A Memory in the Black (The New Aeneid Cycle) (11 page)

Though the light was the first thing that caught Marette's attention,
the chamber's lower level soon drew her interest. It stretched beyond the balcony level a likely twenty meters to the rear of the chamber. Five strange domes protruded from the lower level's floor. Coated in the black material, they loosely surrounded a slightly larger, squat object in the center. Nearly two meters tall and five meters wide, the object resembled nothing upon first glance so much as a great four-legged spider. Slate grey metal jutted with odd geometric protuberances shaped the object, and though the rest of the chamber remained uniformly coated in the black material, only a single thin strip of each boxy "leg" displayed the stuff.

In the center of the object sat what first appeared to be a large, thick disk, though once Marette trained her light on it, she saw it to be shaped instead like a great cut diamond.
Though the base had the dark metal sheen of the legs surrounding it, her searchlight glinted off of the flat top to show a surface of deepest green.

"This is.
 . . amazing. . ." Levy whispered. "What is it?"

They stood a while longer atop the balcony, taking in the sight while
the blue light pulsed. For nearly a year Marette had been involved in this operation. The awe, the initial spirit-testing revelation that another civilization existed somewhere amongst the stars had gradually faded under the everyday pressures that she faced, overshadowed by the deaths that resulted. Up to that moment, all
Paragon
had afforded of itself was a distant sense of
something
hidden behind uniform black hallways and abstract computer systems. But there, in the previously unseen size and features of the chamber, the reminder of what they were standing in brought a return of that faded awe.

"People died for this," s
he whispered.

"Chief?"

Marette shook off the awe again. They were still trapped. She ran her light along the perimeter of the room, across the far end where the chamber's ceiling sloped into a downward curvature that reached the floor, and then back along the vertical sidewalls up to the opposite corner of the balcony. "I do not see any exits."

Levy f
ollowed her light with his and then checked his screen. "There ought to be one along the far wall up near us."

Marette nodded.
Most of the passages they had found were hidden beneath the black material and revealed themselves only when the proper sequence was activated. She looked back to the object at the center of the room, then to the pulsing blue oval. No, they should find a way out first. They needed to secure their position. The oval continued to pulse. Why was it doing that? What had they found?

Later
. "See if you can open the door."

Marette followed Levy to the opposite corner of the ba
lcony where the door should be and then turned back to keep watch on the chamber. She could not let her awe blind her to the dangers and her responsibility to Levy. Previous encounters with the security drones had come silently and with little preamble.

Yet there were no drones. There was nothing to confront but
pulsing blue light, the large, hunched object, and its cadre of black domes.

"Chief, I
can't get a response. I can't even bring up the interface." Levy pushed his hand against several places on the wall to show her. The black material remained inactive. "Nothing."

Marette
tried her own touch on the adjoining wall but received the same lack of result. "Keep trying until you find an area that works."

"What about.
 . .?" Levy nodded toward the flashing oval. "Could be it activates the section."

"It may,
oui.
It may not. Check the walls first, Officer."

Levy did so, making his way across the rear of the chamber balcony and thoroughly testing the surface while Marette covered him.
Nowhere did his touch have an effect. He tried along the slanted paneling on the balcony railing and swept the entire surface save for the immediate area around the flashing. Again, there was no response.

"Down below?" he asked.

Marette frowned and eyed the lifeless black domes with suspicion. "What do you scan down there?"

"V
ery faint energy readings, but nothing hazardous. None that I can tell from here, at least. That crystal in the center, it's definitely not something I've seen before."

"Whatever that is, I would guess it is for something greater than opening a simple door." What was it?

She returned her attention to the blue pulsing. Barely larger than the circumference of a human hand, it begged to be tried, yet the more she considered such a course of action, the more wrong it seemed. Or was it simply the pervasive mental image of each dome opening to release a drone? She stepped closer. "There are no other exits indicated? Nothing on the lower level?"

"No, ma'am."

That was it, then. Better to take action than fall victim to indecision. She motioned toward the oval. "I am going to try this. Make yourself ready."

With a nod,
Levy slung his sensor equipment and readied his weapon. Though research on the salvaged drones had helped ESA to improve a defense against the killing machines, there was only so much the two of them could do against them on their own. One drone at a time they might stand against. Five they could not. With a final glance at the waiting hemispheres below, she pressed her hand to the blue.

The result was immediate.
Across the panel, lighted symbols bloomed in a glowing symphony of color along the previously black space. The symbols and readouts continued across the walls in the lower section, lighting fully before falling to a more subdued state. The black domes themselves came to life moments later. As symbols began to ring their lower sections, Marette watched the black material atop each begin to peel back. Her breathing quickened and her fingers tensed on the trigger as a long cylindrical object rose out of the top of each dome. The objects started to pulse in sequence, emitting flashes of clean, white light that grew more and more rapid until they blurred into a constant, brilliant glow.

Before she could think to take any sort of readings, the black material at the f
ar section of ceiling withdrew to uncover the metal plating beneath it along nearly the entire width of the chamber. Moments later, the metal itself began to slide open. Marette braced herself. Startled by the size of the area that was opening and imagining the sheer number of drones that could be released through it, it wasn't until it had slid halfway open that she saw it was, in fact, opening to the outside. Lunar soil lay suspended above the hole: grey, pressed smooth, and refusing to be disturbed by any rush of escaping atmosphere as common sense told her it ought.

"Levy! Pressurize!" she called out
. She shut her own helmet and reengaged the suit's life support. Every readout told her that the atmosphere in the chamber remained unchanged, that none was escaping, but she knew the lunar material on the surface to be loose and barely five meters thick. Even if it were massive enough to hold the ship's atmosphere in, some of it should simply fall into the chamber. It should not be motionless. Logically it was something to do with the glowing cylinders, but the very sight defied anything she knew.

"Levy, can you
—"

A
brilliant green flash flared from the crystal at the center of the object. Levy threw up his arms to shield his face as lightning arced from the center to strike one of the cylinders in an explosion of energy and chaos. The cylinders flickered and went dark. The crystal dimmed. The symbols throughout the chamber disappeared. As the light and sound faded, Marette's searchlight caught the first tumble of lunar debris into the chamber.

The chamber was about to decompress!
She and Levy called out the same warning. With nothing to hold onto, they pressed themselves down on the floor behind the balcony wall as the lunar rock crumbled and the atmosphere forced itself past it into the vacuum outside. They lay there, waiting for the pressures to equalize and grateful that they had closed their helmets.

"Chief, the pressure is stabilizing," Levy reported finally with some surprise.
"The atmosphere's back."

Marette stood and looked over the chamber, expecting the ceili
ng section to have closed again so that the place could refill with air.

It remained open.

Levy stood up beside her. "Now that's right peculiar."

Lunar debris lay strewn over the bottom rim of the opening, unevenly spread across the floor of the chamber where it fell.
Above, the stars glowed in the sky beyond, but something was different. A faint shimmer across the open space caught her eye. A bit of rock, loosened by the blast, spilled belatedly down into the chamber from outside. When it passed the boundary between outside and in, slipping through the shimmer that appeared to be a semitransparent barrier, Marette began to comprehend what had happened.

"
Incroyable
," she gasped.

Levy looked up at the barrier from his sensor readout.
His words were a confirmation of her suspicions. "That barrier?" he whispered. "That's the black stuff."

They weren't fast enough.

They'd hoped to track Diomedes and Gideon by the damage the car would do, but it wasn't enough for Felix and Caitlin to keep up on foot. The destruction was meager—though Felix realized that was probably for the best despite their immediate need—and the crisscross of streets and turns gave them too many options to be sure of where to go.

It was the sound of sirens that finally led them to the above-ground parking garage and the front half of the car hanging out three stories above the sidewalk. Spotting the flash of emergency lights reflected from i
nside, they rushed up to learn more.

They reached the third story and greeted what they found there with a mix of frustration and relief.
No one was around save for a lone patrolman and an opportunistic tow truck. Upon confirmation that neither Felix nor Caitlin had witnessed the accident—a truth about which neither chose to elaborate—the patrolman ushered them from the scene with the reassurance that no one was hurt.

"They both got away," Caitlin surmised as they left.
"The way he questioned us, I don't think he had any answers."

"No argument here," Felix
said. "But then where'd they go?"

"I don't know, Felix.
" Concern colored her tone. "Do you suppose they got away together? One capturing the other?"

"I don't think so.
I hate to say it, but in this kind of mood," Felix gestured to a smashed section of wall as they passed, "I don't think Dio was looking to capture anyone. But Gideon? Maybe. He's subdued Dio before. But, and this is just an impression, I think he was more—"

"Just trying to prote
ct Ondrea?"

"Yeah.
Distract Dio. Give her time to get away."

"She nearly ran after him.
I had rather a time holding her back."

"You might have saved her life," he
said.

Caitlin
flushed slightly and shook her head. "I just. . ."

Felix stopped walking and
laid a touch on her forearm. "What is it?"

"He shot Gideon. We both saw it.
I just didn't want to see it again. Gideon, or anyone else."

They held each other's gaze for a time, and Felix was once again amazed at how she could touch him without physical contact.
"You're not a bystander, are you?"

"Not a great deal," she admitted before continuing to walk.
"I do hope he got away."

"Gideon was faster than Diomedes," Felix
said with a nod. "Without the car. . ." He paused as things caught up to him. "God, Caitlin, that really seemed like him, didn't it? I didn't hardly think otherwise once I saw him."

"
I know the feeling. I'm going to find out what's happening, Felix."

"We were close
. We'll catch up again. And now we've got another piece of the puzzle. What was Diomedes doing there?"

"That would seem to be more of a question than a solution.
There's a bounty for him, yes?"

"He's wanted. I've been concentrating on so much else lately, I've not given it much thought. There was a video, if I'm not mistaken."

"Aye, there was. He shot the man from a room in the Nexus Tower, downtown."

"Who was it?
The guy who died, I mean."

"I don't recall if I heard a name. Some poor bloke from
Europe. The Space Agency."

Felix turned suddenly.
"ESA?"

"Yes, I think so." She studied him, brows knit.
"You suspect something, I think?"

"I do.
Or, at least I suspect I know someone who might be able to shed a bit of light. Except I don't get how it could connect to Gideon."

"Whom
do you know in ESA?"

"No one.
But," he paused, heeding a promise not to reveal certain secrets. "Let's just say I know someone connected to ESA."

C
aitlin regarded him quizzically. A faint smile formed on her lips. "You're being secretive."

He smiled back.
"Me? Oh, I'm hurt!"

She
continued to watch him. Ordinarily he might have teased her a bit before telling her or letting her force it out of him, but the AoA wasn't something he could tell her about, and finding out what was happening with Gideon wasn't something he wanted to tease her on.

"Caitlin," he started, "it's a secret I promised I'd keep.
You know how much I value my word. Please understand when I say I can't tell you the details."

She
searched his face and then finally nodded with what he took to be a patient sigh. "Is there anything you can tell me?" she asked.

"I can tell you that if I find out anything that pertains to Gideon, you'll be the first to know."

"You'll need to talk to this person alone, then." She made it a question. "May I ask who it is, at least?"

He chuckled gently.
"You may ask. . ." He held up his hand and continued before she could begin to glare. "It's only Marc." Telling her that much couldn't hurt, right? Lots of people like Marc had private contracts, after all.

"Marc? Is he back from
wherever it was he was going?"

"
Antarctica?" He grinned. "Yeah, I got a quick word from him a day or two ago."

"Perhaps you ought to ring him up, then."

He fished for his phone. "Oh, but wandering through the streets yelling for him is so much more entertaining!"

Caitlin elbowed him. "Cheeky."

Felix grinned and dialed the number from memory.

A short time later, Felix settled into the cushions of Marc's couch and looked across the room to where Flynn stood beside the window. "So are you guys just hanging out today, or am I interrupting something?"

"Oh, yes and no," Marc answered in the doorway.

"A bit of both," Flynn added while looking out a crack in the drawn window shade. He pointed toward one of the computers on a desk in the corner. "Is it. . .?" he asked of Marc.

Marc handed Felix the glass of ice water he'd asked for.
"Should be, I didn't disengage him. Holes, you on the job?"

The console
toward which Marc spoke remained dark despite the delicately masculine voice that responded, "Yes, Mr. Triton. All building cameras active and accessed."

"Holes?" Felix turned
toward the A.I. itself. "That you?"

"It is, Mr. Hiatt."

"Voice recognition?" Felix asked. "Is that new?"

"Just a couple weeks ago.
So far he's developing pretty well."

"A bit formal, but at least he's respecting his elders," Felix
said. "What's he doing with the cameras? You looking for someone again?"

"I've got him watching the building," Marc
said. "Basic security routine. He ID'ed you before you buzzed up."

"Had
a problem with security lately?"

Marc shrugged uncomfortably.
"Well, you know, staying careful. What did you want to talk to me about?"

Felix studied
Marc where he sat on the couch. Pressed back into the cushions, arms crossed over his stomach, he was clearly apprehensive about something. Flynn shifted by the window, sitting down to the left of it. Spine straight, eyes alert, he was tense.

"You in some sort of trouble, Marc?"
Felix asked.

"I'll be okay. Just some AoA business that'll blow over soon enough, I hope.
Michael's just here as a precaution."

"You sure?
You don't need any more help with anything? I find you went and got yourself killed because you didn't ask for help, I'm going to be kinda pissed."

"I'll be okay. We're just being cautious."

Across the room, Flynn nodded. A moment of uncomfortable silence passed before he turned to Felix and added, "But don't you try anything, or I'll have to kick yer ass."

Felix turned to Flynn, genuine shock on his face. "Aye god, Flynn, you're getting a sense of humor! More or less."

The young man smiled. "I try."

"The AoA's been good to you, then?
It's been a while since I saw you last."

"They have.
Lots of training. Feels like I belong. I'm not sorry you brought me in, if that's what you meant."

"Hey, don't put that on me,
I just walked you to your recruitment; they had their eyes on you before that." Felix remembered the day half a year ago when he'd first told Flynn of the Agents of Aeneas and their interest in him. He'd just turned away from Diomedes and been sorely in need of a positive purpose. They'd given him one.

"Well, you know what I mean.
" Flynn shrugged. "I still don't get why you're not a part of us anymore."

Felix gave his best secretive smile.
"That milk will get cool on you, pretty soon."

"Is that some sort of riddle, or are you just being weird and evasive?"

"Oh, if I had to pick?" Felix thought about it. "I'd go with weird and evasive. Or maybe 'obscure and evasive.' Make that one word, though—saves time: 'Obscasive.' Somebody call Webster's."

Marc cleared his throat. "I hate to interrupt, but do we get to know why you're needing to meet us?"

Felix gave his best disarming smile out of reflex before taking a gulp of water. "I need to know just how much being a 'friend of the AoA' can get me."

"Oh, yes?" Marc asked.

"The assassination in the Corporate District a couple of weeks ago. Am I right in thinking it's not coincidence he was from ESA?"

Marc and Flynn shared a quick glance that may as well have been a direct yes.
"Why do you want to know?"

"Personal reasons.
I'm not working for anyone on this." Felix paused. While not worried about telling either of them the whole story, he couldn't help but wonder how sensitive of a subject Diomedes was to Flynn. On the other hand, there was no need to coddle the man. "I'm actually more interested in Diomedes. Why he was the trigger man."

"And you've reason to think the AoA's got something to do with it?" Marc asked.

"Other than the fact that I know you well enough to know that if they didn't, you'd have told me so straight just now?" Felix grinned. "I remember you keeping an eye on some guy in town from ESA a while back. I know you guys have got them working on a certain project. One of those guys gets shot—shot
through
the security grid. Somebody had to be pulling some strings for that to happen. I know assassinations aren't the AoA's style, but it's not so far fetched to think you've been looking into the details. I'm not looking for the big picture here, really. I just need to know where Diomedes fits into it all."

Flynn stood, seemingly deep in thought,
and checked the window again. Marc chuckled. "You're always looking for the big picture, Felix. You're a big picture kind of guy."

"Well, okay, so I
can't argue that. But it's not the AoA's big picture I'm trying to see. Or is that not what you're protecting?"

"You know
we can't tell you everything. You're not a part of it anymore. It's not that I don't want to help you, I just have to figure out what we can say without—"

"Without breaking your word?
I know. Don't worry, I'm not offended by that. Doesn't mean I can't try to fish, though," Felix added with a smile.

"Do you
—" Flynn started. "Why do you want to know about Diomedes? Have you seen him?"

"A couple of h
ours ago he was shooting at me. Well, toward me. I think it was Gideon he was really after."

Fl
ynn jolted. "Gideon? You mean 'Wraith' Gideon?"

"I think so."

"Wait, who's Gideon?" Marc asked.

"Remember the guy whose floater you helped us find? Back when you met Flynn?"

"The vigilante Diomedes killed? Or, I guess, nearly killed?" Marc looked from Felix to Flynn for confirmation.

Flynn shook his head.
"He was dead. He had to be. Whoever you saw, it wasn't Gideon."

"Spitting image, I swear.
He more than looked like him; he moved like him. Caitlin saw him first, about a week ago. We've been trying to figure out what happened to him since. He was visiting his old apartment today when Diomedes attacked."

"Maybe Gideon had a twin?" Flynn posited.

"What happened?" Marc asked. "To Diomedes and—this Gideon?"

"Not quite sure. Dio drove away with Gideon hanging onto his hood.
We found the car smashed in a parking garage, but no sign of either of them. Beyond the aforementioned smashed car, I suppose."

Marc leaned forward, rubbing his chin.
"And you think this has something to do with his being the gunman last week?"