The habitation block sat at the other end of the city. It was a squat, blocky structure, and it had a hundred and twelve stories, with half of them nestled underground. Ochre paint covered the building’s walls, its peeling and tattered surface dotted by the spray-painted murals of daredevil artistes.
Though Hiran had been raised on Mount Kataish, which was surrounded by agricultural communes and rural villages, he’d also seen plenty of habitation blocks during his previous life. They were bustling hives of life and noise, he remembered, with gangs of shrieking children running up and down the open-air corridors, youths gathered on the recreational platforms jutting from the walls in regular intervals, and impromptu neighborhood markets materializing in foyers, lobbies, and even stairwell landings.
The habitation block he was now looking down upon had none of that. It was silent, eerily so, but it was far from lifeless and sterile, judging by the readouts on Chaoswing’s scanners.
He turned away from the ship’s opened rear compartment. The ramp hadn’t been lowered, giving him a clear view of the habitation block fifty feet below. Lila was there, doing a triple check of her shotguns and the single plasma blaster she’d managed to get back into working condition.
Hiran’s thoughts drifted back to his conversation with Mirabelle. With her brother slung over her shoulder, the mercenary had taken her leave shortly after Hiran’s acceptance of the subcontract. Hiran had wasted no time in contacting Lila, who then flew Chaoswing over to pick him up, before traveling to habitation block #111374-SEN-PRAGHA. There, she’d activated the ship’s low-powered anti-gravity plates, so that it hovered in the air above the building.
“Have you ever seen or heard of anything like that?” Hiran asked the Savant, mentally pointing at the lifesign readout he had put on display in his Ajna Interface. Thanks to the link between him and the Savant, Lila would be able to see the readout, sense the attention he’d just directed to it, and know exactly what he was referring to.
“Seen? Negative,” she replied. “As for ‘heard’, I did a quick sweep of the Bureau’s job bulletin shortly after you contacted me, and several previous contracts that have occurred on Madhya, in this and other cities, have mentions of similar circumstances in their after-action reports.”
“So this isn’t entirely new to the mercenaries and the levy guardsmen,” Hiran reasoned. “And Mirabelle was deliberately vague with the details because she didn’t want me to get cold feet. Alright, Lila, what are we dealing with here?”
“I am unsure.” The Savant twitched her black eye. “Your credentials preclude the availability of any further information on the contracts I mentioned, and I did not have the time or resources to attempt hacking into the Bureau’s systems. And even if I did, I would be hesitant to do so, given the numerous security and tracking protocols built into them.”
“The lifesign readings are nonsensical,” she continued. “They suggest that every living creature in this habitation block has been subsumed into a single massive entity, yet at the same time, there are obviously multiple distinct lifeforms moving around and engaging in various unknown activities.”
“What?” Hiran scratched the back of his head. “I… isn’t that a contradiction? How can there be one and many at the same time?”
“It depends on the configuration of our scanners.” Lila took over the readout in Hiran’s Ajna Interface, causing it to flatten out into some kind of two-dimensional diagram covered with thousands of green flashing dots. “In this configuration, the scan is a simple, overarching one that simply marks lifesigns and does not take into account the biometric frequency of each of them. As you can see, this readout suggests that there are eight thousand, four hundred, and thirty three distinct lifeforms in the habitation block.”
“And a different configuration suggests otherwise?” Hiran wondered. He felt Lila adjust the readout again, and this time, lines of green light joined all the flashing dots, until they all merged into a single mass on the diagram.
“A more in-depth scan would reveal that the biometric frequencies of all these supposed lifeforms are completely identical,” Lila said. “To use an analogy, if I scanned you, Hiran, the resultant data would be the same whether I targeted your right leg or your left hand. They are distinct parts of your anatomy, but they belong to the same lifeform, you. But if your body parts were very far apart while still being connected, the first scan would display them as separate entities, which they are not.”
Hiran turned the diagram back to its first display, the one with the separate green dots. “So what you’re saying is that all these are the limbs or body parts of a single creature?”
“I said nothing of the sort,” Lila corrected him, though her voice was laden with doubt. “What kind of lifeform would have so many appendages spread out across a habitation block? Yet…”
“I guess there’s only one way to find out.” Hiran waved Lila over to him. The plan was for him to pick her up and then jump from Chaoswing to the habitation block’s rooftop. Hiran’s Starforged physiology and Sun Circuits could easily handle the drop, even with the Savant’s added weight.
“I have set Chaoswing to maintain a holding pattern here for the next seven hours, after which it will return to Scholar Bei Feng’s manor for refueling,” Lila said, as she stowed her shotguns and plasma blaster and walked over to Hiran. “I can aim and fire its plasma lances remotely from within fifty feet.”
“Let’s hope things don’t come to that,” Hiran said, wincing. “A few shots, and this whole building will come crumbling down.”
“Before we commence, I believe a final review of the facts at hand is in order,” Lila said. “First, the Ashen Guild has some knowledge of the threat inherent in contracts with circumstances similar to the one we are now undertaking. Second, their leader had to pick mercenaries for the task, which means that there were no volunteers. Third, a high-ranking mercenary of the most powerful guild in Madhya is reluctant to undertake this contract, resorting to vague lies, promises, and threats to coerce a simple-mindedly valiant individual—namely, you—into working on her behalf for a pittance.”
“Hey!” Hiran protested. “I’m not simple-minded… alright, fine. You got me there. I’m not good at mind games. Back in the day, I simply punched my way out of any situation I got into, and anyone who tried to manipulate me didn’t live long enough to regret their actions.”
“But you are different now, Hiran. You have developed an aversion to needless violence. That is why you did not simply terminate the lives of the Smith siblings, even though that would have been the most expedient course of action. However, would that have been the most optimal and potentially rewarding one?”
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“No, I don’t think so.” Hiran rubbed his jaw. “If I’d just killed the both of them, their guild might still be notified of their demise, and they might find out that I was responsible for their deaths. The last thing I need right now is to make an enemy of a powerful mercenary guild. Also, I wouldn’t have gotten this opportunity. If I succeed in this contract, we’ll be making a nice amount of credits, but more importantly, it’ll allow us to build a connection with the Ashen Guild.”
“This connection will carry with it increased chances of your true identity being exposed, but every analytical projection I have carried out indicates that the risk is worth the potential rewards, especially now that we have adjusted your holographic attunement module to make your fake augmentations more authentic.” The corner of her mouth twitched slightly. Hiran had come to recognize that mannerism as a smile. “It feels most gratifying to have fully functional primary processors once more.”
I guess she must have gotten that sorted out sometime this morning, Hiran thought. “Good for you. Let’s go back to those three things you pointed out. Yes, they’re all true. We’ll be facing something inside that building the Ashen Guild really doesn’t like dealing with, which means that it’ll be very dangerous.”
“Exactly.” Lila extended a few small limbs and used them to point at the shotguns and plasma blaster stowed to her back. “I am as fully equipped as I can be. I believe you are too, Hiran.”
Hiran took a moment to check his equipment. He had his gunbelt and pistol, with eight extra magazines. Azure Fang was strapped across his back. Khigar scale powered armor sheathed his frame. The Hallowed Forge had taken several days to build it, but it was now complete, though as Lila had said, it lacked many of the advanced functions other powered armor suits had, such as climate control modules, mounted weaponry, and nano-synchronization.
The latter feature would have allowed Hiran to put on or take off the armor with his Ajna Interface. As it was, he’d needed to stand in place for ten minutes next to the Hallowed Forge while the machine’s limbs riveted and bolted the armor in place upon his body, before connecting its miniature fusion power pack and bringing it to life.
The armor increased his height by a full six inches and made him look even larger than he already was. It was bulky, but it didn’t seem to hinder his movements in any significant way, and its own considerable weight was entirely negated by the bundles of synthetic muscle threaded through its segments and joints. On top of that, it also covered his body entirely, hiding his lack of Shrava augmentations.
The khigar’s scales had originally been the color of bright cobalt, but Lila had applied a basecoat of dull gray paint over it, before following up with intermittent stripes and patches of black and brown. It was a tactical camouflage pattern suited to urban settings, the Savant had explained. If Hiran needed to wear the armor in forested or polar terrain, its paintjob could then be altered accordingly.
“I have not been able to make any improvements to Azure Fang yet,” Lila said, her gaze flickering momentarily to the hilt of the Aetheric Weapon. “As I said, I have only just reacquired the use of my primary processors, which are necessary for such delicate work.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Hiran clasped the Savant on the shoulder. “I think we’ll manage just fine. Speaking of which, is there still no word from Maxwell?”
“He left me a message ten minutes before you contacted me, saying that he was going to have a new Crassenstein augmentation installed.” Lila shrugged. “Such a procedure will likely require general anesthesia, which means he will be unconscious for the next five to six hours, at the very least. I have left him a message informing him of our situation and location, just in case he is capable of joining us.”
“We could use him in there, but that’s just how things are.” Hiran slammed his armored fists together. “Alright, time to go. You ready?”
Lila nodded. Hiran picked her up and stepped off Chaoswing, plummeting all the way down to the rooftop of the habitation block. He used Wind Wall just before he landed, dispersing the impact of his and Lila’s combined weight striking the synthcrete surface of the rooftop so that they didn’t crash through it.
The Savant strode free right away, sweeping out both shotguns to cover Hiran’s flank. He drew his weapons as well, raising his pistol to readiness with his left hand while sweeping Azure Fang out with his right.
Columns of pipes and formations of vents were strewn across the rooftop. There were a half-dozen entrance stairwells placed at regular intervals across its considerable length. Hiran and Lila made their way toward the closest one, panning their guns to and fro.
Nothing attacked them along the way. Hiran reached the stairwell first and pulled at the knob on the steel door. It swung open easily, and ceiling lights flickered on as their sensors detected movement.
“Nothing here,” he said to Lila, before stepping inside and beginning his descent. He swept the barrel of the gun across the peeling walls of the stairwell, but there were still no signs of any enemies.
But there was something wrong. He turned around and looked up at the ceiling. There were several fist-sized holes in it, large enough to let sunlight through yet too small to be easily detected by airborne surveillance.
Hiran then lowered his gaze to the stairs he’d just begun to descend. They were made up of solid, industrial-grade synthsteel, according to a quick scan with his Ajna Interface, and they were more than capable of bearing the tremendous weight of his armored form.
They were also woven into a mesh-like pattern… which allowed the sunlight streaming through the breached ceiling to reach the glistening, throbbing flesh-like substance caking their undersides.
“What… what is this?” Hiran couldn’t help but wonder. “Is it some Star Beast’s spoor?”
“Visual analysis is turning up no matches across forty-three thousand bestiaries from every single stellar realm,” Lila reported. “Whatever creature produced this substance, it does not exist within the known galaxy. Could it have come from a Void Entity?”
Hiran channeled a small amount of Aether into his Moon Circuits to activate his Void Sight. He saw no trace of Void Essence within the pulsating flesh, so he shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. In fact… whatever this is seems to resist the Void.”
“Is that so?” Lila blinked in obvious surprise. “Like a Starforged’s body?”
“No, not like that. If I used Void Blast on this strange growth here, I’m pretty sure the spell would rip it into pieces. So maybe I shouldn’t have used the word ‘resist’,” Hiran mused. He turned to face Lila, furrowing his brow in thought. “I’m not quite sure how to put it, but if a Void Entity is a completely unnatural creature, then this thing is the utter opposite, in every sense.”
“Perhaps it might be helpful to compare them in terms of a spectrum,” Lila suggested. “The Void exists on one end, and this organism on the other. Mortals, who can be tainted and corrupted by Void Essence, sit somewhere in the middle, alongside Star Beasts. Given their inherent resistance to Void corruption, Starforged are closer to the end of the spectrum occupied by this organism.”
“That’s one way to think about it, I guess,” Hiran agreed, holstering his pistol. Then he crouched down, reached through the stairwell’s guardrail and to its underside, and dragged the armored fingers of his left hand across the fleshy substance.
It was turgid and slippery to the touch. None of it came free in his tentative grasp. He didn’t expect it to. Hiran looked at his fingers. They were coated in a foul-smelling slime, but that wasn’t important, not in the face of his new suspicions.
He sheathed Azure Fang and pressed a switch on the cuff of his left gauntlet. Air hissed as its bolts came undone. Hiran peeled off the gauntlet, mag-locked it to his belt, and reached again for the alien flesh with his bare hand.
“Is that wise?” Lila asked, her crimson lens whirring and clicking readily. “I am detecting no toxins or poisons upon the surface of that substance, but perhaps you should not make direct physical contact with—-”
Hiran grasped the flesh. The touch confirmed everything. He released it and wiped the slime from his palm on the stairwell wall. Lila sprayed his hand with disinfectant before he put his gauntlet back on.
“Did you acquire any new data?” she asked.
“I did.” Hiran shook his head in amazement. “I don’t know what this thing is, but it’s part of something larger, and it’s filled with Aether.”