Crush Depth, The Reef

Lumiara, Survivor’s Refuge

4454.2.10 Interstellar

Finding a person who didn’t want to be found in the Reef was more challenging than Janus had thought. Two kilometers across and at forty floors or more, the Reef was a city of over fifty square kilometers, as big as the capitals of ancient nations on Old Earth. The Apostate had blocked all contacts and disabled his locator service, so they were going to have to track him down the old-fashioned way.

Nikandros refused to participate, and based on his reaction, Janus was just as happy not to have the architect along. Lira came to negotiate the contract, and Ryler came as well since he at least knew what the Apostate looked like and his supposed habits.

The Cult librarian was surprisingly tight-lipped about it.

“Can’t you just show us a holo of him?” Lira asked.

“He’s a very private person,” was all Ryler would say.

That turned out to be a pattern that repeated itself all around the Reef. Some people feigned ignorance, while others flat out refused to point them to where the Apostate might be. For someone that Nikandros despised, the Apostate seemed to inspire an incredible amount of loyalty. Or maybe it was fear.

After two hours and less than ten percent of the Reef searched, Janus started to feel like they were taking the wrong approach. “We’re never going to find him like this.”

“We’re not trying to find him,” Ryler said. “We’re trying to let him know we’re looking for him. He’ll either ignore us or reach out.”

Janus wanted to reach out and wrap his arms around Ryler’s throat for being so mysterious about it all, but he clenched his teeth, and they took one of the transit cabins to the next quadrant of the ring.

They searched, and they moved on. Over the next three hours, they checked bars, nightclubs, mariner clubs, and seafood eateries. There was also this one strange venue for retired sailors that was officially a warehouse and several low-cost flophouses. Of the little they could gather about the man they were searching for, he never frequented the same place twice in a row but was never gone for long, and he had a taste for the most crowded and least expensive entertainment the Reef could offer.

“I’m starting to think he isn’t real,” Janus said.

“He’s real,” Ryler insisted.

“I need to head back,” Lira said, her eyes glowing. “There are still things that need to be coordinated even if we find this legendary bar crawler.”

They’d covered about a third of the Reef by now, at least the parts of it Ryler and the people willing to talk had indicated.

“I had a thought,” Ryler said. “There’s one more place we should go before giving up.”

They took one of the transport capsules a farther quarter-turn around, and then they rode the nearest elevator to the last level. Janus was surprised to see it was sublevel forty-three. He’d thought their colony on level forty was the bottom of the ring.

The doors opened, and the cab was filled with the rich organic smell of algae, rotting organics, and day-old fish.

“Survivor save us,” Lira said. “What is that smell?”

“Welcome to Crush Depth,” Ryler said with a crooked grin. “Lowest level on the Reef.”

***

Crush Depth smelled like sweat and oil and rot, to the extent that even Janus, having worked in waste reclamation, noticed it, and Lira looked like she might throw up. Ryler was surprisingly unbothered—he’d worked in materials recycling and upcycling for the most part.

“Implants,” he said when he caught Janus looking at him. “I turned my sense of smell off.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Lucky jerk,” Lira said.

Ryler winked at them. “Let me know when you decide to get some work done. I know a guy.”

A whiff of something floral was followed by the scent of fish guts. “Any idea where we’ll find him if he’s here?” Janus asked.

“There’s just the one bar,” Ryler answered, leading them through the crowd.

That was the other thing that surprised Janus. A quick read of the layout and signage told him Crush Depth was meant to be a maintenance floor, the place where all the fluids of the Reef pooled before being screened, filtered, centrifuged, purified, and pumped back to the upper levels. It should have been odorless, which either spoke of poor upkeep or deliberate inefficiency.

The crowd told him it was deliberate. Janus had seen a number of what the Cult called eccentrics during his visits around the Reef or his more frequent trips to the outer settlements. They were people who used cybernetics and bio mods to achieve something far enough from Standard that they might not be strictly called human. They did it for a variety of reasons ranging from performance and aesthetics, and the people themselves ranged from extreme rationalists to neurodivergents and a not-insignificant sample of mental illness, and they all seemed to have gathered here.

“Have you noticed that people are staring at us?” Lira said over the comm.

“Of course they are,” Janus said, edging past a woman covered in urchin spines and catching a glance from a man with vertical pupils. “We’re weird.”

Lira took a minute to process that and then answered. “I see what you mean.”

Down here, the unmodified didn’t belong. They were either slumming or looking for trouble, and several glares made it clear that Janus, Lira, and Ryler weren’t welcome.

They reached The Sump, the ‘one bar’ Ryler had mentioned. An old, faded sign hung just outside the condemned-looking edifice, which seemed to have been deliberately made to look corroded. It was also the size of Tartarus, the biggest of the sixer clubs back home. There was no line at the door, just a constant flow of people moving out and moving in, but somehow the bouncer picked them out.

“No normies inside,” the woman said. To say she was large didn’t cover how much she loomed. She was over two meters tall, and her arms and legs were chrome below the shoulders and thighs.

“They’re with me,” Ryler said.

“I said no—”

Ryler tilted his head, and his jaw dislocated. The back of his head popped open by a centimeter, and several vents in the back of his neck opened. His fingers elongated and separated at the joints, revealing steel bones, and his eyes glowed gold as a blue holographic ID credential floated in front of his chest.

The woman swallowed. “Apologies, Librarian Abraxxis. You are, of course, welcome, as are your guests as long as they stay with you.”

Ryler’s implants and prosthetics retracted, leaving Janus shocked and looking for the hidden seams.

“You’ve made some changes,” he said as they walked in.

“If you’re not moving forward, you’re falling behind,” Ryler answered. “Better let me do the talking.”

Janus nodded. He’d been an outsider often enough to know when he was in the wrong place. He hoped Lira had been around him long enough to know the same.

The noise level dropped perceptibly as they walked in, and several conversations stopped entirely as the people around the table stared. The main floor wasn’t packed, but all the chipped and faded tables were full of eccentrics drinking from mismatched mugs and eating greasy pub fare. The bar was standing room only, two rows of people deep, and the harried-looking wait staff moved just short of running throughout the room.

Conversations resumed, but it was still the muted energy of earnest conversation rather than the drunken bluster Janus would have expected. “How do we find him?” he asked Ryler over the comm.

There was a squeal, like audio feedback, and the crowd at the bar parted to reveal a man sitting on a stool that was bolted to the floor. He grasped the bar and turned himself around, his body hidden by a full-body diver’s suit with a hard neckpiece and an inky black glass dome. The man reached up with gloved hands, gave the glass a quarter turn to the left, and lifted it, allowing the dark fluid that had been contained in it to splash down his suit onto the floor, and the smell hit Janus like a wave. It smelled of iron, salt water, and blood.

The Apostate wiped his face with a gloved hand, blinking two sets of eyelids to reveal black pupils that filled most of his eyes. “I heard you were looking for me,” he said in a hissing voice.

“Yes,” Ryler started.

“Not you,” the Apostate said, drawing out the vowel. “Him. Invarian. He’s the biggest freak here.”

All the eyes and other sensory organs in the Sump turned to focus on Janus.

Janus stared at the Apostate across the room. His heart was thumping, and his stomach was in his throat. The man on the stool, if Janus could call it that, had the eyes of a sea predator, the slit nose of a shark, and the needle-like teeth of an alligator gar. His skin—or maybe they were scales—had a greenish-brown tint, and his gills opened and closed as he breathed out of his neck. But Janus didn’t feel surprise so much as recognition and horror.

“Yes,” the Apostate said. “They said you were the one to finally purge Dr. Jahangir’s research. Good for you.”

“We need a captain,” Janus managed to choke out.

“Fine,” the Apostate said, sliding out of his bench. “I’ll meet you at the boat.”

Janus frowned. “That’s it? You’re just… going to meet us at the sub?”

“You can settle my tab,” the Apostate said, clomping past in his heavy diving suit. He paused, shoulder to Janus’s shoulder, the smell of blood and the sea stronger than ever, and he said, “You’re young Nikandros’s outlier. I’ve never believed in the Praetorian thesis myself, but maybe you’ll make a difference.”

His boots clanged on the heavy deck plates, and then he was gone.

“What in the Void was that?” Lira said.

Janus sighed. “Another old, old man who knows too much and doesn’t say enough.”