I immediately shut up and went for the coilgun. “How close? How many?” I whispered. “Wait, how do you know?”
“Good hearing. Maybe two or three, coming from there. Quite close.” Arc pointed to the left-hand door, the one leading towards the active part of the facility. “What do we do?”
Her voice was calm, but the question was entirely serious. She’d obviously had some kind of combat practice or training- my leg would bear the proof of that forever- but this situation must have been entirely foriegn. I thought quickly.
“We aren’t dealing with Ivan Half-a-Chit and his Blue Div friends, here,” I muttered mostly to myself. ‘Best’ case there were professional mercs or private soldiers down here. Worst case it was the Masks, and me without power armor of my own this time. It was best to avoid revealing ourselves if possible.
“We hide for now,” I told Arc, voice low but urgent. “If they don’t see us and leave, good. If we can get one alive we’ll try it, maybe get some answers. If we can’t, kill them. Wait- on second thought, we have no idea if they’ll have implanted radios, some kind of panic button thing for if they’re captured. Let alone any other surprises.” Of course, their biosigns might be chipped and killing them would trip an alarm somewhere, but that was a less immediate problem than, say, an implanted needlegun loaded with nerve toxin or something. It was impossible to know for sure, but dealing with Admin we had to assume the worst. I’d have my soldiers chipped if it was me. It was a damned if we did, damned if we didn’t kind of problem.
“You know what? If they spot us just clip ‘em.”
She frowned a little. “Right away?”
“Right away. This is Admin we’re talking about.” I met her eyes. “Even if this wasn’t some super-secret black ops shit, they shoot first and don’t ask questions when it comes to people like us. Like me, I mean. I won’t shed a fucking tear, that’s for sure.” Saying it made me realize I almost meant it.
Arc considered that, but not for long. “Alright, then. I can get up on the roof quietly. If you put yourself in a spot you can see me-“
“-You can warn me if it’s about to go down. If we have to take them out, do it quiet.”
The edge of her long dagger flowed like quicksilver as she twirled it then put it back in its sheath. “Of course.” I thought I heard a faint clank from beyond the doorway, metal on metal. Arc’s eyes twitched toward it, then she climbed up the crushed machinery in the corner. She practically floated through the hole I’d cut in the ceiling she levered herself onto the roof so quick. Yeah, she was plenty strong. For myself, I got low and squeezed between the big pile of metal shelving and the wall farthest from the left-hand door. I drew the saw just in case. It was tight in here, and I wasn’t confident the Slukh, silent as it was, would be able to down anyone in armor. I couldn’t see the doorway from here, but a glance upward revealed the barest glint of light off of Arc’s eyes. I silently nodded and she returned it.
The clanking from the hall became louder, resolving into footsteps. Voices echoed against metal walls, the acoustics opaque. I thought I saw the flicker of a flashlight on the far wall.
“Control, this is Backstop Three Six. We’ve reached end of the east wing. Continuing search. Out.” The voice was male and oddly accented, definitely not from around here- but it was human and just a little muffled. Probably not a Mask, then.
“Fuckin’ dickheads,” the man continued. He probably wasn’t on the radio anymore, I guessed. “Who do they expect us to find out here? It was all aerial.”
“Seriously,” said someone else as the booted footsteps drew closer. This voice sounded like a woman’s. “They figure out who that was yet?”
“Probably, but that’s secret. NFU clearance only.”
“The fuck is NFU clearance?”
“Not fucking us.”
The woman snorted. “Go to hell, Efrem. Oh, Kings, why did I volunteer for this anyway…I ought to be on my third drink at the club, impressing cute receptionists with my battle scars. But here I am patrolling some shithole even the D-scum are smart enough to avoid.”
I bristled at her words, at the casual denigration of me and and everyone I’d ever known. I wondered if Admin encouraged people uptown to look down on us, simply to make sure they didn’t realize they were just slightly more favored slaves.
The sound of the footsteps changed, and there was a clatter as somebody kicked a piece of metal shelving across the floor. White flashlight beams skittered across the walls. They were in here now. I glanced up at the ceiling, just able to make out Arc in the shadows above. She held up two fingers and I gave her a tiny nod.
“Battle scars?” scoffed the man- Efrem. “You mean those little frag bites on your ass? I’ve seen ‘em in the showers, and you’re not impressing anyone with those.”
“You wanna say that again, man? Maybe it’ll sound less creepy the second time.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Ifa. Let’s look around, I guess.” There was a general clinking of kit as the two sets of footsteps diverged. I longed to peek over the pile, to leap out and just kill them now. Waiting and hiding like this wasn’t my style- not because I was some kind of badass, but because it was absolutely kingsdamn nervewracking. Arc, on the other hand, was still as a bronze statue. She glanced down at me briefly before continuing to watch the two guards or mercs or whoever. I wished there’d been time to work out some hand signals or something.
“You been down here before?” Efrem said idly. He sounded farther away, like he’d gone into the opposite corner. Boots creaked and crackled on the shattered concrete. “Into D, I mean.”
“Not in-in.” Ifa was on the other side of the room from him. Closer to me. “When I was with the Speedies, though, I spent a while on the border beat. Watching the gates, you know? And the fucking state of those people, man, even the ones that did have trade permits! I dunno how they stand to live like that!”
By this point I was beyond anger and into sheer mystification. Was she serious? Did she really not see it? Did she really not know?
“D-generates ought to have the sense to stay where they belong,” Efrem muttered, sounding like he was in the other corner now. “What about the gangs? See any of them?”
Boots ground on the floor. “Nah.” She was even closer now. I barely dared to breathe. I glanced up at Arc and she held her palms apart, then moved them slowly together. I assumed that meant she was still coming toward me. “They knew to leave well enough alone. More whipped than the Fomorii, even.”
I very nearly burst out laughing.
“Figures,” Efrem replied. “Alright, I think we’ve done our due diligence.” Holy fuck, we’d actually pulled it off. Then he kept going. “Check over there and then let’s get the fuck back. Hopefully the caff machine didn’t get blown up.”
Well, it was worth a shot. I tensed, eyes darting between the edge of the pile where Ifa would emerge and up at Arc, who now held a knife in one hand. It wasn’t hard to figure out what that meant.
“Sure, sure.” Ifa sounded bored. Certainly not like a woman who’d be dead in a few seconds. I glanced up at Arc one last time and nodded. She returned it. I couldn’t see her, really, only the steel glimmering darkly in her fist.
“Alright, maybe the monster’s behind this pile of junk-“ A uniformed figure came around the edge of the pile and I uncoiled to lunge like an over-wound rat trap. On the way up from my crouch I took in only the barest details. Big light-mounted rifle held lazily in one hand. Gray camo fatigues. Ballistic vest, bulky enough it probably carried plates. Didn’t want to foul up in that. My empty left hand came up and shoved the muzzle of her weapon away, twinging where the PIN still held it together.
“Ef-“ That was all she got out before my right arm whipped up across my body, my finger already crushing the saw’s trigger. The Wiken whickered up, slid through her arms with a hiss of flash-boiled blood and took her through the neck without slowing. The cut was so quick I saw Ifa’s eyes widen after the blade decapitated her, her lips try to finish forming the name before she tumbled down in a welter of blood. I rushed over her body just in time to see Arc finish her work.
She’d fallen silently from the hole in the ceiling to land behind and almost on Efrem. One hand curled around his chin and brutally jerked it back just in time for the other to draw that long dagger across it. The cut was deep, clean, instant, quite literally textbook- some old spec-ops manual I’d read on the Net said a properly slit throat was one of the fastest and quietest ways to kill a man with a blade.
Arc pulled her knife hand well out of the way before the first spray of arterial blood. She kept Efrem’s jaw clamped and head bent back to make the cut yawn wide and drain him faster. Even I felt a twinge in my stomach at the sight for some reason- his neck had been sectioned like an anatomical diagram. Maybe it was different seeing someone else do it.
Efrem’s rifle clattered from nerveless fingers, and after ten or fifteen seconds Arc let him fall with a wet thud. He didn’t move. She glanced at me, then at the dismembered body behind me. I was misted with the coppery spray I hardly noticed anymore, while there wasn’t even a speck of blood on her torn-up white suit.
“Well. We’ve all got our own way of doing things, I suppose.” She straightened her jacket and crouched to clean her blade on Efrem’s fatigues, careful to stay out of the spreading pool of blood. After sheathing the saw I splashed over and squatted too, but it was to get a better look.
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“Watch out, I’m gonna flip him over.” Arc stepped aside so I could roll the corpse onto its back. He’d fallen face-first into a pool of his own blood, but it was still less of a mess than I’d made. His face was…just a face, really, tanned with thick stubble and a crooked nose. Someone you’d see on the street. He wore gray and black urban camo fatigues and patrol cap, their make finer than the milsurp that sometimes made its way down into the D-block markets. No nametag or rank insignia, but there was a number on one of his chest tabs that might serve as both. His rifle was a heavy-caliber suppressed Yakkorp, the pistol in his thigh holster an Amsidyne- each with a weapon light. Reloads for both studded his belt and chest rig. I didn’t touch the weapons, squinting at their grips instead.
“Fuck,” I muttered when I spotted the telltale sensors. “Genelocked. We can’t steal ‘em.”
“Is it stealing if they aren’t using them anymore?” Arc asked, though I didn’t think she expected an answer. “And are you sure? They both have gloves on.”
I’d read about such systems in some of the gun rags Sawada saved for me. I’d always thought the whole idea was stupid, something extra to go wrong on a piece of kit you really didn’t want going wrong. Evidently these grunts, or their bosses, thought they had the kinks worked out.
“Could be the gene sensor’s on the inside of the gloves. Or on these guys, it’s probably just implanted. They’re augged up pretty good, seems like…” On closer inspection I spotted the contact traces for an implanted radio by the merc’s ear and an optical interface in each of his tear ducts. Even dead his eyes flashed like a cat’s when the light hit them right- retinal implants, whether vat-grown or electronic. Lower down he looked to have some kind of filter in his trachea, though Arc’s knife had gone through it like butter.
“Here, too,” she murmured, pulling his collar down a little. Sure enough he had a cluster of medical ports just above his sternum, meant to interface with battlefield auto-injectors or combat drugs. “It all seems very…crude.”
“I mean, it’s not Amsidyne bespoke shit, but it’s still good chrome. Looks like Gyeoksung pro-line stuff, maybe some Thayer too-“
“No, no, in concept, not execution.” She rocked back on her haunches. “Compare cutting a man open and attaching wires to his nerves to…well, to how we were made.”
“How were we made? I get what you’re saying, but it’s kind of hard to compare when I don’t know anything about the one side.”
Arc huffed out a breath. “Right. Still, though…she’d probably laugh to look at that.” She waved a hand at the dead man. I wasn’t sure what exactly had her so peeved, though by ‘she’ she obviously meant the Sculptor.
“Well, fuck her. She’s not here. And look at this.” There was one last part of Efrem’s outfit. A sort of shoulder cover or brassard on his right upper arm, made of woven plastic. It was orange patterned with jagged green and yellow fractals. I’d seen the same sort of pattern on the samurai way back in the Park- the one who’d left the ancient Dakessar temple there after his pet scientist collected something from it.
“Why wear camouflage if they’re going to put that over it?” muttered Arcadia. “Your city is full of very strange people, Sharkie.”
“This guy’s just a dick and so is his boss. That’s not strange at all here.” I tapped the markings. “Cromwell colors. I’m not surprised.” I rubbed the back of my neck and tried to piece this together in my head.
“Why not? Are these Cromwells another gang?” Arc’s long fingers traced the fractal patterns in the weave.
I snorted. “Basically. The biggest gang, or a faction of it at least. They’re an Admin family.”
“Ah. The supposed rulers.” She frowned. “I didn’t see any of their representatives last time I was here.”
“Ususally they’re fine to let us starve and kill each other as long as the factories keep running. But these guys, they’ve been messing around in D-block for a little while now, messing with the war. The gang war,” I clarifed when she made a quizzical face. “They’ve been funding our rivals, doing all kinds of weird shit. Not a shock whatever’s down here is their fault too.”
“Hmm. What do you mean by weird?” Arc stood all of a sudden and sheathed her knife. The motion was smooth, subtly odd though I couldn’t put my finger on why. Maybe something to do with her growing up without any people- or normal people at least. I literally had a hard time imagining it. Honestly it’s a marvel she’s this well-adjusted.
I lurched up to my feet, boots making sticky noises as they peeled away from the bloody concrete. “I’ll tell you, but first let’s get moving. Who knows if they’ve got friends coming. Speaking of, give me a hand.” I bent and grabbed Efrem’s body under the shoulders. Figured I may as well take the messy end.
Arc grabbed his boots. “Out the window?” she asked, tossing her head at the hole in the far wall.
“Yep.” It probably didn’t matter at this point, but anything that might make us harder to track was worth it. Anyone who came looking for Ifa and Efrem could have fun tracing their locator chips right to the bottom. I did feel kind of bad not leaving the bodies so any of their relatives would at least know what happened, though.
Idiot, I told myself. Fact was I cared more about living than I did some rich blindie family getting closure, and if I really gave a shit I wouldn’t have killed their relatives in the first place, right? Arc didn’t seem too worried either.
We got over to the hole and slung Efrem through. The body tumbled into blackness that might as well have gone on forever. Then we moved on to Ifa. I gave the dismembered corpse a once-over, but she didn’t seem to have been carrying anything Efrem wasn’t.
Arc picked up her severed forearms and pitched them into the Chasm calmly as if she was throwing rocks. “What did she mean when she called herself a ‘speedy?’ she asked.
“She used to be a cop, I guess.” I lobbed the head out then grabbed the corpse under its arms. “S.P.D, Savlop-2 Police Department, you know? ‘Cause they say signing up is a quick way to die.” I rolled my eyes. That was just chest-puffing bullshit if you asked me. If the cops were really that hard they’d come to D- and they never did.
“Ah. It would seem she shouldn’t have changed jobs.”
“I’d say you’re right.” We heaved the second body out into the nothingness. “Ready to get going? The faster we move the better, I think.”
“Agreed. Let’s go.” Arc led the way through the same door the pair of mercs had come in. I wiped blood off my face with my sleeve as I followed. We entered a corridor with the same cracked concrete floor and sheet-metal walls. It was like walking inside a crushed beer can. The air remained humid, water dripping down from torn edges of rusty metal and landing on my face. There were more dull yellow mercury lamps on the ceiling, though they were even sparser and dimmer than they’d been in the previous room.
“So.” Arc stepped over a heaved-up slab of concrete as she spoke. “What did you mean earlier when you said these Cromwells were acting strange? I feel like I’ve started a book partway through, trying to understand this place.”
“To be honest, I don’t have a nice neat answer. But here’s what I do know.” I answered her question as best I could, connecting things together myself as I explained. High-paid menschenjaeger assassins in D-block, the Cromwells using intermediaries to buy all sorts of Sun Age artifacts like the Woven hand and the reader head, and one of their samurai taking something from the old church in the Park. Put it all together and you got…a pattern, at least, though where it led I had no kingsdamn clue.
“So,” I finished, ducking under a crumpled section of rust-eaten trellis. “Any insights?”
“No,” she said, almost offended. “I asked you. Why would I know any more?”
I glanced at her sidelong. “No need to get snippy. You-“
“If I was being snippy, you’d know it.” She stepped daintily over a puddle of black-scummed water.
“…whatever. You live with the Sculptor, right? And isn’t she…” My voice lowered of its own accord, though there was no one around to overhear. “I mean, she was there for the Sun Age, wasn’t she?”
I almost hoped she’d say no, that our maker and the figure out of near-myth just shared a name out of coincidence. But she nodded, still scowling.
“Yes, of course! But that doesn’t mean- Ah. I suppose you know as little about my situation as I do about yours.”
“At least.” Brushing some dangling loops of wire aside, I squinted ahead.The hallway kept going nice and straight, though soon we’d probably hit that big gap in the building I’d seen from the roof.
“Right. First of all, she and I hardly speak. She comes round to my part of the tower to talk at me when she feels like it, which isn’t too often lately.”
“Wait, she lives in a tower? Like an evil wizard or something?”
We came to a mess of collapsed trellis that nearly blocked the hall. Arcadia answered as I looked for a spot to lift it without tearing up my hands. “Exactly like that. It’s a good ways to the east.” That would place it deep in the Glasslands. “This is the nearest side of your city to it, though it’s still far enough I had to take a groundcar to get here.”
“Groundcar? You have flying ones?” I snickered as I got a grip on the crumpled metal and heaved it up with a grunt. I cleaned it up to shoulder height, flakes of rust raining down on us, then pressed it overhead. Arc ducked to scramble her tall frame under it, then glanced back looking somewhat impressed. I carefully shuffled under to follow. I began to slowly lower the heavy mess.
“No. Don’t you? Why bother with the ‘ground’ then-“ She was interrupted by a crash as the trellis slipped from my hands at about waist height. We both froze as the whole hallway creaked and even seemed to settle lower. With my luck I’d send the whole building tumbling into the chasm. Finally the noises stopped and we relaxed. Marginally.
“No,” I answered. “We just call them cars. Or vics.
“Ah. But as I was saying, I don’t exactly have conversations with the Sculptor, and when she does talk she’s irritatingly smug and obtuse. I think she just enjoys knowing more than me.” She scoffed as we kept moving. “Maybe that’s why we were made.”
“Has she ever told you why?” I wasn’t sure if I even wanted an answer. For most people it was simple enough. ‘My parents loved each other’ or ‘the rubber broke’ or whatever. For me and Arc? Only some ancient creep in a tower knew.
“What do you think?” she muttered in a tone that answered the question perfectly.
“Right, right. What do you do, then? How’d you learn to fight?”
She trailed a hand along one rusty wall as her shoes splashed quietly on the floor. “She’s got a big library. Who knows how many years’ worth of data. She doesn’t care what I do as long as I’m learning something.”
“You ever try stopping? To try and make her come talk to you, give you some answers?”
I was somewhat amused when she stopped dead, looking nonplussed. “…it never occurred to me, I suppose. I never got quite bored enough to try.”
I gently pushed a scabby sheet of metal against one wall to get it out of our way. “A really big library, then.”
“Yes. And as for fighting, well, I’ve got the servitors to practice with.” Those were her weird robots, if I remembered right. No thanks. “And there are tunnels under the tower. I used to go down there to train, to explore, but…not anymore.” I glanced over to find a less-than-assured expression on her face. It was the first time, and it looked out of place enough I decided not to press for what she meant.
Finally we reached the end of the hall. A rusty mess that might have been a door once swung slightly in the muggy breeze. “Okay, maybe now we can see what we’re dealing with. If we don’t get slotted by some prick with a thermal scope the second I push this open.”
“I’ll translate us when you do. Though, try not to get shot anyway.”
“That’s the plan.” I gave her a look, but her face was so impassive I couldn’t even tell if she’d been joking. She grabbed my shoulder. I screwed my face up in concentration, trying to consciously push back the cold feeling that represented my ‘quantum inertia’ or whatever the hell Arc called it. It was awkward, like trying to move just your little toe or something. Maybe always on was better than always off, though. I must have got it, for soon the slick, frictionless feeling of translation flowed through me. Arc let out a harsh breath of effort and I decided to make this quick.
Upon pulling open the door I was greeted by an expanse of cratered, rotting concrete that might have been a parking lot or staging yard once. To our left the rough rock wall of the Chasm towered up out of sight, and to the right the emptiness of its span. Between them was about a two hundred yard square of the aforementioned rough ground, patchily lit by floodlights mounted to the structure opposite us.
That structure was the same decrepit half of a building I’d seen earlier, fires and fresh missile damage scarring it even further than collapsing ground and time had. Scaffolds and work lamps studded some parts of it, and I heard the roar of generators. I saw a few figures milling around with lights, fighting fires and doing who knew what. The building’s face was lit up enough to make out a series of rusty metal letters bolted to the wall: KEITH-WHITNEY RIFLE AND CARTRIDGE WORKS. An old ordnance factory now repurposed for the Cromwells’ mysterious needs.
“So we gotta get through there…” I muttered.
“In order to get to there,” Arc finished from beside me. I followed her pointing hand. Near the rear of the building, up against the Chasm wall, a series of lights stitched its way up the rock face and disappeared into the fog. An open-scaffold elevator, like I’d seen in holos about the quarries. There was our ticket out.
We just had to get through Admin first.