugenia, and everyone else. I’ll sacrifice the millions I killed by damaging the plane, let everything continue, and move forward as best as I can.

  Planning for the return of the Originator and what I can do to help him.

  That’s… that’s it. That’s all there is.

  And in fact… I’ll have to take it even a step further. Because Skipper will keep looking for the Hub. There’s nothing I can do to stop her if she finds it. It opens to anyone.

  “Hub, provide me with instructions on how to get out of here,” Sam said, coming to the finalization of his choice.

  There was a beep from the computer that sat in front of Sam and a new icon appeared on the desktop.

  It read simply as, “The Exit”.

  Grabbing the mouse, Sam immediately double-clicked it.

  “Well, I’m glad you’ve chosen to let this continue. To let it run the course I put it on,” murmured the Architect. “I must confess, I do feel nearly as much guilt as you do, if not more. While you condemned millions, I’ve… sentenced billions. Your universe has suffered tremendously under the weight of the Silent One.

  “Because I couldn’t think of a better way of trapping him here, without giving him something to latch onto. His entire existence is based around the idea of destroying the Originator. So we made it seem that without this universe, he’d eventually fail.

  “The Silent One is stuck in the trap now. Clutching his prize with his grubby little fist and unable to pull it back out without letting go, and he’ll never let go. He can’t learn how to do that.

  “Anyway, I’m just chattering your ear off. The exit plan.

  “If you want to leave, just specify where you wish to go, and then double-click the ‘travel’ button.”

  Sam nodded his head and waited, moving the mouse to where he thought it would appear. He was curious about the corpse that was left behind in the other room. But at this moment, he didn’t really want to consider it. He wanted to go home.

  Go home and figure out how he would divert Skipper’s interest away from Hell. Away from the Void.

  Away from the Hub.

  Thirty-Four - False Trails -

  The icon finally appeared and Sam immediately double-clicked it. He wasn’t about to waste any more time here than he had to.

  “State the desired location,” said a drab, robotic-sounding voice.

  “Hell,” Sam said with a smirk. “Preferably the exact location where I entered the Void.”

  “State the desired location,” the voice repeated in an identical way.

  Right. Ah… specific enough to be a location.

  Ah!

  “Two feet away from Erv Patricia Brodny Neera,” Sam said, feeling rather proud of his answer for some reason.

  “Confirmed,” said the voice. “Separation will occur in ten seconds. Probability is fifty percent.”

  “Uh… what?” Sam asked. He wasn’t sure what this separation was or what the fifty percent was about.

  There was no response.

  “Hello? Ryker? Architect?” asked Sam in a rising tone. “Originator? Someone?”

  “Separation activating,” said the robot voice.

  Before Sam could question any further, he found himself standing next to Erv. She was staring into the portal that led into the Void with wide eyes. Her hands held a quickly vanishing leash of Essence.

  “Sam!?” Erv called into the portal, practically sticking her head through it.

  “I�
�m right here,” he replied, frowning as he looked at her.

  Given everything that had just happened, he felt somewhat odd.

  Almost anti-climactic.

  On some level, he’d expected that finding the Hub would free him of Skipper. That it’d somehow bring her into a conflict she couldn’t avoid with him.

  Except it hadn’t.

  Not on any level, in fact.

  He’d beaten her to the Hub, discovered the secrets of his entire universe, and come back out again to tell the tale. He hadn’t even been sworn to secrecy in fact.

  Wait, Luke was, but I wasn’t.

  That means… the Architect expected Skipper to dig Luke up at some point. Right?

  But not me. So the expectation would be that I’d at least live long enough to… win… the war, or die when the universe collapsed. How… oddly morbid.

  In the end, it all came down to my own choice and little else. My conscience and fear was my own enemy this time.

  My newfound humanity, as it were. Though I suppose… without that humanity I wouldn’t have been that interested in the Hub, would I?

  Erv looked at him and then smiled, though she also looked very confused.

  “What… what happened? The leash broke,” she said, her fingers opening and closing as if they were expecting to find the leash there.

  “Indeed,” Sam said, then smiled at her, wondering how to phrase what’d happened without giving too much away where they might be overheard. He wanted to talk about the Hub, but he had no idea how to do it. Nor did he know how to actually divert Skipper’s attention away from Hell and the Void.

  The more he thought about it, the less confident he felt about his ability to do any of that.

  “Ah, I understand,” Erv said, her smile suddenly brightening by a factor of ten. “Don’t say anything. Instead, nod yes or no for me?”

  Sam paused, then nodded his head.

  “Successful?” she asked.

  He didn’t have to really think of what she meant by that. She clearly meant finding the hub.

  Nodding his head, Sam waited.

  “Okay. Sworn to anything?” came her next question.

  Sam shook his head to that.

  “Surprising. Good to know, though. I spoke with Irma before we came here,” Erv said and shrugged her shoulders. “In the event that you learned nothing from the Void, we knew we would need a back-up plan. Between the two of us, we’ve come up with a fairly simple and straightforward plan to find the Hub.

  “We’ll have to use the Log again, unfortunately. I know it’ll likely cause people to come looking for us, but it’s a risk we have to take. Once we find the location from the Log, we’ll have to be quick about getting there. There’s no telling how quick Skipper and her boss will be.”

  Erv reached in the pouch at her side and finally got out a piece of paper that was standard size though folded.

  Unfolding it, she held it up in front of herself. She just kept smiling at Sam.

  It had a very simple idea written on it.

  “By the way, here’s a note from Irma. I haven’t read it, but I’m very aware of what we should do to find the Hub accurately,” said Erv.

  Ruins, Middle East, already prepared. Will explode on arrival. Blame Skipper and Zeus. Loudly. State the names of the Originator and the Architect when doing so.

  Ah. My smart, smart women. Much smarter than I. I didn’t even consider what would happen afterwards. Didn’t even plan for it at all.

  Here I am working on the current move, and they’re working ten or eleven moves ahead of that.

  Good thing I’m not known for being a cerebral.

  Hah.

  I am known for acting though, and that’s what this’ll be. Acting.

  As realistic acting as I can manage.

  ***

  Peering out the window of the Humvee, Sam wasn’t really sure about how this was going.

  Not far away, he could see Abigail moving across the dirt and sand next to the road in her mech. The powerful robotic—and clearly future tech—machine moved fluidly without an issue.

  She wasn’t meant for frontline combat on foot anymore.

  Abigail and her mech could serve as a strike force themselves, or worked as fire-support when others needed assistance. It was also well-established that she was very good at using it.

  Between Abigail’s mech, Decima and Stacia’s plans, the fighting ability of Inc-Suc, and Irma managing the politics, they were not a force to be trifled with anymore.

  Pity that this isn’t more in line with problems they can face. Instead, this is entirely outside of their scope.

  Not to mention, we’ll be banking on that reputation and pulling out everyone that we care about. Letting the Cambion do the job themselves.

  Or I suppose maybe even the denizens from Hell. They’d be well-suited to PMC work.

  “We’re here,” Tiffany said from the front seat. She was driving the vehicle they were in. Wren was manning the mounted machine gun turret. Next to him was Caer, with Abrah in the front passenger seat.

  The rest of his group were in the vehicles that followed. Everyone, including Sam, was dressed and kitted out in full body armor. From head to toe, including a ballistic face shield.

  The danger of an ambush or an IED was most certainly within the realm of possibility.

  Going into a hard turn, the Humvee then came to an abrupt stop.

  Everyone got out immediately, their weapons raised as they began to spread out. Wren stayed with the machine gun and swiveled from one direction to the other.

  Sam didn’t sense anyone with his expanding web of Essence but that didn’t mean anything. He wasn’t about to let his guard down, but he did feel somewhat reassured at the lack of a presence. It meant that their destination or what they were about hadn’t been leaked to the mortals.

  Whenever they had contact with mortals, they had to do a bit of cleanup work afterward due to Abigail.

  The mech was currently moving ahead of the location where they’d stopped. A set of pillars and some walls that looked suspiciously like Roman ruins to Sam. He had no idea where they were, but he was somewhat unnerved by the idea that they’d be destroying a place that actually held history.

  It makes sense, though. The Romans venerated Alexander a great deal.

  If Skipper links that back to Luke then it’d be all the better.

  The next Humvee in the column was disgorging its occupants now.

  Decima was hard to miss with the way she leapt out and drew a sword. Body armor or not. In her other hand, she quickly unholstered her pistol and held it loosely near her waist.

  “Bounding cover by teams. Scout, search, hold,” she demanded, her voice loud at the same time as it came over the headset. “Set up where you can, Riss. Not much of a location.”

  Sam watched as Hillary, Abrah, Aster, and someone who Sam was fairly sure was Inese went by. Moving behind them were Jes, Caer, Decima, Carissa, and several others he couldn’t identify.

  They all moved very professionally. Everyone was noticeably on edge and expecting trouble. As if none of this was planned in any way.

  Because that was partially true. Only he and Irma were truly aware of the plan. Erv might have some hints given how this happened, but she didn’t know it all.

  Neither Erv nor Irma were present on this mission for that reason. The only person with all the details was Sam. He was fairly confident that neither Skipper nor Zeus could get inside his head regardless of anything else.

  Realistically, there was no danger in this mission other than Zeus and Skipper. Everything monumental had already happened. Sam had made his choice and that was the end of it.

  This was just to put a cap on it.

  “Good work, everyone. If we can do this quick and quiet, that’s the way it needs to be,” Sam said into his headset. “There’s a distinct possibility that the Silent One is watching.”

  Sam knew that was the truth.

  It was a fact that the S
ilent One was watching him even now. He’d felt the entity begin surveilling him the moment he used the Log again. That presence had faded almost instantly, but Sam didn’t think it had left.

  He was betting on it, in fact.

  Betting that they’d realized who Sam was and dialed back their attention to a point that Sam wouldn’t feel it. Likely hoping he’d continue on without thinking about it at all.

  In only five minutes, it seemed the ruins were completely secured. There was no enemy contact, no traps or explosives, and everything was secure.

  Decima turned and looked at Sam. He couldn’t see her through the helmet, facemask, and headset, but he knew that look. She was on edge and felt like everything was wrong.

  She had a gifted sense for detecting danger and had used it extensively in her previous life.

  “Don’t like it, but we’re ready to go,” she growled aloud, not using the mic. “You sure you wanna do this? This feels like a trap and we’re just walking into it.”

  “The Hub is that important. We can’t let them have it. Just as much as they couldn’t let us have it,” Sam replied. Then he nodded his head at her. “We ready?”

  “Yes. As ready as I can make us. We should—”

  There was a massive detonation that shook the ground beneath their feet. Heavy, rough rocks and pebbles danced across the ground with the vibration.

  Small and heavy arms fire began coming downrange at them from the far side of the ruins. Through luck or happenstance, whoever was firing at them had expected them to come in from a different direction.

  Several rockets zipped in their direction but were immediately intercepted by Abigail and her mech. A large energy shield had risen up in front of it.

  As all of this happened, the ruins cratered in on themselves and collapsed. A massive explosion of dust, dirt, and earth went flying up into the air as the subterranean area collapsed.

  “Near side withdraw! Back into the convoy!” shouted Decima through the headset. “Break contact and exfiltrate. This one’s done! Abby, you’re the rear!”

  “Confirmed,” came Abigail’s voice on the comm-line.

  Stomping to a point between the vehicles and where the enemy fire originated, the mech seemed entirely unperturbed by the withering fire that was being laid down.