A room full of water. Or is that mist? It drains slowly away.
Plink… plink… plink… fffftzz …
Sparks. A Chiss woman is revealed sitting at a metallic table, light overhead angled, staring through a pair of macrolenses. Datapads litter the table. Scribbled calculations and symbols fill many. In her hand is a tool. A cybernetic relay lays open before her. A security camera, dismantled in pieces, lies nearby. Each piece is precisely placed and catalogued.
She touches the electrode to the relay. Sparks erupt again.
“What’s the job?”
Laughing. It sounds hollow.
“So soon? I thought you liked working for SIS.” The room twists… blurs.
“The job. Details, please.”
Her hands move rapidly over the relay, reconnecting circuits. She’s counting… pulses, units, electrodes, connections, bodies… Wait. There are no bodies here yet. A rushing sound, like water.
Someone lays schematics in front of her. The datapad grows bigger, filling the table. It shrinks and grows spastically in a fit of jerks. She does not notice. She squints at it through her macrolenses.
Fifty-two rooms, seven exits, ninety-eight corridors, one thousand five hundred thirty-two hypernodes, eight hundr –
“What do you think?”
She shrugs. “Possible.” She turns back to the relay, fingers flashing.
“You’ll have to infiltrate the cartel. Probably take a few months of work, minimum. When you’re inside, you’ll find this. Base Laminar 3.” Three. The number three began wrapping in miniature around the table, repeating over and over, until it filled the room. Three. THREE.
“This routes takes you to the controls. From there, you can insert the nerve gas into the vents.” She nods rhythmically. Flavoid toxin. Eighteen methods of uptake into the body. Kills within twenty-eight minutes or within thirty-seven, for the those of stronger constitution, mortality increasing exponentially.
“Will you do it?”
No! A voice.
“Yes,” she says.
“Excellent. Just don’t dissect the entire station, ok?” He laughs.
The laugh grows until it’s deafening, then abruptly stops. Sparks.
She gets up, lifting the relay and moves over to a table, where a man lies, brain visible, skull held open with a mechanical claw. She inserts the relay inside. The room fades to black.
Plink… plink… plink… fffftzz …
Sparks. A Chiss woman is revealed sitting at a metallic table, light overhead angled, staring through a pair of macrolenses. Datapads litter the table. Scribbled calculations and symbols fill many. In her hand is a tool. A cybernetic relay lays open before her. A security camera, dismantled in pieces, lies nearby. Each piece is precisely placed and catalogued.
She touches the electrode to the relay. Sparks erupt again.
“What’s the job?”
Laughing. It sounds hollow.
“So soon? I thought you liked working for SIS.” The room twists… blurs.
“The job. Details, please.”
Her hands move rapidly over the relay, reconnecting circuits. She’s counting… pulses, units, electrodes, connections, bodies… Wait. There are no bodies here yet. A rushing sound, like water.
Someone lays schematics in front of her. The datapad grows bigger, filling the table. It shrinks and grows spastically in a fit of jerks. She does not notice. She squints at it through her macrolenses.
Fifty-two rooms, seven exits, ninety-eight corridors, one thousand five hundred thirty-two hypernodes, eight hundr –
“What do you think?”
She shrugs. “Possible.” She turns back to the relay, fingers flashing.
“You’ll have to infiltrate the cartel. Probably take a few months of work, minimum. When you’re inside, you’ll find this. Base Laminar 3.” Three. The number three began wrapping in miniature around the table, repeating over and over, until it filled the room. Three. THREE.
“This routes takes you to the controls. From there, you can insert the nerve gas into the vents.” She nods rhythmically. Flavoid toxin. Eighteen methods of uptake into the body. Kills within twenty-eight minutes or within thirty-seven, for the those of stronger constitution, mortality increasing exponentially.
“Will you do it?”
No! A voice.
“Yes,” she says.
“Excellent. Just don’t dissect the entire station, ok?” He laughs.
The laugh grows until it’s deafening, then abruptly stops. Sparks.
She gets up, lifting the relay and moves over to a table, where a man lies, brain visible, skull held open with a mechanical claw. She inserts the relay inside. The room fades to black.