Bridge House/Cheyne
16th January SY154
So, the King of Sable Trumps into the Maze infirmary, to find four field agents (two wounded), a giant eagle with a pillowcase over its head, and a unicorn making eyes at his little brother Michael.
If only it actually was the first line of a joke. Sadly, though, the universe has a twisted sense of humour.
As I glanced around the room, I couldn't help but notice that my grandson Alex was one of the two wounded agents. Michael's presence in the infirmary was because he'd been called in to heal him, but as I looked at the lad, I realised that on a fundamental level, he felt different to when I'd last seen him, just a few days ago on Manira. It was as if he had become an initiate of Andrew's Nexus...although I thought I also felt something of the Machine in him, which couldn't possibly be good. On Manira, he'd still been a solid Pattern user, and yet now the Pattern within him was almost vestigial: he was still an initiate of it, but I sensed he had no more skill with it than he had the day he'd walked it.
I looked expectantly at them, and they related the story.
A few days before, related to the investigation into, and apprehension of, Olivia Perrett, a Trump artist who had been working for the Brotherhood of the Royal Martyr in Sable, the Commonwealth and the Reich and its lands, and had been responsible for a number of deaths over the preceding couple of months, a group of Sable agents had found themselves on a tenth-Veil world called Cheyne. While there, they had been led to the offices of a company called Other Criteria, a gallery operating which had been heavily implicated in the Machine incursion on Karstadt the previous May. It had been this incursion which had ultimately led to Andrew, Rupert and myself cutting off the ability of Andreas Delatz and the Machine to operate freely in Magica Superior and a significant number of Shadow Veils surrounding it; and to Andreas's departure from the Reich under a cloud so dark that he was probably never going to see the light of day again in the north of Shadow. Or so we'd hoped.
Members of that first group had gone inside the Other Criteria gallery and one of them, who hadn't previously come onto my radar, but who appears to have some form of time sensitivity, reported that the technology level within the Other Criteria building was too high for the surrounding Shadow. They had also reported that the current exhibition was of works by the same artist who had headlined at the Karstadt exhibition. So understandably, Grey had authorised a follow up mission to discover if there was a serious problem there, and to deal with it if necessary.
To cut a long story short, they opened up a hornets' nest.
They had confirmed the assessment that the building was a potential problem, as it was out of sync with the rest of Cheyne and there were also a number of 'art works' in the exhibition which had given them cause of concern; identified at least one former SD operative as being associated with it, and also apparently linked to Andreas himself in what appeared to be a romantic capacity (this was news to me as I wasn't even sure he was capable of romantic capacity!); and had seen various familiar faces on the security staff who they were damned sure they had killed before, which seems to be another modus operandi for Machine agents, as thus far Andreas has seems to have a limited number of models for his more human-looking operatives. And as a side issue, they also reported the presence of what looked like a Broken Royal Way, made with the Manira Pattern, heading into the nearest Underground station. That was followed to the degree that it headed off up the underground line and then faded away, but they decided that was secondary in their priorities behind the building itself.
So that night they broke in to Other Criteria.
I suppose what followed was inevitable. They made their way to the second floor, where the exhibits they were worried about were located, and initially, all seemed to be going well. Right up to the moment when the shutters came down locking them on that floor. Undaunted, two of them located and secured the first item which had given them cause for concern: a Trump painting by the delightful Miss Perrett. Unlike the others they had found, the subject was in abstract, and therefore not identifiable, but every indication that it was the same kind of 'death Trump' she'd been drawing of late. The title, The Betrayer, also raised a red flag as they were concerned it might be a picture of Andrew.
The other two made their way over to what was apparently a fixed installation which had a residual feel of the Machine to it. Their concern was that it was some kind of gateway, albeit deactivated due to the ritual which blocked the higher levels of Machine technology.
Which was apparently when the shooting started. A group of Other Criteria security – who the group seem to refer to as the Fratelli brothers – burst in on them through the goods lift, and grenades and bullets started flying. One of the first casualties was an artwork comprising a unicorn pickled in formaldehyde. The tank was smashed to bits, and sparks ignited the chemicals, but to the surprise of my people, the unicorn just stood there shaking its head looking rather puzzled. It had been pickled alive, and the explosion had woken it up. Ignoring both bullets and flames, it apparently assessed its situation, and latched itself onto my grandson.
Shortly afterwards, the Fratellis retreated in the face of superior grenade power (having put a bullet through Bond's arm in the process), leaving my people in a room full of burning formaldehyde, with a rather confused looking unicorn. Hell, I'd be confused if I'd been woken up from being pickled in formaldehyde. Lacking further egress, they put a hole through the wall by the staircase, giving them an escape route, and then Alex urged all of them, including the unicorn, to leave while he tried to do something about the larger gateway installation.
The humans were more than happy to oblige. The unicorn not so much. But at least they coaxed it towards the hole in the wall. However, by then, given the fire, time was running out, so Alex got drastic. He hit the installation with the Pattern, and felt a charge go through his body. And as he did, the installation began to activate, and when he turned, he saw what he described as some kind of metallic drone step through.
He was face to face with the Machine.
Rather naturally, this concerned me, given that Machine drones shouldn't be able to operate as close in as Cheyne. If we actually had an active Machine breakout there, we were all in big trouble.
He went on to explain that after trying to engage it in combat with limited success, he had hit the gateway with the Pattern again, knocking himself out in the process, at which point one of the others picked up the story. They heard the bang of the second explosion and went back to fetch him, working their way past the fire and fumes from the formaldehyde. The force of the explosion had thrown him across the room into another formaldehyde exhibit, this one of a bleeding eagle and swastika, which someone with a sick sense of humour had called 'Thousand Years?'. Moreover, said eagle was coming back to life in much the way the unicorn had earlier, and healing the bullet wound in its chest as it did.
As for the unicorn, the drone which had stepped through had been skewered through the processor by a cone-shaped weapon, and was lying inert, while the unicorn was nuzzling Alex and looking concerned. They checked their situation, and as nothing else seemed to be coming through – indeed, the gateway seemed blackened and on fire - they picked up Alex, and the fallen drone, collected the menagerie and headed back to Grey's office in the Maze. They'd called Michael as soon as they'd arrived, given Alex's unconscious and bleeding condition, and he'd come in to help. But as soon as he appeared the unicorn, fickle creature that she was, had abandoned my grandson and latched on to him. At which point they called me...
Oh. And the pillow case. Apparently, the moment the eagle saw Andrew, who they'd called in before contacting me, it had flown at him and tried to take his eyes out. Thankfully they'd caught it mid-leap.
After they'd finished their report, I knew that I had to get to Cheyne and see how bad the damage was. I also hoped that this time I wouldn't need Rupert's assistance. Michael offered to go and get rid of the unicorn, but none of us really knew what the Hell to do with a giant eagle, so in the end, they offered to find someone to look after it. They also mentioned that Andrew had gone upstairs with Grey, so my best option looked like going to find them.
I left them to it and made my way upstairs, and as I went in, I saw Jeff Lucas, one of Grey's interns, walking out of Grey's office with a bucket full of what looked and smelt like horse shit.
As I walked in, both my son and Grey were staring worriedly at the fallen body of some kind of semi-humanoid metallic robot, which was lying on the floor of the office, and I could see a rolled up canvas on Grey's desk. I was too polite to comment on the smell.
"How up to speed are you?" Grey said, with admirable aplomb.
"They've told me most of it. Andrew, I think we need to get to Cheyne."
"Definitely," he answered, "this bloody thing is a Level 11 Officer Drone, and it sure as Hell shouldn't be here. If there are any more of them there, Cheyne is toast."
I brought the Pattern to mind and jumped us out in the direction of Cheyne. Andrew then concentrated for a few moments, his expression becoming grimmer by the second, and he took us the last few steps to the right place. We arrived at the back loading door of a building which looked to have smoke pouring out of the second floor windows, but which didn't seem to be going anywhere. Thankfully, there didn't seem to be too many bystanders around.
As I still had the Pattern idling on neutral I brought it back to mind, and could instantly see two things: one, that the building we were looking at was a pocket Shadow of some sort; and two, the presence of the Broken Way Alex had reported, which did, indeed, look like it had been made with the Maniran Power, probably over the last year or so. This latter phenomenon was interesting, but less immediately threatening than the Other Criteria building itself, which really did feel as if someone had specifically affected that particular building and altered the physics there.
"Why the Hell hasn't someone called the emergency services?" Andrew asked, as much to himself as to me, as he looked at the building "it's pretty bloody obvious something's wrong."
"It's obvious to you and me, certainly. However, whoever set up the pocket Shadow could well have decided it was improbable that anyone else would notice what was going on beyond the boundaries. It's certainly what I would have done with enough time to set things up neatly."
"Which they have been...this wasn't an overnight project. Are you armed?"
"Would you suggest gun or blade?"
"Blade by preference," he replied, "they do more damage, especially when they're better than standard. Bullets risk bouncing off their armour, unless you're loaded with armour piercing, and the higher grade drones are actively shielded. Energy weapons and explosives normally work against the lower level drones, but I'm not sure the former are operational here, even given that physics is screwed in this building compared with the rest of Cheyne, and I don't happen to have any grenades on me. Although I guess we could fix that..."
"Give me a moment."
After concentrating for a few seconds, I brought my sabre to me from it's usual place above the fireplace in my private quarters in Sable. I'd been working on it a bit recently, imbuing it with the Pattern to make it rather more potent, and had also been training more than usual, albeit that I hadn't had the opportunity to test my supposedly improved combat skills in anger as yet. I guessed that might be about to change. Then, thus prepared, we crossed to the pocket boundary and, working together, we picked our way through. Once we were within the boundary, we kicked down the postern door by the loading bay and went inside, Andrew drawing his own blade as we did. The moment we entered I could feel how wrong it was in here and immediately got a very bad feeling which Andrew confirmed shortly afterwards.
"The Machine is active in here. Be very careful."
Thankfully, we seemed to be alone in the loading bay, although from below us we could feel as much as hear a deep, mechanical hum, like a generator. We went through into the gallery proper, and above us could hear what sounded like marching boots, coming down a staircase towards us.
"Drones," Andrew hissed.
"Are you sure?"
"Of course I'm bloody sure. Six or seven of them, I'd guess."
"Suggestions on dealing with them?"
"For people of our abilities, the most efficient way is to use a Power to affect their individual operations, and then either take off their heads or destroy the processor system, which is in the centre of the chest. At least you've got a weapon with you that should be up to the task. I just hope to Hell you're good enough to make a difference. Oh, and make sure your shields are up to full spec, just in case they do hit you with energy weapons."
"Thanks," I answered, biting back any comments about stating the obvious, then asked, "How good are they?"
"Depends on the model. You should be okay as long as they're mainly lower level ones. Higher level, and I'd suggest you keep your fingers crossed and let me take the lead."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," I answered.
"I'd argue with you if I thought we had time, but we don't," he replied, and indicated for us to take up positions near the stairwell exit, in the hope that we could take them out as they came.
Of course, they didn't do anything as subtle as open the door. I was nearly sent flying backwards as an explosion sent it flying into the gallery where we were waiting, but I kept my balance, and Andrew and I moved in to engage.
He was right on the number – there were, indeed, seven of them – and they were doing their best to get through the doorway, with only Andrew and myself to get in their way. I began to fight them as my son had instructed, combining Power and blade. The first two went down easily, but after that they got successively harder. I took a nasty gash to the side as I made a sloppy parry against the sword-like blade on the arm of one of the tougher drones, in place of a hand, but Andrew managed to interpose himself before it became any more serious than that, and took it out with a well directed blow to the chest cavity. The fight was fast and furious, and I was bloody glad my son was there. Alone, I would have been toast. But eventually the last one collapsed into a heap of sparks.
"Not bad," Andrew commented, as we watched the bonfire, "you've been practising."
"It seemed wise," I answered, leaning forward, hands on knees, to catch my breath, and as I did, I set my healing in train to close the rather copiously bleeding hole in my side.
"Upstairs, if you're up to it," he said, "that's where they said the gateway was."
"Hope you're shifting's up to the job," I commented, slightly getting my own back for his earlier lack of confidence in my martial abilities, "given the whole flames and fumes thing."
"I guess it'll have to be," he replied, and we made our way carefully up the stairs. As we did, we walked carefully past explosive damage once we got past the first floor, stepping over the bodies of three more drones. It looked as if they'd been ground zero of a grenade.
"Doesn't look like these were hit with a power."
"They're probably low-level drones."
We reached the hole in the wall which Alex had described, having to fight through smoke to get to it. I adjusted my eyes so they wouldn't be affected by the fumes, and my other senses so they wouldn't be overwhelmed and we headed inside. I have to say I was very glad at that point that Other Criteria's gallery was a good, old fashioned stone-built building, as it meant that the chances of falling through a hole in the floor was much reduced. Beside me, I could hear Andrew beginning to cough and choke, and realised that he wasn't coping. After all, he's not as experienced with shifting as I am. So I cast a spell to extinguish the fire, followed by a purification spell to try to clear the air. Andrew was leaning heavily against the wall, and I could see tears in his eyes from the fumes, but as the air cleared, he started to look a lot better.
"Thanks," he gasped.
"You're welcome," I replied, "so, where do we go from here?"
We looked around and saw a number of smashed and charred tanks, along with a handful of dead and pickled animals, which had presumably been displayed in them until recently. At least it didn't seem as if everything had been pickled alive, which meant that the unicorn and the eagle were something different, which would bear investigation later. I could also see various burned canvases, and the odd sculpture which had been twisted out of shape by the heat. There were also three bodies: human-looking this time and killed by a combination of grenades and bullet.
"Are you up to looking at the gateway?" I asked him, as I sheathed my blade, and he nodded.
As it turned out, there wasn't much to look at: a bunch of charred and tangled frames, and a pair of what looked like broken mirrors, which I guessed were placed such as to give an impression of infinity, and could therefore easily have been some kind of sympathetic-magic style arrangement for a gateway.
"Probably your court."
Andrew concentrated for a while, and then looked back at me.
"It was an active gate to the Machine lands. Thankfully, it's firmly closed now. But quite how the Hell there could be working Machine here, I'm not sure...and I don't like the possibility which is coming to mind. Something activated it within this pocket, I think, and moreover, it feels like its still active. So if this gateway had been left to its own devices, the drones would probably still be pouring through."
"In other words, if it hadn't been destroyed, we would have had a far more serious problem?"
"Exactly," he answered, "but what the Hell activated it? We did a good job of locking down the Machine, or so I'd thought."
"So did I," I answered, feeling like the wind had been taken out of my sails somewhat, "Could it be related to Alex hitting it with the Pattern? Twice! He did mention to me that the gateway opened immediately after the first time he made contact with it, but I'll admit I can't see how that should have changed the physics here to make it more Machine friendly. On the other hand...back in the infirmary, he was reading like a Nexus initiate. When did you put him through your Power?"
"I haven't," Andrew replied, but I could see that he was thinking something through...analysing possibilities.
"Do you know something about him that I don't?"
"Nothing definite. Just suspicions."
"Care to share?"
"Maybe once we're home."
"Okay...can you tell if there are any more drones around here?"
"Let me look."
He concentrated on bringing up Nexus – something which I've never really understood – rather than the Pattern and I could feel him reaching outwards. Obviously trying to detect anything of relevance.
"No more drones, although the three bodies over there are Bleeders...a kind of clone which Andreas likes to use on worlds he hasn't conquered yet, as they can nearly pass as human. However, apart from that, I'd say you and I are the only living or semi-living beings in the place. There's something I don't like the feel of in the basement, though. Shall we?"
"Sounds wise," I answered, and to my surprise he rested his hand on my shoulder.
He activated the Nexus once more, and I felt as if we were sliding from one location to another, and we were down in what looked like a storeroom. The smell of burning was mercifully fainter here, but towards the front of the storage area I could hear the sound of a generator. We looked at each other and nodded, and then headed in that direction. Moments later, we found ourselves looking into a room which contained what seemed to be some kind of suspension or stasis chambers. Ten of them. My guess was that the door should have been closed and concealed, but for some reason it had been left open. Presumably when the occupants of the pods decided to leave.
"Drone pods," Andrew commented, "one per unit. They're a kind of recharge and replenish facility. Although looking at them, I'm not sure they were fully operational."
Then he indicated a second door out of the chamber. He crossed to it and played with the locking mechanism for a moment or two, before it opened with a quiet hiss. As he stepped inside, I saw a look of concern cross his features.
"Problem?" I asked, joining him, and looking about me to see what looked like a number of high-tech workstations, reminiscent of the ones I'd seen on the odd occasion when I'd visited Nexus Prime.
"These aren't Machine...they're Technocracy," he answered.
He sat down at one of the desks and started tapping on the input screen, with a familiarity I still find hard to accept, quickly gaining access to the systems. He then went quiet, and I could feel as much as see him communicating with it. His eyes defocused, the way they sometimes do when he's communicating with the Nexus data Core, and remained like that for some time.
It was probably about twenty minutes before he refocused on where he was and unlinked.
"It looks as if Andreas had one of his mechanical interface types working here – the ones he inflicted on the Technocracy when he seized it for a while, if you remember."
"You told me about them," I answered, recalling how upset he'd been when he discovered how badly Andreas had tried to corrupt the Technocracy before he realised what was going on and went home to deal with it.
"Of course, a Technocracy interface wouldn't have been blocked by the working we did, as we specifically left it active. A quick look suggests that they were trying to link Machine and Technocracy control systems, to get around the block. I don't think they've had much success, but I'll take these away and study them to be sure."
"Did you see anything more general about this office...what proportion of the people here were Machine and what were human?"
"I'm seeing references to a staff of about twenty-five, of which all the security were Bleeders and one of the Partners was a Mind...a human mind in an android body. The rest were probably human. It also seems as if this was an intelligence gathering operation, along with everything else, as there seem to be contacts from six other agents who aren't based full time at this location, but report through it. There's also a record of two other names – Gabriele Schwarz and Alfred Brenner – but I can't see how they fit in. I'm going to have to dig deeper."
"Let's close things down once and for all for the Machine here, and then I'll help you get this lot back to your place, where you can work on them in peace."
"Explosives?" he said, almost hopefully, but I shook my head.
"I was thinking more of clearing away the bodies and any evidence of the unusual, making it look as if it was a more normal fire, and then you and I combining to break the barriers around the building, so it goes back to being a standard part of Cheyne."
"Explosives would be quicker...and considerably more satisfying."
"Yes, but last time anyone mixed explosives and weirdshit technology, Rensburg got blown to Hell and I needed Rupert to help me fix it. And right now, I really don't want to see him."
"You've seen sense at last?" he commented, his tone sarcastic.
"More I'm not sure if I'm ready to face him yet, after Manira."
Rather to my surprise, rather than baiting me further on the subject, Andrew let it drop at that point, returning to the problem in hand.
"You're probably right about the explosives...lets do this."
We headed back upstairs, and Andrew set about destroying the bodies and rendering them to dust, much as he had with the Andreas cyborg he'd beheaded a few years before. While he worked, I settled down to familiarise myself with the boundary around the Other Criteria building, so I could get a good feel for how to collapse it without destroying half of the city with it.
He rejoined me about fifteen minutes later.
"The evidence upstairs is destroyed. We can deal with the basement when we go and collect the hardware. Are you happy with what we do next?"
"You and I need to link briefly and work together, with you disassembling the Machine elements of the pockets, and I'll work on the pocket itself. It should be pretty straightforward."
"I'll take your word for it," he answered
"Of course, it's worth bearing in mind that if the nature of the pocket is the reason why we haven't been bothered by the emergency services while we've been here, as soon as its gone, we're going to be more noticeable."
"Then we'd better be quick," he replied.
He rested his hand on my shoulder again, and with the ease and trust of many years, he slipped into a working rapport with me. It was almost like the old days, before his marriage had self destructed and Rupert had taken him, and that made me feel strangely content.
It wasn't a difficult process, but it was a little fiddly. I could feel him doing as I'd asked and working with the Machine elements of this place. It was as if they had been specifically been built by a Machine initiate, if that's the right term, but probably some years before, which in a way was a relief: it suggested that the place had been set up before we had denied the Machine access to the north of Shadow, and therefore hopefully couldn't be duplicated now. Then, once he was happy, I set about gently unwinding the Shadow pocket, and carefully normalising it with Cheyne itself. Once I was certain we'd done a good job, we headed back down to the basement to deal with the loose ends down there. Andrew destroyed the pods out of hand, much as he had the drones, and then we gathered together the computer kit in the other room.
"Are we done?" he asked.
"I think so," I replied, making the decision to follow the Broken Way anomaly on another occasion, "Let's get out of here."
He brought up his Power once more, and soon ourselves and the hardware were back in his private lab on Nexus Prime. We put it over to one side, and then he looked at me.
"What about Alex?"
"Maybe you can take a look at him," I replied, "I was reading both Nexus and Machine from him, and I didn't like it."
"I can imagine."
"What is it you know about him that I don't?"
"I wasn't sure it was anything until we were back at Other Criteria. It's a cosmic coincidence thing."
"Go on..."
"He was conceived at the same time that I was creating the Nexus."
"Which means?"
"No idea, but I have a feeling its relevant somehow. He's been here a couple of times and seemed a little more au fait with things here than I might have expected, but then, some people are just more technologically minded than others...for example, I know you're never really comfortable here. So sure, I wondered, but I've never seen anything obvious...anything I could pin down...except that he's never seemed all that comfortable with the Pattern. Of course, he's never had direct contact with the Machine before, and maybe that was the catalyst."
"Catalyst for what?"
"You said yourself. Hitting one Power with another shouldn't activate the second one, especially when you, me and Bloody Rupert had locked it down in the first place. But my assessment of the gateway was exactly that: something about him, and what he did, was what broke the lock on the Machine we put in place across in the 25 Veils, albeit just within the Other Criteria building, and brought the gate back on line. So perhaps he had some kind of innate affinity with the Technocracy/Machine Powers which had not made itself known before."
"It's a disturbing thought," I mused, not sure what else to say.
"Quite. Do you want to drive back to Sable? Then I can take a look at him and see if I can figure out what's wrong with him."
"Yes. Probably wise," I replied, and brought the Pattern to mind, jumping us back to the infirmary.
At least the unicorn and the eagle had gone. So had the rest of them, bar Alex and Bond, who was receiving the finishing healing touches to his arm. Andrew concentrated for a moment, bringing up the Nexus, and then looked at my grandson. His assessment was that the Nexus and the Machine were both fighting for control of him, and that unless it was stabilised, it would not bode well for him.
Given this rather bleak prognosis, Alex agreed to Andrew's proposal of putting him through the Nexus proper, as my son was of the opinion that doing so should stabilise Alex's condition and even things out. So to finish off the day, the three of us plus John de Lyon, Alex's biological father, set off back to Nexus Prime and watched as Alex initiated to Andrew's power.