JULY 25 2021
Site-Aorta sat like a dark blister on the horizon, a hexagon of black metal dull and grime-stained. It was a hidden place, coated first in secrecy and underbrush, then by miles and miles of emptiness. Of hills and valleys, forest and mountain: a place few would seldom see, locked in the solitude of the Siberian Permafrost. It was a true oddity, a curiosity to behold. It looked both smooth and jagged, of perfect architecture and natural imperfection. From some angles it looked alike a giant hexagon, slashed from a beehive and placed haphazardly atop the valley. From others it seemed no more noteworthy than a rock. There were no windows, no roads. No doorways or skylights: no buildings that protruded from the side, no fence to gate its surroundings. A few had walked beside it and a few had thought nothing of it. A few had passed right by, paying no mind to the structure hidden in plain sight.
It was a different story within. Nestled within cylindrical hallways lay great light fixtures so that no darkness could impede within the walls, shadow blooming not from a lack of light but due to the complete totality of the darkness of the metal that encompassed the structure. It was a womb of tubes and pipes, corridors like veins pumping into grand atriums and flat plazas, square fields of metal criss-crossed by escalators and water features. It was a bizarre place confused in its style, half gothic and half futuristic, with a sleek interior like a painting of H.R. Giger, curves fixed into the walls like the ribs of some great, dormant creature. Its breathing was the breathing of fans and turbines, its blood the knowledge of its inhabitance, its nerves their emotions and its cognizance their goal. In architecture it was a bizarre chimaera, in zoology a sapient beast. The inhabitants were myriad, yet all worked as one. A hive screwed into the ground, a hidden land scrubbed from all memory.
Floss awoke in her chamber, lulling in a hammock of blankets and pillows
as she stretched upwards, raising her arms over her head as she yawned.
There was a man clinging to her side, arms crossed around her. His hair
was long, black and thick, his demeanour not quite as put together as was
typical. He groaned as Floss stretched, the woman's pale hand brushing
against his black-grey hair. Arkady rose and rubbed his eye, reaching to a
hanging shelf above him and fastening his eyepatch over his face. He
looked over to the clock, seeing it to be early in the morning, light having
filtered through the white portal atop the room's back window, a blinding
white circle that seemed too bright to look into yet did not hurt the eyes
when gazed upon.
"Catnap will be up." Arkady grumbled, his voice hoarse.
"She will." Floss said, "And – I think – she will be expecting me. You not so much."
"Is that you kicking me out, Floss?"
The woman smiled. Arkady was not sure how she always woke up before him, and was not even sure how she slept. Her horns, those two keratinous protrusions that curled from her eye sockets, did not allow her to blink. She always saw the world around her, always saw everything. She could see the back of her own head, see the sky above her, see the ground before her feet. It was impossible for Arkady to imagine, and too it was impossible to imagine how she possibly got any rest with such visual noise always present. He had not only seen her sleep in darkness, but in broad daylight, too. The photoreceptors across her horns seemed detached, then, from the rest of her senses – perhaps she could turn them off. Perhaps it simply didn't bother her, and the world at large was alike a dream of any other.
"I'm not kicking you out," Floss said, "Quite the opposite. You can stay here, if you'd like! You just know how Catnap is around... well, around those she isn't sure of! I don't want you getting stabbed!"
She reached forward and stroked Arkady's shoulder, eliciting a tired smile from the man. Her skin was pale and soft, glittering in light. Inhuman.
"How's she getting on?"
"Alright... a little confused, but she's settled well. She plays with the other children, sometimes, though hasn't said a word to them."
"Still?"
"We can't force her to, sweetheart. It took her long enough to be convinced that we're friends. It would be easy to lose that friendship."
Arkady stood from the bed and nodded. He wasn't quite sure how Floss had done it, but she really had broken through towards the Girl. Jane was her name, now, though Floss, Wilfryd and Verity called her "Catnap" in recognition of what appeared to be the narcolepsy she dealt with. It seemed ingrained into her physiology in a way which was quite ever so baffling, flickers of consciousness mirrored by flickers of puppeted unconsciousness. Arkady didn't know much about the condition, nor about the other anatomical oddities that plagued the young child. It wasn't his area of expertise and he seldom wanted to break anything that Floss and Wilfryd had carefully constructed. He wasn't to be here for long regardless: he would see the Girl, as he always did, a guilty sensation settling in his chest if he did not. He cared for her, yet it was a distant sort of care, not one paternal or friendly. He wished her well, and the image of her blood-soaked and battered – the image of her as Wilfryd had found Catnap, poised in a foxhole – flashed in his mind frequently. It disturbed him, to a degree: the child had been altered in ways that were difficult for him to imagine. Ways that would have made any sane adult lose his or her mind. It wasn't right, though that perhaps was a tremendous understatement.
"Do you have work today?" Floss asked; Arkady nodded and she gave a pouting expression. He was leaving later, his visit to the site one brief and business-only. He was to monitor the reactors in the bowels of the heart shaped site, the "Old Man" in charge wishing for such examinations due to simple scheduled maintenance. The Old Man knew about Catnap; it was under her vision that Arkady had funneled into a car with Wilfryd and Eamon some months ago, sent out to retrieve Verity in the mission that had inadvertently lead to all this. It was a coincidence, and a lucky one at that. Arkady cringed to imagine what Catnap would be going through in the present moment were they not there to have retrieved her. At best she would be feral, cold and hungry, every day a struggle for survival in harsh Alaskan wilderness. In a world of neutrality, she would have been dead. In the worst outcome, she would have been found and taken back to that reprehensible place.
Arkady shook the thought from his head, dressing himself in clothes neatly folded upon Floss' desk. They were working clothes, vague black overalls and a plastic-feeling coat of shimmering white. Floss picked up her own clothes, messily thrown to the ground: a more casual attire of stark gothic look, a broad white dress of flowing and folding fabric, her chest and stomach bound in a pale corset. It matched her skin and hair, comfortable and informal. It had to be that way, for Floss lived in SiteAorta full time. Rarely did she leave the black metal walls, though that was by choice: she did not like to wear her "fake" eyes and found a phobia to be had in the outer world. She was unique. Well, almost unique. She bore similar biological qualities to Catnap, narcolepsy aside, and had been created in a strikingly unique manner. Her closest person to family was that of Eamon, though they were not related by genetics or parentage. They had been created in the same batch, and he was much more sociable. The two of them both were points of focus for the hive of Site-Aorta, though Floss in particular: Eamon could fit in. She could not.
The two walked through the rib-walled halls of Site-Aorta, passing by a few others like Arkady and none like Floss. They descended into the primary vestibule of the site, a stairwell-walled room of flat black metal, the floor shining like marble and criss-crossed by parallel lines of white light. At one side lay escalators that ascended and descended a square balcony that lay halfway up the wall, those middling supports arife with intricate carvings of man and woman, anatomical diagrams of the body split apart into its hundreds of constituent forms. The floor descended in a grid of indentations, square and symmetrical pits that lined flat corridors of darkness. Some sat within the pits, reading or working. Others did not, and were walking from place to place. Some retrieved food or drink form automated fabricators, great cylindrical casks of protein hanging from a gantry atop the underside of the balcony. Arkady looked to the hanging nutrient dispenser, then back to the escalators that ascended to the balcony. It was evident that the technology had been grafted on to the structure, bolted or slid into place. He knew why. Site-Aorta had not been made: it had been found.
That was, perhaps, what made examining the reactors so damn difficult. "Will you stay with me for a bit?" Floss asked, not turning her head to look at Arkady behind her. It wasn't a gesture of rudeness: the horns curled behind her head. She could already see him.
"Sure." He said, "I'm not expected down there for a while. It isn't urgent."
"What is it?"
"Routine maintenance. The Old Man wants me to make sure all the stents are in place."
They rounded a corner, diverging into a wide chasm that looked like the passage between two great ravines. Mountain-high, the forms of colossal walls rose either side of Floss and Arkady, their innumerable ribs extending into the white-lit darkness. Fog clutched to the floor in thin, damp wisps: dissipated with steps, it swept up into the walls and to the ceiling, clinging to the slick metal. Arkady could see people in the chasm, some grafting technology onto the ribs and indentations of the wall. They sat, legs dangling over the edge, like old American skyscraper builders, and looked down to the two as they wandered through the hallway. Doors of slick, thin metal punctuated the walls at intervals, their forms twisted like curled horns. They walked by many, diverging into one and leaving the promenade. Floss knew these routes well. Arkady not so much. They entered into a room vaguely familiar to him, a modest cuboid space partitioned halfway down the middle with a glass window, one half black and sleek and the other more lavishly, more comfortably generated. It had been a quick construction, squat tables and chairs dotting the floor. There was a whiteboard at one end of the room, the other walls speckled with facts about maths, language and science, dotted elsewhere with scruffy yet heartily-made drawings. It wasn't perfect, and the sleek creases of the wall made it difficult to hang things atop it, yet the classroom was more than satisfactory for the meagre crew of children it accommodated. Site-Aorta had been in quite the struggle when a handful of such younglings had fallen into their custody, and worked feverishly to ensure their enrichment. It was an awkward set-up, certainly, as many of the wider crew of the site were not particularly good with children. None of them were nasty or ill-mannered to them, of course, just awkward. Arkady was among them. Floss was not, for she was their wonderful teacher, and many of the drawings on the walls contained the children alongside their horn-eyed tutor. A few had been perturbed by her appearance, yet all had warmed up to her since. She was empathetic in a unique manner, gifted at teaching and with great patience. Arkady wasn't sure how she did it, though did not want to be pessimistic towards the children. He didn't dislike them – he just couldn't do it all day, every day. For years and years. Arkady looked through the window.
"How many students are there?"
"Seven, now." She smiled to Arkady. It was peculiar how he could tell that the smile was genuine, what with Floss not having any eyes to speak of. "Four of them are the children of staff members and three were taken from less favourable facilities, Catnap among them."
"And... how are they doing?"
"Well. Better than any of us could have imagined, though I worry there's too few of them for them to meaningfully socialise."
"Not like you could just, you know, get more."
Floss nodded.
"Precisely. I think they're doing really well, all things considered. They've taken to Catnap well, though again I worry about her silence. It's not like it's the most bizarre thing around here, but – well – I don't want her to be stunted."
"Can she speak?"
"Oh, she can. She speaks to me, Verity and Wilfryd quite a lot. Well, in short bursts. She doesn't string together long sentences, just short commands and queries. She can write long sentences, read long sentences. Quite good at reading, actually. She's just... quiet. It's something we're working on. She's in the middle in terms of age, so there's time."
Arkady nodded. A doorway within the room opened and people started shuffling in, the children and a teaching assistant. Arkady looked towards Catnap. The glass was tinted; she couldn't see him, and to a degree Arkady was happy with that. He didn't have that big a relationship with her, even if he was among those who had pried her from that reprehensible facility of concrete. It was a happy feeling, yet one dampened by insecurity. He looked towards Floss and cuddled her goodbye, walking away from the class to his own outpost. It was solitude, now. He could speak to her later over digital means but it wasn't quite the same. He sighed.
It was somewhat exaggeration to refer to the great beating thing in the bowels of Site-Aorta as a reactor, yet that was what the crew deemed it to be and that – it seemed – was its purpose. It pulsed and writhed like a heart, comprised of the black metal that constituted the rest of the facility, flexible and sleek. It pulsed and moved, draped in a web of veins and arteries that shuddered as the warm lava within coursed throughout and was pushed across the conduits that coalesced like a system of veins throughout the site. The staff had a good idea of what it was. They could replicate it and fix it, get it working and improve it, yet did not – really – know what exactly it was. They understood it as a power generator of some description, made strange due to the precise nature of its construction. It merged with the structure, was an inseparable part of it without seams or welds. As if grown from the metal itself. That was the one part they could not replicate: the nature of the wholly fastened metal, of the singularity of the site. Everything was interconnected, every channel driven from the same source. Every hallway was a tributary in the wider river of its construction: no part of it was separate. The metal walls formed tissues, the mechanisms organs. Arkady wondered how deep the analogy of the site being a living being went.
He descended into the vast atrium where the heart lay, a tremendous room which bore the shape of a pyramid in which the sharp vertices were rounded and soft, a cylindrical pit in the centre leading down to deeper darkness. Pipes trailed within it, shuddering as the balm within surged, the great heart hanging above them and swallowing the wider space of the atrium. Grafted metal could be found around it in ring-shaped balconies, ladders, stairs and ramps dangling down them as large mechanisms scanned the beating heart of metal, breaches in the synthetic organ's hull sealed with large glass vials and stitches of clamping metal. He buttoned the coat shut and set to work. The coat itself was something of a hazard suit, closing around his body in a skintight manner as he activated its vacuum seal. Arkady reached up to the grafted ladders, climbing up them and onto one of the silver balconies that orbited the heart: a catwalk lead into a large, circular valve that had been fused into the side of the heart's black metal and extended out like a tube. It was an airlock that lead into one of the internal arteries, the circular door at its front rotating and splitting in the middle, cleanly parting into the walls and revealing a small section alike an airlock. He stepped within. Ahead lay another door that lead into the airlock proper, the chamber he currently stood within more like an advanced closet than a mechanical apparatus designed for entering the reactor. The floor was grated; at one wall hung long plastic trousers and helmets, sleek and white. The trousers were fastened at the back like the button-opened sleeves of a suit, clipping over the clothes he already wore and linking to the lip of the skintight hazard suit. They became one body, Arkady's legs and feet totally covered by the smooth texture of the white plastic. The helmets looked almost like a mixture between something an astronaut would wear and a swimming cap – he tied his hair back and pulled the squeaking rubber over his face, holding his breath as the underside of the chin adhered to the neck of the torso piece. He was now totally sealed in the hazard suit, and continued in to the airlock. The door swivelled open and he stepped inside, this chamber comparable to the one he had just entered from yet devoid of hanging apparatus. He depressed a button on the side of the door and waited for a moment. It was but a few seconds later that blood began sloshing at his feet. He looked down as the red ichor seeped into the room, flowing from large vents in the wall, a thin liquid like water that bore the deep crimson of blood, diluted to the colour of a blackcurrant juice yet smelling strongly of iron nonetheless. He wrinkled his nose. It gushed in, the curved walls waterfalls of ichor, blood rising to his ankle, then knee, then groin and torso. His thoughts had wandered elsewhere, so used to this process that he payed it no mind: eventually, the blood completely submerged him and he felt his feet drift from the bottom of the metal-grated floor, Arkady lazily reaching up to push himself down and grabbing onto a handhold to maintain balance. He could still see – everything was tinted red, of course, but it was otherwise no different to being underwater with a mask on. Pressure changed in the fluid subtly, and the door before him swivelled and rotated open. There was no gush of differential pressure, nor any current to speak of: he pushed from the handhold and swam forward into the wide space.
The airlock itself had been grafted over a breach in the heart, a fastening that helped to seal its leaking flow of ichor whilst facilitating easy maintenance and observance of the thing's internal workings. The breach was, in no small part, responsible for Site-Aorta's understanding of the reactor: a great churning machine that pumped red fluid throughout the facility. Arkady found it fascinating: it was an unknown that the site staff scarcely understood. They knew how it functioned, yet did not know where it came from. They could describe how it functioned, even create a small replica, but could not control any facsimile made nor replicate the heart's efficiency. They did not know how long the heart would function, yet knew it would outlive them.
The heart fascinated Arkady, as did the blood it pumped throughout the conduits of Site-Aorta. The interest was twofold: the heart itself, the shifting machine of black metal around him, pulsed through the transmition of tiny quantities of electricity, surging throughout the large structure as the nerves did in an organic heart. There were no nerves present though: the electricity seemed to surge in a predefined manner, touching one side then the other in a complete and unbroken repetition. This was what caused the heart to pump, a force unseen and unfelt. If you were to press your hand against the metal of the heart, Arkady knew, you would receive no jolt. The electricity would not pass into you: you would not even feel it. The metal clung to the electricity, and did not let go. The blood was another matter entirely, and had been the initial anchor that had drawn him into working at Site-Aorta. It was, like the heart and the facility, understood yet unknown in nature: it was a solvent, red in colour, that facilitated nuclear fission in the heart.
The fluid itself was largely comprised of water, though indecipherable genetic proteins floated about amidst particles of fissile uranium, as well as the latent hydrogen and oxygen. The water itself was a balm of sorts that dissolved all other materials within it, rich in oxygen and the soluble fissile matter – neutrons floated throughout, and a reaction underwent.
The balm was warm and radioactive. Arkady could feel the heat as he floated through it, yet would not feel the genetic damage of nuclear radiation. That was what the suit was for, though even then he could have swam within the fluid finely. The suit was more there to supply him compressed air to breathe, as Arkady was functionally immune to radiation.
He worked around these machines a lot, and though the heart was unique among them, the radiation they all exuded was a common underlying factor. Site-Aorta had helped him, implanted Arkady with a biotic web of conduits that lay like nerves beneath his skin: they could swallow and dissipate radiation easily, and he would suffer no ill effects other than a sick feeling in his stomach. He often worried that he himself was a risk, that the ARK-Implant in his back soaked up radiation like a sponge, and that those around him would suffer as a result. He had been assured that was not the case, yet the worry still lingered in his mind. He swam ahead, pushing through the balm of the natural nuclear reactor. He was in a ventricle of sorts, a quivering valve held open by muscular fibres separating one chamber from the next. There were no issues with the valve; he made a mental note and proceeded. In the atrium ahead were two great pipes that shook, leading above and down into the conduits of Site-Aorta. Silver metal grates had been grafted over them; the fluid would flow, yet prevented anything undesirable from falling down into the arteries and veins of the site. Arkady checked to make sure they were devoid of blocking detritus. They were; he looked down to the blackness of the tunnel, seeing nothing but hundreds of meters of tube beneath him, and swam back into the ventricle. Unlike a human heart, the heart of this reactor bore a vent in its central muscular wall, a large surface of flexed plates that allowed balm to flow fluidly within it, pushed by the quaking motions of the beating rhythm. Arkady slipped through the vent, not moved by the pulsing as the radioactive ichor flowed gently around him. Another ventricle, this one with a valve worn and broken, now sat before him: he swam over to the valve and saw the silver stent that held it open. It was of the staff's construction, a hastily-made implement to keep the reactor running. It seemed to be working well, and again he made another mental note. Replacement would not be needed for some time, it seemed. Into the atrium and another two pipes hang, both travelling up into darkness. No blockage; no detritus. Clear. That concluded the observational section of the task: Arkady reached down to his trouser leg and fumbled with the plastic, separating a small token from its side and holding it up into the water. He floated calmly, pressing the button down and waiting. A light shone within it: blue at first, then shifting to green. Uranium was still present, it seemed, as were the proteins and neutrons that facilitated the fission. That was it, then. A brief job yet one important to the function of the site, and one that Arkady always found interest in. He swam back to the airlock, sealing the door behind him as water drained from the tube. The metal was stained red, now; the trickling flow of beads of blood wept down the sides, collecting in the drain before being pushed back into the heart that quivered behind the airlock door. He stepped back and undid the helmet and trousers, all blood having drained from them, the suit unsealing and shifting back to a coat again. He fumbled with the buttons, pulling it from his torso and folding it neatly, hanging it on the rack beside the trousers and helmets. Though he had needed it whilst trudging around the site and performing the odd-jobs that the Old Man wanted, it would not be needed now. Arkady checked his watch, sighed and left the metal cylinder, taking one last look to the heart before departing into the upper reaches of the Site. As he walked Arkady felt a tingling in his back as the Ark-Implant beneath his skin began filtering out minute quantities of radiation he had absorbed. Quite typical. He tutted.
The rest of Site-Aorta was largely comprised of hollow tunnels, a labyrinth of maze-like structures that weaved together at strange and indecipherable angles, as random as the tunnels of an ant's nest. There was a purpose to the maddness, yet that purpose was obfuscated by a confusion that the tunnels and their bizarre order imposed. Arkady was among the very few who got lost in the site, as most thoroughly understood the many winding routes it bore. Most were abandoned, the majority thoroughly uninhabited. A handful were wide and cavernous, ill-lit or without illumination entirely. There were spherical atriums and large chambers completely dark, without any light. There were likely others still that had been thoroughly unmapped, the staff of Site-Aorta only hacing charted an estimated 30% of the overall structure. Only a third of that charted 30% bore any inhabitance to speak of. It was, naturally, a little unnerving to think about just how deep in the earth the site stretched. It was of intricate architecture yet bore the overall silhouette of a corskscrew or helix, with a bulbous top end alike a human heart. The rugged hexagon that punctuated the crust of the siberian permafrost was but one extruted end of this heart-like structure, one of the wide and flatcapped "arteries" that sprung from the heart's overhead aorta. There were two other structures like this, hexagonal pillars that jutted up like antennae, yet neither were as large as the central cap that breached the planet's crust. There was anatomical congruency in the form of the heart at the tip of Site-Aorta, with it bearing long and slender tubes at the locations of major veins and arteries. Instead of diverging to form a facsimile of the blood vessels of a human, however, they wove together in looping forms, the pulmonary arteries and veins linking alongside the vertical vena cava to form wide rings that encompassed the entirety of the site. There were axis in these rings, as well as similar gyroscope-like mechanisms in the roots of the corkscrew segments. It seemed that they had been used to keep balance, to spin the segments around ne another like the rings of a planet, twisting and rotating yet never breaking. The natural nuclear reactor was only one of the oddities in the site.
Arkady thought about these oddities a lot, perhaps due to the precise nature of his employment at Site-Aorta. His time here was split, split between Site-Aorta and Mt. Asgard. He was not the only one set up in this manner, though he was the only one who spent the majority of his time at the mountainside facility of Mt. Asgard. A few others were employed there: Eamon and Verity he worked with closely. Both were present in the Continuity site yet he scarcely spoke to them in his work. They had their own tasks to do. Wilfryd, however, was different. Wilfryd worked in Britain, in the "Cohesion" site of Continuity Corporations. Floss remained here: they were split apart yet worked together as one whole, all reporting to the same leader. The same team.
That leader was a strange fellow; someone that Arkady had scarcely seen hide or hair of. He didn't even know his name. Wilfryd simply called him the "Old Man", and it was at his whims that Eamon, Floss and the others worked. He had been here for a long, long time – longer than any of his workers, and seemed to have a deep connection to Site-Aorta and its staff. He bore a sharp interest in the NGO bodies of the world, Continuity Corporations and Burya Pharmaceuticals in particular. They were the source of his work, as were the strange connections that seemed to lie between them. There were underhanded developments happening, it seemed, two of the eyepatch-wearing figureheads of Burya bearing a strong if tenuous relationship with the management of Continuity Corporations. The leader of Continuity Corporations was a strange fellow, Elohim being too young and too inexperienced for the position. His father, Javier Reginald Lightfoot, had vanished and given the company to his only child: perhaps that disappearance was the interest. Perhaps the interest lay in the matter of Elohim's manager-turned-vizier, Scalar. It was with that man that the tenuous relationship bloomed. Yes, there was something happening in Continuity Corporations: something that the Old Man sought to learn more about. His precise methods were strange, singular events that weaved together to create an interconnected web of knowledge and understanding. There were times that Arkady had to simply trust the Old Man's judgement, unable to see how the activities he was completing bore any relevance to the wider task at hand. It was only in hindsight that he could ever see the intricacies of what he schemed, yet in the present moment no hindsight was necessary. The Old Man wanted to infiltrate Mt. Asgard, that much was clear. He bore three operatives at crucial positions in the site, a fourth a stone's throw away and carefully monitoring company relations. Arkady could think of multiple reasons for as to what this was all for, yet none seemed to stick in certainty. Whatever the matter was, it would have to be something noteworthy to drive the Old Man's interest so thoroughly, especially coming off the tail of their discovery in Alaska.
The Old Man seemed to hold contempt for everyone in the institution he was observing, yet loathed Devyat and Emmie with a strong, strong hatred. That was what Arkady could decipher, at least. Wilfryd was the true messenger from the Old Man to the world, and those messages were scarcely pleasant. He had encountered Devyat and Emmie on scarce occasions, relaying sour warnings to the pair, only to be met with hollow grins and shaded threats. Things were heating up. Verity – the newest addition to the team and Wilfryd's sister – had been hired as an undercover operative of sorts, that operation the springboard that had catapulted them all into this mess. Arkady thought about it as he passed the promenade, walking by the classroom where Floss would be teaching the children. Catnap would be among them. The operation, initially, had been quite simple. Verity had been implanted with a littony of technology as a part of her Continuity Corporations work, and that technology had allowed her to supress paralysis implants found throughout Burys facilities. That and other pieces of technology held in Site-Aorta – technology that Arkady knew little about and did not yearn to understand – made the infiltration process easy. Verity was not afraid to die, there, and instead drew Wilfryd, Eamon and Arkady to the site where she was held. It began with a medical trial set up by Burya Pharmaceuticals. Verity signed up to it. A few days in a hospital lead to weeks in the cold of the Alaskan taiga, the nature of the trail having thoroughly changed. She met requirements held by Burya, these requirements eliciting her transfer to the compound. It disturbed Arkady to think of, the simplicity of it all.
Verity had been transferred to that deplorable place because she was fertile; because she could have children. Even so, that arbitrary requirement seemed to bear no relation to the nature of the compound. It was a torturous place, people divided into groups then poked and prodded like lab rats. Some underwent trials of mental conditioning that – from Verity's brief descriptions – could only be likened to psychological torment. Chemical control methods merged with the paralysis of the implants to create total bodily control, surgeries mashing the brain, killing those who were lucky and lobotomising those who were not. There was a grotesque method to it all, by Verity's account. Three buildings for three types of torment: physical, mental and chemical. In the end, the majority of the women – not having the robust implants Verity bore – died. It was disturbing, yet most disturbing was the situation of Catnap: the Girl, seven years old, who lived there. It was an uncomfortable, horrible situation to examine, made all the more unnerving by the fact that – through sensical deduction alone – she did not fit the arbitrary requirement that sent all the other women there.
No, something else was amiss with Catnap. She had been poked and prodded, injected and altered, with so many chemicals and drugs that making a comprehensive list of them all was a chore. Under typical circumstances it would have fried her brain, turned her into a mindless husk or killed her outright. These were not, as it seemed, typical circumstances.
Something else had been injected into the pineal gland of her brain: a protein. It glued her psyche together, made her resistant to psychological torment. Everything fell into place around it; Catnap would retain her extraordinary features for her entire life. Wounds healed rapidly, her brain never truly slept. She had increased strength, though only the increased strength of a seven year old. Her development was to be something closely monitored by Site-Aorta, not to cage, but to protect her and her peers. Arkady feared for the girl, and though her development was far away, hoped that it would invariably go smoothly. They had good reason to believe it would, though. Her psychological issues were being worked on, slowly and patiently, by Floss and the rest of the teaching team. The chemicals in her body had largely broken down, the alterations shifting from something injected to alterations intrinsic to her being: the healing, the strength, the narcolepsy – it was in her DNA. In her genome, held together by that protein that had suffused itself with her body. That protein was a powerful thing: it was the protein that regulated the nuclear reactions in the heart of Site-Aorta, and the protein that made up Floss' inhuman body. Several questions arose around this.
Why where they doing this? That was the chief question. Arkady had an idea, but it was not a pretty one.
Where did they get the paralysis implants from? This bore a clear answer, though raised another question: from Continuity Corporations, from the connection between Scalar and Emmie and Devyat. The question, then, was simple: why would Continuity Corporations work with them? Arkady did not have a clear answer for this. He was certain the Old Man didn't either, and hoped that was the interest they were working towards unravelling.
The last question was the most perplexing, Arkady thought. How did Burya Pharmaceuticals get the protein? Arkady could answer it, though it was not a good answer and raised another question in its wake. They got it from the Blood Rains. They fell from the sky frequently over Alaska, in small regions where no-one lived. They were elusive to catch, quick in nature and astonishingly rare. Yet, when the rains fell, the protein fell with them. The question followed naturally:
What are the Blood Rains?
Arkady wandered the curling hallways of Site-Aorta understanding that the time he had left in his visit was minimal. He would not get to see Floss again, it seemed: it was nearing midday and she would still be teaching, his scheduled ride out back to Mt. Asgard less than an hour away. He sighed. Not many others had been passed as he wandered the hallways, having lingered in the central atrium and now on his way to the internal Site Aorta library. It was somewhat similar to Mt. Asgard in that manner: a colossal facility that served to be a self-contained ecosystem, inhabited by far less people than it should be. Mt. Asgard was empty in a hollow manner – one lying in wait for a sudden burst in population. Site-Aorta was one more secret. Evidently, more people could live in here should the need arise. The 30% figure was no lie: there were swathes of tunnel and conduit left unexplored, left unknown. It was simply a matter of secrecy that kept Site-Aorta hidden. Perhaps the two facilities were comparable in that regard. The ring-like halls wound on: Arkady continued. A prickling idea cropped up in the back of his mind that perhaps he had taken a wrong turn, the thought diminished when the curved corner opened up into a wide, spherical room lined with wooden bookshelves, the white ring-shaped light on the ceiling beaming radiance down into the space. Powered by the heart, activated by body heat. That was how the lights worked. An atrium in pitch black darkness would glow to one of brilliant light if someone stepped inside it, their body heat activating an unseen mechanism and setting the space to light. Arkady wondered just how much of Site-Aorta was darkened as he looked through the bookshelves, a colossal collection split between several layers of ring-shaped balconies. Mainly anatomical textbooks, encyclopedias, scientific journals and the like – it was the personal collection of the site staff, and the staff seemed to be of a singular mind in terms of interest and hobbies. He wasn't looking for anything in particular, walking between the shelves for something to do as the time swooped by. He looked from book to book, spine to spine. There were several that were interesting and – just as his time in the library was to come to an end – he paused, looked to the bottom shelf, and snatched a book up. It was an old tome, dusty. Ancient and perhaps outdated, a journal on nuclear fission. He chortled to himself and slid it back into the shelf. An old book of his – he smirked. Arkady didn't realise that he had a fan in the Site-Aorta staff.
Arkady strolled from the library, his ride only a few minutes away. He bore no intention of being late, though knew that – lost as he could be in the winding darkness of the veins – those waiting for him would not leave immediately. It was not as if they were waiting for anyone else, after all: he walked through the white-lit monochrome of the site at a brisk pace, hands in his pockets, and tasted the dusty petrichor that seemed to cling to the Site's air. It never rained in here, of course, yet that earthy scent of land-after-rain remained always, particularly in the tunnels scarcely inhabited. Perhaps it was a testament to the ancient nature of the site, a telltale to the true age of the black metal that eluded any attempt to categorise or date. It was metal; that was known. It bore chemical similarities to tungsten: its strength and density, yet otherwise evaded meaningful categorisation. It was an alloy, it seemed, once taut and malleable yet now set and stiff. In molecular structure it was a lattice, tungsten beads woven around and between great clots of carbon: it was a carbide, tough and impenetrable, that sat as an immovable welt in the earth, some internal mechanical rogans shuddering with electrical stimulation yet retaining rigidity nonetheless. The precise nature of it did not bother Arkady: it was beyond his area of expertise and did not – form his perspective, at least – concern him in the slightest.
The wide vein opened up into another atrium, this one a large spheroid shape ribbed with descending pillars that curved like coffee-cup handles around the room. They encapsulated a central pillar, raised slightly, with a large ramp snaking down its side in a spiral. There were other entrances to the chamber, the vein Arkady stood in one of three that opened in colossal apertures spaced equidistantly across the squat-roofed spheroid. Strange architecture. Whatever purpose had this once served? Arkady walked ahead into the chamber, passing the ring-like gap of empitness as he approached the curled cage and the raised pillar within. Many routes lead to this place, veins and arteries trailing into it as if it were a crucial organ: small capillaries dotted the perimeter of the curved ceiling above like ducts, tiny shafts that would under typical circumstances house insects or bats, yet in the dark petrichor of the site remained silent. The light above, white and circular, was active and shone brightly down onto the pillar: between the curled forms of the cage, Arkady could see a silhouette standing. He walked forwards, the gaps between the curves large enough for him to pass through, and slinked up the steep ramp.
"Arkady."
Wilfryd stood alone on the top of the pillar, leaning on his cane and dressed warmly. He had a long, black coat and dark hat and gloves, the blackness of his clothing matching the darkness of his hair and the black patch over his right eye. He was alone.
"Wilfryd." Arkady grumbled, a shortness in his breath from having ascended the ramp.
"The reactor?"
"Nothing bad. The transmission was sent through the scanner, the Old Man's been made aware," he stretched his back and pulled his arms over his head momentarily, a tiredness having set in through him. "Better than Asgard's, still. No clue how they've got theirs running, the buggered thing."
Wilfryd smiled subtly and looked to the white light above him, bright yet not hurting his eye.
"And Floss?"
"She's alright. Working with Catnap now."
"How's she getting on? Give me some good news, Arkady."
Arkady shrugged.
"Hell if I know, really. Floss says that she's making progress, but the... issues... will still probably be there. She's not speaking much, but is more comfortable around the other children. As for the... changes, well, the lab's stumped. How the hell she lived through all of that, then had the protein integrate into her brain, is for anyone's guess, really. As is how the fuckers even got their hands on it to begin with."
"That's not good news, not really."
"Well it's what I've got, Wilfryd. And you?"
Wilfryd looked down from the light.
"There was an operation made two days ago. By Veritas, to track down a missing shipment of D3 Paralysis Chips. They were able to track the shipment down to a remote region of Alaska, yet were ambushed. Some firefight, it seems. They didn't find the crate, yet did find something – someone – else. Fiona Pullip."
"Lightfoot's old assistant?"
Wilfryd nodded.
"She's amnesiac. Can't remember her time at CC. She does, however, remember being chased by people. Hunted. The compound she was kept in – that Veritas raided – was a country club of a sorts. One where they chased Pullip through the woods with rifles and whistles, like hunters chasing game. Her descriptions were disturbingly vivid."
"And?"
"They match up with descriptions of the guards that Verity saw. As does the architecture: prefabricated concrete, almost brutalist. The two compounds are almost three hundred kilometers apart."
"Some sort of joint operation?"
"Well, Fiona has been able to describe several of her tormentors in great detail."
"And?"
"The leader of the group – the one who spearheaded the hunts – was Devyat."
Arkady fell silent for a moment.
"You're sure?"
Wilfryd nodded.
"You think the two locations are related?"
"In a direct way? I doubt it. I think Fiona was one of Devyat's... personal experiments."
"Like Catnap?"
Wilfryd nodded. Akrady sighed.
"The compound itself was trapped with a mortar and brittle snow. The hunters were armed with bullets able to pierce the Epsilon women's armour. It was a miracle that not one of the Veritas or Epsilon people died."
Arkady looked to Wilfryd: the man leaned on his cane and bore a stark, pondering expression. Arkady knew the look: he could not help but feel that Wilfryd had more to say, and examined the debriefing he had just received.
"You're not convinced?"
"Not at all. Quite the coincidence that Veritas – with Albatross and the Epsilon women included – would be sent to a mission that appeared, let's say, more hazardous than they first imagined."
Arkady sighed.
"Do you want me to call Eamon?"
Wilfryd looked back up to the light for a moment, the subtle smile creeping again over his half-paralysed face. He'd just gotten off the phone with someone. Adelaide had a new friend.
"No," he said, "I don't think we'll have to."
MARCH 13 2021
Snow crunched underfoot as Wilfryd walked, his breath a grey mist that frosted in the morning dew. His sister, bloodied and bruised, hobbled beside him. Like himself, she now walked with a cane. Far from his own paralysis, however, her limp was due to a deep gauge in the side of her leg, one carved into the flesh from the icepick of a madman. She winced with every step, wrapped in a warm coat the three men had taken with them in the car. She could – perhaps should – have stayed in the car, yet instead had insisted to join Wilfryd and Arkady in their search. The Girl knew Verity, trusted her, and perhaps that trust would extend to Wilfryd and Arkady with her presence. There was a danger to be found with the Girl, a danger innate to her fear and strength. Eamon was out of action, resting in the coffin at the back of their car. His neck had been slashed open by her, no small feat, and now the skin and muscle stitched itself together. The Girl had shown fear when Eamon had tried to approach her, yet there was hope that – perhaps some day – there would be understanding between the Girl and he. They seemed to bear similar physical qualities: innate strength, durability and a healing factor. Inhuman. Wilfryd and Arkady had a guess in their mind for as to what exactly caused the Girl to bear such qualities, though neither at the time knew they were right. The protein – the altering enzyme found within the blood rains and the balm of Site-Aorta – coursed through the Girl's veins, just as it did through Eamon and Floss.
Wilfryd kneeled down, the dark shapes of pine trees looming either side of him. It was a narrow trail that they followed, one that had tailed off from the outskirts of the prefabricated village of Layman. They had torn through the village, ripped through cardboard buildings and churned over several guards, spinning through the roads by the forest until they swung over into the backwood snow. The trail had been visible from the side of the road, dragging and deep, tiny footprints smashed upon the snow and mud. There was an immediate change in demeanour, and all three of the car's mobile inhabitants rushed out to investigate. Wilfryd leered down to the muddy trail and looked up to the snow ahead: the trees diverted into a wide basin, a field of sorts blanketed in frost. The trail continued, ending in a low ditch in the middle. He rose to his feet.
"She-she's here?"
Verity asked. Her voice was tired and shaky, almost hoarse in tone. Wilfryd looked to his sister. Between Verity, Wilfryd and Arkady, she was the only one who bore both eyes. Arkady looked around, groping at his belt and pulling a small firearm from beneath his shirt. There was silence. He grumbled something in his low voice, a sputtering remark of displeasure, as his vision darted across the treeline. It was too cold, the sun shining in a sky that seemed bleached white and icy, devoid of clouds yet bitter and chilling nonetheless. It cast a flat light upon the snow, ice turned to glitter. Wilfryd walked forward. The frost enveloped his silhouette and, mist shimmering around him as he approached, the taiga seemed empty. Silence rang, marred only by the footfalls of their steps, Verity's shallow breaths distant even as she stood only a few feet behind him. He focused upon the trail, a dark stretch that scratched down through the snow, a bisection that lead to a darkened pit before him. He leaned, then snapped his vision upwards.
The darkness was not the trailing of mud – not around the aperture of the hole. It was part mud, yes, yet the snow was slushy and pinkish, the mud itself a sickly crimson. Blood, splattered in composition. It soaked and saturated the land, yet had been painted atop the landscape without a definite source. Wilfryd looked up to the sky and frowned. There were no clouds to be seen, all white and empty aside from thin blankets of cloud around the edge of the horizon.
"What is it, Wilfryd?"
He looked back down to the hole and peered within. A figure, tiny, curled around a mess of bloody fabric, hair turned to wiry clumps as it grew saturated with blood. The form curled and looked up to him, face young and spattered with blood. He flinched back, standing back atop the snow as Verity rushed forward, the Girl crawling from her hole – bloody fox-skin and icepick in hand – yet faltering when she saw Verity. The Girl paused and stood, her clothes tattered and bloody, parka a dark red from the blood soaked upon it.
"Sweetie..." Verity said, her voice a hush whisper. The Girl looked to her. Crawling atop hands and knees like an infant toddler, the child – clutching the barbed implement of the ice-pick and the torn flesh of the fox – looked feral, animalistic, a deep fear in her eyes juxtaposed by the goriness of her situation. Blood chapped her lips, matter her hair, crusted down atop the pinkish fabric of her coat, the white light above casting a dim, thin shadow beneath her that sharpened her silhouette and features, face and body equally lit in totality; in light that occluded no shadow aside from a thin splotch beneath her. She stood, short and ghoulish, and looked to the three people before her. A whisper shook from Arkady's lips, inaudible to Wilfryd and Verity as they stood, silent, The Girl staring down to them for a long and cold clutch of seconds as flecks of snow descended from above. Quiet snowflakes, delicate petals; they hit the ground in thin clumps, filling the gouged tracks of their footsteps and obfuscating them forever. It was a slow process, one just beginning as the snow fell, yet the lines had been blurred. They could not be found, not any more. The Girl dropped the sopping rag of flesh and walked, hobbling soundlessly, towards Verity, wrapping her small arms around the woman as she stumbled back and let out a sharp exhalation of pain. The Girl rested her head on Verity's stomach, looking sideways to Arkady and Wilfryd, eyes unblinking and wide.
Time passed as they stood around the fox-hole of the snowy basin, Arkady nervously checking the surrounding taiga as he jammed the decrepit pistol back into his belt. His breathing was shaky; panicked, not wanting to linger, and in the silence Wilfryd understood his anxiety. He looked, pleading, to Verity.
"Come on." He said, "Time to go now. No use lingering."
Verity nodded and looked down to the Girl, the child's eyes flickering and fluttering in impromptu fatigue. She fell slack and stiff, Verity reaching down to catch her as she staggered unconscious into the snow, letting in a sharp inhale as her wounds stung once more. Arkady rushed ahead, lifting the comatose body of the child up into his arms.
She was light. She was so, so light.
Comments
Post a Comment