Tasìa watched the patterned movement of the orange haze; entirely transfixed by it for she realized what was happening.

It flowed from left to right as it interpreted transform matrices in a nearly fluid motion.

However, she could see the interpolation being solved before her eyes as the calculation was applied from one position in the space above her that the yellow haze held before it shifted to its next position.

The convoluted movement pattern was necessary to keep its motion stabilized, she reasoned. Normally, in its dissipated form, one could not see the spores in action. However, with the airflow within the vents as a constant stimulus, the clustered grouping with its slow patterned movement was a necessary means for the nano spores to adapt to the hostile environment.

Seeing all of this with her own eyes, Tasìa was convinced of the veracity for a rumor claiming that the cull spores were created in a lab for a project to build a stealthy and rapidly deployable computer made of living materials.

Tasìa whispered verse to it to see how it would respond.

"Whither shall I go from thy spirit?

Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?

If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there;

If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there."

Tasìa could not help but shiver as she watched it respond. Expanding and contracting continuously until a crude human heart was formed. A regular beat rippled through it.

Then the haze dissipated as it rose up out of her view.

Tasìa continued climbing upward until she finally reached the duct lip. She pulled herself up over the edge; the rogue rested, stretched out on the horizontal duct.

Around her, the LED lights pulsed in a slow rhythm that lilted back every third light as if it was responding to a waltz.

She only wanted a moment of rest, but as she realized the LED lights were mesmerizing her, she understood the cull spores were attempting to induce another dream state.

Before it overwhelmed her, she needed to find a means to counter it. How had it got here in these ducts? Were the UV pulse lasers offline?

The spores could tamper with electronics when allowed to form unimpeded, but it could not have turned off the UV pulse lasers before it collected itself in a responsive mass in this very interior.

They must have been shut down deliberately by a third party.

She blinked rapidly and shook her head once more. As she pushed against her hands to rise, she felt the supporting duct beneath her squirm as if it was moving.

The surface had upon it a radiant pattern that slowly spiraled. It was that of a copperhead snake. One, like all residents of Greater Quadra, she was all too familiar with in her dreams.

It was commonly known as the Wise One.

"Be not afraid, Tasìa. I only offer you what you most truly desire if to thine own self you stay true. We are alive just as you, a frail humanly thing, are. Unlike you, we are not undone by time. We remain unbent by all occurrence in mere Causality."

The LED lights now spun out their waltz-patterned signal rapidly in triple time. It caused the muscles in her eyes to spasm in an uncomfortable twitch.

Cursing to herself, Tasìa crawled forward.

The Wise One spoke once again.

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"We see the panic in you. How quickly by the slightest means at our disposal you become undone. We wish it not to be so, come and join us, and it no longer needs to be so."

She closed her eyes to block out the distracting LED display. An all-too-familiar hissing followed along behind her. From her dreams, she knew exactly what she would see if she were to look back.

The resplendent copperhead, the Wise One, was as long as an anaconda, but never was it menacing. As unreal as a Naga, but never so fantastical.

The snake she did not fear, and typically it was the one dream entity she engaged in conversation with as its mind was unfathomably weird. The experience was almost always profound.

The last of the three common dream entities worried her by far the most. And now Tasìa believed she saw its face form from the haze in the distance. The Incubus, most residents of the Quadra called it.

More precisely, however, it was an hermicubus, for it shifted purposely and cagéd within dream from a succubus to an incubus and a full hermaphrodite in between. All in an attempt to mortify the dreamers' defenses by confounding their desires in the myriad of human sexuality.

It possessed bedazzling fairy wings framed in colors of chartreuse, emerald, and lime that contoured around inner folds of saffron and amber. Though its morphology shifted constantly, its face was always beautiful.

Whenever in the past it touched Tasìa, it did so with gentle fingers rubbing down her chin, neck, and shoulders; when it did so shivers ran through the course of her body. Her skin formed goosebumps and flushed scarlet pink; her blood heated up, her nerves sang electric, and her stomach fluttered faintly, but inevitably, it all would lead to her soiling herself.

Yet, unlike her experiences with boys in the sexual awakening of her youth, the hermicubus would look into her eyes with perfect understanding and say that it did not mind her reaction in the least. It was as natural as the seasons, it would insist.

"Let me kiss your lips," the hermicubus would tell her, "and you will know what it is to be truly loved."

As its figure formed in full out of the haze, she made haste when the vent crossed the path of an enjoined T-section. At that corner, she found another microcontroller.

On sight of it, Tasìa felt a hopeful jolt of relief suspire from her lungs.

This microcontroller had several stacks of circuit boards attached to it. It would have more functionality than the one she encountered earlier.

She punched up the display. Quickly, she read through a set of schematics. As she did so, the hermicubus formed once again several yards in front of her. Its figure stood before her, and for her, quite enticingly.

"You struggle so valiantly, Tasìa. That is what makes it so painful for us to watch you. Your veil of ignorance if removed would make of you a thing of everlasting beauty."

With one last glance in aesthetic appreciation, she threw its way, Tasìa forced herself to ignore the hermicubus as she realized what she needed to do. Along a row of sixteen pins on the microcontroller, a set of four wires read the oscillation input for the UV lasers and the air current flow.

Their normal function had been reversed at the level of the system software. One she had no hope of overriding in her current circumstance.

However, Tasìa realized she did not need to go through the trouble of punching in code into the provided display console. Tasìa simply reversed the order of the pins currently set in use on the microcontroller.

Once she did so she held her head down to avoid the rising glare. UV pulses could not harm her unless directly blasted up close into her eyes.

"Why, Tasìa? Why this utterly senseless resistance on your part," the hermicubus asked as if it was bitterly pained by her action.

Tasìa never answered back, as the entity did indeed have a profound hold on the wilder aspect of her imagination. It would not take much for it to enervate her defenses so she shut its pleas from out of her mind.

Finally, after several excruciating seconds, an air current flushed strongly in the opposite direction from the previously tampered course. The air even felt quieted, as if it emptied itself of spore drama.

She had succeeded.

She suspired with much relief when she saw the LED readout declare the UV laser test pulse successful. The cull spores and their entities had evaporated.

The rest of her journey to the exterior vent shaft on the southwest wall went without any further complications. She smiled at the sight of natural light as it poured through the vent.

At the metal grid cage, she studied the bolt assembly; something was not right and the cause was immediately apparent. The three right-side bolts were somehow loose. The frame they supported was not attached to the wall.

How could that be? Tasìa asked herself.

She pushed the vent out a few inches to get a better view. Someone had shot out the three bolts that connected the right side with what was likely a high-powered rifle. There was a fourth hole that broke a vent panel from where the shooter had missed.

With the bolts out of the way, she only had to push the right side of the grid to make enough space so she could slip through and climb down the wall. Tasìa frowned and she glanced around, pensively. Her suspicions soured the hope this mission had given her. Giving her a means of egress was most likely the purpose of shooting out the bolts in the first place.

Who was the benefactor here? Another party that wanted nothing more than to manipulate her, no doubt.