Chains of Loss (7 page)

***

Thursday, October 27, 3481.

Time: Early morning. 

Location: Wilderness, claimed by Overarchy.

Initially inside of Derek's head.

Derek sat at the console in his unconscious mind, brooding.  He had spent his sleeping hours trying to take his mind off the inevitable: he was alone.  Even in his dreams, nobody was there to comfort him, not even Shadow.  He still reached out reflexively from time to time, but there was nobody else
there
.  No friends, no family, no AIs off-duty and romping through the Subcontinent; just himself.

So he kept himself busy.  He had an overwhelming amount of information in his implants, but with Shadow gone, he had no easy method of searching the data.  He didn’t even have enough dataspace to decompress anything yet.  The shrouds and suit had their own dataspaces, and by midway through the night he had successfully integrated them with his own.  The increase in working storage capacity was miniscule, but if he needed to use it, it was there.

Shortly before he completed the integration, the medical shroud finished analyzing Mycah’s hair sample, then paired the analysis with its findings from the surgery.  The shrouds had only the most basic of awareness, and made for boring conversation, but the results were fascinating anyway.  He spent the rest of the night attempting to understand what it had discovered by parsing his companion’s genetic code and comparing it with what he had seen.

She had a number of discrepancies from what her genes dictated, and an entire extra organelle.  She was within his people’s definition of humanity, but the extra cell structure was puzzling.

It was an apparent product of genetic engineering.  It had a basic resemblance to a mitochondrion but an entirely different function, taking in trace amounts of ATP and producing...what?  As far as he could tell, it burned energy for no particular purpose.   Derek had no idea what, if anything, it had accomplished. 

Many of the changes had been made to cancel each other out; while Mycah’s brain structure was significantly different from Derek’s, her chemistry had been adjusted to the point that a simulation could find no effective operational difference.  The mediceps determined that she could be expected to be just like any other human, mentally and emotionally, despite the structural changes.  The only things that he was sure of was that the organelle had been engineered such that it would self-propagate in meiosis, ensuring that, unlike a mitochondrion, it would be passed on regardless of the parent's gender.

Still, the point evaded him.  Someone had gone through significant trouble engineering a change in her biochemistry that did nothing useful.  It was as if the engineers had given her body another appendix for each cell in her body, then remapped her brain structure without changing how she thought.  Why?  It was like correcting grammar in a forum argument or arguing literary theory, but more dangerous; an error or mutation could have had disastrous consequences. 

Compared to that, the rest of the news was anticlimactic.  She was significantly shorter than what her genes dictated—she should have been a good twenty centimeters taller at least—and he couldn’t nail down her exact age.  Either could be easily explained as having resulted from her environment.  She probably didn’t even know the things that he’d just discovered.  It would be pointless to mention them.  There was nothing in her genetic code that would allow her to breathe underwater as she claimed to be capable of doing.

Sunlight began to fall on his eyelids; he accepted it as prompting and squinted them open. 

Mycah spoke first from outside his field of view.  “Done sleeping?”

“Mph.  Yes.”

“Good.  Look at this.”

He sat up and gazed at the thing she indicated.  It was another piece of hide, this time with markings and scratches coating its surface.  It took him a good five seconds before he realized that some of the markings were actually letters. 

“What is it?” he asked.

He could hear her annoyance.  “It’s a map.  Don’t tell me you don’t have those back home.”

“Maps?  Of course we have maps.  It’s just, we don’t—.” He broke off.  He could understand how some of the symbols on the map were actually supposed to be representative of actual objects, but he was having difficulty correlating them to what was actually there.  He scanned the map’s key and scale; it only made things worse.  The primitive nature of the object’s manufacture was throwing him off.  If the map was to be believed, there were forty-seven trees between the X that he had figured to be their current location and the ‘World’s Edge’: a situation that he severely doubted.  

He had slipped into the rush without even realizing it. 
Reconfigure status: Flight suit template one.
  He reviewed the suit’s current functions and saved them as default.  From there he snagged every passive scanner that the suit contained and moved them into a single packet, then supplemented it with a magnetic lock.  Template two was complete.  Three seconds later, he was out of the rush and his suit had started to gel.  Another two seconds allowed it to  flow into the new configuration. 

“Hold on,” he said.  He then stepped out from under the trees and fired his newly-made spy drone straight up, aiming both hands at it as it shot over two kilometers into the sky.

“What are—”

“Shh.  I’m just getting us a better map.”

He had made sure to only use passive scanners to avoid radio tracking.  His electromagnetic grapples held the drone in place as it took its pictures, then pulled it in to a soft landing.  On contact with the suit, the drone melted and flowed back into position, returning the suit to template one.  He closed his eyes, spent a fraction of a second assessing the data, then pulled out the industrial nanite shroud and spread it on the ground.

The shroud shifted itself based on his input, raising in some places, lowering in others, and adopting the colors that the drone had perceived.  Seconds later he had a three-dimensional model of the land in a two hundred kilometer radius around his present position.  Detail scaled significantly; it was only completely accurate within a ten-kilometer radius, and was hazy at the edges.  He smiled.

“This is what my people consider a rough map.  I’d do better if I had more time to prepare, or better equipment.

“Still, you can see that there’s nobody within several clicks.  The crash site is over here; you can see the crater.  We went this way…here’s the river we crossed, and here are other water sources in the area.”  Her cybernetics weren’t working yet, so he had the map highlight the areas in question.  When she didn’t speak, he looked up at her.  She was staring at the map, wide-eyed.

“Better…?  Better than this?  I’ve never seen
anything
like this!  Why didn’t you say you could do this before?”

He shrugged.  “We didn’t talk about maps last night.  I didn’t know you needed one.”

“I have a map.  I don’t have a magic relic that lets you see where you are.”

“It’s not magic.  It’s just a machine.”

“Human magic is still magic.”

He didn’t see much point in arguing.  “Okay.  Anyway, where are we going today?”

***

Thursday, October 27, 3481.

Time: Early morning. 

Location: Halls of the City Below, in the City of Talestri.

Khevalis had spent most of the night on trivial work, culminating in a murder investigation that had – so far – been an exercise in futility that had him close to giving up out of boredom. 

A vampire and a rikari had been found dead in the tunnels.  There were no witnesses; nobody had heard either of them call out.  Both had been seen alive mere minutes before.  Neither body had broken or recently healed bones, and Khevalis had found no sign of a struggle. 

Both victims had been Favored, which would have explained why, but they were in different brackets.  The human had come to his position through skill-at-arms.  The taerlae had been an expert runecrafter.  Neither would have gained from the other’s death – nor would any rival of one stand to gain more by eliminating both of them. 

Only three others – two rikari and a vampire – had been in the area at the time.  None of them had a record of unprovoked violence against their subordinates and all of them denied responsibility. 

Khevalis suspected he’d never find out who had done it unless he gave up and the killer stepped forward for credit – assuming that the killer was to be given credit rather than degraded for killing one more than necessary.  He hoped he'd find out eventually, because he was at a loss as far as how they had died. 

Khevalis had even employed his unique advantage, but to no avail.  He could smell a trace of blood in the air where the killing had occurred, but not one drop had hit the ground.  He’d only found a tiny spot of blood on the human’s neck, but he could smell where a similar cut had regenerated – possibly post-mortem – on a corresponding spot on the rikari.  He suspected poison, but not even his nose could detect anything odd.  Besides, what poison could kill a vampire fast enough that he couldn’t cry out – and would also work just as well on a rikari?

The whole thing could be a test, he mused.  One could never know when another test was coming or what form it would take.  The obvious answer was that the killer had used two weapons with different targeted poisons, but it still didn’t give him a motive.  The whole mess had put him in a bad mood when the human was brought to him, and he was grateful for the diversion.

“So,” he began, a pad of paper ready.  “You’re not from around here.”

“No—”

“Wasn’t a question.”  He smiled.  “No local would have come down here.  You’re lucky to be alive.”  He could smell blood on the man.  Yes, this human was very lucky to be alive right now.  Most other rikari would have great difficulty detecting the scent, but the smell had been known to drive vampires wild.

“I can take care of myself pretty well, sir.  I’ve been here for days.”  The human flashed a yellowed grin.  “I had to get the proof I needed.”

“Mmmhmm.”  Khevalis made some random scratches on the paper.  He didn’t need any notes, but he could use the time to assess the man.  “So, who are you, and why did you request to see me?  What are you trying to prove?”

“I’m Martin Rostok, and I need to meet with the Vhaes.”  The man leaned in close.  “I have evidence of treason.  I’m one of his field agents.”  He produced a badge.

Khevalis took the badge and ran the claws on his middle fingers over its surface, intrigued.  It properly described the human in front of him.  It also noted that the bearer of the badge was expected to remain in Falden.  “What is it then?”

“I’ve caught a circle of dissidents.  They squealed; one of us is working with ‘em.”

Khevalis flicked an ear at the human’s casual use of the word ‘us’.  “Names?”

The human rattled off a list.  “Donner, Charmichael, Fritzer, and their contact is a rikari named Adelen.”

Khevalis’s claws shot out completely, but he brought them in before the human noticed.  “What’s your name again?”

“Rostok.  Martin Rostok.  Remember it next time, elf.  We’ll be working together a lot, real soon.”

The taerlae nodded, suppressing a smirk as he handed the badge back.  He would indeed remember, but he didn’t suspect he’d need to for long.  “Where are the conspirators now?”

“One’s being interrogated right now.  The rest are stuck in the cells.”

“Get all of them to the cells.  We shall meet you there; I want them gagged and waiting for him.  You have an hour.  Go.” 

He waited until the human was out of earshot, then gave a low whistle.  One of his brethren emerged from the shadows and stood at attention.

“Find out who took orders from Martin Rostok.  He had three citizens detained and tortured;
who
approved this?”

The rikari departed without a word.  Someone was going to catch hell.  

It had to be sometime around mid-morning; he could hear the mortals of the City Above going about their tasks.  The master would probably be in the laboratory if he was in Talestri at all.  Khevalis passed several of his brethren as they stood sentry duty by the vents that led to the upper level.  A few acknowledged his presence, possibly hoping to curry favor with their master through his attendant.  Most did not. 

Khevalis stopped outside the laboratory door.  He knew that Vhaes knew he was there; he’d never seen his master surprised.  Vhaes would call him eventually.  As he waited, he took the time to check the air. 

He fought a shudder.  The smell of dead things and embalming herbs was strong in this area.  Someone inside the lab had lost control of their bladder as well.  On top of that, there was a faint odor that could have been blood, but for once Khevalis couldn’t be sure.

It wasn’t until the third minute that Vhaes called him in. The ruler of Talestri hadn’t even looked away from the bizarre thing he had up against the wall.  Khevalis approached cautiously. 

The thing on the wall defied distinction.  It took him a moment to realize that it was a living being, and parts of it had changed color to match the wall.  The parts that
hadn’t
changed color had been flayed.