Melody Through The Mirroshade Lens (Download)

A Fiction Anthology for
River St. Grey, Danielle Lauzon,

Travis Legge, Lauren Roy
Developer: Michael Barker
World of Darkness Developer: Matthew Dawkins
Writers: River St. Grey, Danielle Lauzon, Travis Legge, Lauren Roy
Editor: Sándor Gebei
Art: San Denmark
Art Direction and Design: Mike Chaney
Creative Director: Richard Thomas
© 2022 PARADOX INTERACTIVE AB.

All rights reserved. Reproduction without the written consent of the publisher
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2 Melody Through the Mirrorshade Lens

The Profit — Lauren M. Roy 4
They’re Coming Through! — River St. Grey 32
The Test — Danielle Lauzon 61
Fell Winds — Travis Legge 89
Table of Contents 3
Lauren M. Roy
Maintenance hadn’t bothered replacing the burned-out lights in this corner of the
parking garage for years. Three levels underground, people only parked down this deep
during the holiday shopping rush, or if there was a big game in town. But the local sports
teams were notoriously terrible — not one had clinched so much as a wildcard slot in
over a decade. For eleven months of the year, these spots remained empty: too far from
the elevators, too dark, too dank, too creepy.
The worklights threw harsh, stark illumination across the crime scene: Someone had been
torn to pieces here; their remains were strewn haphazardly about the space. Before forensics had
switched the lamps on, the officers had only mercifully small glimpses of the murder, lit by the
squad cars’ headlights and the roaming beams of their flashlights. Now, though, even the veteran
homicide detectives looked grim and pale as they surveyed the scene. Here, the victim’s hand,
fingers splayed as though reaching for help; the wrist bone jutted out from it, stark white and
gleaming wetly. There, a tangle of viscera kicked into a corner. Everywhere, the blood.
Detective Reed had been on the force for 30 years. She figured she had at least
another decade and a half to go, but now, retirement couldn’t come fast enough. It
wasn’t just the ghastliness and cruelty on display; it was how little they had to go on,
how everything that could have helped them had failed. The garage’s security guard had
left his post in the booth to give someone a jumpstart a few levels up during the murder
window. The cameras that should have picked up the victim and murderer were either
on the fritz or pointed away from where they’d passed. This morning, a city worker had
accidentally erased the footage from the traffic cam across the street. The restaurants on
this strip had all been sold trial installations of some fancy cloud-based security systems.
They’d gone online in the last week. Reed had been delighted to hear it — they could’ve
examined the garage’s entrance from half a dozen angles.

Only, the provider had a service outage between midnight and 5:00 A.M., and
nothing got saved.
They’d catch a break, eventually. Someone out there saw something. She repeated
it to herself like a prayer every time the forensic team’s cameras flashed, though she
couldn’t help but feel like all the “coincidences” that robbed them of witnesses added
up to something bigger. Like there was a pattern here, only she was too close to see it.
The elevator on the other side of the garage dinged. Its doors groaned open slowly.
Reed wondered if it had been serviced in the last decade. Why couldn’t it have broken
down like everything else last night, preferably with the murderer trapped inside?
The white man who emerged from it seemed all the more slick and modern in
comparison. He was tall and reedy, the type of build that probably got him asked how the
weather was up there. He wore a somber black suit and tie, with a long beige overcoat.
His shoes were clean and polished. The mirrored sunglasses practically screamed I’m a
Fed. The only thing that didn’t seem entirely regulation was his sandy brown hair, which
rather than a regulation buzz cut was pulled back into a ponytail at the nape of his neck.
Didn’t matter. He carried himself like an agent. Reed suppressed a groan. Much as
she’d entertained the daydream of retiring, this was still her case. She wasn’t ready to
hand it over.
Captain should’ve given me a heads-up that we were getting company, she thought.
She peeked at her phone: no bars. Of course. Three stories underground, surrounded
by concrete. Our shit luck continues. She probably had half a dozen messages from the
precinct, and twice that many texts would blow up her phone when she went back up to
street level. Still, they had officers upstairs. The captain could’ve radioed them and sent
a runner down.
The man glanced around as he strode across the concrete. Reed couldn’t see his eyes,
but she got the sense he was noting every detail along the way. The moment his head
turned toward her, he marked her as the one in charge and angled his steps to meet her.
“Detective Reed?” he asked. He didn’t bother offering a handshake, instead going
right for his badge.
“That’s right. And you are?”
“Agent Caleb Whittemore.” He flashed a badge whose shield she’d seen a hundred
times before and tucked it away in one smooth movement. “I’m going to need your
people to clear out.”
“This is my crime scene, Agent Whittemore. We’ve got a lot of evidence to collect
still.” Reed gestured beyond them. A flash illuminated a particularly large pool of blood
as she pointed. “Unless you plan on getting those spotless shoes dirty?”
“I’m not asking you. I’m telling you.”
“That’s not how this works.” The officers near them had slowed their pace, listening
in on the conversation. “We’ll be happy to share whatever we find. Hell, the way this
one’s shaping up, we’re going to need the Bureau’s aid. But you can’t just throw us out
while we’re still picking up body parts.”
The Profit 5
“You can tell them to move, or I will,” he said.
There was a threat in there, one that made Reed’s blood go cold, even as it pissed
her off. One good thing about him leaving those sunglasses on — she could see that
not a drop of that fear showed on her face. The anger did, though. “No. You can come
upstairs with me while I have a chat with my captain. If I get chewed out for not obeying
you, you can feel smug about it. But too damned much has gone wrong with this case
already, and I’m not abandoning the scene until I talk to my superiors.”
For a moment, she thought she’d won. The hard line of his mouth softened, and he
let out a little sigh. He’d probably had his share of cases like this, too.
See? All you have to do is find some common ground, and—
Whittemore moved away from her, his hand dipping back into his breast pocket to
retrieve the badge. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you all to step away from what
you’re doing,” he said. “Put your instruments down and leave the area. Wait on the
ground level for further instruction.”
Reed expected her team to at least look to her for confirmation. There were at least
three officers down here whom she’d trained, and who would’ve thrown out at least
a half-hearted, Is that an order, boss? her way. But they put their tools down without
question, wherever they stood. Clipboards, cameras, evidence bags, set neatly on the
ground. Reed watched in disbelief as an officer placed her notepad in a pool of blood.
Crimson seeped onto the pages, obliterating her notes.
Then they filed past her, one by one, silently, heading for the stairs and ramps that
would bring them to the ground level.
“What did you do?” she whispered.
Whittemore started. He whipped around to face her, his mouth an O of surprise.
“You’re still here.”
“Of course I am. What the hell was that?”
The agent came closer, looming over her. She had to crane her neck to look at him.
She stared up into those mirrorshades, waiting while he sized her up. In the reflection,
the last of her colleagues disappeared into the stairwell. “You’re stubborn,” Whittemore
said. “Most days I’d admire that.”
“I’m going to need to see that badge again.” There should have been a runner
alerting her to an FBI takeover. He should have had a partner with him. Unless his
pockets were deceptively deep, he had no equipment with him to collect evidence:
no gloves, no booties, no bags. In fact, when he’d stepped closer to the officers, he’d
tracked right through a puddle of blood. It was on those perfectly polished shoes, now.
He’d added his own bloody footprints to the scene. Everything about his presence was
incredibly suspect. How had she missed this many red flags?
Whittemore smiled. It wasn’t cruel, or cold, or smug. If anything, he seemed a little
regretful, a little chagrined.
Of course, a smiling mouth could be a lying one. What mattered was what was in
his eyes.

Almost as if he’d heard her, Whittemore removed his shades.
“Oh,” said Reed. His eyes were a dark blue, the color of summer twilight. She saw
that regret in them, too, matching his smile. A distant alarm bell went off in her head,
finally warning her that something was wrong, that she was in danger. But she was
rooted to the spot, unable to break away from his gaze.
Until he said, gently, “Go.”
Those first few steps, she felt like a passenger in her own body. Her feet carried
her off despite her intentions. But the farther she got, the more her destination seemed
correct: head upstairs, into the clear night air, and await further orders from her captain.
What had she been worried about? Sometimes, cases ended up under federal jurisdiction.
This must have been one of those times.
• • •
Caleb watched the detective leave. It was very rare for someone to resist his orders
so strongly, and that intrigued him. Usually the suit, the badge, and the authoritative
tone did the work for him. Perhaps, when he turned in his brief on this assignment, he’d
recommend his higher ups in the Convention keep an eye on this Detective Reed. The
New World Order had plenty of unEnlightened associates, and they were always on the
lookout for more good candidates.
There’d be time for that later, though. Right now he had maybe five minutes —
ten if he was lucky — before Reed and her team came pouring back down. He wanted
to be out of there before then. It wasn’t that he’d be in trouble for disrupting their
investigation. A call in to the home office would easily get a Gray Suit down here to
smooth things over and support Caleb’s authority. But that was both inefficient and
unnecessary. He was good at his job and would be done here before the fog cleared from
the police officers’ minds.
Besides, while this operation wasn’t exactly off the books, neither did Caleb want to
draw further attention to it before he knew exactly what the case entailed. He’d heard the
dispatchers calling officers to the scene, and immediately his senses had started buzzing.
Caleb didn’t believe in hunches; he had over twenty years as an Operative under his
belt, two degrees, and an array of specialized training. Piggybacking onto the police
frequencies and hearing both what the dispatchers did say and the things they didn’t told
him this crime was out of the ordinary. The tremble in the responding officers’ voices
filled in plenty of gaps.
The worklights highlighted every crack in the old concrete, the years of trash that
accumulated in the corner, and, of course, the body. It was clear this wasn’t just the
dumping site, but the actual scene of the crime. Caleb squinted at the notepad the officer
had set down in a pool of blood. The force of his authority worked faster on some people
than it did others. He nudged the notepad toward a drier spot with the tip of his shoe,
and took in her observations. They weren’t much at this point — the victim was white
and male, anywhere from 18–55 years old. The cause of death was as yet undetermined.
“Torn to pieces” would surely be in all the headlines, but it wasn’t an official coroner’s
term.
The Profit 7
He tapped the frame on his glasses and surveyed the scene. The officers had placed
nearly two dozen yellow plastic evidence markers already. In his left lens, an overlay
took stills of the scene and analyzed the images. Here were several cigarette butts —
was the victim there by choice, meeting someone in this unmonitored, deserted space?
Or had the killer smoked them while they were lying in wait? No signs of a scuffle,
no broken glass, no shell casings. When Caleb found the victim’s hands, the knuckles
weren’t bloody, and the blood under the fingernails was likely his own. His skull showed
no signs of blunt trauma, but his face was forever frozen mid-scream.
Small piles of ash littered the scene, too. What might once have been the victim’s
wallet. A USB drive melted to slag; he aimed his phone’s camera at the mess of the tiny
circuit board, but even though his tech was able to recreate some of the information
etched onto it, it couldn’t determine the drive’s maker. He toed the fragile remnants of
a file folder, its contents burned beyond recognition. In later days, Caleb could access
the evidence files and see what the cops made of it all. Reed had a solid reputation for
closing cases, and she wouldn’t let any clues get overlooked.
Problem was that neither Reed nor her team nor their most sensitive instruments
could see the things that Caleb could. The brains in Q Division came up with the most
useful gadgets, but what they measured would blow the Masses’ minds. So, Reed’s
investigation would take her team in one direction, while Caleb’s would lead him
another way entirely.
He smelled it even before his glasses provided the information. Beneath the
overpowering miasma of blood, wet trash, and offal was the undeniable scent of magic.
He’d tried to quantify it over the years: bright and sharp, like ozone in the air after a
lightning strike. Even if he didn’t know what had happened, he knew that something
had happened. It was a bit like petrichor in that way — that heavy, earthy smell only
appearing when it rains dissipates rather quickly. So, too, would the trail of magic unless
he worked fast.
The overlay lit up his lenses. It was brightest in the center of the murder scene,
probably the spot where the victim was standing when the Reality Deviants cast their
spell. As Caleb circled slowly around it, the filter pieced together what he saw. In the top
left corner, a window popped up with an overhead view. Bright as day, as though they’d
painted it in fluorescent green, was some sort of symbol. Data streamed below it, as the
shades ran through a database of known RD workings.
Caleb let it run. He bent to examine another piece of the corpse. The victim’s
clothing was in tatters, but the fabric had the kind of industrial, mass-produced feel of a
uniform. There, on the shoulder, was a piece of a patch. The logo was mostly destroyed,
but the bottom part had survived. Some kind of parapet, maybe, or a tower from a
medieval castle. He snapped several shots of it, and fed it into the database as well.
Time was ticking down. In the overlay, the symbol lost its crispness. The bright
green faded to a dull olive. He needed to go. Caleb took a few last pictures and did one
more sweep in case he’d missed anything. If the victim had been waiting for someone,
that person hadn’t left a trace. Had they witnessed the death and run? Caleb wouldn’t
blame them. You see someone torn apart in front of you, you get the fuck out so you’re
not next. He already knew about the security camera failures up and down the street. It
implied pre-meditation, but outages that stymied the cops were rarely a match for the
Feed. One of Caleb’s trend analyst friends owed him a favor. It was time he called it in.
Here, Whittemore and Reed agreed: Someone out there saw something.
His work done, Caleb ensured he’d left no trace of his presence. He’d already thrown
enough chaos into an already chaotic investigation. No need to send the detectives off on
a wild goose chase because he’d left a size 12 print behind.
He emerged into the cool air of an autumn afternoon. The golden glow of sunset
bathed the street in soft light, a jarring contrast to the dark depths of the garage and
the harsh worklights illuminating the murder scene. Caleb felt for a moment like he’d
stepped into some other time and place, as though the elevator was some Q Division
portal or some weird Void Engineer invention. The sight of the officers standing in small
clusters and talking quietly grounded him back in reality, and he shook off that eerie,
otherworldly feeling.
• • •
Reed came back to herself slowly. The cool night breeze felt good on her face, the
air fresh and sweet after... after...
After what?
Flashes of the crime scene played out in her mind, snapshot after gory snapshot.
Why were they up here, and not down there? Her officers all wore similar expressions
— horror, confusion, alarm. Had there been some kind of spill that forced them up
here? Gas leak? A dangerous chemical? What sorts of things could erase your short-term
memory?
She wracked her brain, but all it dredged up was an image of her own face, reflected
in a pair of mirrorshades.
That Fed. What was his name?
Whittemore.
Was he still down there? How much time had passed? Her watch told her it had only
been a few minutes. “All right,” she said, then, louder. “All right! Officers! We’ve got to
get back down there. Go fast, and go carefully. If you see someone down there, I want
him cuffed, no matter what he says his credentials are. Understood?”
Her team snapped to as she spoke. They were well trained. Later, there’d be time for
incident reports and bewilderment. Right now, they had a job to do.
Downstairs, however, the crime scene was much as they’d left it. Reed saw no
sign of the agent who’d barged in and ordered them all out. He hadn’t left so much as a
footprint behind. No, that wasn’t quite right. A small patch of concrete showed through
one of the bloodstains. He’d taken something — a cigarette butt, maybe? One of the
victim’s teeth? The USB drive? She called one of the techs over and ordered them to
double check the evidence list. It was going to be a long night.
• • •
The Profit 9
As soon as he reached his car, Caleb pulled up the map on his center console.
It downloaded the information from his glasses and pulled satellite data from the last
24 hours. Primal Energy was always in flux, and most blips weren’t worth the cost in
manpower or little-e energy to track. But just because they weren’t constantly tracking
the patterns didn’t mean the Feed wasn’t recording them. Caleb set the parameters to
show him the murder window and leaned back in his seat to watch.
The map lit up like fireworks, showing a city alive with energy. Most of them
were tiny blooms, the types of low-level infractions that the Convention had long ago
ceased responding to. If someone at a casino or a backroom card game was nudging
probability, either the pit bosses or the mob bosses would catch onto them eventually.
If it got bad enough, the Syndicate would step in. Likewise, someone healing a cooking
burn, or conjuring that onion they forgot to buy at the supermarket. Did the NWO like
letting those things run rampant? Of course not. But if a street kid made it a few degrees
warmer in their makeshift shelter, so what? The problem, in that case, wasn’t a teenager
being warm at night; it was the system that left them cold and unhoused in the first place.
Was he part of that system? Maybe. Probably, even. But his job was to bring about
change by protecting the Masses, not stamping out every use of magic everywhere. You
didn’t call the fire department every time someone lit a match.
At 2:36 AM, the Feed recorded the flare in the garage. Caleb paused the footage and
replayed it, slowing it to real time. For ten seconds, the energy spiked high enough to
blot out the rest of the block, then immediately subsided. He looked for a parallel spike
somewhere nearby, but all else was quiet. He had to widen the search area three more
times, finally finding an equivalent flare in a suburb about an hour and a half to the west.
“There,” he said. “Got you.” He set the coordinates for the location and got
underway.
The sun sank the rest of the way as he drove. He was on the tail end of rush hour,
tangled with the last batch of city workers heading home on the highway. The car was
equipped with all kinds of bells and whistles that could get him to his destination faster
— algorithms finding the fastest way through the traffic, calculating lane changes and
upcoming slowdowns; a setting that adjusted his spatial coordinates, letting him slip
through gaps other motorists wouldn’t dare attempt; even a siren and emergency lights
that would get people to move aside the old-fashioned way. For now, he didn’t bother
with them. Whoever had set off that spell was smart, meaning by now they were long
gone.
The farther he got from the city, the sparser the traffic grew, until he was by himself
on an old country road, surrounded by farmland. It felt deceptively rural. Twenty
minutes in almost any direction would bring him to a bustling town center or a big box
store. He wasn’t far from an airport either, judging by the planes passing overhead every
few minutes. Yet it felt empty out here. Long stretches of woods lined the road, and
when those gave way to fields, they went on as far as he could see. In the distance, light
pollution from one of those close-by cities blurred the stars, but where he was now he
could pick out Aldebaran and the Big Dipper.

He disliked the quiet. The city’s buzz was a constant comfort to him, the sign
of lives being lived. Horns honking in the wee hours meant someone was out there,
that the world carried on even when he lay still in his bed. Out here, you had no such
reassurances.
But the sky sure was pretty.
The GPS led him onto a dirt road so old it was just a line on the map, no name to
speak of. A rusted fence was stuck permanently open and half-buried in the ground,
the victim of some storm long ago. Caleb’s records showed the property’s previous
owners had abandoned it decades ago. A chain of owners trailed off sometime in the
1970s, and while the town laid claim to it, they’d never bothered to do anything with it.
Buildings stood tired and slumped against the sky, dark shapes against the dark woods
behind them. The main house might have been pretty once, with that old New England
farmhouse sort of charm, but now it was a rotting shell. Its windows were covered in
grime or broken altogether. Vines climbed the drainpipes and chimneys, wreaking havoc
with the shingles.
The energy flare had come from the barn. It was in even worse shape than the house.
One of its massive doors hung off-kilter, letting in wind and rain and wild animals.
Gaping holes marred the roof, probably caused by fallen branches and years of neglect,
but Caleb couldn’t help but picture a giant smashing his fists through it.
As he got out of his car, that bright tang of magic washed over him. It wasn’t as
strong as it had been in the garage. Give it a few more hours and there’d be nothing but
the scent of autumn leaves, old hay, and dust. But for now, it was still very much present,
tickling Caleb’s nose and making his hackles rise. It got stronger as he entered the barn.
He’d left the car’s headlights on. They threw his shadow down the center aisle, nearly
to the barn’s back wall. Horse stalls lined the left-hand side of the building. Old tack hung
outside each, their leather gone brittle with age. Aluminum pails dangled from hooks.
Those whose bottoms hadn’t rusted out held brackish water from the last rainstorm. A
pitchfork leaned against the wall. Caleb took it as he passed — just because there were no
signs of anyone still in the vicinity didn’t mean they hadn’t left something nasty behind.
Where the garage had been devoid of evidence and its immediate vicinity carefully
scrubbed, the spellcasters had taken no such precautions here. Muddy footprints tracked
toward the back of the barn. As he got closer, he saw that they’d swept the old hay aside,
clearing a ritual space under the hay loft. The burned-down stubs of fat candles sat atop
wooden crates, melted wax leaving long trails down the sides. They hadn’t done it all
by candlelight, though: A camping lantern hung from a long nail. It was newer than
anything else here, probably fresh out of the package.
Caleb flicked it on. Cold white light filled the barn, and there it was: his second
corpse of the day.
His heart sank.
The victim sat, bound to a chair in the center of a ritual circle. Symbols covered
the walls and floor, painted in a precise arrangement around him. One symbol directly
beneath the chair matched the shape he’d found in the garage. The part of him that
The Profit 11
appreciated art and pattern admired the design. His shades fed him data as they matched
symbols from the Feed’s databases: They represented life and connection, mainly,
whatever the Reality Deviants felt would tie this man to the other.
Deep down, he’d known this was a likely outcome even as he’d avoided thinking
about it. A killing as gruesome as the one in the garage didn’t happen without a great
expenditure elsewhere. He’d hoped to find some makeshift Etherite contraption, a device
that skirted several laws of physics but made sense if you squinted at it the right way.
Maybe a machine that connected to the victim by a pilfered lock of hair, or something
that momentarily opened a tiny portal right into his heart.
But this, of course, was an older kind of magic than that. The Etherites were fond
of steam and steel, but the older Traditions’ magic — or magick, as they preferred —
depended on flesh and blood and bone. Caleb couldn’t tell just what type of ritual had
done the job. The fact that it was one put, what, seven of their nine in play, plus half a
dozen smaller sects besides? He needed to narrow it down.
Unlike his counterpart in the garage, this victim was still in one piece. Caleb
approached gently, as though he were disturbing a grave. There was no chance this
person was going to suddenly gasp for breath and cry for help; he looked like he’d been
dead at least a week, even though the data scrolling along in Caleb’s left lens confirmed
that the Primal Energy readings matched the timing of those in the garage. Had they
killed him offsite and brought the body here to perform the ritual? Or dug this guy up
shortly after his funeral?
The dead man was far enough gone that the facial recognition algorithms were
having trouble placing him. Unlike his counterpart, he wasn’t wearing a company-
issued uniform, but his clothing suggested that he worked an office job: dress pants, a
button-down shirt. A suit coat was draped over a chair off to the side and seemed to be
about the right size.
Caleb plugged an emissions analyzer into his phone. It was about as big as a mobile
credit card reader, made to detect and identify the presence of various chemicals and other
compounds in the air or on a small sample. He touched it to the victim’s hand. No presence
of embalming fluids. That didn’t surprise him too much — why remove a cadaver’s suit
jacket before propping them in a chair? It wasn’t like the dead man would get hot.
Which meant he probably had died here.
Had the murderers really killed him and left him to rot for a week or more? That
felt sloppy, compared to the precautions they’d taken to erase their presence around the
garage. A week was plenty of time for this man’s loved ones to file a missing persons
report. All it took was one cop getting a lucky lead and chasing it down, and this place
could’ve been swarming with local law enforcement long before the murderers ever
began their spell. Why would they take that risk?
Half a dozen boxes popped up on his phone screen as the device did its thing.
Caleb dismissed some of them and tucked others away to compile later. Then the screen
flashed and a message read: rapid onset of cellular degradation, displaying a graph of
the accelerated rate at which the body had decayed.

Caleb did the math. The victim hadn’t been killed offsite. He’d died here, this
morning, probably just before or — more likely — at the same moment as that poor
soul in the garage.
He opened another app and carefully rolled the victim’s fingertips across the screen.
It would take a while for the program to search through the various police databases
looking for a match, but if this guy had been printed anywhere, it’d find him. If those
came up empty, the Order could access private companies that might have them on file
— a job where he had to provide a thumbprint to sign in; his cell phone provider if he
used his fingerprint as his password; fucking Disney World if he’d vacationed there in
the last few years.
In the meantime, Caleb looked around the space. Beside the chair with the sport
coat, one of the watering pails had been repurposed to contain a fire. He dug what
remained of a wallet out from the spent charcoal briquettes, along with the warped and
melted remains of a cell phone. The wallet was beyond saving, but he pocketed the
phone. At home, he had equipment that might be able to salvage some of its data.
He pulled the jacket off the chair and examined it. The label was from an upscale
menswear shop, one of the national chains. Caleb, whose own height meant he was
forever bringing in clothing to be altered to fit properly, could see places where a tailor
had clearly made changes. So, the victim was someone who had the money and desire
to look smart. The coat was so nice, Caleb almost missed the tear near the inside pocket.
The satin lining split just above the seam. The pocket itself was empty, just as the outer
ones were, but when he patted around the hem below the tear, he felt two shapes inside.
He suspected the thumb drive and smirked when he pulled it out. It was nondescript,
the kind you could pick up at any big box store for cheap. Just like the one from the
garage, save for this one was still intact. He fished out an ID badge next. The picture on
it showed a white man in his mid-20s. He was clean shaven, and his hair had that freshly
shorn look. James Greaves, the name beneath the picture read. Caleb held the badge
beside the victim’s face. It was him.
What was more interesting to him was the logo in the upper left corner: the stylized
R of Riverton Financial Services.
James Greaves worked for the Syndicate.
• • •
The motel sign boasted free wi-fi!, but Caleb didn’t need to rely on whatever clunky
spyware- and virus-riddled service they offered. His connection to the Feed was always
open, and right now he was uploading more data than the motel could handle in a year.
The décor in here hadn’t been updated since sometime in the ‘80s, which made his slim
laptop look all the more out of place. It hummed away atop a battered wooden desk, its
algorithms trying to crack the USB drive’s encryption. James Greaves might have wanted
people to know he was dead, but he wasn’t giving up the rest of his secrets so easily.
Even though everything else in this room was outdated, the television wasn’t.
Caleb sat back on the lumpy mattress and cast his incoming data to the huge flatscreen
The Profit 13
dominating the opposite wall. His friend in trend analysis had replied with possible
matches for the garage victim’s patch, though nothing fit exactly. He ran other searches,
too: toxicology reports, anomalies in energy flows, biographical data on Jim Greaves.
Greaves had an older brother, William, who never stayed in one place very long. Their
parents had retired and moved to Florida about seven years ago.
The laptop pinged. The algorithm had found the login site for Riverton’s email
system. Caleb shifted the display over to the TV and ran a standard password cracking
program; it wasn’t long before he’d brute-forced his way into Greaves’s account. The
last few months’ worth of correspondence filled the screen, and Caleb spent a few
minutes scrolling. Nothing out of the ordinary jumped out at him — if Greaves had been
involved with something sketchy, he kept it separate from his work.
He wasn’t in any debt. He paid off his credit cards monthly, and his expenses were
all perfectly mundane. Except... wait. For the last few months, it appeared Jim was getting
double-billed by his apartment’s property management company. Same amount, same
withdrawal date, but there was no record of him disputing the charges. Caleb opened a
new application and found the management company’s database. “Well, look at you,” he
said, highlighting a line of text. Jim Greaves had a second apartment in the same building,
registered under an LLC to hide his own name. “What were you doing there, Jim?”
Whatever was there would keep until tomorrow, but it was a promising start.
Caleb shifted on the lumpy mattress and settled in for a long night of research. First,
he had to make a phone call.
• • •
Reservations for Morrow’s were always booked a year out, at minimum. When
Caleb called Marie last night, it was well after eleven o’clock — past their closing time.
And yet, she’d said “I’ll get us a table at Morrow’s for lunch” as though it were the
easiest thing in the world.
Which, apparently for Marie, it was.
Caleb rarely felt intimidated. Usually he was the one looming over a suspect,
or moving would-be gawkers along. Now, Morrow’s façade loomed over him as he
waited for Marie to arrive. It was an ultra-modern building, all sleek lines and minimal
embellishments. In some ways, he thought, he should have felt right at home here; the
steakhouse was as no-nonsense as any New World Order facilities. Except, it very much
let passers-by know who belonged inside and who didn’t, though Caleb couldn’t quite
put his finger on how. It wasn’t glitzy or gilded. The signage was subtle, the staff’s
uniforms clean and pressed but no fancier than other upscale restaurants he’d been to.
Yet, even standing on the sidewalk, Caleb felt like everyone inside had seen his credit
report and his bank balance and found him wanting.
Marie, on the other hand, matched Morrow’s image perfectly. She didn’t so much
exit the town car that dropped her off as she emanated from it. No paparazzi hung around
the restaurant, but Caleb got the sense there ought to have been cameras clicking and
microphones stretched forth, begging her for a quote. Which was silly because Marie
wasn’t a celebrity. She’d never appeared as a talking head on television or trended on
social media. Still, she exuded power and glamour as much as any award-winning actor
and dressed the part in a deep burgundy suit.
“Caleb,” she said as she strode up to him. She waited for him to bend and kiss her
on the cheek. “I see you’ve taken my advice about a tie.”
It was an old joke between them. Marie knew, as surely as anyone else in the
Technocratic Union, that Operatives’ suits were essentially uniforms. Clothing conveyed
power and status — that was as much a part of the Art of Desire as piles of cash. But
despite the nuanced similarities between the Syndicate and the New World Order, the
ways they wielded that power were worlds apart. By meeting her here, Caleb was
stepping into Marie’s world. The good thing about his standard black suit was it went
with nearly anything. He’d traded the stark white shirt for a buttery off-white silk and
dressed it up with a tie and pocket square Marie gave him as a gift years ago.
They’d met early on in both their Enlightened careers. He’d been a new agent,
following the money on a particularly snarly case, and Marie was the brilliant forensic
accountant the Financiers sent when his Manager requested help. She’d rocketed up the
Syndicate’s ranks, while his rise was more the slow and steady kind, but they’d always
kept in touch. They were friends, and while he had a few colleagues he didn’t mind
going out for beers with, there were very few people in the Union he trusted to have his
back like Marie would.
He followed Marie through the door, still half-expecting the maître d’ to stop him
and call security. There were heavies in the restaurant, standing quietly with their backs
against the wall and hands folded. Caleb couldn’t be sure whether they were Morrow
employees or bodyguards for some of the luminaries sipping hundred-dollar glasses of
champagne. It likely wouldn’t matter either way. If someone caused a disturbance, it
was their job to ensure their bosses had a pleasant rabble-free lunch. Marie breezed right
on past them, though, and Caleb stuck firmly in her wake.
It was clear she was a regular here, and that the other regulars wanted to impress
her. Several times on the way to their table, other diners flagged her down to exchange
pleasantries. They all wore designer suits, and their jewelry had subtle diamond accents
— no one was so gauche as to wear a gala-worthy piece to a business lunch, but Caleb
caught the flashes in their watch faces and the frames of their glasses. Caleb smiled
while Marie shook hands and traded hellos. She didn’t introduce him, but it wasn’t a
snub; she knew how much he disliked these interactions.
As they left one table, he noticed the way the corner of her mouth twisted, as though
she’d tasted something terrible.
“What is it?” He kept his voice pitched low.
Her lips barely moved as she replied. “That man tried to get me fired once. I was
just starting out, and he thought he could get insider info out of the fresh-faced intern.
I’m sure he’s forgotten, but I won’t lie to you and say I don’t hold a grudge.”
He’d noticed the black credit card the man had placed on the silver bill tray. Caleb
pretended to check his phone for an incoming text as he keyed in the name. “You want
me to cause him some trouble?”
The Profit 15
Marie’s eyes lit up. “Oh, hell yes.”
Credit freezes were easy and instantaneous, and Caleb’s clearance level granted
him the ability to impose them — after all, you didn’t want a suspect buying a plane
ticket out of the country. For a man with the money and power to dine at Morrow,
untangling it would be a trivial matter, one he could foist off on an assistant.
But having your credit card rejected was mortifying no matter how rich you
were. It was petty, but it was enough. By the time they were seated, the waiter had run
three different cards and fetched the manager. Marie’s old enemy was red-faced with
embarrassment, and his dining partner looked like she’d rather be anywhere else.
“It’ll be a while before he dares come back here, I think,” said Caleb.
Marie laughed. “That means I get to dine in peace for a couple of months. Thank
you.”
Once they’d ordered (lunch, of course, was on Marie) and the waiter brought their
drinks, she sat back and sipped her bourbon. “So,” she said. “As much as I love seeing
you, I know this can’t be just a social visit or you’d have called me at a normal hour, not
during the eleven o’clock news. What’s going on?”
Last night, he’d only told her he needed to meet. Even though Caleb trusted her,
the Syndicate would surely want to be involved in the investigation once they learned
one of their own had been murdered. He needed to keep that under wraps a little longer,
while his equipment at the motel hammered away at the encryption on the thumb drive.
He retrieved Greaves’s ID badge and slid it across the smooth linen tablecloth. “Do
you recognize this person?”
Marie picked it up to examine it. Her gaze flicked toward the upper left corner,
and her brow furrowed as she recognized the Riverton logo. She’d worked for the firm
since its inception fifteen years ago and had transferred from whatever larger Syndicate
operation it branched off from. The company employed hundreds of people; its offices
occupied several stories in one of the fanciest skyscrapers in the city’s financial district.
Greaves might simply have been a mail room clerk or a middle manager’s go-fer. Caleb
had no evidence suggesting whether he was Enlightened or not, either.
Her eyes widened. “Jim Greaves,” she said. “He works on my floor. Newish hire,
maybe with the company six months or so?” She traded the ID card for her phone. For
as long as Caleb had known her, she always kept it within sight, so she could glance
at the notifications flashing past on her screen. The market’s always moving, she’d told
him once. He’d always thought of the stock market as the way rich people gambled, but
Marie could look at a handful of stocks and predict near-future events the way some
so-called psychics read tarot cards. He supposed it wasn’t too far from how he and his
fellow Operatives read online chatter and credit card purchases. In the end, all you were
doing was reading people.
Now, she pulled up a Riverton intranet site and keyed in a search. “Looks like he
hasn’t shown up for work in two days. No notice to his manager, and he’s not picking up
his phone.” She glanced at Caleb, concerned. “Is he okay?”

“He’s connected to a case I’m investigating.”
“But is he okay?”
“I can’t say anything else just yet.” Withholding information was part of the job.
Management presented entire seminars on how to answer questions without giving
anything away. Most of the time, an average person would see the suit, the shades,
the dead seriousness of your expression, and they’d know it was time to stop asking
questions. But Marie wasn’t an average person; she was his friend. This felt like lying.
“Damn it, Caleb, he’s on my team.”
“A minute ago you said he was on your floor. Not your team.”
Her jaw dropped. “Don’t you dare interrogate me. Not you. We’ve known each
other too damned long for that.” She waved the phone at him. Greaves’s personnel file
was on the screen. “You asked for my help, remember?”
He winced. “I’m sorry. Instinct.”
Marie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them, she signaled
to a nearby waiter to bring another round. “Everyone on my floor is on my team. Even if
he’s not my direct report, you don’t have to go all that far to connect us on the org chart.
So yes, I know him a little bit.” She was quiet for a moment, picking her words carefully.
“If he’s hurt, I’d like to know. Or if he’s hurt someone, I’d like to know that, too, so I can
think about my people’s safety.”
“You don’t have to worry about him hurting anyone.”
She waited, but he didn’t elaborate further. “You know that when people say you
Operatives are cold, this is why. People out there care about him. There’s someone in his
life who’s worried about him right now, I’d bet, if he hasn’t come home.”
Caleb nodded. “I know. When I can tell you more, I will. In the meantime, I need
you to trust that I’m trying to get answers for those people. Is there someone he’s close
to that you know of?” He was careful not to slip into the past tense, even though Marie
surely suspected the worst anyway. Best not to confirm it if he could avoid it.
“He has a brother, I know that much. If I remember right, he was down on his luck
for a while but was trying to turn things around. Jim was helping him out.”
That was William Greaves, Jim’s only brother, older by two years. Caleb had noted
him in his late-night records searches. William had lived at half a dozen addresses in half a
dozen states in the last few years. He had a spotty employment record, but no legal troubles
or arrest records. Could’ve been for any number of reasons that no one in authority would
care to record: bad luck, bad economy. Maybe William was bad at making friends and great
at burning bridges. Maybe he just liked moving around a lot. He’d fallen off the map about
six months ago, but now it seemed he’d made his way back home to his family. What was
that Robert Frost saying about when you go there, they have to take you in?
Was it William’s body in the garage? It would make sense; Tradition mages were
big on things like sympathetic connections, and what stronger connection was there
than shared DNA? Had William been in trouble and tried to run? Rather than chase him
down, all the killers needed to do was grab his brother.
The Profit 17
“And Jim? Is he—” Caleb waited for the waiter to set down their drinks and walk
away. “Is he like us?”
“He’s Enlightened, yes. Only within the last year or so, but he’s very smart and
very ambitious. He was passed up for a promotion a few months ago, and it only lit a
fire under him.”
“How do you mean?”
Marie started at his file on her phone while she gathered her thoughts.
“We like to see at least some degree of ambition in our recruits. How do you practice
the Art of Desire if you don’t want for anything yourself, you know? I mean, you can,
certainly; anyone can pick up on the basics. But I’ve found the people who rise the
highest are often the hungriest.”
As though on cue, their food arrived. Marie’s rib eye was one of the pricier items
on the menu. She hadn’t even looked at the menu to check the price, just dictated to
the waiter exactly how she wanted it cooked. Meanwhile, even knowing that price was
no object with Marie covering the meal, he’d ended up with the more economically
priced roast chicken. It was perfectly cooked, the skin crispy and the meat moist, but he
couldn’t help but wish he’d gone for the steak as well.
Marie closed her eyes and savored her first piece, then cut off a slab and deposited
it on Caleb’s plate. “I’m terrible with leftovers,” she said. “You have to help me.”
She would have done well in the New World Order, he thought as he took a bite. The
meat melted in his mouth. Marie could read people as well as any Operative, but she’d
have hated the monochrome suits.
His phone pinged. The algorithm had cracked more of the encryption on Greaves’s
USB drive. There was a program there, but it was only partial, part of a bigger design.
Caleb managed to keep the frustration off his face as he slipped the phone back into his
pocket. “So Greaves gets passed over for a position,” he prompted after a moment.
“Right. He volunteered for several projects and asked to shadow one of the V.P.s.
He’s been working overtime and last I knew had some kind of passion project he’s
working on in his off time. Something that he told people was going to revolutionize the
way we look at currency.”
“Do you think he would have crossed any lines pursuing it? Met with someone from
across the aisle, maybe?” He meant Reality Deviants. Caleb and Marie had invented the
phrase in their early years, when they were both figuring out that you never knew who
was listening. He didn’t want to tell her about Greaves’s second apartment just yet, or
his LLC. Not until he knew what exactly the dead man had been up to there.
Marie shook her head. “Some people hear ‘you’re not ready for this yet’ as a personal
challenge. It’s not a bad character trait. It doesn’t always make them break laws or fall
in with a bad crowd.” She reached across the table and placed her hand atop Caleb’s. “I
know you can’t tell me much just yet, but promise me when it’s over, you will?”
“I’ll tell you what I can, when I can.”

She nodded. “I’m going to have to shut down his access in the meantime. I’ll have
IT turn off his key cards and lock down his systems logins. Riverton handles a lot of
clients with sensitive data and major assets. We can’t risk a breach. Is that going to throw
off your investigation?”
They each had their loyalties. He’d done as much as he could with the information
he’d gleaned off Greaves’s ID last night, and Marie probably knew it. If he needed more,
he’d have to share his findings with Management, who’d call in their own Syndicate
specialists. He couldn’t be sure they’d tap Marie for the job.
“Do what you need to,” he said. His next stop would be Greaves’s apartment, but
first he planned on ordering dessert.
• • •
Jim Greaves’s secret apartment was a modest two-bedroom with a decent view of
the city’s skyline. His furniture mainly featured a mix of secondhand pieces and Ikea
hacks, but here and there he’d splurged on a big-ticket item as his paychecks allowed.
A large oak desk dominated one corner of the living room. It was entirely wrong for
the space, better suited to a sprawling study in some country estate than a place where
renters couldn’t even put nails in the walls. Caleb had to admire it, however. It felt
aspirational: Don’t just dress for the job you want; work at a desk that makes you feel
like the CEO. The entire place had the feeling of an office to it, as though it were the
place from which Jim might have launched a new company.
Suits filled the main bedroom’s closet, clearly Jim’s work clothes. They were the
same cut and size as the coat Caleb had found in the barn. A pastel rainbow of dress
shirts hung beside them, each one neatly pressed. He had a drawer full of ties and pocket
squares, and a jewelry tray atop his dresser held tie tacks and cufflinks.
Two picture frames sat beside his accessories. One featured a man and woman
in their late 50s, probably his parents, from the family resemblance. The other was a
picture of Jim with the two of them and a young man around Jim’s age, maybe a couple
years older. He was a little taller than Jim, a little bulkier, but clearly related. They were
all dressed up for an evening out, standing beside a life ring for the S.S. City Lights.
It was one of those staged photos companies made you pose for when you went on a
harbor cruise and sold to you for scandalous amounts before you disembarked. Caleb
eased the photo out of the frame. On the back, it read, “Mom, Dad, Bill, & me, 7/12/19
— Bill’s 30th.” At last, Caleb knew what the victim in the garage looked like when his
face wasn’t a rictus of terror and pain. It left him a little empty, nonetheless. Here, on his
30th birthday, William Greaves simply looked sad.
The second bedroom might once have been Jim’s library, judging from the shelves
full of finance books and legal thrillers lining the walls. Now, though, the pullout couch
was made up into a bed, and a portable clothing rack obscured one of the shelves. A
small barbell set was tucked into the corner, flanked by a duffel bag and a suitcase that
had seen better days. A plastic laundry basket full of neatly folded tee shirts and jeans
sat beside the pullout.
The Profit 19
Caleb took a closer look at the clothing rack. Uniforms hung from it, three identical
sets of shirts, pants, and jackets. They matched what he’d found on the body in the
garage. Caleb pulled one of the jackets from its hanger and inspected the patch on the
shoulder. There was that brick pattern again, this time part of a complete castle wall. The
word “BASTION” was emblazoned beneath it in gold thread. Caleb snapped a photo.
A search turned up only a bare-bones website which featured that same logo and a
single line of text: for inquiries, call. Caleb called the toll-free number from his phone,
but it only led to a voice mail box instructing him to leave his name and number and
his call would be returned. No greeting named the company or its services; it offered
no estimate on when someone would reach out. Caleb pawed through Bill Greaves’s
belongings, but he found no pay stubs, no bank account statements, no employee
handbooks or business cards. It might be that he did his banking entirely online and
Bastion deposited his paychecks directly, or maybe they paid him in cash. Either way,
he found no immediate paper trail.
In the corner of his lens, a new search ran, trawling various corners of the internet
for mentions of Bastion: forum posts, pictures of their logo, anything.
Whoever they were, whatever they did, they covered their tracks.
Caleb returned to Jim’s gigantic oak desk. Like the rest of the apartment, the desktop
was impeccable. A closed laptop sat atop it. This wasn’t one of Riverton’s company-
issued machines. Instead it was something prototypical — a top of the line rig, with the
sort of processing power that would leave any professional gamer drooling with envy.
Greaves wasn’t a gamer, though. He needed the machine for a different kind of number
crunching.
Now, he sat in Greaves’s chair, slid the laptop in front of him, and powered it on. Its
password matched the one Greaves used at Riverton — it didn’t matter how many times
people were told not to reuse passwords, few of them ever heeded that advice.
A portable pass-through drive — courtesy of the brains in Q Division — kept the
incomplete program on Greaves’s thumb drive unlocked even after Caleb detached it
from his home machine. It looked like a slightly larger thumb drive, with room for a
charging cable. Somehow, the electrons bouncing around in there tricked whatever was
plugged into it into thinking the original protocols were still running, which saved Caleb
a lot of time. All he had to do was plug the pass-through drive into Greaves’s laptop
and...
Ready.
The cursor blinked in a command window, awaiting orders.
“Let’s see where you’ve been, my friend,” Caleb muttered. The next step always
made him feel a little old and out of touch. From his wallet, he dug out a packet about
the size of a pre-moistened hand wipe. Instead of a napkin, inside was a thin sheet of
plastic film. He peeled it from its backing and held it up to his shades. The film clung
to the lenses. Immediately, a new heads-up display crossed his vision and focused in on
the laptop screen.

Ready, it flashed, overlapping with the cursor on Greaves’s screen.
Caleb gripped the desk chair’s armrests. When he used these things, there was always
a moment where he felt his balance tip even if he sat stock still. He took a deep breath.
“Ready,” he said.
The screen grew in his vision until it filled the entire world. One moment he was sitting
in Jim Greaves’s apartment, with a view of the late afternoon sun dipping toward the skyline.
The next, he was standing in a vast, off-black room, whose floor, walls, and ceiling might
have been in arm’s reach or might have been miles away. He could, if he wanted to, feel his
ass in the chair and his feet firmly planted on Greaves’s floor in the real world, but the dual
sensations of here and there always walloped him with waves of nausea when he tried.
Instead, he waited until his brain prioritized the input from his eyes rather than the
rest of his body. It helped that the film transmitted sound through his glasses’ frames,
making the temple tips behind his ears act like bone conduction devices. Right now, all
he heard was the low hiss of white noise.
The program came from Iteration X and had been designed with cross-Convention
use in mind. Not everyone in the Union understood machines the way the Iterators did,
and therefore they’d invented a way to represent how they moved through the digital
world. Some advanced AI picked up Caleb’s movements and questions, interpreted
them into code and commands, and fed them back to him as shapes, sounds, and motion.
“Where have you been, Jim Greaves?” he asked, and after a moment, a door swam
into view in the blank wall before him. He stepped through.
Caleb found himself in a busy bank lobby. Tellers stood at every window, processing
transactions. A low murmur filled the air: the din of people discussing interest rates
and loan calculations, the beeps of PINs punched into an ATM, the whir of machines
counting cash. None of it was real. If Caleb looked too close, the tellers’ faces dissolved
into ones and zeroes. Numbers and symbols scrolled by in their eyes. Caleb was at an
island near the front, where white deposit slips filled a slim row of cubbies. A ball point
pen was chained to the surface, and a sign in a plastic stand offered a free toaster if you
signed up for the bank’s signature checking. A silver box — definitely not a toaster
— rested beside his right hand. It clicked and whirred like the counting machines, but
Caleb couldn’t see any buttons or slots for transactions.
After a moment, the silver box thunked. A clattering arose from it, like coins spilling
from a slot machine. Yet nothing came out of it, and beneath the box was only the table’s
solid surface.
No, not nothing.
A slot opened in the side of the silver box, revealing a nondescript black USB drive.
The teller windows were equipped with pairs of slots as well. He took the drive to the
nearest one and plugged it in to the left-hand slot. The teller smiled politely, waiting.
When nothing happened, Caleb switched the drive to the slot on the right. Still nothing.
“Can you tell me why it’s not working?” he asked, not sure what type of answer
he’d get.
The Profit 21
“You need the second key,” she said. “Two people have to confirm the action.”
“Ah.” Caleb took the drive back and returned to the silver box, wondering if it
might spit out another. As he glanced toward the door, a transparent figure strolled out.
It was neither a real person nor a ghost. The pinstripes on its suit were made of scrolling
ones and zeroes — this was the program itself, showing him Jim Greaves’s path through
the dark web. Caleb followed.
Warning signs flashed in his heads-up display, letting him know he was on the
outskirts of the dark web. This was the start of dangerous territory, places where
normally law-abiding citizens dallied when they got desperate. Sketchy financing
schemes, payday loans, businesses whose profits were too good to be true, they all lived
here, drawing good people into their nets. He moved in deeper, following Greaves’s
figure past shadier and shadier institutions.
Farther along, and the banks were only banks in the vaguest sense of the word. These
were institutions who’d handle your money for an exorbitant fee, guaranteeing little in
the way of safety or security. If you trusted the wrong person, or if the government came
sniffing around, they’d take their cut of your money and run. Money rarely ever stayed
in one place here. It transferred from buyer to seller, and sometimes made its way —
heavily laundered, of course — up to those sunnier, more legitimate banks. Other times
it was funneled offshore, to banks that had no treaties with the United States, and who
weren’t subject to its tax laws. Still, Greaves continued on.
The HUD’s warnings turned dark red. Now he was fully immersed in the dark web.
The places he and Greaves passed weren’t even banks anymore, just dimly lit backrooms,
though he spotted a handful of vaults in gilt and marble halls. Money counters whirred
within, but instead of depositing customers’ paychecks or a retail store’s earnings for the
day, their operators tallied protection money or profits from drugs and other contraband.
There were more and more guards with each stop.
Greaves’s program stopped at last, at a card table inside a dim warehouse, lit by one
swinging light bulb on a chain. A pair of hulking guards stood to either side of a heavy
vault door. Instead of a combination lock, or a spot for a banker’s key, there were two
USB slots side by side, just like the ones at that first teller’s window.
The silver box rose up from the card table’s center. The slot opened in the side. But
instead of a slim black USB drive, what it spat out was a twisted, melted lump of plastic
and metal — the same one Caleb had pulled from a pool of Bill Greaves’s blood.
When he retrieved it, something deep within the vault went thunk, and the guards
turned to stare at Caleb.
Shit.
He scooped up the box as he ran. He couldn’t say why he did it, whether it was his
own instincts calling him to protect the box or some part of the It X program guiding his
movements. He just knew he had to get out.
As he reached the door, a guard cross-checked him out of nowhere. Caleb careened
into the wall, cradling the silver box like a football. He had just enough time to register
the logo on the guard’s sleeve — BASTION — before he had to dodge a looping fist.
He ducked beneath the guard’s arm and slammed his shoulder into the heavy door. Even
though he knew it wasn’t real, it still hurt like hell.
Instead of stumbling into yet another bank or backroom, this time he found himself
in a long hallway. The walls were bright white and bare, the floor covered in industrial
beige carpet. Doors appeared every fifteen feet or so, none of them marked in any
manner Caleb could interpret. Where the hell am I?
Most of the time, if you asked that question an It X program popped up a helpful
map or a menu so you could figure out what you were looking at or put yourself back
on the right track.
Error: Disk not found. Please insert disk.
The words flashed in front of Caleb. He waved them away with his free hand.
Footsteps thudded behind him, not in the hallway just yet, but not far off.
He ran for it, trying doors as he drew even with them. Some had no doorknobs.
Others required keycard access, and if the silver box emitted any signal, it wasn’t
one that granted him access to this room. He kept reaching into his pocket, where the
program normally deposited useful items, but every time he came up empty. A crash and
the sound of splintering wood behind him told him the guard had entered the hallway.
He was out of time. Just as he was about to turn and face his pursuer, a door up ahead
opened just a crack.
Caleb barreled inside. He closed the door and turned its bolt lock, then took a step
back as he caught his breath.
He was in Jim Greaves’s library-turned-spare bedroom.
The brothers stood in the center, oblivious to his presence. Bill wore the Bastion
uniform, but his jacket was open, the top few buttons of his shirt unbuttoned. He looked
tired, like he’d just come home from working a series of double shifts. Jim hovered
beside him, one hand on his brother’s arm. His hair was disheveled, as though he’d been
running his fingers through it while trying to work out a particularly snarly line of code.
“You can talk to me,” said Jim. “Whatever it’s about, I’m listening.”
Bill sighed and shrugged off the coat. He stared at the logo a long moment before he
hung it up. “What if I told you I’m not working for the good guys?” he asked.
Jim frowned. “How do you mean? You’re a bodyguard for an exclusive company.
I’d be surprised if they didn’t have a few shady people on their client list. A lot of the
time, they’re the ones with money to spend on security, and the kind of enemies who
require them hiring a team in the first place.”
“It’s more than that.” Bill sat heavily on the pullout. The mattress spring squeaked
under his weight. “I know part of my job is that I pretend not to hear what they say to
each other. I’m there to make sure no one gets hurt, and shut up otherwise. Usually, I can
do that, no problem. But...”
“But now you’ve heard something you can’t ignore.”
Bill didn’t say anything for a long moment. Caleb thought he might have been
fighting tears. “People will get hurt,” he said at last.
The Profit 23
Jim sat and slung an arm around his big brother’s shoulder. “How many? From what?”
“I don’t know. I keep looking up statistics and... Could be dozens, could be thousands.
But I’ve figured out who some of the clients are, Jim. Or at least who they represent. I
can’t be part of this, even if I’m not the one handling the money. Or the weapons. Even
if no one tries to stop the deal, even if everyone on the security detail ends up twiddling
our thumbs for a few hours, I’m still complicit. Anyone those weapons hurt, that’s on
me, isn’t it? God, Jim, what if kids get hurt?”
Jim looked stunned. “It’s an arms deal, then? Is that what you’re telling me?”
Bill nodded miserably.
Caleb had an idea what might be going through the younger Greaves’s head — Jim
was Syndicate. The Financiers looked for opportunities everywhere, not only places
where trading was on the up and up. Their black market operations were kept quiet,
sure, but if Jim was as savvy as Marie suggested, he’d surely gotten wind of that division
of the Convention. He was probably thinking he could get his brother out of trouble
and present his bosses with an opportunity to eliminate the competition and steal their
clientele. The best of both worlds.
When Jim spoke again, his voice was soft. “You always do the right thing, Bill.
Even when it’s landed you in the shit, I’ve never questioned your moral compass. I don’t
question it now.”
Caleb recognized that tone. He’d used it plenty of times in interrogations. The other
person heard only the kindness of your words, the soft way you spoke them. Deep in
their own fear, they clung to it like a life raft. They almost never realized you were
steering them toward the outcome you wanted. Bill Greaves might not have heard the
trembling thread of ambition in his brother’s voice, but to Caleb it might as well have
been a flashing neon sign.
“These guys, though.” Bill shook his head. “They’re connected. I don’t know that
there’s anyone I can trust to bring it to. Bastion’s hidden deep. They cover their tracks
like nothing I’ve ever seen before. And the clients, these are the kinds of people who
have diplomatic immunity, or who can just... buy their way out of trouble. For all I know,
the police are in their pockets already.”
“I know someone,” said Jim. “Let me make a call.”
The door shuddered on its frame. The brothers didn’t react. Caleb glanced toward
it and saw not the apartment’s thin bedroom door, but the reinforced white metal of the
hallway he’d come through. Behind him, Jim was reaching for his phone.
This is a recording, not a memory. Caleb realized. Maybe it was something Jim had
stored on his phone and backed up to his laptop, or some smart device that was always
listening for its owner to wake it up had picked up their voices and recorded without
permission. He asked the It X program to download it but received only another error
for his troubles.
The door shuddered again. Whoever was on the other side of it had to have fists like
sledgehammers.

An alarm sounded, bright and insistent. Caleb realized it was coming from outside
— not just outside of the room, but outside of himself.
The door splintered. Caleb turned back to the brothers and saw the room shudder
into a different recording. Now it was an office, well-outfitted with leather furniture and
a bar cart full of crystal decanters and top shelf spirits. It was a corner office, of course,
its floor to ceiling windows offering a stunning view of the city sprawling out below.
He’d been in this room before. This was Riverton.
This was Marie’s office.
The alarm sounded again. No, not an alarm, he realized, that’s a phone ringing.
The silver box, still in his arms, went THUNK, and a small, pleasant voice said,
Connected. Executing Greaves Currency Program, version 3.07.
In the memory, Marie stepped through the door. On her heels was the AI guard.
Neither seemed to notice the other, but the guard’s gaze locked immediately onto Caleb.
A thin red horizontal beam shone from the guard’s eyes, scanning Caleb from head to
toe. “Target acquired,” the guard said.
Caleb tore the film from his glasses, and the world lurched as he disconnected from
Jim Greaves’s laptop.
In the drawer beside him, a phone continued to chime.
• • •
Caleb waited a moment for the nausea to pass. He told himself it was all due to
the jarring perspective shift. You were supposed to return to the dark, empty virtual
room and perform a short list of tasks to reorient your senses before you removed the
interface film. The It X agent who’d shown it to him described it like ejecting a USB
drive from your computer: If you just yanked it out without telling the machine to cut
the connection first, you risked corrupting data.
That was why he felt sick, surely, and not that last image of Marie’s office making
him question everything he thought he knew.
Marie knew who Jim Greaves was. She knew he wasn’t just some eager employee
on her floor. He went to her for help, and she...
What had she done?
Even if Bill had seen too much, overheard something the Syndicate wanted kept
quiet, why would they kill Jim, too? It would have been a simple matter to pin Bill’s
murder on Bastion and keep their rising star on the payroll.
The phone was still ringing. Caleb wheeled back and opened the desk’s center drawer.
There, behind a felt-lined tray containing several hefty fountain pens, was the culprit. It sat,
playing a calming glissando in fake bell tones, atop an envelope containing several folded sheets
of yellow notepaper. Caleb pulled the phone out first and tossed the envelope on the desk.
Carrie Waters — Summit Financial Services, read the caller ID. It had been ringing
long enough that voice mail picked up the call before Caleb could tap to answer or
dismiss it. The phone’s protective case sported the Riverton logo. He unlocked it with
The Profit 25
Jim’s passcode, another treasure the thumb drive had yielded up. Jim had never changed
the phone’s background; it, too, showed the Riverton R.
There were a couple days’ worth of voice mails and texts waiting, including several
from a number listed as Riverton Human Resources. Then there was one from a number
Caleb recognized, even if it didn’t have a name attached: Marie. Not her number at
Riverton, but her personal cell.
He opened it.
Found him. Sending a car. Be downstairs in 15.
It was from the afternoon of the murder. A few hours later, Jim and Bill Greaves
would be dead.
None of this added up. Why not do it all on the books? And why hadn’t Marie told
Caleb what was going on? They were old friends; even if she was afraid of Bastion
for whatever reason, she could’ve come to him for help. He replayed their lunch
conversation in his head, picking it apart for what he might have missed.
She’d never lied to him. He was sure of that.
But he trusted her so implicitly he’d missed all the things she didn’t say.
She said she’d be shutting off his access. Had she gone through with it? It made
sense that the phone number itself was still active, Caleb supposed. Marie might have
put in the order to close the account, but that didn’t mean the service provider had gotten
around to it just yet. But Riverton’s internal IT department should’ve been on top of his
company access. Yet, when he clicked on the email logo, it connected to Jim’s Riverton
inbox without any fuss.
Nothing significant had changed from when Caleb had hacked into the account
late last night. A slew of new industry newsletters had come in, some company-wide
announcements, a few clients’ passive-aggressive “As per my last email...” messages.
No, wait. There was a message in the drafts folder, which hadn’t been there before.
It was scheduled to be sent out tomorrow morning. Caleb opened it.
Dear Riverton Colleagues,
In today’s fast-paced environment, you have to be ready to jump on oppor-
tunities as they arise. The market’s always moving, as some of our mentors tell
us, and what’s a hot stock one day will be a dud this time next week. I’m sorry to
say that Riverton’s higher-ups didn’t seize the opportunity they had with me, and
thus I’m moving on.
You won’t see me again, but soon enough you’ll hear about the work I’ve
been doing. It’s going to cause some disruption in the meantime, and I’m sorry
to those colleagues who are about to have to work a whole lot of overtime. When
your families ask why you’re spending so much time at the office, don’t blame me;
blame the people who said I wasn’t ready.
I was. I am. My only regret is you’re not coming on this journey with me.
— Jim Greaves

It was written well after his death, and Caleb had scrolled through enough of
Greaves’s regular correspondence to know this letter displayed none of his normal
syntax or style. People who didn’t know him might believe it, and if this hit the news
once word of the murders got out, there were phrases in there that were journalists’
catnip. Caleb could imagine everything from six o’clock news anchors’ dry readings
to dramatic reenactments in a Hollywood documentary. If the story was big enough,
amateur social media sleuths would be examining it in hour-long investigative videos or
remixing the words and setting them to music.
But what was the story?
He flipped the envelope front-side up. Jim’s name and address were written in a
heavy, blocky hand. The sender hadn’t included a return address, but the postmark was
local, dated just four days ago, on Monday. Caleb slid the sheets of paper from it and
spread them out.
In the event of my death was scrawled across the top in that same blocky handwriting.
Jim,
I have to do this on my own. I know you trust your colleague, and while I
hope I’m wrong — that I’m paranoid, or overreacting, or just plain misunder-
stood — something about our meeting is setting off all kinds of alarm bells. You
know that usually when they start ringing in my head, trouble isn’t far behind.
So I’m getting myself out of your hair for a little while, so that if anyone comes
knocking, you can tell them truthfully that you don’t know where I am.
I have a few leads. With any luck, this will all be over in a few days and I’ll
be back to sleeping on your pullout and eating your frozen pizza while I look for
a new job. But if you don’t hear from me in the next 30 days, or if I turn up dead
before then, I’ve left the details you need on the next couple of pages. Do what
you think is best. I hope you won’t burn it, but I understand if you need to protect
yourself — that’s why I’m leaving now, to protect you as best I can. If you decide
to show this to your colleague instead, please, please be careful.
Tell mom and dad I love them, and I’m sorry.
— Bill
What followed were three pages of ledgers containing names, dates, dollar amounts,
and Bill’s recollections of the conversations he’d overheard. He’d done some internet
digging, and written down details he found relevant about his subjects: the companies
and countries they were associated with, their close contacts, their political leanings. By
this point, the paperwork was positively annotated.
He would’ve made a decent low-light Operative if he’d lived.
The pieces began tumbling into place.
Bill had met with Marie, but something about her tripped his own danger sense in
a way neither Jim nor Caleb had ever spotted themselves. Whatever it was that spooked
him, he took off and sent the letter, both as a warning and a backup. But Jim went to Marie
before the letter arrived, and by the time he did receive it, she’d had time to prepare.
The Profit 27
Caleb couldn’t know what was in Jim’s mind when Marie texted to say they’d
found Bill — by that point, he’d almost certainly read the letter. Had Bill’s warning
made him wary of her?
Did it matter? Caleb didn’t have siblings, but there were people he’d met over the
years who he’d wade into danger for. If Jim thought Marie was holding Bill somewhere,
or if he thought his presence would make Marie’s people stay their hands, of course he’d
have gotten in the car she sent. It was the fastest way to get to his brother and might be
his only chance to plead Bill’s case.
Naïve of Jim to think Marie would even be there.
Caleb tucked the letter into his coat pocket and stood. He needed to call this in. It
was time to get Management involved, especially since this was now a cross-Convention
issue. He hated the idea of putting his friend’s face on wanted notices for other Operatives
to track down, but then, at what point had Marie stopped being his friend?
Was it just today, when she realized he’d caught this case? Or had she been someone
else all along? He didn’t know if she was a double agent, or simply a ladder-climber,
using anyone who could help her as a rung. Nor did he know which was worse. The hurt
was the same either way.
He was reaching for Greaves’s work phone and laptop when he caught movement
out of the corner of his eye.
Someone was on the other side of the apartment door, their shadows blocking the
hallway lights outside. The door flew inward, pieces of its frame splintering off with the
force of the kick.
Caleb dove toward the kitchen, taking cover behind the breakfast bar that split it
off from the living room. The agents poured in, shooting. Caleb counted three of them
in the picture window’s reflection before their bullets shattered the glass. They all wore
Bastion uniforms.
“Agent Whittemore!” one of them called, as that first wave of bullets subsided.
“You have an opportunity here. I suggest you take it. Stand up, hands where we can see
them, and slide your gun towards me. We can talk.”
He didn’t buy it for a second. While that first one called out her terms, the others
were creeping toward the kitchen to flank him. He didn’t even need to see them to know
it; it was a basic tactic. Caleb rolled toward one end of the breakfast bar, shoving the
bar stool at the end across the open space. Three shots punched into its white leather
backrest, making a perfect triangle.
“I’m going to have to call bullshit on that,” he hollered. He came up into a crouch
and shot around his makeshift cover. Half a dozen shots, spread wide but not too wide,
aiming for where his opponent had unleashed their fury on the stool. He heard two
distinct thuds: bullet hitting person, person hitting floor.
One down.
Their leader was still trying for reason. If she was worried that he’d just dropped
one of her allies, it didn’t reach her voice. “We know you saw Greaves’s program.

You want to be on the ground floor of this, trust me. Join us and you’ll be a very rich
man.” The AI guards inside the virtual banks, she meant. That last one had said target
acquired just before Caleb ended the program. They must have tracked his location and
dispatched a team immediately.
“Your boss knows I’m not interested in a big payday,” he said. He switched on
an infrared filter in his lenses. The leader still stood just inside the door, but the third
teammate was on the other side of the breakfast bar. If they wanted him dead, all they
had to do was pull the trigger. His suit had some armor built into it, but judging from
the state of that defeated bar stool, whatever they were carrying packed a much deadlier
punch than your standard bodyguard’s guns. Were these prototypes of whatever deal
Bastion was brokering? Perhaps a gift from a satisfied customer? “Listen, Marie clearly
doesn’t want me dead, so why don’t you give up your weapons, and then I’ll be happy
to chat.”
“She only said it would be nice if you lived. Not that you absolutely have to.” They
moved in unison, the leader heading toward the back of the apartment, the other leaping
over the bar. Caleb was already in motion, flowing up from his crouch to catch his
attacker. He spun with the big man in his grip. Bodies in motion tend to stay in motion,
his trainer used to say. Caleb had long ago stopped doing all the mental calculus it took
to redirect a target in mid-air. If he had to, he could explain vectors and applied force and
all the other necessary math to a group of new recruits, but after decades of fighting, he
did it all on instinct and muscle memory.
The man screamed as Caleb sent him careening out the shattered window.
The leader was waiting for him. She hardly blinked as her colleague sailed past.
She didn’t even attempt to snag him out of the air or knock him aside. She stood in
front of the late Jim Greaves’s great oak desk with her gun leveled at Caleb’s head. His
shades recorded its contours, estimates scrolling past with likely ammunition types and
modifications. Caleb himself merely admired its appearance: It was an elegant gun,
molded to its wielder’s hand. From the way she held it steady, it was likely lightweight
but not too flimsy. Q Division would be giddy to get their hands on the specs.
“Last chance,” she said. “There’s another squad on their way up right now. You can
surrender, or they can scrape you off the floor.”
Caleb thumbed a switch on his own gun. A high-pitched whine filled the air as its
charge gained power. “Tell Marie I’ll find her,” he said and pulled the trigger.
The Bastion agent pulled hers at the same time. The shot went off, but the kinetic
tug from Caleb’s gun pulled her aim off. The slug slammed into his chest rather than
his face, a net positive, but it still hurt like hell. The fabric of his suit gathered the bulk
of the bullet’s energy, dissipating it throughout the rest of the garment. It felt like a pair
of donkeys took aim at his ribs and kidneys in addition to the shot to his chest. He went
down hard, skidding back across the kitchen with the force of it.
The agent strode after him. Caleb scrabbled backwards, every movement a symphony
of agony. He dragged himself into the bathroom and managed to slam the door before
she took another shot. The window opened onto a fire escape. Caleb squeezed himself
The Profit 29
through it. The apartment building was old, and this was clearly designed with much
shorter tenants in mind, let alone Caleb’s unusual height. Still, the night air washed over
him, and though he kept expecting to hear the telltale clatter of agents pursuing him,
they never came.
It was only as his feet hit the ground that he realized why that was. She didn’t want
me. She wanted Greaves’s laptop.
• • •
Most days, the briefing room was a comforting space. It was where Caleb could
unpack the pieces of a mission, laying them out in an orderly fashion and admiring a job
well done. Usually it was just him and a Gray Suit, making sure all the paperwork was
filled out and loose ends were tied up.
Today it had the feeling of an interrogation, even though Caleb had done everything
within the proper parameters. The Order granted him a degree of leeway in what he
reported and when, due to his long and excellent track record. Even though he knew
he’d acted properly and according to protocol at every turn, he couldn’t help but feel
on edge. It was a trick of the room, of course, one he’d deployed plenty of times when
he was on the other side of the table. The place, the suits, even his colleagues’ carefully
schooled facial expressions served to make the person being questioned two inches tall.
The one thing he could be sure he had going for him was the PsychOps agent
observing the proceedings never so much as twitched. Everything Caleb said, every
movement he made, they scrutinized. Their silence confirmed his sincerity and
conviction, and most importantly, his loyalty toward the Union.
Which was good for Caleb because he’d seen the news that had the usually stoic
Gray Suits looking unnerved. Syndicate-backed banks were reporting a sudden, massive
loss of their digital cash reserves in a series of overnight security breaches. Their systems
had read them as legitimate transactions, shifting currency around too fast for any human
to process. By the time anyone noticed the anomalous activity, it was far too late.
News sites reported it as a hack, attributing it to one James Greaves, who had
masterminded the whole operation. Greaves was, of course, missing, presumed to have
escaped to a country with no extradition treaty where he’d live out the rest of his days
in luxury under an assumed identity. Cyprus, maybe, or some other partitioned territory
whose social justices were sacrificed at the altar of politicized cash.
The body in the barn had, of course, been cleaned up long before the money
disappeared. Bastion Security Services remained a ghost. The website was gone, the
toll-free number disconnected. The only evidence they’d existed at all was on the
footage Caleb’s shades had recorded, and the pieces of Bill Greaves’s uniform the cops
had collected at the murder scene.
“So who was he going to blow the whistle to?” Caleb asked. “I never found a
contact name.” Once he’d called his supervisor, several teams of Operatives had taken
over the investigation.

The Gray Suit sat back and spread her hands wide. “He’d found a journalist who’d
been digging into some of the clients, trying to figure out who was brokering their deals,
and set up a meet. Looks like the contact was there when Bill died. Turns out if you
see someone ripped apart in front of you, you get the hell out of there and lay low for a
while.”
“And Bastion didn’t send someone after them to finish the job? That feels like the
sort of thing that only confirms there’s a story there in the first place.”
“Oh, I’m sure Bastion wanted to get to them, but the Feed was able to restore the
security footage that got erased. It gave us a jump on them. Our team found him first.
He’s visiting with some of our specialists right now.”
Caleb didn’t envy them. “And Marie?”
“She’s the Syndicate’s problem now. If they want our help, they’ll reach out, but for
the time being it’s considered an internal matter.” For a moment, the Gray Suit let her
expression soften. “I know she was your friend. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I’d like to be part of the team that finds her.” All he wanted
was to ask her one question: Why?
“I’ll see what I can do,” said the Gray Suit. “In the meantime, let’s go over this one
more time.”
• • •
Servers hummed as they ran Greaves’s algorithm. On the screen in front of
Bastion’s CEO, the numbers continued to climb. He didn’t understand all the code that
went into it, or what exactly kept the currency stable — its value wasn’t based on market
fluctuations, or the price of gold, or a tech bro pyramid scheme. His benefactor had
offered to explain it, but he’d politely declined. You couldn’t put a price on plausible
deniability, and explaining how the coffers stayed full wasn’t his job. He was the man
with a million contacts, who knew who was buying and who was selling, and how best
to bring those people together. That was what mattered.
“I hope the last few days haven’t set you back too far,” said his benefactor. She
radiated power, even as she lounged on the couch in his office. He knew better than to
give her anything but the rosiest of outlooks.
“Not at all,” he said. “Companies change their names all the time. Bastion’s
rebranding and rebuilding, and that’s all my clients need to know. We had to cut some
losses, but the others will more than make up for it.”
“Good.” Marie leaned forward. “Make your calls. We wouldn’t want to keep our
buyers waiting.”
The Profit 31
River St. Grey
Viridian godrays seared outward from the gate. Gleaming and gorgeous, they cast
back the shadows of the lab then seared through the first line of assembled marines.
On the right flank of the wedge formation, two privates exploded as the beams clove
them into pieces. The first was able to get out a short scream, but the other collapsed
in two halves, a still expression of shock upon her face. Following the emerald light, a
writhing mass of muscle and flesh pulled itself out from the whirling vortex inside the
gate and lurched forward. Larvae spilled in great sheets from its bulging pores, spraying
across the laboratory, and the avalanche of centipedes and maggots, falling upon the
crew, began to burrow through the soft tissues of their skin. Sergeant Taxon fell quickly
and with much ceremony, worms chewing into the liquefied pulp of his eyes. Corporal
Lance, whose name had always been a source of teasing and consternation, disappeared
into the yawning maw of the flesh-muscle, which whipped him through the air, crashing
against the ceiling and crushing the corporal inside. A junior steward, Calhoun, who had
been delivering the evening’s rations to those on guard, now scratched at the acidic fluid
excreting from the flesh-muscle that peeled away his face.
In return, the marines of the Neutralization Corps turned the room into a gale of
ballistic weapons fire. Chunks of the undulating, flesh tentacle exploded into pulpy
viscera, whilst the heavier caliber rifles immediately pulverized its sinew and tissue into
a fine mist. A fungal, souring scud, rotten like the musk of fermenting milk grafted the
air, billowing from the bleeding, thrashing mass. The squelching sound of its muscle
and flesh churning over the pulverized sinew could have been mistaken for an agonizing
wail.
As though in response, Theophanie shouted out the warning again. “They’re coming
through!” The Dreamspeaker’s voice carried far above the discordant screams of both

ballistics and massacre, seeming even to resound from the vortex in time. The spherical
superstructure of the gateway’s steel fingers whined as the alloy contracted, before a
second pulse of burning light bleached the world in green. The disintegrating rays, this
time, curved harmlessly away as Captain Deacon strode along the left flank. Her arms
cut elegantly through the clotting air, and where they danced, the light followed, scoring
the thick plates of the ship’s inner hull. As Theophanie had warned, the light denatured
beneath the long shadows of an insectoid limb, climbing through the vortex.
Three knuckles sectioned the extremity into four sections of shelled armor, and all
across them, knife-point hairs dangled from long, extruding tethers, like a spear blade
hung on the end of a chain. Private Kerrh soared back from the left flank, impaled
through the stomach on the armored appendage. Two others leapt to save him but
crumpled under the lacerations of needling hairs, which cut open the air, independent of
the shelled protrusion.
Deacon wavered on her feet, weak with the strain of holding and averting the
smoldering beams of light. She fell to one knee and, in her exhaustion, struggled to
center the aim of her revolver. Panic raced through her as more marines collapsed
beneath the flesh-mass and the armored spider’s leg, both seeming indifferent to the
barrage of bullets. Before her vitality could fail, she pulled deep upon her own fortitude
and exerted her thoughts outward, bleating them out in a command to Theophanie:
“Force munitions!”
• • •
“...because if Consensus can be isolated, then it can be configured!” Basil was
indignant. His forehead, always beaded with a thin sheen of sweat, now gleamed with
salty droplets and a strand of saliva flew from his mouth. Deacon dropped her gaze from
his puffy eyes, barely able to see where it had landed on her cheek. She locked her eyes
back to his and made a show of holding it on the tip of her finger. Basil shifted his weight
in an awkward fidget and looked away. “Apologies, captain.” He muttered. She chose
to take her time in considering a response, which Basil seized upon as an invitation to
continue.
“But you understand my position, yes? The door is stable! You, especially, must
know what a feat of the arcane and engineering this is. How could we —” She closed
the distance between them, wiping the wad of saliva onto her index finger and allowing
the agitation in her voice to show.
“By remembering that the parameters of the experiment were ever only to establish
the possibility. It is possible. Therefore, we are done.”
Basil took a step back to reestablish the space. Shaking his head with a comical
enthusiasm, he barked, “You are done. And why not? Your ship, your crew. Not your
experiment.” He gestured broadly across the lab at her team before ending the display at
the glowing gate. “My experiment. And how many months or years before I can ferret
away another Dreamspeaker and get a captain to sign off on the expedition? We don’t
know —” Deacon closed the distance again with another step forward, anger apparent
They're Coming Through! 33

in her step. She held out the congealed blob of saliva on her finger, pressing it into the
lapel of his coat and pushing him back toward the wall.
“That’s exactly it, isn’t it? We don’t know. Anything could happen, and without a
larger exploratory team to assist you, I’m not taking risks with my people based on what
you don’t know.” Deacon withdrew her hand and wiped the residual fluid on her trench
coat. “Shut it down. Now.” She turned on her heel and walked away, displeased by the
tact required in dealing with the little doctor, but nonetheless content to be done with the
strangeness and uncertainty of this voyage. Now they could return home, Magdeen and
Silvia would pay up for the debts they had accrued, and Doc Higgins —
“Why don’t you shut it down.” Basil had found the threat he was looking for.
Shaking beneath a mounting sense of intermingled dread and contempt, he nearly
spat the response on the deck. The three officers with Deacon, Commander Winslow,
Lieutenant Magdeen, and Ensign Norris stopped in unison. It wasn’t a question; it was
an observation. As the voyage had progressed, an apprehension had begun to form in
her — once they’d reached their destination, far between Void and Penumbra, there was
no telling what Basil might do as the distance turned meter by meter into leverage. She
had hoped against such a betrayal without considering whether that hope clouded her
judgment. Now, she chastised herself for allowing it to.
Without turning “Basil —”
“Doctor.” He interrupted. She rubbed her temples and sighed.
“Doctor. What are you dreaming is going to happen here? We’ll happily be your
hostages while you poke through literal holes in time, and afterward, we’ll each write a
mission report with glowing accolades about how you were right all along, and no one
should ever have doubted you?” She turned to see his answer, and to her surprise, he
appeared flush with embarrassment beneath the resolute facade he had affected.
“You can report what you like. Once the larger divisions see our results here, they’ll
speak for themselves. All I’m asking for is —”
“You aren’t asking; you are telling us that you won’t shut it down and that we are
required to help you until you are satisfied.”
He considered this with an earnest expression, “I suppose I am,” and smiled.
She considered shooting him on the spot as an act of personal satisfaction. Though
it would not, she knew, close the gate. It began to dawn on her as she scrutinized the
self-congratulatory glee in his face: He’s not going to close it until his safety is assured...
which means hauling this thing back. She shook her head, glanced to Magdeen, and
found confirmation of her thought in his expression, both furious and fearful. She sighed
again and tactically adopted the appearance of acquiescence. There would be a better
moment to explore their options, away from the little doctor. So, she simply hunched
her shoulders and shrugged at the esteemed Dr. Basil Ducard. She then crossed the room
and, kneeling, placed a gentle hand on the shoulder of Theophanie, the Dreamspeaker.
“I will keep myself ready so you can mentally speak to me. If anything changes, and
I mean anything, I need to know about it.”

Theo smiled meekly up to her from where she sat on the floor, centered to the
gate, but against the opposing wall. Shining up at her, Theophanie’s eyes turned sad as
if in apology. Deacon returned a miserable smile of her own, and gave her shoulder a
reassuring squeeze. “It’s fine, Theo. I just need to know if anything changes, and that’s
enough.” Theophanie nodded back with a second, weak smile. Deacon appreciated the
effort in her trying to look brave, and she wished again to hurt Basil, now for both the
smiles he’d made them wear.
“Get it done then, doctor.” She patronized, and turned with her officers to leave,
ignoring whatever celebrations and reassurances Basil engaged with shouting after them.
Theophanie, as the laboratory emptied, stared in silence at the raised platform on
which the gateway sat, somehow cradling the green maelstrom of incomprehensible
time in its riveted steel jaws.
• • •
“Force munitions!” Theophanie commanded, voice resonant in both mind and
space with the conviction she and Deacon shared.
As soon as the message was broadcast in a psychic wave, a frenzy of activity
ensued, where rifles, carbines, and pistols all began to click and clatter as the marines
fed them with new ammunition.
Deacon dropped the visor of her helmet, allowing her eyes to adjust to the shattering
light, now flaring once again as if in response to the momentary lapse in gunfire.
Magdeen lay a few feet ahead of her on his back, crawling away from the green gate
while struggling to cycle the ammunition in his lever-action rifle. Preventing his escape,
a thick, hair-like spear pierced through the bone of his right shin, protruded out the back
through the calf, and then hooked upward around the knee, tugging him toward the light.
The lance corporals, Ackard and Silvia, had both run up beside him, draped their arms
beneath his own, and acting as a set of anchors for him, they hacked wildly through the
fibrous hair, pulling him away.
Someone else was screaming, clearly audible over the sudden silence. From the
opposite end of the gate, the writhing, bulbous mass of muscle had rocketed violently
forward, smothering the upper half of Xander’s skull. Several feet behind him, Basil
simply stood to the side, observing his assistant’s screams, which soon turned to a high
pitch gurgling as the mass yanked open his jaw and began to spew a colony of worms
into his throat.
Norris, Winslow, and Stevenson stepped away from the gore and his indecipherable
pleas. Stevenson was the first to re-arm his shotgun, and a plume of crackling electricity
erupted from the barrel. Yellowed blood and cartilage exploded into toothpicks from the
flesh-mass, and it shook itself free of the assistant. The young man pitched forward on
his knees, regurgitating the thousands of larvae onto the polished floor. Then his spine
went stiff and he collapsed forward, completely still.
In as loud a voice as she could command, Deacon screeched above the chaos, repeating
“Force munitions, God damn it!” She thumbed four revolver rounds from her belt, each

earmarked with a bold red line that ran the length of the cartridge. Loading them into the
gun, she spun the cylinder and clocked back the hammer. An orange gleam began to burn
within the weapon, casting shafts of light from the barrel. Quickly, she sighted down the
fibrous-hook in Magdeen’s calf, followed it back to the armored leg, and took careful aim at
the circular abscess in the carapace from which it emerged. She fired.
The light coalesced into the barrel of the gun, and the sound of pressurized, broiling
atmosphere kicked up into a screaming fever pitch. For an instant, it seemed to steal away the
light of the room, drawing it inward. Then, a concussive breach of fire exploded from the weapon.
The oversized pore in the carapace shattered open in a spray of chitinous shrapnel,
setting the hair-like fibers ablaze. The armored segments of the insectoid leg thrashed
violently into the sides of the gate, stabbing blindly with its pincer at the fire which had
wounded it. The bristles of hair where Deacon had fired sizzled and smoked, and then
snapped clean, sending Magdeen, Ackard, and Silvia tumbling backward. A dozen other
tooth-tipped hairs retreated from their assault across the room and locked into place
inside the porous sections of the segmented armor.
Opposite her position on the left flank, arcs of blue lightning pierced the knotted
mass of the tentacle as Norris opened fire with his rifle. The previously putrefying stench
now billowed with the acrid smells of charred meat as the rot burst from the searing
electrical discharge. A waterfall of maggots and worms came spilling out of it, pooling
across the floor in a churning heap. Stevenson and Winslow, meanwhile, unleashed
similar bolts of fire at an exposed joint in the armored extremity. The shell cracked open
under the blaze, and a wave of pustule-colored blood exploded from within.
As more marines, loaded with the specialized ammunition, unleashed the unified
barrage, the flesh-mass and the armored appendage retaliated. A seismic wall of force
came crashing across the lab as they swung out in wide sweeping blows which threw
the assembled soldiers to the ground. A low wail imploded from somewhere deep within
the gate, showering the space once more in the lethal rays of viridian light. Theophanie
stepped forward as Deacon had, and wove the brimming streams away from the marines.
Far more elegantly than Deacon, her fingers pricked upon the air as though plucking
invisible strands, and under whose strain, the light spun into harmless orbs that drifted
under her command. Slowly, her hands worked the unbound light into a larger whole,
pushing it toward the gate, and shearing more of the chitin and flesh away. She moved
the sphere until it encompassed the whole of the gate and vortex. Finally, the monstrous
protuberances disappeared back into the schism. As a quietude rose around them all,
Deacon could hear that Theophanie had been speaking.
“They’re coming through, they’re coming through, they’re —” A glaze and far
distance was cast across her eyes, and her voice carried a delirious rhythm and tone.
Deacon rushed to her side, aching with bruises and exhaustion, and tried to rouse Theo
from the trance. The other woman continued to repeat the warning. Was it a warning? A
statement of fact? Then where were they? Struggling to speak above the silence herself,
Deacon wrapped her friend between her arms and rocked her back and forth.
“They were already here, Theo. They’ve gone.” Hearing her, Theophanie’s body
relaxed, though her fingers still moved while she pulled away from the captain to look
in her eyes. The far distance still remained in Theo’s, and disquieted, Deacon’s skin
prickled with anxious bumps. Calmly, the Dreamspeaker nodded to her.
“I know that. They’re coming through, and so will you. I thought you should
know it too.” Her voice lilted, somehow sweet in spite of how foreboding the meaning
behind it was. Before Deacon could make sense of it or press her to be clearer, the
Dreamspeaker’s eyes came back to full color, the vastness behind them no more. As if
concluding a separate conversation, and her face drawn taut in strained lines, Theo said
“...so I won’t be able to hold this for long.”
• • •
Callaghan and Edna threw open a series of emergency release valves as power
fluctuations blew open several port caps on the central power conduit. A green, gleaming,
and jellied sludge exploded from the coolant pipes, burning through Hansen’s face and
throat with such speed that his body simply crumbled in on itself, perfectly silent.
“Fuck!” Cal threw shut the pressure cutoff gate and, from the corner of his eye,
thought he saw something writhing within the jellied ooze. Another spout of steam
erupted from the gauges, and he charged across the engineering deck with a massive
wrench, roughly the size of a staff in hand. He threw its teeth upon the regulator bolt and
cranked down on it with his full weight until it stubbornly turned into the shutoff position.
The high-pitched whine of escaping gas began to recede as the pressure equalized within
the system of pipes and conduits, and the meter on the main gauge shifted gradually
counterclockwise. The temperature on the engineering deck had spiked tremendously
in only a few moments. Both Callaghan and Edna wiped sweat from their eyes before
meeting each other with looks of astonished anger. Porter crouched at a safe distance
from Hansen’s body, looking lost and uncomprehending, but still alert enough to refrain
from touching the corpse.
Cal looked over Hansen’s body. The muscle still sizzled beneath his jumpsuit as the
green substance ate through the organic matter of his shoulders. Callaghan shuddered
then slammed down the wrench in a fit of rage. Sparks flew from where it struck the
floor, and the engineer bellowed “What in the fucking hell was that!?” Unsatisfied with
the feedback from striking the wrench into the ground, he hurled it across the deck,
where it clanged harshly against the pipes on the far wall.
“Porter, get down to cargo and find out what’s happened before it happens again.”
Porter looked helplessly at the chief engineer, motioning limply at Hansen, and struggling
to mouth anything sensible. Callaghan slanted his mouth, half in a sympathetic smile,
half in a frown.
“I get it. By the time you get back, we’ll have Doc Higgins or Justine here to
look after him.” Callaghan responded. Porter still struggled to move, and Edna kneeled
beside him. She took the young man in a full embrace and whispered softly to him, but
whatever she said, it was too low for Callaghan to make out. After a few moments, she
let go of him, and he stood, nodding to her with a face fresh with tears. He looked over
to Callaghan and stammered “Sorry chief, I’ll get right on it.” Cal waved him away, but
with an affectionate tone.
“Nothin’ to be sorry for, kid, just find out what’s what for us.” He gave him a final,
affirming nod as he left and then crossed over to Edna, still beside Hansen’s body. With nothing
substantial to say, he felt dumb next to her and awkwardly asked “What do you make of it?”
She shook her head, which felt appropriate. “There was something moving in the
coolant, I thought...” She stated, flatly and with some distance. The thought of what he’d
seen made his skin crawl. As much to steady himself as to console her, he placed a hand
on her shoulder and squeezed softly.
“No time for anything like that. Porter will fill us in on the situation upstairs, but
in the meantime I need you to grab Higgins or Justine out of medical.” When she didn’t
move right away, he slid his hand from her shoulder to just under her arm and coaxed
her gently to her feet.
“I uhh —” He staggered on his thoughts and looked away from her, steeling his
nerves. “It’s not the most delicate thing to say, but tell them to bring a stretcher with a,
uh... well, a cover.” He glanced back at her, and shared in the uncomfortable silence as
she processed the idea. Afterward, she smiled sadly, touched her hand to his, and left.
Cal waited for several long moments, somewhat dazed before his attention finally
resolved back to the situation. He was alone. Though not exactly. Hansen was here. He
scuffed his boot on the floor and kicked at the air, deflated. Taking in a deep gulp of air,
he kneeled down and took a careful look at the trail of green sludge, trying to see, though
not really hoping to see, if there was anything else inside of it.
Stillness.
• • •
Cognizant of the sulfuric, sickly-sweet stench that permeated the pools of pale
blood and their disemboweled crewmembers, several of the marines had puked, adding
an acidic tang to the malodor. Deacon hocked back the bile rising in her throat and
spat away a wad of mucus. Wiping a thin film from her lips, the smell and taste only
intensified, and she resigned herself to simply tolerating it. Composing herself, she put
up on her feet and took stock of where the situation had left them.
Magdeen sat in a corner of the lab, braced by Ackard while Silvia tried to cut through
the fiber-spun blade still lodged in his shin. Norris, meanwhile, helped Stevenson to his
feet, and Winslow hurried to her side, stammering with fading adrenaline.
“Y-you okay, Captain?” Although quite formal and obligatory when he usually
asked, his voice now shook with sincere nerves.
She nodded, patted him on the shoulder, and closed her eyes. “We can’t be caught
unawares like this again. I’m authorizing full use of force munitions.” Surprise crossed
his face but did not linger. “Get the quartermaster down here and start assembling
barriers, three V formations encircling the gate. Call down all marines in full regalia.
Get out the word that we’re on high alert for any other... well, monsters.” She shook her
head at the ridiculousness of the word, waved the thought away, and continued. “Don’t
say monsters. Anomalies. Non-combat crew are on standby for assisting medical staff
with any field needs.” He nodded dutifully and motioned for Stevenson, calling out.

“You’re with me.” Before they disappeared into the wall opposite the gateway,
Deacon grabbed him by the arm.
“When I say bring everything, I mean everything.” She motioned with her head
toward the gate, where a steady trickle of liquid filth had already begun to stream down
the ramp, out from the vortex.
It seemed as if the faintest hint of a grin, almost imperceptible, hid behind his
mouth, but it had always been difficult to tell with him. It would have been an odd time
for it, but at leisure, he was much the opposite around the crew. Gregarious almost, but
his stoic demeanor always re-emerged once he realized she was near. She put away her
curiosity, untimely as it was, released his arm with another pat on the shoulder, and with
a single nod, let him go.
“Norris!” Deacon called as she approached him. The squat man was glaring down
Basil and checking his weapon, but stood to attention when she neared. “Pull Higgins
out of medical with a full detachment of field kits; then inform Callaghan we’ll be
drawing power from the drive core. Tell him I don’t care, whatever he complains about.”
“As you say. Anything else, cap?”
“No, you’re good.” She flashed her teeth in a grateful smile and turned away from
him, but quickly pivoted back. “Yep, wait. Tell Callaghan that we need their welding
torches too.” She pointed to the widening pools of rotting and writhing worms. He
nodded in understanding and left.
Scanning the compartment while she made her way to Theophanie, she took two
marines and set them to contain the pools. As she approached Theo, she heard the Mage’s
quiet murmuring, though it came to an abrupt halt as she neared. The Dreamspeaker sat
back against her hands, a stark departure from her standard, well poised cross-legged
stance.
“I’m sorry, Deacon...” Theo sounded as though she may cry, and hid her face away.
“They just appeared, I wasn’t ready for it, didn’t know, I swear I wasn’t —”
“Theo.” Deacon interjected. “You told us as fast as you could. Also, you are
currently holding the damn thing shut. After having closed it. By yourself.” She stepped
around the sitting woman, and gave her an affectionate smirk. “Shut up.” Theo looked
away again, a mixture of flattered abashment in her face.
“Thanks, Dee.”
“You’re welcome because thank you too. I need you to be okay because we need
to be completely ready this time. Right?” Theophanie looked uncertain of herself,
continuing to avoid the captain’s gaze.
“Theo, am I right?” Deacon repeated.
It took her a short while to dig into her reserves so as to resolve upon an answer, but
finally said, “Right you are, Dee —” She paused and jokingly corrected herself with a
gladdening face, awkwardly affirming. “As you say, Captain.”
She pushed Theo playfully on the shoulder. She’d always had an image of
Dreamspeakers as technopagans but slowly had come around to the idea that Theophanie

was just an actual witch. Someone who wouldn’t be out of place in a fairy tale, tricking
fools into mortal debts with her awkward charm and beautiful voice. That felt especially
true in moments like this, where Theo would say the correct words to imitate friendship,
but with a disconnect of tone, like she didn’t understand their meaning. They’d worked
together for nearly four years, and the disciplinary attitudes of her crew was something
the Dreamspeaker only ever seemed to affect begrudgingly, understanding the effects of
etiquette and decorum, but not their purpose. Even so, Deacon had grown fond of their
relationship, unusual though it was, and the smile specific to it now crept across her face.
“I appreciate it, Theo. Now...” She trailed off as she glanced toward the gateway.
“Can you tell me anything more about what those things were?” Theophanie shook her
head.
“I don’t know what you would call them. Touching them, they’re not of the
Gauntlet, even if this tear in time somehow connects to it.” She mused, dredging up the
images of what she’d experienced. “There were only flashes of... lust? Hunger? Like a
knot of flesh seeking to consummate itself by gorging on others.” She let out a chuckle.
“Cosmonauts encountering the Flesh-Knot.” Deacon shook her head with reproach, but
with a chuckle of her own.
“We are not calling it that.” Deacon stated firmly. Theophanie shrugged as though
the name was not horrific. “If we call it anything, it’s going to be something utterly
banal and not haunting.” Theophanie shrugged in response again, but before she could
respond, an ear-piercing shriek rang out with startling urgency.
Basil squatted leisurely over the corpse of his assistant, lifeless in the spray of foul-
stenched larvae, blood, and giblets. He was talking to himself in a slightly disordered
cadence, dabbing thick globs of the liquid and worms into an assortment of glass tubes
and trays. On the whole, he appeared largely unmoved by what happened and more
annoyed by the aftermath of what remained. His scream had been of frustration and
indignation, and it only intensified as Deacon turned from her friend and approached
him, off-put by the frenetic grasping at viscera and wild muttering.
On the journey, Basil had shown what she now recognized as remarkable restraint.
At dinners or when she checked over their navigation, he was well-spoken and
compelling, with a detached interest in the experiment, displaying a healthy distance
from his research. It was a disposition she favored in scientists, suggesting a lack of
motivated bias. She and Magdeen had been screwed out of pay, food, and opportunity
by academics before, and it was always because the researcher had too strong a personal
stake in their dealings. Good scientists, she thought, could step back and decouple
their emotional connections from their inquiries into the Umbra, and Basil had made a
convincing performance to her.
Now look at him. She stopped quietly, a handful of paces behind him, and listened
for a moment. None of what he said was especially coherent, instead coming out as
piecemeal sentence fragments. They were all insults directed at Xander’s lifeless body.
She looked down at the poor young man, face half-obscured in filth, and what was
visible contorted into a shock of pain and terror. The image of what had been done to

him, throat bulging with gurgitation and the muffled pleading being suffocated out by
— She put it away and continued to listen.
“Incompetent... God damn... Told him to hold it... Not make love to... Couldn’t be
a more fitting end, really... at least be of some use now.”
Bristling with a fury she couldn’t conceal, she drew in front of him and yelled “Can
you turn this thing off now that it’s started killing people?” The answer was foregone
and she knew it. He either wouldn’t or couldn’t. Not now that something was aware of
them, and what could step through to reach them. She doubted very much that he was
capable anymore of shutting it down. So, she braced herself against the impulse to harm
him, but when his answer came, it struck her with such surprise that it bypassed any
attempt to remain patient.
“I can only hope that these samples aren’t utterly ruined due to your reckless
indulgence of weaponry, while your idiot meatheads pummeled the poor specimen with
a war’s worth of —”
NOPE. With the heel of her boot, Deacon kicked him hard. He plummeted forward,
face first into the ground, accompanied by the sound of shattering glass and the thud of
his body hitting the floor. Then it was all his indignant screaming.
“You. You’ve ruined —” He cut himself short as he felt the cold cylindrical barrel
of her revolver press against the back of his skull. She pushed his face deep into the
filthy piles of gore, giving him the chance to see it up close and allowing herself a
moment of catharsis for assisting science.
“I’ll say it again.” She fanned back the hammer with a loud click. “Close it.” His
voice was sheer resentment, a thing which could barely gurgle from his throat and
scarcely squeeze past his teeth.
“As if I would.” He pushed his head back against the barrel, pain now joining the
mixture of hatred in his voice. “As if you would.” For the first time in her life, Deacon
found herself completely unsure as to whether or not she was capable of pulling the
trigger on a gun which she had both drawn and aimed at another person. Somewhere,
there was still that same hope as before, barring her hand from further action. As though
aware of the process unfolding inside of Deacon, Basil rolled onto his side and dead-
eyed her. “If any of you barbarians want to make it out of here alive, I mean.” The look
in his eyes unsteadied her, but she didn’t break contact with them. Even so, she calmly
relaxed the hammer on the pistol, lowering it. Silvia, who had drawn up beside her
with her carbine readied, followed suit. Then, a new and wonderful thought occurred to
Deacon. She smiled back at him.
“You’re absolutely right, of course, Doctor.” His face went sour at the condescension
in her tone. “Corporal?”
“M’am?” Silvia replied.
“We cannot kill this poor man in cold blood. After all, he is likely the only one on
board with the technical knowledge to shut down his device.” Deacon celebrated her
frustration, holstering her gun and then clapping her hands together. “Whoever you have
available, have them assist you in binding the good doctor’s arms and legs, and then set
him in front of the gate. I sent Norris off to requisition things from Callaghan, so after
you’re done, I think we better requisition his person too.” She smiled at her subordinate
and turned away from Basil. “As for the doctor, if he doesn’t want to turn it off or is now
impotent to the task, then we can’t compel him to.”
From the corner of her eye, she could see the fire of pleasure in Silvia’s posture. “As
you say, Captain.” The young soldier retrained her gun on Basil, and she took three long
steps backward to preserve a healthy distance between them.
“As I say.” Deacon agreed, nearly melodically.
She didn’t remain to witness Basil’s expression and did her best to tune out his
barrage of protestations as she made her way to Ackard and Magdeen. Halfway there,
Basil was shut up completely, following the dull thud of a blunt instrument striking
bone. Silvia called out in explanation. “He was going to rush me.”
Deacon made a pronounced shrug without turning and approached Magdeen. Doc
Higgins was here now, crouched over Mags and finishing the job of removing the bladed
fibers from his leg, now a relatively easy operation given proper instruments.
He’d clearly administered morphine for the pain, since upon seeing Deacon,
Magdeen half spoke, half drooled “Eyy Capm, wha’s th wurd?” Deacon cocked a grin
in spite of herself.
“You may want to be careful asking about words right now. You’re liable to hurt
yourself.”
He honked out an embarrassing laugh and said “Ohh ho ho, at least I don’t have a
hold in my leg.” which set him to giggling.
Affectionately, “You absolute idiot. The foot’s on the other shoe.” His face contorted
as he tried to parse together what that could possibly mean but seemed to give up.
“I cantch talk t’yoo when I’m like thish, Deea.”
“That’s true.” She smiled again.
This appeared to satisfy him, and he sank back against the wall, his eyes closed, and
in his comfort mused “Thash wa’some wild thit.”
Deacon leaned against the wall and sighed “Aye...” As though his comment
had jinxed the situation, Theophanie’s voice called back out. “They’re coming back
through.” The orbiting seal of light that she had cast around the gate dissolved, and
she slumped heavily to one side, utterly spent. From within the gate, Deacon swore
she could hear her voice combined with Theophanie’s as the gate fully reopened. The
many hits of adrenaline throughout the day had left Deacon feeling equally weak. Her
thoughts spun out as she attempted to marshal a second wind, but the adrenaline simply
coursed through what felt like an empty shell. Noticing the captain’s struggle, Higgins
braced her on the shoulder and helped coax her thoughts back into clarity.
“Drink this before you collapse, Captain.” When her vision refocused and she could
discern the flask, marked with an upward pointing stripe, she scowled at him. He ignored
the look, and pushed it into her hands. “You look like hell, so drink it.”

“You’re the expert on that one, doc.” She shot back and accepted the container.
Immediately, the foul smell of the thick, sugary nutrient syrup filled her nose. Higgins
snorted at her jest.
“Only because I see you so much.’’ Then he strode away with his medics, rushing
Magdeen on a stretcher to the field hospital in the lab’s storage annex.
The unbearably sweet tonic coursed through her, restoring Deacon somewhat to
a sense of vitality, but she saved half of it. Rushing back to Theophanie, she barked
out commands and organizational orders to the crews who trickled in from the armory,
helping to establish the basics of a palisade from which to fight. Only two crates of
special munitions were stacked at the back of the room, so they would have to be
enough as the main stockpile came in. Winslow joined alongside her, assisting her to
carry Theophanie to her platform at the end of the lab. The first series of shots rang out
behind them as they cleared the field, but now amid the biological sounds of flesh or
armor being broken, there were strange howls of pain and fury. Deacon looked over her
shoulder as they set Theo into place. Significantly larger insects than the larvae now
skittered unevenly down the ramp, seven or more legs carrying them at speed toward
the half-assembled marines.
• • •
Hansen’s body now lay obscured beneath two pairs of coveralls. Callaghan leaned
back against his makeshift chair, itself as much a staple of the engineering deck as the
banks of pipes, gauges, and conduits. When Edna had returned, furious nearly to tears,
and reported that the medical team had no one to spare, Cal took the initiative to retrieve
some spare uniforms from their lockers and draped them over Hansen’s derelict body.
Hansen’s Derelict... he thought to himself, taken in a morbid fit with how the words
sounded like a name. A ship’s name? No, for something else. Though for what, he didn’t
know.
Porter had then come back, following Edna, with little more in the way of insight
to report.
“The experiment. It went... wrong? It’s complete chaos in cargo. The whole
Neutralization Corps is there, it looks like a battlefield.” The word stuck in both their
minds. Old memories, old wounds, some they’d shared and been a solace to each other
through. Though not all. When the look between them passed, Porter continued, “The
Doc has a field hospital up and they had Captain Deacon cordoned off. I couldn’t get
a very clear answer from anyone.” He paused, uncomfortable with what to say. “LC
promised to come by when she could.” Callaghan noted his hesitation in mentioning her
by name, but simply did his best to look as though it didn’t bother him.
That had been nearly an hour past, and only now had Justine arrived with the
stretcher and a pair of sailors in tow, all apparently surprised to find a dead engineer on
the floor. She made her apologies for the delay as they approached the body with the
carriage, but Callaghan scarcely paid her any attention. Silvia stood in the doorway, and
it was all he cared about. He sat patiently, legs crossed beneath the chair, as the medics
prepared then transferred Hansen’s body to the stretcher. Stepping around them, Silvia
slid alongside him, and in a quiet voice said “Captain’s asked for you in the hold.” He’d
anticipated as much but remained seated, looking her over. Scrutinizing her for details
yielded no information, guarded as she was — both in general but with him especially.
A slow surge of longing coursed through him as he struggled to determine whether
the coolness with which she treated him was an extension of their ongoing hostility or
simply the situation at hand.
“Now?” She prompted impatiently, at which point he decided it was both. He let out
a heavy sigh, turned his attention to the medics, and waited for their work to conclude.
For her part, Silvia decided this was done for the purpose of agitating her, but didn’t
pursue a commensurate response while a dead man was being... disposed of. She felt
guilty for the thought, even if it was the truth. To avoid dwelling on the feeling, she
glanced down at Callaghan and allowed a wave of resentment to wash over her without
resistance.
He leaned forward on the chair and pulled out an assembled bag of tools from
behind his legs. Taking it by the handle, he stood up then followed behind Justine and
the medics as they exited Engineering, Silvia trailing him. Once they diverged from the
medics, and had proceeded down the corridor a bit, he asked, “How are things?”
Silvia frowned from behind him and decided to interpret the question as impertinent.
“Can’t say. You’re the technician, so you’ll need to ask the Captain or see for yourself.”
He wanted to press the issue. To insist that she knew what he meant, or even respond
diminutively about her position, but he doubted it would amount to much. So they
continued on in an uncomfortable bubble of silence, which burst and caused them to
stop when the sounds of weapons fire erupted ahead of them. Exchanging a dire look,
they broke into a sprint at the same time, rushing into the lab as fast as they could.
The scene beyond the bulkhead was dire. Magdeen lay offset through a door into
a storage room, where Callaghan could only barely make out a series of field beds. In
front of the door, several body bags were stacked on one another in a haphazard heap.
“Move!’ Silvia shouted, shoving him away from her, scarcely a moment before a
twitching spider-amalgam, with a full jaw and teeth, leapt past where he had been. Silvia
reached to unsling her carbine, but Cal was faster in pulling a pressurized-torch from his
toolbox. Casting open the flame valve, and sparking it with his mind, he unleashed a jet
of blue fire that incinerated the creature. “Thanks!” He shouted back at her, noticing the
tell-tale glow of force ammunition inside her weapon, now that it was primed. Now, he
thought, he understood what the hell had been going on. She nodded, but then grabbed
him by the sleeve, and pulled him into a crouched walk toward Deacon and Winslow.
The captain was pouring something into Theophanie’s mouth, holding her head
back so that she drank, and lightly tapping her fingers against the Dreamspeaker’s cheek.
By the time they reached them, occasionally ducking or dodging out of the way of
shrapnel, stingers, claws, and teeth, Theo’s eyes were open and the three were frantically
speaking. Deacon’s face lit up with hopefulness once she saw him, but neither could
clearly hear the other over the discordance. She motioned for him to follow, pointing
at the medical annex. The lieutenant beside her, Winslow handed off pieces of armor to

Deacon as they made for the door, which she threw on and buckled in a slapdash hurry.
Callaghan thought for a moment that he could hear a familiar voice, crying out for help,
but he didn’t dare to take his eyes off the path between himself and the door. Twice, he
nearly tripped and would have gone sprawling. Once in a fresh puddle of human blood,
which lost him his footing as he slid, and the second time on the bulging corpse of a
fly-tick when it crashed suddenly in front of him. It burst into a rolling mess of smaller
parasites when his boot struck it, and he’d let loose a torrent of flame on the work-shoe
as they clung on, nearly catching the frayed knees of his coveralls in the process. They
barreled through the open bulkhead as a low explosive boom overtook the laboratory
behind them.
“I need to know if you can disable the gate, weaken its scope, seal it off — anything.
Anything we can work with, because this isn’t sustainable.” Deacon spoke with hurried
awareness. Something in the captain’s expressions always made him uncomfortable
with receiving orders or questions directly, and now the effect was amplified while
he turned the question over in his mind. Despite their general dislike for one another,
Deacon did defer to his authority in these matters, and she waited with patience as he
examined them.
“I don’t know.” Callaghan said honestly. “Genuinely, I don’t.” Deacon nodded to
him, buckling Justine’s left pauldron into place.
“Whether yes or no — what would it take in order for you to know?”
“I need to get close to the equipment. There were noticeable spikes in pressure
throughout Engineering after Basil took us all hostage, and today they were magnitudes
worse, on the level of a runaway effect. Edna and I were barely —”
“Cal, I’m sure it is incredibly interesting and I look forward to hearing all about it
when the situation isn’t trying to kill us.”
“Right, you’re right.” He replied. “In short, Basil must have modified the gate in
some way. I need to see what’s changed. Or, if he didn’t and this is the result of the
timestream, or even Paradox, I would need to know that.”
“Got it.” Deacon said immediately. “Here’s the plan then. You’ll approach on the
right flank; we’ll put marines beyond the barricade of the left, and hopefully they’ll be
bait enough to attract the bugs away from you.” Donning the helmet as her last piece of
gear, she called over a marine and directed her to bring Callaghan a heavy assault suit.
“Also — and I know you won’t like it — Silvia and Ackard’s units will be your escorts.
It sucks what happened, I get it, but they’re the only senior corporals left. The others all
got their promotions within the hour.” She clasped the back of his head with one hand
and pressed their foreheads together. “Thank you, Chief.” Then she was gone. Winslow
remained to brief the corporals once they’d arrived.
• • •
In the days following its construction, the sleek and elegant design of the gate
was immensely satisfying. Its sharp, symmetrical edges were beautiful in their way,
but now the entire superstructure sat lopsided and nearly half-sunk on the platform

from the weight of new machinery sticking out at odd angles. Callaghan poured the
modifications, tracing where the new tubes lead, how they were connected, and what
could be done about them. As the changes began to make sense, his panic mantled to a
new high, infused with certainty and dread. It was an absolute hack job of hastily welded
pipes and power relays. The list of parts Basil would have had access to ran through
his mind, and his sense of dread further ballooned. Basil would have spliced the gate
directly into the drive core’s main conduit, through the access panels along the floor. An
easy enough job to pull off in an emergency — that’s what they were for, after all — but
an altogether more difficult endeavor to disassemble. He wasn’t even certain that he
could. Not with one engineer already dead and no one to replace him. The only other
option, if Theophanie could pull it off...
Callaghan’s thought trailed off abruptly, as he became acutely aware of Basil,
detained before the gateway but otherwise undisturbed. Although gagged, the man’s
face was turned upward with amusement, creasing his eyes where something foreign
now lay. Experienced with bitterness, he recognized Basil’s demeanor as that of a deep
loathing, mired with glee. It surprised him. Their work on the gate left him with the
impression that Ducard was a fundamentally meek and undaunting man. Now he could
see how dire his mismeasure of him had been, as the scientist sat in a curiously clean
circle on the floor. The streams of insects skirted neatly around it, and Basil simply
glared out at him, eyes dimpled with spite. Basil knew what Callaghan had discovered.
He relished in it. An unexpected urge began to blossom in the engineer. A violent lust to
charge across the room and with his hammer collapse Basil’s head into a bowl. It was
Ackard — the bastard — who brought him back to his senses.
“How does it look, Chief?” The LC called. Callaghan repressed the urge to scowl,
hating both his reliance on Ackard and the man’s perpetual courteousness. Silvia stepped
close beside them, shooting down a leaping centipede, spraying yellow innards across
them. Noticing the look of affection between them, Cal scowled even deeper. Weighing
out the options, he decided that Theophanie was the only person who could help him.
“I have an idea!” He shouted back at them. “Get me to the Dreamspeaker.”
• • •
Deacon reconstituted the right flank as Silvia’s team made their way back from
the gate, evening out their positions along the defensive line cutting through the utterly
ruined lab. The maneuver to buy Callaghan time had worked to draw the attention of the
endless stream of abominations, but having her troops exposed had ensured more deaths
than she had hoped. As the mutated, bulging creatures spread thin along the line once
more, Deacon fell back to the third line of encircling walls, and realizing the danger in
moving back toward Theophanie, she called Winslow over to her. Blood was pouring
from an open wound on his left shoulder where the armor took a hit. Carrying only
his sidearm now, Deacon affirmed her decision to herself. Though still reluctant, she
ordered the broadcast of the ship’s distress signals.
“It’s only a precaution.” It was difficult to speak with softness against the tumult
of battle, and her reassurances did little to console him. It couldn’t be helped. “A

precaution.” She reiterated, pressing the black-lockpin into his right hand. “You’re
authorized to take any actions necessary in order to relay those signals.”
The lieutenant always looked unhappy, and nothing in her orders counteracted it
now. Even so, he nodded dutifully and asked for any specifics to include in the message.
Calling over the blaze, but still keeping her voice low enough that no one else
would hear, she dictated “Distress signal Pan-Pan, UMS Insight. Subsequent research
into time-dilation is not recommended, and...” She frowned in advance of how terrible
the next thing would sound. “Operation in danger. Intervention and rescue are neither
requested nor advised.” As much as the lieutenant understood the reasons, he hated
it. The gate could not return to the larger world, and no matter how hard they fought,
they were undeniably losing ground. Perhaps Deacon saw it in his face, or perhaps
she simply needed to disperse the silence between them. Either way, she punched his
shoulder in a flippant gesture of lightheartedness and took a step past him. “I’ll manage
the fires here; you know the rest. Be discreet and godspeed, Win.”
“As you say, Captain.” The sudden familiarity of the phrase stopped her from
moving as a sad nostalgia fell upon her step. It was an ever-present phrase in her life.
Equivalent in some ways to her name, her rank — everything she was. Essential to
her moment-to-moment life, and so with heavy hesitation, she turned away from the
comfort of those words, granting Winslow a simple nod, and made her way across the
field back to Theophanie.
Although protected on most sides by the steadily developing fortifications,
Theophanie’s hands and face were deeply lacerated. A large swath of burned flesh ran
backward from her jaw, terminating in a discolored thatch of charred hair, fused into her
throat and face. Her hands worked fast against each burst of light from the gate, catching
and redistributing the light as before. When Deacon drew near, ducking and sprinting
between cover, Theophanie ducked low beneath a reinforced section of wall.
“So?” She asked quickly, though trying to read the answer on the captain’s face
beforehand. Deacon tilted her head — almost a no, but not quite. Deacon pointed ahead
to Silvia’s team.
“We’re about to find out.” Deacon called back, rising on her feet to provide cover
fire.
Seeing this, Silvia dispatched the five marines in their entourage, bolstering the
right flank. The gap between them and Deacon’s position was sizeable. An unassembled
section of wall lay flat on the field, and the men who had carried it were dead atop of
it. Globs of acidic spittle and projectile needles flew through the air which separated
them. Some marines fell. Without a guaranteed path, Silvia put herself on Callaghan’s
right side, with Ackard ahead. Hopefully, the bodies at the wall would provide enough
cover for his crossing. After an exchange of glances, they burst forward from the wall
at a dead sprint.
Flames flew from Ackard’s hand in a wide shield to their side, evaporating the
corrosive jets of saliva as the trio rushed on. When they were within leaping distance
of the other side, two arms fell on Callaghan, one to his shoulder and the other to his

waist. They propelled him suddenly onward with a burst of force, and as he plunged
ahead, falling into cover, Silvia cried out behind him. Looking back immediately, she
and Ackard lay on their stomachs facing one another. Around her right thigh, a thinner
variant of the flesh-mass tentacle wound its way around her hips, tugging her backward.
She held desperately onto Ackard’s left bicep as the length of flesh wrenched on her
waist, the air rushing out of her lungs as its grip crushed her stomach and all feeling from
her legs. Callaghan threw himself toward them, grasping Ackard by the calves. Deacon’s
arms wrapped around him so that they formed a human chain, holding Silvia in place.
Ackard’s pistol swung wildly in his free hand as he tried to align a shot on the undulating
tendril, but every shot crashed with sparks against the floor. Just as Theophanie broke
from cover and took aim, lightning crackling from her fingertips, Silvia’s eyes turned
wide, and her auburn skin went pale. The protruding thread of muscle gave a final,
furious thrash; her hands fell limp; and it ripped her away.
Ackard’s scream syncopated with the rounds he fired until his pistol clicked
uselessly in the vacated air. Deacon, Theophanie, and Callaghan heaved him away
from the open space, and the engineer took the bawling man in an embrace, looking
helplessly to Deacon for further instruction — What do I do? These were the moments
which distinguished her for her position as captain. The cruelty required the sudden
activation of dissociated calculation and emotionless, agonizing order. As kindly as she
could, Deacon took Ackard from the engineer’s arms and laid him on his side, where
she guided his body into a curled ball. She pulled Callaghan, shaking and bewildered,
away from the grief he might otherwise share with Ackard and isolated herself with him.
“I need to know about the gate.” She said plainly, and the coldness in her voice
filled the engineer with outrage, disgust, and pain. He filled his lungs and sat upon his
knees to shout at her, but his breath disappeared in a flash when she seized him around
the throat and squeezed.
“More people are dying every second, and that thing, whatever it is, will overtake
the voidship. We cannot let that happen, Chief. It cannot be allowed to spread, because
if it does, it will be because you let Silvia die in vain, and because you let it out into the
world.” She released him with a shove, and he fell backward on his hands. “So... What
are we going to do about it?”
The conflict inside of him and the long moment it occupied tore into his heart.
Grief, rage, pain, and self-hatred crashed against his thoughts and fought for dominance,
but when he saw Theophanie’s eyes, he seized his mind and held it still against his
aching soul. Deacon repeated the question, and he shook his head.
“I should just let you all die... It’s her fault any of this is happening in the first place.”
He jabbed his finger at Theophanie. “You’re the one who’s supposed to know what’s
going on, but you’re just as stupid and clueless as everyone else.” Deacon positioned
herself between them, cutting off his view.
“That’s not fair to her, she —”
“Not fair? Look around you, Deacon, nothing that is happening is fair. She was
supposed to be in tune with the ship, but she didn’t notice a thing while Basil was

splicing power injectors from the drive core into the gate.” Callaghan felt powerful,
speaking somewhat technically in the service of an accusation. “If she had, none of this
would...” Deacon waited as patiently as she could, knowing it would only escalate the
passions at play to interject. Callaghan carried on with his rant and all she could do was
wait for it to exhaust itself. He sputtered, tripping on his words when a new creature,
mantis-shelled with an aculeate’s sting, crept into view behind him. The reverberation
of her revolver was enough to finish the process, and Callaghan fell silent, hunched over
with emptiness and defeat.
“Cal...” She began, not expecting him to respond to his name, and he didn’t. Even
so, it was clear she had his attention. “I’m not going to give you some grand speech and
say Silvia heroically gave her life to get you here, but she did die getting you here. I have
no solace or gloried lies to tell you.” She paused to let the old phrase take root, as it had
for her among her dead comrades aboard a sinking destroyer in the Atlantic. “What we
do next, it doesn’t honor anyone or enshrine their person in deed. But the one thing we
can do?” She lifted his chin to seize into his eyes. “We can burn that gate to hell, take
what lives inside it, and make it scream.” She flipped open the wheel of her revolver and
replaced the empty shells with new rounds. “If you don’t want to do that, fine. Die here.
The only thing I know is that Basil did something to the gate, and if I shoot it enough
times, it will do something.” She rose on her knees, still crouched behind the wall, and
motioned for Theophanie to follow her. Before she could step away, Callaghan grabbed
her by the wrist and held her in place.
“That won’t help.” She allowed him to pull her back down by the rank insignia.
“The vortex is likely self-sustaining. If we close the gate, I doubt it would do anything.”
Finally he looked at her. “But Basil had to hook it to the drive core; I’m guessing that’s
what stabilized it, but who cares? If I flood the engine into the spliced power relays he
connected, and Theophanie can deliver that energy into the vortex, it might destabilize
it.” Although Deacon was smiling, she countered.
“I need better than might, Cal.” To which he merely shrugged.
“That’s the best I got. Basically, all I can say is that if you shoot enough energy at it,
it will do something.” He iterated on her words, a small crease on his lips.
“Alright, Chief. Let’s do it.” Coming around the captain, Theophanie embraced her
arm with a fast squeeze.
“I think I can hold it back again. For a short time. If that will help.” Theo looked
ashamed and uncertain of herself, clearly feeling responsible and resonant with
Callaghan’s accusation.
“That’s what I was going to ask.” Callaghan replied.
• • •
The casualties lay strewn across the floor. Most in pieces, some with recognizable
expressions of horror, while a select few were pristine by comparison. As Theophanie
had enveloped the vortex once again, the bugs which remained had begun to scamper
away from the battlefield. The gas-torches made quick work of containing them before

they could escape throughout the ship, but that was when Deacon had noticed many
converging on the soldiers nearest to them. These were the corpses who lay, looking
almost peaceful, as though they were merely sleeping.
In the battle to seal the vortex, Deacon lost track of the crawling little horrors, so
when she approached the clean corpse of Private Kelborn, she was cautious, stopping
several yards short of it, and immediately issued an order to not touch the dead. Small
lumps moved beneath his skin, stretching it in places before it returned to normal.
Her own skin crawled in response, and she resisted the urge to swat at invisible bugs.
Unwilling to risk the many corpses of her former friends bursting into new monstrosities,
she issued a burn order on every cadaver, noting that the crew should maintain a sizable
distance. Disgusted with the task and the death rising from every inch of the room,
Deacon decided this was the only good time for her to indulge in a break.
Partitioned from the activity of armaments being assembled and armor put in place,
Deacon reached into the pocket of her trench coat. If she was going to die, she was going
to look her part for it. She pulled out a crumpled package of rolling tobacco. Quickly
rolling several pinches into two cigarettes, she put one between her lips and placed the
other in Magdeen’s. The immediacy of his pain killers had long since faded, and he
groaned beneath their absence when he repositioned himself against the fabric of the
medical hammock. She lit his cigarette and then hers.
“Does it really look that bleak for us, Dee?” He asked amid an exhalation of smoke.
She wasn’t sure and drew on the smoke in an uncomfortable but placating silence.
Mags had run on every crew with her since they were simple sailors on the material
oceans. Long before either of them had dreamed of such worlds or space as where they
now sailed. They’d hauled cargo, chased legends, and hunted outlaws, so the silence was
not an absence of communication. The words just needn’t be said.
Mags knew she was avoiding something, but the combination of pain and fear
withheld his questions, which otherwise would have been incessant until he was satisfied.
In place of that satisfaction, he contented himself to be patiently in pain beside her.
For her part, Deacon cast out her thoughts across the many close calls they had
come up against and conquered, or barely escaped, seeking in her memory for some
parallel from which to rally hope. By the time the cigarette had burned low enough to
singe her fingers, she had come up empty.
“Can you believe that stupid son of a bitch?” She asked.
Mags let another silence answer him and moved past the question. “I guess that’s
what we get when we start trying to pull weird shit out of the Consensus.”
She stared vacantly into the space that lay beyond the walls. “What’s funny is that
I was so sure we would blow up, but nope.”
Mags lightly punched her on the shoulder “Is that funny?”
She shook her head with an eye roll. “Yeah, I know...”
“What’s really funny is I was expecting to hit it off with Theo on this one.”

She looked his face over, unsure as to whether he was serious, and found herself
surprised upon realizing that he was. “It would never have worked out between you.”
She punched him back, a little bit harder than he had.
He grinned coyly “Who cares? You can have a really good time in the process of
things not working out.” A bemused sigh escaped from her and she shook her head,
half-approvingly.
“I’ll tell you what. If the ship’s going down and there’s no chance of survival, I’ll
give her a direct order to march in here and break your heart.” He grimaced from the
pain of laughing.
“I appreciate the gesture, Captain.”
She smiled as she stood, “Just looking after my boys.” She offered the pouch of
tobacco to him, and his face soured. “Don’t read into it dumbass. If you’re gonna be laid
up in bed, unable to be useful to anyone, the least you can do is have a good time for the
rest of us.” Mags returned the smile, took hold of the pouch, and mocked her.
“As you say, M’am.” She shook her head once more and took a step toward the
door.
“I need to get back.”
“I’ll either see you when you’re covered in guts and entrails, or just after I wind up
as part of something’s guts.” She laughed and he laughed too. They shared a short look
of affection, then she turned away.
• • •
“God damn it, Porter! We don’t have time for this.” Callaghan roared over the
screaming machinery, the thrum of energy, and the biological whirring of the pipes.
The two were cloistered beside one another in the cramped maintenance shaft through
which the Insight’s innards ran horizontally throughout the ship. Before them sat a thick,
square metal door, about four feet by four feet, which was bracketed by two enormous
clamps holding it shut.
“I saw something! I’m not lying!” Porter shouted back, clear terror in both his voice
and babied face. Callaghan smacked him upside the head.
“Get the damn door open then!” The connection to the door as a means of safety,
compared against the fear of remaining where they were, jarred the younger engineer
back into action. As Callaghan heaved against the left clamp, he threw himself against
its counterpart. From the corner of his eye, he could make out the movement once again,
and for a terrible moment, the clamps remained idle. His muscles primed with fearful
adrenaline, and he dropped his weight against the door. The clamps relented and fell
sharply onto the floor, and the door shot open with a burst of diffusing hot air that
knocked him backward. Callaghan’s huge hands closed violently around his coveralls,
and then he was yanked through the door. Behind him, he could feel Edna shoving him
along in unison.
“Move!” Callaghan bellowed, forcefully reaching for Edna next and throwing her
past the door beside him. Even above the blistering sound of the ship all around, he
could hear the door screech shut, and when he looked back, Cal was feverishly throwing
the clamps back into their restraining position. Edna half-crawled, half-leaped back to
him, and fastened the second clamp back beside it. Porter’s body shook with strained
cramps, and he could scarcely make out what lay around him in the new darkness on this
side of the door. Soon Callaghan was pulling him along, one hand yanking him by the
collar, while the other flung the heavy bag of tools far ahead along the path.
“Get it together and move!” The chief hollered, striking him again on the side of
the head. This time it worked. Porter found himself tumbling along on all fours at a
breakneck speed ahead of both Cal and Edna, guiding them by the series of arrows
stamped into the plates in the passage. The three of them hurtled through the cramped
accessways to the drive core’s transformers, deep in the ship’s lowest levels. From
these stations, numerous other coils, power lines, and pipes dispersed across the vessel,
delivering differently stabilized power grades to various facilities.
Most important to Porter, the sparks of electrical discharges here cast enough light to
feel safer, if still confined, though he knew the tunnels would soon open up into a series
of larger chambers where the sense of claustrophobia would recede. He urged himself
on, banging his head against the low ceiling as they moved, and sighed with relief when
he finally emerged into the more spacious interior around the main drive. The air was
both thinner and cooler here, and the familiar dance of electrical light allowed him a
moment to catch his breath, and to still his nerves.
Callaghan made no such pause. He went immediately to the transformers, getting
as close as safety would allow. Porter couldn’t make out what the man was saying, but it
seemed like he may have just been speaking to himself. Edna rushed past him, following
Callaghan’s arm as he pointed down a side passage that ran perpendicular from theirs.
She disappeared into it as it narrowed. Soon he realized Callaghan was shouting at him
again, but the words were drowned out by the absolute disorder around them. Realizing
this, Callaghan instead shoved a large cone-shaped mechanism in his face, and began
motioning down the tunnel that Edna had followed. Porter nodded that he understood
what to look for, took a deep breath, and plunged into the darkness after her.
• • •
Deacon re-emerged into the lab. A fleeting moment of pride passed through her as she saw
the fully assembled force of her Neutralization Corps marines. It was like she couldn’t take it all
in until now. The barricades, the two turret-towers, and the reinforced plating along the whole
of the lab’s inner walls. Standing there in full armor, she felt galvanized and utterly capable.
The fortifications were arrayed around the gateway in an inverted crescent, encircling
it on one side. The first line of the crescent was occupied by the non-Awakened, semi-
Sleeper crew who took on the heaviest armor and crouched behind the chest-high
barriers. Behind them, the Awakened marines were hidden almost entirely from the
view of the soldiers at the front. Stood behind higher walls, they could more freely
compel arcana, obscured from the non-Awakened crew. Finally, behind the second rank
of marines, the two elevated platforms and void-munition turrets, their tall shielding
performing a similar function to that of the second file’s walls.

“Captain on deck!” Winslow called, and at once, the whole assembly rose to
attention. Boots reverberated. Deacon’s chest rose with power at the display, a burst of
conviction sparking like fire in her veins, furious and eager. She soaked in the moment
triumphantly, allowing it to steel into her bones and seep heavy into their marrow, and
from which she deeply drew as she declared herself.
“As you were.”
“As you say.” The response rebounded on the metal walls like thunder, and though
now relaxed, she saw the heartening it compelled in the countenance of each soldier down
the line. She grinned fiendishly. Only thrice had the occasion for such a congregation
arisen in her time as a captain under the newly anointed Technocracy. Before, in her time
as a maritime officer, she had assembled her crew along the deck of her ship a handful of
times as they gained on the trail of an enemy vessel. The salt of the ocean which sprayed
off the waves and heightened the senses was now substantiated by the cindering, alkaline
smell of force munitions. A good enough substitute, she reckoned. Behind each rank of
the formation, large crates had been pried open, and from which that smell permeated
the hold. Each division of the line had a separate color of ammunition, which denoted
the type of force it would produce. She had taken to calling each by their own pet names
— fire-breathers on the left, mass multipliers down the middle, and the arc-casters on
the right. She examined each division of infantry and confirmed their supplies in short
order. Now they were fully assembled and prepared, not desperately throwing together
whatever defenses they could, and she felt proud beside them.
Ahead of their defenses sat the gate, and between them sat Basil, tied up and
silent. As she looked him over, her thoughts turned to Callaghan and the hope that he
was finding success in the tunnels beneath their feet. When she was satisfied by the
inspection, she confidently took position on the right flank’s tower. Taking the rifle that
Winslow had left there, she slung it into the crook of her arm, and began to speak.
“I hope, by now, we’ve seen enough of the situation to know what it necessitates of
us. Something has breached the vortex. The price of which has, so far, been incalculably
severe. Your friends, your comrades, people who you loved, and of course Commander
Magdeen’s leg.” The assembly rippled with small laughter, and some cried. “We have
very little information regarding what lies on the other side of the breach, but we know
two things for certain. It cannot be allowed to escape the confinement of our ship. Your
ship. The second thing we know for certain is that it will not escape the confinement of
our ship. Am I correct?” A seismic ripple carried across the deck as the soldiers stamped
a single foot in unison, calling an affirmative to their captain.
“Good. The plan is simple. When Theophanie releases her seal, we shoot down
every living thing that steps through to our ship. Our engineers need time, and our job
is to shoot the vortex until it gives us some. We ensure their success, at whatever cost.”
She paused, allowing emphasis to build. “When I say at whatever cost, you may think
that it may require you, the person beside you, or even myself to die. But be forewarned
that you are not entitled to do so if I have not ordered it. At whatever cost, you stay alive
and you keep killing, and you keep killing, and you...?”

“We keep killing, Captain!” The marines, their crew, the medics — all together
answered.
“And no one does it as well as you, am I correct?
“As you say!”
“Yes, I do.”
• • •
Twenty feet ahead of him, Edna’s headlamp scattered the darkness into the deep
crevices behind the pipes and cables around Porter. He flinched away from the sudden
brilliance, allowing his eyes to adjust while shielded from it. Moments before, a storm of
gunfire had erupted overhead, and farther down, what sounded like a tunnel collapsing.
He frantically sought after the spliced junctions that Callaghan predicted would connect
the gateway into the central drive conduit. It didn’t take long to find them, but what
he found alongside them froze his body once again in fear. The green sludge which
had erupted onto Hansen dripped from the connections, and behind them, a discolored
purple- and pus-colored mass writhed, stretching along the conduit in both directions
and as far as he could see in the scattering light.
Porter mustered his courage in the form of just do the job and you can leave, but
when he reached out for the spliced connection, it had moved three feet down. He
didn’t understand, and simply rebuked himself for being stupid, then crawled down the
distance and reached out again. To his absolute astonishment, Basil grabbed his hand
and pulled it away. “Doc-doctor? How — “
“We don’t have time for that, kid. Look at this.” Basil pointed in the direction
behind them. When Porter turned to look, Basil shoved the pod-end of the writhing
flesh-mass over his head and began yanking it forcefully down. Beneath the roar of
machinery, and the softening of the pod around his skull, Edna could not hear the young
man screaming and, with her back turned, could not see as he bayed violently against
the mass, gorging itself on him.
“Atta boy, just like that.” Basil whispered for no one else to hear, not even Porter as
he struggled less and less against Ducard’s hold.
“Pwea... kelpm” A sudden shock ran down Porter’s spine, followed by the deep,
thudding resonance of a thick but hollow shell being cracked open. Then he was still,
and Basil let him go. The scientist wiped a thick rivulet of blood-tinged sweat away from
his eyes, patted Porter on the back as he shuffled past the corpse and toward Edna, taking
up the only remnant of Porter — his wrench. He twirled it in his hand to make sure he
had the shape and weight of the thing, and as he drew near to the woman, her back still
turned, he reached into the space behind the pipes once more, drew out another large
mass of wiry flesh, and reached for the back of her head.
“Hey, Doc!” Basil had just enough time to glance back. From the darkness of the
side passage, a violent stream of fire exploded and burned itself into his skull. With
his free hand, Callaghan made a twisting gesture then pushed out toward Basil. The

orange flames turned into a ghostflame blue, searing the air with heat and forward force,
liquefying Basil’s eyes within their sockets.
The fire behind her had flipped Edna around immediately. About six feet away, a
column of flame poured over a person, but she couldn’t make out who it was. Panicked,
she reached into her toolbag and produced a fire extinguishing canister, then threw it
into the side passage from which the flame originated. As it burst into a sudden white
cloud, the fire dissipated as the suppressant fog obscured all visibility. She turned away
to run farther along the T-junction and get clear of the gas. Whoever had been on fire,
she needed air before she could administer first aid. As she stepped forward, something
pulled her neck sharply backward, yanked her by the ponytail, and dragged her into the
fire extinguishing fumes.
Then darkness. Wet darkness. Wet and slurping, a sudden pressure around her, her
head pounding with the booming rhythm of pumping blood and arteries. She was being
pulled by her skull, throat stretching until it felt like it would rip. Then she was lifted
into the air. Kicking out with her legs, she reached for whatever was holding her and
screamed in panic when a pair of hands took hold of her wrists. They locked her arms at
her sides. She heard movement toward her in the dripping, suffocating dark.
At first, Callaghan didn’t understand what happened or what he needed to do. All
he managed was to sit there with a stunned, frothing fury that Basil was still alive.
He needed clearance now, and he could return to killing him. How to clear the air?
Decompression locks, but too far. Decompression. Wind? Wind. Cal decided any
potential blowback was worth it, and he pulled deep from inside himself for a long
moment, then released a concussive blast of air that swept the cloud of suppressant
down the branching passageways. The force of the thing threw Basil sideways into
the pipes with bone-shattering force, and he glanced down at the rib sticking out of his
chest. He laughed once and then fell unconscious beside Edna. When she felt the grip on
her wrists disappear, she pulled the screwdrivers from her belt and began tearing open
the viscous, mucus-laden muscle around her head.
Callaghan, meanwhile, was astonished that nothing bad had blown back at him. The
hand with which he had produced the blast didn’t even ache, and something inside him
— a basic trepidation and caution that had been drilled into his every waking thought
since he had Awakened — suddenly fell away.
The next thing Edna knew, a pure stream of white light sheared through the pulpy
tentacle that had dragged her. With the screwdrivers, she managed to cut enough of
the rest away to fully free her eyes and mouth and gasped wildly at the fresh air. Still
in panic, she searched violently for whatever threat was next coming, but ahead of her
there was only Cal. Cal and... Basil? The chief held a ball of pure light in his left hand,
while his knee pressed hard into Ducard’s throat. Cal turned his right hand over and over
in a strange sequence, and she realized that the sounds of the ship were gone, that she
could hear the two men speaking.
“...then you better start explaining those insane things, you pathetic man.” Cal
growled in a voice of pure hatred she had never heard before. Basil simply laughed, his
broiled eyes jiggling like jelly in their sockets.
“We’re all in this forever now, Chief!” Cal struggled to understand the man’s
genuine excitement, and how happy the stupid shit was acting. “Though ya never got
me like this; well done!” Callaghan pressed more of his weight on the doctor’s throat,
desperate to stop his laughter.
“What are you saying!?”
“Grrk ha... When do you glrrk — think you are? Ha he hehssk” His voice choked
out, incoherent and mad. The guidance lights flickered suddenly, and the pressure
release caps on several pipes shot open. The bright green sludge exploded from one of
the port caps behind Edna, and the pipes shook violently against the spiking pressure.
Realizing what was happening, Cal sighed, submerged Basil’s head in the ball of light,
and fell away from him.
Callaghan looked mournfully at Edna, whose eyes pleaded with him for
understanding. He thought of Silvia and knew what had to happen. With the pocket of
silence collapsing, the clamoring soundscape of machinery and boiling gasses crashed
into the world once more, and green light cascaded down from the laboratory. Callaghan,
illuminated by the ball of light, mouthed “I’m sorry...” to Edna, and before she could
make sense of why, the engineer bolted around her to the main valves. Throwing them
open, the surging power in the drive conduit grew brighter, surging with green and
gold electrical shocks. After flipping a set of breakers, he went to the spliced coupling,
embedded with the drive core. As he held the burning sphere of light in one hand, Edna
came up beside and held his other. Smiling together, Callaghan cast out his thoughts
with a far-flung hope that Theophanie would hear him. He pressed his hand against the
conduit and plunged the ball of light inside.
Everything faded, bleached, luminous, and faintly green as he converted their
bodies into a surge of fuel.
• • •
“They’re coming through!”
The gateway bloomed once more with the sickly green light. Two rays swept across
the front ranks, cutting the nearest two soldiers in half before Theophanie or Deacon
could redirect them. The deck of the laboratory shook beneath a sudden wave of force
which traveled outward from the light. Something more was coming.
“Fire at will!” Deacon cried.
Purple fluctuations of spacetime fired from the mass manipulators and collided in
waves against the hordes bursting into the world through the vortex, crushing, erasing,
imploding, and catapulting them back into the maelstrom. Snaking trails of lightning
combined into a single stream from the right flank, and as soon as the flesh-mass emerged,
the amassed bolt struck it down, easily cleaving it into three pieces. The smaller variants
of the tentacle snapped through the breach, the pod-end of the second thickest grabbing
one of the fire-breathers around the face. The riptides of electricity converged on it, the
worms of pus-colored blood again spewing from the wounds. Before it could be cloven
in two, it raised the soldier high into the air then slammed him down against the chest-

high barricade, killing him. The flesh swung out and threw the dead man back at the
vortex, whereupon he vanished in a spectral gleam of light.
The dangling spears sprung forward from the armored leg as it materialized from
the gate. Norris severed one at the base with a well-timed shot, but two others hooked
themselves into a pair of mass manipulators, flinging them across the room. The large
appendage crashed against the high walls that shielded the Awakened marines from
view, and for a terrible moment, it seemed as though they would fall. The palisade
rocked violently backward, and the marines braced against it long enough for the
arc-casters to push the carapaced extremity back. As the wall had rocked, one of the
marines behind it came into view of an unAwakened crewman. Paradox rebounded on
the marine, compressing his body into paste. The crewman collapsed in a fit of sheer
disbelief and terror.
Deacon shouted to the gunner of the machine-turret, but he only met her with a
bewildered stare. The cables which fed energy into the turrets were idle, with no sign
of power. Come on, Callaghan. Get it done. Turning her attention back to the field with
a volley from her rifle, Deacon stopped suddenly, stunned with confusion. One of the
smaller tentacles was prying open the panels of the floor in great, twisted gashes. When
it had finished, two of the smaller tendrils descended toward it, carrying Basil down into
the exposed space beneath the lab. On instinct she burst-fired her weapon at him, but the
shots were intercepted by yet another flesh-mass. The rounds vaporized its upper half, and
it crashed down on the floor. Basil disappeared below deck. In retaliation, the armored leg
swung directly for her, but Justine tackled her to the ground, and it sailed past them.
Deacon gave an approving nod to her, and Justine smiled broadly. A moment
later, blood exploded from her mouth as one of the spears circled back and pierced her
through the stomach. Deacon reached out to grab her with a cry, but the hook tore her
away. Another small pop and burst of light from the vortex. Deacon rolled back up to
her feet and focused her fire on the leg where Norris and Stevenson also aimed. The
combusting impact of spells and shells shattered open the chitin, tearing apart the flesh
beneath. It lashed viciously outward, and stabbed Norris through the thigh. Before it
finished him, a golden ring of light collided against it, severing the harpoon. Winslow
was slumped against the railing of the second tower, breathing heavily with exhaustion
from the effort. Hemorrhaging fluids, the leg withdrew at a surprising speed into the
gate, leaving behind a festering trail of meat and pus. With it, a jarring silence now
asserted itself across the lab, in which the approaching roar of something vast became
noticeable. In unison, and to her surprise, both she and Theophanie called out together:
“It’s coming through!”
They’re coming through, and so will you. Theophanie’s strange remark filtered into
her head, unwelcome and unbidden, but as before, Deacon had no time to consider it.
The vortex expanded suddenly, straining the gate’s steel jaws in an ear-piercing screech.
The light around it rolled and bubbled as though being set upon by a great shock of heat,
and slowly, each point of light began to materialize into hundreds of bulbous, searching
eyes. They pushed through the schism, making way for a dwarfing and unblinking
eyeball to emerge, a frenzied cognizance in its gaze.
A second voice spoke inside of her. Probing, asking questions, asserting itself over
her inner monologue and dominating her will. It peeled through her thoughts like pages,
taking specific notes and binding them together in a collection she did not understand. I
am. You are. We. We are we. Become we. Tell me. Tell me the numbers. Tell me the stars.
Tell us where we are. Where we can go... The grand eye focused in rapid succession on
each person arrayed against it, the pupil dilating and contracting as it scrutinized every
marine, medic, and crewman. The unAwakened swayed in place and formed a small
procession, carelessly stepping toward the light. Deacon tried to cry out for them but
found the voice boom in defiance of her. The vast, all-reaching scope of its will seemed
unending, like she could search forever and never glimpse the borders of its being. The
unAwakened crew began to disappear in little pops of light. The entity forced back her
tears and denial and rage, taking them from her and investigating them in turn as they
occurred before discarding them as functionless. She tried to press through the invasion,
but every feeling was stripped away, examined, and removed from her, leaving behind
a steady and vacant void. At last, the bulging eye turned to her, and the weight of its
presence expanded beyond any comprehension of size, description, or resistance. Its
pupil opened to see into her more, knowing now that she was the one with the answers it
sought. The strange and otherly dominion over her thoughts set her body to screaming,
but it wouldn’t move, and as the presence neared the information inside her, she knew
she would give in.
From the gash in the floor where Basil and the tentacles had escaped, a sudden gust
of white powder came rushing upward. The gas enshrouded the eye, visibly burning
away the liquid membrane of its lower eyelid in which it spasmed. The pupil darted
wildly around the lab, and the lapse in its focus returned Deacon’s control of her body.
She sprung to her feet, Stevenson and Ackard joining suit, and the three of them opened
fire from their positions. The bolts, flames, and compressions of Time collided against
the dozens of orbiting eyes, bursting seven before a sudden, wavering distortion rose in
front of the eye. It looked to her like a wave of heat caught in the distance, and their shots
dissipated across it. Even so, she had her mind back and with it cried out to Theophanie.
There was only silence. A warbling roar plumed from the vortex, the eye reasserting
itself across the marines. Ackard stood bolt upright from his cover, nodded to something
only he could hear, and with his sidearm, fired a shot through his own head. Nearby,
Higgins toiled pointlessly over Norris’s destroyed leg. Feverishly applying pressure, a
set of spasms ran up the ensign’s body, then it lay still in a pool of blood. The doctor
fell back on his knees, staring at the body. Stevenson and a handful of other marines,
resisting the domination over their minds, continued to fire.
Theo’s voice rang out to Deacon. The presence receded into nothing, and a hurling
storm of green fire, raging with gold thunder, barreled past her and smashed into the
distortion before the eye. The wavering air sank inward from the momentum, then
spread open as the flames chewed through it, then spiraled into the eye. Deacon looked
to see Theophanie in the center rank, conducting the storm with her entire body. Her
skin peeled away, broiling beneath the labor and the kinetic force resounding from her.
The flesh and membranes of the smaller eyes melted beneath the wall of fire, and the
main eye peered directly into the center of the gale at Theophanie. A spear of emerald
glass materialized from the center of its pupil and launched from the eye. The fire broke
upon the air, swatted away as the projectile plowed through Theophanie’s hip, pinning
her to the ground.
Another blast of light. White and reverberating, it flooded upward from the access
tunnels, filling the lab with dazzling and twisted rays. Beside her, Deacon saw the power
coupling to the turret illuminate. She threw herself against the triggers of the cannon
and swiveled the turret to face the glowing light. The cannon split the air with a steady,
ear-quaking drum, and the mixed rounds drilled into the eye, though what damage it
caused, she couldn’t discern. The sorely wounded leg re-emerged from the gate directly
toward her. The fortifications that lay in its path collapsed on the few surviving marines
huddled behind them, and those immediately in the way turned into heaping sprays of
bloody mist. The struts of the tower buckled as it swept against them, and Deacon was
thrown far forward, hurtling into the air as it collapsed. She landed at the base of the
gate, staring up the ramp at the eye, focused in utter calculation upon her.
Two thin tendrils, like black whips, emerged from its tear ducts and snaked their
way toward her. She tried to move, but there was no sensation in her legs that lay crushed
beneath a steel beam. The two whips coiled around her throat, then slid along her cheek
as she tried to jerk her head away. Then, small barbs sprang out; they latched painfully to
her ears; and the ends drove inside them, separating the tissue in the canals, and entered.
She had been screaming. Hadn’t she? No. That wasn’t right. She had only woken
from a bad dream. She was in her quarters, passed out from a night of jubilee and
friends. Of course, how could she have forgotten? Panic then filled her thoughts as she
remembered; her logs were due. Without them, the pilot of the Insight couldn’t steer the
ship. She had to give him the coordinates or be lost out here. Where was here — she
reprimanded herself for asking questions. Those were distractions. She only needed to
get to the bridge. She ran from her quarters, feeling strange in the corridors. Had they
always been so wide? Why had she felt comforted by their narrowness in the past? A
painful jolt of fear rocketed through her. Stupid. Stop asking so many questions and run.
The bulkheads of the passageways were already open, and she sprinted through them
without obstruction. They seemed to twist in on themselves, extending in all directions
without limit, and she realized she had no concept of how long she had been running.
Just as panic threatened to halt her pace, she emerged through the entryway and onto
the bridge. The pilot turned to her, faceless and made of clay. This is normal; everyone
is always made of clay. He had no name or substantiating presence either. In fact, he
seemed to emanate a great and empty nothing as he raised one hand to her, expectant
for the coordinates. Right, that’s why she was here. Her own hand rose to meet his,
as if by instinct, and in it she held a folder of documents, and labeled on it in not-her-
handwriting were the reassuring words: The Road Home. The no-faced man gingerly
took it from her, and the nothing of his head became a jagged smile, pockmarked with
missing teeth. Something was wrong in that smile, and when his fingers turned softly
over the folder, spreading it open, her vision collapsed back into the real world.
Magdeen limped forward on a crutch, struggling to hold his rifle with one arm as
the recoil sent many of the bullets wide. Despite this, his initial burst had punctured the

thin black tendrils that squirmed inside Deacon’s skull. Theophanie, far behind him,
compelled the latent energy of the vortex outward, drawing the lethal rays of green
light into blades that scoured the eye. In the time she had been possessed, the tendrils
had dragged Deacon up the ramp, and the carnage of Mags and Theo’s attacks covered
her in stinking blood and tears. She lay there in the moment, idle and weak. The vortex
spun wildly, just above her. She knew her friends would be dead soon. And she knew
they would be alive again. Bathed in the proximity to time which burgeoned in from the
vortex, she startled herself with how many things she was now aware of. Beneath the
ever-gleam of collapsed-expanding time, she saw so much it hurt. The dread and the
glory, neither to be restrained. I can see it... Separation, the recursive eternal, the joy
of dissolution stretching beyond the bounds. I can see it! In a moment, the all-moment
would burgeon inside her, she’d always remembered, even as she just now realized. But
it is all drawing away. I will fall away. Theophanie, they’re coming through! Deacon’s
hand reached out to touch the swirling fissure in time, as Magdeen and Theophanie,
Winslow and Norris, Silvia and Ackard and Callaghan... Everyone she knew was dying
a thousand times and would die ten thousand more if she touched the vortex. To die so
many times, but they would also be alive. She felt the trembling gaze of the eye around,
its will commanding her to stay away from the schism. It is afraid, and it knows. She
smiled. She prepared herself for the day to start anew, knowing it wasn’t the first time.
Submerging her arm in the breach, she called out across time to herself and Theophanie:
“They’re coming through. They’re coming through. I am coming through.”

Danielle Lauzon
The sliding doors whooshed gently open, and a blast of cold air slammed Melody
Gray in the face. She didn’t remember the building being quite so cold yesterday and
immediately regretted not grabbing a hoodie to keep herself warm in class. The white
and glass interior reminded her of a corporate office more than a training facility, but
having been here the day before, she knew the cool façade was simply a front for a
building full of technological wonders and straight-faced Iteration X members.
Melody glanced down at her itinerary for the day. According to this, today was
nothing but a battery of tests. Yesterday’s orientation left her with a manual that she
dutifully carried, though the day before was a whirlwind of experience she could barely
remember, so she hadn’t had a chance to read through it yet. She even dreaded the
thought of it. She figured she would force a glance through it while she waited for her
tester to arrive. They couldn’t possibly be wanting to test her on the handbook, but she
didn’t want to be completely unprepared in case something came up.
The handbook did bring up unpleasant memories from the day before. It was all still
fuzzy, other than a half-remembered nightmare. She was surprised that she hadn’t heard
anything from anyone about what happened to the rest of her orientation class. She
hadn’t seen any one of them since orientation, and she remembered something about
mutual housing arrangements. Maybe that hadn’t started yet. Then again, maybe they
covered all that yesterday and she just didn’t remember. Everything after arriving at the
facility was a blur, so it’s entirely possible she just forgot. Maybe they caught whatever
happened on camera and had no questions for her.
“Good morning,” the security officer greeted Melody.
“Good morning to you, Officer Bailey,” she offered a cheery smile and nod as she
read the security badge that hung from his collar.
The Test 61
He smiled and nodded back. “To the testing rooms today?” he asked her as he
scanned her security badge.
“Yes, sir,” she said with relief. She didn’t realize how worried she was that he was
going to stop her until he handed the little white square back.
“Room 242A,” officer Bailey told her.
She made her way to the testing rooms on the second floor. Small cubicles lining
the hallway sat directly across from larger rooms furnished with dozens of computer
stations. 242A was the last cubicle on the left at the end of the hallway. Inside the room
were two chairs and nothing else. She guessed they liked to talk about the tests first, or
maybe she would start with a test of her magical ability rather than her programming
aptitude. She took the chair facing the door, choked down a swallow, and cracked open
the Orange HR Manual to read through while she waited for her tester.
Melody didn’t have to wait long before the door slid open and a tall, lanky man in a
suit and mirrored sunglasses walked in. Melody knew immediately without asking that
this man was not a normal Iteration X tester. He didn’t have the slouchy posture, casual
clothes, and pale appearance she would expect from someone who spent all their time
behind a computer. Instead, this impeccably groomed and well-dressed man radiated
an intimidating aura. He wore a black suit and thin black tie covered in a long brown
coat. He had sandy brown hair pulled back in a sleek tail at the nape of his neck, and
a smooth-shaven face. The sunglasses were a statement, or some kind of intimidation
tactic, because the lights in these rooms were cast low with a blue tint to be easy on the
eyes.
“Melody Gray?” the man asked as he shut the door behind him.
“Yup, that’s me,” she said.
“A pleasure.” As he spoke, he held out his hand to shake hers. She was forced to
stand to take it, and as she shook his hand, she could tell he was assessing her.
He motioned for her to sit down and took the seat across from her. They shared a
moment of silence together as Melody tried to figure out what was going on.
“Are you my tester?” she asked hesitantly.
“Ah, I’m sorry, let me introduce myself. I’m Lieutenant Caleb Whittemore,
investigator for the New World Order, probably listed in that little manual you have
there.” He pointed at the small manual Melody was holding onto tightly in her lap.
The callout made her self-conscious and she laughed as she set it aside. “I haven’t
read it yet,” she admitted shyly.
“That’s okay. I’m not going to ask you about anything in there.” The agent’s voice
was stern but not unkind. A terse smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. “I’m going
to ask you a few personal questions to verify your identity as we begin,” he paused for
her to respond.
She nodded in understanding.
“Please state your name,” Whittemore asked as he pulled a small tablet from his
inner coat pocket and powered it on.
“Melody Gray,” she said slowly.
“Yes, I know, it’s for our records,” he said with a smile as he waved the tablet that
was clearly recording the session. “Where are you from?” he asked.
“I grew up here, in Los Angeles,” she replied.
“Where did you go to school?” he continued.
“Stanford University,” Melody said.
“What did you study there?” he asked.
“Electrical Engineering with a minor in Computer Science,” she replied by rote.
“Have you ever frequented the internet forums, Hackerforums, Hak5, Evil Zone, or
Darknet?” the agent asked.
Melody had to think for a moment but eventually shook her head no.
“Is that a no?” he asked.
“I have not, no,” she said slowly.
“What about Cybrary or Hacksociety?” he pressed.
“I’m sorry, I’m not sure how this is relevant,” Melody balked at the line of
questioning.
“Is that a yes?” Lt. Whittemore asked passively.
Melody stammered, “What? No. I just don’t see what this has to do with anything.”
“Melody, tell me about yesterday,” Lt. Whittemore leaned in as he said the words.
Melody’s stomach sank and her heart sped up. Ah, so here it was. She knew she
didn’t do anything wrong, but she couldn’t help but worry that she was in trouble.
“What about yesterday?” she paused in thought, hoping her instinct was wrong. It
wasn’t.
“Tell me about your orientation,” he said. His stern voice lost all its kindly edges.
“Don’t you have video of the incident?” she asked.
“Yes, but I want to hear it in your words,” he told her.
• • •
“Do you have the security footage?” another man in mirrored sunglasses and a
suit asked officer Bailey as they both watched Melody and Lt. Whittemore on the main
screen. The security room was small and cramped with computer displays cycling
footage from every inch of the building on screens all around them.
“We do, but it won’t be of much help. Whoever did this cut the footage. It’s nothing
but static now,” Officer Bailey told him. He handed over a small compact drive to the
mirrorshades with a dour look on his face.
“Are Iteration X so lax with their security that a mere recruit could hack the
system? What about all your special protections?” The agent snatched the drive from
his colleague.
The Test 63
“She must have had inside help, and that’s what you’re here to find out. No one could
do what she did without assistance. Believe me, everyone in Iteration X is stumped,”
Officer Bailey said.
“Let me send this to Whittemore and see what he thinks,” he told the man and
moved to connect the drive to one of the many computers.
• • •
Lieutenant Whittemore looked up from the report in front of him and snorted. Even
with the redacted portions accessible to him, the report felt incomplete and made little
sense. A rogue HIT Mark, an elite hacker responsible for overtaking one of the most
sophisticated pieces of machinery the Technocracy had at their disposal, and a missing
recording of the episode. No one was that good, especially not a supposed recruit whose
very first day caused so much havoc. Someone was leaving something out on purpose,
but he didn’t have the clearance to go questioning the higher ups about the report. He’d
just have to get to the bottom of it himself by interviewing the recruit.
• • •
Melody took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. “To be honest, I don’t remember
a lot of what happened. I know I was in a class with five others for orientation and the
instructor was showing us a robo—”
“HIT Mark,” Lt. Whittemore interrupted her.
“Yes, that,” she said. “Anyway, something happened…” she trailed off as she tried
to remember what occurred the day before. Visions of blood and screaming filled her
mind. She shied away from the thought, but the look on Lt. Whittemore’s face told her
she wasn’t getting out of this line of questioning. She continued, “It went crazy and
started attacking us. We all fought back, or at least tried to, but it was too powerful.
Eventually, I was able to disable it, but not before everyone else had died.” Recounting
the event made her feel weird. People had died, that was sure, but it still felt like it
wasn’t real; it was all still just a bad dream to her.
“How exactly did you survive such a brutal attack?” he asked leaning back in his
chair.
“I…don’t know,” Melody trailed off. “Like I said, I barely remember anything
about it.”
Whittemore let out a sigh and stood up. Melody watched him apprehensively as he
pulled out a set of mirrored shades and held them out to her. “Come on,” he said and
gestured for her to take the shades. “We’re going to the scene; that might help refresh
your memory.”
For a moment, Melody balked at the idea. Just the thought of being in that space
again was enough to set her heart racing and her head throbbing. Memories started to
reform in her mind just at the thought of it. That morning she had awoken in her own
bed screaming in terror and covered in sweat. She was dreaming about the incident, and
for a moment she just thought it was a particularly bad dream that felt real. The kind of

dream that stuck with you and made you mad at your friends before you were able to
calm your nervous system enough to remember that it was all fake. It wasn’t until she
found bloody clothes in the hamper that she realized it was all real. The horror of that
memory came crashing back to her and she gave a soft shudder.
She didn’t even remember coming home, much less taking off her clothes and
cleaning up. Would he believe her? He didn’t seem like the type who believed that
trauma could rob someone of their memories. Especially not someone who is supposed
to have magic at their disposal.
“How do these work?” she asked as she took the glasses from him.
“Why, are you planning on hacking them?” he asked in a deadpan. It took two full
beats before Melody realized he wasn’t joking.
“What? No. If I could hack your technology in front of your face without you
noticing then I don’t even know why you’d bother to interview me,” she said. “I just,
I don’t want to be startled. I’ve heard about mirrorshades, but I’ve never seen them in
action.”
“You put them on, and they feed your descriptions into an algorithm along with
video footage and camera data to recreate a space. You and I can then watch what
happened from a safe distance,” he told her.
“Do you see exactly what I see?” she asked holding the shades up to the blue-tinted
light and staring through what appeared to be ordinary lenses.
“In a manner of speaking. I have my own overlay that gives me more information,
such as reports and information coming in from outside. Yours will only show the
hologram. But don’t worry; we’ll be there together,” he assured her.
She didn’t feel assured in the least.
“Go on,” Lt. Whittemore urged her gently.
She eased the shades onto her face and settled them behind her ears with a practiced
flip of her hair. At first nothing happened. Then the agent reached over and tapped the
side to turn them on. Immediately, information flooded her vision and the room spun.
She gripped her chair, but as she looked down it was gone. She was standing in the
orientation room as it looked when security had arrived yesterday. Blood splattered
the walls; bodies lay torn to shreds, crushed, and otherwise maimed and dismembered
throughout the room. Tables and chairs were strewn and broken across the room. Blood
and bits of flesh pooled on the tile, and everything seemed tinted red from blood that had
splattered the overhead lights.
“Oh, God,” Melody exclaimed and put her hand to her mouth.
“Weren’t you here yesterday? I can’t imagine it is much worse than it was then,
what with all the bodies gone now,” Whittemore said passively.
As he said this, the bodies disappeared, as if instantly removed from the scene.
“I was, but this is horrific. I don’t remember there being so much blood,” she said.
The Test 65
“Maybe that’s because you left soon enough that your fellow recruits hadn’t finished
bleeding out. Why didn’t you tell anyone what happened yesterday?” he asked.
Melody closed her eyes and took a deep breath to steady herself. “I don’t know. I
guess I was in shock,” she replied.
He made a low grunt and nodded in reply. “Yes, I could see that. And when you
woke up this morning, you didn’t think to check in?”
“I thought it was a nightmare, a dream that felt too real,” she said.
“And now?” he urged.
“And now I think I’m going to be sick,” Melody replied, her stomach gurgling to
punctuate the sentiment.
The room before them had the same white and glass features as the building’s
entrance, but this one was spattered in what amounted to several gallons of blood.
Melody moved as far into the hologram room as she dared without stepping in too much
blood and stopped. She turned to face Lt. Whittemore and said, “Is this supposed to
spark my memory? I don’t know what happened here other than several people died. I
don’t even remember leaving. Hell, I don’t remember making it home.”
“Think hard, Melody; your life depends on how you answer my questions,” he
told her. “Why don’t you start from the beginning and tell me what happened to you
yesterday.”
The memories flooded back, and her nausea subsided. As she described the events,
the room changed around them to accommodate. It wasn’t perfect, as there was static
in the corners of the room where she didn’t describe what was happening. But it was
enough to populate the scene with herself and the people who were in the room during
her orientation. Soon, her own narration of the events slid into the background as the
hologram populated the scene based on her memories of the events. Her mind went
immediately to the attack.
• • •
Even as the HIT Mark grabbed the red-haired recruit by her neck and twisted,
Melody knew how she’d react. For the second time in two days, Melody raised her
weapon and unloaded a useless blast of fire on the machine. The bolt ricocheted off the
metallic armor covering its body, but leaving no trace of the “bullets” or their casings.
Not even a scorch mark marred its pristine surface and clothes. The redhead crumpled to
the floor and stared into the tile exactly as Melody remembered she would.
“That won’t work; they are immune to magic,” the orientation officer yelled over
the fray. Melody mouthed his words in unison. They overturned a table to put a barrier
between them and the HIT Mark, but it was futile. The quick robot vaulted the table with
supernatural ease and put its fist through the officer’s chest.
They were the last of them. All six other people in the room had fallen, and now
Melody was alone and completely unprepared to deal with this travesty. She had been
on the other side of the room from it when it started its killing spree, but now she was
its last target. They locked eyes for a moment, then it pointed at her and let out a low
metallic whine. The HIT Mark’s arm opened, and what appeared to be a laser-guided
rifle rose and locked into place.
It froze in place, the experience around her paused. Whittemore’s voice sounded.
“Tell me what you know about the machine in front of you.”
The sudden stop disoriented Melody for a moment, but she shook her head and
processed the question. “I don’t know a lot. It’s a HIT Mark. It is obviously capable of
killing half a dozen people without much issue as it killed my entire class. I know it can’t
be affected by magic. That’s about it,” she said.
Whittemore nodded and wordlessly restarted the hologram display.
The details of what happened next were hazy, but Melody knew that having a firearm
pointed in her direction would only be bad for her. She dove behind one of the upturned
tables before a single shot rang out and the table corner exploded behind her. She rolled
in expert fashion, in perfect harmony with yesterday’s recording. The distinct sound of
the shell hitting the ground, and the next bullet chambering, reverberated through her
ears as she looked around for another safe place to hide.
She caught sight of a metal table leg glinting on the ground next to her, the top of
which was still connected to a shard of wood from the table. It wasn’t the best weapon to
have against a giant murderous robot, but it was better than nothing. Another shot rang
out and a piece of wood from the table shattered right next to her, with splinters spraying
the ground beside her. She grabbed the table leg and scurried to the next table while the
HIT Mark tried to get a bead on her.
The hologram paused once more as Whittemore spoke, “You disabled it with a table
leg?”
Melody glanced toward him and nodded. “It was the only weapon I could find at the
time. But I don’t think it worked. Let’s keep watching,” she said. Even in this moment
Melody wasn’t sure what happened next. It was as if her recounting of the events was
itself filling in her memories of what happened to her the day before. She was as eager
to see what happened next as Whittemore seemed to be.
As the hologram started up, Melody watched herself move to put the tumble of
tables and chairs between her and the HIT Mark. It hesitated for a moment as it tried to
line up a kill shot on her. She took advantage of the hesitation and tossed a chair in its
direction. The robot shot the chair out of the air, and Melody tossed another. She was
running out of chairs, and the distraction would eventually leave her without cover. She
couldn’t do this for too long, but it was enough to let her close in on the machine without
getting shot. She tossed one more chair and moved in close enough to swing her table
leg at the HIT Mark. It blocked with one arm while it shot the chair out of the air with
the other. Melody had made a mistake, and it was sure to cost her.
The HIT Mark grabbed the table leg and wrenched it to pull from her hand as
it swung its gun arm to aim directly at her face. Holding on to the table leg, Melody
hopped up and let the construct swing her up into the air with its momentum. Once she
was up in the air, she let go and flew into the corner. She tried to roll but instead landed
in a heap. She was battered and bruised, but could tell she had managed not to break any
The Test 67
bones. She didn’t have any time to waste and rolled away just in time to avoid another
bullet. As she rolled, she came face to face with the orientation officer whose lifeless
body lay in a pool of their own blood. Her breath caught, she eased herself away, and
as she did, noticed the pistol at the instructor’s hip. How had she missed that during
orientation? It didn’t matter. Now she had a better weapon for dealing with the robot —
if only a little better.
The hologram paused once more. “You held your own against the HIT Mark rather
well. Are you sure no one else was alive during all this?” the agent asked.
“I remember watching it fight all of them at some point. I can’t recall if I was
fighting alongside anyone or if they were all dead,” she told him.
“Did you know that HIT Marks are our most deadly weapon, capable of killing
even the most trained Convention member?” he asked placidly.
“I didn’t, but I believe it,” Melody responded.
His only response was a soft grunt. He started up the hologram again.
Melody had watched it fight the others and knew that it wouldn’t be easy to bring
down. She would need to shoot it in a controller in order to disable it, and she didn’t
know enough about these robots to know where such a thing would be. The one thing
she noticed was that it was built to mimic humans. Its movements were clearly based on
human movements, only it moved much faster and was clearly stronger than any human
would be. Based on that information, Melody guessed the controllers would be in the
head or heart area and aimed for those locations. She fired the pistol three times, one at
each eye and the third at where a human head would be. The eye shots missed, but still
hit it in the face, and the chest shot ricocheted off its body. If the controller was in the
chest, there was no way she’d get past the armor with this little pistol.
The HIT Mark aimed in her direction and shot at her, but she ducked behind the
lectern before it could hit her. Bits of wood sprayed away, and she decided to try for a
different tact. Melody leaned away from the lectern and shot at the HIT Mark’s knees
and elbows, hoping to disable it. She scored a hit on a knee, and the leg buckled and the
construct fell to one knee. It kept shooting at her, and the wooden lectern she was hiding
behind wouldn’t be much more of anything if she didn’t move or incapacitate the thing
soon. She tried again for the face, emptying the magazine into it in hopes to overload
it. This time it seemed to work, taking out an eye and tearing off a massive part of the
machine’s face, she exposed metal armor which bent and buckled under the onslaught.
Whatever she hit did the trick, and the thing fell to the floor in a heap.
• • •
The holographic images faded around them, and they were standing once more in
the blood-spattered orientation room. The bodies were gone, but the HIT Mark and the
blood remained.
Lieutenant Whittemore tapped a stylus on the tablet he was using to record the
session. “So, you shot it?” he asked.

“Yes,” Melody responded, irritated that he’d bypassed the better parts of her bravery.
“Where did you shoot it, again?” he looked down at the tablet as he asked.
“We literally just watched it,” she said somewhat bemused.
“Humor me,” he told her.
“The head and chest, but mostly I think the head shots disabled it,” she said.
“Had you ever used a gun before yesterday?” he asked.
“Yes. My dad was an enthusiast and insisted we all learn how to shoot and take care
of guns. He bought me a revolver for my high school graduation,” she told him.
“Would you consider yourself an expert marksman?” Lt. Whittemore questioned.
“I don’t know about expert, but I’m a pretty good shot,” she said.
“Right. And what were you doing before the HIT Mark attacked?” he looked her in
the eye as he asked the question.
“I already told you; I was sitting in orientation with the rest of the initiates,” Melody
said, somewhat irritated.
“Why don’t you take a seat, Miss Gray.” Lt. Whittemore motioned to one of the
overturned chairs.
“No, I think I’ll stand. This shouldn’t take too much longer, right? I told you what I
remember about yesterday. You saw it in action,” she said.
He nodded and moved towards her. Why was he pushing her further into the
room? What did he want from her? He couldn’t possibly think she was somehow
responsible for what happened, could he? The HIT Mark shot at her too. It killed her
training companions. How could he even begin to put their blood on her hands? All
these questions filled Melody’s mind, and she worried the lieutenant would mistake her
anxiety for guilt. Was he trying to read her mind, the way the orientation officer had
done the day before? Surely, he would have to tell her if he was going to use magic on
her. Or would he?
“Why don’t you tell me again?” he asked.
“Why? I told you everything already,” she said.
“Please, Miss Gray. You might remember something else in the retelling,” he said.
His lips twitched up, but the smile didn’t reach the top half of his face. Not that she could
see it behind the mirrored sunglasses.
• • •
The computer screen showed an image of the large orientation room with six people
seated at the few tables in the room and one person standing in front of them. Each of the
recruits had a manual open to the first page except one. The woman at the far end of the
table on the right had short, brown, curly hair and amber eyes. Her crooked smile pulled
the skin at her cheeks into cute dimples.
“Is that Melody?” the agent asked. He recognized her from Whittemore’s videos
but wanted to confirm with the officer.
The Test 69
“Yes,” Officer Bailey responded.
“You saw her come in yesterday?” he asked.
“I did, sir,” he responded.
As they watched, Melody sat motionless while the orientation officer went through
unmutuality training as per the HR Handbook. Everything seemed completely normal,
and then static filled the screen. The screen stayed filled with static for a few seconds,
then the security officer paused the display. “It goes on like that for about ten minutes
then comes back on,” he said.
The agent nodded. “Let’s see it.”
The security officer resumed the playback, and sure enough the static remained
for ten full minutes. When it ended, the room was in disarray. Five recruits and the
orientation officer lay scattered in various states of wholeness. Melody stood in the
center of the room covered in blood. She turned from the carnage in front of her and
walked calmly out of the room.
“Whittemore, are you seeing this?” the agent asked in Whittemore’s ear.
He gave a curt nod in response, which Melody didn’t seem to notice as she began
preparing to tell her story again.
• • •
Melody closed her eyes and began describing the scene again.
“Go back further this time,” Lt. Whittemore told her.
“How much further?” she asked.
“Let’s start at the beginning,” he said.
She nodded and started describing the room as it looked when she entered.
Melody sat in the glass-fronted room listening to the orientation officer talk and
looked down at her manual.
“Turn to page three,” the blonde-haired, blue-eyed orientation officer told the small
group. Melody said the words impassively as she recalled them.
As pages rustled all around Melody, she flipped the page and began reading along
as the officer spoke. She hoped the whole orientation wouldn’t be like this. She hated
people just reading to her when she could go home and read it herself. This stuff seemed
pretty important though, so maybe it was just to get the most crucial bits driven home.
Her eyes strayed across the page as she listened to the orientation officer.
It suddenly struck Melody as strange that just like the Orange HR Handbook, the
Iteration X orientation begins by discussing unmutuality. Working towards the same
consensus was important, but she thought that she would get more information about
her job as an agent or where she was to be assigned. It was, of course, just the first day,
so she guessed that ensuring mutuality was more important than literally anything else.
She could see why training took so long if that was the case.

Melody paused in her description and mused aloud, “It’s strange how much time is
spent on unmutuality.”
“Is it?” Lt. Whittemore asked in a musing tone.
“The first thing that we learn is what it means to step out of line. That seems strange
to me. I don’t even know what the lines are yet, and here we are being lectured on
unmutuality,” she said.
“It’s important for everyone to know what mutuality is, and how to work towards a
mutual consensus. Do you find it strange that we care about working towards the same
consensus?” he asked.
“No, I just —” she cut herself off.
The agent gave a knowing nod that Melody didn’t like one bit. “Why don’t you tell
me about the HIT Mark?” he asked.
Melody began describing the scene once more. This time as the hologram populated
the scene, she took more interest in what she was seeing.
The hologram showed Melody glance up at the stern-looking individual standing
behind the orientation officer. They had explained it was a HIT Mark, one of the many
weapons produced by Iteration X’s Defense Management department, where Melody
was to be starting in the coming weeks once orientation and training were finished.
It looked like a person, but had a ghostly white and waxy appearance that belied its
cybernetic nature. The orientation officer had assured them that the construct was on
standby, but Melody noticed it was looking directly at her each time she glanced up to
take it in.
She was still looking at the HIT Mark when the orientation officer called her name.
“Melody Gray, is it? Is there something you would like to share with us?” they
asked her.
“Um, no, I’m fine, I just —” she cut herself off rather than talk about how she
thought the robot was looking at her. No need to embarrass herself in front of the rest
of the initiates.
Melody, who was now watching this play back through a hologram, took this
opportunity to really look at the HIT Mark. Its eyes were facing forward, but she
distinctly remembered seeing it look at her. She paused the program to take it in in this
moment, its shiny surface and waxy appearance. Of course, those pale blue eyes weren’t
looking at her, but it definitely felt that way when she was in orientation. She restarted
the hologram and hoped that the NWO agent wouldn’t question her about the pause. He
seemed to simply want to watch her this time, so there was no question.
“I’ve already told you that it’s on standby, see.” The orientation officer turned to
the HIT Mark and waved their hand in front of its face. The other recruits chuckled, and
Melody let out a sigh of released tension. Of course, the officer would know exactly
what she was thinking. That’s their job.
Before Melody had a chance to feel ashamed for her fear, the HIT Mark grabbed
the officer’s hand and twisted sharply. Melody heard the snap of bone clearly across the
The Test 71
training room. Several others around her gasped, and the orientation officer let out a
scream of anguished pain.
The pause this time came from Lt. Whittemore. “What prompted this attack?” he
asked.
“I don’t know. I think it was the sudden movement in front of the machine’s face,”
Melody responded.
“Let’s rewind that and watch it again. This time, slowly,” he told her.
Without her pause, Melody replayed the last few seconds in slow motion. Her
hesitation that the HIT Mark was looking at her, the orientation officer’s assurance that
it was offline, and then the sudden attack after the orientation officer waved their hand
in front of its face.
This time they saw it together. The HIT Mark’s eyes briefly glanced in Melody’s
direction just before the attack. Melody gasped and Lt. Whittemore simply nodded.
“It looked at you,” he said. It wasn’t a question, simply a statement.
“I remember it had been glancing at me, despite the assurances that it was offline.
Maybe it was looking at me because I was looking at it. I don’t know how anyone else
wasn’t also staring at it. It was so intimidating just standing there in the back of the
room,” Melody said.
“Do you remember it looking at anyone else?” he asked.
“I don’t know; I wasn’t really paying attention,” she confessed.
“Let’s keep watching,” he said.
The orientation group immediately erupted into action. They all stood quickly and
knocked over their chairs. The orientation officer wrenched their arm free and stumbled
away from the HIT Mark which was now pacing slowly toward them. Melody watched
the spectacle in shock as the orientation officer knocked down the lectern they had been
standing at only moments earlier and tried to run. The HIT Mark was too fast, though,
and reached out and grabbed them by their shoulder with one hand. The other came down
swiftly onto their neck, and for a brief moment the orientation officer dangled from the
HIT Mark’s grip like a ragdoll. It twisted its wrist and the officer’s neck snapped with
a sickening squelch. The construct tossed them aside and turned to the rest of the class
who, like Melody, were frozen in place by the horror in front of them.
With the HIT Mark’s attention now on them, they all started moving at once. The
woman with flame red hair knocked over the table in front of her to take cover. The
dark-haired man started running for the exit door. The young man with over-large teeth
pulled out a gun and started shooting. The woman with blue, starlit eyes screamed and
fell to the ground, putting her hands over her head, as the man with blonde hair and a
snake tattoo, who was clearly her partner, threw himself on top of her to shield her body.
The HIT Mark didn’t waste any time. It dashed at the dark-haired man and punched
through his back, its hand bursting forth from his chest before he crumpled in a heap on
the floor. It turned and stomped down on the couple lying on the floor, crushing them
both as they let out a gurgled and pained yelp. The red-haired woman rolled away from

a kick, and the man with over-large teeth continued to pour bullets into the HIT Mark
to no avail.
Melody crouched low and tried to get in close to the HIT Mark so she could distract
it to give the gunner a better shot, but it turned to her, part of its forearm dislocated, and
a laser-guided rifle rose up and locked into place. While she didn’t know much about the
robot, she knew having a gun pointed at her wasn’t ideal. She knocked over a table and
dove behind it as a bullet whizzed past her head. The woman with red hair was still in
play, and Melody could see her crouched behind a nearby table. They met each other’s
eyes for a brief moment while shots continued to ring out between the man with over-
large teeth and the HIT Mark.
The woman gestured at Melody, then at the HIT Mark. Though Melody couldn’t
tell exactly what she wanted, it seemed like her distraction idea was still the best plan.
Melody stood and tossed a chair at the HIT Mark. As she did, it shot the chair out of the
air, but that gave the man with over-large teeth a better angle and he put two bullets into
the construct’s face. It staggered back, but clearly wasn’t going to go down without more
firepower. The red-haired woman threw a chair as well, but this time instead of taking
aim off the man, it caught the chair with one hand and shot at the man with the other.
He tried to dodge out of the way, but the man with the over-large teeth took a bullet to
the arm as he fell to the floor. He lay prone for just a breath too long and another bullet
took him in the head.
The HIT Mark turned toward the red-haired woman and began firing. She dropped
behind her table just in time to miss being shot in the chest. The bullet grazed her
shoulder, but she seemed otherwise fine. Melody also dropped behind her table before
the construct could turn to her. The two women shared a look, one that passes between
two people who know their time is up. Melody stood again, hoping to distract the
construct to give the woman a chance to run. Instead, as she stood, so did the red-haired
woman who shouted to get the robot’s attention. It turned to her and as she threw a chair,
she gave Melody a wink.
With the HIT Mark’s back to her, Melody couldn’t run. She had an opportunity
to attack it from behind, even if such an attack did feel futile. While the red-haired
woman ran and dodged, Melody moved to pick up over-large teeth’s gun. She checked
the magazine and saw there were only two bullets left. Better make them count. She
took aim at the construct’s neck, just below the head, in hopes that she might be able to
decapitate it with two well-aimed shots. Red hair was running out of places to hide, so
she needed to be quick.
Just as Melody took aim, red hair stood up and made herself an open target for the
HIT Mark. It stopped and took aim at her, which gave Melody the opening she needed.
As it fired at red hair, Melody shot twice into the back of its neck. The head lolled to
one side and the construct crumpled to the ground. When Melody looked for red hair to
thank her, she saw that she had been shot through the heart. She stood alone, covered in
blood that wasn’t hers, the rest of her class-mates dead on the ground around her.
• • •
The Test 73
The hologram’s program once more removed the bodies from the room, but not the
blood splatters and other evidence of carnage. For a moment, Melody forgot she was in
a holographic display and stared down at the blood on her hands. It even felt slick on
her fingers.
Lieutenant Whittemore tried to move past Melody further into the room, but she
held her ground. It was a subtle thing, but she kept herself between him and the rest of
the room, as if she could shield him from the carnage they were both standing in the
middle of.
He had watched her as she recounted her story, which made her nervous. It was
the same story, though he made her go through more of it. They were in class, the HIT
Mark went wild, she shot it, and it fell over. Everyone died before she could save them.
Why wouldn’t he accept that? They had played through it twice already, and it seemed
like instead of watching the scene, he was only watching her. Or maybe that was just
her nerves.
“Did you get the gun from Mx. Brown or Mr. Smith?” he asked her as he looked
up from his tablet.
“Who?” she asked.
“The orientation officer, Mx. Brown. Or the other recruit, Mr. Smith,” he said
patiently.
“I —” she cut herself off and didn’t say anything more.
“You don’t remember,” he offered to her.
“It was on a dead body. To be honest, I don’t know who I got it from,” Melody said
with exasperation.
“And you shot the HIT Mark in the head?” he asked.
“Yes, I already told you. I think I might have hit it in the chest as well, but the head
shots, they are what brought it down,” she told him.
“Was there anyone else in the room that you failed to mention?” he asked.
“Just the orientation officer, Mx. Brown, and the five other initiates,” she said.
“Did you talk to anyone else before you came to orientation? The day of or the day
before?” Lt. Whittemore changed the line of questioning suddenly.
“I’m sorry?” Melody stammered, taken off guard.
“Did you talk to anyone before you came to orientation yesterday?” he asked again.
“I think I talked to the security officer to ask for directions, but no one else that I
remember,” she told him.
“And after you left the room? After you disabled the HIT Mark?” he asked.
“I don’t remember,” she said slowly. “I must have told someone, maybe the security
officer at the front desk? But like I said, I woke up this morning thinking it was all just
a bad dream.”
“You’ve told me that,” he said. His voice was dry, and he sounded bored.

“I don’t know what else to tell you,” she said. She clenched her fists at her sides,
feeling frustrated with the whole situation.
“Tell me who you’re working with,” Lt. Whittemore said deadpan.
“Who I’m working with?” she asked.
“There’s no way you neutralized a HIT Mark all on your own with a pistol. I don’t
care how good a shot you are. So, how did you really get it to go down? Where is it
now?” he pressed as he stepped into her personal space once again.
Melody flinched away from him, moving further into the holographic room. “I told
you everything already. I’m not working with anyone. I shot it, but it took a lot of bullets
before it went down. It killed half a dozen people in front of me — do you really think
I’d lie about how I neutralized it?” She was practically yelling now.
“Why don’t you tell me again?” he asked, his voice calm.
“Again? Why?” she asked.
“Just one more time, in case I missed something crucial,” he said.
“Can’t you just listen to your recording or rewatch the replays on your own
mirrorshades?” she asked.
“I can, and I will, but for now, I want to hear it directly from you. One more time,”
he said.
“Fine,” she huffed.
“From the beginning,” he said.
• • •
“Did anyone see her leave the building?” the other NWO agent asked.
“I did, sir. I asked her what happened, and she told me it was a rogue HIT Mark. She
seemed really out of it. I called it in, and when we got to the room it was like this.” The
security officer motioned towards the computer screen.
The video was still running, and the screen showed a small security team arrive in
the room and begin removing the bodies.
“Where is the HIT Mark?” Lt. Whittemore asked from the comms they were all
connected to.
“We didn’t see one, but it’s honestly the only thing that could have done this much
damage.” The security officer seemed nervous about that.
“Do you think she hid it before the camera feed came back on?” Lt. Whittemore
asked.
“I wouldn’t know how she could move something like that on her own. Again, we
think she must have been working with someone on the inside. There’s no telling how
long the camera was actually out for,” the security officer said.
“You didn’t notice the static from the security room?” Lt. Whittemore asked the
security officer.
The Test 75
“I…” he trailed off. The pause told Whittemore everything he needed to know. The
security had been lax; he hadn’t been watching all the feeds closely; he didn’t even know
how long she had been in the orientation room to know if the time stamps were wrong.
But if he said any of that, he would be deemed unmutual. A tough call.
“I see,” Lt. Whittemore said in response.
• • •
“One more time,” Melody said under her breath as the room re-centered itself on
the start of orientation. She could hear Lt. Whittemore’s side of a conversation he was
having with someone not in the room with her, but she was positive she wasn’t supposed
to be. He talked about her like she wasn’t there, maybe because he knew she could hear
him. Maybe he wanted her on edge.
As Melody started to recount her story for the third time, she realized that she
couldn’t really remember coming into the room. So, she started with the orientation
itself. As she recounted, she was surprised to notice that she remembered more details
than before. Like how boring orientation was, and how she was nodding off during it.
The holographic version of Melody’s eye flickered open and she gave a little start
as she caught herself nodding off again. To say the Technocracy’s orientation procedures
were a little boring was an understatement. It didn’t help that she hadn’t gotten much
sleep the night before. She was anxious about her first day on the job, and it led her to
insomnia. Her recruiter was certain that she would be a good fit, and she remembered
being excited about what little information she had about the inner working of Iteration
X. She had interned with one of their many security fronts last summer, and she enjoyed
her time there. She was a little surprised when they asked her to return so soon, and with
a much different offer than before: joining Defense Management as a full agent.
The orientation officer was droning on about something, but Melody was having
a hard time concentrating on what they were saying. She caught something about
unmutuality, but it all felt like it was blending together with the general Technocracy
orientation she went to over the summer. Her eyes flipped shut again, and she could feel
her body relaxing into a doze. She awoke with a start once more and noticed that the
people around her all had their training manuals open. She opened hers as well but felt
lost not knowing what page to turn to.
“Melody Gray,” the orientation officer said her name.
“Yes?” she snapped to attention at the sound of her name.
“Please try to keep up. We’re on page three,” they told her.
“Of course, thank you,” she felt so embarrassed by being called out she slunk down
in her chair. Murmurs filled the room which only increased her embarrassment.
“Quiet. Let’s get back on task,” the orientation officer said.
Melody turned to page three in her manual and stole glances at the other people in
the room with her. They were looking at her, or at least she felt like they were looking at
her, but when she looked up, they were quick to turn back to the instructor. There was a
woman with flames for hair, red as the sun on a hazy summer day. She was sitting closest
to Melody, and when she noticed her looking, she shot her a smile. Next to her was a
man with black hair and no face. He did not look at Melody, and she couldn’t stand to
look at him for too long. Beside him was a woman with blue stars for eyes and a blonde
man with a snake wrapped around his arm. Neither looked at her directly, but Melody
could feel their eyes burning with curiosity when she wasn’t focused on them. Then
there was the man with too many teeth. When he grinned at Melody, she could see extra
rows of teeth spreading back into his mouth. The orientation instructor was looking at
everyone equally. Of all the people in the room, Melody felt the safest and friendliest
feelings towards them. They appeared to care about everyone equally, hoping they all
remained mutual and didn’t need to be culled. Finally, there was the HIT Mark. It stood
behind the lectern near the orientation officer, and it never stopped looking at her. When
she met its eyes, she knew that it hated standing there on display for everyone to just
look at. When she looked away, she could feel its eyes pleading with her to release it
from its cage.
The playback paused as Melody looked at the strange people assembled in the
room. Lt. Whittemore was watching her as she investigated their appearances.
“Is this the way they looked?” he asked.
“It’s how I remember them,” she told him.
“Last time you focused on the HIT Mark. You were sure it was looking at you,” he
said.
“It was, wasn’t it. But they were looking at me as well. I just remembered that I
could feel their eyes burning into me,” she said.
“And now?” he asked.
Melody tried to focus on the information in front of her, but others’ gazes felt too
real, too painful to suffer. “And now I can’t remember what came first. I remember them
looking at me and knowing that now makes me sad. I couldn’t save them,” she said.
“Keep going,” he said.
The holograms started moving again and Melody watched the HIT Mark as the
scene progressed. Hologram Melody wasn’t looking at anything in particular when the
HIT Mark struck. But Melody could see that a blast of energy erupted from its palm
in her direction. She was lucky it didn’t hit her while she wasn’t paying attention. In
response, the star-eyed woman screamed and fell to the ground, and the blonde snake-
man stood and flipped a table on its side for protection. The orientation officer moved to
block the HIT Mark, but it wasn’t responding to them.
“Stand down,” they said in an authoritative voice.
The robot simply punched them in the jaw, which caused them to crumple to the
ground. Their head made a sickening crack as it hit the lectern on the way down. The
fire-haired woman lunged to protect the orientation officer, but the HIT Mark was
already on her. It aimed another energy blast at her chest, and as it erupted, she fell to
the ground and rolled. Had it missed her? Melody couldn’t tell.
The Test 77
Melody’s memory of the event was imperfect, so when she paused the playback in
order to look for the woman, she couldn’t see her. The area where she had rolled was
hazy with static.
“You don’t remember what happened to her?” Lt. Whittemore asked.
“I think she survived the hit,” Melody mused to herself.
“Where is she?” he asked.
“I think she’s there,” Melody pointed to where the static was resolving into the
flame-haired woman, but it was still hazy. She couldn’t see details, but she could see that
she was breathing on the floor.
“You seem uncertain if she lived,” he motioned to the woman.
“I think she did. Yes. She lived because she’s the one who tried to save the orientation
officer,” Melody said. As she did, the woman resolved completely, and Melody could
see burn marks singing her on her left side.
“When this happened, you weren’t sure if she was alive, so the program fills in
your memories as they come to you. I wouldn’t worry about it,” Lt. Whittemore told
her. “Continue.”
Melody watched herself flip the table in front of her and move to the back of the
room, where the energy blast had scorched the corners and made everything fuzzy. She
hunkered down and watched as the rest of the initiates tried to fight the HIT Mark. The
man with black hair and no face seemed to try to use magic to set it on fire, but it simply
glanced off without a single singed hair. The man with too many teeth closed in and tried
to kick the creature while the star-eyed woman threw a chair at it.
“Get down,” the blonde snake-man yelled. He was picking up a table with the intent
of throwing it at the HIT Mark.
The man with too many teeth ducked as the other man heaved the table at the
construct. It hit the robot square in the chest and made it take two steps back. The table
clattered to the floor, and the HIT Mark moved in and kicked the man with too many
teeth before he could dodge out of the way. He flew back and hit the man with black hair
and no face, and they crumpled together in a heap.
Melody could see that the woman with flames for hair was attempting to administer
to the orientation officer, but the blood trickling from their eye told Melody it was a lost
cause. She kept trying, shaking them gently and saying a name Melody couldn’t hear
from where she was, but knew based on what Lt. Whittemore had told her. After a few
moments of this, the woman gave up and crawled away to the two men in a pile a few
feet away.
The star-eyed woman was screaming so loud Melody thought her eardrums might
burst. The piercing wail seemed to irritate the HIT Mark as well, as it turned to her
and advanced in a deliberate slow walk. The woman didn’t move; she just stood there
screaming as it stalked toward her. Melody averted her gaze as the robot grabbed the
woman with stars for eyes by her face and gave a sharp twist of its wrist, snapping her
neck. The wailing ended abruptly, and Melody heard the woman’s body thud to the floor.

Melody’s gaze fixated on the flame-haired woman and the two men on the floor. It
appeared they were dazed but not dead. She let out her breath which she didn’t realize
she had been holding. While the HIT Mark scanned for another target, Melody could
see the three of them organize themselves behind a table. The man with no face pulled a
pistol from a holster at his hip and began shooting at the HIT Mark. The other two started
tossing chairs at it to distract it. In response, the robot extended one arm it transformed
instantly into a rifle. It shot the chairs out of the air before they could hit, and the bullets
from the man with no face’s gun ricocheted off the robot’s body.
Two shots from the arm rifle brought the man with too many teeth down, but the
flame-haired woman was able to duck behind the table once more. The black-haired,
no-face man seemed to be searching for an opening but remained hunkered behind the
table as well, afraid of being shot. The HIT Mark shot the table repeatedly, and wood
splinters and shrapnel peppered the two hiding behind it. The blonde snake-man came
in swinging from behind. He had picked up a table leg from the shattered table he had
thrown at the construct earlier and was using it as a club. He hit it twice in the back of
the head, and it turned to him, giving the other two enough time to move out and get to
a better vantage point. The man with no face shot three well-aimed bullets into the back
of the HIT Mark’s skull, causing it to stagger forward. As it did, the blonde man hit the
robot again, and from the floor, the orientation officer grabbed its ankle and it fell to one
knee.
Melody thought they were going to destroy the robot, but it recovered quicker than
they did from their maneuvers. It brought its gun arm around to the blonde man’s chest
and blew a giant hole in his torso with a single shot. It stood and stomped down hard on
the orientation officer’s hand, crushing it and causing them to scream out in pain before
a single bullet through the head ended their life. The black-haired man with no face was
able to duck behind another table, one less filled with bullets than the last, before the
construct finally turned back to him.
“I’ll distract it while you shoot it,” the flame-haired woman called to the no-face
man. Before she could do anything, the HIT Mark turned to her and shot at her. She
dodged out of the way and ended up behind the table with the no-face man once again.
They were pinned down, and it wasn’t looking good for them. Hologram Melody
sat frozen in fear. She remembered being terrified to reveal herself which would likely
get her shot, but if she did nothing, then two more people would die in front of her.
While she deliberated, she could tell things were getting desperate for the woman with
flame for hair and the man with no face. The HIT Mark was shooting at the table they
were using as cover, and pieces of wood were flying away from it through the room. The
man with no face was taking shots as he could, but his aim was hindered by having to
duck behind the table every few seconds.
Melody centered herself and tried to overcome her fear. She could distract the robot
to give the no-face man a better shot. She would have to try a different tactic than the
flame-haired woman tried, but it could work. Maybe she could save at least two of them.
She crawled out from her hiding place and picked up a chair.
The Test 79
“Over here!” Melody called to get the robot’s attention as she threw the chair at the
same time, hoping to distract it long enough for the man with no face to shoot it again.
She immediately began running through the back of the room as the HIT Mark shot the
chair out of the air and started shooting after her. The no-face man took the opportunity
to shoot at the HIT Mark again, and the flame-haired woman was emboldened to throw
another chair at it. Melody guessed it judged her the lesser threat, as it immediately
spun and sprayed bullets at both the flame-haired woman and no-face man rather than
continue trying to shoot her. Damn. As the no-face man’s bullet caught the robot right
in the eye, its own rifle shot caught the man in the place where his face should be, and
he fell backward. The woman let out a small scream and tried to take cover again, but a
bullet found its way into her chest and her shoulder as she dropped.
Melody froze in place and hoped the HIT Mark had forgotten about her. It spun in
her general direction, but she could see the damage the no-face man had wrought on it.
The robot let out a few metallic clanks before simply crumpling to the ground in a heap.
The no-face man had destroyed it, even as he died.
Melody rushed over to the flame-haired woman to see if she could help her, hoping
to save at least one person’s life this day. When she got to her, she could see she had the
glass-eyed look of someone who isn’t long for this world.
“Why?” the woman rasped at her.
“I don’t know, but don’t go dying on me,” Melody responded.
“Why would you?” she asked again and the air in her lungs rattled to a stop as blood
came trickling out of her mouth.
• • •
“Did you shoot the HIT Mark or not, Miss Gray?” Lt. Whittemore asked.
“I did shoot it,” Melody responded.
“In the face, yes?” he asked.
“Yes, in the face, and some in the chest,” she said.
“Where is the HIT Mark now?” he asked.
“How would I know? It was still here yesterday when I left,” she said.
“You are the only survivor, Miss Gray. Surely you didn’t just black out after your
harrowing experience. You must remember what happened after you disabled the HIT
Mark,” he said to her.
She put her hands to her head and scratched her scalp. It was a nervous tick and sign
of frustration, one she had been able to hold off on performing until now. “You aren’t
listening to me. I told you I barely remember what happened yesterday. Look at all the
static in this room. Clearly, I don’t have the memories to patch up the drywall, much less
a killer robo-rogue. Until I got here this morning, I thought it was all a dream. I don’t
know what happened to the HIT Mark. Maybe someone removed it. Maybe whoever
made it go haywire told it to leave afterward. Maybe it was you,” she said.
“Yes, a compelling idea,” he said in response.
“So why aren’t you interrogating the people who make those things? Or whoever
was in charge of this one,” she said.
“That’s the problem we’re having. We can’t find it, so we don’t know who to
ask. We need you to help us figure out what happened so we can get to the bottom of
everything. Are you sure there isn’t more you remember?” he pressed again.
“I keep telling you; I don’t remember it. I don’t even remember going home,” she
said, feeling exasperated.
“Why was the HIT Mark there?” he asked her.
“I don’t know. I assumed they wanted to show it off,” she responded.
“Who is they?” he asked.
“The orientation officer, I guess. Defense Management makes those things, right?
So maybe they wanted to show it off during orientation,” she said.
“When did it come into the room?” he asked her.
“I told you, it was there when I got there,” she said.
“I’ve seen the video of the room. It wasn’t in here when you came in. In fact the
video doesn’t show the HIT Mark at all,” he told her.
“What? That’s nonsense, what else did this to all these people?” she asked.
“Oh, I’m certain it was a HIT Mark,” he assured her. “But there’s part of the video
missing. You’re literally the only one who witnessed the attack,” he said.
“You told me you had video of the incident,” she said astonished that he would
reveal this information to her.
“I lied,” he said simply.
After the confession, the room’s edges fuzzed out and more static filled the space.
It seemed her memory of the incident was the only thing filling in the blanks, and her
realization of that seemed to affect the program’s capabilities.
Melody looked around the static-filled room and thought about the holograms, her
memories, and what they had witnessed. “Is this real?” she asked suddenly.
“What do you mean?” Lt Whittemore asked.
“You, the holograms, my memories. Is any of it real?” she reached out to touch a
nearby table as she spoke. Her hand passed through it with a burst of static.
“I can assure you that I’m real. The attack was real. As for your memories, well,
that’s still left to be determined, isn’t it?” he said.
“If you don’t have footage of the incident, and I am the only witness, how do I know
that anything happened? How do I know that this isn’t some weird test of my integrity?”
she asked.
“Do you need to see the bodies? I can take you there,” the agent told her.
Melody paused for a beat and looked around the still blood-splattered holographic
room and shuddered at the thought of seeing her classmates in various states of death.
“No, I don’t want to see them,” she said meekly.
The Test 81
“I know that this is stressful for you, but I really need you to remember when the
HIT Mark first came into the room,” he told her.
She shook her head back and forth. “I wish I could remember more. But it was here.
Maybe it came in after orientation started, but I remember it always being there. Then
the attack happened, then I left.” Melody pointed to the area of the room where the HIT
Mark had been standing in her memories.
“You say you don’t remember leaving the room. So maybe you don’t remember
giving the HIT Mark orders as well?” Lt. Whittemore asked, his voice hard.
“I’m sorry, what? It tried to kill me and succeeded in killing my entire orientation
class. Why would I be giving it orders? Why would I order it to try and kill me?” she
asked. How could he accuse her of ordering it to do anything? What did he think she
had done here? Did he really think she was responsible for killing her classmates and
instructor?
“Then why don’t you tell me what really happened?” For the first time since the
interrogation began, Lt. Whittemore’s words carried the compulsion of magic behind
them. She could feel it coming off him, but it couldn’t take hold in her mind.
“I’ve told you everything I remember. I’ve told you three times now. I just don’t
know what else to tell you,” she said.
“You’ve told me three different stories each with their details off, different, and
scattered. Clearly your story has something wrong with it. Why don’t you tell me who
you’re working with?” Lt. Whittemore asked. Once again, she could feel the force of his
magic spread over her, around her, and through her.
“The Technocracy? Iteration X? I don’t know what you mean,” she stammered in
confusion.
“No. Who programmed the HIT Mark?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she responded. Something in her mind told her that this was a
dangerous line of questions. Maybe she did know, but she had been made to forget. But
she couldn’t tell him that. Not after everything else that had happened this morning.
“So did you hack the HIT Mark, or did someone else command it to attack?” Lt.
Whittemore pressed. It was clear to Melody that he was getting frustrated by her lack of
compliance. Maybe he thought she was unmutual; maybe he was just mad that his magic
wasn’t working on her.
“I didn’t command it to attack. I don’t know who did. It just started attacking us,
like it was waiting for something which eventually set it off,” she said. She was starting
to get heated. Her voice cracked and her mind felt like it was on fire.
“Okay, let’s try another line of questions,” Lt. Whittemore said gently. “Where was
the HIT Mark standing?”
“Over there,” Melody pointed to the back of the room near the overturned lectern.
This too set off alarm bells. He had said he didn’t see the HIT Mark in the video. Was
that a lie also? What did it mean if he was telling the truth? That thought sent a spike
of fear through her that she didn’t understand. Confusion should be normal after such a

traumatic event. He couldn’t possibly expect her to remember everything perfectly. So
maybe it arrived during the orientation and attacked, so what?
“Can you show me?” he asked.
Melody moved over to where the HIT Mark had stood when she first entered the
room. The spot was now filled with static, but as she looked it filled itself in with the
blood she knew was there from the orientation officer who died there. The sight of the
blood made her feel woozy, but she managed to keep herself upright. She did not stand on
the blood but motioned to it from where she was standing behind the lectern. Lieutenant
Whittemore moved to inspect the area, but she moved to keep herself between him and it.
“Is there a problem?” he asked her.
“Yes. There’s someone’s blood there. Show a little respect,” she said in disgust.
“Let me remind you that we are in a hologram. That blood isn’t real and anyway,
they are dead and gone,” he responded, but kept on his side of the lectern.
“You can see it from there,” she said.
“I can, but it doesn’t look any different to me than anywhere else in the room,” he
said.
“Yes. I don’t imagine it would. But you asked to see where it was standing, and
that’s where it was,” she said, once again feeling irritation and heat rising.
“In the real room, the room where all this happened, there’s a door there,” he said,
pointing to a section of the wall that was a few feet behind where she mentioned the HIT
Mark had been standing.
“What door?” she asked. There was no door on the wall, and she didn’t remember
seeing a door during the orientation or any other time.
“There’s a door there on that wall. In my video feed of the room, there’s a door. You
seem to have removed it in your memory of this space, but let me assure you, it’s there.
Can you try to remember the door and if you saw anything behind it?” the agent asked.
Melody thought on the room, she tried hard to remember if there was a door there,
but from her faulty recollection, there was nothing there. Even now, in this holographic
display, there was nothing there.
“This orientation room is the only one like it in the whole building. According to the
video I uploaded to create this hologram, there is a door on that wall. Where is it? What’s
in there? Did you see?” he asked her.
“I see a wall, not a door,” she said in response. Melody examined the wall behind
her for any indication that there was a door there. No seams, no hinges, not even the hint
of a raised area that was different from the rest of the wall. What was Lt. Whittemore
trying to pull here? Was he intentionally trying to confuse her?
“Did the HIT Mark come from in there?” he asked her.
“I told you, the HIT Mark was already in the room. I don’t know where it came
from,” she said, her exasperation rising once again. “I don’t see a door. I promise. It’s
not even that my memory isn’t filling in the gaps. It’s just a wall here.”
The Test 83
Lieutenant Whittemore tried to move past Melody once more, probably to get to the
wall he claimed there was a door on, but she blocked his movement. She wasn’t going
to let him magic a door into existence just to prove his point, and she felt like she was
well and done with this line of questioning. He shuffled to one side, then the other, each
time she blocked his movement. He tried to walk right past her, and got close enough to
shoulder check her, but she stepped back and put her hand on his arm.
“Please don’t do this,” she said.
“Don’t do what?” he asked her.
“I’m trying to answer your questions to the best of my ability, but I don’t know what
this question about the door is about. There is no door there, and I don’t see any reason
for you to go over there just to try to trick me,” she said through a clenched jaw. Her
eyes flashed with the frustration she was feeling, and maybe something there told Lt.
Whittemore to back off, or maybe that was just part of the test. Either way, he stepped
back and stopped trying to move past her.
“Who are you protecting?” he asked.
“I’m not protecting anyone. I guess, myself since you seem to think I’m somehow
responsible for what happened yesterday,” she said.
“I never said you were responsi—”
“Whatever,” she cut him off.
“Who gave the HIT Mark the command to attack yesterday?” he asked without
missing a beat.
“I don’t know,” she responded quickly.
“Where is the HIT Mark now?” he shot back.
“I don’t know,” she said again, a little more loudly.
“Who disabled the HIT Mark after it attacked?” His questions were coming in rapid
succession now.
“I did,” she said.
“How did you disable the HIT Mark?” he asked.
“I shot it,” she said.
“What did you do after the HIT Mark was disabled?” he asked.
“I left the building,” she said.
“Where is the HIT Mark now?” he asked again.
“I don’t know,” she practically yelled the answer.
With a sudden movement, Lt. Whittemore was on her. He grabbed the front of her
blouse and pulled her in close to him.
“Tell me who you’re working with,” he growled at her.
“No one!” she yelled in his face.
He backhanded her with the hand that was still holding the tablet that had been
recording the entire session. It was so quick and unexpected that she didn’t have time to
defend herself. She put her hand up to her stinging cheek and gasped. He let her go and
stomped to the other side of the room. It was clear that she had riled him, and he had lost
control. That wasn’t her intention, but she felt a small swelling of satisfaction that he had
finally felt as frustrated as she did with this whole thing.
“If there isn’t a door on that wall, why won’t you let me go look at it?” Lt.
Whittemore asked quietly.
“Why would you want to?” she asked in response.
“If I opened the door, it might spark your memory of what is behind it,” he told her.
“There is no door there, so if you opened a door, it would have to be by some magic
of yours. I’m tired of people questioning my reality here. Aren’t we supposed to be
making a Consensus?” she asked.
“That’s for the masses,” he said off-handed.
“Sure, but I’m not the masses, and I don’t need you altering my paradigm to fit your
Consensus that there’s a door there,” she said.
“There is a door there. Here, let me show you,” he pressed a button on his own
mirrorshades and the holographic room altered around them. Where before blood and
fleshy bits covered the room, it now stood clean and spotless. The chairs and tables
where in their upright positions and everything looked pristine and new. Melody and her
classmates sat in their respective seats and the orientation officer stood at the lectern.
The only difference between this image and that of Melody’s memories of the start of
the incident were that instead of a HIT Mark standing near the lectern there was an
empty wall.
“There, where you say the HIT Mark was standing is the door,” Lt. Whittemore
told her.
“I don’t see a door,” she said slowly.
The agent pulled his shades down just a hair and Melody could see his crystal-clear
blue eyes just beyond the mirrored surface. He was looking at the wall in confusion.
“Why do you think there isn’t a door there?” he asked her.
“Because there isn’t a door. I don’t know where this image came from, but it doesn’t
have a door, just like my memories,” she said.
Lieutenant Whittemore looked from Melody to the wall and scoffed, “Look Melody,
there is clearly a door on the wall. I have changed the feed to fill in from the initial video
footage from yesterday, rather than using your memories to populate the room. There
isn’t a HIT Mark, but there is a door.”
“I don’t see a door,” she said.
He looked at her flabbergasted and it was clear his frustration was overcoming him
once more. He took a step back from her and clenched his fist. “Look again,” he said.
“You look again. Point out the door to me,” she said.
Lieutenant Whittemore looked at the wall and his mouth dropped open just slightly.
He moved to it, and this time Melody let him past her. He went to a spot on the wall
The Test 85
directly behind the orientation officer and the lectern and pressed his hand to it. “It’s
gone,” the two words were spoken in a barely audible whisper.
“It was never there,” she said.
“What did you do?” he snapped.
“I didn’t do anything,” she said.
He opened his mouth and closed it. “How did you? Where did the door go?”
“I told you; I didn’t see a door. Now who is having memory issues?” her tone was
somewhat mocking.
Melody could see the agent chewing on unspoken words. She guessed he didn’t like
being on the receiving end of that level of snark. Finally, he spoke, “There’s no way that
a HIT Mark attacked a class full of people and didn’t kill everyone involved. There’s no
way you disabled a HIT Mark with a well-aimed shot to the face, no matter how good a
shot you are. There’s no way your story makes any sense.”
“Just like there was a door there?” Melody said. “You came here with all these
assumptions. I don’t have the answers you’re looking for, but I’m not lying to you. I
can’t explain it any more than you can, but if anyone is being lied to, it’s both of us. I
didn’t do anything to the HIT Mark. I didn’t command it. I barely know anyone in this
building other than the security team on floor four who I interned with last summer and
my recruiter. Whatever happened, whoever did it, it wasn’t me.”
She pulled the mirrorshades off her face and the action left her dizzy for a moment
as she reoriented herself to the small interrogation room which they still stood in.
“If it wasn’t you, then who was it?” he asked.
“I don’t know. You’re the investigator, you’ll figure it out,” she said as she passed
the shades back to the agent. “Please believe me.”
“I don’t believe you, but I can tell you believe your own story. My work here is as
done as it can be,” he said as he powered off the tablet and put it and the holographic
mirrorshades back into his coat pocket. He pulled out a small business card and passed
it to her as he walked past her. “This isn’t over. I’ll be in touch,” he said as he walked
out of the room.
• • •
Whittemore stopped by the small security office on his way out of the Iteration X
building. The other NWO agent and Officer Bailey gave him a nod as he entered the
room.
“Welcome back,” he the agent said with a smug look on his face.
“Search the whole building for that fucking HIT Mark,” Lt. Whittemore said. “I
want to find it, and I want any evidence linking it to Melody Gray.”
“Yes, sir. Do you want me to keep surveillance on her?” Officer Bailey asked.
“No, I’ll keep an eye on her myself. Also, I’ll be taking the security tape for further
review,” he said and walked away from the desk. The officer simply nodded and let him leave.

Whittemore took the long way back to his office, so he had some time to think about
what happened with Melody Gray. His magic hadn’t worked on her. None of it, from
compulsion to simply reading her thoughts to see if she was telling the truth. Whatever
she had up as protection was powerful enough to keep him out, which means either she
was powerful enough to force someone to work with her without remembering, or her
ally was powerful enough to protect her from him. Either way, it wasn’t looking good for
Iteration X. He was only about eighty percent certain she wasn’t a Nephandus, but there
wasn’t any way for him to know if she was working with them. Future investigation will
have to go that route.
When he got to his office, he did two things. The first was plugging the external
drive into his computer to rewatch the security recording of the incident. The second
was checking his connection to the card he had given to Melody before he left. He was
disappointed to find that he couldn’t see anything about Melody, but he could see that
the card was in a dark place. Maybe it was in her pocket, but the magic should allow him
to see her directly, not just the card. Everything about this case was just so confusing.
When Whittemore glanced up at the computer screen he gasped and stopped the
tape. Right where Melody had indicated the HIT Mark stood, where he knew there was
a door, where a door had been the last time he watched this video, there was no door.
It was gone. Was he going insane? Had she somehow hacked the footage through the
mirrorshades she was wearing and her version of the program? Surely, he would have
noticed her running a program. Her shades weren’t even running the full program, simply
the holographic display. There’s no way she could do such an advanced technique on her
second day with Iteration X. She had to have an accomplice.
• • •
Melody watched as Lt. Whittemore walked out of the room past her. She followed
him out, but not out of the building. Instead, as he walked towards the elevator, she went
further down the hall and to the back stairs. She took them to the first floor where the
orientation room stood. She was almost shocked to find it in pristine condition. She had
seen it so often that morning covered in blood she just assumed it still looked that way.
The glistening glass door opened with a whoosh as she entered and she drifted to
the back of the room where the lectern stood completely whole and unmarred by the
events of the day before. She placed her hand on the wall and began investigating it. The
agent seemed so certain there was a door; she wondered if it was her who was wrong.
She ran her hands across the smooth wall and felt nothing other than the raised bumps
from the dried blood splattered across its surface. She wondered idly if she was going
to have her regular test now that the investigator was gone, or if she was free to leave
for the day.
• • •
A man and a woman sat behind a console watching a video on a large screen. The
video showed a split screen. One had a close-up of the wall Melody was looking at as
she searched around it. The other screen showed Melody Gray’s face extremely close
The Test 87
to the camera and searching around as though looking for something on the wall the
camera was mounted on. The man had a thick, brown, bushy beard and wire-framed
spectacles. The woman had long, black hair pulled into a loose and messy ponytail with
stray hairs framing her round and cheery face.
“Are you sure it can’t see the door?” the man asked the woman.
“Positive; its programming won’t allow it,” she responded.
“Fascinating,” the man scratched his beard and marked something down on a
clipboard. “And it will perform this way in the field?”
“Absolutely. It’s field ready. What you just saw was a completely raw test. Lieutenant
Whittemore is an elite NWO investigator. His recent promotion came straight from the
top. Our-side-of-the-brick-ceiling top. Even he has no idea what he was interacting
with,” she said.
He jotted down something else on the clipboard as he nodded to himself. “And the
hologram, her programming seemed to flawlessly integrate with the mirrorshades to
create realistic images,” he said.
“Oh yes. Q Division outdid themselves on those mirrorshades, and we had been
hoping Lt. Whittemore would bring them along. I’m always so pleased to see how our
systems work together so seamlessly. Another feather in the Iteration X cap,” she said
beaming with pride.
“Absolutely stunning. So where is the other HIT Mark?” he asked.
“Well...” she trailed off.
“The one who did all the damage and killed the others,” he continued almost over
her.
“Oh, it was all her. She doesn’t remember doing it, but we planted her in that group
who were all exhibiting signs of unmutuality. She doesn’t remember it because we
reprogrammed her memory of the incident. That part isn’t infallible, but it was good
enough to fool Lt. Whittemore.” The woman smiled her cheery smile and tightened her
ponytail. “That is to say, good enough.”
“You seemed to hesitate when I asked you where the other one was; is there another
one?” he asked.
“There is,” she said with hesitation in her voice.
“But?” he asked.
“But it is missing,” she said.
“Missing? How can you let something like that go missing?” he asked her.
“We ran a similar test last month, but instead of coming in the next day it just
disappeared. We’ve been doing everything we can to search for it, but with how well it
integrates with the masses, we haven’t been able to locate it,” she told him.
“Which means they could have it?” he asked. His voice was gruff, and he was
obviously disturbed by the prospect.
“Yes. It means they could have it,” she responded sounding defeated.
Travis Legge
Monday, 19 December 2022
Ultima Thule, Queen Maud Land, Antarctica
10:45 UTC
As the airlock hissed, Danny Grant felt his guts jump into his throat. Despite eight
years of xenobiological research at Ultima Thule, he still felt an acute spike of panic
every time he entered quarantine with a new discovery. As a Progenitor there were at least
a dozen techniques he could apply to mitigate or negate anxiety, but he had no interest
in doing so. That moment of panic — silent acknowledgement of the stakes at hand —
reminded him that one misstep while handling materials and organisms of an unknown
origin could have apocalyptic consequences. Although the Union had protocols, safety
measures, redundancies, and back up redundancies to handle mishaps, none of them
were guarantees. Also, nuking the site from orbit in the event of a containment breach
might save humanity, but it would do sweet fuck all to save Danny. A containment
breach meant he was a dead man, and he was fervid about avoiding such a fate.
He stepped into the airlock, which sealed behind him. Decontaminant rays flooded
the chamber. It was standard protocol for anything going into or out of quarantine from
the open lab. Flickering red and violet lights danced throughout the room, bathing
everything in their cleansing glow. They also brought out the freckles on Danny’s
face, the only flesh exposed to the light in his environmental suit. Even in summer, he
frequently went weeks at a time without seeing the sun. Those frozen nights taught him
that it wasn’t just the paranormal but this very beautiful, very dangerous place that could
kill him. Between an endless backlog of lab work, caring for the menagerie of animals
he kept on site for research purposes, and a general distaste for sub-zero temperatures,
Danny only went outside when duty or cabin fever demanded it.
Fell WInds 89
Danny wasn’t with the field team on the expedition that yielded the latest collection
of artifacts and biofacts. Had he been present, he’d have advised against bringing this
much material back to base at once without full spectrum analysis on multiple samples.
Dr. Charlot Berg, the Research Lead and Site Overseer, was in charge of the field team,
and she often prioritized findings over foresight. The field team had meticulously
documented but barely scanned everything hauled back to base. This added an undue
burden, and no small amount of risk, to the quarantine assessment. It made more work
for Danny, but it helped pass the time — no mean feat at Ultima Thule. If nothing else,
it kept his job interesting.
The shattered remnants of a sailing ship of indeterminate mid-19th century origin
and her contents occupied the largest portion of the quarantine bunker. Planks of wood,
furnishings, the remnants of three cannons, dozens of cargo containers in various states
of decay, and various personal effects laid strewn about the floor in a chaotic placement.
A card with a letter and number sequence decorated the floor before each item to identify
the artifact and allow archaeological data to be tracked and traced throughout its study.
Beyond the central chamber was cold storage, used for biofacts and other biological
samples collected in the wild. Danny needed to ensure the safety of each item, catalogue
it, and record any pertinent archaeological data he discovered in the assessment. This
was the work of days, if not weeks, as each piece would need to be removed from the
environment upon establishment of safety to prevent any unknown material or pathogen
from making it onto the base.
He picked up his tablet and dove in.
• • •
Wednesday, 21 December 2022
19:22 UTC
Danny blinked his eyes to stave off screen fatigue. Twelve-hour days had reduced
the artifacts in the quarantine area by about a third. So far, he’d managed to piece
together that the wreckage came from a wooden vessel likely built in the mid-1800s.
There were remnants of technology far too advanced for that timeframe, including
evidence of a difference engine and sail fragments treated with a deviant chemical
designed to provide extradimensional resistance. This was either an Etherite vessel or
a Technocratic expedition from before the Etherite defection. In either case, it was a
fascinating discovery that warranted every ounce of caution. If it was a superstitionist
ship, it could have all manner of infectious extradimensional threats on it. Even the
Order’s dimensional technology in the 1800s was primitive at best, with containment
being as much a function of blind luck as scientific acumen or protocol. The wreckage
reminded Danny how far the Technocratic Union had come in such a brief time.
Through cooperation, unity, and a common purpose, the Enlightened Scientists of the
Union pushed the boundaries of human understanding beyond what anyone aboard this
ill-fated wreck might have dared to dream.
As he scanned a sediment-encrusted tube, he commanded the voice-operated straw

in his helmet to his mouth. The straw rewarded his thirsty sip with the gurgle of an
empty thermos. He’d run out of Erg Cola, which was going to make continuing his task
a challenge. Thanks to the bioprocessing modifications in his second skin, Danny could
survive for days in the suit, recycling his own waste. However, he didn’t pee caffeine,
and that was going to be a problem. As he thought about packing it in for the night, an
audio notification chimed from his tablet and gave him pause.
“Recording Media Detected,” the tablet said in a husky voice, tinged with the slight
hint of an Edinburgh accent.
Danny looked at the readout. It seemed that there was a phonograph cylinder inside
the sediment. He knew it would take at least an hour to decontaminate the sample, and
another 30 minutes minimum to safely extract the cylinder — if it was metal. A wax
cylinder would take considerably longer. Danny was curious but tired.
“Hey, Lind?” Danny said to his tablet in an accent far less slight. “Can you read
the interior surface of this artifact with sufficient precision for a modeling scan?” As he
spoke, he set the tablet on a tripod with its camera facing the artifact.
“Certainly, Danny,” the virtual assistant replied. “I’ll need ten minutes, twenty-two
seconds.”
Danny smiled, “Can you then extrapolate the contents of that 3d model, compare it
to archival records of phonograph cylinders, and export an audio file?”
“I can,” Lind said. “Would you like me to drop that to your ES-Phone?”
“Please do,” Danny said as he opened the interior airlock. “I’ll see you in the
morning, Lind.”
“Rest well,” Lind replied.
Danny stepped into the airlock for decontamination.
• • •
20:27 UTC
Danny walked into his bedroom with a dehydrated ration pack and two liters of
water. His hair and beard were still wet from the shower. Most nights, Danny preferred
to have dinner in the mess hall with his colleagues — maybe even organize a friendly
poker game or an impromptu shootout in the combat simulator — but not tonight. His
curiosity over the contents of the phonograph cylinder outweighed his considerable
desire to socialize. While it was possible the recording would be nothing more than
some music of the time, Danny hoped it would offer insight into the identity of the
shipwreck.
Researching approved history for the masses revealed a single shipwreck near
Antarctica in the 1800s, and the next one didn’t occur until the Endurance sank in 1915.
Temporal dating techniques indicated the newest artifact Danny had studied so far
predated the Endurance’s commission by at least fifty years. Furthermore, an expedition
found the wreckage of the Endurance only a few short months ago. Danny recalled
Fell WInds 91
discussing the finding with Margit, one of the scientists at Troll Research Station —
Ultima Thule’s nearest neighbor — during one of their many remote chess games played
over the radio.
Searching Union records bore no fruit. At his level of clearance, Danny couldn’t
access most files regarding Union history in the area beyond 72 degrees south. As the
resident xenobiologist it ground his gears that he didn’t have open access to the history
database. He’d brought the issue up repeatedly to Charlot and always got the same
response. The New World Order required each search request be processed individually
to preserve temporal and ecological conditions in Antarctica. In other words, it’s pretty
easy to push the bounds of Consensus here because so little is established. The official
position of the NWO was that discussing information about the history of Antarctica
establishes a firm history, which further cements the Consensus in a place where
Consensus is both relatively fluid and relatively contained by Technocratic assets.
Antarctica was one of the purest areas for field research on the Front Lines, and the
higher ups didn’t want to jeopardize that for expedience.
While Danny wasn’t much of a psychodynamics expert, he had a pretty good bullshit
detector, and the NWO’s justification for their position set it wailing. He was convinced
that the NWO was hiding something — likely several somethings — in the works in
Antarctica. While he understood the need to preserve operational security, he also knew
that Ultima Thule was one of the most secure locations on Earth, and communications
going in and out were no exception. As far as Danny was concerned, the NWO’s tight-
lipped policy ranged from short-sighted to recklessly negligent given the nature of the
work performed at Ultima Thule.
He poured a liter of water into his meal pack and placed it in the microwave. Picking
up his ES-Phone, he considered whether he should ask Charlot to file a request for his
search before listening to the file. That could take hours to process. He then considered
the possibility that he might not even be allowed to listen to the file once he reported it. If
Charlot deemed the NWO data regulation guidelines applied to the recording, he could
be denied access to it until he could prove his need to access it for operational safety.
That could also take hours.
The microwave beeped, pulling Danny’s thoughts back to the room. He removed
the pasty meal that was meant to be shepherd’s pie and sat at his desk. Taking his first
bite, he opened the audio file from Lind.
• • •
Friday, 22 December 1848
First Mate’s log. Final entry.
The numbness in my fingers brought on by bitter Antarctic air and hemorrhage has
robbed me of my ability to properly hold a pen, let alone write in a legible script. Even
if the cabin were to miraculously warm up, I fear my hands are too slick with blood to
manage a functional scrawl. I’ve resolved, then, to make my final log entry, and the
epitaph for the Agamemnon, on phonograph in the hopes that someone from the Order
of Reason might find it and heed the warnings herein. A doom from beyond the Void

has claimed the Agamemnon and her crew. Even as I record this, I can feel the darkness
of oblivion scratching at the edges of my awareness. In these final moments, I lack the
hypocrisy to pray forgiveness for the life I’ve led, as I have always placed my faith in
calculation and procedure rather than mythic figures. Yet, I do feel compelled to pray
to whatever godly things may be listening that this warning finds its intended audience
before the horrors I’ve seen wash ashore in settled lands.
At precisely 10:08 am Greenwich time yesterday morning — the exact moment
of the Solstice — our barrelman, Warrant Officer Caldwell, spotted a ship cresting the
horizon to the south. As our expedition intended to reach the South Pole, and no other
Void Seeker vessels were slated to be anywhere nearby, this ship sparked immense
curiosity. Excited as we were to see another seacraft, we approached with caution. If
it were a Sleeper vessel, it was lost and likely had been for some time. No Sleeper has
made it this far south according to our records, so our immediate concern was that we
would find a ghost ship staffed only by the frozen corpses of a crew struck down by
misadventure. If only that had been the bounty of our meddling!
It didn’t take long for us to pull up next to the foreign vessel. She appeared adrift,
and our helmsman was able to bring us about in short order. As we drew closer, the
strange surface of the fouled vessel summoned a deep discomfort in the recesses of my
soul. The —
• • •
20:29 UTC
Danny stopped the recording and stared at his phone for a long moment. What the
hell had he stumbled across? Should he get his team in here? He looked at the door to the
hallway, then back to the screen. No, he’d invite someone else if it became necessary,
and surely the relic of some dead first mate wouldn’t demand it. Instead, he set his meal
aside, pulled a contact lens case out of a drawer, and flipped it open. These lenses — a gift
from an Iteration X Biomechanic who stole them from a Seer who perfected them with a
Virtual Adept... or something — could immerse anyone into a virtually constructed and
enhanced environment. Paired earbuds became concert halls, and guitar strings seemed
to vibrate inside your mind, despite their digital stereo recording. A nearby friend could
describe their grandma’s homemade marmalade in a few words, and your nostrils would
fill with illusory citrus. In short, the lenses could extrapolate descriptions, photos, and
sound recordings into fully realized virtual environments. He blinked the lenses into his
eyes, leaned back in his chair, and resumed the recording.
• • •
“What do you see, Kinner?” The first mate had to say it twice, his voice dying on
the still air.
Fell WInds 93
The majority of the iron-sick hull was caked with strange plankton of black and
blue hues.
“Nothing yet, sir,” Kinner responded. He looked perplexed. “I couldn’t tell
you if these were corpses of mundane sea life or alien creatures dragged from some
undiscovered nautical hellscape.” He chuckled to drive home the jest, but it fell flat. He
replaced the smirk with a frown. “Whatever their nature, we’ll need to board in order to
locate identifying markers or discern the ship’s origin.”
Taking advantage of the digital environment he now occupied, Danny looked
across the water at the drifting vessel. Cursory examination revealed no crew on the
deck or in the rickety crow’s nest. Immersed in the reality presented by the log, Danny
could feel the bitter Arctic air on his skin. He could taste the salty sea air, and beneath
the recording, he could hear waves lapping gently against the hull of the Agamemnon.
The first mate’s voice continued, providing ominous narration to the scene before him.
“Our crew, the damned fools, couldn’t wait to board the ghost ship. If any souls
survived below decks, we were obligated to lend aid, but the lure of an unexplained ship
in waters no person is known to have sailed was far more tempting than any humanitarian
concerns. Our Bloc is not famed for our restraint in the face of the unknown. Ever
pressing against the boundaries of what is into the realms of what could be is in our
blood. Despite the excitement, our boarding party adhered to protocols. Each of us
carried a pack with medical supplies, blankets, food, and fresh water. We each also
carried a pistol and saber in case malignant monstrosities responsible for the ship’s
misfortune were still aboard. Those of us with proper training and proclivities carried
additional gear as appropriate, and I ensured my daggers were sheathed but ready should
the need to defend ourselves arise.
We pulled our ship abreast the bizarre vessel and boarded with a crew of five. Captain
Walker, Ensign Dutton, Ensign Kinner, Doc Polk, and I made our way to the abandoned
deck. The first thing I noticed — and curse me for not speaking up then and there — was
an odd familiarity in the design of the deck. The layout was different than our own, but
the core structure of the ship was eerily similar. Though I hadn’t brought any apparatus
to appropriately measure, the ghost ship seemed roughly the same size as our own. This
wasn’t inherently notable as sailing the icy Antarctic waters requires a sizable vessel
properly insulated and reinforced to endure the frigid conditions. However, the location
of the companionway and the architecture of the railings were both similar enough to
ours that they could’ve easily both come from the same blueprint or commission at
the same shipyard. Were it not for the pervasiveness of rusted fastenings and warped,
waterlogged wood, I would have placed the ships at about the same age.
Failing to heed the ill sensation this suspicion roused in my guts, I accompanied
Captain Walker into the companionway. As she opened the hatch, the foulest mixture of
rotten meat, perspiration, and sewage emerged from the darkened deck below, assailing
our noses. I barely clung to my composure upon inhaling the fetid air. Ensign Kinner
was not so fortunate and regurgitated his morning’s rations onto the deck. Captain
Walker chastised us to keep our wits and produced her etheric torch to illuminate the
compartment.”
Danny, too, struggled to keep down what little of his lunch he’d managed to
consume before embarking on this virtual journey. The lenses lived up to their reputation
for olfactory support, and it was the foulest stench Danny had ever encountered. A few
calming breaths fought back the threatening nausea, and he sallied forth.
“The abattoir that stood revealed in the harsh, silvery glow of the etheric torchlight
was an assault on the eyes that rivaled the wretchedness of the stench. The corridor walls
stood caked with moist humors, the paneling beneath peeking out only in fingerprint
streaks as though someone had run their hands through the blood and viscera adorning
the walls while walking past. The ceiling fared no better. Fleshy bits of offal dripped
from above, seemingly pasted there with a layer of visceral matter. The nature and
material of the floor were a mystery, obfuscated by a thick inviolate coating of entrails
and ichor that refused to yield an inch to the planks below.
Though the captain managed stoic silence in the face of this hellscape, I witnessed
her shudder as she stepped from the bottom stair and the viscous detritus swallowed her
boot to the ankle. She paused and holstered her pistol, producing her saber in its stead.”
“This ship is otherworldly,” the captain whispered as she shifted the handle in
her fingers for optimal grip, mere feet in front of where Danny stood. “Be ready for
anything.”
Every small hair on Danny’s hirsute body stood on end as he realized the simulation
placed him directly in the first mate’s shoes. Choking back a second wave of nervous
nausea, Danny continued his observation.
“The boarding party followed suit. Doc put on his etheric goggles to allow him to
see spirits and invaders who might hide in the spaces between the fabric of the Tapestry.
The illumination provided by those lenses, though dim, cast a dull silvery glow in his
immediate vicinity. Kinner, having recovered from his digestive indiscretion, removed
the electrical generation apparatus from his belt and snapped it into place on the pommel
of his blade. Though he refrained from powering it up, the device would give his strikes
the power and potency of a bolt of lightning upon activation. I drew my daggers, which
had been bathed in mermaid’s blood under the light of the full moon. A time-honored
fortification technique among the Void Seekers, this had the additional benefit of
allowing defense against immaterial entities.
Polk reached to his belt and activated his autoscribe. The small belt-mounted box
was meant to detect and record fluctuations in spiritual activity. It was an experimental
device of Polk’s own design, which had only one prior test in the field. The remarkable
invention detected ambient spirit energy, quantified it on a scale of negative ten to ten,
and recorded results through a moving needle that charted the data on a strip of paper.
The moment Polk powered the autoscribe on, the needle leapt to life, drenching the
paper in black ink.”
“Captain!” Polk’s voice was louder and more panicked than intended.
Captain Walker shot an annoyed look over her shoulder.
“Sorry,” Polk whispered. “The autoscribe is giving alarming readings.”
“Off the charts?”
Fell WInds 95
“Well, no. Not exactly. If we were in an Otherworld, I would expect consistently
high readings. This place is all over the place. Low. High. Non-existent. I can’t keep
track.”
Captain Walker nodded and opened her mouth to issue an order. Before she could
speak, the sound of pained weeping spilled into the corridor from the cabin beyond.
“At a slow, deliberate pace, the captain edged forward through the layer of muck
and rot at her boots. In turn, we followed, fighting our revulsion at the effluvium of
rot that played upon our noses and the sticky impedance of the viscous charnel matter
around our boots from whence the stench emanated.
Despite our best efforts, the floor vanquished any attempt at stealthy movement. Raising
our feet beyond the surface of the gore conjured a wet sucking sound like a blade pulled
without care from an enemy’s gut. Yet dragging our feet along the entrail-soaked flooring
roused a sloshing noise that reverberated through the corridor, loud enough to our ears
to compete with the torturous mewling at the end of the hall. As we crept deeper into the
passageway, moving astern, a scratching sound like a sack of grain dragged along gravel
joined the cries at the end of the hall. In tandem, the sounds also moved further astern, as
if trying to escape our advancing presence or to lure us deeper into the hold. Though I was
behind the captain according to the protocols of our training, the urge to dash past her nearly
overwhelmed me. I wanted to bring a swift end to the wretched keening! The suffering
visited upon whatever creature was responsible for such desperate tones was undoubtedly
inhumane in the extreme. For the sake of the victim — and my own sanity — I wanted
nothing more than to put an end to their misery and the banshee’s wail it produced.”
As the sound rose in the background, Danny felt his pulse quicken. He felt similarly
compelled. It was like listening to a wounded kitten warble for aid that would never
come. Danny pinched the web of his right hand with his left thumb and forefinger to
remind himself what was real and what wasn’t. He hoped the reminder would serve as a
bulwark against whatever the narration would next reveal.
“Inspired by our grisly surroundings and their pained cries, I envisioned the
poor soul with tattered skin punctured by broken limbs, lying in the filth and begging
for release. In my mind’s eye I could see the intricate details of their torn flesh. The
separation of dermis from muscle and fat below as though they’d been partially flayed
by an expert surgeon. I could smell the pungency of a half-digested meal wafting from
their exposed and punctured intestines, and I could hear the squelching splatter of their
blood, pumping with alarming speed from their myriad wounds. I imagined standing
before the pitiable wretch with my belaying pin, stifling a grin as I drew back for a
compassionate blow.”
• • •
20:36 UTC
Danny closed his eyes tightly, in part to disable the simulation, but mostly to escape
the horrific images flashing across his vision.
“Hey, Lind,” Danny said into his ES-Phone.
“Aye, Danny,” the virtual assistant replied.
“Call Anastasia,” Danny said, stressed to the point that his voice cracked.
“Aye. Your simulation is paused. Calling now.”
Danny opened his eyes as the phone rang in his earbuds. He was back in his room.
He brought up his vital signs as he waited for an answer. Pulse, blood pressure, body
temperature, and respiration were all elevated. The realism of the simulation accessed
through the lenses was intense. Danny began some breathing techniques he’d learned to
regulate his pulse.
In the main rec room across the base from Danny’s quarters, Anastasia’s ES-Phone
danced across the corner of a ping pong table, vibrating as it rang.
“Gonna get that?” Paxton asked as he delivered a backhand return with far greater
ferocity than the sport demanded.
Anastasia spun toward the incoming ball, holding her paddle in a firm penhold grip
which deftly blocked Paxton’s shot.
“Ripley,” Anastasia said. “Answer incoming call on speaker.”
“You’re on speaker,” the mezzo voice chimed from Anastasia’s phone as it
connected the call.
“Anastasia?” Danny’s voice sounded harried. It was enough to give Anastasia
pause, but not enough to distract her from the game. “Can you come down here? I could
use your insight on something.”
“Yeah,” Anastasia said, stretching body and voice to return Paxton’s latest shot. She
nearly missed.
“Careful, Danny,” Paxton warned as he fired the ping pong ball back to Anastasia
with a smash. “You’re gonna earn Ana dish duty distracting her.”
“Just a second, Danny,” Anastasia said as she returned the ball with a vicious kill
shot. “Just had to take out the trash. I’m all ears.”
Anastasia picked up the phone, taking it off speaker and putting it next to her ear.
She walked out of the rec room, leaving Paxton to be taunted by Hahn and Ramirez
who’d witnessed his defeat.
“You down in containment?” Anastasia asked.
“No.” Danny’s voice was short and quaked slightly. “My quarters.”
“Danny, we’ve talked about fraternization policy.” She was gently ribbing him.
Normally it’d get a chuckle.
“I’m not taking the piss here,” Danny shot back. “I need your help.”
“Sure. I’m on my way.”
Anastasia reeled a bit. Danny seemed out of sorts. Not the grouchiness so much
as the humorlessness. When things were at their roughest, Danny usually had a quick-
witted comment or a snarky bit of banter at the ready. Anastasia double timed it to
Fell WInds 97
Danny’s room.
Five minutes later, Danny opened the door. His hair was still moist from the
shower. Anastasia walked in and looked around. Aside from the barely touched and now
congealing shepherd’s pie sitting on his desk, there was no sign of immediate distress
beyond Danny’s body language. His posture and breathing indicated he was highly
disturbed.
“What’s going on, Danny?” she asked.
“I found an audio recording in the shipwreck,” he began. “An old wax cylinder. I
had Lind image it and build me a waveform. It’s the last log of Voidship Agamemnon.
Details some sort of horrific encounter they had.”
“Okay,” Anastasia said. “You take this to Charlot yet?”
“No,” Danny said, wincing a bit with embarrassment. “I didn’t want to bother her
with it if it just turned out to be music or something.”
“But it’s definitely not music,” Anastasia observed.
“More like a horror audiobook,” Danny explained. “Now with visual accompaniment.
I had Lind extrapolate a simulation based on the contents of the file, the artifacts we’ve
scanned so far, and historical records of the Agamemnon. This thing they walked into,
I’ve never seen something so disturbing.”
“Like Nephandic?” Anastasia said, her eyebrow raising to a peak.
“Maybe,” Danny said. “Monstrous for sure.”
“Okay,” Anastasia nodded. “You did the right thing letting me know. For now, we
just have a spooky recording. Are you finished with it?”
Danny shook his head. “I still have a bit to look through.”
“Are you good to continue?” Anastasia asked.
“Aye,” Danny sighed. “I think I can see it through.”
“Good,” Anastasia nodded. “Send me the audio file and a link to the simulation. I’ll
loop Charlot in. You finish the recording and get a report together while it’s still fresh
in your mind.”
Danny nodded as Anastasia started to turn to the door. She then paused, turning
back.
“You sure you’re okay, Danny?” she asked. Nodding to the desk, she said, “You
haven’t even touched your protein paste.”
“It was a shepherd’s pie,” Danny sheepishly replied.
“It’s not anymore,” Anastasia said casting a disapproving look at the meal, before
shaking her head. “If you need me, shout, ok?”
Danny nodded and shut the door behind Anastasia. He tossed the food in his trash
bin as he clenched his eyes to turn the simulation back on.
• • •
The crashing cacophony of splintering wood and my companions’ screams roused
me from the disturbing vision — certainly a mental intrusion brought about by the
damnable environs — as a bizarre creature burst forth from the cabin next to Kinner.
Though Kinner shrieked like a harpy, he retained enough composure to pivot toward the
monstrosity and activate his saber. His swing lacked elegance but struck true, impaling
the monstrous assailant through the abdomen. He discharged the blade, sending sparks
of lightning throughout the creature’s alien flesh.
This thing that attacked my crew was roughly in the shape of a human, with arms,
legs, a torso, and a head. Beyond those cursory similarities, perverse divergence dictated
the creature’s form. A dozen spikes of an indeterminable, though oxidized, metallic
material poked into the flesh of the creature’s torso and shoulders. Only thin strips
of sanguineous flesh — stretched over irregular protrusions of metal and rubber —
remained of the flayed skin covering the monstrosity’s limbs. Large portions of its body
were bereft of flesh, revealing a structure of tubes, wheels, and pulleys in the place
and presumably serving the purpose of musculature and sinew. Unlike the tortured soul
in my vision, the mutilations on this creature didn’t bleed. The lacerations were old
and adorned with a pervasive border of cicatrix at the edges. Mangy patches of stringy
brown hair poked out from the top of its head, behind a pair of bulbous, argent lenses
that dominated its upper face. These bug-eyed goggles appeared fused to the thing’s
head by some foul perversion of chirurgy. The briefest sensation of familiarity scraped
against the edges of my awareness as the creature met my gaze, its face twisted in
writhing agony courtesy of the lightning now dancing along its inhuman form.
Blood, oil, and an uncomfortably human scream spewed from the creature’s broken-
toothed maw. It raised a knee into Kinner’s solar plexus with a wet thump. Kinner yelped
with shock as a sharpened bony protrusion shot forth from the maniac’s appendage,
skewering Kinner’s chest cavity and emerging from his back. The saber sputtered and
the lightning gave out as Kinner coughed his last in a defiant glob of phlegmy blood
which he spat forth onto the creature’s lenses. Kinner’s body then went limp and fell
into the diabolical refuse on the floor. I admit the horrendous sight robbed me of sense
or action. Despite my will, I couldn’t summon the ability to overcome my shock and
respond, for in all my years on the seas I’d never encountered a creature so terrifying.
Fortunately, the captain suffered no such impediment. In a single fluid motion, she
drew her pistol anew and placed the barrel against the brute’s temple. Squeezing the
trigger, she sent bullet, brain, and blood flying. The top half of the monstrosity’s head
disintegrated in a red mist as its corpse fell on top of Kinner.
“We’re leaving,” the captain said. “We’ll get back to the Agamemnon and sink this
vessel.”
We spun on our heels and headed above deck. As I crossed the companionway
threshold, escaping the abominable horrors of that charnel corridor, the sky split in two
with a vengeful bolt of lightning. During the scant moments we had remained below
decks, a storm rolled in. Even without the benefit of Doc’s etheric goggles, it was plain
Fell WInds 99
to see this was no mundane meteorological event. The clouds were a sickly, gangrenous
hue, roiling with specks of foul material barely visible without the benefit of a spyglass.
As the captain stepped onto the deck, rain began falling in sheets. Thick to the touch
and tasting of copper, it was clear that this rain was no more natural than the clouds
from whence it fell. Polk began weeping. He looked down at the autoscribe as the ink-
dispensing arm danced across ticker paper, furiously blackening the narrow strip.
“These readings make no sense, Captain!” he exclaimed as he fought against the
flow of tears, sniffling like a scolded child. “It’s as if my instruments have been seized
by chaos, or we are in some strange realm not adhering to any laws of nature or gods.”
“Everything makes sense, Ensign,” Captain Walker replied as she approached. “If
you approach it from the proper point of view. Is it possible we’ve crossed into the
Void?”
“With these readings,” Polk presented the ink and rain-soaked ticker tape to Captain
Walker for assessment as he spoke, “not unless we’ve shot right past the near regions
and landed in deep Etherspace.”
“Blast it!” the captain cursed as she tossed the ticker tape to the floor. “We aren’t
equipped for that kind of journey.”
She was right. Our hold was well-prepared for a trip to the harsh climes of Antarctica,
but a voyage deep into the Void was beyond our capabilities to endure. Even in the height
of summer, our planned destination was inhospitable to human life. Accounting for the
advances of our Enlightened Arts and the extensive supplies aboard the Agamemnon,
we’d only intended a fortnight’s expedition beyond the Antarctic Circle. If we had truly
traveled beyond the Horizon, we could run into anything. As Polk had pointed out, the
very laws of physics could change at a moment’s notice.
And yet, despite the ghastly environs, physics seemed consistent. The rain fell from
the sky top to bottom. The water, and other less savory fluids, felt wet. The air was bitter
and cold, but breathable. All physical evidence pointed to us remaining on, or at least
near, Earth.
“We can sort out the finer points of our predicament when we’re safely back on
the Agamemnon,” Captain Walker exclaimed as she turned toward the boarding plank.
As we took our first steps toward the safety and familiarity of our vessel, a horrible
creaking noise emerged from the deck below us. Captain Walker rose half a meter into
the air as the wood beneath her feet creaked loudly and bowed upward. Before she —
or any of us — could react, the deck around her shattered, sending shards and splinters
in every direction, and piercing the flesh of my crewmates. I avoided injury by sheer
mathematical accident as the shards miraculously missed me by centimeters. Dutton
and I shielded our eyes from the assault. Doc’s goggles offered his eyes protection — a
good thing as a large shard shattered the right lens and would have assuredly cost him
the organ had he been unprotected. The crew suffered only superficial injuries with the
exception of Ensign Polk who lost his left eye to one of the accursed projectiles. Polk
let out a yelp of agony and fell to his knees as blood, tears, and vitreous humor cascaded
down his cheek. In that instant, as we reeled from the ligneous assault, an animate length

of rusted chain with treble hooks attached to the links emerged from the blackness below
and pulled Captain Walker below decks through the freshly opened gash in the wood.
Oh, that the monster would have taken me in her place! If it had, she’d have shown
the good sense to abandon me to the damned creature in the ship’s bowels and my
crewmen may have escaped. Instead, driven by loyalty to my captain — and truth be
told, fear of the responsibility of leading the men to safety from the nightmare in which
we now found ourselves — I commanded the crew to hold their ground. As Doc rushed
over to treat Polk, the damnable villain responsible for the attack emerged from the hole.
The creature was humanoid, dressed in straps of weathered leather nailed to
shredded flesh in a jagged mockery of a blouse. Long, blond curls emerged from her
scalp, flailing in the wind in wild strips where thick, clotting viscera had failed to restrain
the locks by matting them to her face and shoulders. A patch over her left eye appeared
to be fresh, uncured leather derived from human olecranal flesh. Her teeth were jagged
shards of black metal, and she emanated a wailing chorus as she masticated the air
around her. Her tongue — a blood-slick muscle that extended at least twice the length
of a human’s — lapped at the appalling precipitation as if trying to catch individual
crimson-hued droplets. A fleshy tendril the width of a wine pipe, which boasted an oily,
segmented carapace reminiscent of a wood louse, appeared to extend from her backside.
The tentacle’s origin remained mercifully shrouded by shadows of the deck below. From
the angle at which I stood it was impossible to determine if this appendage merely
supported the creature or was intrinsic to her anatomy.
Yet despite the clearly inhuman features of this thing before me, there was another
flash of familiarity. The cheekbones, the hair, the shape of her intact eye — though not
the color, for in place of iris and pupil she merely had a black void of nothingness —
these details were familiar to me. The monster before me wore the form of my captain!
• • •
20:39 UTC
Danny paused the recording and stared at the waveforms on the screen.
Doppelgangers weren’t unheard of but were damned unusual. Creatures assuming a
twisted mockery of the crew’s forms seemed plausible but didn’t match the M.O. of any
EDE he could think of off the top of his head. He’d check the database when he was
done, but he feared these creatures were beyond the Union’s understanding.
“Where the hell have you been?” he asked aloud. He was alone, but waited as if
expecting an answer, then resumed the recording.
• • •
Stunned as I was by this realization, I am ashamed to admit I failed to react with
sufficient urgency when the creature attacked. Grasped in her all too human hands, she
Fell WInds 101

held perversions of the captain’s weapons. A saber with a hilt of bone and a blade made
from rusted, plankton-coated metal was gripped tightly in her left hand, and in her right,
she held a flintlock pistol seemingly derived from the ossified corpse of some unknown
cephalopod. Keeping her saber in a defensive position, she took aim with the pistol and
discharged. Despite the rain, haze, and chaos, she struck true. The bullet split Doc’s
Etheric goggles at the bridge of his nose and left a farthing-sized hole in his face.
Polk shrieked in terror as the contents of Doc’s skull emptied onto the deck. I’d
already been belayed too long in shock and so forfeited the luxury of mourning. I flung
the dagger from my left hand through the air while Polk’s scream still rung out. The
creature parried the blade but left her torso exposed in the effort. I lunged forward and
drove my remaining dagger into her throat until I felt meat and blood against my ring
finger’s knuckle.
Gravity tugged at my weight, so I leaned into it. I bisected the creature’s humanoid
portion as I slid down her body with only the purchase of my blade to keep me aloft.
When I ran out of monstrous flesh, I fell hard to the deck below, knocking the breath from
my lungs. Looking up, I saw the tentacle holding this alternate version of my captain
had already begun to sway. My limbs refused to answer my panicked call to action, and
I could only look up in mounting dread at the prospect of greeting the mystery beyond
by the remains of this monstrous thing crushing me to death.
The tendril collapsed, but a hand grasped my shoulder and pulled me clear at the
last moment. Though my savior spared me further injury, neither of us received quarter
from the onslaught of gore and humors which upon impact with the deck burst forth
from the shattering corpse with concussive force like a gas-bloated and sun-baked whale
corpse left to rot on a beach. Showered in viscera, I looked up toward my rescuer and
saw the captain’s blood-soaked face staring back at me.
“Can’t have you dying on me, Commander,” she said between sharp breaths and
depleted panting. “I need you to carry me out of here.”
With that she looked down at her leg. My gaze followed hers and I saw a ghastly
compound fracture had relieved both the tibia and fibula of her right leg from their fleshy
purchase, shortly below the knee. Each bone stuck out at least a decimeter, and her foot
sat crooked at an odd angle to the rest of her body.
“Landing could have gone smoother,” she grunted as she reoriented herself to a
more comfortable position on the floor. “But I’m alive. How’s the crew?”
“Doc’s dead,” I said as I fought against the howl of agony in every muscle and joint
and rose to my feet. “That thing shot him in the face.”
The captain nodded. I looked around the room in search of any detritus that might
serve as a makeshift splint or crutch. As I dug through the wrecked environs, I realized
that I’d been in this hold before. Like the deck above and the creature I’d slain, this was
an unsettling hell-twisted replica of our own ship. It stood to reason that if we’d just
faced the captain’s doppelganger, the creature we’d encountered in the hall was surely
another duplicate. I recalled the lenses on its face and realized it must have been Doc’s
corresponding monster.

“Commander?” Polk shouted between sobbing gasps. “Captain?”
“He’s gonna get us all killed,” I whispered as I scaled a stack of crates. I was able to
see a bit of the deck, but Polk eluded my view. I scrambled down the crates with all the
alacrity my purchase permitted and scurried to the captain’s side.
“Polk is shouting like a damn fool up there,” I explained as I removed my jacket. I
tossed the garment aside and ripped the sleeves off my shirt.
The captain winced as I shoved her bones back into place. She’d likely muted her
sense of pain through meditation techniques we’d learned on an Eastern journey some
time ago. It’s a handy trick. I tied two shafts of splintered wood to her shin to help
stabilize the limb. It was a less than ideal choice, but I wanted to get up topside and shut
Polk up before his shouting called to every monstrosity on this bedamned vessel.
I should have known better…
I hanged my jacket loosely over my shoulders and helped the captain to her feet.
The splint restored her mobility so she could walk with assistance. Using my left arm to
steady the captain’s stance, I held my dagger at the ready in my right. I placed myself
between the captain and whatever lay in the darkened recesses of this nightmare vessel’s
bowels. Captain Walker drew her pistol and held it at the ready in her offhand.
The hall between ourselves and the stairs stood saturated with the same repugnant
swill we’d encountered when we first journeyed below decks. Exposure and adrenaline
did little to calm the nausea that rose in my gullet and danced at the back of my throat
at the meaty sloshing noises our footfalls projected. If any of these otherworldly
doppelgangers — apparently twisted reflections of our own crew — remained below
decks, they would undoubtedly hear our movements. Torn between vigilance and haste,
I selected the former as we slowly advanced through the charnel-strewn hallway.
Despite the sloshing at our ankles and the creaking of the boat, I could hear the
muffled sound of Polk’s voice crying out from above. He was ignoring a primary safety
protocol about contact with unknown hostile entities. By shouting like a fool, he was
advertising not only his position, but his solitude. It wasn’t a question of if this would
get him killed, so much as when. I could only hope that our careful movement was swift
enough to avert such a fate.
As we reached the midway point between the hold and stairs, I became aware of a
metallic and irregular ticking noise in the distance. I grew curious. If this was a mockery
of our own vessel from some far-flung Otherworld, would it bear the same compliment
of equipment and supplies? We had a difference engine aboard to aid in navigation and
calculation. Was I hearing some strange parody of our own ship’s systems, working out
the mechanics of slaughter and bedlam in their steerage? How closely did these macabre
invaders hew to the metaphor of reflection? The divergences were clear and grotesque.
But beneath that gory veneer, there were perceivable similarities. How deep did they run?
I shook myself free of contemplating such speculation, for it was a luxury that
could remain belayed until all remaining hands were back safely on the Agamemnon.
We rounded the corner connecting the bow hallway to the stairs and the sternward hall
where Kinner had met his end mere moments prior. Casting a glance down the hall I
Fell WInds 103

could see his knee emerge from the muck, trapped where he fell beneath Doc’s unearthly
counterpart. I shamed myself as I suppressed the instinct to recover his body for a proper
burial and pulled myself and the captain up the stairs.
Polk’s voice grew louder and clearer as we ascended. Eager to occupy my mind
with something beyond the horrors below decks, my thoughts went to the chastising
I’d give Polk for endangering us with his shouts. The respite shattered as quickly as it
began, as shots rang out from the captain’s pistol. I looked back at the captain and saw a
dark bulbous shape fall at the bottom of the stairs behind her.
“Dutton,” she said.
“Ours?” I asked.
She shook her head. I turned my attention back to the top of the stairs. As I did so,
Polk floated into view in the companionway. His limbs hung limply, devoid of life. His
head had fallen lifelessly to the left and his eyes were frozen open in a ghastly stare. As
his jaw moved in a jerky, clumsy motion, I noticed the wire-sheathed limb penetrating
his torso between the shoulder blades. Despite his body’s repurposing as a macabre
marionette, his voice sounded normal as he cried out.
“Captain?” the corpse shouted. “Commander? I’m scared!”
“That’s not Polk,” I said, robbed of insight beyond the obvious by sheer fright.
“Then kill it,” the captain said, reloading her pistol. “That’s an order.”
“Aye, Captain,” I replied, tossing my dagger at the accursed appendage that
commanded Polk’s flesh.
My blade broke the creature’s grip on Polk, and his corpse dropped to the deck. An
inhuman whistling, like that of a steam pipe, rose in tandem with an all-too-human wail
of agony. The grim puppeteer spun into view. Beneath the haphazardly placed wires,
metallic plates, and blood-soaked, weeping wounds, the creature before me was clearly
Dutton. He screamed again. This time, the sound tore through my jacket and into my
flesh like a thousand angry wasps. Though I averted my gaze to protect my eyes, I felt
my right eardrum burst, and hearing in that ear faded to pain.
The captain leveled the barrel of her freshly reloaded sidearm at Dutton’s gaping
maw. Shots rang out, muting the hearing in my left ear to a distant warbling. I felt the
ship keel and let out a panicked cry as I fell to the stairs. Looking up, I saw the captain
lean on the wall as my vision swam in a wide arc. It wasn’t the ship that had keeled at
all. I’d merely lost all equilibrium thanks to my ruptured eardrums.
The captain smiled and offered some remark that escaped me due to my injury but
clearly amused her. I swallowed hard and adjusted my attention inward. I’d learned
enough Life procedures in my studies to isolate the injured areas of my body through
breathing exercises. While it wasn’t sufficient for any real healing — that would need to
wait until we were back on the Agamemnon — it allowed me to ignore the most severe
effects of my wounds. Hearing returned to my left ear, though my right was too damaged
for my paltry command of Life to correct. With middling confidence, and the support of
the handrail and wall, I slowly rose to my feet.

“You going to make it, sailor?” the captain asked as I swayed against the wall.
I chuckled and spat out a mouthful of blood that had drained down my ear canal into
the back of my throat. “I’m ship shape and Bristol fashion, Captain,” I replied.
We righted ourselves and completed our ascent to the deck. Dutton was lying on the
rain-slick wood, shedding blood and brain matter from the fist-sized hole in the back of
his head. This was our Dutton; I had no doubt. I realized that Polk, Kinner, and Doc had
gotten off easy by comparison. Dying was horrible, but Dutton’s fate appeared far worse.
His body lay littered with hastily installed implants of unearthly origin. While I lack the
training or acumen of even a novice Mechanician, I could fathom no possible benefit
of these foreign installations and assumed they served some ghastly purpose beyond
driving Dutton to murder. Perhaps they acted as some sort of mind-control apparatus
that allowed the doppelgangers to seize those they encountered and bring those victims
into subjugation under their own terrible designs. As I pondered possible origins for our
newfound foes, Captain Walker nudged me with her elbow.
“Move now,” she ordered. “Mourn later.”
I took up as much of the captain’s weight as my wounds and faltering stability
allowed. She covered our exit as we made our way toward the boarding plank. It was a
short journey — less than a half dozen meters — but felt as though it took an eternity. The
ship was eerily silent, but I kept my gaze fixed firmly on the boarding plank, entrusting
the captain to identify and eliminate any encroaching threat. None manifested.
As we reached the boarding plank, I saw Warrant Officer Caldwell standing watch
on our deck. My desire for escape overwhelmed my capabilities for manner or protocol.
I hopped up onto the plank first, then turned back to aid Captain Walker. As I spun,
a humanoid silhouette overcame the captain from behind. The shape drove a dagger
through the captain’s back. Blood spat forth as the dagger’s tip punched through the
flesh of her chest, spraying her vital humor into my face. I heard the captain call out one
final order.
“Sink these bastards!” she shouted.
I cleared the blood from my eyes just in time to see Captain Walker press the barrel
of her pistol to her left temple. She turned away from me, pressing the right side of
her face against her assailant. Though a scream of rebuke rose in my throat, it failed to
arrive upon my lips before she squeezed the trigger. Her body slumped to the deck as the
creature that stabbed her reeled back, squealing in agony. She’d managed to wound the
monster and deny them a prisoner with a single shot.
The creature recovered from its injury faster than I did from my shock. It lunged
toward me, dagger in hand. I recognized the blade as it closed in on my stomach. It was
mine. I felt a tug on my back at the moment the dagger bit into my flesh. I careened
backwards on the might of Caldwell’s muscles. For all his strength, he lacked the speed
to prevent the wound. Though his intervention staved off the reaper, blood flowed freely
from my now open gut.
The creature hissed at me with an all-too-familiar voice as it climbed up onto the
docking plank. Now bereft of the benefit of stealth, the aberration’s features became
Fell WInds 105

plain to me. Like the others, this doppelganger clothed itself in strips of black chitinous
leather, which appeared to be affixed to its flesh by rivets of oxidized metal. Bands of
thorny wire bit into the fingers of its left hand, in the same spots where I wore my rings.
Its lips split vertically at the center, the loose flesh nailed back to the cheeks and jaw to
create an inhuman maw of jagged fangs, but the eyes held a shape undeniably similar to
my own despite their blackened sclera.
I knew that if this creature made its way onto the Agamemnon, our ship would be
as good as lost. I waited until I could feel my crewmate step down behind me. Trusting
in Caldwell’s strength, I kicked at the side of the boarding plank, dumping it — and my
doppelganger — into the icy waters below. Agony wracked my body as gravity insisted
on pulling my legs with greater force than the wound in my gut wanted to tolerate, and
I felt the edges of the gaping hole in my midsection tear. Caldwell swung me over the
railing and safely onto the deck of the Agamemnon.
“You all right, Commander?” Caldwell asked.
“You heard the captain,” I panted in pained breaths. “Sink the bastards. Commence
firing! Commence firing!”
Though outfitted for exploration rather than warfare, the Agamemnon’s broadside
was more than up to the task. Shots rang out for the next several minutes as Caldwell
ran to fetch a nurse from our medical bay. Despite my losses in both blood and brethren,
I laughed loudly at the sight of the damnable duplicate of our vessel as our cannons
riddled it with explosive shells.
Looking to my left, I saw Caldwell returning with Nurse Casey. Caldwell carried
a stretcher while Casey held a bulging medical bag. I briefly entertained the possibility
that I might survive this wretched ordeal, but my hopes were short-lived. As the pair
approached, roughly ten meters from me, a hand sprung up over the railing. By the
time I drew breath to shout a warning, my doppelganger had leapt over the rail and
slashed Nurse Casey’s throat. As she fell to her knees, Caldwell lunged forward, using
the stretcher as a bludgeon. He swung wildly, a telegraphed blow that my twisted
counterpart deftly abused. My doppelganger crouched beneath the stretcher and drove
his dagger into Caldwell’s groin with a single, fluid motion.
“Hostile on deck!” I shouted with the breath I’d called for my belated warning.
“Help!”
My duplicate looked down at me with a cold, inhuman gaze. His head titled slowly
to the side as he evaluated my wounds. I felt like a trapped animal at the mercy of a cruel
hunter. Rage boiled in my bowels as he stared at me but rapidly cooled to a chill terror as
the gore-encrusted corners of his lips curled upward into a sadistic rictus. I thought for
certain he would rush me — end me — but no; I would enjoy no such fortune.
My doppelganger turned slowly toward Nurse Casey, who still lay convulsing on the deck,
her lifeblood oozing from her throat. At first, I thought he meant to torment me by mutilating
the corpses of my crewmates, but his designs were far more disturbing. He reached down into
the wound on her throat, probing the slash with his fingertips. I cried out in protest, but my
admonitions and threats were insufficient to distract him from his grisly work.

As his fingers dug deep into her open throat, a compartment opened on his shoulder.
A metallic scarab-like device emerged from the recess. Blood and oil dripped from the
abomination’s insectile form as it climbed down my doppelganger’s arm and into Nurse
Casey’s throat. Her feet began to violently convulse as inhuman chittering emerged
from the cavity where her shredded voice box once rested. For all the world, I swear it
sounded like laughter.
Apparently satisfied with his macabre surgery, my duplicate turned his attentions
to Caldwell. Another scarab emerged from his shoulder as he reached down to the
barrelman’s face. While Nurse Casey’s injuries rendered her fully insensate, Caldwell
enjoyed no such luxury. He begged and pleaded for mercy as the doppelganger grabbed
his cheeks and forced his mouth agape. Meanwhile Nurse Casey slowly sat up. Her
eyes glazed over with the same vacant stare as the other duplicates. She’d become one
of them.
With my gut open, I knew I couldn’t crawl on my stomach, so I began backing away
on my elbows as Casey moved to her feet. Her motion was jerky, like a marionette tugged
at by invisible strings in the hands of a tantrum-stricken puppeteer. She also moved
slowly, which was a small mercy in a sea of distress and afforded me the opportunity
to back into the nearby companionway. I flung myself down the stairs, relying on my
knowledge of geometry, the ship’s construction, and what little comfort lady luck might
have to offer to reach the bottom of the stairs without meeting the reaper.
I had to reach the captain’s cabin. From there, I could address the ship through the
public address tubes. I resigned myself to the certainty of a watery grave and pulled
myself to my feet. As I rose, I felt what I could only assume was an intestine slip loose
from its moorings and emerge from the chasm in my torso. A visit from the reaper was
imminent. It was now a matter of timing. I stumbled the dozen paces to the captain’s
quarters and fell against the door, shaking loose another hunk of viscous matter in my
gut. I contained the greater portion of my errant entrails in my right hand and turned the
knob with my left. The door was locked.
Fortunately, my command of Science was sufficient to jostle the tumblers through
precise application of rhythmic force. The lock released and I fell into the room. I kicked
the door shut and pulled myself to the amplification funnel on the Captain’s desk. I could
hear footsteps on the stairs outside as I reached the funnel and activated the device.
“Crew of the Agamemnon!” I cried into the funnel. My voice emanated from
a matching funnel in every room of the ship, and three more above decks. “This is
Commander Osterburg, assuming command. Captain Walker is dead and we’ve been
boarded by hostile otherworldly beings. The Agamemnon is lost. Scuttle the ship! I
repeat, scuttle the ship! Open all bulkheads, detonate arms! It’s been an honor to serve
with you all.”
I fell to the floor, waiting for the inevitable. I wondered if it would be Casey come
to finish me off or Caldwell? Would my doppelganger take it upon himself to end me,
or leave me to become the plaything of one of his new converts? Had I a weapon, I’d
have denied them the pleasure, but I was woefully unarmed. It was likely the captain had
some sort of weapon stashed in the room, but I hadn’t the foggiest idea of where to look.
Fell WInds 107
After a few seconds of considering my mortality as an alternative to succumbing to
helpless woe, I realized no one was coming in. I could faintly hear shouts erupting from
deeper within the vessel. The crew was making their last stand.
While cursory examination of the captain’s quarters revealed neither weapon nor
means of patching my mortal wound, I did spy the phonograph Captain Walker used to
record her logs. I placed a fresh wax cylinder on the spindle and resolved to record the
truth of what has happened here.
The sounds outside the cabin have died down. I believe it’s safe to assume that
means that the crew has fallen. I feel the ship sinking — their sacrifice was not in vain.
I can only hope that these otherworldly doppelgangers are as susceptible to drowning as
their earthly counterparts. If you discover this cylinder amongst the flotsam left by our
passing, heed my warning.
There is something out there in the dark spaces beyond the illumination of reason
that wears our faces. Some perversion of ourselves. It defies reason and logic and seems
to thrive on pain and suffering. It is a threat to everything the Order of Reason stands for
and to humanity as a whole. On this day it slew the crew of the Agamemnon, and I fear
this is only the beginning. I beg you; do not await its arrival. Find it where it breeds and
lay that realm to waste. Give no quarter. Spare no expense. End this threat.
Lest you share my fate.
• • •
20:49 UTC
Danny ripped the lenses from his eyes and vomited the shepherd’s pie.
“No. Absolutely not. Calm down.” He panted the words aloud to himself. “Those...
those contacts.” He washed his mouth out with water, spat the irrigated mixture into the
trash can, and turned to his phone. Processing what he’d just seen through Enlightened
eyes, he scrolled through the wordy transcript using his blurry own.
It matched. Impossible. But the audio pulled from the cylinder described the same
events Danny just witnessed, in the patient detail of an early Technocrat who knew a
discovery needed recording. Danny caught his breath.
“Hey, Lind,” Danny said into his ES-Phone
“Aye, Danny,” the virtual assistant replied.
“Search Union databases for all instances of EDEs or MURDs assuming the
appearance of Union personnel, exclude results involving known Tradition assets, and
exclude results involving attempts to infiltrate the Union.”
A list of search results appeared on the screen. The first entry was Therianthrope
Entities. Werewolves, werecats, werebadgers. While they were shapeshifters, none of
what Danny saw indicated they had any connection to animals. Next on the list was
Hemophagic Entities. Vampires would make a lot of sense if the whole of the continent
and its surrounding waters weren’t bathed in sunlight at the time of the attack. The third
listing, TBEs — tinkerbell entities if you had a sense of humor — seemed plausible.
However, doing a quick scan of Union records, it seemed that any TBEs capable of
displaying the level of power Danny witnessed would have been extinct for centuries by
the time of the recording.
Fourth on the list was the Nephandi, those twisted and fallen Reality Deviants who
served oblivion, destruction, and chaos. The creatures Commander Osterburg described
certainly fit the bill. Nephandi were known to employ tricks like shapeshifting,
necromancy, and perversions of Enlightened Science. But for the Nephandi to mimic
the appearance of the entire crew from the beginning of their encounter was unusual.
Particularly as there was no attempt to trick the sailors until well into their encounter —
and that came from one of their own who’d suffered conversion into a drone of some
sort. Everything Danny knew about the Nephandi implied that they might try to replace
crew members with doppelgangers, perhaps picking them off one by one until they
could overtake the survivors. These beings Osterburg described seemed disinterested in
deception until half the boarding party was already dead.
Danny’s guts leapt to his throat as he read the fifth entry.
“Threat Null.”
Danny leapt out of his chair and dashed out of the room.
“Hey, Lind,” Danny panted as he ran at a full sprint down the east hallway. “Call
Charlot. Emergency.”
“Dr. Berg,” Charlot said, answering on the first ring.
“We have a potential HSKIN in containment!” Danny shouted between heavy
breaths. “En route to eliminate. Send backup!”
HSKIN was Technocratic jargon, an acronym meaning Holy Shit Kill It Now! It
was a designation applied to the greatest threats the Union faced. Nephandic mages
twisting reality to serve unspeakable alien beings, shapeshifting monsters that could
tear an operative to ribbons before they realized they were even in danger, and hostile
invading alien beings were among the threats designated HSKIN. Threat Null was
another such threat. Every encounter the Union recorded with Threat Null indicated
they were humanoids of extradimensional origin with near immunity to Enlightened
Science. They used their own twisted apparatus to generate procedures similar in effect,
if not process, to Technocratic protocols. Intelligence also indicated some Threat Null
Deviants may possess the ability to take over Union operatives’ minds and mimic their
appearances.
The all-hands alarm sounded, reverberating throughout Ultima Thule. In every
corner of the base, operatives secured their experiments, abandoned their dinners, or
discarded their evening’s recreation. Danny skidded into the locker room and grabbed
a clean containment suit. He didn’t bother with the second skin as he didn’t plan to stay
in containment for a single second longer than necessary. He tossed the suit on over his
clothes and was inside the airlock before the first backup arrived on the scene.
Danny emerged in the containment area to discover nothing had changed. Everything
was still and quiet, exactly as he’d left it earlier.
Fell WInds 109
“Danny,” Lind’s voice emerged from the tablet as the screen lit up. “You aren’t due
back until 08:00. Did you forget something?”
“We have a potential HSKIN in containment,” Danny replied as he walked toward
the cold storage chamber. “Initiate the NIMBY and prepare to flood the chamber.”
“I must remind you,” Lind said, “that the NIMBY will translocate any creature
native to this dimension —”
“To a random point within 10 kilometers or so.” Danny interrupted. “I’m aware of
the risks. Proceed.”
The lights in containment dimmed for a moment as the whirring sound of the
NIMBY powering up filled the chamber. The NIMBY installed in the containment
chambers was a modification on the field unit design. At Danny’s suggestion, Lilian and
Peter, the two biggest technical minds at Ultima Thule, worked together to incorporate
the NIMBY’s dimensional resonance attunement protocols into the lighting as well as
the air filtration system. While it was a significant power drain, it created a field that
would affect all creatures in the chamber. This not only allowed the system to remove
multiple EDEs if necessary — translocating any creature not native to Earth into an
algorithmically selected dimension — it also eliminated the need for targeting.
Danny opened the cold storage chamber. The room was empty, as were three of the
four examination slabs in the center section. A body occupied the fourth slab. The corpse
was remarkably intact for being over a century and a half dead. Thick black leather
strips covered the saponified form, affixed to the remaining flesh with rusty rivets. Thick
corpse wax obscured the sublime details of the creature’s features, but the lips were
clearly parted and pinned to the skull with metal fasteners. Danny’s eyes darted down
to the left hand and saw bands of barbed wire poking out from beneath a soapy layer of
adipocere where the individual fingers had melded together at the base.
“Danny!” Charlot’s voice came over the intercom in a sudden burst, nearly startling
Danny out of his skin. He jumped and shouted at the sound.
“Mary and Joseph,” he shouted in response. “You scared the shite out of me.”
“Backup is assembled at the airlock,” Charlot continued, declining to acknowledge
the tone of Danny’s response. “Can you elaborate on your findings? Do we need to
breach?”
“Hold on!” Danny gasped, trying to compose himself. “I think it’s still dead.
Anastasia briefed you on the recording, right?”
“She did,” Charlot replied. “I was listening to it when the alarms sounded.”
“The ship was taken down by EDEs of an unknown origin, but I think…I think this
may be contact with Threat Null.”
“Threat Null?” Charlot replied. “That would predate first confirmed contact by over
a hundred and fifty years.”
“I know,” Danny said. “But based on the description Commander Osterburg gave in
his recording, I’m pretty sure I’m looking at one of their corpses.”

“This is unprecedented,” Charlot said with the vibration of barely contained
excitement in her voice. “No member of Threat Null has ever been taken alive or dead.
Think of the data we could collect from that corpse!”
“Hadn’t considered it,” Danny shot back. “Been too busy clenching my cheeks so I
don’t shite myself to death from raw terror.”
“I understand your concerns,” Charlot spoke in calm soothing tones. “The body
has been dead or at the very least immobile for a long time. We found no indication of
extradimensional life at the retrieval site. We also have armed security on standby and
you’ve activated anti-EDE protocols. You are safe; you’re trained; and you have the
might of the station here at your back. We could learn so much with an autopsy.”
Danny knew enough about psychodynamics to know that Charlot was likely using
vocal techniques to soothe his emotions and reduce his anxiety. All things considered,
he was grateful.
“Aye,” Danny nodded and blinked a few times to collect himself. “You’re right. But
if I have to hit the NIMBY, I’m gonna expect you to personally toss on a parka, hop in
the snow skimmer, and swiftly retrieve my arse from whatever random chunk of tundra
I land on.”
Charlot chuckled. “Do you need me to send in any backup?”
“Nah,” Danny said as he loaded a wheeled instrument stand with forceps, scalpels,
scissors, and a bone saw. “No sense in risking two of us being taken over by hostile
EDEs that we know next to nothing about.”
“I’m glad to see you’re maintaining a positive outlook,” Charlot said.
Danny chuckled and pushed the instrument cart next to the corpse. Charlot was
right — this thing had been dead for over a century, and it showed. He also benefitted
from the protection of his containment suit, and while he hadn’t had time to put on
his usual undergarment, the environmental protections and structural reinforcements of
the outer suit were sufficient to operate in deep space. Logically, he knew there was a
statistically insignificant chance of any danger from performing an autopsy on the body.
Despite that knowledge, Danny couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. He
ignored the sensation and grabbed a scalpel from the instrument stand.
“Hey, Lind?” Danny said, holding the tip of the scalpel millimeters above the
saponified chest of the corpse. “Beginning autopsy of suspected Deviant Extradimensional
Entity. Find UT-187-92, humanoid biofact.”
“21:12 21 December 2022,” Lind replied. “Autopsy begins.”
Danny pressed the scalpel into the waxy flesh of the corpse’s chest, slicing between
strips of blackened leather to expose the sternum. The adipocere gave way to the fine
blade, but the force of contact was sufficient to form spiderweb cracks for several
centimeters on each side of the incision. Seeing this was all it took to rouse Danny’s
analytical mind and scientific curiosity. His terror quenched, he proceeded with the
autopsy.
Fell WInds 111

Over the next thirty-six minutes, Danny worked on the body. He followed standard
protocols for cutting the U-incision, removing the frontal rib cage, and extracting the
internal organs. Thanks to analytical equipment years beyond the technology available
to the masses, he’d managed to collect remarkable amounts of data from the organs as
they were removed. Biologically, the body was definitely human, though also definitely
of extraterrestrial origin. Despite the brutal and primitive appearance of the various
implanted devices in the body, they seemed to be at least technologically on par with
similar materials being used by the Order of Reason of their time, though it lacked
the punch card analytical engines used in Hit Mark III units. Aside from the creature’s
dimensional vibration markers and genetic anomalies, Danny might have believed he
was working on a Luminary experiment.
At precisely 22:48, while removing the last remaining kidney from the body, Danny
felt the cadaver jerk. He leapt backward as the creature shook with violent tremors.
“It’s fucking moving!” Danny shouted. “I’ve pulled all its organs out and it’s
fucking moving!”
The doppelganger sat up sharply. Tittering as it looked around the room, the creature
settled its eyeless gaze on Danny.
“Breach?” Charlot asked into the intercom.
“No time!” Danny shouted.
The creature was already on its feet. Sharp, rusted spikes emerged from its fingertips
as the corpse wax that bound them by the base cracked and crumbled. Danny backed
into the wall as the creature lunged toward him.
“Activate NIMBY!” Danny shouted as metal claws punctured the faceplate on his
helmet. He could see the protrusions extending. They were clawing their way toward his
eyes. “Activate the fucking NIMBY —”
A flash of blue-green energy filled the chamber. It disappeared, instantly revealing
that cold storage was now unoccupied.
“Shit!” Charlot shouted. “Do a sensor sweep. We need to find him!”
Charlot opened the monitor hub program on her laptop, which gave her an aggregate
view of every diagnostic readout throughout Ultima Thule. She wasn’t sure how useful
the sensor array would be looking for a humanoid at ground level, but she had to start
somewhere. As she looked to that section of the screen, she was greeted with flashing
red. The dimensional integrity spectrograph was showing critical readings. Zooming
in on the instrument, Charlot could see that the dimensional barrier 500 meters above
Ultima Thule was suffering total integrity failure.
“Invasion,” she said aloud, processing the weight of the revelation. Her fingers
dashed to the keyboard and activated the site-wide public address system.
“Attention all personnel,” Charlot announced. “We have a critical dimensional
breach 500 meters directly overhead. All hands to battle stations.”
As she sounded the alarm, Charlot also brought up exterior site cameras to see
exactly what was coming through the dimensional breach. Her heart sank as the image

from each camera filled end-to-end with a dull black metallic object. Whatever was
poking through into the Front Lines was massive. She assumed it was likely a Threat
Null vessel, given the nature of their find and the timing of the breach. As there were only
eighteen personnel stationed at Ultima Thule — one of whom was stranded somewhere
in the Antarctic — they were likely about to be overrun by hostile EDEs. She activated
the camera on her laptop and recorded a brief video.
“This is Dr. Charlot Berg, Progenitors, Station Overseer at Ultima Thule. We
have hostile contact with HSKIN EDEs we believe to be Threat Null. Requesting all
available containment and elimination assets be deployed to Ultima Thule for immediate
intervention. We’ll hold them as long as we can.”
Charlot sent the message to the four nearest Symposiums. While each was several
hours away, she hoped that translocation procedures would be approved to bring in
backup. It was the only hope she and the rest of the folks stationed at Ultima Thule had
for survival.
• • •
22:49 UTC
Anastasia was with the security team outside the containment airlock when Dr.
Berg called all hands to battle stations. Hearing that the dimensional breach was above
the station, she dashed for the doors to make a first-hand assessment of the threat. As she
flung the door open, she expected to be greeted by bright sunlight but instead found the
exterior of the base in shade as if someone had opened a massive umbrella above. She
looked up in awe and saw that the sun was instead blocked by what she could only guess
was the nose of an alien voidship.
Throughout her time in the Void Engineers, Anastasia had faced down dozens of
threats from beyond the dimensional barrier. Fighting off extradimensional invasion
was just part of the job. She’d never encountered anything of this scale this close to the
Front Lines. She felt tiny, and hopeless, not unlike she’d felt during her first spacewalk.
She also felt her pulse increase, her breathing speed up, and perspiration form on her
skin. Recognizing the signs of her fright, she pulled out her ES-Phone and opened
the NOT app. A quick adjustment to the app settings enabled a script she’d written to
affect a target’s sympathetic nervous system. Rather than erase memories, as the NOT
usually would, this modification allowed the user to turn off a target’s fear response on a
neurological level while simultaneously flooding their system with adrenaline. Although
she’d developed the subroutine to help others increase their responsiveness and chance
of survival in high-threat situations, she thought now would be a great opportunity to
field test it on herself. She hoped she’d be able to survive long enough to report her
findings as she looked into the ES-Phone’s flash and activated the app.
With a flash of light, her fears were gone. She put the ES-Phone back in her pocket
and retrieved her plasma cannon from its resting place at her back. Removing the safety
on the plasma cannon, she stepped out onto the field beneath the vessel.
Fell WInds 113

Anastasia’s heads-up display provided preliminary analytics data. The vessel’s hull
was comprised of a mysterious ceramic. Eighteen percent of the compounds within
the ceramic were of alien and unknown origin. Furthermore, a defensive energy field
surrounded the ship, which utilized an algorithmically generated frequency variation.
Translocating through the field would be virtually impossible and any attempt would
likely result in death.
Anastasia ran for the snow cat, diving behind the vehicle for cover. Leaning against
the track treads opposite the invaders’ vessel, she hoped the reinforced armor on the
vehicle would prove a sufficient shield against any terrestrial weapons the alien craft
might deploy. Raising up just enough to take aim, she discharged her plasma cannon at
the ship. She didn’t drop back down beneath the cover, instead observing the point of
impact. As she suspected, there was no appreciable effect on the force fields. The aliens
could have easily ignored the blast. They chose not to.
The ship returned fire, just as Anastasia had hoped they would. Sickly green plasma
shot from a port on the bottom of the hull, reducing the snow cat to a pile of slagged
metal. While Anastasia’s outer environmental suit protected her from injury, it was
melted beyond utility. She dashed behind the mess pod and removed what was left of
the environmental suit. She had a half-baked, reckless, and downright ill-advised plan
to take the fight to the aliens, but given how badly her forces were outgunned, it was the
best she could come up with.
She was betting that the aliens needed to turn off their force field in order to fire
their weapons. Her gamble paid off. There was a hiccup in the shields, about seven-
hundredths of a second on either side of the blast firing. If she could execute precise
timing, she would be able to translocate onto the alien vessel. She just had to get them
to fire their weapons again.
As she calculated possibilities and calibrated her equipment for spatial relocation,
the garage doors opened. The rest of the Border Defense officers emerged from the
garage. Two of the officers, Ramirez and Hahn, piloted combat exoskeletons. The
remaining three, Lang, Paxton, and Pearce, wore standard environmental suits and
carried plasma cannons.
“I’ve got a plan,” Anastasia said over comms as she broadcast her tactical data to
the new arrivals. “I need you to scatter and concentrate fire on the alien ship where I’ve
painted it. Then take cover.”
“Aye, sir!” five voices called out in response.
Anastasia hugged the exterior wall of the quarantine bunker and inched closer to the
corner. Peeking around the edge she saw the others spread out throughout the grounds,
each firing on the area of the ship Anastasia had digitally marked. As their cannons
harmlessly struck the alien force field, Anastasia was able to collect data on the shield’s
frequency variations and energy output. She was able to trace the Primal Energy flow
back to the force field generator. She was also able to calculate the response time and
frequency range of the enemy cannons. She programmed her translocation protocol to
account for these variables.

Of the five colleagues on the battlefield, four managed to evade return fire from the
ship. The fifth, Officer Ramirez, took a grazing hit that liquefied the lower half of their
combat exoskeleton. They were alive, and Anastasia dared to hope, free of severe injury.
It was up to her to ensure that the sacrifice, such as it was, was not made in vain.
Anastasia stepped out into the open and fired her cannon at the exact spot the others
had targeted. Again, it had no appreciable effects on the shields. Rather than ducking the
return fire, she remained firmly planted in place. As she’d hoped they would, the alien
vessel returned fire. The instant the alien weapons discharged the shield dropped. This
triggered the preprogrammed subroutine Anastasia had programmed and shifted her to
the force field generator before the plasma beam could reach her.
The generator’s exterior port was on the underside of the hull. Anastasia appeared
upside down relative to the Earth and activated her magnetized boots to gain purchase
on the vessel’s outer paneling. Once firmly in place, she fired her plasma cannon into the
generator port at point blank range.
Sparks sputtered and spit as Anastasia deactivated the magnetic boots. The force of
the blast threw her backward, hard. She was able to discharge her cannon twice more
before hitting the exterior wall of the quarantine pod. While her second skin shielded
her from the worst of the impact, she felt something break in her upper back, and her left
hip painfully dislocated. As she fell to the ground, she could see the massive hole in the
underside of the alien hull.
The remaining combat exoskeleton flew through the air toward the hull breach.
All three operatives who lacked combat exoskeletons hung onto the larger battlesuit,
hitching a ride into the belly of the pan-dimensional beast. Anastasia rolled onto her
back and pulled the trauma pen from her belt. She pushed the button to arm the device,
and a twelve-gauge needle extended five centimeters from the tip of the pen. Taking
a deep breath, she shoved the needle into her chest, puncturing her heart. She pressed
the button to fire, filling her circulatory system with a burst of Progenitor-designed
drugs and nanites, which rapidly went to work repairing the damaged tissues in her
back and hip. She noted the marked distinction between blocking one’s fear response
and blocking pain receptors as she remained acutely aware of every millimeter of flesh,
bone, and sinew where the nanites worked. Her back felt like it was being stitched back
together with white-hot needles. Her leg tugged, twisted, and snapped as her hip slipped
back into its socket. The whole process took about ten seconds during which Anastasia
was insensate to her surroundings thanks to sheer physical agony.
Once everything was back where it belonged, Anastasia scrambled to her feet and
looked up at the vessel. She could see the telltale flashes of energy weapons discharge
through the hole in the hull. She looked to the plasma cannon that had landed on the
ground, about two meters away. The barrel was warped and glowed red with heat. She
needed a weapon.
Looking around the crater-riddled grounds, she saw the half-melted combat
exoskeleton. Ramirez had gotten themselves free from the suit but had clearly been
severely injured. They pulled themselves across the snowy ground — dragging their
Fell WInds 115

limp, lifeless legs behind them — toward the garage door. Anastasia dashed over to
Ramirez and lifted them in a fireman’s carry.
“Why didn’t you use your trauma pen?” Anastasia asked as she set Ramirez safely
inside the garage.
“I tried,” Ramirez replied. “It was a dud. Gave me a probability failure error.”
Anastasia scowled. Probability failure was a polite way of saying Paradox.
Normally that wasn’t much of a concern out in the isolation of Antarctica. While the
dominant paradigm of the Front Lines was only so malleable no matter where one
traveled, Consensus was fairly forgiving at Ultima Thule where Enlightened Science
was concerned. However, a starship-sized dimensional anomaly was bound to stretch
Consensus beyond the snapping point, so it made sense that equipment would start to
fail. She grabbed a new plasma cannon from the weapons rack in the garage and hoped
that Paradox would be as unkind to the aliens as it was to her allies.
“Dr. Berg?” Anastasia said into her communicator.
“I’m here,” Dr. Berg replied. “Sitrep?”
“Ramirez is down,” Anastasia said as she placed several grenades on her belt. “The
rest of the security team has boarded the alien vessel through a puncture I was able to
make in the hull. I’m going back in.”
“Do what you can,” Dr. Berg said. “Backup is en route.”
“ETA?” Anastasia asked.
“Imminent,” Dr. Berg said.
That didn’t fill Anastasia with a great deal of confidence. Imminent meant that backup
agents were likely arriving through Procedure-based travel. With the exponentially
increasing number of variables on the battlefield and the increase in reality adjustment
resistance — another polite term for Paradox — the backup could arrive any second.
They could just as easily take minutes to arrive, which Ultima Thule did not have.
“Roger that,” Anastasia said, picking up a second plasma cannon, which she
strapped to her back. “Over and out.” Anastasia ran back onto the field. As soon as she
could see the hole in the hull, she activated her translocation protocol and teleported
inside the vessel.
Plasma beams flew past Anastasia as she materialized, mid-step, in the hallway of
the alien ship. The rest of the squad was pinned down, taking cover behind scraps of hull
and random detritus left in the wake of the field generator blast. Her HUD went to static
and died — another damned probability failure — but the illumination regulators in her
contact lenses worked, so at least she wasn’t blinded. Bereft of her VDAS access via the
contact lenses, she needed to rethink her strategy. She dropped to the floor and slid up
behind Paxton, who was posted up behind a crate.
“Fashionably late?” Paxton asked as Anastasia slid to a halt against the wall next
to him.
“Outfit wasn’t working for me,” Anastasia shot back with a smirk. “I took a little
time to accessorize.”
She looked down to her belt. Paxton’s eyes followed her gaze and widened when he
saw the row of grenades adorning it.
“You got a plan for those, or are we just making a statement?”
“Had a plan,” Anastasia corrected. “I planned to port into engineering, let these
suckers off in their void engine, and then beat a hasty retreat. But ‘dox fried my HUD.
I’ve lost targeting, and I don’t know where engineering is.”
“Pearce was trying to hack their systems,” Paxton nodded, gesturing further down
the hallway, toward the onslaught of alien attackers. “He’s up that way about five meters.
Found an access panel. Lang is covering his back.”
“Where’s Hahn?” Anastasia asked as she peered down the hall. The combat
exoskeleton was nowhere to be seen.
“Crazy son of a Hit Mark rushed right over the first wave,” Paxton said as he shot
another of the aliens in the face. “Said he was gonna try to thin the herd. Tactical puts
him about 70 meters abaft”
“You still got tactical?” Anastasia smiled.
“Yes, sir,” Paxton said and activated a screen-sharing protocol. Paxton’s tactical
data, while glitchy, showed up in Anastasia’s HUD.
“You’re a lifesaver,” Anastasia said as she patted Paxton on the shoulder.
“I had a feeling you were going in the other direction with that intel,” Paxton said,
shooting two more aliens.
“I am,” Anastasia said as she bounded to her feet. “Get ready to retreat on my
mark.”
Anastasia rushed down the hallway, screaming and firing her plasma cannon as
quickly as she could pull the trigger. Paxton laid down cover fire to support her as
she rushed the enemy. The barrel began glowing red in angry, overheated protest of
Anastasia’s disregard for safe operating procedures. When the plasma cannon reached
critical temperature, she threw it down the hallway into the amassed alien bottleneck. As
she’d hoped, the gun’s inherent malfunction was compounded by Paradox. The plasma
cannon exploded in a brilliant flash of super-cooked air, instantly incinerating a dozen
of the aliens.
She pulled the second plasma cannon from her back and began strafing the hallway
with blasts, cutting down the rear ranks of the alien force. Though they returned fire,
Anastasia held her ground and miraculously was not hit once. When the final alien fell
to the floor, Anastasia spoke into the comm channel.
“Border Defense,” she said firmly as she took off running down the hallway.
“Regroup at the entry point and prepare for evac.”
“Already?” Hahn’s voice crackled through the comm channel. “I feel like we
haven’t shown our guests a proper welcome. Don’t want it getting around the Deep
Universe that earthlings are rude.”
Fell WInds 117

“Don’t sweat it,” Anastasia said. “Proper welcome inbound. I’m gonna light off
some fireworks.”
“Copy that,” Hahn replied. “En route to rendezvous.”
Anastasia used the tactical display to bring up energy output readings. Adjusting her
focus to Primal Energy expenditures, she could lock on to the void engines, or whatever
equivalent tech was running the ship. It didn’t take long for her to narrow down direction
and location. She’d have to fight her way through about a hundred meters of the ship
and up three decks. The engine room was apparently in the center of the saucer, likely
to reduce the chance of an external threat targeting the engine. Unfortunately for the
invaders, it also meant that an explosion in the engine room would probably take out
the whole ship.
As she moved down the hallway, Anastasia saw the sheer destruction Hahn had
wreaked on his way in. From the look of the walls and the sparse trail of dead invaders,
it looked like he’d just let his weapons rip while he advanced to do as much damage as
possible. While it probably wasn’t the soundest tactical approach, it undoubtedly helped
Hahn blow off some steam. While she understood the impulse, Anastasia would have
much preferred another boring afternoon in the combat simulator to this.
She rounded a corner and saw Hahn holding one of the aliens on the ground with his
foot in the invader’s back as he leveled the barrel of his plasma cannon against the back
of the creature’s head. She stopped just short of stepping in skull and brain fragments as
Hahn pulled the trigger.
“Hey, boss!” Hahn said with a grin as he looked up. “I was just finishing up here.
Those are grenades!”
“Yep,” Anastasia said. “And they’re on their way to the void engine.”
“Right,” Hahn nodded. “You got a plan that involves surviving?”
“I can port out,” Anastasia replied. “Probably.”
“I can’t help but notice you seem awfully calm about this whole thing.”
“Oh,” Anastasia said, furrowing her brow. “I’d probably be terrified if I hadn’t run
that NOT script.”
“You got it working?” Hahn said with a cheerful giggle. “You shut off your emotion
chip?”
“It’s totally different,” Anastasia said, with a dismissive wave of the hand. “Data
was a synthetic —”
“Yeah,” Hahn chuckled. “Just giving you shit.”
“Will you get to the rendezvous?” Anastasia snorted. “I need to go heroically risk
my life to destroy this enemy vessel.”
“Nerd,” Hahn shouted over his shoulder as he ran back toward the breach. Anastasia
shook her head and continued toward the engine room.
• • •
23:01 UTC
Charlot sat at her desk poring over dozens of damage reports. Casualties were
minimal so far, with Ramirez wounded in battle and Hoskins caught in a stray blast
that hit the barracks. Neither were critical and both had been moved to the trauma pod.
Danny was MIA, which would just need to wait until the invaders were neutralized. It
had been twelve minutes since she’d called for backup, and Charlot was losing patience.
As she reviewed damage to the sensor dish array, Charlot received an incoming
message from Anastasia Tyler, the head of station security. She activated the call.
“Ana,” Charlot began. “Sitrep?”
“I’m in the alien engine room,” Ana said. “I’ve eliminated the threat from the
immediate vicinity, and I have enough explosives with me to push the drive critical.”
“All hands, brace for shockwaves,” Charlot said, as she held the public address
button.
“Good plan,” Ana said, coldly. “Also, my translocation gear is acting finicky. I
don’t have a guarantee I’ll make it out.”
“Well, hang on!” Charlot said. “I can grab you with the site cargo transporter. I just
need to lock onto your datapoint.”
Charlot’s fingers flew across the keys as she brought up the transporter controls and
scanned for Anastasia’s signal.
“I have lock,” Charlot said.
“Great,” Anastasia sighed. “On my mark.”
Charlot’s finger hung over the execute button. She heard the sound of two dozen
metallic pins sliding loose from their housing followed by the staccato clanging of
grenades hitting the ground.
“Mark!” Anastasia shouted.
Charlot slammed her finger down on the button. A second later the station rocked so
violently that Charlot was tossed from her chair onto the floor. Her face hit the bookshelf
along the nearby wall, bloodying her nose and causing her to see double for a few
seconds. She struggled to her feet and looked out of her office window.
The ship was gone. Various pieces of metal and flesh littered the field outside
Ultima Thule. Charlot could see Hahn stumble into view from behind one of the
telescope dishes. He appeared a bit shaken up but otherwise uninjured. The rest of the
Void Engineer field detachment rushed out of their hiding spots to meet up with him.
Charlot turned and rushed out of her office to the cargo bay.
She could hear the pained moaning through the door as she approached the cargo
bay entrance. Anastasia survived but sounded like she was not in great shape. As Charlot
flung the door open, a horrific sight waited to greet her.
Anastasia laid on the floor of the transporter pad, writhing in agony. Medical tests
were needed to be sure, but it appeared to Charlot that Anastasia’s skin had turned inside
Fell WInds 119
out. The blood-tinged layer of cheesy opalescent fat that made up her hypodermis was
exposed to the open air. Furthermore, there were protrusions and lumps on her body
indicating that the second skin she’d been wearing was somehow trapped beneath the
skin, distorting her body and undoubtedly contributing to the agony. It was a ghoulish
manifestation of Paradox, but all things considered, Charlot was grateful for the outcome.
“Don’t worry,” Charlot said. “We’ll get you taken care of.”
She called for trauma responders to collect Anastasia. She briefly entertained calling
off the backup as the invasion force no longer presented a threat. However, there was
a hell of a mess on her lawn to clean up, catalogue, and study. If it was, indeed, Threat
Null, the data that a thorough scrubbing of the wreckage might provide could better arm
the Union for future encounters with the malevolent aliens.
She also had a missing operative to track down. She figured since the backup left
her team to single-handedly stave off an extradimensional invasion, the least they could
do was help with the cleanup. She was grateful it was summer. That would mean Danny
had a fair shot at surviving until they could find him.
• • •
Queen Maud Land, Antarctica
22:49 UTC
“—Now!” Danny shouted onto the empty, white tundra. He fell backward, his
weight no longer supported by the wall.
He fell hard onto solid ice below a thin layer of snow. Frosty air rushed in through
the four finger-sized holes in his mask. He gasped deeply, taking in a lungful of frigid
Antarctic air. He was alive, and seemingly uninfected by the creature. He lay on his back
for several seconds, staring up at the bright solstice sun.
Then it hit him: the solstice.
He shot to his feet as quickly as the bulk of his containment suit and the cold would
allow.
He remembered Commander Osterburg’s log. The alien ship — the goddamn Threat
Null vessel — crested the horizon at the precise moment of the solstice. Maybe their
home dimension aligned best with the Front Lines during certain cosmological events.
Perhaps their technology at the time only permitted contact during that period. Maybe
this wasn’t even Threat Null, but instead some heretofore unknown extradimensional
threat with similar goals and modus operandi. Whatever their origin, Danny was sure
that the solstice and the aliens’ activities must share some level of connection.
He was certain that the body in quarantine was dead. He was halfway through
the autopsy before it became responsive. Was it possible that the planetary alignment
activated some sort of delayed anti-tampering technology, or that the creature received
some sort of command signal from its home world? While the containment unit was
heavily shielded from outside signals, the convergence of celestial bodies may have
been sufficient to breach the seals. It was conceivable that the shielding in containment

was simply insufficient, for any number of reasons. The EDEs may have tapped into a
frequency previously unknown to Dimensional Science. It may have been some sort of
anti-tampering protocol. A set of pre-programmed responses and actions imbued into
the creature’s cybernetics activated in response to the body’s demise and delayed by
the freezing waters of the arctic. Without further study — which Danny hoped would
be impossible thanks to evicting the monster from the Front Lines — he would never
know for sure.
Danny realized that if the body was receiving a signal that escaped Ultima Thule’s
notice, it could have just as easily been broadcasting a similar signal. If his hypothesis
about the correlation between the solstice and the EDE activity were true and the creature
managed to send a homing signal or distress call to its home dimension, the station could
be in severe danger. He had to warn them. But first he’d have to find them.
He didn’t have his ES-Phone and because he hadn’t had time to don his second
skin, he had no safe water source, no nutrients, and no means of communicating with
the base. His suit kept him warm enough for the moment, but the holes in his helmet
meant he’d lost environmental containment and would eventually freeze. His nose and
eyes were already cold.
Danny looked around, desperately hoping to see some landmark. Anything that
could guide him back to Ultima Thule. His desperate search revealed only driven snow
and solitude. He scanned around a wishful second time. Still nothing. He gave one last
look to the sky and started walking towards a beautiful horizon.
It actually was beautiful here, wasn’t it?
Fell WInds 121

What does the Technocratic Union agent see through those re-
flective lenses? How many hours of interrogation footage, archives of
dossiers, gone over one more time, again and again? What song of
Enlightened trigonometry beams before their eyes the trajec-
tory of the reality deviant, or the fastest route to cover in a
firefight? Imagine vast mugshot archives of unmutual hack-
ers, “magick” grifters, and monstrous fiends. Picture the
boundless feed of fearful information scrolling from
top to bottom of the glass, perpetually keeping them at
odds with the so-called mages, and the wicked truths
that keep the agent believing they’re saving the world.
There are those who believe it accurately, and their stories are
the ones most worth telling. Elite, isolated researchers and Iteration
X rookies alike understand why their work is so harsh and thank-
less, but they can both share the same vision of a peaceful future,
as seen through their own Enlightened lenses. Staring through
the screens, the question that deserves asking is this: how deep
can this infinite calculus permeate? Into the eyes? Into the mind?
Into the soul, and time, and beyond? If pushed, how could it
not go beyond? How could it not go beyond, and how could it
possibly stop?
Gaze long enough, and what gazes back?
Melody Through the Mirrorshade Lens is a compila-
tion of four novellas surrounding the infamous Technocracy
and its predecessor — the Order of Reason.

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A Fiction Anthology for

River St. Grey, Danielle Lauzon,

© 2022 PARADOX INTERACTIVE AB.

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They’re Coming Through! — River St. Grey 32

The Test — Danielle Lauzon 61

Fell Winds — Travis Legge 89

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