Born in Darkness

by Thomas Farmer

  She listened as they spoke.

  “Dekaneas Eleni.” The blue-stripe that spoke, a woman, had a warm, pleasant voice. Her tone spoke of authority without having to be harsh. “Status?”

  “The comm uplink here was badly damaged, Lochagos,” the smaller of the two working in the floor replied. She raised up out of the work area, bringing tools with her. Her voice was higher in pitch and even clearer than the first one, but no less firm. “Estimate five minutes to repair it if the spares all fit. Fifteen to twenty otherwise.”

  The first speaker nodded. “Anything from the sensor net?”

  “Nothing out of the ordinary on the ground.”

  “Explain.”

  “It filters out anything with a regular pattern like the air system, water dripping, and so on. If something irregular makes noise, the program pings me. Three of the stations have been set off, one twice.”

  “I sense a 'but' in there, Dekaneas,” the largest member of the group said. His voice was much deeper, with a gravelly quality. None of them sounded like green eyes.

  “Yes, Lochias. The only pings in the last hour have been from above us.”

  “I thought the sensors could not pick up anything through the floor.”

  “They can't, no. Either I'm getting faulty readings, or something is moving around in the ceiling.”

  The first to speak looked up, scanning the ceiling. Victoria's blood froze as the helmeted face passed by her hiding spot. In a moment, the reflexive search continued. Victoria let out the breath she had been holding and slowly, very carefully, readjusted herself. If they were somehow listening to her movements, she needed to stay absolutely still until they left the area. She might as well get comfortable.

  “What bothers me,” the green-sleeve said, “is that you're getting those readings from places we've already cleared. Lochagos,” he turned to the tallest blue-sleeve, “do you still think it's possible for us to effectively clear these levels? They're obviously avoiding us.”

  The tallest blue-sleeve nodded once, slowly. “I believe so. Admittedly, I hadn't expected the mastigas to do anything but rush us as soon as they scented us, and this waiting is grating on my nerves as much as it is yours, but we don't have any better plans.”

  “Bring the Strategos's entire regiment down here and burn everything,” the larger of the two blue-sleeves working on the floor suggested, then, “sir.”

  “Not an option,” the tall blue-sleeve replied. “Not with One Hundred down here.”

  “Cheer up,” the small blue-sleeve with the soprano voice said. “You could still be on customs inspection duty.”

  The other one working in the floor grunted. “I've spent enough time going through boxes of grain to last the rest of my life.”

  Victoria watched them work for some time. Finally, they inserted a small piece of electronics in the floor and replaced the panel. They all picked their gear back up when a noise drifted through the area.

  “Victoria...”

  Victoria's head shot up as the four below looked around, murmuring to themselves.

  “Victoria,” the voice drawled.

  What was more unsettling was that she could not pinpoint where it came from. Whatever had spoken, however, seemed to speak from everywhere at once. Everywhere except her own head, that was. She was all too familiar with the sensation of remembering having said something from a mouth that was not hers, but this was something different.

  From below, the voice of the apparent commander ordered the others to move. In the silence that fell, Victoria remained where she was for the better part of an hour, but the voice never came again.

  ***

  Victoria remained in her hiding place in the ceiling long after the six strangers were gone. Between their conversation below her and the snippets of dialogue she heard as they came and went, she had two new pieces of information. First, the “mastigas” they spoke of had to be the green-eyes. The only other thing they could have been referring to were the rats. They seemed wary of being hunted by these mastigas. At the very least, that meant they merited “enemy of my enemy” status, though the second piece of new information kept them firmly in the “unknown” category.

  That second piece of information was that, in addition to the mastigas, these newcomers seemed to be searching for her personally. None of them had said so, at least not in her direct line of hearing, but the context was obvious. They came to search for something, and their actions had already ruled out the idea that they were searching for the green-eyes. That, and the fact that they constantly referred to “Number One Hundred” were all the clues she needed.

  Her shell, the thing in which she had first awoken, had been painted with that number. Hers had been listed as number 6-100, with ninety-nine others, all empty, stretching back down the room.

  One Hundred was not her name, and the fact that it was how they referred to her infuriated Victoria. She could see the logic, she supposed, but that only made it worse. By calling her One Hundred, instead of any sort of actual name, they removed her humanity. She wondered if they considered her human at all, or simply some sort of test subject.

  She growled involuntarily at that thought. A series of informational images superimposed themselves on her memory. She remembered reading about something called Project Titan. The memory seemed to have been triggered by hearing the name of her enemy—mastigas. This new information came through another set of eyes, displayed on a holo projected by another pair of hands.

  She shook her head violently to clear the memory. She would not forget it. So far, she was not sure she could forget things like that. As time passed those memories became indistinguishable from her own without serious mental effort. Other bodies—other lives and deaths—all melded together in her memories and dreams now.

  The entire group seemed to defer to one of the blue-stripes in particular, and Victoria made a mental note that she was likely the group's commander or leader. In turn, the commander relied on the big green-stripe for matters of tracking. Despite their noise, he seemed quite capable of following even the most well-hidden tracks. She overheard him explaining to one of the others about the differences between the footprints and other signs of passage the various kinds of mastigas left.

  If he was that skilled, she knew it was only a matter of time before he led them right to her. That thought sent a chill down her spine. Even if they were friendly, which she currently had no proof they were, Victoria had no desire to be cornered by their tracker. When they met, it had to be on her terms.

  Unlike climbing up, where she had the pile of debris to extend her reach, Victoria had no such aid now. She was not about to return to the pile she made, either. If the strangers found it, they would likely set up camp there and wait for her arrival.

  Carefully, she eased to the edge of one of the broken sections of ceiling, reaching as far as she could. Some of the areas were built with higher than usual ceilings, but this did not seem to be one of them. The wound in her side protested as she pulled herself back into the warm safety of the ceiling, but she ignored it.

  Victoria had very little room to maneuver, and even less to maneuver something as big as the sword she stole from the four-armed mastigas. Eventually, however, she got it off her back and down through the hole. If she held the heavy pommel and hooked her feet around part of the steel framework in the ceiling, she could touch the weapon's tip to the floor below.

  With nothing else to brace against, Victoria knew she had to be quick. She took a deep breath, then levered herself out and through the hole, using the sword itself as an anchor. The tip slipped on the tile and she fell. Unlike last time, she was prepared now, and managed to turn over in the air to land on her feet.

  She still landed hard, especially as her feet were still bare. The impact sent a shock through her heels and leg bones, but that was quickly overshadowed by yet another stab of pain from the now-bloody wound in her side. She had no idea what torn stitches felt like, but she was sure some of them tore
as the pain in her side flared and her knees buckled.

  Victoria's hips hit the floor, which sent another new wave of pain through her body as bruised ribs mingled with her torn and bleeding side. She bit back a curse, instead letting it out as a low growl as she scrambled to her feet. Every motion sent another shock of burning torment through her flesh, but a thought that kept her going during her endless fights with the mastigas resurfaced—she would have time to bleed later..

  She turned her attention back to matters more important than physical pain. The blue-stripes were clear enough regarding the purpose of the devices they left in the floor. However it actually worked, she knew her sudden landing on the floor would be transmitted directly to them. That only gave her a few minutes.

  Victoria knelt and removed the section of flooring that hid the device. She withdrew it, examined it. Victoria turned it over in her hands. From the outside, it looked like nothing so much as a small, black box. A few holes had been cut in the outside here and there, but nothing protruded from it.

  The explanation given by the blue-stripe named Eleni seemed, at least to Victoria, to indicate the device transmitted actual sound, not just notices that it had detected something. She banked on that possibility, tapping the thing with her knuckles twice.

  “Come find me,” she said to it. Her voice was hoarse. Between lack of water and simple disuse, she spoke with a raspy quality and a rattle in her throat.

  Victoria set the box down on the floor and was about to walk away when a thought struck her. The newcomers must have been hiding these devices for a reason, and that reason clearly was not her. If they were hiding them from the green eyes—the mastigas, she reminded herself—then Victoria had a duty to put them back in their hiding spots.

  The strangers were not friends. She would find out exactly what they were soon enough, but she was not about to do something careless that might help the mastigas in any way.

  With the device once again hidden under the floor, Victoria examined the room once more. She had been here before, several times in fact. To her eyes, the only important things were the footprints of the six strangers in the thick layer of dirt.

  The scattered remnants of clay pots and dead plants gave Victoria another reason to confront the strangers. She had no food and was nearly out of water. With them prowling around, her chances of acquiring either were very low.

  If the strangers were friendly, they would have both in abundance to share with her. If they turned out to be hostile, it would not change their stockpile any. Victoria would simply have to kill them all before she could eat or drink again.

  Her stomach growled and protested at that thought, and Victoria put a hand there automatically. It came away wet and sticky from blood that finally seeped through the black fabric of her shirt. She did not want to consider how much blood she lost for it to soak through like that. One way or the other, she had to deal with the problem of the strangers before she could inspect her injury again.

  She examined the room in detail now, gritting her teeth against the sudden flare of pain in her side. Now that she was thinking about it, and about her hunger, both problems strove to be the sole occupant of her attention at that moment. It took several deep breaths and many minutes before she had those things back under control again.

  While she waited, Victoria heard distant sounds of shouting and repeated cracks that her brain told her were gunfire. The mastigas did not possess firearms, but the strangers did, which told her they were engaged with one another somewhere close enough for her to hear. If nothing else, that realization solidified the “enemy of my enemy” idea in her head—the strangers were not going to be helping the mastigas.

  Again, she examined the room around her. Three doors led away from where she now stood. Victoria knew one of the doors led to a utility closet. The shelves inside had been smashed and it reeked of the sort of chemicals that triggered memories of painful death.

  The other ways were different, and she had watched the strangers leave the room. The door through which they left led to the same place as another door adjacent to it, though the halls went different directions for a while. If she waited in either of them, the strangers could come up behind her.

  So Victoria went to the fourth door, which from her own personal experience led to a small room strewn with broken furniture.

  Victoria scooped up some of the dirt from the broken flower pots in one of the corners. She scattered it across the floor, deliberately walking through it and leaving obvious footprints. She also made sure to step hard on the floor, making a loud trail of noise that the device in the floor was sure to pick up.

  She wanted there to be no doubt where she went, and for them to follow her, and this let her dictate the time and place of their meeting. It was not ideal, as the pain in her side indicated, but at least it was better than them finding her while she slept or with a needle and thread in her side.

  Now, all she had to do was wait.

  Chapter 9

  A second passed in a minute as the Hexarch's eyes slowly blinked. She was speaking, but the words were so drawn out that Second Lord Lelantos was having trouble following them. She had been speaking, saying the same sentence, for the last ten minutes. Two minutes before that, she had taken a breath, and two more sentences filled the quarter-hour before that.

  Ten minutes passed and Lelantos continued to meditate with his eyes open. His Hexarch, First Lord Rivka, had now called up a menu on the holo-display above her wrist. He watched every movement of her fingers across and through the holographic images, as she slowly inched toward the keyboard.

  As she typed, he moved his eyes, but not his head. A window sat behind him and dust swirled on the winds as the minutes ticked by, glacially slow in its ballet through the sunbeams slanting over his shoulder. Across the room, a digital clock's final number blinked, replaced by a black square for more than five seconds before the next number in the sequence burned in its place.

  Idle thoughts crossed his mind as he watched the icy slowness of Rivka's fingers as they typed out a message. He already knew, or suspected anyway, what she was going to write, but interrupting his Hexarch before she was done would be impolite. Besides, the twenty minutes it took her to type the short message allowed him to bring his thoughts back to the surface.

  Finally, she finished typing and held her wrist aloft.

  The green letters demanded an answer. “HOW SLOW?”

  He opened his mouth, tightened his throat. His diaphragm clenched as his lips slowly formed words. To speak at a pace she would understand required time and dedication. His answer took three full minutes of carefully controlled breathing to articulate.

  “One sixtieth.” Lelantos supposed that, from her perspective, he still rushed through his words.

  More time passed as she typed out a message. This one was longer and scrolled across the holographic display with minutes in between each letter. He waited, reading her question as she typed it out, then reassembling the hour long text in his mind once she completed it. Fortunately, years of such experiences had created in him the desired mindset. Lelantos was nothing if not extraordinarily patient.

  “YOUR METABOLIC OUTPUT IS EVEN HIGHER THAN USUAL,” the message read with glacial slowness. “ARE YOU UNCOMFORTABLE?”

  He thought for a moment. His head felt a little fuzzy around the edges, like he had been drinking weak wine for hours without ever quite reaching a state of drunkenness. He placed a hand over his heart, moving this time at a pace more like what he was used to. The movement still took nearly twenty seconds to complete. Under his palm his heart thundered once.

  He waited. Twenty-five seconds later, he felt another two-stage thump in his chest. He started to inhale and focus on the feeling of air rushing into his lungs. His unconscious, the part of his brain that could not comprehend the world at anything other than one second per second started to panic as the deep inhalation lasted almost two full minutes.

  As he let the air out of his lungs, i
gnoring the certainty that he was about to suffocate and pushing the urges of his hind-brain away, he answered her question.

  “My pulse is fast,” he said, “and I'm already getting hungry.”

  Another message scrolled across First Lord Rivka's holo-screen. “BUT NO PAIN?”

  He drew out his answer, “no,” for a minute and a half.

  Another slow message from her screen read, “I HAVE PLACED A TARGET...”

  ***

  “...on the top of a spire fifteen hundred meters away.”

  Speaking the message itself was extraneous. Rivka knew that anything she was actually saying would be so stretched out that Lelantos would have trouble understanding her, but it helped keep her thoughts in order.

  “Your rifle is on the balcony. Please hit that target twice.”

  The message on the display floating above her wrist finished scrolling. Lelantos's wide eyes followed it and again she marveled at his patience. The angry, impulsive man he had been before Project Titan would not have waited so long for anything. She, certainly, would not have been able to stand still as long as he had, feeling time pass so slowly. It must have felt like an hour or more since their conversation started.

  After a moment, Lelantos nodded. He moved his head normally, from her perspective, then turned and strode to the balcony. His steps were no longer than anyone else's would have been, but they came in such rapid succession that his movement sounded more like the steps of a sprinter than those of someone calmly walking across the room.

  Rivka followed a pace behind. Lelantos blinked at the sudden brightness of the afternoon suns overhead, shielding his eyes against the glare. True to her instruction, his rifle awaited him. However, she had withheld the crucial detail that the rifle awaiting him had been completely disassembled.

  He looked it over for a moment, two or three seconds at most, before going to work putting the complex weapon back together. His hands moved like lightning, sorting the parts and assembling the rifle in just thirty seconds.