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Enigma II had plenty of inconspicuous hiding places. This floor was for pipes of the cooling system, not likely to be use for anything disruptive. What routine scanning might occur here would not be able to detect the bomb he was planting here. An architect would have to physically crawl down here to notice something was wrong, and they'd not likely have a reason to do so.
They would believe the mission had been about the chimera and the human prisoners. In part, it was. They were just using the opportunity to plant another bomb on another Enigma station.
It was all about strategy. At the right time, when their resistance was strong enough and they would issue their threat, it would be accompanied by some very nice explosions of crucial weapon projects.
Granted, their current strategy was a little off. Utara was smarter and they had a lot less time. Then again, Kirindi could win a compliant hive so easily, they could compensate. Kirindi's diligence in "befriending" people had a use after all.
He wasn't too sure though about her letting those scientists be impregnated with aliens. A little physical chaos might help, but it could also get in the way. Perhaps she had let it happen because she wasn't certain she could keep Schrodinger under control. Xenomorph might just get in the way of cyborg too, acidic as they were.
Kirindi had recruited Schrodinger in her usual way and so had relative control over the hardware of the station. This was presumably the reason they hadn't seen any cyborg yet. This man however had no innate reason to join up with Kirindi, having a well paid job that he enjoyed.
Problem was, without cyborg available Utara decided to release drones from previous experiments into the halls as a cleansing operation. He could only speculate for the reason such drastic measures were taken. No time for evidence gathering either.
Utara had just become aware of his existence.
He could not afford to be caught here, not so close to his little gift.
He quickly moved on, having decided to head towards the nuclear cells. If caught there, he could pretend his reason for having gone this far down was to investigate that experiment.
Precision was everything in this situation. He moved up the levels as quickly as possible to fake an alternate route, his freedom range lessening with the second.
Thirtheen seconds and it would have failed. Thirteen seconds and he would've been seen climbing out of the vents when Utara's scanners went back online. They hadn't. They only saw him running from the distant cell cluster that he hadn't come from.
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The vents lost their convenient width before the G laboratory, so Kirindi slipped out and went through the normal halls. It momentarily struck her as strange that Schrödinger had been able to disable all cyborg, but her sister quickly reclaimed attention.
She stopped before the last door separating her and her sister. Echo showed it was too thick to tear down, her plasma caster too small to work with quick enough. Not without risking that a stray bolt reach her sister, whose prison was opposite of the door.
A subtle change in the magnetic fields of the station and a cheery Shadhahvar told Kirindi the generator was successfully offline. It puzzled her a little, she had hardly noticed anything of their efforts, but it wasn't too surprising in face of her waking sister.
She wanted to bounce, claw at the barrier between them. She didn't, she was kainde amedha and did not waste her energy like that. 921-Y would open the door soon enough, wouldn't he?
"Please, hurry ... "she whispered once.
She tried sending him a message, but there was no answer. Perhaps Utara had already reclaimed the radio channels.
Maybe ...
When the door suddenly without warning, she fell forward. Echo now painted a clear image of the prison in her mind. It was a round hall with a towering column from floor to ceiling. A large white form, her sister was in it, clawing weakly against the smooth cell. Kirindi immediately leaped up and climbed to as close as she could get to the glass. It all went quick, she warned her sister to move back.
With the power gone from this level, it only took one plasma bolt to destroy the rooting of the cylinder. No back up restarted it, no defense system was activated.
She waited for the flood of liquid to lose strength, then unsheathed her wrist blades to start tearing away the remaining glass.
Her sister crashed through it before she was done, tearing along the cables that fed her and had held her up. There was a cry, a slam and cracking as she hit the floor, then the sizzle of acid blood.
Kirindi felt the pain of impact and couldn't move for a few moments. Only knowing her link with Karga'te, she had not expected the link to one of her own to be this petrifying and intense. No long subject to the fields inside her prison, nor the chemicals, her sister's mind rampaged into clarity. Senses and feelings flooded Kirindi's mind, she had to force herself to climb down and collect herself.
Her sister had been locked up so long she had trouble orienting herself as well. Up, down, smell, sound, goo, shard, movement, the web of existence ... stagger, crawl, closer, sister?
The massive skull turned to Kirindi and a skeletal head slowly appeared from below the dome. She smiled, but her sister had no lips to smile back. Still hunched down, Kirindi moved closed and laid her hands aside of her sister's face. Their foreheads touched, and in their minds both smiled at each other.
A storm broke free in this silence. With inhuman speed they exchange their life's worth of memories and feelings. They were the same, same in pale skin, same in mother, same in need for a family.
"Like me," Kirindi whispered.
Her sister noticed the humans before she did and tensed up at once, a lust to kill brewing in her instincts. Through the haze of that rage, Kirindi only barely recognized Jake and Shadhahvar, but when she did she urged her knowledge onto her sister.
Not a threat. Friends. Don't you feel? They're with us, they'll help us.
The two wearily waited at the entrance. Jake at the very least had a mind sharp enough to realize he had been in danger from the sister. Unlike with her sister, who eased down and trusted Kirindi unconditionally, Jake continued doubting even when the threat was gone.
Her sister turned her head towards them, and at that moment Shadhahvar's flashlight fell on her face. The woman screamed, dropped the light and turned to run. Jake instinctively caught her, clamping a hand before her mouth. Shadhahvar tried to bite, but he didn't let go.
"Shady, it's alright, it's alright. It's just Kirindi's sister, don't you hear?"
"Hmmhmhmm." Kirindi couldn't tell whether that was a yes or no; Shadhahvar seemed to know what was going on, yet was scared anyway.
"Shadey, I'm going to let go now, don't scream again. They're friends. Remember what I told you about life or death situations involving mad scientists and hostile monsters?" Jake removed his hand.
"They don't exist?" she said weakly, her eyes still in the direction of the chimeras.
"Mins that. Forget about that."
"We're going to die horribly?" Her voice became squeaky.
"No. We team up with the other people trying to escape. Kirindi is our ally, right? So is her sister. Understood?"
"But that thing looks like those monsters!"
"Shut up. White monsters be allies."
Her sister quickly became annoyed with the fruitless talk, she wanted out of hell now.
Her body was stiff and cracked as she stretched it. The goo that had held her earlier made the floor slippery, so Kirindi tried to support her, but with her little weight she could do nothing to help her stand up. It took a lot of tries to get all four legs under her sister.
The door was an even greater challenge. While she technically could fit through with her skull, she wasn't yet flexible enough to worm the rest of her body out when she low to the ground. After a lot of trashing around, she somehow still managed, mostly thanks to getting injured and her acidic blood eating away at the doorframe.
Once she was out, the next issue was finding a road she could fit through. 921-Y still was silent, so she had to figure it out on her own. She wasn't used to this, since father always had lead the way.
Well, in a way, this road would end back with father, so she was not lost.
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The general in charge of Enigma II's military arm was only in his middle ages, yet had more ripples than he should have. With Sullivan gone, he was the sole authority, a task he received by folding his hands and leaning his forehead against the tips, eyes closed.
Jonah patiently waited until he finished thinking. He was somewhat grateful for his own lack of emotions, he might not have been able to conceal that he'd left the scientists to die.
"What do we know?" the general said slowly, after several minutes had passed.
"That we are being invaded by an unknown number of highly advanced enemies capable of creating and unleashing artificially intelligent viruses. That is all we know. What I suspect is based on a glimmer and no more."
"And what do you suspect?"
"That there is a relative of our white chimera."
The general stared ahead, then sighed. "So, that'll be the only freak show we'll be missing by the end of the day?"
"Possibly. If ... lucky, one may survive our current cleaning crew. But we cannot rule out though that they may have come for something else. Has Schrödinger set up cyborg with our other treasures?"
"Schrodinger is alive, but not responding. Can you do anything about that?"
"Perhaps not with my sixth sense disabled, but I will try."
"I'd appreciate it if you tried just with words. There's already enough creepy mindfucking going on in this place."
"I quite agree," Jonah said.
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When they met 921-Y Kirindi was greatly relieved, a feeling prominent enough to stop her sister from charging at the moving blank spot without mental resonance. With some effort, Kirindi explained her that even though the android could not be part of their hivemind, he was not a machine that served the enemy.
He had been in the middle of rewiring a closed door, and didn't respond much when they joined him. He gave a brief status report without even looking up.
So, they waited.
Her sister did not stop communicating and had a much bigger brain to do so. The endless stream of memories and sensations threatened to overwhelm Kirindi and she had to sit down. It came to the point where even Jake, light as his awareness of the hivemind was, noticed something was wrong.
She felt his hand on her shoulder, looked up into worried eyes.
"What's wrong?"
"She cannot stop speaking to me," Kirindi whispered. He didn't fully understand why this would tire her. She did not show him, he would be unable to handle the chaos. When he noticed that was all the answer he would get, her sat down against the nearest wall.
After a while, he finally said it. "What are you doing to us? I know I'm somehow ... linked to you? Shady is here too, isn't she?"
"You are all in my hive."
He thought he should be angry, offended, even outraged. It was so contradictory, even now he still felt a wave of calmness coming from her. She smoothed away those feelings quite deliberately, they would make him function poorly.
"You don't want it?"
"You could have asked me. Hell, I have the right for my full emotions and my free will! You can't just do this to other people just like that!" The anger really wasn't cooperating.
"I did ask you. You came in yourself."
"I meant consciously."
She tilted her head. For her tapping into people's mind was something that occurred naturally, that humans had issues with it had never occurred to her. Then again, she had never met humans before boarding the Philidon.
"Why?"
"That's the way rights work, okay?" Kirindi let him become a little frustrated, it seemed to put that other side of his mind at ease.
"I'm keeping your fear away a little still. I do not do anything to the reason or source behind your anger."
Another silence, for Jake at least.
"Is there someone else influencing me too?"
"You think that old Mother is doing something? She is rather strange, indeed ..."
"How closely did you follow me when me and Shadey disabled the generator?"
"I did not watch. My sister ..." She made a gesture at that great white creature.
"Maybe you should listen to that ... uhm, Mother. When we were down there, one of those ... things, those drones appeared. It didn't attack, it just very conveniently drooled acid on a place we couldn't get through and then left."
Kirindi blinked a single time.
"We could probably use the help," Jake added.
She didn't reply, kept her thoughts to herself and her sister, who feared all the other queens but had nothing useful to say on the one.
921-Y stood up and Shadhahvar at once asked, "How's it going? Can we leave yet?"
"Not so very well. I need an diryxinator, Jake would you-"
"Ooh, I know what that is, I can get it!" said Shadhahvar.
"Are you willing to stick your hand inside a bleeding dead cyborg?"
"Ehm..." Shadhahvar backed off, then turned for Jake. "Jake, he needs a diryxthingy!"
"What type?"
"Any one you can get your hands on," 921-Y said.
Jake stood up and started down the hall, intending to pull apart one of the cyborg they knew to be stored in a nearby hall. Kirindi gave Schrödinger a mental prod, asking him to please make this easy for them. 921-Y's viruses would make sure Utara would not get too much in the way of sending any protocols.
A still bored Shadhahvar turned her attention to the Auton again. "So, what are we going to do if we can't get this door open?"
921-Y sighed, just for show. "Hope Kirindi's sister can wreck a garbage hatch before Utara turns on the freezers on this level."
· · · · · · ·
Jumping over a pile of frosted fellow Servant, the drone continued towards the strange noise. It came from a huge mass slamming against metal, as far as his cold senses could tell.
The sound came from two strange rulers — not mothers, though one should be — whom he was to find in accordance to the call of his Mother. She was rather interested in them and called them adoptive Children, liked them far better than the new queens with their flawless, stagnated copies of their wills.
At least, he thought she liked them. It was rather hard to tell, since she slept an unnatural sleep curtsy of her captors. After she had laid her eggs, they had forced her back into that sleep, with her last command being to attend to these strange not-mother-yet-rulers.
He was close now. The crashing of the strangers had ceased, but he felt their presence still. Strange Children of an unknown Mother, one that was no ruler but just a mother. Searching their memories brought him no where, they had noticed him and blocked his curiosity. He did find out however they were allot older than him, though not even a fraction of the age of the Elder Mother.
Closer still. Just a few meters underneath him. Too late he noticed where exactly the humps in the floor he stood on came from, his senses too dull yet from the frost earlier. The huge head of the queen chimera burst through the metal hatch. It send him flying against the ceiling and bounce off to land on the corona of the much larger creature.
She was very offended by this, understandably. Violently she shook her head and the drone decided to latch on. Getting ripped apart was not in accordance with his Mother's command to help this creature.
So that arm reaching up while she tilted her crest to pluck him off was not productive. Especially not the getting thrown against the wall part.
He felt a few cracks inside, but quickly jumped to his legs again.
She still wrestled to work herself through the hatch. Soon her tail would be free, he might have to run.
Yep, tail free and coming right at him. He dodged.
She nearly fell forward as she pushed herself out of the hole, clumsy yet still fast enough to plant a claw on his tail. He turned and bit, though he wasn't strong enough to break her skeleton. Still, the thin layer of skin atop of it bled and caused her enough pain to release him.
He shot away and turned around at the end of the hall, finding himself not pursued.
The other stranger had climbed up and stood before her sister.
Slowly, he became aware of what went on in between them. The first sense of their hivemind was startling and crowded, not to mention how wrong it felt to join a hivemind not of his own Mother. Still, his Mother had told him to approach them, so who was he to deny the invitation.
They were physically so much like host bodies, he couldn't understand what his Mother wanted with them. Was the small one dominant, the leader? That made no sense. Had he misunderstood his own Mother's command?
No, he had not, his far away Mother told him.
With caution, he walked back to them. The smaller ex-stranger approached him, but then suddenly turned back at a certain noise. More hive members started to crawl through. While he did not understand their noises, he got the gist of their language through the sisters.
One of the humans complained about the state of their tunnel they had just come out of, apparently something relating to the smell. He was particularly confused when she said, "Just look at how I smell now!"
The other fleshy one was irritated and really hated the bad grammar, whatever that may be.
The third wasn't a real creature, though it pretended to be. The sisters thought of him as alive, but he could detect nothing to support that.
All three pseudo hive members noticed him. The two real ones did some screaming and fear, giving the small sister a hard time calming them down and irritating the big one. More noises between those four, and the distrustful mental prodding of the big sister.
Then the small one turned back to him.
The safe way out she requested. Wasn't sure whether he would comply, didn't trust him either.
They could call like mothers, but had that independence of host bodies, and they were sterile without ever becoming queens. Perhaps that was why Mother was so interested in them, their ability to mediate between two species without posing a true risk to her.
He doubted it a second later, then realized both doubt and understanding weren't quite part of his instinct. Odd.
Perhaps the small sister was doing this. It didn't sit well with him, she was guard, acting servant, getting the results of a mother. Whether that was better or worse than the big sister with her aggression he didn't decide on yet.
Well, Mother said help them. So he showed her what he knew of the way out. Back up, to where he was born, to start.
It was time to move. Careful not to betray their position any further than he had done already, he sensed for the presences of the hostile Servants. They were shrieking loudly on all tone heights possible, but their energetic fields were low and unaware of the presences of the others, either Fellow or Enemy. They were completely blind for this little makeshift hive.
His other brothers were also aware of the plot. It was their duty to lead away the hostile servants and create a free path. His Mother's captors had released the hostile ones to clean up, driving them forward with the cold from the walls. They were dying one by one, sometimes at the same time, as their duty was. He himself would have to die too, should it become needed, but so far he was to stay alive.
Somehow, he liked that idea. He'd been a chestburster not too long ago, it would be as unfulfilling as it was to his brothers, dying now without ever meeting Mother.
A tremble in the walls made him lose that little pleasantry. The force that controlled the cold was activating, had the invisible mind in the walls noticed them?
Probably, the sisters said.
He was about to break into a run when they objected. The small one did not want to leave behind the other three things, and her sisters automatically agreed with her.
But they had to run!
They would, but only as quick as the humans could keep up.
Irritated, he turned to the nearest human,stood on his hind legs and grabbed it. More annoying noise ensued when he pushed it onto the queen sister's back. She was insulted, but off course agreed when her sister explained the rationale behind it.
The other human seemed to catch the drift, and climbed on as well. The third, the fake life, declined. It could apparently run quick enough to keep up with the carrying sister.
Weird things, they were so different from one another. Well, at least they went quicker now.
They ran.
His Mother spoke to him again, much to his delight, but at once he had to push away the enthusiasm. He was told a new Command, which he was to keep well hidden from the two sisters. It was all she could tell him in this state, that and a warning of the enemy's approach.
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