Page 64 of Scion

“Nah, I’ve already tested everything. All working again,” I assure her. “How’s it all looking?”

“THEY HAVEN’T FIGURED OUT THAT ANYTHING IS WRONG YET. CLEAR PATH BACK.”

“Yeah, I bet that won’t last.”

“I’LL HANDLE IT. LIKE I ALWAYS DO.” A pause. “I SWEAR SOMETIMES I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHY YOU’RE HERE.”

I grin as the elevator’s upward trajectory eases. “You know what, Atti? Majority shareholder command. Keep the voice for an hour or two.”

A long silence, then, “I HATE YOU.”

The doors slide open, and I walk out onto Floor 132.

FLOOR 132 IS BOTH DAZZLING and pretty much exactly what I expect. The elevator opens into a vast, contiguous space, this single room surely taking up the majority of the floor. Thirty-foot-high ceilings. A filigreed black-marble floor, with more polished black stone forming massive, stylishly twisting pillars, all of which are somehow ingrained with warm golden lights. The whole thing feels more cathedral than office.

About thirty metres away, there’s a grand staircase that leads to an open upper level, where I can see the only obvious tech in the entire space: a massive screen set into the far wall, the words NO Q-VID CONNECTED in large bold letters across it.

That, I’ll admit, gives me a second’s pause. Q-coms are perfectly secure—not even Atti can tap in without a physical sister device—but it’s damned expensive just for the audio. I didn’t even know they made them for video.

“Crimson.” A man’s head appears over the railing, near the staircase. “Or should I call you Azure?”

“Hello,” I call back cheerfully, waving. “Who are you?”

“Will you even remember if I tell you? I must say, though, I am impressed that you made it this far.” The man, whoever he is, seems worryingly unperturbed by my presence. Almost smug. “But it does seem a little short-sighted to have taken the Suppression serum before making your way up here.”

At the base of the staircase, something stirs. Two somethings, actually. Two big somethings.

“Hm.” The Argoses—Argii? I really have to look that up—start clumping their way toward me. Their footsteps sound like they’re going to break the stone. “Arguably, it was probably more short-sighted to calculate the dosage using an on-net lab.”

I activate my somatics.

No weapons, still, of course. I don’t even have a Ceramic. Not an easy fight by any means, but we knew there would be biosecurity in here somewhere, and I’m almost all the way to healthy. The odds are good enough.

“Sonder apricity defenestration,” he calls loudly.

I pause, but the Argoses keep coming.

“Um. I don’t think you got the right stand-down codes,” I observe.

“No, I think I did.”

I want to laugh as I try to shift into a better defensive position, but decide not to when I find that I can’t move. The man’s cheerful statement becomes even less funny as the Argii stomp closer and I take in exactly what he means.

“This… is…cheating,” I huff between straining, but ultimately vain, efforts to get my body to respond. Damn. Oh, damn.

“No, this is using a tool as it is meant to be used.” A long pause as the monsters with far too many eyes approach, until they fill my vision. I will my muscles to move, try to use their rev-enhanced strength to force them into position against the invisible bonds that seem to be holding them in place. It’s useless. “Limerance petrichor clinomania.” With a soft wheeze that I could almost take as annoyance, the two Argos slow, then turn and creep to either side of me, standing not two metres away.

I watch Smug Exec with rev-enhanced vision—I can still do that much, at least—and assess my options as he saunters confidently down the stairs toward me. They’re not great. They’re not really “options” in the traditional sense, actually, because I can do literally damned nothing at the moment. And he’s just plainly announced the biosecurity stand-downs for these monsters, which means he sees no possible course to me leaving this place alive.

To be fair, neither can I right now.

Smug Exec comes to stand in front of me. About five metres between me and him. I could kill him in less than a second, if I could do anything at all. “Is Jasa de Alwes really dead?”

“Yes.” It’s out of my mouth without my permission, almost like it’s someone else doing the talking. I hate it very much.

“How?”

“Knife to the stomach, on the way out of Sanctum. She bled out before we could get her to an AID.”