Continuity Corporations : Chapter 9 - It takes two

 

AUGUST 06 2021 

"Well", Scalar said, "I do hope this doesn't end in... in conflict for either of you." He looked up to Agent Gemini and A-65, holding a clipboard in his mechanical hand, standing before them as he was when they and the Epsilon Women were sent off to their ill-fated expedition to the brutalist storehouse, that sordid home of slavery and violence. The Epsilon women were not with them, now. Only a few others were, and in this scenario it was them who were the guards and firepower. The company CEO, Elohim, stood impatiently before Scalar, his two silver-masked servants either side of him. Gemini had not spoken to them, but knew their names: Ecstasy and Valium. Ecstasy was practically bouncing on his feet. Valium stood stooped, one arm at his bicep. She let out an internal sigh. Yeah, it was only natural to be anxious. This event they were going to, whatever it was, was something both Elohim and Scalar had boasted of being incredible importance, some grand event of riches and fortune, where reams of the wealthy would line up to potent technological investors from the world over. Continuity Corporations, Minerva Cybernetics, Burya Pharmaceuticals and others of a similar calibre would all be in attendance: it was, as such, to be quite a ball. 

Naturally, they were not taking the weapon-ready Cranefly over to the convention, yet Gemini saw it as they marched through the half-walled exterior tunnel to the landing pad. It looked small on the horizon, a dim black scratch against the whites and greys of the landing pads against the strong wall of the Mt. Asgard Site. There were, all in all, a good few people on this excursion, her and A-65 among a few other guards, those a part of the military "Delta-P" squadron. Her brother was a member of that unit, though he was not present in the group. They looked to be of the military type, soldiers with short-cut hair. More professional than Epsilon, perhaps, or at least attempting to look so. There were a lot of those Delta-P folks, a large mob sent to guard the VIPs of the expedition: Elohim and a chunk of Ambassadors, the highest of the high in the pyramid ecosystem of Continuity Corporations. And Elohim was bringing his two servants. It was a group of perhaps a dozen, too many to fit into the Cranefly regardless, yet even so Gemini felt a lingering sense of the forlorn as she stepped up into their vehicle, a large and well-stocked private plane. It was too much for her liking. The VIPs went in the front of the craft, moving down the long aisle and sitting against plush seats of beige. The Delta-P squadron sat in the segment over, seats larger and more communal. She, A-65, Ecstasy and Valium sat in the final, squat compartment. At least, perhaps, she was sitting with good company. The seats were squat and thin, windows a little dusty and tables a little sticky. The lights were blaringly artificial and shone amber in the cabin, the air cold. Two sets of seats sat at either side of the room, both with a table before them. She slumped in one, Valium and Ecstasy in the other, with A65 lingering a moment before sitting on the seat opposite her. She smiled. Some time passed: the plane took off, and no-one spoke. Valium sat anxiously, arms hugged against his side. A-65 leaned against the window, red-and-orange dreadlocks bright in the amber light as clouds and mountains rolled underfoot. They were splendorous. The mountains looked endless, large rock faces blending together into great swathes of grey defined by the constant visual noise, subtle and fine, that proliferated their faceted surfaces. They emerged between valleys of thick green and blue, where forests intersected with half-frozen rivers dotted by the vague proliferations of fauna and flora. The clouds sat above them, thin, the sky above blue-white and shining, the ineffective sun gleaming down upon an empty tableau glittering with its shell of powdered ice and frost.

 "Have you been sleeping alright, A-65?"

The frost glittered as the light hit it, individual points of reflection and refraction flaring out to form wide paths and lines that traced clouded patterns across the description. It looked like the entire mass of snow was one colossal snowflake, glittering with the forms of many. A-65 looked over to Gemini. He scratched his arm.

"Yeah," he said, "It's been better. I'm, uh, glad I told you about them. I don't know, it helped."

Gemini smiled. It had helped, and her expression was a comfort in the cold, cool air.

"I'm glad." She spoke softly. "This... thing we're going on, A-65, it'll be fine. I promise. It won't be like what happened last time."

He nodded and let out a mechanised sound: laugh, sigh or grumble. Gemini put her hand in the centre of the table, which the mask motioned down to for a moment.

"I'm fine." he said. "Really, I am."

Gemini put her hand in her pocket and looked out to the snow.

It was evening when they arrived, making landfall in a large airport nestled against a bustling city: Munich, Germany. Gemini had never been, nor had A-65. They were hurried out, then into the hefty transport that drove them into the city proper. A-65 looked out the window, then, stared to the darkened sky above. It was a quiet route they followed, one verged with fields and woodlands – different to those of Mt. Asgard, deciduous and green – and split up by fine regions of village and town. He hugged his arms into his chest. Looking at him, Gemini felt a panging urge to ask, again, if he was alright. If he was happy. His posture told her all she needed to know, however, and she understood what his answer would be. Biting her tongue, they continued. 

Soon, silent as ever, they entered the city proper. They unloaded their luggage and moved up to their rooms. Each had their own: it was a small and private space, smaller than their chambers at Mt. Asgard but more lavish in decoration and style. Softer bedsheets, beiger colours. The colour beige seemed to be popular. The state of affairs was then explained: not by one of the VIPs, but by one of Elohim's servants, a high-ranking anonymous fellow with a mane of pink hair, a silver shark tooth mask and a magenta sash: Ecstasy. Tomorrow was the day of the event: there would be a role call beforehand, early in the morning, then breakfast at the hotel lobby. They would make their way down there, delivering the goods of the presentation to be built up by venue staff. Their stall would be established mid-afternoon, with the early talks happening in the evening. From there on out, it was up to the VIPs for as to what their guards did: some would always be at their side as escorts, others always standing by the stall as others still ensured that all was going smoothly with venue staff. It seemed that the building was, naturally, quite ever so large. There would be break times and such where the guards could wander around the venue, and others when they were expected to accompany VIPs to important meetings. It would be a day long and official: Gemini sighed internally. It would be boring, but – hopefully – safe. She and A-65 would be ok.

*

The guards had funnelled into their rooms, some talking and jovial and others anxious, silent or quietly contemplating the events of the day to come. Ecstasy remained by himself in the small room supplied for him, sitting by a lamplit desk masked and writing. It was administrative work, some sort of form that dictated that he had done what he had done: that he had told the others of the day's goings-on, given them a time get up and a time to get dressed, and had double-checked that they understood the cold words of professionalism he had ushered. It was boredom; it was bureaucracy, plain and simple, easy enough to complete but a total slog regardless. Better get it done now, before the festivities of the morning. He had quite a day ahead of him, by all accounts.

There were certain flexibilities this position gave. Bonuses, he thought, confounded by the unique qualities of the region they now stayed within. The hotel was nice, yes, yet there was another excellence in its form: privacy. He heard a knock at the door.

"Come in."

 It was Valium: Ecstasy looked over to him. He was still nervous, still anxious, walking up towards the pink-haired man and dragging a short chair over the carpet. He sat down beside him. "I know you might not believe me," Ecstasy said, "But I've dealt with him before. Done something similar before, actually. And I'm stronger than I look."

Valium looked up to him, neutral mask seeming increasingly worried.

"Adelaide said he was dangerous. I just wish she hadn't have told me that. Everything else I'm fine with. It's not-not like I had much here, to begin with."

Ecstasy grunted.

"Tell me about it. But... well, the plan remains as it stands. Either we'll go now or we'll go later, doesn't really matter when, but when we're in we do some digging."

"Won't he just... lock us in a cage? Torture us? Ecstasy, I don't think that-"

"Devyat's a methodical fucker betrayed by his creativity. We've got weaving out of him down to a system."

"We?"

Ecstasy leaned closer.

"Oh yeah, we. There are a bunch of us, squirreled away elsewhere: me, you and Adelaide are only the beginning of it. Didn't she tell you?"

Valium leaned back and drew his hands over his chest.

"Yeah," he said, "She told me there's someone here I'd have to meet. That there are others at Mt. Asgard, too. A... a reactor engineer and one of the Veritas ladies."

"Arkady and Verity." Ecstasy nodded, scratching his chin under his mask.

"Oh, they're dolls. Verity actually escaped Devyat first-hand some months back, helped a fucking child escape too! And, uh, I've got a sister, too. She got out of his grasp."

Silence for a moment. Valium looked to Ecstasy.

"Ecstasy..." he said, voice a concerned whine, "What the fuck's going on? I thought you were just some new hire, then thought you were an agent from... from fuck if I know, some other company! Now I find out you're... you're what, some kind of spy? Some vindicator working against Burya?" Valium threw his hands up as if bermused, seeming upset and worried and sick with anxiety. Ecstasy felt a gnawing pit grow in his gut, a deep seed of pity. He pondered for a moment. He thought, and reached up to his mask, holding it with both hands and lifting it from his face. It took some effort to do so, the fabric sealed around it, yet it clicked off and free: moving it down onto the table, Valium saw him proper, and relaxed gently as he pulled the black half-balaclava down to his neck. The man was handsome, just as he looked on his file, though his hair was more rugged and his stubble a bit fuller. One eye was covered in a silver patch, the other with a thick shadow beneath it and a black eyeline over the lid. His cheeks were slim and toned, his nose blocky. Snake bite piercings sat under his lips. Ecstasy sat and looked at Valium for a minute, his expression at last discernable. Lips pursed, eye wincing – he had an inquisitive look about him, and smiled warmly to show crooked teeth in his mouth. They looked sharp, almost shark like: akin to those of the mask he bore.

He introduced himself to Valium, introduced himself properly. He told him his name, his proper name: Eamon Grayson. He told him about the man he wold speak to in the morning – another of Adelaide's friends, Wilfryd. He told him about his sister, Fiona, and Wilfryd's sister, Verity. He told him about Arkady and Catnap, and the dismal place they had found her in. He mentioned how Catnap had fought, yet how they had found her: how they had taken her back to their facility, black and sunken, and how she lived there now, peaceful as could be. It was a story, one hard to believe. Valium kept his mask on and remained silent.

He could not decide whether he believed it or not: there were links that made it believable and exaggerations that made it not. But Eamon remembered Catnap, and Valium saw the flickering of strained emotion over his face. Ecstasy remembered Catnap. And Valium remembered Fiona, the first who had came before him. Beaten and tortured for years and years by the man he now knew as Devyat.

Valium made up his mind, then. Anxious and worried, his decision had been made. He would go ahead with their plan, working with Adelaide as he already was, to help Eamon enter the horrendous Site of Devyat's home and release the robotic prisoner within. It was a far-fetched story. Ecstasy smiled and rubbed Valium's shoulder. Dejection seemed present: his shoulders sagged. 

"Hey." Ecstasy said, putting both hands on his arms as Valium looked up to him, "You'll be ok."

 "Yeah," Valium said, voice a low sigh: "I know I will. I just – I just hope that you will be, too. Adelaide didn't tell me a lot about that guy, but... just be careful. Please. Don't let him hurt you."

Eamon reached up to the man's masked face, flicking a lock of blonde hair out from before his eyes.

"Valium", he said, "I promise." He looked into the man's mask for a second, leaned forward, and planted a gentle kiss on the metal forehead. Valium leaned forward suddenly, wrapping both arms around Eamon and pushing his masked face into his shoulder. He had not known Eamon for long. Not at all, really, only a few months. Even so, as they worked together, he could not imagine having anyone else at his side.

AUGUST 07 2021 

Wilfryd stood in the event hall, waiting. Staring. There were stands aplenty across the large room, lit beautifully from the glass chandelier above, crowds of visitors clad in suit and dress walking in grim herds flocked by the promise and virtue of wealth: of bloody reimbursement against a planet they owned and ruled. His hair had been combed, his attire carefully put-together days before the event in question. He wanted to look as if he fit in, wanted to look the part. Feel the part, perhaps. His gouged eye helped, he found, to sell it. He was not the only one missing an eye, here. It was an insignia of sorts, birthed by a man long ago lost, a man he did not know yet whos lifeblood stirred on the events of the now. Javier Reginald Lightfoot; JRL. Elohim's father, the founder of Continuity Corporations. In his zeal, in an accident of fire and shrapnel, that single eye had been torn from his body. Now many subjected themselves to that same mutilation, an aspect of near-religious reverence that sat peculiar in Wilfryd's gut. His missing eye was a coincidence, but a favourable one at that. He would play the part. As he stepped through the halls, black suit stark against the whites and greys seen elsewhere, he counted.. one, two, three – four people all with the same eyepatch. Two of those four he knew, the others he did not. Emmie and Devyat, he saw them in their green suits, and they saw him too. The white-haired woman glanced to him for a moment, a moment too long, and smiled. One-eyed, she gave a long blink – a wink, perhaps? And whispered something to the tall man beside her. Stocky-jawed and distant, mouth a smile of perfect fluoride white. Devyat. The others were their lackeys, perhaps other soldiers sent out to the event as deckhands. Wilfryd felt a loathing feeling grow in his gut as his lip curled into a sneer. He leaned heavily on his cane as he passed them: what were their exhibits this year?

A mechanical heart, pumping balm through a cold machine, and a set of lungs. Silver lungs, inflating slowly. Those too were a symbol, another icon of cultish zeal. They came from the same origin as the missing eye: JRL. It was not a symbol for Emmie nor Devyat to use, butchered by Burya Pharmaceuticals as it had been. Feeling the emotions of a guilty pedant, loathing and grumbling, Wilfryd walked elsewhere. He passed the stall of Continuity Corporations, glancing at the head-monitor and half-built robot on display, and looked to the personnel around it. He smiled gently. He recognised one of them.

Francis Albatross: A-65.

Wilfryd knew that Albatross would not recognise him, though. But he knew him. He looked healthier than last he saw him, crushed beneath a building and burned badly, the servers and bricks over his legs dusty and cracked. Wilfryd had been the one to lift them up, Arkady lifting the dying man out from underneath and dragging them to the coffin within their car. He had been mumbling, talking about people chained. How the chairs were broken: how that was the easy part.

It had been a cold, cold day when that had happened, the fire melting frost as heat roared from the rubble. His skin sloughed off in great sheets, and for a minute it looked like all efforts were futile.

But it had all payed off, it seemed. All payed off. They kept him alive, kept him preserved, then put him at the rubble's edge when the cleaners arrived. He would have died otherwise. But now here he was, there he stood! Healthy, anxious, excitable – with all the ripe emotions of a functioning human! He spoke to Agent Gemini and she smiled, catching Wilfryd's glance as she looked out into the hall. She paused, and waved him over. Wilfryd knew of Gemini too.

"I didn't know you would be here!"

"Well, it's not official, Gemini. I bought my own ticket, you know! Cost a damn fortune."

"A-65," Gemini said, gesturing to the black-suited man who stood by the desk, "This is Researcher Shiftweight. Or-uh-do you just go by your actual name now? He quit the company, you know." Wilfryd smiled sheepishly and looked down to his cane. A-65 was finding it difficult to pin an age on the man. From some expressions, in some lights, he looked no older than he or Gemini. Conversely, other expressions showed him to be much older, an industry veteran or retiree.

"Oh," he said, "Just on medical leave for a bit. Leg's still fucked." She hummed and nodded thoughtfully. Wilfryd held a hand out to A-65: with trepidation, the masked man shook it. "Wilfryd Jonathan," he said, "I do... research work for Continuity Corporations' Site in the UK, Cohesion."

 A-65 nodded.

"Oh," he said, "Yeah, I was told about that. Yorkshire Moors? That's near..." He trailed off lowly, looking to Gemini then to Wilfryd: "I've been there before. Well, not the Site. I've been to the moors there, though." "Hmmmm. Yes, they're wonderful. All... gothic and such." Wilfryd waved his hand noncommittedly. Gemini gestured to A-65 with both gauntleted hands: 

"This is A-65," she said, "He's a... new hire at Veritas." Wilfryd gave a brief half-smile, looking between them. "We've... we've had a few people join recently, in fact. Another Anonymous folk, A-18, but... well, she's not here at the minute."

Silence cast between the three of them.

"Work, then?" Wilfryd asked. Gemini gave a begrudging nod.

"Yeah," she said, "I mean-hell, you said you got your own ticket, I'm sure CC would have gotten you one but... well, they'd've had you standing around like us, wouldn't they? I won't keep you if you're busy, Wilfryd, I just thought I'd say hi." She shrugged, Wilfryd looking over to the wares across the table and the associated – high – price tags attached to them. It was all high-and-mighty, held in such a baroque regard, but in form the gathering was little more than a comic convention for folks with more money than sense and a gourmandic lust for the excess. He bade the two farewell and walked off, privy to the crawling sensation against his back: the sense of being watched. Not by Gemini or A-65: the two were talking and jovial. No, Devyat and Emmie. He grumbled again soundlessly, and entered the growing crowd. There was safety in numbers, even if his acceptance into the mass was precedented only on appearances. He loathed Devyat, he loathed Emmie, and he loathed this broiling mass of consumeristic ignorance around him. He loathed the suffering that had occurred at their hands, and knew that – with planning and execution – that he could spearhead an attack upon their greatest invention: the cruel machination of pain and birth that sat deep in the bowels of Mt. Asgard. Sponsored by evil, bought by evil and bred for evil. He disappeared into the crowd, and for a moment felt as if without identity: there were new fellows to bring in to this plan, and he would reveal all he could in due time.

It was not due to laziness that he did not reveal the subterranean truth to them, nor was it fear: many simply were not ready, not prepared to know the depth and depravity of the situation at hand.

For the immensity of the building the sordid venue was held within, quiet spaces were few and far between. The building was majoritarily comprised of common rooms such as the exhibition auditorium and lecture theatres and private spaces that were off-limits to guest access: fire escapes, subterranean tunnels, gantries and the like. As such, to find a quiet space in previous casings of the venue, Wilfryd had diverged from the main central masses of the halls and walked through the long, winding, art-filled halls, those with ceilings supported by pillars and wall-sized windows of glass. One of these hallways, nestled afar from the upper hall of the exhibition space, bore a small divot in one corner, where a lonely and plush sofa sat. It was there that Wilfryd had chosen to make his meeting. He sat and waited, placing his cane over his lap and resting his jaw atop a fist. Wilfryd thought. Whether or not this operation – the operation he and his sister and Arkady and Eamon were a part of – was in a good or bad position was yet to be seen, and that final decloration of standing could only be gleamed through action. There were a great many variables at play, too many for the man to think of in one sitting, and the complexity of the conspiricy he felt he was up against seemed vast. They were only at the position they stood in due to coincidence, it was as simple as that, and he feared that such coincidence was banking on an impossible gambit, and could be unwound far too easily.

What was happening with A-65? What about Fiona? Finding Fiona seemed to be one hell of a coincidence, especially for A-65 to find her. There was something amiss there, he knew it: he had no proof; no evidence. It was a coincidence too rich to be true, he was certain. The man had blown up that facility – a processing site used by the Trinity of Devyat, Emmie and Scalar to traffic – yet he had only discovered it by chance. Without his blast, Burya would not have fallen jittery. Without that, Wilfryd and Arkady would not have investigated, and they never would have known: A-65 would have died and one colossal coincidence would have slipped from their grasp. But he had survived. He had been operated on, had his memory wiped, was saved from extinction – and went on to find someone else, someone that Wilfryd had assumed long dead, in a situation blaringly similar to that of the facility he had destroyed. Wilfryd sighed. There was something afoot, here, he knew it.

Time passed. Footsteps echoed out behind him: Wilfryd turned to the noise, which split across the frozen silence of the distant corridor. It was Valium, the masked man hugging his arms as he marched over the space and sat down, silent, opposite Wilfryd. Wilfryd looked to him for a moment: Valium, his hand covered in a wooly black bodysuit, moved up to brush some hair out from his mask.

"Eamon told me to speak with you." he said, "He told me that you would have answers."

"I do." Wilfryd said, puffing his chest out and wiping his hand on a lapel of his black suit. "I'm a friend of Eamon's. We've together for a while: Wilfryd Jonathan." He held out his hand: Valium shook it.

"I-I'm, uh, A-62. Valium." Wilfryd paused, looking to him and smiling, trying his hardest to seem warm.

"I'm a Continuity Corporations employee myself, but this... this isn't Mt. Asgard. You don't have to give me your fake name." Valium gave pause. He seemed shift, suspicious, fidgeting anxiously with his thin hands wrapped one atop the other.

"I don't know." He said, "I... there's a part of me that's quite anxious. That I'm doing something wrong, that this could be a set-up, that I'm not supposed to be here." Wilfryd sat back and nodded. From Valium's perspective, he seemed affable enough. The man held out both hands. 

"You spoke to Eamon?"

"Eamon? Yeah, I did. I, uh, knew him as Ecstasy before."

"You trust him?"  

A moment.

"Yeah. I do. I just don't know about all this."

"Well, we've known each other for a long time. Longer than you think, Valium."

Again, Valium paused. He was looking down to the floor, he hadn't realised it but he had been, staring away from Wilfryd and avoiding eye contact. He looked up to him.

"My name – my real name – is Grant. Grant Erin." Perhaps he gave in too easily. Wilfryd smiled. It was a warm and genuine smile, made off putting by the strange uncanniness of the man: his long, choppy black hair, unclean, and his strangely ageless visage. 

"Thank you." He said, "It's nice to meet you, Grant. Eamon's told me a lot about you."

"He has?"

 "He's told me enough. Enough so that I can... ah, piece together the remaining fragments. You know of Fiona Pullip?"

"A-18." He mumbled, sitting back in uncomfortability and raising his thin arms over his chest. The fabric of the magenta shirt seemed thin, too thin to be warming. Even as the summer humidity set in, fans supped hot air from the building: Wilfryd imagined that the man was cold. "Yes," He continued, "Uh, Adelaide told me about her." 

The Spider. Hanging from the underside of her prison. Wilfryd smiled. "She was Elohim's... assistant before me or Eamon. Taken away somewhere and only recently recovered. Tormented, it seems."

Wilfryd nodded.

"Tell me," he said, "What do you know about Burya Pharmaceuticals? Or the man known as Devyat?" 

Valium looked up and around the room. It was empty, the noise of the ball elsewhere distant. It felt like they were talking about something forbidden, though, something that could not be overheard. His voice was hushed.

"Adelaide told me about him, too." Valium said, "Told me he's dangerous. That he was the one who hurt Fiona. And Eamon... Eamon spoke in hyperbole. Mentioned in wavering terms, broadly, about others. Others working with you and him who've got out from Devyat and others like Fiona who've been hurt by him."

Wilryd nodded.

"We," he said, "Are... well, we don't really have a name. We work at a place known as Site-Aorta. It's far away from here, in Siberia. It's hidden." "And you... work at Continuity Corporations, too?"

Wilfryd shifted.

"It's a strange relationship. So often, it seems, that... well, we work against Continuity Corporations. But we are not opposed to them, none of us are. We – many of us – are rooted in it's history. I work there. My sister, Verity, does too – you'll meet her soon enough. My friend Arkady does. Eamon, obviously, does. And now you do, too. Yes Continuity is a self sabotaging thing. It's leader, Elohim, conspires. His subordinates, Scalar and Cerebellum, conspire. They have a deep and strange history that we've been trying to unravel. We know bits and pieces of it, lived through others. Others still are hidden in shadow, trapped, and we work to illuminate them."

Valium looked, silent, towards the man. He knew little of the history of the company that employed him.

"What do you mean?" He asked. Wilfryd's face flickered a smile birefly, and he fastened his suit as he shuffled. The room was still empty

"Continuity Corporations began as a segment of the CIA in the 70s. At the time it was known as 'Project Scalar', with the crude and laughable goal of creating sapient and thoughtful artificial intelligence. They created a variety of models. Some were motile, able to walk around, others still and inert: like computers, chained to their desks. They thought and dreamed, not quite human but not quite not. And they adapted. They grew in an almost biological sense: the partnership of Project Scalar stretched far, to the soviet region, and in that connections were made. The leader of the project was known as Javier Reginald Lightfoot, or just 'JRL'. He is the father of Elohim, Coninuity Corporations' CEO. There were others involved, too. Emmie and Devyat. Those are fake names, we assume. There's little on either of them, and their age betrays their looks. They are old, older than you or I, but do not look days over forty. At the start of the project, they were teenagers. Lovesick, perhaps, Emmie a sadist and Devyat a masochist. A bizarre relationship. Yet they contributed what they could to the project, and made the Ais think. Whatever they fed those machines, it gave them their minds, and gave them thought that cannot be replicated by modern technology. They are intelligent – truly intelligent. The project was, by all accounts, a roaring success, yet the Ai minds were sealed in vaults beneath the earth. One exist under Continuity Corporations. Her name is Adelaide. Her fellows are hidden elsewhere, unseen. She believes that another, Aeries, now sits with Devyat and Emmie. The other thirteen – the immobile – have been disseminated elsewhere."

"After the robotic minds of Project Scalar were sent away, the exact nature of the project changed. The employees changed, as did the project name: it was no longer Project Scalar, it was now Gate-Tech. They were a private sector, founded and ran by JRL. There were faces old and new in that group: Emmie and Devyat stuck around. Perhaps the brightest of the bunch were two scientists they hired. One, a nuclear physicist: Arkady. Our Arkady. The other was a theoretical physicist known as David Moore. JRL was calling shots this time, and though it was him who received the glory of their efforts, it was Moore who saw it to fruition. They, at JRL's wishes, wanted to create a Gateway. A Gate to another world that humanity could live upon. And, well, they got close. Moore created the portal, Arkady the reactor to power it. There were bodies that could help them, lab techs to record results, and slaves of Emmie and Devyat who befell test after test." Wilfryd let out a sigh. It was a long, hollow sound. "In the end, they got their gateway to work, albeit briefly. The reactor failed: the gateway broke. Cut out the eye of Arkady and JRL. Caused a tremendous fire that took many. Others still were exposed to aberrant radiations. Some simply vanished. The Gateway worked, though. There just needed to be some time for the technology to catch up. And catch up it did: shortly after, the company pivoted into Continuity Corporations. The 80s had just started and they sold pharmaceuticals. There was a pivot. They created their first cybernetic implant, ELO-1. It developed and grew. Now we're here. JRL vanished, and ownership was passed on to his son. Lawrence Lightfoot: Elohim."

*

"He's a senior doctor. Or was one at the very least." Gemini said. She was leaning against a balcony in the tiered and lavish building, the sky dark above her and the city lights bright below. The balcony was a curved slab of rock: polished and beige, some form of granite or marble perhaps, shiny and engraved with tiles and patterns. Others stood at the balcony beside them, investors and elite. They talked in voices ragged by smoke and in tones of secrecy and enforcement: A-65 felt thoroughly out of place, thoroughly awkward. Gemini showed no such embarrassment, even as garish lanyards professing their 'visitor' status hung from their necks. She had, perhaps, learned to live with it. "I worked with him on some cases, years back. Something about corruption or embezzlement, I can't remember the details. He was nice, though."

A-65 nodded. The man they had just spoken to – Wilfryd – struck a sense of unease in him, for a reason he could not possibly conceive. The man was vaguely off-putting, yes, yet that off-putting expression could be delegated to social awkwardness or worry. He did not look particularly creepy, either: he was handsome and well-dressed, groomed neatly and with clean hair. His missing eye, perhaps? No, that was wrong to judge someone off. That was a disability, just as his injured leg was. A-65 almost felt guilty for thinking it, but something did concern him about the man. He sighed, exhalation metal. Gemini turned to face him.

"What's up?" She asked. A-65 waved his hand away. The wind rustled through Gemini's hair, crisp and warm. It was late in the evening: the sun had just set on the summer sky. He had almost forgotten that it was summer, what with the snow falling back at home. But it was warm here, it was nice. He would say that, cooped up as he was in the thick bodysuit and mask, he would assume he was burning up, but the heat within his body was comfortable. Regulated by the P.MAGE implant, or perhaps just making the heat bearable. He leaned onto the railing: Gemini looked back out to the sky above.

"Thank you," she said after a moment, "for telling me about your nightmares. Really, you didn't have to."

"Don't mention it," he said, "It's just nice to have it off my chest, I guess. I hope I haven't bothered you too much."

"No." Gemini shook her head, "It's not – it's not like that. It just got me thinking, y'know. I've just been thinking, about what you said. You said it was a nightmare, A-65." She looked to him: her face was worried, her hair framed beneath the head monitor flying wildly. "I've seen things like that before. More times than I can really count, I've seen things like that. Men and women, individuals... and whole groups."

"Like Fiona?"

"Like Fiona. I don't want to freak you out, A-65, but... well, I wouldn't say it's exactly rare." She looked out to the horizon. Silence for a moment. "I have nightmares like that too, sometimes." A-65 remained silent: he looked to her as she continued, staring out to the night sky: "This must seem weird." She said, "Or, like – like it's too much information, and I'm sorry if it is." Her voice trailed off and stuttered for a moment: she looked up to the stars. They were difficult to see, the sky a mud-grey swamp of light. "Years ago." she said, "Before Continuity Corporations, me and my brother were military. I had a friend back home, one of very few, and... I don't know. I guess I always felt like I was a shield to her, like I looked after her." She looked to A-65: "Like how I feel about you, I guess. But I was always there for her." She sighed and looked back out to the sky. "Anyway, shortly after me and my brother were hired, him going in Delta-P and me goint into Veritas, she was kidnapped. Taken from her home by... I don't know, police said it was a random crime. It's haunted me ever since." A-65 remained silent. He looked to Gemini. There wasn't anything he could say, not really. She continued. "I think about her a lot. She was my only friend for a long, long time. And as macabre as it is, every time we go on a mission, and every time I see someone chained up or tortured or trafficked somewhere so far from their home... there's a part of me that wants it to be her. Not because I want to hurt her, just... I want to know." Her gauntleted hands hung over the railing, which Gemini drew back as she leaned upright. She reached up with her sleeve and wiped her eyes, giving a sorry smile to A-65. "Sorry." She said, "I'm sorry to dump that on you. I hope you don't mind."

A-65 remained silent, looking to the woman, and – slowly – moved his hand over the railing, atop hers. She swivelled her hand around, clasping her metal fingers around his palm and rubbing her thumb against the back of his hand.

"What was her name?" A-65 asked. His voice was quiet.

"Sophie Reynalds."

"I hope you get answers, Gemini. I really do. I hope you get solace, at the very least."

"Thank you." Gemini gave a weak smile. 

A-65 did not have the heart to tell her of the sinking feeling that sat in his stomach: the worry that, maybe, she was among the many he saw in the gut of that abandoned building. Maybe, he thought, she was freed by the blast. Maybe she was crushed under the rubble. 

*

Valium and Wilfryd were walking, now. These halls were similarly empty, and the amber-ish glow of the light above melded with the humming light of the city beyond, out into and across the hallways shone as the wind blew through window and balcony. The ruckus was quieter, now. The noise less pronounced. The aristocracy moved like a great roiling machine in the distance, the laughs and roars the skin of one bestial morass that festered beyond sight. Wilfryd walked with a heavy limp, leaning atop a thin metal cane. Valium had to walk slowly to keep at his pace, and as they wandered worried that he would run into Elohim or another of the Ambassadors: it would be a difficult situation to explain, and one with punishment he was certain. 

They did not run into anyone else, however. The hallways were thoroughly barren.

"The situations we find ourselves in," Wilfryd said, "are tangles. Not necessarily tangled by complexity: sometimes only by coincidence. No matter the cause, though, they are and remain tangled. Linked to one another, constantly linked, always. It's a strange thing to see, and never shrinks. The connections only grow, Grant, and with each one that passes grow more bizarre and desperate."

"What do you mean?" Valium asked. It was a confusing thing to hear.

"Well", Wilfryd responded, "Take our work. Me and Eamon and Arkady – take what we do. Do you know, Grant, what exactly it is we do?"

The man shook his head. 

"I've heard bits and pieces. Been able to pick together what I can. It's been vague, listening to you and Eamon and Adelaide talk. I have an inclination."

Wilfryd smiled.

"Oh, and what's that, then?"

 "You work against Devyat and Emmie. Sometimes that contradicts the work of Continuity Corporations, even if it is for the company's betterment. Adelaide wants us to work for her, to be her eyes and ears. She wants to find the other minds made alongside her. You want to help her, even just if that means hurting Devyat. But..." he paused and collected his thoughts for a moment. As he walked, his hands were clasped behind his back: Wilfryd could tell he was a man of education. For a moment he felt curiosity fasten itself in his mind, blooming from a wonder to know why and how he was in this position. "...But that's a coincidence too, isn't it? You were not working for Adelaide, not always. You were working against Emmie and Devyat, and your path converged with Adelaide's."

He nodded.

"Some months ago, we found a young girl. She was among those captured by Devyat, freed by my sister in a raid we performed on a human trafficking compound. We couldn't stay there for long, but learned that they – Devyat and Emmie – were processing the women there, transferring them elsewhere across the strait between Alaska and Russia, and deep into the tundra. Some other site." He glanced to Valium for a moment. "I know Adelaide. I knew her. Helped her in the past, back when I worked at Continuity Corporations. It was an accident, at the time, but the foundations of friendship were set."

"What happened?"

 "I was a researcher, an engineer in theoretical mediums. They required help with a particularly nasty piece of machinery able to simulate dreams. Adelaide's mind had leaked into it, and I spoke with her there. It was a sad thing to see, Grant. I promised her that I would try to get her out of there, any way I could. She has access to things, you see. Anything within the site – any data that reaches it – she can see, to a degree. Devyat and Emmie haunt that data. I told her what I knew about that processing facility we raided in Alaska. She told me what she knew about Devyat and Emmie's operation. There wasn't a lot there, but there was enough to know that other such sites existed." He let out a sigh. Perhaps not a sad exhalation, but one of nostalgia trimmed from tragedy. "There were other sites. We were able to find one, in England. Scarcely populated. It was destroyed in an explosion. We believed that another was in Burya Pharmaceutical's headquarters, Burya Site-1, right on the cusp of the Bering Strait. We had plans to investigate, at some point in the future. It is a rushed plan, but... well. Eamon is confident in his ability. And Adelaide is confident that he will not be without friends, there."

"What do you mean?" Valium asked. Wilfryd looked to him.

 "Adelaide believes that one of her fellows – an Ai known as Aeries – is being held there."

"So what's the plan, then?"

"Eamon is going to investigate. He's going to smuggle himself into Burya Site-1 and ditch Continuity Corporations, ideally, before the end of this event. He'll be picked up and taken to the site and Devyat, will not be able to resist him. Do you know why?"

"Fiona Pullip. She was his old plaything, hunted through the forest. Recovered by Veritas."

Wilfryd nodded.

"Fiona bore, like you and Eamon, the Vel-17 implant. Eamon will be her replacement. Or at least, Devyat will think he is." Wilfryd looked to Valium. He could sense deep unease behind the man's expression and gave a sympathetic smile. "You'll have to trust us." He said, "Eamon is capable. And more durable than you could ever possibly imagine. It's not implausible, even, that Continuity Corporations may send a search party after him. If they do, then it will likely be a Veritas team. Perhaps including Verity, my sister."

"They didn't send one for Fiona." Valium said meekly. There was a dampness in his tone, a strong weight of anxiety.

"The difference," Wilfryd said, "Is that we, now, sit at a convergence of coincidence and tension. Adelaide saw the meeting between Scalar and Elohim. You putting the Bowline transceiver in the plant pot was a stroke of genius. They hate one another, Grant. Any more strains between them and the company and Devyat and Emmie come at a risk of collapse, this... false ecosystem they have established is brazenly fragile. Scalar is the most nervous of them all. He would sooner send for a rescue, if not just to whip Devyat and Emmie in place, than leave a close employee festering in their care to become one of their 'LBR' tests."

"So that's it, then? Devyat's going to take Eamon in, and you're betting on the Ai being there? And betting on Eamon escaping, or having Scalar send a team to get him? What if Emmie or Devyat sends him right back to Continuity, as soon as they find him?"

Wilfryd smiled.

"Ah," he said, "I think you misunderstand, Grant. That would be a sensible thing to do, would it not?" He paused for a moment. There had been ten LBRs. The tenth was Fiona. They knew of a few others. Catnap had been one: a woman unable to sleep, forced to run and be hunted. A little girl who's body ran autonomously, sleeping in winking nudges, with strength greater than an adult man and a healing rate quicker than any human. They were different, and both were different from the other spattering few Wilfryd had seen. He looked to Valium. He was not smiling, any more. "Devyat and Emmie are not sensible people."