It was days before we were back, but when we returned, things looked almost exactly as we'd left them. The square entire lot had been closed off, nearby buildings evacuated, and XPCA on constant watch, monitoring the spherical sky-blue gateway every moment.
Tenebrae, too, was exactly where we had left him, char at the bottom of a shallow crater. Despite his failings, no man deserved a grave such as that. It would have to be addressed after the Exhuman.
Deej and I let ourselves in, conferring briefly with the soldiers on-guard, and then approached the portal. Since our visit last, none had gone in nor out. A fact we changed as both of us stepped through without hesitation.
It was no different from walking from one room to another, but as my first footstep across the threshold pushed the ground, I realized that where we were, in addition to being potentially anywhere, was also potentially anything. Instead of pushing myself up and forward and taking another step, I went up and forward...and up and forward...and up and forward.
I looked down and blinked at the familiar sight of the ground receding from under me. My hair for once did not rest on one side of my visor or the other, but instead drifted straight up. Deej looked like a mime as he freewheeled in the air.
"No gravity?" he asked.
"I would appear so," I confirmed.
Despite the apparent usefulness of my jetpack in a situation like this, getting it to cooperate was surprisingly difficult. The pack was not made for super-atmospheric flight, though some models certainly were, and there was nothing physically stopping plasma repulsors from working in zero-G, or even airless environments, which this was fortunately not.
But the pack worked with an onboard AI which handled many aspects, including trying to stabilize and keep me gyroscopically stable, and the AI was programmed with the assumption that gravity was a thing which existed and would continue to exist. When I deployed my pack, it immediately wildly overcompensated and sent me soaring into the air.
I had to disable most of the 'intelligent' systems and basically fly on manual before it would cooperate sufficiently. Deej drifted patiently with his arms crossed and a grin on his face while I experimentally jettisoned myself about at random before discerning an operational configuration.
Despite this, I dutifully attached myself to his back and pushed us both towards the orb of blue and the ground it represented, though such a concept of ground was a luxury in this environment.
Now that I had control of myself again, I could spare some time examining the surroundings. If outside of the portal had seemed a conventional workshop, this seemed a very unconventional storeroom. The area was immense, but enclosed, what seemed an enormous cube made of wood panelling, with matching wooden shelving units, I suppose they could be called, breaking up the space like a library, if libraries extended in three dimensions.
The shelves were all closed, and their contents invariably drifted around inside. I opened one experimentally, and found dozens of a device I did not recognize, threaded on the outside, but with a mechanism built into the cap. They floated within the cubby at random, and I closed the shelf before any could escape.
That was above the portal, which was on an almost two-dimensional walkway, though what good a walkway did in this space, I had no idea. The walkway was a straight line through the very center of the cube, apparently anchored to its sides. The portal was at one end, and seemed to be its only feature.
Beneath the walkway was...cargo. Dozens and dozens of crates and large boxes, bound with netting and maglocks. Much less orderly than the shelves above, this resembled more of an asteroid field of huge supplies, probably storage for anything too big for the organization above.
I realized it almost as an afterthought, seemingly so mundane a fact in such an alien world, but I could see my breath. It was cold here, cold enough to be uncomfortable in my flight suit, and much colder than the other side of the gateway. I checked my visor's HUD and pulled up weather data. Fifteen Fahrenheit. I was surprised I hadn't noticed earlier, but I suppose I had more pressing thoughts.
Without warning, a second sky-blue sphere appeared at the other end of the walkway from the one we entered, and almost as soon as it had, a man emerged, checking something on what appeared to be a standard holo tablet, and absently kicking off the platform towards the shelves. With practiced ease, he attached the tablet to a maglock on his waist and looked up, his eyes going wide when he saw the two of us, me perched on Deej's shoulders, the tips of my wings flickering in the room's omnipresent glow to keep us steady.
"Um," he said, still drifting upwards. "Hello."
"Are you Aledonis Smith?" I asked.
"That is me." He drifted into a shelf and grabbed hold, Deej and I both flinching as his arm moved, but he was simply anchoring himself to talk to us. "You are...hunters, I presume?"
"You presume correctly. Filth such as you--"
Deej interjected. "You are wanted for subversive Exhuman activities and crimes against humanity. Ordinarily I would inform you to surrender or die, but as you have probably heard, there is now a third option, to come to New Eden of your own volition. I recommend you consider it."
"Oh. Dear."
He was a thinner man, with a lab coat and glasses, almost the stereotype of what we could expect a technopath to be. Unremarkable face, short brown hair, but a device or two on his wrists and ankles which belied his craft. They could contain anything from antimatter bombs which would tear apart the earth, to raw genetic material which would grow into an amalgamated monstrosity in seconds.
"Umm. I'd be happy to surrender, or move, but I'd have to ask my fiance," he explained, almost apologetically. "She's further in, I hope you understand."
"I'm sure she'll figure it out when you never return. Keep your hands in plain sight, demon, I will fire without provocation."
"Damn, Karu, chill."
"I will not 'chill', he is an Exhuman," I hissed at Deej. "And do not think to undermine me in front of a prisoner. I do not show weakness to their kind."
"Is that before or after you sleep with 'em?" he asked with a laugh. I rotated myself so that my face was opposite and upside-down his, and gave him the iciest glare I could manage through the visor. "Haa, irie, yute, just jokin'."
"I do not appreciate it."
"So...I'm going to go," Smith said.
"No, you are not--" I turned to him, but before I could do anything, he tapped a stud on his wrist unit and a portal appeared directly on top of him, disappearing into a sliver of blue and then vanishing almost as soon as it had appeared.
"Damn it all, Deej, why did you not simply let me shoot him?"
"What, are you an icer now?"
"And are you an idiot now? He's a technopath. And now he knows we're here, and he's going to fortify, and we had one chance at making this a simple op."
I was having flashbacks to the police station vault. Those hesitating, tentative moments where the Exhuman had pretended to surrender, before killing everyone I had loved. Even as Deej grinned apologetically at me now, I wondered if he knew that my anger came not from fear of my own death, but rather concern over his.
The only thing for us now was to move forward as rapidly as possible and hope to reach the Exhuman before his defences were properly prepared. Going slowly and methodically would ultimately cost us more in the long-run.
Not certain where else to go, I shuttled Deej back to the narrow walkway, the end opposite the open portal, and as we approached, a blue sliver opened into a sphere, like it had been waiting for us. I took a deep breath and we pressed through.
And then I fell on top of Deej as gravity again returned to us. I saved a quick profile of my jetpack's zero-G configuration and re-enabled its other functionality as I trailed in Deej's wake, focused on my equipment and counting on him to be my eyes for the moment. We'd only been walking for a few moments when he vanished, and I looked up.
Another portal. Beyond it, a glass wall with what appeared water behind it. My eyes followed the wall upwards and I realized I was in a narrow dumbbell-shaped room, again a narrow walkway between two portals, but this room was entirely enclosed in glass, and outside of it, as far a the sourceless light in the chamber carried was water.
And not just water. Aquatic life. Jellyfish, sharks, rays, schools of glittering, colorful fish which seemed to shimmer hypnotically, parting and recombining as other creatures approached and threatened. None of them looked familiar to undersea life I'd ever seen, except in broad strokes.
I stood agape as one particularly large shark swam close to the glass, creating an empty wake where no other creature dared to enter, its powerful tail lazily creating currents as it waved back and forth, its eyes spots of pure black.
Deej re-emerged and caught me staring. "We can gawk after," He said with a smile. I nodded, feeling embarrassed for my uncharacteristic unprofessionalism, and made myself move forward.
The next world we entered was even more bizarre. A huge machine, the size of a building, shaped like a huge bronze egg was the focus of this room, and the pathway we were on was the ground on which this monstrosity rested. No spindly narrow walkway this time...at least not where we currently walked, this was much more conventional ground.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
We skirted the thousands of controls and buttons and levers studding the base of the machine and headed for the far side, but when we entered the portal there, we found ourselves in the same room again, just...rotated. I could see, way above me, the two portals we'd just traversed, and if I backed up ever so slightly, could see my trailing arm and leg only just sticking out of one of them. I waved, and the hand peeking from the blue above me waved.
"This is highly irregular," I complained.
"I think we're going to be in this room for a while," Deej said. I followed his gaze and noticed that all around the machine, there were maybe a dozen small walkways like the one we were on, each having their own different gravity, and all close enough to some part of the machine to access another part of it.
So whatever this thing was, it was important to the Exhuman, and it was so monumentally huge that the best way to work on it was having all of these different gravitationally-awkward regions. How this was superior to a simple set of scaffolds, I couldn't comprehend, but questioning the inner workings of a technopath's mind was a sure route to madness. We pressed onward, experiencing new angles of the machine again and again as we went.
One thing was for certain however. This technopath's particular bent was obviously towards portals. How this would be weaponized, I had no idea, but all it would take would be one portal opened in the middle of the sun to extinguish all life on earth, or some such. While the stable portal doorways were one thing, he had already shown he could deploy them atop himself when he escaped us, and therefore presumably had no limitations on where, or where to his gateways could lead.
Never mind the places devoid of gravity. Or the light everywhere, even at the depths of the sea with no source. Or this non-euclidean Escheresque nightmare...I wasn't even certain places such as this were of this world. Perhaps they were different worlds, or even places of his own creation. As much as it piqued my curiosity, I was here to destroy, not to learn.
We crossed what was apparently the final threshold and found ourselves in yet another room, as cold as all the others, yet this one looked very much more human, and yet alien all at once.
There were a pair of mattresses on the floor, surrounded by books and empty cups of instant noodles, a holo, idly playing some show I vaguely recognized, and work benches, covered in spindly parts, half-completed devices, and at least two more of the numerous portal holders we'd already seen so many of.
Perhaps most worrying was what appeared to be an exosuit, being actively worked on by a small woman with a firey red ponytail, up to her arm in the suit's side, obviously adjusting something deep within. Next to her was our man, the Exhuman, but who was she?
"Ah, they're here," he fretted. "Aesa, my love, please, listen to me."
"Mmm," she replied. "Number 9 wrench."
He sighed and went to one of the tables digging through the disorderly mess of tools. I trained my weapons on him and he just looked at me, impassively, defeated.
My every instinct told me just to fire. End it all, here and now, before things went south, before I lost Deej. Deej saw me flick the safety off with my thumb and put his arm out, lowering my guns.
"He's not the one," Deej said.
"He's the one on the contract," I said, furrowing my brow. I re-engaged the safety and tapped a few things on my holo, bringing up the details.
I was sure I hadn't forgotten them, and the contract verified that. I sent it to Deej to be obnoxious. He looked down at the incoming message and shook his head. "Which one has the wrench in their hands?" he asked.
Smith took the tool back to Aesa, who took it without looking, plunging her arms back inside the exosuit without a word or glance.
"Okay, simple enough," I said, and trained the guns on her instead. Again he stopped me.
"We talk this out," he said.
I shook my head. "Deej, she's a monster."
"You don't know that. We're turning over a new leaf, remember? New Eden?"
"She had her chance to come voluntarily. They've been accepting Exhumans for days now. She isn't among them. The only conclusion is that she won't go."
"Or maybe, she lives in a world of her own down here. Look at what she's built down here, you tell me she has nothing better to do but watch the news?"
"The news is right there," I pointed at the holo playing the show. "So yes."
Smith was now busying himself getting a huge, thick fuzzy-lined coat and draping it on the Exhuman. She was only wearing a grease-stained tank top and shorts, and I noticed that in the cold, she had goosebumps all over. If she had control over everything in this domain, why not make it a more pleasant temperature?
He turned to us after managing to get her arms through the sleeves, seemingly without cooperation on her part of any kind, and turned to us. "I'm ready to leave, I suppose," he said.
"We're not taking you. You're not an Exhuman, are you?" I asked.
He blinked at me. "Uh. Of course I am."
"Then why is she the one who is working?"
"She's just...the help."
As if to prove him wrong, she held out a hand in his general direction without taking her eyes off the exosuit. "Anjrostrock."
He sighed and went back to the bench, sifting through tools until he found something mechanical I couldn't begin to describe, and handed it to her.
"Yes, very convincing. Now we shall be taking her."
"No..." he said, attempting to stand between us, but with a stance so flimsy I probably could have left him to fall over on his own, in time. "...or...not yet anyway, she's very preoccupied right now."
"Yes, preoccupied building weapons to kill humans with."
He was about to respond but she did instead.
"Soldering iron, flux, and the number 22 circuit."
She turned and pointed, for once, at one of many quantum cores trussed up with wires and components on one of the benches along the walls. As she turned, her eyes passed over me and Deej, but showed no recognition.
He collected the requested parts, pulling a small cart over to her with soldering supplies on it and placing the core on top.
"Please warm up," he pleaded, rubbing the sleeves of the long coat on her. "Please, please, please."
I'd have enough of these games and this waste of time, and of allowing her to progress towards whatever insidious Exhuman scheme she was building towards. I stepped forward, slipping under Deej's grasp, and grabbed the girl, Smith going wide-eyed with shock as I went.
"Don't--" he said, but I pulled her away from the circuit. For a moment, her hands hung in the air like she was still working on it, and then fell to her sides.
Abruptly the two of us fell forward at some mental command from the girl, and I realized we had gone through another gate. We were moving in slow motion, me tumbling forward for long moments, my hand still on her arm, before she finished changing something with her mind...Exhuman powers and all, it wasn't surprising to think she could control her own technology as Athan controlled lightning. Whatever change she made, abruptly, I was the only one moving slowly, as she separated my grasp from her, casually walked a few paces away, and then opened another gate and vanished into it.
Leaving me hanging, literally, as I fell forward still with excruciating slowness. I'd tripped and fallen forward when I entered this world, and based on the chrono in my HUD, it was two minutes since then, and I was now leaning forward nearly fifteen degrees towards falling.
Over the course of the next half hour, I watched the ground infinitesimally creep towards me, seemingly unable to move, I could do nothing but watch, trapped in my own mind.
It was two hours then, before I noticed a crescent of light appear where the Exhuman had vanished, and over the course of the next few minutes, it widened until it was a full sphere. She and her portal had been unaffected by the slowness of time in this realm, this one was. I hoped, after nearly three hours now, it was Deej, who had beaten them single-handedly, and come to recover me, but my heart sank when I saw a foot emerge with painful slowness, and it was not that of an Exosuit.
Most of six hours later and I was very nearly horizontal, with the ground within reach, and the person, the man Smith, had almost emerged from the portal. I had watched his expression move from concern, to a frown, to a glint of realization, as he inched his hand towards the controller on his wrist. Now, finally, he had depressed a few keys and…
And I slammed into the ground, face-first.
"I'm so sorry," he said, helping me up. "I told you not to disturb her yet."
I had to think back to memories of hours and hours ago to recall his words. "Where's Deej?" I asked.
"I don't understand the question," he said.
I grabbed the collar of his lab coat and lifted him bodily over the nonexistent floor of the black void. "The man in the Exosuit. What has transpired with him in my absence?"
"You haven't been absent," he muttered. He checked his wrist device. "Oh, oh no."
"What?"
"I am so sorry. I really did insist you not touch her!"
"Tell me, what!" I shouted.
"How long have you been trapped in here?" he asked.
"How long do you think, fool? As long as you threw me in here."
He shook his head. "I came as soon as she came back without you. You were gone...fifteen seconds, tops."
I blanched. "It has been eight hours, forty-two minutes, and fifty five seconds," I growled.
"Ah. How cruel of her. You really shouldn't have touched her."
"Explain this to me," I said. "Or maybe I don't care, and will simply--"
I moved to set him down and pass him, but he interceded, holding my wrists, making me flinch.
"In this dimension, time passes differently, as does our perception of it. She brought you here to get rid of you...but then made you experience time slowly...I don't know why, to punish you, I suppose. When we come back, it will be like we never left, even if...for you it has been hours."
"So she is a monster," I confirmed.
"No! She's...well, she is a good person, but she's just focused. She is very different when she's working. Please, just wait, and you'll see."
"I shall take my chances,” I growled.
"At least wait until she warms up!" he shouted as I muscled past him back through his portal.
As he said...it was exactly like I'd never left. She seemed to have only just emerged from a portal, starting back on her work, Deej had only just realized I was missing, and then I was back, and where Smith was standing was the portal from which I emerged.
Out of Deej's range, I advanced within five feet of the working girl and pointed my scattergun at her back. I pulled the trigger and the burst of laser fire vanished into a portal which appeared between the two of us, reappearing on my right out of a second portal, and scouring me.
I felt my skin burning on my arm and chest, where I'd caught some of the scattered beams, and swore. My armor had held, a smoking hole in my chest with serious burns, but it hadn't penetrated. Still swearing, I cracked a vial of medical gel and sprayed some on my two new burns.
More troubling, she had turned to face me with the same cold indifference in her eyes, but it was now me and not the exosuit upon which she was focusing. Smith reappeared and surveying the scene began to mutter "oh no, oh no, oh no," like it was his mantra.
I raised my arms and fired again, rolling sideways as soon as I did to avoid the same trick, but she was gone, and my fire streaked through the empty air, scorching a pattern on the far wall.
I waited long seconds, taking to the air, and feeling Deej begin to engage behind me, as we waited for her to reappear. I got a proximity alert and rocketed upwards towards the high ceiling, as bullets ripped through the air where I had been hovering.
There, before me, on a metal balcony which circled the room, the Exhuman Aesa peered at me over the ironsights of an assault rifle, her pale green eyes flat with disinterest as she pulled the trigger again.