The elevator lowered, traveling below the ground floor of the warehouse and into the winding support structures of the megacity. Crisscrossing supports and old concrete made patterns in the wall like striations in stone. Small holes dotted the walls as they passed, most the size of small animals.
Nadia tapped James on the shoulder, pointing to an upcoming opening that looked just large enough to squeeze through.
“We shall wait here,” she said, though most of her words were drowned out by the whirring of the lift’s engines.
James understood the intent anyway and nodded. He ran to the opening, jumping through it with his arms outstretched as if he was back in the training room jumping through hoops. His body squeezed through with barely enough wiggle room to crawl deeper inside.
A moment later he felt a wave of water pick him off the ground and carry him further in the hole. He felt his master brush against the sole of his shoe a moment later.
They waited like this until the elevator’s engines stopped then started again as the lift made its course back upward. Nadia tensed as the whirring noise of engines came closer, her refractive stealth already up. The elevator grinded up the supports with an agonizing slowness until, finally, the bottom rose above their hiding place.
Once she was sure no one could see them from above, Nadia crawled out of the space and helped James maneuver out.
“Good thing you had me do all those climbing exercises,” James joked as he entered the shaft leading down.
“My foresight is indeed impeccable,” Nadia said in agreement. “But save your breath, we must descend quickly.”
Nadia led by example, jumping off the edge of the shaft and falling at an angle. She landed with both hands gripping the small holes between support structures. She took a short hop to the side to give James some space as he jumped. He landed with similar skill, though a piece of old concrete dislodged from the shaft and fell to the distance.
It landed seconds later with an echo that sounded too much like an alarm in their ears. Nadia hastened her journey down, leaping from handhold to handhold as fast as she safely could. James followed behind, keeping up as best he could.
The sound of moving metal greeted them as they climbed downward. At first, the two cultivators thought it was the elevator above, but it soon became apparent that the noise came from below. The noise drowned out almost everything else, becoming the perfect mask for falling debris. Eventually, the support structures that made the base of the floor above vanished, leaving only the four metal pillars that held the elevator. Cris-crossing bars weaved between the pillars to stabilize the lift, giving James and Nadia much needed support going down.
Lights illuminated the room below as they exited the shaft, revealing a large production factory underneath the warehouse. The lift had put them in the center of the room, distanced far from the walls of this hidden facility. James saw pistons and conveyor belts moving something along but he was too far away to see it clearly. Servitors moved through the winding pathways between the machines, carrying something in large buckets.
Nadia only glanced at the size of the room before moving on to other priorities. She checked the area below for any guards. There were none, surprisingly.
Suspicious, Nadia took a long look around the area, barely spying the lattice of laser equipment disguised as bolts on the supports.
“Hold, disciple,” she said, grabbing him.
James stopped and looked at his master in confusion. Nadia pointed the laser grid out.
“I have seen these in some of our archives. It reads biometric data and reports any unauthorized entry.”
“What do we do?” James asked.
Nadia settled into a comfortable position just above the first of the grid. “Two options. We can climb back up toward the hole and hide until they no longer grow suspicious. Or, we take a risk and attempt to bypass the grid.”
“How?” James asked.
“A leap of faith is the idea that came to mind,” Nadia said. She pointed in the distance. “Would you be able to make it there?”
James followed her movement, spying a moving piston halfway between them and the wall. When it pumped down, there was enough space for a person to fit. But when it pumped upward, that space shrank to nothing as the top of the piston almost collided with the wall.
“We can’t stay on that,” James said.
“The goal isn’t to stay disciple,” Nadia said. “Look past the piston. See the small outcropping on the wall?”
James did, just barely.
“I’ve never jumped that far,” he said.
“Then it is best we go back to the hole,” Nadia said. “We can wait there safely.”
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“You don’t know that, though. Right?” James asked.
“I do not,” Nadia said. “We would risk everything on them not searching the elevator shaft, and if we are caught neither of us could defend ourselves due to the size of the hiding place.”
“Then I’ll make the jump,” James said.
“Disciple,” Nadia said, concern on her face.
“I’m not overestimating myself, master,” James said. “My body knows it can make the jump, I just never tried.”
“Are you sure?” Nadia asked. “If you have any doubts—“
“I don’t,” James said.
His master gave him a searching look, checking for any hint of doubt before acquiescing. “Then, follow my lead.”
Nadia moved from her resting position, shimmying around the outside of the pillars before stabbing a hand into the roof above. Some debris fell away, but the noise couldn’t pierce the din of moving pistons and whirring conveyor belts.
With her hand secured, Nadia swung around the outside of the elevator’s supports, twisting and lifting herself over the biometric grid as she readied for a jump. James watched his master as her body tensed as one, then pushed off the platform with a speed that his younger self only thought possible in shows.
Nadia soared through the air like a bird before landing in a roll on the descending piston. Once she came to her feet, Nadia took two steps across the piston and jumped with power. Again she soared across the underground factory, landing with what would have been a loud thud if the machinery hadn’t drowned it out.
James took a breath, entering the Metastate to ready himself. The biometric grid revealed itself to him, lines of light energy that crossed in a perfect cube grid down the elevator. Steeling himself, James moved to his master’s previous position, placing his fingers inside the grip she made earlier. Her hand was smaller than his, meaning he would have to put more strength in his fingers to hold himself up for the small amount of time it took to swing around the support pillar.
Another noise joined the clanging machinery below, the telltale whirring of an elevator engine. Cursing to himself, James quickly calculated his first movement, swinging himself around the pillar and securing himself for a jump. He watched the piston jump up and down, finally thankful for all the studies his master made him do.
Since the piston moved at a set rate, James could time it as long as he knew how long it would take for him to travel through the air. A calculation that Nadia had drilled into him early in their training.
With a smile, James tensed his body, using the Metastate to find every muscle that could possibly give him some jumping power. He unleashed his potential energy all at once, springing across the gap much more a frog than a bird like his master. Instead of landing in a roll on the piston, James landed on all fours with a grunt. In his haste he’d forgotten to account for the landing.
No matter, he could still function and move despite the twinging of sprained muscles in his arms. He picked himself up, took two steps like Nadia, and sprang off the piston toward his master. She caught him with a cushion of water and a smile on her face.
“Well done,” she said in his ear.
The two descended just in time to shrink behind some machinery as the elevator came down. James spied Peregrine, two of the Oni gangsters holding an arm straight while Osman waited at the side. Even at this distance, James could see the man’s indifferent look.
Nadia tapped him on the shoulder. James turned to see his master motioning for him to follow.
They made their way through the machinery, pieces of cybernetics and other materials James couldn’t quite make out traveling on the belts next to them. Every so often a servitor would come by and take a piece off the belt, placing it either in a storage container or on another belt.
But as they moved closer through the strange pieces of large machinery, the cybernetics changed into something more disturbing. An arm, or a leg, still connected to the cybernetics moved down the belts. James saw his master stiffen in disgust at the sight, and it took all he had not to retch as bile reached the back of his throat.
Thankfully, they reached a place to spy on Osman before anything more disturbing appeared in their way. James pushed the thought of what was going on to the back of his mind, unwilling to try and think about why there were so many body parts on a conveyor belt. Instead, he settled in to watch Osman.
Peregrine was looking at his master with a mix of disbelief and something James couldn’t place. There was a pleading nature to the look, but filled with the desperation of a zealot. Peregrine’s whole word seemed to be crashing down around him.
Osman, for his part, only looked bored. As if Peregrine’s entire revelation was another Tuesday. He perked up only once in the conversation, James unable to make out the words.
He easily made out what happened next.
With barely a flicker of emotion on his face, Osman thrust a hand into Peregrine’s chest. The teenager stared at his master in shock and despair as Osman removed his hand from the hole now in the young cultivator’s chest. The light in Peregrine’s eyes dimmed as the teenager looked up at his master.
James thought he screamed, but no words came from his mouth. He made to jump Osman, emotion overriding his intelligence. Nadia grabbed hold of him, pulling him into her arms and back out of sight.
James fought her for a moment, the shock of Osman’s callous action and the speed of it all fresh in his mind. It took Nadia pulling James’s face up to look into her eyes for him to stop.
He saw in her eyes an echo of the shock in his heart, masked by years of experience.
“Breathe,” she said in his ear. “You cannot lose your mind here.”
James listened, sucking in a breath even as his heart felt like it pumped knives through his veins. “He, he just killed him.”
“He did,” Nadia admitted, pain in her voice.
“He didn’t do anything,” James said weakly. “And Osman killed him like a bug. Less than a bug, because bugs make people feel disgust.”
James looked at his master.
“Breathe,” she said to him again. “You must control yourself. We must collect evidence of this and bring it to others. Osman has become a demonic cultivator.”
James nodded, taking in another breath.
“They are taking his body somewhere,” Nadia said. “Have your handheld ready to record. We shall ensure Osman’s despicable nature is revealed.”
James looked to see Paulie talking with Osman while more gangsters grabbed Peregrine’s limp body and carried it away toward the other side of the factory. He pulled his handheld out as Nadia moved, keeping it ready to record.
The master and disciple moved through the factory, past the conveyor belts of limbs. The limbs became torsos as they moved closer.
James felt more bile form in the back of his throat. A creeping dread started to run up the back of his neck.
He was so lost in his own feelings that James ran into Nadia. Startled, he looked up at his master only to see her face pale.
“By all the forces,” she mouthed.
Slowly, as if someone had grabbed his head and turned it for him, James turned to look at what his master saw.
In the back of the factory, in piles akin to mass graves, lay bodies. Servitors moved between the piles, ferrying a body into the first of many machines. James’s eye caught a glint of something on the back of a body. A shining red orb embedded in the neck.
“These are all cultivators,” James whispered in terror.