Voidstalker

THE LABORATORY

Yanking open the biometric scanner beside Lawrence Kane’s office door, Aster uncovered a hidden keypad and punched in her personal override code to bypass the biometric lock. The red light flashed green, and she slipped inside like a thief in the night before anyone noticed. Once the door was sealed behind her, she leaned against the wall and hyperventilated to dispel the panic over what she had just done.

As project-lead, Aster could use her personal override code to access almost any place in the labs, including other people’s offices if necessary. That meant it was a privilege of her position meant only for emergencies, not for snooping around a co-worker’s office. Even though it wasn’t technically a violation of her employment contract, she certainly didn’t have a legitimate reason for doing it.

Felix’s insistence on digging up whatever Lawrence might have found had stoked a dangerous curiosity in her. Part of her did want to know what had happened to their colleagues on Loki, if only to provide some sort of closure. Not to mention, anything she found might help the authorities and thereby clear the cloud of suspicion hanging over everyone else. Of course, Aster had adamantly rejected versions of those arguments only an hour ago. But they had slowly eaten away at her resolve until she could stand it no longer.

Most companies in the high tech sector used the same highly compartmentalised research and development chain. The researchers carried out the basic research with no immediate commercial value in one facility, then passed on their findings to the engineers to develop into a usable product in another facility.

In theory, this was supposed to leave each section free to focus on their respective areas. In practice, it was just legal cover, and everybody knew it. Hardly a year went by without a major corporate scandal being uncovered involving experiments of a legally questionable nature, either due to an industrial accident, or the revelation that corporate espionage was involved. In the event of legal trouble, the research end of the chain was the most likely to be cut loose to save the rest of the company.

Of course, the process couldn’t be completely stovepiped. Lawrence’s job as ‘liaison’ was to observe the research process and ensure at least one point of contact between the two ends of the chain. It also meant that if anyone knew for certain whether the Loki staff had been breaking the law, it had to be Lawrence. He must have had a set of notes about what he saw at the Loki facility, and his office was as good a place to look as any.

The office itself was cramped and austere, and looked like it hadn’t been used in weeks, which it hadn’t, of course. At the back of the office was a stack of crates, and at the front was a simple desk welded to the wall like in any standard office. An automated cleaning drone buzzed back and forth across the floor, silently vacuuming up the dust collecting in the corners. Other than that, there wasn’t much to see.

Aster sat down at the desk, and the holographic computer screen lit up in response to her presence, displaying the computer’s main menu. Everyone had their own locked office, so nobody bothered to password-lock their computers. Besides, if it were code-locked, Aster could use her personal override code to access any project-related files she wanted – another way of abusing her authority as project-lead.

Cycling through the main menu, Aster came across a folder labelled ‘Loki Observation Notes’. That was a little too easy to find. She opened the folder and scrolled through the notes. All of them were second-hand observations of experiments conducted by the Loki team along with Lawrence’s comments. None of it was recent.

Aster kept glancing at the office door, fearing that someone might walk in and catch her looking through someone else’s files. She knew of course that no one would; she was the only one on this floor with a personal override code. But the wrongness of what she was doing and the paranoia of being caught made it hard to concentrate.

Eventually, she stopped scrolling and threw her head back in silent frustration. Of course they were just second-hand observations; that was Lawrence’s whole job. What exactly was she looking for, a written confession of guilt? If he had been kept in the dark, he wouldn’t have known anything worth writing down in the first place; and if he had known, why would he leave behind evidence indicating his own complicity?

Aster got up to look at the collection of boxes stacked at the back. Would he have hidden anything in them? They were standard storage crates with a simple turn lock, not meant for storing anything valuable. She popped open one of the crates without much effort, finding old components and circuit boards inside. There was nothing immediately relevant to the project, let alone anything nefarious.

There were more boxes piled up at the back of the office, and Aster spent the next half hour rummaging through each of them. She found an assortment of worn-out parts, burnt out circuits, spare tools, an extra set of dirty engineer’s overalls, and nothing else.

Aster slumped against the wall. Again, she had to ask herself: what exactly was she hoping to find? Lawrence hadn’t been to this office in weeks, why would he have left anything incriminating behind? Every entry-level engineer and technician had their own office, but Lawrence's office was just a glorified storage closet.

The cleaning drone zipped along the edge of the wall, meticulously scrubbing the corners before vacuuming up the dust around Aster’s shoes. Moving on, the drone found its path blocked by the pile of boxes. It paused its routines and hummed patiently, waiting for someone to clear the obstruction.

Aster looked at the drone curiously. Since Lawrence was hardly ever here, why would he bother having a cleaning drone in his office? She bent down and plucked the drone off the floor, flipping it over and examining the underside.

It was a simple, commercial model, though the counter-espionage techs would have scrubbed it for malicious components and software before allowing it into the building. It was an older model, too, moving about on six motorised wheels instead of an anti-gravity cushion. Wheels? Really? In an age when Humanity could make a 100,000 tonne spacecraft hover above the ground, why not a simple cleaning bot? However, that also meant the drone had a simple, pop-open panel on its underside.

Aster dug her nail into the groove and prised open the panel, exposing the components. There, hidden in the guts of the machine, was a red memory chip secured to the inside of the drone’s casing by adhesive. This wasn’t the kind of chip that a simple cleaning drone would need, in fact it wasn’t even connected to the drone’s circuitry. The manufacturing code indicated that the chip could store at least a zettabyte of data.

Aster felt a leaden weight drop in her stomach. This kind of data chip was used to store and transport sensitive company information between locations rather than transmitting it through potentially insecure data links. The data chip, and whatever was on it, were proprietary material, and it clearly wasn’t meant to be found.

Worming a finger into the circuitry, Aster peeled the chip cleanly away from the adhesive and held it up to the light. The weight in her stomach only grew heavier as she stared at the blood red data chip; but having come this far, she couldn’t just leave it where she’d found it. Aster slipped the fingernail-sized chip into her pocket and hastily reassembled the drone, before placing it back on the floor where it resumed its mindless cleaning routine.

Then she fled the office.

* * *

After navigating the maze of service tunnels, the squad finally re-emerged into the main facility, itself a maze of pristine corridors and corporate offices. Ogilvy’s increasingly faint tracking signal was heading towards the laboratories at the opposite end of the enormous facility; at least that’s what their onboard maps were telling them.

Losing a comrade in the field was bad enough; having a comrade be taken prisoner was almost worse. You could make your peace with the death of a brother-in-arms and resolve to avenge him later, but if he was captured there was no telling what might be done to him in captivity. The bizarre ravings of the treacherous maintenance technician didn’t give them any peace of mind, either; but that wasn’t even the strangest thing.

The whole place was deserted.

The facility was supposed to be big enough for a staff of a thousand or more, and yet apart from Marcus Teller and his dead accomplice, they had yet to encounter another staff member. There was no way only two men could carry a fully-armoured operator on their own, let alone whilst he was struggling and thrashing, so there had to be a lot more than just a dozen people in on the conspiracy.

So where was everyone?

To Gabriel, it was just as well that Ogilvy was being taken in the direction of their primary objective. Otherwise, this rescue mission was pure foolishness. As a soldier, he could certainly feel the need to rescue a brother-in-arms – or avenge him if he were killed, particularly one under his command. But if he had to choose between saving a soldier and completing the mission, he would have left Ogilvy to his fate. That wouldn’t make him popular with the squad, but events seemed to be conspiring to unite the two priorities.

Ogilvy’s weakening signal meant that his captors were widening the distance between them. That, or the signal was being jammed, a difficult thing to do. Eventually, the signal disappeared from the squad’s sensors altogether.

“Fuck!” Doran cursed, “Now all we have is his last known location.”

“It’s better than nothing.” Bale pointed out.

As they were speaking, Gabriel used his wrist-top computer and his command authority to deauthorise Ogilvy’s ID and remove him from the squad’s local network.

“Woah! What the frick are you doing, colonel?” Viker demanded.

“Using my command module to follow protocol.” Gabriel replied, minding Viker’s tone.

“But you’ve cut him off from the squad’s comm. system!” Viker shot back, “what if he gets free and tries to contact us?”

“He can still use his comm. to let us know that he’s free again,” Doran explained, “but unless Colonel Thorn reinstates his ID, he won’t be able to hear anything we say in reply.”

“And more importantly, neither will his captors,” Gabriel added firmly, “Once a squad member is MIA, their gear is to be considered compromised until proven otherwise.”

Viker was silent.

“Unless you would prefer to allow the enemy to listen in on us?” Gabriel added.

“No, sir.” Viker acknowledged grudgingly.

“Good,” Gabriel answered, “then let’s go rescue Ogilvy.”

The squad continued through the deserted facility until, at length, they reached the entrance to the laboratory complex. Ogilvy’s tracking signal had vanished beyond the door, but he had definitely passed through this way.

The entrance was an atmospherically sealed door with a viewing window and another biometric lock, leading into a decontamination chamber. While the squad covered him, Doran planted Teller’s severed hand on the biometric reader. The reader rejected the hand with a red light and an angry beep.

“Figures.” Said Doran, tossing the now-useless hand aside, “either they’ve de-authorised his biometric signature or he was never allowed in here in the first place.”

“It’s another breach resistant door,” noted Viker, running his hand around the edges of the door, “Blast resistant too. Hard work even for a plasma torch.”

“So you can’t cut through it?” Gabriel asked.

“I probably could,” Viker replied doubtfully, “but we’d be here all week.”

“I could try cracking the encryption, instead.” Doran suggested.

“Do it.” Gabriel ordered.

The squad’s motion trackers flashed red.

“Contacts! Behind us!” Bale shouted as the squad spun round to face the threat.

A silver object bounced off the wall at the far end of the corridor and slid to a halt in front of the laboratory door. Before the squad had time to take cover, the object detonated, releasing a wave of concussive force that sent them flying against the walls, temporarily scrambling their suits’ sensors.

At the far end of the corridor, several creatures appeared from around the corner, bounding on all fours towards the squad with vicious, hungry snarls. Still climbing to their feet, the squad managed to raise their weapons fast enough to open fire, spraying flash-moulded pellets into the faces of the oncoming creatures.

Two of the creatures dropped dead before they could close the distance, their flesh and wiry sinews torn to shreds by the gunfire. But one of the creatures managed to evade most of the bullets – ignoring the few that grazed its body – and got close enough to leap into the air towards Gabriel, knocking him to the ground.

Gabriel found himself pinned down by a snarling mass of teeth and claws. His shields could protect him from extremes of pressure as well as block or deflect high velocity objects like bullets or shrapnel; but they were no good against the beast’s comparatively slow-moving teeth and claws. However, his armour still made him virtually invulnerable, and the creature’s teeth fractured as it clamped its jaws around his gorget armour.

Someone managed to wrap an arm around the creature’s belly and yank it away from Gabriel, tossing it back down the corridor. As the creature rolled across the floor and tried to scramble to its feet, someone else shot it with a single round. The bullet penetrated at the base of the creature’s neck, punching straight through the vertebrae, and almost severing its head in one go. Death was instantaneous.

“Thanks for the assist.” Gabriel said.

He picked up his weapon and jumped back to his feet. With the immediate threat apparently neutralised, Doran returned to work on the door lock’s encryption while Cato covered the corridor in case of other threats. The rest of the squad turned to examine the vicious animals that had attacked them.

The three creatures were vaguely canine in appearance, but bioengineered beyond recognition as normal dogs. They had grotesquely enhanced musculature and elongated snouts lined with razor sharp teeth. Upon closer inspection, their teeth and claws had a dull grey sheen to them. They had been coated with nanopolymer, strong enough to make the enamel and keratin that made up the teeth and claws much sharper and more durable.

There was something else visible in the mutant creatures’ ruined flesh. Gabriel stuck his gauntlet into the mangled meat of the mutant canine, and plucked out a single sinew of muscle, holding it up to the light. It was a dull grey colour and was strongly elastic. Holding both ends, he tugged sharply on the strand, but no matter how hard he pulled on it, the strand of muscle wouldn’t snap.

“Synthetic muscle tissue?” Bale asked, crouching down beside Gabriel for a look.

“Looks like it.” Gabriel concurred.

“Who the frick would do this sort of thing to animals?” Viker said in disgust.

As if to answer Viker’s question, the squad’s motion trackers flashed red again.

“Another contact!” Cato shouted a little redundantly.

The squad snapped back to attention and trained their weapons on the newest threat, closing ranks to cover Doran as he worked on the door lock.

A lone figure stood motionless at the far end of the corridor, clad in a jet black suit. The silhouette looked vaguely female, but it was difficult to tell. The squad’s networked sensor suite couldn’t make heads or tails of her, but all she did was stand there, watching them intently whilst making no effort to take cover or attack them. Gabriel altered a setting on his weapon, switching from full automatic to a single, high-powered shot.

“One shot from me,” Gabriel said, crouching down on one knee, “kill burst from you.”

The squad understood exactly what he meant, and readied their weapons accordingly. Gabriel’s helmet optics were synced with his weapon’s electronic sights, so there was no need for an old-fashioned targeting scope. His HUD marked the target with a red outline and zoomed in for greater detail, projecting a virtual targeting reticle on the mysterious figure.

With a clear image of the target now filling his HUD, Gabriel could see that the figure was indeed female, and the jet black suit she was wearing was combat armour, albeit not a kind he had ever seen before, lacking any visible protective plating. Her helmet was bulbous looking, like a classical drawing of an alien without any features drawn on, and she wasn’t carrying any sort of weapon, not even a simple sidearm.

Gabriel took dead aim at the eerily calm target’s head, his helmet labelling the range as 38.913 metres, a reasonably close range. Just as he was about to squeeze the trigger, the figure slowly raised a hand and traced a finger across the back of its other hand.

The biometric lock chimed approvingly and the reinforced door slid open, breaking the squad’s focus as they reacted to the unexpected sound behind them.

“We’re in!” Bale said, relieved, “Good job, Doran!”

“I didn’t do anything.” Doran replied, mystified.

Gabriel snapped his attention back to the mysterious target. She was gone.

“What do you mean you ‘didn’t do anything’?” Viker demanded of Doran.

“I mean the decryption program needed another few minutes,” Doran answered, “something or someone opened the door for us.”

“Who wants to bet our mystery target opened it?” Gabriel asked rhetorically.

“Codename ‘black widow’ for later?” Cato suggested.

“Sounds good to me.” Gabriel replied.

The squad filed into the decontamination chamber and the door sealed behind them, the chamber filling with anti-hazard gas. The three mutant canine corpses were still visible through the now-clouded glass, bleeding out in the corridor like piles of discarded meat.

Bu the ‘black widow’ was nowhere to be seen.

* * *

Slipping out of Lawrence’s office like a thief – which now, she technically was – Aster powerwalked down the deserted corridor back to her office, hoping to reach the safety and privacy of her own office before someone saw her.

“Dr Thorn!” a voice called out from behind her.

Aster froze up. Had she been caught already?

She turned around slowly as someone approached; a young woman with a ponytail and a tablet computer in hand. One of the newer hires.

“I just wanted to update you on the reactor core simulations we’ve been running.” She said, sounding slightly out of breath as she showed Aster a table of results on her tablet, “all the metrics look green.”

Aster inclined her head to examine the graph of results; her muscles were rigid and her heart was pounding with the guilty fear of being caught.

“Looks good to me.” Aster assured the woman woodenly, “email me the results directly and I’ll take a look at them later.”

“We won’t know for sure until we do live-testing–” the junior engineer began.

“I know, I know,” Aster answered, anxious to end the conversation, “but without authorisation from the board we can’t do any live-testing. Good work though.”

“Thanks…Dr Thorn.” The junior engineer answered, puzzled by her boss’s less than enthusiastic attitude, “I’ll send you the results in a minute.”

“Good. See you later, then.”

Aster abruptly turned on her heel and headed back to her office. She didn’t stop walking until she had sealed and locked the door behind her.

Though safe from prying eyes, she couldn’t bring herself to heave a sigh of relief. There was no relief to be had now. Unless she handed over the data chip to the authorities, she was now officially complicit in whatever Lawrence had been involved in.

Aster fished the little red memory chip out of her pocket and stared at it. Logically speaking, Lawrence wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of hiding the chip if it didn’t contain important information, particularly information that he’d wanted to hide from his colleagues, or even from the company itself.

Aster gulped at that thought. Normally, the stovepiped nature of the R&D process meant that the company board would be wilfully ignorant of the actual research activities, the better to reap high returns from questionable sources, and the better to sweep any incidents under the rug. But if Lawrence had evidence that the company board had direct knowledge of the incident; that would have made him a loose end…

Still staring at the blood red chip, Aster’s head was swimming with unmade decisions. Should she look at the data at all or leave well enough alone? Should she access the data here in the labs or somewhere offsite? Should she hand over the data chip to her employers and risk a criminal complicity charge from the DNI, or give it to the DNI and risk getting permanently blacklisted from the private sector?

The first decision was easy enough. Having taken the data chip, she may as well find out what was on it; but that still left the question of where to access the data from. The board of directors would be scrambling to contain news of the incident and rumours of malfeasance on their part. They would also be vigilant for employees seeking to jump ship by using stolen corporate secrets as leverage.

All computer workstations had spyware installed to guard against corporate espionage from a turncoat employee, so accessing the data here in the lab would necessarily alert her superiors. However, taking the data chip offsite was also out of the question. Even if she could get it past the security scanners undetected, the data was corporate property and she would be stealing from her employers by taking it out of the building.

Finally, whether or not she looked at the data herself, there remained the question of what to do with it. Accessing the data on a computer with company spyware on it would make running to the DNI afterwards a problem, whereas simply giving back what already belonged to the company might make the problem go away.

But there was also Gabriel’s position to consider. There were any number of ways in which she could be caught, all of which could burn Gabriel if his own wife was found to be involved in criminal activity, especially if it involved xenotechnology. Whereas if she went to his bosses instead of her own, it might earn them both points. As much as nepotism disgusted her, surely their marriage had to count for something.

Aster clenched her fist around the data chip to hide it from her sight. People were dead because of the data she was holding, and the blood red colour was a far too literal reminder of that fact. Just looking at it made her stomach churn as much as her mind.

It was also proving difficult to shake the unnerving thought that the company might simply cut her and the others loose once it knew for certain that anything incriminating had been safely locked away. The board of directors had already effectively sacrificed hundreds of their own employees to protect themselves, why wouldn’t they do the same to the rest of their workforce? In that case, there was no reason for Aster to alert them to the fact that she had the data. She would have to hide the chip first, then go to the DNI.

Aster cast a fresh eye around her office. Where could she hide the data chip in case her office was searched again? The workstation was no good, since that was the first place anyone would think to look. What about the furniture? No. A decent scanner would detect anything electronic stuffed under the cushions. She couldn’t dismantle her computer and try to hide the data chip inside, and making a hidey hole in the wall or floor also wasn’t possible.

There were no good hiding spots in her office. Come to think of it, why hide it in her office at all? If she came under suspicion, her office would be the most obvious place to search. She would have to hide the memory chip somewhere else in the building.

Aster stuffed the chip back into her pocket and took a deep breath to calm herself. No one was any the wiser, and Felix had been convinced to drop the issue. She was still in charge of this research section, and in the absence of instructions from the board of directors, everyone was looking to her for direction. That ought to make it easier.

She left her office and took the elevator down to the primary testing floor where the actual ‘project’ was being built. It was a concert hall-sized space, with a dozen little workshops scattered all over, all revolving around the project itself: an experimental fusion reactor the size of a sky-car. The reactor frame was double the size, however, covered as it was in a jungle of wires, cables, and supporting equipment.

It was the work of several years’ research and another year’s worth of construction, and was almost ready for activation; and yet the incident on Loki could sink J.E. Co. and render the whole project redundant. It was a shame to think it might be mothballed before they had gotten a chance to see if it worked. Then again, it was potentially based on xenotechnology research; how many lives had been lost to build it?

Acting as casually as possible, Aster made her way to the side office at the far end of the testing floor. The side office stored a variety of things, mostly spare tools and computers, but in pride of place was the activation key safe. The safe had a biometric lock, preventing anyone except the project-lead or one of the company directors from accessing it.

Aster allowed the scanner to flash-scan her eyes and the safe door popped open in response. Then she plucked the red data chip from her pocket and stuffed it in the far corner of the safe, shutting the door before anyone could walk in on her. The chip was safe for now. Unless, of course, someone with more authority than her decided to look inside.

Aster left the side office and headed back the way she had come across the testing floor, only to freeze up when she saw who was coming the other way. It was Felix – of all people. Had he seen her leave the side office? Would he try and get her to change her mind on something she had just done?

Felix was still walking in her direction, but apparently hadn’t noticed her. She started walking again, trying to keep her pace slow and steady. As they walked past each other, their eyes met for a split second before quickly averting again.

The awkwardness was cringe-inducing, but at least she was safe from suspicion.

* * *

The main conference room in J.E. Co.’s corporate offices was swanky and spacious, with an oval conference table carved from bioengineered wood, and lined with comfortable, high-backed chairs. An entire wall of the conference room was a single pane of glass, providing a sweeping, panoramic view of Asgard City.

No one dared stop to enjoy the view, however, because the boss was furious.

“Who does that bitch think she is?!” Chairman Darius raged at nobody in particular, pounding his fists furiously against the table, “first she shorts my stock, then she brings over some military prick to threaten me, then she rats me out to the fleeking spooks?!”

One of the intimidated spectators opened his mouth to point out that there was no proof Jezebel Thorn had tipped off the DNI, then thought better of it.

“This could sink the entire company,” Darius continued, growing short of breath from the effort of venting his anger, “The Loki rumours alone made the stock price tumble 15%. When the media finds about the DNI raid…or worse still, if they find out about the missing security team we sent in…”

The chairman was silent for a moment as his anger ran out of steam. The assembled staff waited with baited breath, wanting to be sure that their boss’s temper really had died down.

“We’ve…finished screening all the staff.” Someone announced nervously.

Darius looked up with interest, a signal that it was safe to continue talking.

“Based on an analysis of staff members’ personalities, behavioural patterns, and personal circumstances, we were able to cross–”

“I don’t know what any of that means.” Darius said impatiently, his hardened tone warning the man to get to the point.

“…No one we looked at has done anything to warrant suspicion.” The security officer said, knowing full well that the chairman wouldn’t be happy with that answer.

“In other words, you’re telling me that you didn’t find the mole.” Darius answered. It wasn’t a question, it was a statement tinged with anger.

“Sir, we don’t know for certain that there is a mole.” Someone else in the security team spoke up, not wanting to leave his colleague to face the storm alone.

“Of course there’s a mole!” Darius bellowed, his temper reigniting, “How else would Jezebel Thorn have known that the Loki facility had gone dark before the rumours came out?”

Again, no one dared to contradict the chairman, especially since his logic actually made some sense this time. Instead, a security technician stepped forward with a flexi-computer and laid it out on the table for the chairman to see.

“We did flag these individuals as warranting extra attention.” He said.

Chairman Darius looked over with interest. Then his interest turned to puzzlement.

“What the fleek is all this supposed to be?” he demanded.

“Bribery and blackmail are the two most common ways to recruit a double agent,” the security technician explained, “so by compiling and cross-referencing information on the personal circumstances and private lives of the staff, we can determine who is most vulnerable to being recruited as a mole.”

“And thereby find out who the mole is.” Darius concluded, sounding encouraged.

The security technician wasn’t actually going to say that, but kept his mouth shut.

The names on the list included, among other things, an applied mathematician who liked to frequent strip clubs, a married junior accountant who was having a lesbian affair, and a metallurgist with medical bills.

“What about this person?” Darius tapped one of the names.

“Dr Lawrence Kane.” The security technician said, “He was the liaison officer for the Loki facility. He’s a loner, likes to drink at bars alone, and occasionally brings home a prostitute. Apparently, he was also diagnosed with some kind of blood disorder five years ago.”

“Pitiful loser.” Darius sneered, “He’d be an easy target.”

“However, he’s been up at the Loki facility for the past few weeks,” the technician continued sceptically, “which means he’s probably dead by now.”

“That doesn’t mean he wasn’t a mole when he was alive.” Darius pointed out, “look into him, just in case. Who else is there?”

“There’s also the lead scientist for the reactor project.” The technician said, highlighting her name from the list, “Dr Aster Thorn.”

“‘Thorn’?” Darius growled, his fingers curling into fists at the mention of the name.

“By marriage,” the technician clarified, “it’s not her maiden name.”

“Even so, there’s no fleeking way that’s a coincidence!” the chairman exclaimed with absolute certainty, “Does she tick any other boxes of suspicion?”

“No, she doesn’t.” the technician replied, warily but truthfully, “She’s originally from the colonies, happily married, four kids, no criminal record or history of questionable behaviour, and an excellent credit score. Other than the coincidence of names and her colonial background, her profile gives her the weakest probability of being a mole.”

“Check her again,” Darius ordered, “Do a deep probe of her if you have to. There’s no way that slippery snake Jezebel wouldn’t consider recruiting a family member or an in-law.”

“We can check her workplace activity.” The technician suggested, “See if she’s tried to requisition any equipment or use her personal override code.”

“Do it.” Darius ordered, snapping his fingers commandingly at the other technicians. They nodded and hastily departed the conference room. The technician waited until he was alone with the chairman before continuing.

“We also did a search for this ‘Gabriel’ person.” The technician said.

“What did you find?” Darius demanded.

“This.” The technician answered, opening up a separate file.

It was marked: ‘Access Denied: Tier 2 classification’.

“I see.” Darius said simply, his eagerness for revenge evaporating in an instant, “forget about him. Focus on Kane and Thorn.”

* * *

The squad exited the decontamination chamber and fanned out to secure the area. They found themselves in another atrium, more spacious and high class than the first waiting lounge, and with holographic screens displaying soothing images and sounds from nature.

“Welcome to the Research Labs,” the android receptionist said congenially, “please check in at the front desk before–”

Viker silenced the android with a single headshot. The round punched a hole clean through the robot’s forehead, blowing out the back of its head in the process and spraying shattered electronics against the back wall.

No one questioned Viker’s decision. Any amateur techie could reprogram an android to be hostile. Furthermore, the squad no longer had the element of surprise, and there was no telling what kind of booby-traps might have been rigged in anticipation of their arrival.

There was one detail, however, that arrested the squad’s attention, one which looked decidedly out of place in this otherwise generic corporate lounge. It was a message scrawled on the wall above the front desk in dark red capital letters:

‘KNOWLEDGE SETS YOU FREE’.

Cato climbed up onto the desk and swiped his hand across the bottom part of the right-hand ‘E’. The sensors in his gauntlet confirmed what they suspected.

“Blood. Human.” Cato confirmed grimly, “But not Ogilvy’s, thankfully.”

The letters were enormous, too large for one person to have provided all the blood. That still left open the question of what kind of psychopaths would kill people just to daub giant slogans on the walls in their blood.

“Colonel,” Bale asked, “what exactly are we looking for here?”

“No one goes to this amount of trouble just to kill a prisoner.” Gabriel reasoned, “Whatever they want with Ogilvy, they’ll need to get his armour off first.”

“The medical bay, then?” Cato suggested.

“That’s as good a place to start as any.” Gabriel resolved.

Gabriel took point as the squad proceeded down the eerily deserted corridors, following the signs on the walls towards the medical bay. The whole place resembled a deserted hospital from a classical horror film with perfectly perpendicular walls and floors, and the eerie absence of people; even the lights were flickering to complete the effect.

Perhaps ‘mental asylum’ was a more appropriate metaphor. The walls, ceilings, and floors were covered with disturbing writing; bizarre slogans and phrases crudely daubed in block capitals, and in what was almost certainly also Human blood.

‘TO KNOW GOD IS TO BE GOD’.

‘SUBMISSION MEANS PEACE’.

The sinister invocations of the divine became creepier and creepier as they proceeded through the eerily deserted corridors. Warnings about monsters and demons in the dark, awe-filled references to the ‘Temple’ and the ‘Voice’, and many other pseudo-religious babblings covered virtually every surface.

There was also more esoteric graffiti: long passages of text written in an indecipherable script that the squad’s suit computers didn’t recognise. Alongside these were complicated mathematical and chemical equations scrawled on the walls like devotional art.

The squad turned yet another corner into one last corridor leading towards the medical bay. Painted on the floor, next to the fundamental theorem of calculus, was one piece of writing that was refreshingly straightforward: ‘FUCK THE CORPORATES!’

“At least we agree on something.” Cato remarked.

“Just how many people worked here?” Viker wondered aloud, changing the subject.

“Officially, around 1000.” Doran reminded him.

“Yeah, the ‘official’ number is clearly bollocks,” Viker retorted, “We’ve encountered a grand total of three people so far, and two of them are corpses.”

“Leave it to Viker to complain about a LACK of things to kill.” Cato joked.

“Hey, I just want to know where everybody is.” Viker answered, “Also, how in Terra’s name did J.E. Co. manage to build a facility this big right under our noses in a major star system? Is the DNI’s intel really that bad?”

“Any insights, colonel?” Doran asked.

“I agree,” Gabriel responded, “normally illegal labs like this are small and hidden out on the frontier. But this place must have taken years and cost tens billions of credits to construct, and probably a lot more to keep it secret.”

“What are you saying, sir?” Bale asked.

“I’m saying that either there was an awful lot of corporate – and possibly political – buy-in to this project,” Gabriel clarified ominously, “or something about this location meant that the base couldn’t have been built anywhere else. Maybe both.”

Without warning, the lights died. The squad closed ranks as their visors readjusted, then two office doors slid open on either side of them simultaneously and the squad opened fire.

Bale shot one target through the wrist, who screamed in agony as his hand was severed clean off, his fingers still wrapped around a grenade. The other target opened fire with an auto-pistol, hitting Viker in the back. His shielding deflected the shots, and Doran returned fire, three controlled bursts eviscerating the target’s organs.

Cato and Gabriel covered the corridor while Doran and Bale secured the two rooms.

“Clear!” each of them shouted in turn.

The attacker who’d lost his hand was still alive. He lay on the floor, groaning in pain and struggling to breathe, clutching the mangled remains of his wrist.

Bale stowed his weapon and picked the captive up by the throat.

“Where’s the prisoner?” Bale questioned him through his helmet speakers.

“Go to hell!” the prisoner spat back defiantly.

Bale paused for a moment.

“You first.” He replied, snapping the man’s neck with an audible crack and discarding him on the ground like a limp doll.

“If killing the lights is their only plan for slowing us down,” Cato remarked, “this’ll be an awful lot easier than I thought.”

“Found something.” Doran announced.

Still covering the corridor, the squad filed into the room Doran had secured, stepping over the bleeding corpse on the floor. They found themselves in a small security room with banks of computers and security monitors. The monitors were dead and the computers had been powered down, and the equipment lockers had been emptied of their contents.

Doran held up a data pad that had been discarded on the table.

“Looks like they were worried about an infiltrator.” Doran said, scrolling through its contents, “listen to this: ‘the walls have eyes and the floors have ears. Dani is watching and listening, an agent of the fricking corporates and government spooks. The Voice has whispered to me that only the Temple can be deemed safe; fall back there and leave her to watch over nothing and listen to silence’.”

“What the fuck does all that mean?” Cato asked rhetorically, “Apart from the fact that they have a leader who receives instructions from voices in his head.”

“‘The walls have ears and the floors have eyes’,” Gabriel said pensively, “could there be spyware in the system?”

“That’s what I think.” Doran replied, “It would explain why the computers were shut down; and if it had root access, it could hijack all the security camera feeds.”

“That doesn’t mean there wasn’t an infiltrator.” Bale replied sceptically, “Assuming those aren’t just paranoid rantings, if there really is spyware in the system, someone would have had to plant it in the system. Perhaps someone called ‘Dani’.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Viker objected, “if ‘Dani’ is a Human mole, then retreating to some stronghold further back wouldn’t root him out.”

“Well, what else would ‘Dani’ refer to?” Bale asked.

“I don’t know,” Viker admitted defensively, “a codename, a metaphor, a figment of the facility’s staff’s imagination, it could be anything–”

“It doesn’t matter who or what Dani is.” Gabriel interjected, cutting short the discussion, “We can find out more on the way to the objective.”

“The medical bay is on the other side of the ‘live-testing hall’, whatever that is.” Doran said as he consulted the map, “it should be at the other end of this corridor.”

Practically on cue, the door at the far end of the corridor opened, letting in a beam of light from the other side that forced the squad’s visors to readjust yet again.

“New contact!” Gabriel shouted.

The squad exited the room and took aim at the source of the light.

A figure appeared, standing on the other side of the doorway, partially obscured by the light behind him. Though difficult to make out, the figure was dressed in a technician’s overalls with the J.E. Co. logo instead of body armour, and was apparently unarmed. Of course, this wasn’t the first time they’d encountered a supposedly harmless techie.

Gabriel primed a single high-powered shot and crouched down on one knee, taking dead aim at the silhouette’s head. His helmet’s optical suite was equipped with a variety of visual filters, and the software darkened the otherwise blinding halo of light around the target whilst highlighting the target itself in enough detail to line up a clear shot.

Then the doors shut again, plunging the corridor back into darkness.

Somewhere, deep down beneath the layers of training and psychological conditioning that had made him a voidstalker, Gabriel was starting to feel a rankling hatred for this deranged enemy. They had brazenly kidnapped a member of his squad, and were using his life to lure them deeper into this Mastermind-forsaken death-trap.

Gabriel didn’t mind death-traps. He did mind being mocked on his way through one.

“Everyone,” Gabriel growled over the comm., “On me.”

The squad followed Gabriel’s lead as they walked towards the door, weapons raised and ready to shoot. ‘Walk to your death, don’t run’, the drill instructors always said.

The door light was green; it was open and didn’t need to be breached. Doran and Viker leaned against the door on either side whilst Cato, Bale, and Gabriel crouched down with weapons ready. Doran stretched out his free hand above the electronic lock, indicating a countdown with his fingers. Four…three…two…one.

On zero, Doran tapped the green button and the doors slid open.

With weapons raised, the squad emerged into the ‘live-testing hall’: a cavernous chamber with a domed roof illuminated by flood lighting high up on the ceiling. The walls were lined with supplies and mechanical gear, but the centre of the chamber had been cleared to create a big open area that looked like an arena. Exactly like an arena.

In the centre of the chamber was a giant metal frame equipped with restraint clamps and a set of robotic arms. Housed in the frame was a mobility platform: a piloted mechanical walker twice the height of a Human, consisting of an armoured cockpit with mechanical legs and arms. Mobility platforms were typically used for heavy lifting.

This one was equipped with military-grade weaponry.

The squad froze. They kept their weapons trained on the threat, but it wasn’t clear they could win this fight; at least not without heavy weapons or explosives. They had been lured out into the open against a threat they weren’t equipped to fight, with limited cover and nowhere to which they could fall back.

A klaxon sounded and yellow lights flashed around the mobility platform’s support frame as the restraint clamps were retracted. The walker took a slow, heavy step forward and stomped its foot down loud enough to echo throughout the chamber.

“Cover, now!” Gabriel shouted.

He took aim and fired.