Andre stared at the ceiling; his eyes glazed over. He had woken up hours ago, but the details of the nightmare still haunted him. He knew it wasn't his memory, it couldn't be for one thing he saw it from a view outside himself. The faces of his people, their voices, the screams as they died, it always felt so real.
The recurring nightmare was always from a slightly different view, but the details were always the same. At this point he could not tell apart his real memories from the recreations in his nightmares and that unsettled him the most. The thought that in his twisted mind, he has bastardized the memory of those he had led to their deaths.
He stared at the ceiling until the first rays of light brightened the sky. His alarm blared, rousing him from his daze. He sat up awkwardly at the edge of his bed. It had been more than enough time for him to get used to lacking any limb on his right side, but movement just wasn't the same when body weight was so lopsided.
Normally even limbs could be regrown with thaumaturgy, but his wounds were not so simple. Whatever magic those creatures used they did not just cut him physically as far as anyone could tell they completely severed the very idea of his limbs resulting in every attempt at a biological replacement being rejected by his body. Even magi-tech solutions faced problems as his brain refused to properly interface with the synthetic limb greatly reducing its effectiveness.
He had ended up settling with simple prosthetics with no fancy magic aside from being made with reinforced thaumaturgic steel with the failure to link to his nerves he had to control it with muscle twitches which meant he was stuck with pre-programmed movements. He attached his prosthetics to the permanent anchor points he had surgically embedded in his body for convenience before standing up to start his day.
After his great failure, the public called for his execution demanding that he follow the soldiers he killed to the afterlife as some form of penance. If it was him to decide he would have obliged them but the UN high council would not have it. They had lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers during the battle on the Andes-Amazon front. They would not execute a valuable asset for no gain. He was instead stripped of his rank and banished to a made-up desk job in the Thaumaturgic Research Institute to get him out of the spotlight.
It has been seven years since his great disaster with every passing year the calls for his blood grew weaker. With tragedy being a daily occurrence in the post-cataclysm world most have already forgotten about him.
He headed out of his room grabbing a protein bar and a nutrient shake as he passed the countertop. He scarfed down the protein bar and drank the shake within seconds finishing as he neared the door. Tossing the empty plastic wrap and bottle in the bin next to the door he walked out onto the empty corridor.
Every living space required expensive filtration due to radiation from the overuse of atomic weapons and the thaumaturgic sludge of the withering curse. Most of the world's population lived in massive and densely populated buildings to minimize the required space that needed constant maintenance. Having a room to themselves was a luxury few could afford.
Unlike most of the population, a mage of his caliber was highly resistant to the curse and functionally immune to radiation as long as he had the energy to spare. Which allowed him to take an empty room in a building that was normally only good for storage.
Andre walked through empty halls heading for the building's exit. No one would be here this early; even later, few would visit the restricted materials storage. He walked through rooms filled to the brim with monster parts and earth materials that had transformed upon being saturated with mana. Most of the materials in storage had incredible properties but were rare and currently could not be produced in quantity some could not be reproduced at all and thus their use is heavily restricted to prevent superfluous expenditure.
Right next to the airtight metal entrance door was the building's air filter. The magi-tech device was the size of a small room, a mass of ducts and wires connected to a two-meter-wide cylinder made of pure copper a bubbling dark green liquid could be seen inside through a thin vertical cutout. It was an early small-scale prototype of the massive filtration facilities that keep humanity breathing.
Andre squinted as he observed the dark green liquid inside. The thaumaturgic filter fluid was originally a glowing neon green in color but months of absorbing contaminants had stained it. Andre estimated that it would still last for a week or two, but the machine had already eaten through its mana crystal given the dimness of the glow.
He grabbed a new crystal from a box next to the machine. Mana crystals are not actual crystals in fact they are not physical objects at all. They were made by interlacing the mana in such a way that they form a stable object to contain themselves. For whatever reason this object was always manifested as a triangular prism. Each crystal requires an exact quantity of mana to form with each step in size requiring three times the previous. This made it easy to form a robust unit of measurement with the smallest possible crystal being equivalent to exactly one unit of mana followed by powers of three.
The crystal he held was a size four crystal equivalent to exactly 81 units of mana. It took him hours to make one of these as mana manipulation was never his forte. This is why he had chosen to make them in batches, so he did not need to race against the clock every time something in the facility needed one. It was the least he could do given that his supposed job didn't exist. He was essentially told to sit around and wait out the storm. Seven years later he was convinced even the people who put him here had forgotten he exists.
He had taken it upon himself to do the more dangerous jobs around the facility like cleaning out the filters and generally moving around hazardous materials. To him, such things were relatively harmless but to regular staff just getting close to the filters filled with concentrated radioactive sludge and vile magic was probably shortening their life span by a few weeks.
For an hour he worked on the filter. Its mana crystal socket was located deep in its base buried deep beneath layers of wires and mana circuitry as its original creators never intended the prototype to be anything more than a proof of concept; it was designed more for ease of construction rather than use. He grunted as he knelt next to a small maintenance door slowly snaking his arm around the wiring to reach the socket. With years of experience, he made it look easy even when he was fairly certain such a task was supposed to be done with some long-forgotten tool, maybe it wasn't supposed to be done at all.
Andre knew maintaining the aging filter was a dubious task. The value of materials within the storage was more than enough to warrant investing in a new filtration system and the institute would have probably done so already if he didn’t exist to do the job. At this point, they were probably dragging their heels about replacing all the aging devices to keep him busy and of course so they can divert the resources to other projects.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
Finally, he felt the crystal slide into its socket and the bubbling liquid in the tank glowed slightly brighter. He checked on the aging circuitry to see if there were any obvious problems. He knew nothing about mana circuits but much like how even a layman knows that a smoking electronic device probably has issues he could check for any worrying mana fluctuations. Satisfied that the old filter machine was working fine he stood up to leave.
Just as he was about to head to the next aging device on his maintenance list the door to the building screeched open and one of the main facilities guards walked in. She wore the standard navy blue environment suit of the security force, a necessary garment as with most soldiers they were expected to spend most of the day outside in the elements. She gave him a salute which was strange given he was stripped of his rank, but it seemed for whatever reason some of the institute's guards insisted on saluting him. He had long given up on correcting them.
“Sir, orders from the high council,” she said while handing a sealed envelope to him with both hands.
He perked up; he hasn't been contacted by the council ever since they gave out his sentence. He was honestly convinced he was banished to this post for life. A way to keep him available for any future need but at the same time have him serve a life sentence. That indeed could still be the case.
The guard spoke when he moved to open the envelope before her.
“Sir, I am not permitted to see the contents.”
“Then you are dismissed, thank you for your work.” He said, giving her a quick salute.
The door screeched once again as the guard left him alone in the building. He scrutinized the envelope seeing that there was no obvious classified marking. It was honestly quite strange a letter from the high council was usually quite conspicuous but this one was just a normal envelope free of any identification. He tore open the seal and took out a small piece of paper on it was the all too recognizable spartan format of an emergency dispatch.
[
Orders of the United Nations High Council
Receiver: Andre S. Ortiz
Location: Floor -32, Thaumaturgical Research Institute Main Facility
Time: 0700 21/10/2096
]
Andre squinted as he scrutinized the slip of paper. He was already within the TRI main facility grounds although a disconnected building, but he was pretty sure there was no emergency occurring. The time given was seven in the morning tomorrow which was odd. Usually, the time was filled simply with ASAP given the nature of emergencies. This was the first time he had ever seen an actual date and time on it. Even the location was something he didn't know existed. He was well aware that the facility had restricted basement levels but a negative 32nd floor was definitely a surprise.
He shrugged burying the questions in his mind his job was to follow orders and he doubted anyone was stupid enough to forge an emergency dispatch just to get him to visit the facility's basement. Most of his questions would naturally be answered tomorrow anyway.
Andre went about his day as normal, the long list of aging magi-tech devices would not maintain themselves. He had to list down all the devices which had to be replaced now that he had to leave as they were a danger to anyone that wasn't as sturdy as him.
The next day at exactly four in the morning Andre stood in a line outside the facility's main building. Opening and closing the gates was kept to a minimum to prevent overtaxing the filtration system so they had to wait until a large enough group to form in order to enter or exit.
A buzzer rang as yellow lights blinked informing the group that the gate was about to open. The group surged forward entering the gate in a quick and organized fashion keeping to the right side as another group exited the building from the other. The gate closed behind them, and the entrance room's fans roared to life, sucking as much of the contaminated air that entered with them into the filter system.
It wasn't nearly as effective as using a clean room interlock system, but such measures were deemed too expensive, and time-consuming for general use indoor locations and were mostly used deep within the facility where actual clean rooms were needed. The system was deemed ‘good enough’ to decrease risk with the average lifespan hovering around 55 years, drastically lower than before the cataclysm but much higher than the low thirties that was expected without the filtration system.
Andre threw the disposable environment suit he wore in the bin. He did not need it himself but if he walked around with contaminated clothing it would pose a threat to the regular folk. He arrived three hours early as he expected getting past all the checks to enter the restricted levels would take a substantial amount of time. Little did he know how wise that idea would prove to be.
Andre expected it but he could not help but frown as he arrived at another checkpoint the fourteenth he had to cross. He now knew the reason why the researchers rarely left the building. It wasn't because outside was a toxic wasteland but that they would grow old and die before getting past all these damn checkpoints and airlocks.
The guards had an apologetic look as he walked up. Just from seeing him, they could tell it was not his first, second, or third checkpoint of the day but they still had to go through all the checks or else they would be in deep shit once the chief of security looks through the recordings.
“Sir, I need you to hold out your ID.” one of the guards said while holding a scanner.
The scanner beeped and its small led light turned green to confirm his ID's authenticity. There was no readout as the guards themselves weren't exactly allowed to remember who was what this deep in the facility.
He stood in a T-pose as the body scan checked him from head to toe before giving a green light. He placed both hands on a flat scanner and his eyes in front of a camera. After a few seconds, another light glowed green. Then a guard gave him a tube which he spat in and dropped down the DNA scanner. This was followed by him having to give an awkward explanation about how the blood test device wouldn't be able to pierce his skin and he had to do it himself. It took him almost a minute of pushing a specialized tool he carried for this exact purpose down at his index finger to finally shed a drop of blood. After that, it was a short ten-minute wait for the light to show green. Any more checkpoints and he would run out of DNA.
The guards held out a box where he placed the spit and blood tube. They held it out and made sure he was looking as they threw it down a hatch into an incinerator.
“Sorry for the wait sir, you are all clear to go.” the most senior of the guards told him while giving a short bow.
“No need to apologize. I would be far more annoyed if you didn't do your job.” Andre dismissed the unnecessary apology with a wave.
“Next time I see a shapeshifter I'll take it out on them.” he joked as he walked through the checkpoint.
“That we all sir, that we all.” The senior guard nodded.
Finally, he started down the stairs that would take him to the -32nd floor. He barely made it in time, the clock reading five minutes before seven.