Revolutionary Road
To the Abyss and Back - Ch.13. Veliard joins a plot within the Nautilus corporation, and Gwyn shares uncanny knowledge
Review of No Life but Immortality
Veliard Reed - 25 September 2191 - Facility D-17/Marmarion shuttle
Dried blood on the walls was the first thing that caught my eye as I re-entered the lab; it looked like someone had been riddled with bullets. Beneath my feet, glass shards and chips of concrete crunched unpleasantly. Nautilus soldiers were tending to the wounded: the “criticals” had been taken to the lower level to be placed in stasis.
How many times had the asset changed hands? Nautilus, Ivan and Danielle, Heldrich, Moon Cross—and now Nautilus again... On the side of Nautilus, one soldier had fallen; on the other, everyone except for two who failed to self-destruct to avoid capture.
“So you really don’t know who took that liner, or where? You believe those primitives could keep a vessel running?” my new “sister” Gwyn asked, her voice full of disbelief, referring to the population of Seven Winds.
“Even a broken clock is right twice a day,” I answered pensively. “This morning, the city was one of the wealthiest on the continent, and the liner was the residence of a local warlord who managed to recruit people who knew what they were doing. I hope we’ll take it back in Port Amundsen.”
Right now, I was standing on a millimeter-thick sheet of ice, and I could hear an ominous crack. They would certainly interrogate the Moon Cross prisoners and the surviving citizens. Someone among the former Orderlies is bound to remember me, Ivan’s pursuit of the metamorph, Danielle, and the “Martian invasion” of the liner. Worse still, they might remember the Winters’ regenerative abilities. If that happens, my former colleagues will likely hunt the ship, as if Geryon weren’t enough.
We continued our conversation in the mess hall, where three strapping lads had removed their helmets and were already setting out field rations. Only now did I notice a deep bullet score on Gwyn’s pauldron. The silence around us was unnerving; I had already noticed that the extraction team members hardly spoke to one another. The first thing that crossed my mind was that they, like Danielle, could be telepaths. Then I dismissed the thought: with telepaths in its ranks, would Nautilus be so concerned with bringing the runaway girl back?
“Why didn’t you occupy Seven Winds sooner? This catastrophe could have been avoided… Maybe…” I said.
“We had other troubles to resolve,” Gwyn replied.
“And who’s in charge of you now?”
“President George Ironside,” the cyborg showed me a holographic portrait. A dark-haired man in his fifties, with blue eyes and a refined face. The spitting image of an actor playing the “benevolent king.” “Oh, he’s gonna be mad when he hears about you!... Just kidding.”
“Ironside... I don’t recall the name. And combat operations, I take it, are led by this Minna of yours?..”
“She leads many things. Ever since she was entrusted with corporate security, much has changed for the better.”
“Great to know that the company’s in good hands. And to be back with the family!” I said, looking around again and noticing fresh blood spatters that were already fading, thanks to the walls’ self-cleaning system.
“Was it hard, living all on your own?”
“To be honest, it was a paradise. Short version: I set up a research station in a lovely, quiet spot to do some biological research. The Blackout barely touched me; everything was going smoothly until those damn fanatics blew my home to pieces and started chasing me across the entire continent as if I were… a demon.”
“Uh-huh. That’s usually how it goes for people who only mind their own business,” Gwyn replied.
“What brought you guys back?” I asked, ignoring her preachy tone.
“We need new resources, power sources, and places to live. It’s better to start with areas that are already developed. Life underwater is no picnic, especially when you’re talking about decades down there. As I mentioned, they captured the woman who was left in charge of the facility after the Blackout. I don’t need to explain that her life is on the line, and we’d quite like to get her back.”
It was a good thing my cyborg parts kept me from bursting out laughing, because holding it in was a struggle. Did they actually paint the picture for her this way, or was she playing dumb?
“The only problem is the fanatics consider this territory theirs,” I told her. “No, not just this facility—the entire continent. And if we don’t deal with them soon, we won’t hold Seven Winds... They’re holding a man in Port Amundsen who could sort them out; even if we aren’t ready to crush the fanatics entirely, we have to rescue him. Do you even know who’s backing them, or which Prophet they worship?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Classified information.”
My heart dropped straight into my cybernetic boots. Vassilevsky wasn’t lying when he said there was a rat nested in the Winged Sun. If Nautilus had leaked info about his deployment to Seven Winds, then they undoubtedly knew about Rakhmanov, Violet, and me...
Gwyn nodded toward the fire exit, gesturing for me to follow. As I got up from the table, I noticed our brothers-in-arms were still silently chewing their late dinner—or early breakfast—staring ahead with completely vacant eyes. They weren’t drooling or dropping food out of their mouths, but it was a creepy sight nonetheless. What other lovely little surprises did this “family” reunion have in store for me?
“What in the actual disconnect...?” slipped out of me once we were past the door. It applied to pretty much everything.
“We need to get the hell out of here,” Gwyn said in a barely audible whisper. “I’ll explain everything once we’re in the open ocean.”
“I’m not moving a single step until I know where we’re going and why.”
“Minna is not your friend, Veliard. She must not get her hands on your hacker. There’s a schism in the corporation. President Ironside is just a figurehead—a cardboard cutout who doesn’t control a damn thing. There’s her, and then there are those of us who want to decide our own destiny... People who are sick of the absolute authority of lines of code and numbers, and all these ‘great projects of the future.’”
How delightfully familiar... Knowing the backstory of our enemy, there wasn’t a shadow of a doubt as to where this Minna had crawled out from.
“What? Creating an AI based on Geryon Lyndon’s mind? You guys are absolute morons... As if you didn’t know that the murdered Wilhelmina Heiss became his alter ego. His subpersonality.”
“Don’t look at me; I had nothing to do with it. When she helped crush the drug riots on the Njord, they practically deified her. I’m begging you, let’s go, we’re running out of time.”
How the mighty have fallen: drug riots! I could see my dear old corporation was knee-deep in shit, but I had absolutely zero desire to pull it out. What troubled me most was Gwyn’s knowledge about “my” hacker. Damn mole… I had to warn Rakhmanov about how bad things were. But right now, I was hog-tied.
“Your little tin soldiers back there don’t seem particularly bright,” I noted, following Gwyn. I didn’t trust her any more than I trusted Minna, but the female cyborg still felt like the lesser of two evils.
“They have what’s called a ‘control chip’ in their brains. When it’s not actively deployed, the brain enters a sort of ‘power-saving mode.’ It preserves instincts, reflexes, and basic daily habits that a person performs automatically... Like a half-dream.”
“So they don’t accidentally use their neo-cortex between battles?”
“That’s close. If the chip malfunctions—say, from trauma or an EMP blast—the person has a chance to awaken.”
“And how did you dodge the surgery?”
“By demonstrating loyalty. Minna still needs smart combat units, and I happen to have a lot more experience than these boys. But don’t relax. There are fourteen of them here. And three more stayed behind in the boathouse.”
Waiting for Gwyn and me in the boathouse was the Marmarion, a submersible shuttle that the extraction team had used to reach Seven Winds. Back in my youth, it had been a strictly peaceful transport, meant for ferrying employees from the mainland to Nautilus’s underwater facilities. When I was twelve, my mother personally took me on a tour of the Njord during my school break; it was exactly this kind of transport that picked us up from the Nautilus pier in Florida.
The fact that the three sentries snapped to attention as one the moment Gwyn appeared gave me a shred of hope: at least I wouldn’t have to kill anyone this time. Really, why shouldn’t the expedition leader drop by for a toolbox, or perhaps a bottle of enhanced “ambrosia” for an important guest?
Once inside, the first thing my companion did was manually lock the deck hatch and switch the boat to manual control. I kept my questions to myself, even though the whole thing looked suspiciously like a kidnapping.
“Going somewhere?” Minna’s cold voice echoed from the intercom. It sounded nothing like my Vi’s voice. She must have detected Gwyn’s interaction with the shuttle.
“Yes, ma’am. Veliard scouted out that a group of savages has occupied Outland village to the west,” Gwyn replied, firing up the engine. “Thirteen targets. We’re heading out to purge them. Let the men rest; the two of us can handle it.”
“Did I give such an order?”
“Ma’am, I am trying to think and act ahead,” Gwyn said, her eyes glued to the dashboard gauge showing the engine’s readiness. “They need to be eliminated now to prevent further issues. The flooding of Seven Winds is proof enough.”
“Return to your post and wait until I have investigated the area,” the inhuman voice commanded. “Coordinates?”
The question went unanswered. Gwyn ordered an emergency dive and cut off external communications. A moment too late, bullets began to clatter against the hull, and hot plasma hissed, searing the outer layer of the plating. The water closed over us, and we were suddenly plummeting into the abyss. Back in my “biological” days, a dive this abrupt would have made your eardrums implode from the pain.
“What a day,” Gwyn remarked serenely, leveling out the Marmarion. I looked around the softly lit cabin of the shuttle, remembering how silver schools of fish used to flash outside the windows, how a steward-bot would gently roll down the aisle, handing out fragrant fruits and cold drinks, and how the cabin used to smell of expensive perfume—mossy, smoky, and woody all at once... The human brain is a strange thing, resurrecting tiny details at times like this—details you didn’t even notice back then.
“Gwyn, do you have olfactory receptors?” I asked, just in case.
“Only air quality sensors to detect toxins. What about you?”
“Same here... Man, everything’s gotten so run-down in here...”
“You do realize nobody gives a damn about upholstery, silverware, and light music anymore...”
“Silverware? I never even noticed it before.”
“We’re Nautilus! We can’t even handle the little things without grandeur...”
“No wonder I never fit in! I assume you have a plan?” I asked, watching a colossal, blood-red jellyfish drift past the porthole.
“Who in their right mind sails into nowhere?..” Gwyn countered.
“Then share it, if you want my cooperation. I lived for a long time in a tiny little world where everything was clear, predictable, and neatly categorized. Now everything is happening so fast it’s enough to drive you insane. Did I get it right that all your colleagues are going to hunt us down?”
The female cyborg reclined her seat, shifting into a half-lying position. I don’t know who adapted the body my team had designed for her, but they hadn’t even forgotten to include two neat contours on her chest.
“We’re going to break your friend out and deliver him to the Kerguelen land base. Formally, it’s still part of Nautilus, but practically, it’s under our people’s control.”
“‘Our people’? You mean, the opponents of your AI dictator?”
“You see, after the mutiny on the Njord, Minna introduced forced chipping. The other bases are worried they’re next in line. The bravest ones are moving to land, but they don’t want to live like savages. Hence, Kerguelen...”
“So why don’t they just solve the problem themselves? Too scared?”
“We haven’t reached a critical mass of active rebels yet. Most of our staff is an exhausted corporate herd suffering from withdrawals, held hostage by chipped thugs and metamorphs who inspire terror just by existing. Down there, underwater, Minna controls her security very tightly. Both physical and electronic.”
“Damn it... I really hate her name.”
“Why’s that?”
“It’s similar to the name of the woman I loved.”
“Unbelievable... Well, yeah, you were a human longer than I was,” Gwyn said, shaking her head. “Aside from the Omniverse, I’ve never really had a chance to fall in love. Good luck finding the kind of pervs who’d fall for a combat cyborg—and even then, there’s no guarantee our personalities would match.”
“Any supplies on board?”
“We’ll make it to Kerguelen, provided we pump the hacker full of tranquilizers. The more he sleeps, the less he eats.”
I kept quiet, scoffing to myself. If anyone is about to take a little nap, sweetheart, it’s you. If Violet and I were going to sail to Kerguelen, it certainly wasn’t happening in the next few days. And highly unlikely in the next few months.
“You mentioned some of Minna’s experiments that you guys aren’t exactly thrilled about...”
“She keeps pushing biotechnology, as if she’s hellbent on repopulating the planet with superhumans... That’s what the metamorph experiments are for. And the attempt to breed telepaths. Not to mention the maximum integration of living tissue with machinery. Even now, when we’re starved for absolutely everything, those projects are her top priority... To her, we’re just expendable material for her grand plans. The help. Or, in the worst-case scenario, lab rats.”
“Why am I not surprised?.. Still, telepathy is a new flavor of crazy,” I said, already knowing about Vassilevsky’s unusual find and hoping to fish for more.
“Don’t you remember your own company’s projects?”
“I ran one project, and you’re drawing breath because of it. So cut the sarcasm.”
“The task of breeding telepaths had an innocent name: Research into Genetically Determined Electromagnetic Sensitivity of the Brain. What people used to call ‘supernatural’ is really just science we haven’t broken down yet; back in the day, people thought lightning was God throwing a tantrum. If gadgets can connect remotely without wires, it stands to reason that one brain can connect to another in the same way. No artificial ports needed, because nature already gave us the hardware. It opens up a bottomless pit of possibilities for industrial espionage and everything else... Have you ever read those ridiculous theories about the ‘third eye’? Funny thing is, the so-called extrasensory zone of the brain is located right around there, and in a normal person, it’s usually asleep. The neurons in that area become hypersensitive during mutations of certain genes that used to be dismissed as ‘junk DNA.’ You could call those mutants real psychics. It’s incredibly hard for them to stay sane until adulthood without eating a bullet—for obvious reasons—so the survivors prefer to keep quiet about their ‘gift.’ Our scientists managed to isolate the gene responsible for activating that extrasensory zone and cranked it up. And that’s how they artificially raised twelve girls.”
“Only girls?”
“In all recorded history, high activity in the extrasensory zone has been predominantly documented in women,” she explained. “Men with the mutation just get what you’d call ‘good intuition’ and often excel in negotiations.”
“Would be handy,” I replied, feeling a sting of envy.
“Four of the subjects grew up to be perfectly ordinary people. In six of the girls, the psychic traits were packaged with autism, childhood schizophrenia, and other mental pathologies.”
“Poor things…”
“Only two turned out stable, and one was raised in Seven Winds. Her name was Danielle. She didn’t just read thoughts from a few hundred meters away; she could take control of animals. Right before the Blackout, there was some kind of incident, so they put her in hibernation and didn’t bother evacuating her... They didn’t realize the Blackout was going to last this long. It brought so many disasters that nobody gave a damn about Lab D-17 until recently.”
I immediately slipped into playing the village idiot.
“And she’s still alive?”
“Oh, stop this! You know far more than we do! Before Moon Cross showed up, one of your little friends paid a visit to that lab. Why don’t you let him tell you what happened to Danielle?”
“I see someone from the Winged Sun has been very generous with information. Care to share a name?”
She kept silent, still unsure. If she had decided to defy Minna, what was holding her back?
“Since we’re in the same boat, literally and figuratively, we ought to help each other out. You are counting on my help and my honesty, aren’t you?”
“Quid pro quo. You tell me where your colleague Ivan took the girl.”
“They were in the city when the flooding started, and I couldn’t establish contact. If they survived—and Ivan could probably survive a nuclear blast—they might have been taken along with Violet. In that case, there’s a chance we can bust all three out. I did my best to divert unwanted attention from my friends. That is, assuming your Minna doesn’t get to them first.”
“We’ll do everything we can to make sure that doesn’t happen. Right?”
“Your turn to reveal a secret, Gwyn...”
“Our informant in the Winged Sun is Lola Mendes. She monitors the radio traffic, which makes her incredibly easy to recruit. She warned us that your operative, Ivan Vasilevsky, had set out to investigate Seven Winds. She also told us that your head of external communications is our former prisoner, Rakhmanov—the Martian.”
Well, well. The rat turned out to be the mistress of our “beloved” chief, Klaus Freiberg. One of our three radio operators, the boss of the other two, and a close friend of late Helga Swensson. As Gwyn went on to explain, Nautilus had reached Mendes fairly recently—around the same time Helga died in that reactor accident. Unfortunately, I was away, escorting Ivan and Rakhmanov to set up the radio beacon, which allowed us to break through Geryon’s blockade for less than an hour and send a message to the guys in Arkona.
Lola knew enough to understand how dangerous Geryon and his flock were. I figured Lola’s desperate desire to keep her cozy, peaceful life going indefinitely ran headfirst into a very real fear for her own skin. As a result, she didn’t think twice before selling us out—despite everything Rakhmanov had told her about what Nautilus had become.
The cruise was going smoothly. Nautilus wasn’t exactly flush with cash and couldn’t afford to waste vehicles, so we didn’t expect immediate pursuit; the squad back in Seven Winds simply had nothing to chase us with. The flip side, of course, was that the Marmarion was being tracked remotely, so we could comfortably expect an ambush waiting for us on the approach to Port Amundsen.
“If I were them, I’d try to get to the prisoners first. And I assume their chances are pretty high... On our side, we have my old observations of Port Amundsen. I’ve systematized them into layouts, which I’ll share with you. I know how many checkpoints they have, what time the guards rotate, where the armory is, and which sectors have the best kill zones...”
“And do you know how to get out of there in one piece?”
“Keep your eyes peeled. The most heavily fortified place in Port Amundsen is the Temple, but it’s unlikely they’d hold high-value prisoners there... A hospital or a warehouse is much more probable... The safest bet is the hospital quarantine unit—constant temperature, thick glass, and easy to guard. Frankly, if I wanted to keep a captive somewhere where nobody could get to them, I’d pick the hospital... Wait, I just remembered there’s also the detention facility.”
“What, like a prison?”
“Pretty much... They used to put violent criminals there before shipping them off to the mountain mines... Interestingly enough, the Moon Cross’ teachings spread faster among the convicts than anywhere else. The authorities didn’t mind; the local preachers enforced discipline and never called for riots, even though it was a completely different story on the mainland...”
“Hold on...” Gwyn interrupted. “Didn’t the Moon Cross invade this place from South America?”
“The militant wing led by Aelius did, and they were fewer in number at the time. But they landed on highly fertile soil,” I lectured her. “Now, the Moon Cross now controls almost the entire west of the continent, including rich deposits of gold, iron, and other rare metals. You guys could definitely use those. But I agree: before we handle that, we need to deal with the Shadow.”
“With whom?”
“I refuse to call that thing Minna. ‘The Shadow’ is one of the aliases Geryon Lyndon used, and that’s what I’m calling his modified digital copy. Why breed so many virtual demons? As if one wasn’t enough to drag us all to hell...”
“And you’re acting like you had absolutely nothing to do with it.”
My mind drifted back to that long-ago tour of the Njord. Back then, I had walked from section to section until my unaccustomed feet practically begged for mercy. Having seen so little of the world outside our family estate, I stared wide-eyed at plants that had never existed in nature, changing color at a touch, at rats with brains packed with microelectronics moving in time to music, and at metal alloys fusing with living tissue on a nanoscale.
But how many doors had remained locked that day? How much was happening just out of sight that would have made me turn and run for my life? Geryon had already spread his tentacles across the Net, closing in on my little family, while his original digital copy waited for its hour in the archives.
Whether he was left to rot in a simulation, dreaming of revenge, or was shut down and locked away in a vault, history remains silent. They say a son isn’t responsible for the sins of the father—or in my case, the mother. They lie. At least in my case.
The cruise was surprisingly peaceful. We slept to our hearts’ content, taking turns on watch. Sleep was the only luxury we could afford, but it was so sweet, especially since we’d had so damn little of it lately... When I wasn’t asleep, I re-watched the logs of the scouting raids Violet and I had done, trying to sniff out new blind spots and strongpoints in the enemy’s defense.
Once upon a time, when we were trying to hatch a plan to capture Apostle Aelius, we had drawn up a detailed map of Port Amundsen, marking every possible infiltration point. Back then, we thought we’d be operating with at least a squad of Trackers and a swarm of drones at our back.
Now, Violet and Wilhelmina were prisoners, and I was caught between two fires alongside a practical stranger of a cyborg woman who could do literally anything. But hey, only in a meticulous SWOT analysis will you ever find true peace of mind, you dysfunctional disaster, Veliard Reed...
Now and then, I’d space out for a minute or two. The majestic silhouettes of whales and large sharks glided past the porthole, and schools of small crustaceans flickered in a phosphorescent haze—utterly oblivious to our passions and turmoils, seeing nothing past the metal hull but two irrelevant living things.
People who deny the existence of alien, non-human intelligence are incredibly naive; just like those marine crustaceans, we can look point-blank at beings vastly more evolved than us, look, yet see and comprehend absolutely nothing. And those others couldn’t care less about our feelings, hopes, or social structures, much like I don’t give a damn who the alpha is among those tiny shrimp... To them, we aren’t enemies, friends, or food—we’re just background noise...
Like any respectable city in Antarctica, Port Amundsen had a dock for underwater transport. High-value facilities in the Moon Cross’ city usually had between eight and twenty guards patrolling the perimeter, and I figured we could expect at least that many waiting for us at the dock.
Fortunately, Gwyn came with some serious combat modifications that I lacked: a stealth module whose radiation forced her exoskeleton’s nanobots to create a cloaking surface; the ability to crawl along ceilings or slick vertical walls; and tactical apps wired directly into her brain.
Wherever she looks, she shoots—no thinking required, the gun built in her limb finds the target on its own. If she and her kind still can’t neutralize the Shadow even with upgrades like that, things on the Njord must be truly pathetic.
They need a master down there.
I hesitated until the last possible second before contacting Vassily Ilyich, since the number of parties interested in intercepting my signal had just doubled. But what I had learned from Gwyn couldn’t be allowed to die with us if things went sideways. I activated my wrist unit—drones couldn’t reach us underwater anyway—and sent a two-word message: Watch Mendes.
To be honest, the worse things got, the more I missed Rakhmanov and his good-natured composure. For as long as I’ve known Freiberg, he loved to flex his high status and remind everyone of their place in the corporate food chain by imposing petty restrictions—like forbidding anyone from staying outside the city for more than two hours without a special permit, or growing weed for personal use.
Rakhmanov, on the other hand, was friendly and down-to-earth without being overly familiar, and he projected his sense of dignity onto everyone around him. The younger crowd viewed him as the father figure; just look at our Ivan, whose biological father was a monster.
Heck, forget the kids. Chronologically, I was older than Rakhmanov, but I always perceived him as the wiser one. Probably because he’d survived a hell of a lot more shit in his life than I ever did.
“How are you?” Gwyn’s voice snapped me out of my thoughts.
“Feeling like a ruin. Will the trip take long?” I asked my new “sister.”
“We should make landfall by nightfall,” Gwyn replied. “If you want to get some sleep, now’s your best window.”
“You said Nautilus had two telepaths. Where’s the second one?”
“In her entire short life, she never met a single decent human being,” Gwyn explained. “So she preferred not to live in a world like this.”
With a sense of quiet triumph, I thought about how Danielle had been a hell of a lot luckier: she had run into a whole team of good people. And with that thought, I drifted off to sleep.