Even after seeing what my work has done, I have no regrets. If I had been followed better, listened to more closely, all of this could have been avoided.
The fault is not in the R0713.
Arnon D’Bvaym
THE ETHEREAL LIGHT that had barely brightened the halls and rooms of Id’s factory nearly disappeared after the door to the surface had sealed shut. Good. As far as Kayla was concerned, this put her even more in her element. She was accustomed to functioning on little light, and silently stalking through near-black hallways was even easier than doing so through the forest. She didn’t have any risk of stepping on twigs or leaves here, although Kayla kept a close eye on her foot placement anyway. She was also impressed by how quietly Westley managed to slink along behind her, particularly considering that he seemed to be having difficulty remaining in reality. She couldn’t tell what color his face was, but his expression revealed that his arm and shoulder still hurt a great deal, and, despite wiping his face clean, half of it was covered in lines of blood from the gash in his forehead. A red ember stoked in Kayla’s stomach.
Kayla tugged Westley into a side hallway and held her breath as two rozies shambled by. 64Bit had once suggested that Id’s rozies may have enhanced senses, but the fact that they kept bumping into walls and doors—sometimes leaving dents behind—attested that they didn’t have night vision, despite creepily glowing eyes. They also didn’t seem to be able to smell better than any regular person—Kayla could smell herself and Westley and knew that hard travel through the wilderness had not left them smelling like roses. These advantages were likely all that kept Kayla and Westley alive as they slunk through the factory for hours after Zed’s betrayal, initially hoping to find an exit, eventually settling on hope for shelter.
The doors of the factory were randomly sealed shut: some wouldn’t budge, others slid open easily, a few were open before Kayla found them. Several times, Kayla was nearly forced to confront a rozie following them when a door she attempted to open refused to budge, but fortunately none of these rozies appeared to be the intelligent kind, like Zed. Kayla tried to push memory of the demonic rozie out of her mind for a moment. Though Kayla had felt some satisfaction in killing Id’s rozies and slightly avenging Fort, her real knot of pain and anger had Zed at its center—and herself. If she hadn’t found that rozie head and arm, if Zed hadn’t ever entered the valley, Richard would still be alive, grumbling about something Kayla did as Kayla made sure that she left her mark on the world. It was because of Zed that Kayla would never see Richard’s big, dumb smile ever again, or get annoyed at the way his s’s whistled . . .
Kayla caught herself before she got too angry. Now wasn’t the moment. She needed to keep herself and Westley alive. Then they could escape the factory, hunt down Zed, rescue 64Bit . . . and, most importantly, kill that filthy rozie and its evil trunk.
I’m fixating again. Stop thinking about it. Focus on where you are. Kayla slipped through a room and took it all in. No sign of rozies, but no exits either. If one of the monsters entered by chance, she and Westley would be trapped. This would not be their safe haven. Kayla poked her head into the hallway, looked up and down, then tugged Westley again. “C’mon,” she whispered.
“We didn’t do anything,” Westley murmured. Instead of moving forward with Kayla, he slumped to the floor in the doorframe. “We failed. We didn’t save anyone—they probably all got turned into rozies. We didn’t even escape. Zed kidnapped Bit and left us here to die. I thought . . . I thought . . .”
Kayla shushed Westley and glanced down the hallway. She thought she noticed movement again. Shut up! Kayla thought.
“This isn’t supposed to happen. Heroes beat the bad guys, I thought. I didn’t know how we’d win, but we’d win. That doesn’t mean the bad stuff wouldn’t happen, but we’d overcome.”
Footsteps, uneven and clear in Kayla’s ears, floated down the hallway. Something was definitely approaching. “Westley!” Kayla hissed, slapping him gently and, to her surprise, feeling guilty about it. “Shut up! We’re not in the clear yet.”
Rather than shocking Westley into clarity, Kayla’s slap seemed to shut something in Westley off. He rubbed the elbow of his injured arm and stared at the ground, unmoving. Kayla rolled her eyes. She pushed Westley forward so that he leaned away from the doorframe, hooked her arms around his chest, and slowly dragged him deeper into the room she had just explored. Westley was at his limit—hopefully this room would be safe enough.
Kayla let go of Westley after they were out of view of the open door and held her breath. The footsteps grew louder, a small crowd of them, all unevenly moving down the hallway and bumping into things. There was something strange about the sounds, though—they seemed too soft, as if the rozies were being extra gentle as they stepped and ran into things. The thought chilled Kayla’s bones. What if this were a crowd of intelligent rozies? If even a single one glanced in this room, she and Westley would be doomed. She had been stripped of her weaponry: her gun and knife, Zed had destroyed; the knife Westley had given her, gone. Maybe she could gouge out a rozie’s eyes with her fingers.
No. I’ll crawl away from Westley. If they peek in and see me, maybe they won’t notice him. I’ll make some noise, try to slip past them and run. Maybe Westley won’t be noticed. He can lie there and whine until he recovers. Maybe he’ll survive.
Maybe.
The footsteps approached the door—preceded by a beam of light, strangely enough. Regardless, Kayla lifted herself to a crouch and prepared to leap forward if something looked in.
A head poked in, the light emanating from it making it look fiery and demonic. Kayla leaped into a run, rushing toward the figure, then dropped to the ground and slid passed it into the hallway. She used her momentum to bounce to her feet off the other wall and—
“Aaaaaaaaaaagh!” The figure raised its arms in the air, shouting in an old, creaky voice. Kayla paused, then turned to look at the figure. The way she could see its chest moving, the way it pressed itself against the wall opposite her, it was clearly more terrified than she was. Kayla took a step forward; the figure flinched. After a moment of staring, the figure said, “Ye be not rozie, aye? I’m an old man—apparently—and unarmed. If ye be looking to hurt me, I suggest making it quick and nipping out as quickly as ye can. There’s rozies about—at least one of us should live.”
Kayla cautiously stepped forward. As she did so, her eyes adjusted to the light and the figure before her transformed into an old man. His skin had liver spots, he was covered in wrinkles, and he was dreadfully thin; what’s more, the bandages that covered his arms, legs, and lower body unmistakably identified him from earlier, as well as the glass port in his forehead that shone like a flashlight. “You’re the guardian technomancer,” Kayla whispered.
The man looked confused, then ran his hands through the sparse hairs on the sides of his head. “Maybe? I don’t remember ye, lass. I don’t remember much, in fact. But I feel as if I should . . .” The guardian technomancer drifted off as he spoke, staring through Kayla rather than at her. After a moment, he shook his head and grinned a charming half smile, then the light in his forehead switched off. Kayla blinked as her eyes adjusted to the darkness again “My apologies for shining this in yer eyes. Call me Gizmo! And please, none of this ‘guardian’ business. I don’t believe to be worthy of such an honor. Even if we were just speaking of technicalities, I haven’t even an acolyte of my own to justify it. Would love to train one someday, though . . .” Gizmo’s voice drifted distant again.
Kayla studied the old man’s face. It was difficult to tell in the dark, but he seemed genuinely confused and concerned. Kayla could sense no guile in him.
“Come with me, then,” Kayla said. She took Gizmo’s arm, feeling oddly pleased that the guardian technomancer, a figure that had seemed so unapproachable, needed her help. She led Gizmo over to Westley and pointed. Westley was lying on the floor, breathing softly. “I’m trying to keep him alive. We’re trying to escape this horrible place. Can you help us?”
Gizmo knelt before Westley, grunting as he did so, and ran his hands over Westley with a medic’s precision. As he inspected Westley, he said, “Getting out of this drab place is second on my to-do, but I’d be glad to help ye. First off, though, there’s some people a floor or so below us in need of help. I suspect that they’d been kidnapped by a dark technomancer, but given the bloody mess that I woke up near, he’s dead already.” Gizmo froze and looked to the side. “Did I kill the bastard? Oh, ye’d think that’d be something burned into one’s memory. Taking a man’s life is not forgotten lightly, even a wicked one.” Gizmo shivered, then shook his head with a sudden change of focus. “This lad’s arm is broken!”
Kayla wasn’t certain how to respond. She had no idea how much of the guardian—of Gizmo’s memory was gone. The old man didn’t remember his acolytes and hadn’t even mentioned Fort—just how little did he remember?
And, what’s more, he’d found survivors? Not every citizen of Fort had been turned into a rozie? Kayla paused—she wanted to follow Zed and destroy the rozie, a need that rested heavily in her gut, but she felt a stronger pull to stay here, to protect Westley and try to rescue the surviving Forters. She knelt beside Gizmo and placed a hand on his shoulder. Gizmo focused his attention on her, his eyes bright.
“I want to help save those people. I can’t think of anything more horrible than being trapped here, starving to death, or else becoming rozie food. But there’s a lot of rozies wandering around. I think we need to find the way out, first, or at least find a safe middle place that we can lead people to, if they aren’t in immediate danger. Wandering through this dark factory with a scared crowd and no plan sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.”
Gizmo squinted his eyes, then turned back to Westley as he unwrapped some bandages from his arm, revealing scars that were clearly visible even in the dark. “Yer a sharp one, lass. This idea, I like it.”
The old man’s confirmation felt good for some reason. Perhaps it was because of Kayla’s shift in focus, the shift that began with her choosing to stay with Westley rather than follow Zed. She would one day make Zed pay the debts he owed her, but, for now, it felt better to be focused on where she was. Kaylalooked at Westley, who seemed to finally be relaxing under Gizmo’s care.
“If it’s not too late,” she said, “let’s do what we came here for.”
#
“THE HIVE WISHES to speak to you, Divinity.”
Prophet couldn’t build enough hands to count on their fingers how many times he had heard that phrase. He sometimes wondered if the Hive considered him at its beck and call, rather than the other way around—if so, he would need to severely moderate the Hive’s thoughts for a few weeks or months until it settled into a more correct routine. But, at the same time, Prophet did bring this upon himself. He preferred to speak with the Hive in person, after all, and didn’t like it when the Hive interrupted him itself, even though the Hive could project its thoughts through all of the Gates of Heaven, even in the Garden. Prophet stood and nodded, indicating that the Enlightened servant should run ahead of him to alert the Hive that Prophet would come, even though the Hive knew the moment the thought crossed the Enlightened’s mind.
These interruptions did give Prophet time to admire the majesty of the temple he had built to the Creator, and Prophet was grateful for that. The ceilings were painted in beautiful renditions of planets, mountains, oceans, skylines—among the greatest of the works of the Creator. The walls were colored gold, white, and red, and simple stained glass graced every window. Even the floor was beautiful—every hallway, every room, featured a beautiful mosaic of polished, colored stone covered in lacquer. Prophet strolled slowly down the vast, empty hallways of the temple, his hands behind his back as he admired his work and noted minor imperfections that he would have an Enlightened correct later that day.
His footsteps echoed through the halls. Prophet frowned. He would need to find ways for the Enlightened to move around the temple more, keep themselves busy—it wasn’t right that the Creator’s temple felt so empty. The Creator’s home must be filled with happy hearts and hardworking hands.
Prophet took the long route to the Hive’s room, enjoying the tapestries in the smaller hallways and stairs that were designed to look as if they had streams running down them. He paused in front of a tapestry just outside the Hive’s room and smiled as he took it in. The tapestry depicted the first technomancer as he gifted to the world the technology that enabled the creation of the Enlightened. The faceless technomancer stood in the middle of a grateful crowd, his hands held aloft with a metal body floating above him, a double halo of light creating the sign for infinity around the two of them. Prophet was quite fond of this piece, this reminder that the eternal world was on their doorstep. If only the last civilization of man hadn’t taken this holy technology and made a monster out of it . . .
Prophet frowned and leaned closer to the tapestry. Several individuals in the crowd had what looked like bloodstains covering their mouths and teeth; in addition, their eyes were entirely white. These individuals were small, hidden by regular persons, but once Prophet noticed one, he began seeing others. Prophet flared his nostrils and flexed his hands. It appeared that the Enlightened who had last repaired this tapestry was thinking for herself again—Prophet would need to see to that. Prophet added the tapestry, and the Enlightened, to his mental to-do list, and swept into the Hive’s room.
Two of the room’s unusually tall walls were essentially one large, black computer with dozens of human faces dotting its surface—the Hive—most of which were staring at Prophet as he entered. Each face had a full body attached to it, encased within a homeostasis chamber, and the brain behind each face was neurally connected to every other brain in the room, save for Prophet’s. A gifted technomancer each, their abilities to connect and command multiplied a thousandfold by their link . . . if only they could unify and become one.
Just a few days before, Prophet was confident that Id would bring him the boy, the core processor, and the work of salvation could enter its final stages, but recent communication had left him uncertain. Id’s increasingly erratic behavior and independent thinking was dangerous—if she hadn’t proven so useful and loyal in the past, Prophet would have sent far more than Hannah to check on his wayward disciple. The dark expressions on most of the Hive’s many shiny, red faces resurfaced these troubling thoughts in Prophet’s mind.
“Thank you for entertaining us, Divinity,” the Hive said, dozens of voices speaking in near unison.
Prophet noted several faces that appeared to be asleep or were otherwise not matching with the whole—these would need to be disciplined.
The Hive continued, “Id is no more.”
This surprised Prophet, but only marginally. Id wasn’t the first of his distant disciples to perish without his leave. “And the condition of her temple?” Prophet responded.
“Lost. The connection has been severed. Not physically— the systems are in place that should allow us to contact, even control, the facility, but something has changed in the software that removed our permissions and shut down communications. However, despite this silence, we did receive notification of Id’s death the moment her heart stopped beating.”
Prophet held his hands together behind his back and stared up at the Hive, his brow furrowed. Not knowing what happened to Id or her temple was troubling—did a rival technomancer suddenly get the better of her, or did she lose control of her Enlightened? As frustrating of a loss of resources as that was, Prophet had larger concerns: where was the core processor? And had Id managed to secure it, hopefully send it to the Gates of Heaven before her death?
“Where are Hannah and Gabriel?” Prophet asked.
“The tracker on her indicates that she is traveling home very quickly. More than likely she will bear all the news we seek. As for Gabriel . . . He is headed north, toward the Binary facility. I don’t know what agenda he is pursuing; perhaps he was given something to do in the area before Id perished.”
Prophet furrowed his brow more deeply and clenched his hands. Gabriel was Enlightened, but he required much more direction and oversight than Hannah did. Allowing Id to direct him had been a mistake—Prophet had put too much trust in Id. And if Gabriel were captured by the Binary, the heathens would likely learn too much of Prophet and his work—the Creator’s work. Something had to be done.
“Id was our disciple in the area—I don’t think it’s reasonable for us to take another of our satellite disciples and have them deal with this,” Prophet thought aloud. He paused, then continued. “The heathens of the Binary have required an enlightening light for some time, and I would wish to incorporate many of them into yourself. I will check on our projects downstairs—perhaps one of them can be prepared to bring the heathens in line and collect Gabriel in the process.” Prophet adopted a serene expression and looked at one of the Hive’s many faces. “Was that all?”
Many voices spoke in raspy unison. “What if Hannah brings with her the other boy, Divinity? What preparations would you have us make?”
Several moments passed as Prophet thought. Then he remembered—the child, the acolyte who had withstood Id’s torture and showed remarkable natural aptitude in controlling rozies. If he proved to be equally skilled in breaking them . . . “Have a room prepared for the child, and provide study material. Basics—I’ll want to judge how reliable he is before he learns of deeper doctrine. Milk before meat, you understand.”
“It shall be as you wish, Divinity.”
\ END OF EPILOGUE
Copyright © 2023 by David Ludlow
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