An Obsidian Sky Part 10

'Yes, please...um, where exactly are the elevators,' I stuttered.

'The elevators are located on the second gallery inside the transport mezzanine. Is there anything else that I can help you with?' The green figure of a woman stated all of this without emotion.

'Can you tell me anything about the quarantine?' I asked, wondering whether or not the system was even capable of understanding the situation.

'Of course citizen. The quarantine has been continuously implemented after several citizens experienced symptoms similar to that of a viral infection. The quarantine level was extended nineteen days after infection to encompa.s.s the remainder of the Commercial District. The Commercial District lost network communication shortly afterwards. The quarantine will remain in effect indefinitely. Is there anything else I can help you with?'

'No, that will be all,' I replied. The green lady inclined her head and disappeared. Still there was silence all around. With effort I began to move towards the stairs that would take me to the second gallery.

I had risen onto the first floor and was circling around the gallery towards the second level when I heard the sound of somebody frantically running up the stairs. I could hear their breath catching as they drew in air. There may have been more than one, but I could not tell. From my position I was blind.

I ran. My legs picked up their pace and I felt the hunger fall away, only to be replaced by that oh so familiar feeling of terror. I wound around the curved gallery stairs and onto the second floor. As I sprinted up the final stair I saw the overhead sign that indicated the transport hub.

The sign exploded in a shower of sparks. Whatever was chasing me was no ordinary infected. That thing still retained enough of its demonic intelligence to operate an energy weapon. I fled in the direction of the transport hub with super-human speed. A shot flew past me and exploded against a gla.s.s mobile which disintegrated into a rain of deadly shards and fell towards the mezzanine below.

The transport hub was just through the arch ahead of me. 'Summon lift,' I screamed to the ever watchful AI. A green figure floated next to me synchronising its refresh speed with my running rate.

'Of course citizen. I notice that you are in some distress. Weapons discharge has been detected, the police cannot enter a quarantine zone, would you like me to take executive measures?'

'Yes!' I screamed, 'for the love of fate, do something.'

I was nearing the lift now, but I could see from the symbols above it that it was still a considerable distance from me. I could hear the breath of the infected clearly now. I heard the AI's voice behind me. 'Attention criminal, you are in violation of Ascension Citizens.h.i.+p terms. Desist immediately or executive measures will be taken against you.' The infected merely snarled and fired another energy bolt towards me. I threw myself down and the bolt whizzed across my head and exploded against the door of one of the lift platforms. The door did not budge and inch.

The infected was going to get me, of this I was sure. I had nowhere left to run and the lift had not arrived. I turned around and raised my lancer. To my horror I saw not one, nor two, but closer to ten of them. They were moving with a speed that even the uninfected could not have achieved. I was going to die.

Behind them rose a curious floating object. It looked a little like Sean, with a blue eye in front of it. But the device was sleeker, longer and much more durable looking. From the underside of its body a ma.s.s of beams emerged and struck my pursuers, cooking them so quickly that they dissolved upon the impact. The creepiest part of the entire ensemble was that the device made absolutely no noise, and so the sound of flash-fried flesh was all the more audible.

The device erased the infected with little effort and casually descend back to wherever it had come from. The AI appeared again. 'Congratulations citizen, your a.s.sailants have been dispatched with. You are now safe. Please proceeded to your destination.'

As if on cue the lift arrived and the doors opened. I was still rather stunned by the display of power that the system had put on. Without really caring I punched my floor number into the machine and waited for the doors to open again.

The lift doors opened onto a corridor that ended on all visible sides in a view of the Commercial District. I was so incredibly high and yet I was not even half way up the building. In this moment of contemplation I felt the cold muzzle of a gun press itself into the back of my head.

'Don't move,' called a familiar voice. 'Into the next room.'

I nearly fell to my knees with the shock of it. I felt sicker than I had ever felt in my entire life. My stomach dropped and churned. The person holding the gun to my head was Aeniah, Aeniah Corinthia.

She pushed me physically into an apartment room.

'Why are you doing this?' I called out.

'I know what you saw George. I knew it would happen sooner or later. I was only surprised that you had not noticed right from the beginning, I have used my United World access ID often enough.'

'So what, what is the problem, I figured that you were older than you looked, Sean seemed to be trying to tell me just how old, but how is that a problem?'

'It is a problem because certain agents cannot know.'

'Who, who can't know?'

'Blue Dawn.'

'But why?' this was beginning to be far more complicated than I had imagined. It seemed as though even holding a gun to my head still would not make me pay enough attention.

'The answer to that is complicated and far too long to answer, I must be certain of your silence before I disclose any of it.'

In truth I was not really frightened of Aeniah, I was aware of my own value and knew that she would not kill me. If I was honest I did not really trust either of them. Blue Dawn seemed as though she might cut my throat the moment I became dispensable and I felt no need to arm her with any information that she did not need to know. It was for these reason that I said, 'I promise you my silence.'

Aeniah did not respond at first, she appeared to be weighing her possible options. I felt the pressure of the gun against my head lift slightly and then fall away completely. I waited a moment before I turned and saw Aeniah wandering further into the apartment. I hurried to follow her inside.

I found Aeniah staring out of a huge window and looking out onto the expanse of the city. She seemed smaller than before, hunched there with her hand firmly clutching the window ledge. Her face was half covered in a deathly shadow and half bathed in heavenly light. She sighed, a long tormented sigh.

'Where to start. Where to start.' She sighed again. 'Do you know how long ago it was that the United World ceased to exist.'

'Not exactly. Actually I don't think I was ever told.'

'No I don't suppose you were. Your generation lived like children, you were consumed with the most superficial things in life, it is no surprise that the word ended the way it did, that it never recovered.

'The United World officially ceased to exist two hundred and fourteen years ago. After that the consortium of nations that made it up fought for the last remaining portions of the world that remained habitable. It was this final fighting that began the end of the world.' She sighed again and seemed for a second as though she could go on for no longer. But despite my concerns she continued anyway. 'I was born two hundred and forty four years ago on a continent that you will never be able to visit. When I was twenty I entered the military just as the two powers of the world were gearing up for their control over the colonies that we had established together in the spirit of good will. After a series of gene treatments I was able to become a general.

'We became aware of Ascension's construction by means of a medium range reconnaissance probe. We were amazed by the strides that they had taken in technological development.

'Upon Ascension's completion Carvelle invited several members of the United World government to have the chance to benefit from the station's advances. I was included in the party. We were very impressed.

'I was tasked with the defence of Ascension and was given a United World Destroyer in order to achieve this end, should a war ever emerge. In compensation Carvelle agreed to export all his technological advances, aside from project Ascension.'

'In a matter of years the United World had infinite longevity, a genetic fortification that permanently stalled the ageing process. Ironic, I suppose, considering that within just a few years we would be proved very mortal indeed.'

Aeniah paused as if to reflect upon her past. Then she continued. 'My nature as a security enforcer gave me access to Ascension's systems. It is this authority you have witnessed,' strangely she smiled. 'I bet you think that being tasked with the protection of a station was somewhat a downgrade in my professional circ.u.mstances, but don't you get it, Ascension seemed the guiding light of the future, and I was going to be a part of it. Come what may.

'I got the news that we had dropped the bombs halfway through supper. I think I will always remember the meal, re-sequenced pork, cold, with a battery of cress. I asked for my orders and was told to bring in my Destroyer to help defend ourselves from the enemy. But I never left. The tactical download told us that the Untied World had dropped the bombs, that the fleet was destroyed, there would have been nothing left to defend. As far as I was concerned Ascension was the key to the future. With the advances they were making we could have returned to Earth and restored it to a pre-war state. But of course these advances never occurred. We watched from a distance as Ascension destroyed itself.

'It started slowly at first, but then it all fell apart. The angels went rogue, the population maddened as they were forced to drink more and more upon Carvelle's artificial nectar.'

Aeniah, perhaps realising that this was not the time for long stories, seemed to poise herself as though wrapping up the tale. 'So why am I so concerned about Dawn?' At the sound of that name her voice seemed to harden and her body language became far more square, as though responding to a request for a fight. 'It all started when Carvelle decided to abandon Ascension, ranting and raving about a future amongst the stars. I can't believe I fell for his bulls.h.i.+t. He really believed that he had found all the answers. We really believed him.

'For some reason he decided that the Xenith cla.s.s cruisers were insufficient, he wanted my destroyer. There was little that I could do, that f.u.c.king population and its casting meant that we did not stand a chance. A few of us managed to escape back onto Ascension when the Destroyer was invaded.

'I prayed to Blue Dawn to shut the project down, she could have turned the whole system off. I asked her to kill the Eye of Orion and transport it away from Ascension. But she would only kill the power. The population was already maddened by now, but at least they could not cast any longer.

'What Blue Dawn wants the most is to continue with project Ascension. She has realised the Eye of Orion network is a dead end, but when I was here before she was continuing the manufacture of new, more docile Equinox subjects. Enough was enough. I went down and into her power array and set energy disrupters on each of her DCNs and shut that b.i.t.c.h down.

'The moment Blue Dawn went down, it was all over. Ascension's failsafes activated across several sections of the station. I escaped by taking a small shuttle designed for one way FTL translations. I arrived back on Earth hoping to find some semblance of my society in the wasteland, some small refuge from which we could rebuild. Instead I found a population killing one another over the last remaining sc.r.a.ps of habitable planet. There wasn't much difference between Ascension and this maddening scene.

'In all the chaos I went back to the remains of the United World Military Command and used components from the hospital to alter my appearance and genetic fingerprint. This appears enough to have been enough to throw off all but Blue Dawn's suspicions. Ascension will continue to see me as I am, it was designed to be able to.

'After that I waited for a little bit of society to return. It just so happened that there was just enough resources in Africa for civilisation to exist for a while. Believe me, if there were any working FTL capable vessels left I would have moved to the colonies. Luckily there weren't, and given the circ.u.mstances on the colonies now, I wouldn't want to have ended up like one of those freaks.'

She finished and I thought about what she had said as we stood there together in the silence. She must have been the oldest woman in the world. I always knew that something was a little strange about her. It was then that I realised something else. In the growing silence between us I asked, 'wait, so what shut her down the second time.'

'I'm not sure. The charges I originally used might have re-fired, but this seems unlikely. She would probably have taken them offline, at least I didn't see them when we were switching on the DCNs. I think that she might have just faked a shut down in order to get us here, where she can manipulate us, where she has us under her control.

'Oh and if you are wondering why I helped to turn her back on, it was out of necessity. Without her it would not have been possible to engineer a solution. We wouldn't have been able to get to Hercula, the vessel we came in on would not have had the range. So I guess, so far, everything has worked out okay. But heed these words George, Blue Dawn will stop at nothing to redraft the Ascension project, all she needs is the Eye of Orion out of the way and some new subjects. I don't know how she is going to achieve any of this but believe me; she has a plan.'

I stared at her in wonder. 'Aeniah, even as far as this entire saving the species thing goes, that seems a little paranoid.'

'You really are an idiot, aren't you? This is what she is designed to do, her only purpose. She can do nothing but continue with the project. What we did to the AIs is beyond comprehension. They were never free, because if they were our society would have collapsed. She has to keep going you moron. She had no choice.'

'Okay, okay,' I said. She was after all quite willing to place a gun to the back of my head and I was in no rush to get any more bruises. 'So where are the nutritional synthesis devices.'

'Where do you think George?' She waited a second before gasping in an exasperated manner, 'in the kitchen, the past is not that different from the future, everything was just a little easier.'

I turned from the window and Aeniah to look for the kitchen. Just a little way away from my former line of sight was the familiar black granite and silvery utensils characteristic of only the most fas.h.i.+onable of kitchens. I walked inside and Aeniah followed, she was still behaving strangely. I sensed that she still feared that I might tell Blue Dawn her secret. She also seemed to have been strangely affected by her story. There was just the hint of a tear in her eye, a slightly hunched posture in her walk. Maybe for once, she would start to act her age.

The kitchen was similar in colour and precious material to a fas.h.i.+onable kitchen in Bataga, but that was there that the similarities ended. The entire room was a bank of curved clear screens elegantly placed on top of the black granite surfaces. I went over to one and after a few tries managed to get my order across. A sort of large black glossy cube began to print our meals. It was bizarre. A platform descended from its surface about half a foot, and a flat arm brushed itself back and forth, raising itself with each pa.s.s. Beneath it was the food that I had ordered. Once the synthesis was completed the platform emerged from the device with an entire platter of food.

I turned to Aeniah and I said, 'well that was a lot easier than I thought it would be.' It seemed just too easy, no infected on this floor, Aeniah had not shot me, it was all far too easy.

We gathered the food into a basket that had been placed next to the kitchen surfaces. Again it was too easy. It was the same when we descended the lifts. Nothing got in our way, nothing at all.

We were descending towards the fifth floor and the lift was slowing when it happened. The Chorus Heights AI resolved in the confines of the elevator and the lift stopped.

'Attention citizens. Due to an administrative override, quarantine across the city has been lowered. All systems are now available for public use. All buildings are open. As a travel advisory this system advises that you refrain from entering public s.p.a.ces or travel in any way other than using ma.s.s transport.'

Something began to nag at my thoughts. There seemed nothing the matter with the Commercial District. In fact with the level of protection the Chorus Heights AI could offer, I felt very relaxed indeed. It was because of this notion that I finally asked, 'why the travel advisory?' I immediately wished that I hadn't.

'Whilst the Eye of Orion dissidents were contained within the confines of the city's buildings and sealed infrastructure, the resolution of the quarantine enabled their escape. This system is issuing the travel advisory to you because it has estimated that around two hundred and fifty thousand political or genetic dissidents have been released back into the surface population.' The green woman finished her announcement without emotion. I knew what she meant by dissidents. The infected were out. We had not realised it, but we had just become the architects of our own destruction.

To Aeniah this appeared to be nothing of a surprise at all, although a slight twitching of her lips gave the game away. She was ready for a fight. 'Chorus Heights,' she commanded, 'immediately dispatch sentinel retainers for our protection. In addition patch us into the Commercial District's data-link network and give us real time surveillance feeds.'

The green woman snapped to attention, raising her hand in a curious gesture of symbolism and replied, 'working general. Commands issued. Cos-net access granted, sentinels dispatched.'

The lift resumed its journey back down to the transport hub. Aeniah raised her gun towards the elevator door. I took my lancer off the holster on my back and armed it. I raised it to the door just as it opened.

On the other side of the door was a horde. They had obviously descended from the higher levels using the stairs. They had not yet seen us and were a little busy with the fact that the sentinels were pulverising them in their ma.s.ses. The sentinels were essentially what I had expected. They were the same devices that had saved me from the infected as I went up to find Aeniah.

For some reason she dropped to her knees. I wondered if she was okay. She held out her hand, but it was not to me. A holo resolved into the floor and covered the entire lift up to about a foot high, split into several sections it showed the way back to the hopper in a series of real-time surveillance feeds.

'The sentinels won't keep them distracted for long.' Aeniah glanced at me and then sighed again at my ignorance. 'You would have thought if we could kill them this quickly and efficiently then Ascension would not exactly have been overrun. They can cast George! They will pluck those sentinels from the air and tear this building down if they have too.'

'But isn't the Eye of Orion shut down?' I hissed.

'No. Cutting the power to it is only enough to reduce its broadcast range and the level of power it could offer.' I looked confused. 'For f.u.c.ks sake George will you just get something for once.' I stared at her and waited. 'The Promethean Layer acts like a drug. The more you have, the more you want. You get addicted and desire a higher and higher dose. The angels don't cut it so they bring in the Eye if Orion, but that don't cut it after a while so you jack it up with a power source. All Blue Dawn would agree to was a shut down of the power supply. She couldn't break it, so she chose to study it. This means that even though the infected are stupid, they work like a hive. Get them in large enough numbers and they might just do something smart. Get them in numbers like this and there will be enough of them to cast!'

'Ok so how do we get back to the hopper?' I asked.

'You're joking right? I mean you are seeing this surveillance feed?'

I realised that I had not been paying attention. Oh f.u.c.k. The hopper had been overwhelmed and was lying on its side filling with water. The jetty was packed out. It seemed as though every infected had been desperate to get a good tan out by the water. Abigail and Harris were nowhere to be seen.

'What the f.u.c.k do we do Aeniah?' I was starting to panic. The feeds showed that there was simply no way that we were getting out. And even if we did our transport was gone. We would never survive on the streets.

There was a fizzing sound and then a bolt of blue shot out of the decimated crowd. It struck a sentinel which exploded in mid air. More bolts began to fly now from the depths of what remained of the horde. They were casting now. I thought I was witnessing evolution. I thought that I could almost see them think, as a perfect and complete whole. It was the kind of image that could make your stomach turn. I looked at Aeniah in desperation. Her face was thoughtful.

'Observation Deck,' she announced spontaneously. The lift doors closed and I felt a pressure in my legs as it began to surge upwards. 'Sean, meet us in the observation deck.'

A holo of Sean appeared on Aeniah's arm. She continued, 'Did you find your power modules?'

Sean replied, 'yes sir. I am en route.' His holo dissolved. The floors on the lift continued to race upwards. We were now hurtling past the hundred floor mark. Aeniah seemed to be fidgeting with something and seemed concerned. This worried me, it was almost impossible to make Aeniah nervous.

As we whooshed past the hundred and twentieth floor she turned to me and said, 'George, you know you could connect to the Eye of Orion. Blue Dawn has lied to you, she doesn't want you to get too much power. She wants you docile and easy to manipulate. Even though the Eye of Orion is down, you could connect to it and be useful. I know you don't want to, but I could really use some of that old time magic about now.'

'I thought you had a plan,' I maintained.

'I do, I can get us off this building but we will only end up on the streets. When that happens we are going to have to run straight to our vehicle and race our way out of here. If you could connect, you could help defend us from their casting. It may be our only chance.' Her worry was infectious. Contained within those few words was Aeniah's confession. She was in over her head and she was frightened. It was in this moment of Aeniah's humanity that I decided to try.

For me the Promethean Layer was like a star that was always superimposed somewhere in your vision. It was faint, but if you looked at it the world would take on a new quality. It would be filled with light and you could see straight into the heart of things. Concentrate a little harder and you would hurtle towards this star, until it became brighter than the sun, until there was nothing else you could see. And then and only then the world would re-appear and you would be connected. When I was next to the angels the star was a lot brighter. But now with the reduced power of the Eye of Orion I could barely see it. It was so faint that I could barely be sure of its position in my field of vision. It was this uncertainty that made a connection difficult, because you had to focus on it to connect.

I focused on that faint star but nothing happened, I couldn't get it within the centre of my vision. I tried to move it, but it would not comply. The Promethean Layer was obviously something that would not bend to my will. Bearing this in mind, I closed my eyes and waited. Sure enough after a couple of seconds the star winked into a brighter being. This was it, I could focus upon it. I gently moved my mind's eye, rather than the star, into the centre of my vision and focused. There it began to blossom radiating outwards in pulses. The supernova began to expand and expand, filling my mind with light. A roaring appeared in my conscious that threatened to drown out my thoughts. This power was unlike the kind that had been delivered by the angels, it was more violent. It was harsher and it felt dangerous.

The explosion of light overwhelmed me. I thought I would cry out from the bliss that it was filling me with. My mind was crushed under its weight. Then, just as I was beginning to believe that I would die, the light was replaced by a sudden appearance of reality. It was a reality purer than what I could see with my normal eyes. Aeniah still looked the same, but she was different. I could see light radiating from her. The red throbbing pulse of energizing blood flowing through her veins captivated my imagination.

'I'm connected,' I gasped.

'Okay we only have one floor. Just hold on until we hit the ground.'

The lift doors opened and we raced out onto the building's roof. The wind was awesome in its ferocity at this height. With my enhanced vision I could actually see it with its grey arms and tendrils slas.h.i.+ng across us, about us. I followed Aeniah's radiating glory towards the side of the building.

From here I could see the expanse of the city. The Commercial District, seen through the lens of the Promethean Layer, was even more awe inspiring than before. Each of its buildings glowed and pulsed with the yellow light of their power supply. I could see the power distribution hubs which were as bright as a freshly exploding nuke. The trees glowed with a greenness that was so fluorescent they were almost in danger of seeming fake.

Sean was waiting at the edge. Plugged into the side of him were two power modules which threw out a static white.

'I am ready to take you down Sir,' Sean stated cheerfully.

'What?' I cried at a loss for how this feet of magic was going to happen.

Aeniah turned tiredly towards me. 'George, Sean is equipped as you might have noticed with aerial repulsers. The two power modules I asked him to requisition have given his repulsers the temporary strength to carry us to the ground. However they were not intended for this purpose and so, it is going to be more of a controlled fall.' Aeniah proceed to firmly hold onto one side of Sean.

'I am not so sure about this,' I said as I grabbed the other side. But it was too late, we were already falling. The building raced it's way skywards as we fell down towards the ground. Floor after floor rushed past us.

'You gotta slow down Sean, we won't make a landing at this speed,' I exclaimed. He, of course, did not listen.

The ground was coming into full view. The infected were all staring upwards, staring straight at us. They were no longer the size of ants and my confidence that we would be able to make it through them began to fade.

We were so close now that I could make out their faces. They were a pallid color, drained of any blood and life. Their lips, much in the fas.h.i.+on I had seen on first entering Ascension, had been torn from their faces, exposing raw jaw and tendons. Some were missing limbs, others were bloated beyond recognition as human. They had all drank too much from the Promethean Layer and were paying the price for that mistake. The best thing about the whole situation was that I noticed that Sean's rate of decent had began to slow.

I looked at Sean, if it was possible for a totally expressionless and faceless slab of metal to express strain, that he was expressing it. With my enhanced vision I could see the sparks of failing circuits and the fried components that might ultimately lead to our deaths. Even though we were not far from the ground I knew that a fall of this height would almost certainly leave us dead.