[i]“One step at a time,”[/i] Spencer affirmed, took a deep breath, and threw open the vault door. Death’s pungence assailed him, a rancid bouquet that crept along his flesh, blurred his vision, and raced down his olfactory nerve where it scrunched his nose. Time, ever the merciless tyrant, cleared his senses to receive the nigh-limitless possibilities of sensory revulsion. The room stank worse than his sweat-drenched, vomit-stained, urine-soaked self. He shifted his weight, suddenly self-consciousness, resisted the urge to heave, and contemplated whether more substantial evidence of how hard he partied was caked in his crack. Instinctively, his eyes drifted toward his former friend. Not quite the welcome distraction he sought. [i]“What was his name? Wilco? Raphael? Randall? Yeah. Yeah. Randall.”[/i]—Spencer rambled, barely cognizant of his vocalizing his musings. At some level, though, he knew why words were necessary. That sojourn into realm of abstract dread, memories real or imagined, impressed on him the need to openly acknowledge reality. Not all reality was worth reflection, he concluded. Like the corpse in the room. Still, Randall deserved a moment of silence, although he intended to make it brief. Not because he was apathetic—he did eventually remember his friend’s name. That, he concluded, was the fault of substance abuse. Even now, the world felt increasingly like molasses. Rather, because none would be helped if he, too, were reduced to a hot mess that steadily seeped toward oblivion. Pragmatic, he shared the moment with an assessment of the room for valuables. Nothing. Everything he required was in his satchel. Ah, his satchel! Why did it hang from his hip instead of that hook on the wall? Allure City, death trap and menagerie without compare. Escape. He reached in, found his communicator, plugged it into his ear, and without another thought darted out of the basement apartment. With the door flung wide open, any neighbors who survived to abandon the perceived safety of their homes might regret their second chance. [i]“Spencer Tras requesting immediate tele-evac,”[/i] he breathlessly managed before a pressure wave knocked him flat. Ears ringing, he clung to the sidewalk at the top of the concrete stairs, amazed the bottom didn’t embrace him and a broken neck. Still dazed, he peered through the expanding cloud of dust toward the epicenter of the blast. [i]“IMMEDIATE EVAC,”[/i] he screamed. [i]<< Acknowledged, >>[/i] a voice intoned calmly, [i]<< Relay commencing >>[/i] A flash of white light pierced the clouds, struck where was sprawled, and in the blink of an eye he was gone. [center] . . . [/center] [i]“Blegck! Eww. When we’re finished, drag our guest into the watercloset and scrub him til he’s spotless,”[/i] Czes demurred to a synthetic assistant whose plastic expression analog inexplicably twisted in horror. As usual, Czes was a dapper in his cashmere ivy cap, rich brown jacket, diamond checkered vest, straight slacks, and blutchers—attire utterly anachronistic within the streamlined modernity of his well-lit surroundings. In spite of the bleak events, there was something in the scene before him—a chaotic, idiotic, laissez-fair canvas—that led to a lightening of his mood. Bemused, however inappropriately, he repressed an inappropriate smile his brown eyes couldn’t quite mask and added, after a poignant pause, [i]“Burn the clothing. Every scrap.”[/i] Composed, he fixed a faux frown on his face and appraised his new arrival. The oaf sat on the floor, his impish face lit with the look of disassociated bewilderment that too often accompanied teleportation. He blinked, he rolled his eyes, and absently observed how the large disc of glass in the ceiling shimmered from the heat of the transporter array’s energy pulse. It was amazing how the beam pierced half a mile of ocean. The distraction wasn’t working. Hands shoved into his pockets, he opened his mouth to speak, paused again, and finally spoke, [i]“Spencer, my name is Czes Schäfer. You’re safely aboard my private yacht, the [/i]Kithless[i]. I’d like to extend my pleasure at finally making your acquaintance. However, before we formalize our introductions, uh, strip. You’re filthy. Utterly vile. Throw your clothing into the incinerator. Also, report. We need to know what is going on.”[/i] As he awaited a reply, Czes grimaced, lifted a kerchief to his nose, turned, and initiated the procession toward cleanliness. [center] . . . [/center] [hider=Historical Data File][center][h3]Five Wing Seraphim[/h3][/center] Tristan gazed into a bright light without blinking, his black pupils, irises, and corneas dilated wide into holes no luminance escaped. He could feel the strength in his limbs, although something prevented their movement. It didn’t concern him, as his senses indicated no threats were local. Meanwhile, memories flooded his brain. The surge nearly overwhelmed him, but he repressed the flow and allowed the task complete in the background so he could focus on the present. Momentarily, the light seemed to dim. He made out a reinforced-concrete ceiling, inhaled the fresh scent of ice accumulated on the interior walls, and faintly heard the wind howl through a long stretch of corridors. Wherever he was, outside was incredibly cold. [I]“You’re on Outstation Vega 5.8, colloquially known as Jadis,”[/i] a woman said. Although Tristan couldn’t see her, somehow he was able to analyze her vocal patterns along with what he could only interpret as her “aura.” Whatever it was, without seeing her, he could visualize her. Hot, no doubt about it. Aussie accent, ample hips that undulated gracefully, pert breasts, librarian glasses, and—his downfall—lustrous red hair. A ginger. She had to be a ginger. How he missed red hair in all the right places. [I]“You hail from Oceania, eh?”[/i] he inquired jovially. [I]“What is the last thing you remember?”[/i] she asked all business-like. Undeterred, Tristan answered, [I]“I remember taking an armor piercing round to the back of my head. Either I survived or you’re an angel.” “Neither. You remember that happening because it did happen. You died. However, as a valued asset, your memories were streamed to Mobius Corps central database and your DNA record preserved. You are a clone of the original Tristan Singh.” “You sure know how to take the wind out of a guy’s sails, lady,”[/i] he muttered. [I]“Your mission on Xenophore was a success, but proved irrelevant; a multiversal event called the Cataslysm decimated the United Earth Confederation, and Earth-F67X was set back several hundred years, at least in terms of colonization, but we’ve also managed to take a few steps forward,”[/i] she continued as though he weren’t there, although the words were obviously intended to bring him up to speed on whatever the current situation was. [I]“As such, several improvements have been made to your clone.” “What’s the mission? Why bring me back?”[/i] he interrupted. [I]“The interference that you encountered during your time on Xenophore, the bands of space that blot out technological function, are encroaching on our territory. We lost contact with the last agent we sent out, and they are presumed dead. Our scientists theorize that most modern agents who are sent out into that the encroachment zone will die, due to the wetware cybernetic implants in their bodies,”[/i] she replied. [I]“Yet I was able to survive it, drifting through space and such, so you brought me back to investigate; right?”[/i] Tristan asked. [I]“Exactly right,”[/i] she said. He smiled, tried to turn his head and look at her, but it didn’t work out too well. Besides, he had a perfect picture in his mind, and, somehow, he knew it wasn’t wrong. [I]“Mind telling me your name, lovely?” “Dr. Reschelle Mavox.” “Reschelle. That’s a pretty name,”[/i] Tristan winked. Finally, he managed to tilt his head enough to catch a glimpse. The pretty name was accompanied by a pretty body, much like the sumptuous image in his mind. No, not much—exactly the same. It was uncanny. Not one to waste time on coincidences, he took to the high road and mentally undressed her; took in the ample curves of her breasts and hips and imagined the smooth flesh that undulated beneath her dingy white lab coat and slate gray slacks. Dr. Mavox tapped him on the shoulder with her stylus and chided, [I]“Enough flirting. Sit up. I’ll unhook you and then we can run some tests on your motor functions. After that, I might let you put on some clothes.” “Well, let’s not rush things,”[/i] he replied with a dopey grin. Tristan flexed his abs and pulled his upper body forward, but as soon as he did a sharp pain lanced his every nerve and his vision went darker than his carbon fiber flesh. He felt himself slam back down on the bed and heard Reschelle’s—with some alarm, although a distinct lack of surprise—assurances that he needed to remain calm. After all, everything was going to turn out just fine. He didn’t know why they wouldn’t. Even when seized and spasmed so much the auto-restraints were applied, he assumed things would be alright; that this was just some glitch to be worked out of the system. Still, the paint continued to mount. It went from annoying, to disconcerting, to a completely unbearable concerto of tingling, stabbing, ripping, and then an absence of sensation that spread continually inward. When it stopped, he thought he was finally out of the woods. Until he realized that he was just that thought, that there was nothing else to him. It was his last thought. Dr. Mavox gazed down at the hospital bed and the patient on it in disgust. He looked like a photo of one of those ancient victims of the electric chair as smoke poured from his liquefied eye sockets and blood seeped from underneath his nails. With a sigh, she spoke into the air with the knowledge the message was being recorded. [I]“Seventy-third clone revitalization attempt on Mobius Operative X7B, known as Tristan Singh, failed at three minutes past nine, Jadis time. No progress. Widespread corruption and antique nature of the neutral upload continues to produce faults during synthetic sync.”[/i] A notion tempted, stridently tweaked, and feigned knowledge of her innermost contemplations. It wasn’t her voice that piqued her interest with ersatz insight. The concept of a cancerous counterbalance to the decay was heretical to her scientific principals, yet it seduced as much as it repulsed. She glanced around, wondering where it came from. Before she knew it, she was on her hands and knees searching for bugs, microphones, or signs of sabotage. Before she accepted it was truly all in her head, she knew her frantic quest would result in a psychiatric review—after all, she did not act in a vacuum. Her hands suddenly trembled. She didn’t even notice her bracelet slip off and clatter to the floor, a thin gold chain with various religious charms that ranged from a pentagram to the Taiji. As she stood, to mask her peculiar behavior, Reschelle ran them through her long auburn locks. Likewise, she briefly closed her eyes and took a deep breath in an effort to mask her bewildered emotional state. Where the notion sprang from, she was not sure, but it was more than just a thought—more than some eerily realistic daydream. Ultimately it didn’t matter, for as soon as she realized how peculiar her behavior appeared, Dr. Mavox understood the danger she was in. Any untoward action now could easily end her career, which was the last thing she wanted. She stood quietly until she felt calm and confident, then reached behind her ear and grabbed her gravity-resistant pen. [I]“So it was there the whole time?”[/i] she muttered in feigned annoyance. A sigh was expelled from her mouth. With any luck, the charade convinced to those who watched. There were always watchers, and watchers for the watchers. It annoyed her and scared her, but she needed the people who insisted on them if she wanted to advance the field of cellular recognition. Still, she felt better, in spite of her failures, and sat down at her desk in a room adjacent to the lab. There, she took notes on the various permutations of her subjects, what worked, what didn’t, and explored the idea forced into her mind from elsewhere. Just as she was about finished, her phone rang. After two rings, she picked it up. [I]“Dr. Mavox,”[/i] the voice of a man said. [I]“This is she,”[/i] she answered. Without delay, as though her response was considered a matter-of-fact, the voice continued, [I]“Project Mephistopheles is indefinitely on hold. You are to return to Vervet for debriefing. A shuttle has already been dispatched to your location on Jadis and will arrive to pick you up within the hour.” Click.[/i] The call was over almost before it began, and she stared at the phone in disbelief before she shrugged it back in her pocket. Jadis was a horrible place, cold, stuffy, and secretive. A return to Earth would be appreciated, but she wondered what that meant for her future with Mobius and its various associates. [center]. . .[/center] An hour later, Dr. Reschelle Mavox stood with her suitcase in the spaceport of Jadis. It was dawn, but that didn’t make it any warmer. Through the glass, she could see where the ship would pull in. Beyond that, the open white landscape, all ice and snow. The only thing that gave this planet credence was its thin atmosphere and enough minerals to set up an advance automation colony of robots to establish a base of operations where humans could work out of. How many studies on animals and human prisoners took place here to advance science? She couldn’t say, but it was easily in the thousands. Finally, the shuttle arrived. She felt it before she heard it, the ultrasonic rumble of the air. Then it appeared in the bay and turned toward her. Once more as barren as she was cold, Jadis silently orbited the near-void. For the moment, she was far more frigid than usual, her frost-nipped flesh in opposition to Vega relative to the gaseous giant that hung between her and the star like a winking cauldron of violet smog. Without stellar rays to warm her, the pattern of wind in Jadis’ atmosphere changed, the methanol rain that swept her surface steadily crystallized, and megacryometeors bombarded her pocked flesh mercilessly and with increasing frequency throughout her gloom. If anyone remained in the installation, unless they were a veteran of Jadis, the sound of the giant chunks of ice exploding against the bunker would prove terrifying. However, only one person remained, and he was incapable of feeling. Stacked in a radiation-shielded and climate-controlled storage facility, the cryo-preserved clones of Tristan Singh awaited a resurrection that was never to come. It was impossible for them to know or care, for even if they were to somehow thaw out and awaken, the quantum arrangement of their brains remained unmapped. They would be blank slates, incapable even of the unconscious response of maintaining a beating heart. Self awareness was far beyond them. Truly becoming their progenitor—the soldier who gave his life those ages ago on Xenophore was decidedly impossible. That was part of the procedure Professor Mavox was attempting to overcome when she was hastened away from the secret base by strangers. She wasn’t conscious when she was taken away, so she didn’t know that nothing now lived on Jadis. Not her staff, who froze to death as the cold air seeped through the laser-blasted observation chamber of the spaceport and spread through the station. Not Tristan, who was already frozen. Nobody. Which is why, when she came to, she was confused, but not distraught. [I]“Where am I?”[/i] was the first thing that came to her mind when her eyes opened, but she possessed the good sense not to open her mouth. Instead, she let her eyes wander and allowed her ears to listen. It was incredibly quiet, except for the unfamiliar voices and a distant hum. Readily, her mind summoned the image of the spaceship that appeared to return her to Earth, and she wondered if she was still aboard. Yes, the low ceilings, metal walls, and the hum of an engine -- she had to be aboard a spacecraft. However, its medical bay, if this was one, was unlike any she recognized. Instinctively, she knew she was amongst strangers. Everything was different, she realized. Not only was she amongst strangers, but either total aliens or one of the species listed in Mobius Corps’ [I]Black Book[/i], clearance for which she did not possess. Likewise, she did not know where Jadis was, as all her time there was spent indoors without access to so much as a window or even an observatory through which she might ascertain the world’s position in the night sky. Not that such isolated mattered to her, she ruminated, given how she poured all her time into her work. A fruitless endeavor, it turned out. Besides, if she needed fresh air or sunlight, the virtual reality modules were more than adequate. Truly, she didn’t know much at all about where or why she was where she was. However, her work, despite being designated civilian research, was also top secret, and these creatures sought to peer into her very thoughts and steal not only from her but, through her, from Mobius Corps. In that moment, Dr. Reschelle Mavox knew that her life was imminently threatened. Not by those amongst her, but the fact that she was amongst them: a circumstance transformed into certain peril which, although not readily apparent, emerged from within rather than without. What she knew of Project Seraphim, in particular her cogni-generative research, would not be compromised. Mobius Corps were more than able to guarantee that truth held. That is why she wasn’t surprised when she suddenly coughed and saw a mote of winged pollen adrift in the otherwise sterile chamber. It was elegant and beautiful, like a ballerina on a stage. As it hovered above her, death raced through her limbic system, gracious enough to suppress pain and fear and in their stead establish grim determination. She coughed again, and a million more specs joined the former. In her imagination, she heard them drill into the walls of the med-bay and via her increasingly sharp intuition felt their spread throughout the spaceship. None would survive; most certainly not her. Little did she know, nothing would survive. Not so much as a single cell or microchip. Not even the vessel she presently occupied. Even so, a smile of satisfaction tweaked her lips. Pleasure chemicals flooded her brain and, a masochist for the first time in her life, she enjoyed the rapid atrophy of her body, the rupture of her organs, and the sight of—in her peripheral vision—her limbs as they vanished into moist streaks of umber-hued dust.[/hider] [center] . . . [/center] Verification arrived earlier, but things were hectic in the Tel Aviv office. An alien encroachment displaced the whole Iberian Peninsula and its fifty million souls while the resultant seismic activity threatened another half billion. The media went crazy, puppet leaders raved furiously, and nuclear strikes were authorized without hesitation. By an order of magnitude, the event was the greatest modern publicized tragedy in Earth-F67X’s history. In spite of that, chaos gave way to protocol at the numerous field offices of Mobius Corps and after a second, third, and eventually a ninth urgent notice someone was assigned to assess the Jadis breach. [i]<< Outstation Vega 5.8, codename Jadis, has gone silent. >>[/i] read the communique. [center] . . .[/center] Cold, dark, silent: Some exploit those words glibly, as when describing an empty room on a winter night from the comfort of an atmosphere-rich planet luxuriating in the circumstellar habitable zone. Yet light a match and feel warmth, glance out a window and bask in starlight, or sigh to end the silence. Indubitably, the words, like the theatrical sophists who spew them, become meaningless and their power is dispelled. On Jadis, the words possessed visceral meaning. There was insufficient atmosphere to conduct sound; no magnetosphere, tidal force, or molten core to generate heat; no light sufficient to penetrate the shadow of the gas giant and surrounding dust cloud in which the ice world lurks. It is utterly cold, despairingly dark, and unyieldingly silent. Given the failure of facility designated Outstation Vega 5.8, the bleakness could not be overstated. A black site located on a planet known as Jadis, it was deemed impenetrable to assault. Yet its blast shields were rent and automated security protocols corrupt. Instead of air, near-vacuum permeated the depressurized subterranean lair. Undeniably, this was the culmination of collusion—treachery and intrusion combined in an operation intended to rob what rightfully belonged to Mobius Corps. Nobody alive remained. Frozen bodies littered the halls; frosted-over glass vats, which held clones infused with Tristan Singh’s DNA, were bolted to the walls of a laboratory’s storage unit that seemed to stretch on forever; and a partially awakened replica lay in a state of lifelessness on a gurney in the revitalization room. In the darkness of that isolated chamber, an orange ember materialized and illuminated a forgotten gold link. Indistinct, it blossomed and intimated origins in the negative space of shadows. Therein danced an opium-fueled vision, where bloody eddies mixed with fire and broke against a basalt cliff. Stretching onward as far as the mind could contemplate, the noxious tide thirstily rolled over the upraised faces of the eternally damned. Drowning, burning, screaming, choking, the violent in life were condigned every moment of misery. No relief came, nor would it come. Atop the cliff loomed a silhouette—half horse, half man—armed with a fork with which it cast back into agony the undeserving seekers of a gentler fate. Its head turned slowly, a halo of tentacles whirling in the background like hair wild in the wind, and the creature stepped from wall to room. There, its massive form, stooped over the ice-preserved corpse, was barely contained. Further defined, it was clear the semi-equine physique was a pretext composed of ooze-slick segments that grasped at and slithered around another like a menagerie of woke intestines. A claw, or a mouth, or crushed gravel embedded in the translucent membrane—it was unclear—swept down, plucked the bangle off the floor, and plunged it into Tristan’s chest. [center]. . . [/center] Tristan practically leapt off the thin rubber mattress. Red emergency lights flickered in his periphery and he heard the distant buzz of backup generators. It was all very disorienting. Still, his training kicked in, he closed his eyes, slowed his breathing, and assessed his situation. No non-ambient noises, so he was clearly alone. He heard the ducts rumble as the air pushed through; felt it pass over him, crisp and cool. He had to be underground. His heart slowed down to a reasonable pace. Satisfied, he opened his eyes, let them adjust to the dimness, and tried to stand. Restraints. Leather straps around his wrists and ankles. With a swift jerk, he wrenched his left arm free. Another arm tore through the leather like it was made of lint. He freed his legs. Finally, he stood. [I] ‘Earth,’ [/i] he thought. The trek home was long overdue.