The Infiltrators
CHAPTER 1
The infiltration team moved swiftly and silently through the twisting darkness of the Labyrinth.
No two team members were from the same species, and as they passed the glowing hieroglyphic symbols of the Unknown Architects their silhouettes were so oddly incongruous that it might have given witnesses pause. On the other hand, their odd alliance may have also explained their efficacy: the deficiencies of one were compensated for by the strengths of the others.
The infiltrators reached a doorway, and the largest of the group, an appara’ti called Lil’Lal Breen, knelt at the threshold while the other members fanned out behind her. Lifting her right hand to the door, she spread her fingers wide, and her arm and forearm blossomed backward to her elbow like the petals of a black flower, exposing the molten red of her internal workings. Dozens of techno-organic filaments extended, interfacing with the locking mechanism on the door. Breen communicated with the door, sending the proper codes. When it opened she moved quickly through it, her forearm closing up, and the team followed.
The Unknown Architects had carved the Labyrinths eons before. The series of seemingly endless caves ran beneath the surface of each the four rings, but barely more than five percent of them had actually been mapped. This was no surprise given that very little of the actual Rings, themselves, had been mapped, but the unsettling thing about the Labyrinths was that their true purpose was still completely unknown. Were they really simple passages for travel? Had they provided shelter for some past species? Were they once inhabited? Theories, rumors and superstitions abounded and yet no evidence other than their actual existence had ever been discovered to prove anything definitively.
Tonight, though, they provided safe passage for the team beneath downtown CS2 and into the very heart of the Temple of the Black Church.
As Breen led them down a hall that appeared pitch black to those with standard vision, the sounds of the machinery of the Soul Harvester became louder. To better focus her perceptions, her eyes were closed to the darkness. No longer relying on standard senses, but those awoken through ingestion of the perception-altering substance väsen, she moved quickly and confidently forward. There were no others on this level, but above them were several sentries walking routes that had been mapped and predicted by internal algorithms earlier that night. The many voyants, errants and trenchers of the Black Church were mostly engaged in deep states of transleep. A few were engaged in — other acts.
The Soul Harvester was large, a structure within a structure that, shielded from the Manifold, presented itself as a dead zone to Breen’s perceptions. It floated in front of her like an island and, once more when reaching it, she knelt, interfaced with it, and entered. This time, however, her companions waited outside to cover her.
CHAPTER 2
Entering the Soul Harvester, she was struck by something she’d heard on her fledgling first day at the Université de Bjerg: “There is no magic.”
The words swirled and churned through her mind just as now the eleven souls swirled and churned through the air above their own corpses. Stripped raw of physical bodies, the ephemeral, complex codes of living organisms circled like a school of koi fish beneath the water’s surface. They darted about the immense laboratory, exploring. When souls crossed, they slowed and sniffed like curious animals. Their corpses, an assortment of appara’ti, passengers, and synchronauts, were laid out on individual tables.
Lil’lal Breen felt for them. She, too, had once been in their position: disoriented and suffering, their bodies rendered lifeless meat, they kicked against the darkness, struggling to awaken from a nightmare.
But this was no nightmare.
The complex machinery of the Soul Harvester1, embedded within the ceiling, floor and walls, ground smoothly along. The machinery sealed souls in and shielded them from collection by the rings of Vagevuur2. The Soul Harvester had claimed its crop, separating soul from body, and now its inner mechanisms shifted gears to decode and reprogram those souls.
The services by the Black Truth Priests in the courtyard earlier that day had been perfunctory. The Temple of the Black Truth Church, located at the heart of Mother in the City of Stranded Souls, was a temple in name only. Far from a holy vessel, it was in fact a machine, a combine constructed by devotees, sycophants, and slaves of the Black Truth Church to collect, decode and reprogram the souls of every last creature in existence.
Breen thought she could hear the ghostly screams as the combine broke souls down into burning pinpoints, reflective fragments, and sparkling trails of light that tumbled and twisted in the darkness. Mixing like debris in the ocean, these pieces spiraled clockwise from the center of the room like the arms of a small galaxy. It was beautiful, downright supernatural —
(there is no magic)
— and hypnotizing.
But no. With each passing moment she risked failure and capture.
Breen and the geissgruff known as Broken Swords on Volcanic Rock had known each other for years. They’d made unconventional allies but, then again, he two had been born and raised in the shattered ruins of CS2, the largest of the Free Zones. As an island of rock floating an eighth of a mile from the cliff edges of the Bjerg ring, CS2 was a kind of no-man’s land that provided a safe haven for those escaping the Ring War Two. The Faction Blanc maintained an uneasy equilibrium on the neutral ground of CS2, but that didn’t stop governments from interpreting the terms liberally.
Unfortunately, Broken Swords had been on the receiving end of those legal grey areas, and the ‘gruff had been taken in a neighborhood where the Faction Blanc had no jurisdiction, rounded up by a squad of Black Truth Crusaders in a reprogramming sweep
But Révolution Étudiante, however, had its own ways and means by which to interpret the rules. Thousands of years in the past, the Unknown Architects11 had bored miles of twisting tunnels deep beneath the surface of the Bjerg ring. Each of the four rings contained its own seemingly never-ending Labyrinth, uniquely designed from the others, going so deep that less than a single percent of them had been mapped. Their original purpose was unknown, but tonight she and her fellow student resistance members had used them to navigate their way inside.
In order to do so, however, Breen had had to consume a larger-than-usual quantity of the miraculous proto-chemical known as väsen12. That had been hours before and the waning effects now left a shallow, depressed vacuum where confidence had once blossomed. Feeling vulnerable and exposed, she removed a pouch of the stuff from her backpack, poured a few grams onto the back of her trembling hand, and snorted —
(an immense, burning tidal wave
slams into her brain and then
explodes
vibrates
surges
roars
through her body)
— the proto-chemical flipped triggers and switches in her brain, the physical place where the very code of her soul resided, setting her consciousness adrift through spacetime. Distant pasts, alternate nows, and possible futures spilled out behind and in front of her, and she was convinced — no, suddenly downright knew — that she was the center of all the universe. These turbulent currents were strong enough to pull someone under and drown them, and she started shutting each down, one by one.
With each eliminated, the basic components of the universe lit up around her, and Breen tuned herself around balletic wavelengths of spacetime. Colloquially known as Much Smaller Things, these foundational strings vibrated in patterns, forming a framework that built, one layer on top of the next, the primary building blocks of Much Bigger Things.
Each component was infinitesimally small; too small, in fact, for the naked eye to perceive. To Breen’s väsen-infused mind, however, they were obvious: the Much Smaller Things presented as distinct, resonating patterns that composed Smaller Things, which in turn arranged themselves into Things known as carbon, helium, and other elements, Bigger Things such as molecules, and finally Much Bigger Things such as wood, rock, metal. At that level, living beings arranged (somewhat less elegantly) these Bigger Things into tools and clothing, houses and buildings. The laws of nature, however, arranged (much more elegantly) them into living husks such as those that now lay, in various states, on the laboratory workbenches.
Seeing them now, Breen closed her eyes to eliminate any confusion or false readings brought by visual data, and opened her mind. She rode currents of spacetime past the floor, ceiling and walls, finding Black Truth voyants and errants, deep in meditative transleep in their personal chambers. Sentries on duty were doing rounds on other floors.
This soulist laboratory was expansive and filled with machinery she’d never seen before. At any other time, she might have been awed, but this place was an unholy factory. In this place, entire personalities, memories, and feelings were broken down, redesigned and rewritten. Whole people were erased, permanently, in favor of the whims and needs of the Church of Black Truth. Overnight, rebels became spies for the enemy, non-believers became believers, and enemies of the church became allies. Defiant citizens who spoke out against the church, or even those asking innocent questions of doctrine, were sent to temples for reprogramming, emerging as devout followers.
CHAPTER 3
The Soul Harvester roared, reaching a climax. Somewhere, rusted metal slid against rusted metal, and then clanged loudly, like a tremendous steel door dropping into place —
— and then the last pieces of souls left spinning in the air suddenly vanished.
The mechanisms within began to spin down and the arms slowed.
Eleven souls once residing within had become virtual ghosts stored within the machinery of the Temple of Black Truth, and the bodies of flesh and blood now left on the benches had just suffered the True Death1, reduced to nothing more than discarded clothing. Without souls, the internal code that made them who they were, their eyes were hollow orbs. Each had played a role in the revolution — academics, historians, scientists, and even just common citizens who had fought against the Church of Black Truth’s campaign of misinformation, propaganda, and outright lies.
The workbench surfaces began to shimmer, turning shades of molten red, and the empty shells descended, as if swallowed by water. The machinery would process them, rebuilding their physical structures. At the same time, those souls would be exhaustively examined and thoroughly deconstructed. Offensive code would be rewritten to ensure loyalty to the Appara’ti Kingdom and devotion to the Church of Black Truth. Later, somewhere deep within the Temple, their reprogrammed souls would be downloaded into their newly-reconstructed bodies and released.
Upon returning to families, friends, schools or places of work, they would have refreshed attitudes and reinvigorated bodies to match. Derogatively referred to as 2.0s, the reborn would spread the Black Truth and sing the praises of the Appara’ti Kingdom.
The machinery started up again.
The tables softened again, but this time a new group of bodies, different the ones from before, rose up from within.
Her senses, firing on all cylinders, recognized Broken Swords: the warm glow of his soul — the resonance of strings, the familiar composition of the Much Smaller Things of his friend’s husk.
Dried blood encrusted his nose. Rivers of it had poured from his mouth, drying in thick, sticky scabs that caked his chin and neck. Thick, clean lacerations, around which the fur was scorched black, crisscrossed his chest where he’d been cut by the beam of a lasgun. Breen shook off the urge to gag: her friend smelled of cooked meat.
Though the meat that composed his body was irretrievable, the Much Smaller Things that composed the code of his soul still resonated with life, and they would continue to do so — at least until Bjerg reached its zenith, the Manifold4 washed across it, and the Engulfing Darkness collected it like a tide pulling the dead into the ocean.
Breen unslung her bag, pulling from it an oblong, lozenge-shaped instrument. The wooden soul stick was warm to the touch and fit snugly into the palm of her hand. The surface was inscribed with the nausea-inducing, intra-dimensional ‘glyphs of the written geissgruff language. Breen couldn’t exactly read the ‘glyphs, but she recognized enough switches and studs to key the sequence she’d been taught. Väsen washed through the device, and the coating of microscopic Much Smaller Things that comprised the thing’s main display shifted in resonance, awakening intra-dimensional ‘gruff-glyphs that changed from red to blue.
Soul sticks were containment vessels for encoded spacetime, storing a soul’s code while preserving its memories and experiences. More importantly, they shielded souls from natural collection by the Manifold. Once triggered, the soul stick would read and transfer the target soul into its memory, storing it for a theoretical eternity. This one’s surfaces were slightly worn but it was otherwise none the worse for wear. Soul sticks were constructed by master geissgruff voyants, whose prowess with väsen devices was legendary. Breen didn’t understand their workings, but she knew they were carved from the legendary wood of Vatn, the World Vine encircling Tre Reikstjarna. It was said that this wood had extraordinary properties.
Breen keyed a few more commands into the soul stick and then set it atop Broken Sword’s sternum. The tiles on the display cycled through different messages and readings in ‘gruffglyphs, indicating who-knew-what. Telltales on the surface of the device shifted from red to yellow to blue: it was cycling up.
CHAPTER 4
“The soul,” Breen’s teacher had once said, “is a set of instructions on which the trunk of every sentient creature is built.
Over time, unique memories form the branches. To the sleeping1 mind, the trunk and branches seem infinite, creating the illusion of ‘life’. To the woken — scientists, soulists and academics — ‘life’ is a series of coded instructions. This code reacts to the world, creating self-awareness and the illusion of independence. Should we break this code down far enough, Breen, our actions are as predictable and foundational as ringrise. Make no mistake — we are nothing more than complex machines.”
The soul stick worked. It hummed in rhythm with the shifting colors of the display as it detected, read, and downloaded the lines of encoded data comprising Broken Sword’s soul.
That was when Breen noticed an immense structure squatting at the far end of the room.
Neither wood nor stone, mechanical nor organic, but something altogether different, it rose out of the floor like a small mountain. Covered in pipes and ducts, the thing steamed as if ready to burst at the seams. A single door sat at the base and, in the center a blue light leaked out of an ice-encrusted port hole. Despite this, a comfortable warmth radiated off the thing and Breen found herself somehow drawn to it.
Closer now, the port hole was fogged. Breen reached out. The surface was warm to the touch, and his fingers left streaks through the condensation. He leaned forward and peered inside at the face of —
— an urther child!?
Breen had heard stories about the legendary, nearly mythical species, but had the Church actually gotten hold of one? Where and how?
A series of quiet whistles and beeps drew Breen’s focus back to the soul stick, where telltales cycled to green. Leaning forward and squinting at the display, Breen tilted her head left, then right, then left again to shift her perspective and better translate the ‘gruff-glyph: transfer complete.
Broken Swords’s encoded soul was now stored within the virtual manifold of the soul stick. His body had suffered the True Death.
Breen slipped the device into her bag and scanned the temple around her once more. It looked as if nothing much had changed, and the patrolling guards were in spots well-within the paths predicted by her internal algorithms. Breen’s route back to the Labyrinth was clear.
As she slung her bag, however, the weight of the steaming structure descended upon her. She stopped, and her gaze shifted back to the structure. Through the streaks her fingers had made in the frosted glass the urther child seemed to sleep.
Breen was listed top of her class at Université de Bjerg just before she’d dropped out to join Révolution Étudiante. While she was enough of an idealist to have allowed herself to be caught up in the movement, she was also enough of a realist to recognize that she may very well have been trading a comfortable lifestyle in favor of the life of a fugitive. Both facets now warred inside of her, and yet —
— an urther child!
Since their rumored involvement in the first Ring War5 two hundred years ago, no urther had been seen, and it was generally thought that their fledgling species had been wiped out. If they had returned, what could it mean? There hadn’t been any mention at the briefing. If her handlers in Révolution Étudiante had known, surely they would have wanted the child, or at least information about the child, brought back.
Knowing better, yet unable to stop herself, Breen locked the straps of her backpack over her shoulders and approached the door. At several stories tall, pipes, tubes, and ducts bulged like throbbing veins as fluids and gasses rocketed through them.
Peering inside, Breen could see the urther child immersed in a viscous, dark red fluid. Lips slightly parted, its chest rose and fell: it appeared to actually be breathing. The mysterious fluid went in red in color, but emerged a shade of blue that shifted back to red again. Inward blue, outward red, again and again. The fluid obscured the child’s gender, but then again she’d never seen an urther before. Did they even have genders?
Trans-dimensional ‘gruff-glyphs covered the panels along the side of the door. There was also an enormous panel built into the side of the machine, with a far more complex-looking interface, that probably controlled whatever it was that was keeping the urther alive and in stasis. Somewhere among those dials and displays was a way to simply open and close the door, but what would happen once she started hitting buttons and flipping switches? What if he opened the door without keying the correct sequence? Might he inadvertently kill the urther?
No risk, no gain.
Examining the ‘gruff-glyphs, Breen decided what was what and keyed a sequence. Nothing happened, and so he tried again. Nothing. And then again. At the end of each sequence, however, he got nothing but a flashing red light. Her final attempt resulted in a buzzing and a ‘gruff recording that was, most likely, telling her to give it up.
CHAPTER 5
“Krag’get,” Breen cursed.
She was probably lucky she hadn’t set off any alarms — that she knew of. For a brief instant, the realist inside of her considered giving it up. But the idealist told her to plow forward, and so Breen closed her eyes, thinking of Broken Swords. The two had grown up together and trusted each other implicitly. Breen regularly stayed at Skyflier1, the ‘gruff’s village high in the Bjerg mountains and had seen her friend key ‘gruff locks quite a few times. She’d also seen her friend, quite skilled with technology, hack the codes on dozens more.
How had Broken Swords done it?
As if to play a trick on either herself, or the lock, Breen turned suddenly back to the instrument panel and, barely looking, keyed a sequence that felt right — like something Broken Swords would have done, had done, dozens of times before.
And then, without fanfare, the display flashed green, there was a click, and a recorded ‘gruff voice welcomed her. The door slid open, a tide of steam rolled across the floor, and the thick, viscous liquid began to drain, exposing the urther child’s face.
Its eyes snapped open, exposing bight green irises. It coughed spastically, ‘exhaling’ fluid from its mouth, and then tumbled forward.
Breen caught it. The creature’s brown skin was still covered in the slick, viscous fluid it had been submerged in, and it nearly slipped between her arms. Its skin was hot, and the child began to shiver the moment it emerged. The coughing and hacking and shivers became jerks and spasms, and Breen lost her grip on the slick surfaces, and the urther dropped clumsily to the plated floor and curled into a fetal position.
Breen knelt beside it. She had no idea how old the child was, but it was small, not much bigger than a geissgruff, but less well-formed and more fragile. Its eyes were open, but unfocused. Its mouth fell open, the balls of its eyes rolled back.
And then nothing. It lay motionless on the floor.
Breen’s own child had been lost fleeing the passengers, and parental instincts kicked in. She scooped the child into her arms, tilted its head back, and slid one finger down its throat, trying to clear an airway. Halfway through her endeavor, it occurred to her that she didn’t even know whether urthers had airways, nor if what he was doing would clear it (for all he knew, he was pinching it off) but when the child gasped, Breen reckoned she was on the right track.
She rocked the child. It struggled, fighting at first, even as it clung to her, latching on for dear life. Its green eyes were wide, bloodshot, and full of fear.
“Breathe,” she told it.
And then it scrambled away.
From afar, Breen could see how frail and vulnerable it really was: thin and pale, its physique resembled that of a genetically unmodified tippet2, clinging to evolutionary dead-ends the genetic engineers had discarded long ago. It was undeveloped, muscles soft and pliable beneath skin covered in random patches of unsightly hair.
Still, the thing maintained a sharp awareness that Breen had not seen in creatures native to the Ringrealms. She shrugged her coat off and tossed it to the child. It was at least intelligent enough to slip it over its shoulders. Breen gestured for the child to follow, but of course it resisted. Its gaze moved around the room, inspecting nooks and crannies for seemingly no reason.
Breen attempted to connect to the Manifold. After several tries, it was just as she’d feared: the temple was shielded from unauthorized communications. There might be workarounds, but Breen feared poking around too much would set off alarms
Breen cursed. She’d been foolish. She’d given in to the idealist again, painted herself into a corner, and now she might just pay for it. How was she was going to get the krag’gam thing out?