“Galileo, what’s wrong? Talk to me. You’re a total wreck.”
“You don’t understand, Ivaenzikal. Your kind never needed an arms race. You don’t get it. All they ever want is to destroy each other. I can’t keep doing this.”
“Where are you? Medjay is back. She’s alive. She can come help you if you just tell me where you are.”
“Jay? No. Do not tell her to come looking for me. They’ll enslave her, too. These dwarves want me to make something unstoppable. I won’t do it. I’d sooner scatter my soul. In fact, that would be the best option.”
“No, Galileo. Not you too.”
“I’m a murderer of the worst sort, Ivan. Remember me. If you can, get your Clan to erase this whole rotten planet.”
-Present Day
Kris:
[Vitals: Normal]
[Status—Mari: Healthy]
[Status—Relkur: Healthy]
[Status—Vilke: Healthy]
[Catalyst Status: Nominal, 3 Spare Cores]
[Core Depletion: 16%]
Kris had to admit, she was impressed. Completely customizable status elements that remained within her line of vision at all times and could assess the condition of a person at a glance. And she could further toggle the status with a flicker of motion from her eyes. She could even customize actions like winking as well.
She winked with her right eye while looking at Mari.
[Warning, user is identified as temporary ally to TEST SUBJECT 001… analysis temporarily enabled.]
[Companion: Mari Kishibe]
[Status: Healthy]
[Disposition: Friendly/Romantic]
[Details:]
- Race: Bio-engineered Human
- Current Mission: Eliminate ‘Weeds’ in the Garden
- Enhanced Bone Structure, Enhanced Musclusature, Biotech Contact Lenses
[Warning, user will lose access to analysis if temporary ally status is terminated.]
Kris had a lot of questions. She had done the same analysis of one of the Anvien workers before, but it hadn’t given much information. A lot was hidden in the warning text boxes, too. Test subject one? Mari was still being treated like a lab rat or something. It grated at her, but she had to focus.
The ‘current mission’ section was worth a bit of consideration. Why Mari had a mission to weed anyone’s garden was just bizarre. The best she could make of it was that it was a sort of code or otherwise veiled message.
“Listen up!” The commanding deep bass of Vilke’s voice drew everyone’s attention. “We are heading in as two teams. The lead team will clear advance threats while the backup team pushes forward with the defensive line. Our goal is to cook these insurgents inside the server rooms they so badly wanted to get into. We need to navigate to the coolant valves and shut them down. We will maintain a gap of twenty meters between the two teams.”
Kris followed Mari and Relkur as they joined Vilke for the advance team. Then she looked back at her mother’s team for the defensive fallback group. Alynne was still holding the rifle she’d borrowed, and the other Anvien workers had all gathered up their own weapons.
The only larger weapon missing from the group was Mari’s massive long-range rifle. It hadn’t been properly cleaned and maintained for anyone to trust it yet. Half of Vilke’s handguns weren’t checked or tested, either.
Kris realized she had missed the rest of the briefing, so she made herself look busy checking over her own experimental weapon. The HUD she had created technically doubled up the ammunition counter, but she didn’t want someone else to have no idea how to use it in a pinch. On the other hand, while the weapon’s ammunition percentage counted down from one hundred, her HUD counted up from zero.
There was some movement, and she looked back up to see Mari smiling at her.
“Something on my face?”
“Just your usual winning features.” The casual flirting chased away all the tension and fear in her.
Kris smiled, then darted in for a quick peck on the slightly shorter girl’s lips. “Let’s get this over with, yeah?”
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
“I wouldn’t dream of slowing you down.” Mari leaned up and kissed her forehead at that, then they turned together towards where Relkur was ready to peel back the wall from next to Mari’s barricades.
“You two ready?” Vilke was giving them a sly smirk, but it vanished when they nodded in reply. “Let’s go.”
Relkur silently ran his fingers over the surface of the wall, and the solid stone seemed to turn partially liquid in his hands as he sank fingers into the malleable inner support structure and peeled the wall back.
Mari took point and darted into the gap ahead of them, her raven hair dancing along as she half crouched into the movement. A few moments passed as Vilke strode forward in a ready stance, his rifle aimed into the space, but more towards the left than Mari had gone.
Kris watched as Relkur followed, then she took up the rear.
When she got past the crevice, she saw the dimly lit corridor they’d sealed off with the barricades. She glanced back and saw Karin following them into the opening with the shield that Mari had made earlier during their test shooting.
She turned back around, watching as Mari followed the right wall, and Vilke hugged the left. They each covered opposite directions as they approached the first intersection in the hallway. Then she remembered the rule about Mari’s five meter radius, and she swiftly followed.
Relkur stayed in the middle of the group, but he seemed uncertain of where to stand, and unwilling to walk right up the middle. Kris laid a hand on his shoulder, then quietly pointed him towards Mari’s back. He nodded, then followed Mari along the right wall. Kris took up the rear, keeping her eyes moving as she scanned their surroundings.
Everything was eerily quiet. Sure, there was the hum of machinery and other equipment nearby, but there were no voices, no footsteps… just blood.
When Kris cast her gaze beyond the five meter radius ahead of Mari, the halls in both directions were smeared with blood trails. She couldn’t tell whether they were evidence of more creatures, or if they were signs of the creatures they’d already dispatched.
“Mari, go ahead right. I’ll hold this position until the backup team can lock it down.”
“No need.” Mari was surrounded by the faint red mist of the active nanites that had broken down all the blood they’d passed to that point, so she took another ten steps down the hall, then doubled back and coalesced another barricade over the left path.
“You’ll have to teach me that trick.” Vilke chuckled as he eyed the solid black metal wall.
“Talk later.” Mari turned on her heel and strode back down the right path, closely followed by the rest of their group.
They walked in formation for another forty meters of winding hallways before they reached a frigid room that looked like the site of a battle. The walls were splattered with a large spray of blood and numerous trails that vanished as Mari approached. The center of the room was host to a massive air filtration machine. They were quite common in the underground tunnels, and they ran hot enough to need a dedicated coolant system.
Kris frowned, but kept her weapon ready, eyes moving with caution. Vilke strode forward first, and Mari covered him until he reached the next hallway and scanned the room. A gesture signaled the all-clear, and they silently shuffled their positions. Nobody needed to say aloud that they needed to actually check the tracks.
Mari kept her weapon trained on the far exit to the room while Vilke skirted around to get a better look at the situation. When he reached the large bloodstain across the wall, he twisted his face up in anguish at the sight.
Kris followed him inside, and he tried to stop her, but was too late.
There, hidden behind the machine, were the remains of a tall vaguely human person. Kris took a clinical eye to the body, noting the fresh blood and shredded flesh. The neck had been gouged out by claws, and with how the corpse was broken over a sharp angled edge, the spine hadn’t survived the impact.
The blood smear was cut off abruptly by Mari’s radius, but it was clear the person had been a worker. Something rather large had torn into his neck and launched him in a single swipe. Then, over some amount of time, different other things had sated their appetites on the fresh corpse.
“Look here.” Vilke pointed at some tiny markings in the blood trail.
“What are those?”
“Tiny tracks. Rats maybe?”
Mari came over, and the blood vaporized as she neared. “An issue?”
“A corpse. Maybe a Ravien? I’m not touching it to check under the clothes.” Kris shivered in revulsion at even the barest thought of doing so.
“We might have some smaller creatures to deal with, too. Tracks from tiny animals were in here.” Vilke’s voice was sour, and he glanced back in the direction of the defensive team that had advanced to the hallway behind the room they were in.
“That is less than ideal. Also, this room is really cold. Won’t it also be affected by turning off the coolant?”
“It’s a self-contained system. There couldn’t be a risk of a cascading failure in the air maintenance. So, this one is operating individually.” Kris was happy to offer some useful advice. She was beginning to feel out of her depth, and she had to stifle her feelings of inadequacy.
“Right. Okay, so tiny afflicted creatures. What do we do?” Mari was tapping her chin thoughtfully while her eyes remained on the hallway ahead.
“Depends. If we’re talking about a mouse, then it won’t get through our boots or clothes to bite us. Little risk of infection. But something a bit larger? No clue.”
“How bad would it be if the bioweapon jumped to fleas or something?”
“They don’t carry it, actually.” Kris piped up again, feeling on a roll for being useful. “There’s a difference in blood. Even when the bioweapon would jump to new creatures, it would take time for it to acclimate to differences in blood types across the new species. Even gender differences in some creatures stymied the spread.”
“So we just pray it doesn’t already affect fleas. Got it.” Mari’s voice changed pitch just slightly at the end, and Kris raised her weapon when Mari visibly stiffened. “Eyes up. Something moved.”
Kris took a knee, steadying her aim the same way Mari did when she paused at an intersection. Her eyes honed in on the spot where Mari was looking, and she noticed a single drop of blood falling from the ceiling about twenty meters down.
[Affliction: 6%]
Her vision immediately tagged the crimson pool that had formed, and Mari advanced towards it while walking in a circuit to cleanse all of the blood around the room with her radius.
Vilke took point, and he paused at the intersection, looking up at the source.
Another droplet fell, looking sticky and partially congealed.
Kris approached and Relkur joined them as Mari finished her lap while holding some extra ammunition that she passed to Vilke.
“From the floor above?”
“Probably. I scanned it, and its blood mixed with coolant fluid.” Mari and Vilke both had their eyes turned upwards.
That was how Kris was the one who saw it.
Ripples in the pool of blood.
“Hey, I think something’s coming.”
Patreon!
discord server is the best place to get in touch with me!