“Alright, that should be the last one.” As Valentine entered the room crystal patches inlaid into the walls rose to a glow providing gentle illumination. The Sarcophagus seemed larger in person. She hesitantly walked up to it, her hands nervously fidgeting with her tools. “See? No sign of foul play. Let’s get out of here and seal it back up.”
Grey strode over and ran a finger along the lid. “Humor me and access it directly.”
She narrowed her eyes, “I’m tripling the size of the bag, Grey.”
“Quit your grousing and get to work.”
Valentine continued to mutter under her breath. She reached out and laid both hands on the Sarcophagus. Orange pulsing light quickly sparked outward in vibrant angular patterns. Arsiel walked over to one of the statues and rapped it lightly with his knuckles. It made no sound. “You know, Grey, having us break him out would totally be Ansel’s style.” Grey glanced over his shoulder at him and slightly raised his left eyebrow. Arsiel dismissed the look with a wave and a smile, “Yeah yeah, borrowing trouble,” he paused for a beat, “No less true though.”
Valentine looked up from her work. Rectangles of light appeared in the air around her displaying all manner of visual and textual data. “OK. The box is still occupied and the occupant is very much dead. The seals haven’t been broken or tampered with, and none of the room’s dedicated security systems have been tripped.” As she spoke the various displays illuminated and enlarged themselves as they became relevant. “That’s about as comprehensive as I can get without actually opening the damn thing.”
Arsiel walked over. “Ok, if he’s still in there now what do we do?”
“Whoa. Hold on a second,” Valentine’s voice was shaky. “What the hell? Something’s not right.”
Grey may have been talking about the weather for all of the emotion in his voice, “Care to elaborate?”
“There are some discrepancies between what the Sarcophagus’s internal sensors are reading and what the system is displaying them as reading. They’re showing that the corpse is smaller than the systems think it is.” The tip of her tongue peeked out from between her lips as she concentrated. “Diagnostics indicate that there’s a problem with the relay between the sensors and the processing system. Rerouting to back up relays now. OK, everything’s back to normal and hey, would you look at that I’m getting an alert that the corpse’s status has changed.”
Arsiel frowned, “So the body shrunk? Don’t they do that what with all the decomposition?”
“The Sarcophagus is hermetically sealed and temperature controlled, there should be no decay, nor anything else. The body is effectively in stasis. But two weeks ago it reduced in mass and size by roughly eighteen percent and its temperature briefly spiked by 8 degrees.”
“Is there an internal camera?”
“No, but if you give me a minute I can make a portion of the lid transparent. Arsiel stand by in case the guardians freak out. I’ve shut down as many triggers as I can but I’m still likely to trip a few alarms by altering the substance of the Sarcophagus.”
Arsiel drew his blade, an elegant five and a half foot bastard sword made of the same lustrous white metal as his armor, and stood in a relaxed stance in the middle of the room. “So Grey, where do shrinking bodies fit into your plan?”
Grey cleaned the lenses of his glasses before replying, “They don’t. Not yet.” Valentine finished speaking softly to the metal and after a soft caress it lightened to a crystal clear transparency. Arsiel focused on the statues. Grey crowded in to take a look. His eyes narrowed. “That’s not Ansel.”
The air felt quieter, the shadows a little darker. The pitted iron statues loomed menacingly. Arsiel half turned to look back at Grey. “What? How can it not be Ansel? The body we put in was Ansel’s. If no one opened the damn thing how’d a new body get in there?”
Grey drummed his fingers on the now transparent metal, “Is it possible that the same bug in the sensor relay hid a breach from you?”
“No way. Too many redundant systems for that, some of which are purely mechanical, and none of them have been tripped or broken, I checked directly. As far as I can tell, about two weeks ago Ansel’s body turned into this guy’s.” Valentine paused, mouth slightly opened. “What the hell is that?”
“What the hell is what?”
“There’s some sort of bizarre energy marker in here. Someone’s been in my system. Someone slick. I wouldn’t have even noticed if not for the relay bug.”
“Has anything been tampered with?”
“Not that I can tell…” The lights in the room suddenly cut out and the access way they used to enter vanished behind a panel that slid seamlessly into place in the wall. The Sarcophagus dropped down through a hatch in the floor, which promptly sealed behind it. “An intruder breach? Now?”
Grey’s features seemed waxy and unhealthy in the orange light emitted by Valentine. “Where?”
Another rectangle of light appeared in the air, this one displaying a schematic of the Tomb. A bright dot flashed in the center schematic. “In the crypt chamber…but that means…Oh shit. We’re the breach.”
“Can you turn it off?”
Valentine’s fingers and eyelids twitched. A flood of tiny characters could be seen flooding across the surface of her eyes. Webs of light raced along the floor from her feet. A series of muted clanks, snaps, and hisses could be heard from the walls. “I shorted out the traps in the Crypt chamber and bypassed the guardians. That trick won’t work again, though, the system is fighting back now. Whoever got in adjusted it just enough so that if an alert was triggered we’d be classified as hostiles. And now that we’re in an alert, the system won’t recognize any commands to reclassify our status. And no, I can’t turn it off. An off switch was a ’exploitable weakness’ ‘we’ decided to omit in the design phase as I’m sure Grey can recall with perfect clarity.”
“I do.” Grey slid his glasses back up the bridge of his nose with a finger. “Unfortunately Arsiel, we’re going to have to fight our way out.”
Valentine pivoted in place hands slightly upraised,“I’ll do what I can to keep the traps from killing us. Until the system catches up to me I can use them to take out guardians in other sections. It won’t account for all of them, though, so you guys are on your own there.”
Ringing metal footsteps could be heard pounding up the corridor towards the main door to the Crypt chamber. Arsiel approached the door. “Hey Grey, when you guys designed this place, you used us as the standard for the kinda people you wanted to keep in or out, right?”
“Correct. Which is why I can’t simply just gate us out of here.”
The footsteps got louder and were accompanied by a bone tingling high-pitched whine. Arsiel assumed a ready stance in front of the door. Blackness blossomed from the shoulders of his armor and spread across its surface much like spilled ink on parchment. The darkness was deep, textured and full of soft pinpoints of light. His silhouette could have been a window into deep space. The door opened. He smiled. “Good, I was looking for a challenge.” Oblivion manifest as a man with a scintillating pearl sword rushed to meet the screaming mechanical tide.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment