Chapter 63

SUBTLE UNEASE

Alexander moved quickly through the dim corridors, his drone keeping pace. He kept checking for any change, but had so far found only disappointment.

His senses stretched wide across the facility. The place was quiet, with the only notable sound besides his footfalls being the air scrubbers working overtime. In a way, he could also hear the power lines carrying current across the base, but that didn’t really count. Nobody else could hear it.

His Technopathy pulsed regularly, reminding the cameras to loop feeds of empty hallways. It was a drain, but a minor one. He had to keep Annie and Talia invisible as much as himself; that was his job.

He was close now. The elevator that led to the research wing sat ahead, tucked into the spine of the complex. He could feel it just ahead.

Then he sensed something else. Someone was closing in on the elevator from the opposite direction.

Alexander slipped back around a corner, pressing himself against the wall. His senses reached and narrowed toward the intruder and recoiled. There was something wrong, a dissonance that prickled against his awareness. It felt dangerous, though he couldn’t place why.

The man rounded the bend and shuffled toward the elevator, humming off-key, the tune grating on Alexander’s nerves. He stopped in front of the doors and smacked the button with the heel of his palm.

Alexander felt the elevator rising from far below. It went deeper than he expected, much deeper. And it was moving slowly. He felt impatience warring with his calm. The humming made it worse. He pushed the irritation down, forcing himself to breathe slowly.

At last, the doors slid open with a ding. The man stepped inside. Alexander sensed the elevator’s terminal acknowledge the swipe of an access card, the four quick taps of a code that followed, and then the doors shut. The elevator began its slow descent.

Alexander moved. He jogged to the doors, seized them with Metallokinesis, and pulled them open. The elevator shaft disappeared into darkness before him as he slid to a stop at the edge, peering down. Far below, the elevator dropped like a lantern sinking into the dark.

A smile tugged at his lips. It’s not quite flying, but one day…

He stepped into the void, and the drone zipped down after him.

Gravity took him. The walls streaked past as he plummeted, air dragging at his mask. He seized the metal woven through his jumpsuit, pulled against it, slowing himself in bursts until he matched the elevator’s pace. His boots met its roof with barely a sound.

He crouched low, riding it down.

That’s when it hit him again.

The sense of danger crawled up his spine, a whispered threat against the back of his neck. His heart quickened, and a bead of sweat broke loose, sliding down his temple. He caught it with his fingers, staring at it with the suspicion that now edged his awareness.

It’s fine… He has given no sign that he is aware of me.

He reset his breathing again, controlling the pace and slowing his heart.

The elevator shuddered to a stop.

The suddenness of it made Alexander flinch. He cursed himself for losing focus. Then he spread his senses wide, pushing them out across the research wing. And quickly found his senses being suppressed. It was stronger than the feeling of the collar, but far weaker than the invader’s gateway.

Tracing around the fields where he could, feeling for electrical currents, lights, and metal, he realized there was only a single room without suppression fields. It was full of tech, though he’d need to get closer to identify what, but that wasn’t what drew his attention.

Something at the center of the room was giving him the impression of a person, based on the signals, but it was unlike anything he’d felt before. Electricity pulsed and ran along strange pathways, condensing in places that didn’t match his image of a human.

Alexander wanted to be excited at the prospect of meeting his first alien. It was something he’d looked forward to ever since learning about their existence.

But he had a sinking feeling that it would not be a pleasant first encounter…

Because he also sensed that the being had five suppression collars attached to it.

Annie crept down the hallway, stepping carefully as she went. Boots were really noisy compared to her feet. She’d almost walked into a half-asleep guy shuffling toward the bathrooms in pajama pants and only avoided him by ducking into a doorway. The memory made her grimace.

Now she stood outside the administrator’s office.

She sighed, arms folded. Computer stuff. Of course it had to be me. Alex really owes me for this.

Her eyes drifted to the door. Then to the glowing security panel. Then back to the door. She groaned under her breath.

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“Fine,” she muttered.

Her right arm rippled, metal flowing into a thin strip sharp enough to pry into the seam. She leaned in to jimmy it open.

Beep.

The panel blinked green, the lock clicking open. Annie froze, metal arm still extended. Slowly, she raised her head and spotted a camera in the corner.

She mouthed a silent, exaggerated thanks.

Then she tugged the door open and slipped inside.

The office was underwhelming. A bare wooden desk, a chair, and a humming mini-fridge against the wall. The desk had a holo-display hovering above it, the Santiago Systems’ logo rotating in crisp white light. And in the corner…

She blinked.

A huge bird cage, nearly as tall as she was. Inside, bright feathers of red, yellow, and blue shifted as a bird stretched awake. Its curved beak snapped once, eyes bright and intelligent.

It squawked. “Chilli go out! Chilli go out!”

Annie’s eyes widened. “Shhh!” She spun back to the door and yanked it shut quickly.

The bird bobbed its head, fluffing feathers. “Chilli go out. Pretty Chilli. Go out.”

“Right,” Annie muttered. “Perfect. A roommate.”

She crossed to the desk, staring at the display. The logo spun patiently at her, with no buttons and no visible controls. She crouched, poked around and frowned. “Where’s the computer?”

A glance underneath answered that: the thing was built into the desk itself.

Annie groaned again. “Of course.”

Metal surged over her arms, shaping into axes. “Fine. We’ll do it my way.”

She hacked into the desk. Splinters flew. The bird squawked approval from its cage.

“Chilli go out!”

Annie paused mid-swing and looked at the bird. “You know, it’s really not nice that they keep you locked in here all the time.”

The bird tilted its head. “Not nice. Chilli go out.”

“Exactly,” Annie muttered.

She hummed under her breath as she finished carving into the wood, then shifted her arms back to normal hands. With a grunt, she pried the computer unit loose, then lifted it onto her shoulder.

She turned for the door, pulled it open, then paused.

Behind her, the bird shuffled on its perch. “Chilli go out.”

Annie met the bird's eyes. Then glanced down at the cage’s wheels.

Talia moved carefully, feet barely whispering on the corridor tiles.

Reaching the security office, she was almost taken by surprise when the door eased open and a man stepped out. Pulling the door shut, the security officer turned, freezing at the sight of her in the white fox mask.

She tilted her head, considering the security panel behind him. She could see it had biometric options, along with a pin pad.

His hand went for the holster.

Talia was quicker, closing the distance in an instant. Her fingers jabbed into his throat with the perfect amount of pressure.

His eyes bulged as he choked, hands reaching to grasp at his neck.

Talia stepped around him and hooked a fistful of his hair, pulling him around, before slamming his forehead into the wall right above the retinal scanner.

The door unlocked with a beep.

She hauled him through the doorway and shoved him to the floor once inside.

The security room glowed with panels that ran wall to wall, each panel split into tiles, and each tile a camera feed covering the entire complex. In the center of the panels, several tiles were used to blow up the feed of a single room with a narrow bunk. A woman lay on her side, unaware she was being watched.

Talia’s mouth curled down. “Creep.”

She stalked back to the security officer and delivered a single, perfectly weighted stomp to his temple, ensuring he was unconscious.

“Alex,” she said across their private comms, “I’m in the security room. Release camera control.”

“Done,” Alexander replied. “I’ve just reached the research wing. Something’s not quite right, but I can’t put my finger on it. Not in any danger. I’ll let you know when I find what we’re looking for.”

“Understood.”

She moved back to the console. She scanned the various feeds until she found what she was looking for: Annie, stepping out of what was probably the administrator’s office.

Talia frowned, then tapped a few keys, zooming in on her friend. “What are you doing, Annie?” she muttered to herself.

The little ginger was dragging a bird cage down the hallway, pausing at each corner to peek around it, before tugging it after her.

Shaking her head, Talia sat down. Interlocking her fingers, she stretched them out in front of her.

“Let’s get to work,” she said, voice sharp.

Dr. Miller stepped from the elevator and paused, head tilted.

There it was again. Faint, but he hadn’t imagined it. A tug at the edges of his power, like someone brushing against a curtain he had left wrapped around himself. He felt it once above, just before stepping into the lift. Then it vanished. He felt it again while descending. It was subtle, so faint most would miss it. But subtlety was his domain.

Aesthesiarch allowed him to subtly manipulate the senses and sensations of those around him. Sight, sound, pain, paranoia. All subject to his Will.

And he never disabled it. Even now, the field radiated out from him, unseen and unknown, nudging anyone nearby toward unease. It sharpened every flicker of suspicion, every latent dislike. Made people fear him without ever knowing why. Kept them pliant.

His favorite application, though, was in the work. Subjects already panicked in the chair, but a slight adjustment could heighten pain, amplify dread, or strip away numbness until nothing remained but raw nerves. Their shrieks and pleading became cleaner data under the lens of heightened perception.

Dr. Miller waited. When no further drain on his power occurred, he shrugged.

He moved down the reinforced corridor at an easy pace, coat brushing against his legs. His thoughts lingered on his favorite subject: the first genuine success. The anomaly. He refused to think of it as a singular occurrence. It was only the first in a sequence yet to be realized. There were so many avenues left unexplored. So many possibilities.

Of course, that the experiment’s success had coincided with the System’s descent was a slight blemish on his record. As if his research had not been on the cusp of proving its worth for weeks already. It wasn’t his fault that the mercenaries had taken so long to bring him the correct specimen.

Perhaps tonight he would introduce foreign tissue into its system and see what mutations followed. A graft from one of the failed subjects would be perfect.

The corridor split at a T-junction. To the left was the cell block, the subjects still and quiet behind heavy steel doors, restrained with shackles and suppression collars. Even the failures. Nobody would ever accuse him of lacking caution.

He paused only briefly, then turned right and made his way toward the laboratory, humming off-key as he went.