Chapter 69: The Ones Who Rule (Patreon)

The vault door sealed with a sound she felt through the floor, and then it was just her, Napoleon, and everything climbing out of the capsules. The Operator pulled her sleeve back and checked the scar. Its color had risen to about a third of its length.

“Tera, give me something.”

Your Living Forge. We’re in range, and a pack of those things is bunched up on the main floor right below us. Light it, pull the air out from around them, and see if they go down the way the cultists did.

“That’ll work. They still breathe, right?”

Tera said nothing.

Down on the main floor, the transformations kept going, one body after another breaking open inside the crystal while the voice called out formula numbers over the rows. She found a gap between two equipment racks, deep in shadow, lowered herself into it, and crossed her legs.

[Living Forge activated]

The rings on her right hand lit up. The forge unfolded over her palm, and she fed the flames until they stood at full burn. Air reversed across the room, dragging in from every direction and down into the fire. She leaned forward and watched the nearest things through the grating of the catwalk floor. Ten seconds passed, then twenty. At the minute mark, nothing below her had so much as stumbled.

“With people, this is fast. They should be dropping by now.”

That’s just it, Operator. These aren’t people anymore.

“Any theory why?”

Best theory, they don’t run on air anymore. Eron changed how they make energy so they don’t need to breathe at all. Some microbes live the same way, no oxygen. Cutting the air won’t hurt them.

The Operator shut the forge down, and the rings went dark against her palm. Below her, one of the things threw its head back and howled, the sound carrying down the level and echoing back.

The screaming was getting worse, hundreds of voices at once. The human ones cut deepest. Everyone still trapped in the crystal could see what was coming for them, watching it happen to the others first, and the begging tangled with the howling, filling every corner of the catwalk.

“Tera, I can’t do this. Not with all of this going on.” She pressed her hands to her head. “I’m supposed to have this upgraded brain and I can’t use any of it. I need you to think for me right now, because I can’t.”

I don’t think anyone could keep a clear head through this, Operator.

“There were kids down there. I’m going to kill him. I swear to God.”

For now, the only thing we can do is leave, and you’re going to have to let this one go. There are millions of bodies on this floor, Operator, and it’s gone way past anything you could fix on your own.

The Operator stayed quiet. She didn’t know how to answer that. And the worst part was that the whole time she tried to think of options, the screaming kept going below her, and she knew exactly what those people were feeling. She had felt that pain herself.

Working through alternatives one after another, she came up with nothing.

Operator, here’s what I’ve got. Option one. You’ve already been through your first mutation, so you’re stronger and tougher now. There’s a chance their bites won’t even break your skin, and we both know you can take a hit. You could push for the control panel and try to shut Eron’s system down, or hack it.

“I’m tougher, sure. But there’s easily over a hundred of those things down there. They’d drag me off before I got close. I don’t have the strength to pull free from that many of them at once.”

Then option two. Your second mutation’s still climbing, and that one should give you the strength to go toe to toe with them.

“Yeah, except it’s not finished. How long until it completes?”

Going by what I’m reading, about an hour.

“And once I take control away from Eron, how do we get out of here?”

That part’s on you and Napoleon. You two carve a way out, and you protect Dan, Lessa, and the kid while you do it, since you decided to put that weight on your own shoulders.

The Operator let that settle.

“So it’s not really two options, then. I have to pull off both of them.” She nodded to herself. “Fine. Then I need somewhere to hide until that second mutation finishes.”

The Operator looked at Napoleon, who had stayed quiet beside her the whole time.

“On my shoulder. We can’t have your legs making noise.”

Napoleon jumped onto her shoulder. She started up, moving in a crouch, taking the climb a little at a time to stay out of sight. As she went, the screams grew louder, and now, among the voices of the people still alive inside the crystal, she caught the voices aimed at her.

“Why are we locked in here? Please, let us out!”

“Where’s my family?”

“You’re going to pay for this!”

The Operator kept her eyes forward and ignored them. She reached the third floor and found a run of offices, doors spaced down the corridor. She went for the one farthest off, tucked in a corner, the darkest of them and the easiest to go unnoticed in.

This works. This is exactly what I need.

She eased the door open.

“Napoleon, you’re staying out here. Keep out of sight. You’re on guard.”

Napoleon watched her in silence.

“If any of those things come up here, you stay still. I know you’re fast, but we do not know what they can do right now. They could get hold of you. So you don’t move. Understood?”

“I will follow your orders, Operator.”

“Good. Just watch. Anything happens, knock on the door. I’ll know it’s you by the sound.”

The Operator went inside, closed the door, and stayed where she was with her back against it.

Well. Now we wait.

Even with the door shut, the sound didn’t stop. Far off, the automated voice ran the same message again and again.

Installing mutation formula in subject.

Installing mutation formula in subject.

Installing mutation formula in subject.

Every repeat was another victim, one more person turning into one of those things, and the voice never broke its rhythm.

Outside the research facility the day was bright, with helicopters flying over the perimeter. A military camp had gone up around the whole installation, and fences and barriers closed off the grounds to keep out spies, the curious, and anyone without clearance.

In the middle of it, walking in front of the main entrance, was Eron. He held a tablet in one hand with a headset over his ears, and nothing around him pulled his attention, because it was all on the screen, on one figure in particular, a woman with red hair.

Veyra, the commander of the military complex, crossed to him and stopped.

“Lord Eron, the squad’s ready. Twenty soldiers, dosed with the formula. They’ve handled it the best out of all of them, and they’ve shown the least mental damage.”

“Any progress on the cameras in the other zones?”

“No, my Lord. Level thirteen is the only one we can see, since it runs on its own power. The team in the security room cut power to the rest of the lower complex, like you ordered, so until they get the secondary system back up, the other cameras stay dark.”

Eron lifted his eyes from the tablet for a moment.

“Good. The distraction’s holding, so she won’t be leaving. The mutated ones have the exits covered.”

“And how do you want her brought in, my lord?”

“Alive. That’s the one thing that matters.”

“Understood. And if she resists?”

“Then they break what they need to break. A leg, an arm, it makes no difference to me.” His eyes remained on the screen. “Her condition past that doesn’t concern me. Only that she’s still breathing when she reaches me.”

Veyra waited.

“And if we see that she’s found a way out, like you warned us about?”

“Then your men do whatever it takes to keep her here.” Something shifted under his voice now, an edge that hadn’t been there before. “Destroy whatever they have to destroy. Bring the whole level down on top of her if that’s what it takes. I don’t care what’s left of her by the end. But she does not leave this place. She does not leave.”

“Yes, my lord. As you command.”

Veyra bowed her head and stepped away. Eron looked back down at the tablet.

What is that coming out of her hands? A forge?

And that fire she makes. What else is she hiding? What other secrets does that woman have?

A little later, he watched the Operator climb the stairs with a cybernetic spider on her shoulder and shut herself inside one of the offices.

Damn you. If you’d just worked with me, centuries of research would have been done by now.

Damn you.

He ran the recording back on the tablet and watched it through again. Then something cut through the steady noise of the helicopters, a sound coming down out of the sky, something getting closer. Eron looked up. Heavy machinery groaned somewhere above the clouds, old metal forcing itself into motion.

The sky, full of sun a moment before, turned dark and gray, and out of the clouds came the leading edge of a ship, long and rectangular, nothing about it matching the technology of the camp below. More of it kept emerging, more and more of its length, until the full size showed and the ship covered most of the sky. It came to a stop above Eron and the military camp, and a slot opened along its underside. Out of it came a smaller craft, still large, more a platform than a ship. Two figures stood on it in plain view from the ground, and nothing was piloting it. As it came down, the soldiers and every member of the camp’s staff dropped to their knees, as if they were watching gods arrive in the world.

The two men stepped down off the platform. Both carried the same third eye in their foreheads that Eron carried, closed for now. They were just as beautiful as him, and just as cold.

They didn’t go to him right away. The taller one looked over the camp, the soldiers on their knees, the noise of the helicopters, the smell of fuel and dirt and the rot rising up from the facility below. The distaste stayed on his face. The other one looked at the kneeling men with open contempt, not bothering to hide it.

They crossed to Eron without hurry.

“Why are you spending specimens like this?” the taller one asked.

“Because I found it.” Eron was talking too fast. “The complete solution to the mutation formula. The full evolution. After all these centuries, I’m the one who found it.”

Neither of them answered. They didn’t like the excitement in his voice, and they let the silence sit until he felt it.

“Say that again,” the taller one said.

The two men opened their third eyes at the same time. The eyes were red, run through with black veins, and the light from them fell on Eron’s face. The moment they opened, he lost hold of his own will. He didn’t want to answer them, but the answer came out of him anyway, pulled out by a force he had no way to fight.

“I said I found the full mutation formula. And spending the specimens is a necessity.”

Both men closed their eyes. “You’re telling the truth,” the same one said. “Explain.”

Eron held up the tablet. The excitement was back in him now that he had their attention. “This woman is a traveler, and the System turned this zone into a dungeon. I don’t know exactly what it did, but her body carries the completed evolution, and I need her. I’m spending these bodies because they’re the only thing keeping her here, so if she finishes her mission and walks out, we lose her for good.”

Eron turned the screen toward them and leaned in. “I’ve only watched her, never had her under instruments. But I’ve spent centuries reading bodies by sight, and the signs of deep mutation are on her. The structure of her, the way the tissue sits, the changes go below the skin. The woman the System showed me didn’t have them. This is real evolution, and you know I don’t claim one unless I’m certain.”

“I’d need far more than this to be certain. A proper analysis, her body in front of me, not a recording.” He handed the tablet back. “But your judgment has held up before. What’s your plan?”

“The imperfect mutated men are the best option I have. They cost nothing to lose. At the very least, they slow her down, keep her from finishing whatever she came to do.”

“Inefficient,” the taller one said. “Completely inefficient.”

“Tessron, I don’t like the way you’re talking.” Eron’s voice climbed. “I found her. I found the solution. I’ll handle this myself.”

“You should have gone down there yourself. Even at the cost of your own life, for your own people. But you’re too much of a coward for that. You think only of yourself,” Tessron said.

He turned back to his companion. “Mordran. Go down with those soldiers. Bring her back by any means. Kill whoever needs killing, give up whoever needs giving up, and your own life too, if it comes to that.”

Mordran nodded.

Tessron looked back at Eron. “That is what it means to sacrifice for your own, coward.”

Without another word, Tessron stepped onto the platform and rode it back up toward the ship above them. Mordran watched him go, then gave Eron a brief bow and turned toward the entrance that had been cut down into the lower floors, the twenty soldiers falling in behind him.

Eron squeezed the tablet until the screen cracked under his fingers.

The human screams had finally stopped.

The Operator looked out through the office window, across the level. No more transformations. From where she stood, she couldn’t see the main floor below, but it wasn’t the human screams that worried her now.

It was the things. A whole horde of them, and she didn’t have to see it to know. Level 13 was huge, and by now it had to be full of them.

“Tera, looks like the mutation’s almost done. Am I going to laugh like a lunatic again?”

Who cares? Nobody’s around to watch you this time. The only ones still alive who caught the first show are downstairs behind a security door thick enough to handle it.

“I hope they’re all right.”

Behind that door, I’d say they are.

A few seconds passed.

I think we missed something, and I’m only catching it now. Some superintelligent AI I am.

“What?”

Eron’s been watching us. Which means he saw all of it.

“I don’t see a camera anywhere.”

It’ll be hidden somewhere.

“Right.”

The Operator raised her head toward the ceiling. She didn’t shout. She kept it low and even, and let the hate sit underneath every word.

“I hope you got a good look. Because this is the closest you’re ever going to get. When I walk out of here, you’ll have nothing. Centuries with no answer, and now centuries more, and you’ll spend every one of them knowing I was right in front of you and you couldn’t take it. You’ll stay exactly what you are until the day you die.”

No answer came.

“I know you heard me.” She looked at the scar again. The color stood near the top now.

“By the way, Tera. Do I need to get the clothes off, like last time?”

No. The outside already changed. This one is internal. Unless the last exhibition left you with some kind of fetish, I can confirm the clothes stay on.

“Very funny, you ass.”

The numbers say ten seconds, Operator. Get ready.

“Ok.”

She moved to the center of the office and stood ready. The scar had filled with red, all the way to the top. Then the red drained out of it, every bit, and the skin went back to its usual white.

Five seconds, Operator.

“I’m ready. Anything that can help us. Any damn thing that gets us out of this.”

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.