As she shuffled up the vent, knees pressed against the duct, hands pushing herself upward, Tasìa thoughts focused on her growing distrust in her partner.
She was certain Felicité held something back from her. The rogue gathered from the trouble the Argentinian had keeping her own story straight, it must have been something vital.
Was Tasìa being used as some kind of bargaining chip between Felicité and her employers? Was she now merely delivering herself to them as some kind of prize?
Even with these doubts running through her head, just the freedom of being in an area that she normally would not have access to gave Tasìa a taste of what she craved - the autonomy to make her own decisions, once again.
She was well aware of the risk that this could all backfire on her. That she could be falling in line just to be betrayed as she had been betrayed before.
Memories of the dissolution of her B&E team were so fresh still, she had to stifle her anger before continuing onward.
She needed to keep on track. Focus on the present, her father would have told her. Don't become a slave to past mistakes.
The risk is worth it to get away from this damn place.
If this was a double-cross, they were taking the risk in allowing her so much leeway that she was now mapping out the air duct system of a security-sensitive facility. Information that she would sell one day if the opportunity presented itself.
Tasìa reached the ledge leading into a horizontal duct. She pushed up and climbed into it. Strips of LED lighting ran up and down the concourse. Showing the direction of the airflow.
A few dozen yards farther up she came across a microcontroller. Tasìa read the display pinned to the side of it. What she discovered alarmed her.
The graphic on the display traced out the schematic in a read-out of real-time sensors in the vent ducts on her current level. It showed airflow patterns from three separate corners of the ventilation system were merging on her path.
Could this actually be deliberate? She tensed up at the paranoia this sounded to her own ears.
Up ahead another vertical shaft came into Tasìa's view. She pressed her arms against the lip and pushed herself up into it.
This straight vertical climb proved to be more of a challenge than the previous attempt where she scooted up the break room access vent. The duct surface of a coppery hue here was more varnished.
As she yawned with great discomfort given her predicament, Tasìa admonished herself for insufficient preparedness on her part. She really should have slept more; the more effort she exerted, the more her brain felt out of it.
She could have brought a surgical mask she kept in the annex locker. She was in such a rush to make this plan real she did not take sufficient time and necessary precaution.
Now her irritated sinuses made her nose itch, but she could not move her hand to scratch it. She tasted an odd flavor on her tongue. Almost like wilted greens and onions in a salad.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
She shook her head violently in an attempt to ward off her growing incapacity. The-here-and-now seemed aloof and distant.
Tasìa drifted into memory; her mind making odd connections between her memories and present-day reality. She heard the giggle of a young woman echo through her mind.
A beautiful sound that thrilled her young self. She was three again. It came from a patio three stories up above her. It was her favorite person in the world.
With a speed other children her age had trouble accomplishing as they walked upon the ground, Tasìa climbed the jagged stonework that formed the apartment building wall. She slipped over to the patio rail.
Her three-year-old self hunched on the long support bar while wishing she had a tail to wrap around it.
Aunt Tatiana stretched along the length of a reclining chair as she sunbathed. Her head jerked up when she saw the girl grinning at her.
The woman brushed the long strands of brownish blonde hair out of her eyes as she grinned back at Tasìa.
"Spider monkey! You did not just climb up that wall did you?"
"Yes'm Namesake, I did."
The young woman rose up from the recliner. She wore only red bikini bottoms as she could expect perfect privacy behind the dense latticework along the patio railing for herself and her guests.
"Namesake? Is that what you're calling me now, and not Auntie Tatiana? Do you even know what Namesake means?"
"It means you. Mama says it means you."
Tatiana picked her up from the rail and held her up against her boobs. Hugging her tight.
"Spider Monkey, what am I going to do with you?"
The Russian woman leaned over the patio table and turned up a radio. She started dancing with Tasìa in her arms. Bouncing her up and down as the girl giggled.
Aunt Tatiana's guests, a pair of scrawny black-eyed ones, sat together on the other chair, watching, impassively.
"I guess we dance," she answered Tatiana.
"That is right; we dance. If I am Namesake, then who are you?"
"I'm your Spider Monkey!"
Tatiana shook her hips in the rhythm of an old, old dance, swinging Tasìa from side to side.
"Yes, you are. But what does your mother call you?"
"The Rose."
"Do you know why?"
The black-eyed ones started to whisper together in a cacophony that sounded similar to the Russian she sometimes heard Tatiana speaking on her phone.
Tasìa, realizing how strange this was turning out to be, tried to push her mind away from the memory. In the here and now and as lucid in appearance as the world around her, one of the black-eyed ones, a raven-haired girl, faced her.
Her solemn visage with unblinking eyes leered just two feet away on the opposite side of the duct.
"We have so much we can show you, if you just let us in, Rose. Right there ," even as the black-eyed girl held her pale white hand lifted towards Tasìa, the girl seemed to bare her no malice, " let me touch your forehead, and I will open up your third eye. Then you will understand."
With fear rippling through her gut, Tasìa jolted out of her dream state; almost falling as her mind returned to consciousness. Instead, she lost her grip and she slipped.
Her emotional state grew dire as she slid down the vent with gaining momentum.
Tasìa pressed her back against the surface with her feet firmly set against the opposite side. The hard plastic of the LED strips bumped uncomfortably against her butt. She finally came to a stop, two dozen feet down from her initial advancement up the duct.
Tasìa paused to consider what she had seen. The black-eyed ones were not in her original memory. At least she possessed no memory of them in her youth.
With a tinge of doubt now clouding her certainty, she told herself they were a mere construct of the spore invasion.
What of the Rose? She did not remember that as part of the original memory either. Her mother never called her Rose, did she?
Tasìa looked up. Through the illumination caused by strips of LED lighting running up the vent she could make out an orange haze floating above her.
It whipped slowly around, moving in mathematical involution. Patient, it seemed, as if it waited for her.