Day 25 6:00 AM
Kyte stood across from Yinzhu in the same room they met in, now without the screen. A lance hovers in between them. Yinzhu had ordered Kyte here in the morning for one final check-up before boarding the SeaSong. Kyte came prepared with files of vessel maintenance, lab scans referenced and cross-referenced again and again, and so they were momentarily caught off guard by the sight of the lance. And what a weapon it was. It was shown with a soft golden glow that illuminated the delicate carvings of ginkgo leaves that wrapped around the staff, indicative of internal Mercury flow if the floating wasn’t enough to give it away. The spearhead extended from a maze of ivory latices into an obsidian gray point with a translucent blade forming around it. From even the hazy morning light, the blade glinted wicked sharp. At the other end, gold capped the end of the staff and a tinsel hung off with a small jade pendant.
“Do you know why I am showing you this?” Yinzhu said.
“No, your Grace,” Kyte responded without missing a beat.
Yinzhu scoffed. “You of all people shouldn’t be picking the easy way out. Answer honestly.”
Kyte hummed. Damn it. She had built up too much credibility for competence. Kyte plastered a smile over her annoyance.
“Reassurance that should anything,” Kyte meets Yinzhu’s eyes, “ go awry, you are more than equipped to handle it.”
Yinzhu curled her lips and with practiced grace twirls the lance with a flourish before sheathing it.
“Precisely.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Kyte’s footsteps resound down the blessedly empty hall as she steps through the airlock; even when trying to be quiet, she is betrayed by the steel of the vessel. Nico enters after and makes about as much sound as a single raindrop in a stormy sea. He closes the maintenance hatch before more water can get in. They are in a watertight janitor’s hallway quite a ways away from the central lab. No alarms so far, but who knows how long that will last? Kyte pulls up the map of the facility, gathered from their scouting missions, on her wristband. The layout is a tangle of corridors and side rooms that constricts itself around the neck: a large hallway that opens up to the main lab and containment facility. Nico looks at the map over Kytes shoulder and silently traces a series of turns with his index finger. At his destination, his finger pauses and Nico gives Kyte a tentative look. She nods.
In a blink of an eye, he is gone out the door, silent as a wraith. It is just her and the sterile compartment. Kyte stiffly watches his blue dot move along the projected screen. There is another dot of a buzzing yellow: Yinzhu. She had a head start en route for a side corridor connected to the main lab. Once Kyte was certain Yinzhu was on pace, she took a deep breath and stepped out into the complex proper.
Pale overhead lights leave nothing in shadow except a disturbingly detailed silhouette of Kyte’s figure. She makes haste down hallways that all look dizzyingly similar. Left, then right, forward, keep going, then—STOP! Kyte catches herself right before stepping into an intersection from which a series of footsteps sounded. She swings her head around and swells with hope when she spots an alcove behind her. In as few steps as possible, Kyte bounds into the alcove, which turns out to host a vending machine of sorts. Just as she lodges herself into the corner beside it, voices drift out about where she was moments before.
“...yeah, Boss wants it ‘effective’ as soon as possible,” a feminine voice says.
“Ugh, I wish she would cut us some slack. That asteroid is weird and gives me the creeps,” responds another.
“Yeah I agree, but there’s not much we can do against the boss's orders,” the first one replies. The other person says something in response, but they are too far now for Kyte to distinguish words. She waits as long as the timeline allows before tip-toeing out and continuing forward. That was a close call. Also, what is so weird about this asteroid that it unnerved the Mafia’s top scientists?” Kyte filed that question to the back of her mind for now. One problem at a time.
Right, right, one more left. Kyte stops in front of a door with a plaque confirming it to be the mechanics' room. She pulls out a small card-like device from her pocket. It was something given to her by Yinzhu. A jammer, Yinzhu said. Once slid into the key slot on the door, or into the crevice between the door and wall, it would emit a wave of frequency that overwhelms the door’s reader. It was a slight gamble if the door would even use a standard frequency range, but the door clicked open. Kyte breathed a sigh of relief at yet another bet won. Stepping inside, Kyte shut the door behind her as the lights clicked on to reveal a forest of machinery. It would have been ideal to use a code at the security HQ to cleanly shut off everything, but the probability of getting to the HQ unharmed and not alarming the workers was impossible. Therefore, the three of them had settled for a less elegant but safer strategy: manual de-activation via destruction. Scanning the machines around her, she systematically maps out the order in which they would have to be tampered with and exactly where. Bless that technical applications seminar she had attended last summer, thought Kyte.
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Before she starts she takes another look at the group map. Yinzhu is almost in position, and Nico’s dot is working its way up to the agreed location. Kyte then takes out a screwdriver and starts to disassemble the box hosting the power bank. Once the screws are all off, she yanks off the metal lid to reveal a complex tangle of gut-like wires. Taking out a pair of shears from her other pocket, Kyte begins to cut specific wires with a satisfying squish as rubber gives way to metal and Mercury.
By the end of all her deconstruction, the room is a mess. Kyte wipes the sweat from her brow. This should be enough: Mercury flow to security system diverted, check; electrical circuits for locking doors destroyed, check; communication lines cut, check. The major flaw here was obviously that Kyte had only destroyed one of many mechanical rooms, but there was no possibility for her to be thorough and get every last one, and hopefully, there will be no need with the circuits disrupted.
Her map shows Nico’s blue dot almost at his destination, and Yinzhu having made it to her destination. Kyte moves to the panel for the evacuation alarm system. A list of hallways sit labeled above matching switches. She flips the switch for hallway 5N and is out the door.
Yinzhu screams as the air around her is lit by a furious blare and the world turns red. She stumbles forward into the main hallway, disjointed by the crashing in her ear drums. That crashing turns into thumping, and all too late she realizes it is the sound of people weighed down by armor and combat equipment heading straight for her. She sees flashes of light. Bullets, her mind fills in after she has already rolled aside to dodge them. None of this was supposed to happen, she thought as she activated her polearm. Did Nico get discovered, she wondered as she sent the polearm straight through the first armed attacker, or was it Kyte? Another blast of energy, now from behind, almost sent her tumbling into a fresh wave of bullets. With a quick javelin-like throw, she took down the stray scientist who had shot her before he could reload. Her polearm dislodged itself from the man’s chest and flew back to Yinzhu’s hands to block an incoming dagger attack. Through the flight of bullets and faces gripped by stress, Yinzhu saw the doors of the main lab. She tightens her grip on her polearm and feels the weapon respond as it glows brighter under her command to cut down everything standing in between them and that door. When all these vermin are dead and she has the asteroid, Yinzhu thinks as she ducks out of the path of staining arterial spray, she will get to the bottom of what went wrong.
Kyte is pressed up beside the opening to a smaller connecting lab room. If the heat sensor on her wristband is correct, then there are only two scientists in there. Scientists are oh-so cooperative when they come rushing out when the evacuation alarm is pulled. Kyte takes a fraction of a second to bemoan her actions of the very near future. Then she jumps them. She takes the butt of her screwdriver and rams it into the side of the closer one’s skull. The dull thud is deafening and Kyte feels an odd tumbling of her gut at how the scientist crumbles to the floor. For the record, the other scientist was in a worse state than Kyte. By the time he came back to reality, Kyte’s screwdriver was already making contact with his skull. He goes down like the first. Kyte scrambles to peel off one of their lab coats and squirms into it. She plucks protective eyewear from the other’s hands and straps it to her face. The first one begins to stir and Kyte sprints off, concealment be damned as her mental clock ticks down.
Right, right, left, duck into this room, resume, and another right. Kyte is so close now to the main lab. Just a little more, she tells herself. Thudding steps sound from a hallway in front of her. Kyte barrels forward and comes face to face with a small group of guards in full combat equipment. Kyte puts on a panicked face. She doesn’t have to try very hard.
“You aren’t supposed to be here,” the one in front says, “there’s an intruder ahead.”
“I know, I know, but all my project files are in the lab! Oh if that ruffian destroys my research, we will all be doomed. It will be quick officer!” Kyte pleads. They hesitate but ultimately let her through. Kyte wastes no time and charges forward. One more corner and she sees the golden glow of the only polearm Kyte has been personally acquainted with, except this time it wasn't floating serenely in the air, but soaking in blood as it slashed open the chests of three guards. It was simply…beautiful. Without hesitation, Kyte squeezed between the guards and the wall. Yes to get to the goal: the lab, but more so to obey the tug in her chest to see the proprietor of the carnage. She steps over and through crumpled bodies, barely feeling the blood soak into her skin. Finally, amidst a flurry of bullets was Yinzhu. She and her polearm were one entity in a graceful dance between bullets and limbs. Each movement flows into the next: a dodge into a brutal downward swing, then a leg sweep finished with a forward parry. Kyte would have stayed there watching if not for one dodge making Yinzhu land directly in front of where Kyte is standing. Yinzhu looked back. Did she feel Kyte’s presence? With Yinzhu’s battle prowess, Kyte would believe it. Their eyes met through the goggles. Kyte runs before Yinzhu as time to recognize her, hopefully. Luckily, another guard tries to kick Yinzhu right then, and she is pulled back into battle.
If she ever left it, Kyte says to herself as she forces herself to not look back. None of the guards give her a second glance as she runs through the lab door, all too busy watching their co-workers get cut down by one woman.
She had worried for many nights what would happen once she got into the lab proper. If there were still people there, would they recognize the intruder in their midst? They would all know each other, so her hasty disguise left her only a fraction more protected. Reality is both better and as bad as Kyte imagined. There were still scientists there despite the blaring evacuation alarm. However, all of them were so preoccupied with saving their experimental data that no one gave Kyte much scrutiny. Nevertheless, Kyte ducted behind an open lab bench for cover. Peeking out from under, she sees the asteroid for the first time.