Tim Akers - Dead of Veridon

Slowly, painfully, I pulled myself to the door and inside the bunker. My arms and legs were bleeding, pinched by the unpowered joints of the suit. My head was pounding. The air was nearly gone, each breath a long, thin gasp that left my lungs hungry. When I collapsed to the floor, the doors began to close. I thought it was too late. That I couldn't even move to unseal the suit and let air in. That the doors were closing too slowly. That I was going to die here, on the bottom of the Reine, with a carpet of the undead as my funeral pillow. That it was getting awfully dark, and awfully cold.

I woke up shivering. The light around me was even and warm. Very white. When I breathed in, the air was clean and cold. I opened my eyes. Still in the suit, but the seams were open. My helmet was unsealed, the glass leaves of the dome pulled back. The edges of my vision were spotted, but otherwise I felt okay.

Not spotted. There were tiny black circles on the glass of the helmet. I raised my arm, freeing it from the unbuttoned sleeve of the suit, and a rain of oblong black forms cascaded from my skin. I sat up and tried to shout, but my mouth was clogged. Hadn't I been breathing clean air, so sweet, just a second ago? I gagged, and wriggling black slugs fell into my lap. I screamed again, and this time got it off. A nice, high pitched shriek. I was sitting in the middle of a sea of the squirmy little bastards. They cleared away from me like I'd dropped fire on their heads, rippling away like a scabrous pond.

The room I was in was small, the walls and floor apparently metal. I say apparently, because all I could see was the small area around the suit, where I had just scared away all those little slugs. They were a couple inches long, about an inch wide. Black. They writhed over each other, blindly sensing each other. They clustered around the corners of the room.

These were the Fehn in their purest form. The walking dead that we usually referred to as Fehn were really just symbiotes. Carriers. Those who died in the river risked joining their ranks. The slugs filled them, choked their lungs and veins, ate out their brains and leeched onto their muscles. They maintained something like their living personalities, only infinitely older. Sadder. And they spoke as one, with the river.

You usually didn't see them naked like this. Every once in a while there would be a report of a vein of squirming blackness among the currents of the river. People would stay off the river for a week. Then everyone would go back to normal, and we'd forget about it.

The light in the room came from a globe, about three feet in diameter, supported on a pillar of the writhing Fehn-slugs. The globe was held in a carapace of silver, a framework of plates and pipes that looked like armor, only they did nothing to conceal the brilliant globe of light within. Perhaps it was some kind of containment device, like the filament structure that held the element in a frictionlamp. The pillar shifted liquidly, and the globe got closer. Turned to me, like a giant eye.

"Apologies, user. Certain subroutines are proactive." The voice came out of the room, as though the walls were talking. Perfect monotone, no inflection. And very few words that I understood.

"Certain sub-teens are damned creepy," I muttered. "I take it you're the Mother Fehn."

Globe-on-a-stick rotated slightly, precisely, then back, a dozen times. Like an escapement, each rotation very crisp.

"Acceptable," it replied.

"Right. Acceptable." I stood up, shivering as a handful of Fehn-slugs clattered to the floor, falling from hidden folds of my person. "Sorry about those pipes. Hope I didn't cause you any discomfort."

"The fetters. The user was disconcerted about their removal. His displeasure was measured corporeally." Rotate, spin, slither closer. "Remunerations are due."

"Uh, so." I backed away, stepping carefully out of the suit. "You're upset by this?"

"Remunerations are due, and the balance will be paid." The whole pillar undulated as the Mother approached, its base a carpet of slugs. As it approached, the carpet overran my suit. Halfway through consuming it the Mother paused and lowered her eye-globe to the ground. "New schematic. Processing."

The slugs in the room shifted, then dived for the suit. I pranced out of the way as they swarmed over the iron carapace. I wasn't going to be able to get back in there, no matter what. The memory of wriggling slugs in my throat was too much, and watching them treat the suit like a lunch buffet was disconcerting. That could be me, if I hadn't woken up.

"Archived," the Mother declared, then returned her attention to me. "Remuneration."

I held out my hands. I didn't want to be remunerated, whether that meant the Mother intended to pay me, or if it felt I owed it something. Didn't want to know what sort of currency the Mother of the Fehn dealt in.

"The man who fettered you — wait a second." She was still approaching me. "The man who installed those pipes and killed all of your children, his name is Ezekiel Crane. Or Maker, if you know that name."

That stopped her. If a giant globe of light on top of a pillar of squirming slugs could ever be called curious, then the Mother Fehn was curious.

"The Family Maker was exiled in the eightieth year of the Reclamation, as declared by the Founders of the city. Their kin was purged. Their tree was burned to the root."

Strange to hear such an alien creature speaking in metaphor. I shrugged, then explained what I knew of Crane. What he had done, and what he was trying to do. She waited attentively until I was done. I ended with my theory that Crane had allowed himself to be captured by the angel Camilla, although I could only speculate as to what end. The Mother didn't move for several seconds, then turned to face me with its broad, glowing eye.

"These are relevant historical notes. Thank you for entering them into the archive. Will user be available to supplement the archive following the events at the Church of the Algorithm?"

"Supplement?" I asked.

"This line of history is not complete. We would like our records to be accurate."

"I'm not recording this for history. I want to know if there's anything you can do about it."

"Record. Archive. Report," the Mother said. "What we have always done."

"Is there anything you can tell me about how to stop it?"

"Disambiguate. Stop recording. Stop archiving. Stop ambient lighting function. Stop communications…"

"Stop it," I snapped, then realized that would just require further disambiguation. "I need to know how to stop Crane from destroying the city. I need to know what he's done to Camilla, or what he plans to do."

"Conjecture. Outside of parameters. Restate."

"Gods in hell, this was a valuable outing." I rubbed my face, then started when I opened my eyes. The slugs had formed a circle around me, leaving only a few feet in all directions. "Get these damned things away from me!"

"Clarify range requirements."

"Away!"

"Estimating," the Mother said, then rotated slightly. The slugs backed off. Four inches.

"Much, much farther away," I snapped. The slugs fled to the far corners of the room. I sighed. "Good enough. Now. What was it that Valentine said about you. That you were something like a library, only a mad little bit of one? That seems pretty accurate. Mother, what do you know about Crane's plans for Camilla?"

"Cross-referencing previous user with queries regarding the servitor colloquially known as Camilla. Result. Transcript begins…"

"Summarize," I said.

"Summary. There are three hundred fifty three direct instances of nodal activity on this subject. Fifty-two additional instances can be related to similar…"

"Never mind. Give me the transcript."

"Verbal or printed?"

"Printed?"