Undermind Book 4, Chapter 16: Unveiled (Patreon)

“I think we’ve found our smoking gun,” said Liz, the silver-haired Unveiler. She stood at the door of Saskia’s cabin with Vincent and John. The guys bobbed their heads in unison, as if to underscore the truth and importance of her statement. Shivering as a blast of cold air swept through the doorway, Saskia hurriedly ushered them inside, and closed the door.

A month had passed since the incident at the Unveilers’ meetup. Saskia, Ruhildi, and some of the Unveilers—the ones who had been specifically targetted by the assault squad—were now staying up in the frigid Yukon. They were laying low while the storm kicked up by the bloodbath in Alberta blew over. She suspected it’d take a long time to blow over.

The three Unveilers seated themselves at the table of the modest cabin, glancing warily at Ruhildi, who stood guard by the door.

“So you have an exact location?” said Saskia.

“An area, yeah,” said Liz.

“Well don’t keep me in suspense. Give it to me.”

“First, we need you to confirm something for us,” said Liz. “You know all the weird shit our guys have been investigating in Norway…”

“So it’s in Norway.”

“Of course it’s in Norway,” said Liz. “We figured that out weeks ago.”

That was an exaggeration. They’d narrowed the locations of suspected ‘aliens’ down to a handful of countries, of which Norway was the most likely candidate. Not a point worth arguing, though. Best to just humour her.

“And by weird, you mean all the X-files crap,” said Saskia. “UFOs, ghosts, disappearances, bodies embedded in concrete walls…”

“And yetis,” said Vincent. “Don’t forget yetis.”

“I wish I could forget the yetis.”

“The yeti story didn’t pan out,” said Liz. “The disappearances, on the other hand…well, most of those didn’t pan out either. But one of them did. It was—surprise, surprise—the one you were most interested in.”

“The mountaineers last seen in the Hjørund Fjord,” said Saskia.

She’d had a bad feeling about this when they brought it to her attention earlier, and this news only reinforced her suspicions. That location had stood out to her, because it was where her mum had first met Calbert Bitterbee.

“Yeah,” said Liz. “It was weird because the media completely ignored the story, and the local authorities refused to talk. The family of the disappeared made some noise about it, but then they too went silent.”

“And let me guess,” said Saskia. “When your people interviewed the family members, they had no recollection of the incident.”

“Bingo,” said Liz. “They claimed the pair had died in an avalanche—which was corroborated by news articles that conveniently appeared overnight, back-dated to a few weeks ago.”

“And you want me to check if the articles really are new.”

“Yup,” said John. “At this point, we can’t even trust cached sites. Whoever is behind this can stick his fingers in them, too.”

Saskia nodded. “Show me the articles.”

One feature of her oracle browser was that it didn’t just give her access to the current state of the Internet. It could access a snapshot of the Internet from any point in time, starting from about a month ago. And unlike the caches stored in server farms around the world, her snapshots were not vulnerable to outside interference. That interference wasn’t just theoretical. She and her vassals had found a number of examples over the past month.

Sure enough, when she checked her snapshot from the date shown on the articles, they were nowhere to be found. They had indeed been added after the fact, and the dates fudged to hide the evidence.

“You were right,” she said. “They’re definitely fake. Thank you for this.”

“No problem,” said Liz. “You saved our lives. It’s the least we can do. We’ll contact our friends in Norway and see if they can dig up anything more.”

“There may be no need,” said Saskia. “I’m heading that way myself as soon as I’m able.”

“How will you get there without being—oh.” Liz’s face lit up as she contemplated the prospect of Saskia doing her teleporty thing.

Saskia ushered the three of them out the door, then lay down on her bed, and opened up a voice link with her vassals. It was pretty good timing, actually, because at this moment they sat in the hexapod, not far from the border into Norway, after having spent a few weeks ambling across Northwest Russia, Finland and Sweden. Without Saskia there to pilot the hexapod, the job had initially fallen to her mum—the only other person with the necessary access privileges. Later, with the help of the programming interface she’d given them, her friends had hacked the machine to allow any of her vassals to pilot it.

“Well?” said Saskia, after she relayed the news, and received only silence in response. “You know that’s where you met him, right?”

“Met who?” said Alice.

“Are you messing with me? We’ve gone over this a dozen times.”

“I’m kidding, Sass.” Alice sighed. “Well, sort of. You seem to remember more about what I told you as a child than I remember living through. Now that I’m your vassal, a little bit has come back to me, but it’s still kind of a blur.”

“It’s okay, Mum. Not your fault. He must have used his mind trick to make you forget, and erased all the other evidence as well.”

“You think your father is behind this disappearance,” said Dave, who was listening in on their conversation.

“Probably,” said Saskia. “It could be The Ram, but my money is on Calbert. I really hope he didn’t kill them…”

“When are you coming back to us, Sass?” asked her mum. “You should be here when we go look for your father.”

“We’ll try again today,” said Saskia. “I hope it works this time.”

She and Ruhildi had been trying to teleport back to the hexapod for the past few weeks, on and off. The last attempt had been several days ago, and hadn’t produced so much as a single tentacle, metaphorical or otherwise. But now felt like the right time.

Time to say goodbye to her Unveiler friends.

Vincent clapped his hands. “You’re going to do that thing, aren’t you?”

“What thing?”

“The tentacle thing!”

Saskia groaned. “Yeah, I suppose we are. But I wish you wouldn’t call it that.”

“Can we watch?” he asked.

“Uh, I’d rather you didn’t,” she said. “I don’t want to strip naked in front of you guys, and the transition tends to shred clothes. I borrowed these from Liz. It’d be a shame to waste them.”

If there was one thing she’d learned from her various trips into the between on both worlds, it was that clothing rarely survived the…explosive changes her body went through in the moments before it vanished.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” said Liz. “It’d be more than worth the sacrifice to see you going full alien on us.”

Saskia sighed. “First off, I’m not actually an alien. Well, not an extraterrestrial alien. I was born here on Earth, same as you.”

“Semantics,” said Liz. “You aren’t human. And I’m not saying that to belittle you. Humans are boring, and you’re awesome.”

Saskia blinked at her. She hadn’t realised until now that Liz was a true fan. “Okay, fine. You can watch. But no cameras. If I find this posted on the Internet, I’m coming for you, and you’ll wish those goons had gotten to you first.”

The Unveilers gathered around—but not too close—as she cast her thoughts toward her undermind, willing it to transport her and Ruhildi to a specific location…  

This time, it happened so fast, there was barely time to wave goodbye as her flesh expanded and contorted and twisted across dimensions. Her last sight before she plunged into the between was of Liz and Vincent and John, standing there with mouths hanging open; eyes bulging.

Yeesh, she thought. Didn’t they already see the video? It can’t be that different up close…

Then she was surfacing on a windswept hillside, near a stone cairn. Before she could get her bearings, a storm of new memories assaulted her. Things had been going from bad to worse on Arbor Mundi, and now it seemed as if her other self wouldn’t be around for much longer.

Focus, Saskia, she told herself. You can’t change any of that. Focus on the here and now.

The map marker representing the hexapod was just down the hill. They’d made it to the right place. Her other self might be frocked, but here, so far, so good. Ruhildi sent her a reassuring smile as they made their way down to the hexapod. They clambered up into the storage bay (now converted into a passenger bay), and hastily dressed.

“Aw, no souvenirs from Canada?” said Fergus, greeting her in the cockpit.

“If I could carry objects through the between, do you think I’d arrive buck naked every time?”

“You bring her with you,” he said, flicking his gaze down at Ruhildi, who still waited in the passenger bay.

“She’s not an object,” said Saskia. “Also kind of a special case. Sadly, I don’t know how to transport the rest of you, though I suspect it is possible.” She’d seen Yona do it with her followers, and with her traitorous vassal, Anduis. The latter had been intended as a one-way trip (or at least a very lengthy stay in the between), but Okael had pulled him out somehow.

“That’s fine by me,” said Raji. “I’d rather stay out of that freaky tentacle void of yours.”

“You and me both,” said Saskia. Though she couldn’t deny the usefulness of being able to teleport across worlds—and between them—she missed the days when all the weird crap in her life had mostly been confined to her imagination.

Crossing the border, they passed through rolling hills, green fields and pine forests, before the terrain grew increasingly rugged and mountainous. As they entered the western side of the country, her mum began to point out the names of mountains and towns and villages she’d visited all those years ago. With her dad. Whom she now couldn’t remember. It was still weird to think about that.

Wow, the landscape really was stunning. She was itching to go for a hike, but she had to stay on task. They were here for a reason.

Passing through the scattered villages surrounding the Hjørund Fjord, she could see no signs of anything out of the ordinary. No UFOs. No yetis. And nothing of particular interest marked on her map.

Then she realised what she wasn’t seeing was equally important. It took her a while to notice, but when she did, the effect was unmistakeable. Whenever she tried to look at a certain location in the nearby mountains, her eyes would drift away. This had happened to her before—but not on Earth. The greenways on Ciendil. Freygi the assassin, after she became Chosen. Abellion’s sanctum in the Crown of the World. All had a similar effect on both eyes and oracle senses. Anyone who wasn’t expecting it might walk right past the blind spot without noticing. She found it hard to believe the effect would fool everyone, but if anyone had made it through, they hadn’t made back it out to talk about it.

“Up there.” She pointed in the general direction her eyes were refusing to look. “You can’t see it, so don’t even try. But I’m willing to bet whoever we’re looking for is up in those mountains.”

“I’m willing to bet whoever’s up there won’t appreciate us butting our noses in,” said Ivan.

“Oh, I’m counting on it,” she said. “Even if it’s my dad. Especially if it’s my dad.”

If there was a road leading up the mountainside, it was also hidden. But unlike most ground vehicles, theirs didn’t need roads. Rough terrain was little trouble for the hexapod. With six highly agile legs, and extendable sprigs for extra traction, it could take on slopes that would give a human mountaineer pause. They still had to be wary of avalanches and rockfalls, though. A tumble down a steep slope in this thing would be no fun for anyone—and especially not for Raji, Fergus and Ruhildi, who were hanging out in the passenger bay. They’d rigged up some webbing to support the extra passengers down there, but it wasn’t as well-padded as the cockpit.

They crested a ridge, and followed it up the mountain, until it began to level off, forming a plateau. It was here that she had to really fight to keep the hexapod on-course. The repelling field around their destination was easily as strong as Ciendil’s greenways. Her head was pounding, her ears ringing, her muscles twitching as she resisted the intense compulsion, and urged the bug mech onward.

“Shit, you’re bleeding,” said Ivan.

She dabbed at her upper lip with her finger, and it did indeed come away red. “It’ll heal as soon as we get through,” she muttered. “Any minute now…”

It was probably just as well she was doing the driving. Her passengers didn’t seem to be affected in the same way, aside from being unable to look where they were going.

Suddenly, as if a switch had been flicked off in her head, the pressure was gone. She let out a sigh of relief—

And froze.

“What the ever-loving fuck is that?” said Dave.

Without tasking her eyes off the display, Alice reached over to whack him across the knee.

Rooted to the side of the mountain was an immensely tall…something, reaching almost as high as the mountain peak. It had an organic, vaguely tree-like form, with bulgy bits and branchy bits, and a distinct lack of straight edges and symmetry. But it was made of metal and concrete, with cables snaking in and out of its jagged walls. There was something that looked disturbingly like the wings and fuselage of an aircraft sticking out of its upper reaches. Around the structure were a series of pylons, feeding wires up into its extremities. Electricity thrummed between the tips of its branch-antennae, while spindly machines scuttled up and down its central tower, poking and hammering and welding.

Some of the little four-legged robots scurried down to ground level—where she quickly discovered they weren’t quite so little, after all. Though smaller than the hexapod, they were easily big enough to swallow a chihuahua whole, had they been so inclined. They even had what looked like mouths. Why would robots need mouths?

The creepy metal monstrosities fanned out around the hexapod, forelimbs clacking against ice-slicked rocks.

“Looks like we may be in for a bit of a scuffle,” she said.

At her command, the hexapod’s smaller side guns swivelled down, levelling stubby little barrels at the robots. The larger main guns would be no good against close, fast-moving targets, but these should do the trick. Without needing to be asked, Ivan and Dave were each controlling a share of the weapons, giving them full 360-degree coverage. Now that they had ammo they could fire straight (courtesy of Ruhildi’s stoneshaping), Saskia had re-enabled the auto-target-lock feature. They still had to pick their targets and pull the trigger manually (hence why it was still better to have more than one gunner), but once their targets selected, the guns stayed on them.

“How did those buggers spot us so easily?” asked Ivan. “We’re cloaked.”

“Cloaked, but not entirely invisible,” said Saskia. “Their little robot brains must see the ripple in the air, or perceive us in some other way.”

The robots drew to a halt just a few metres away. There they stood for several long seconds, waggling metal antennae in the air. She tried to strafe around them, but she couldn’t back up too far, or she’d be outside the barrier again.

All of a sudden, her map was filled with an awful lot of red and orange markers. The robots sprang forward.

Without hesitation, Saskia squeezed her mental trigger.

She wasn’t the only one who fired in that moment. Four of the jumping robots exploded into bits of shredded metal. She and Dave had scored a hit. Ivan had scored two. Follow-up shots shredded another three.

A dull clunk sounded outside, followed by a buzzing, scraping sound.

“Feck!” said Fergus. “Shake it off, Sass!”

“Working on it,” she muttered.

The hexapod—which at times like this felt like an extension of her own body—spun about wildly, legs flailing. They couldn’t get a good angle on the attacker with the guns, but a sharp impact with a tall rock knocked the robot free.

A moment later, it flew apart, courtesy of a point-blank shot by Ivan.

The red glow of a telegraphed strike gave Saskia just a moment to leap away, before an explosion tore into the mountainside. The world spun end-over-end, followed by a tooth-jarring impact, another dizzying roll, and then…silence. Stillness.

Saskia glanced around the cockpit, and through Ruhildi’s eyes scanned the passengers. “Everyone okay?”

The groans she received in reply told her they were not okay, but not seriously wounded, either.

The hexapod staggered upright, swaying on dented legs. Through the flickering sensors, she could see more robots scuttling toward them, but they weren’t the biggest problem. Atop a nearby rock, she could just make out the wavering, almost-transparent silhouette of a larger machine.

“Is that…?” said Ivan, squinting at the display. “Oh shit.”

Even before he even finished speaking, Ivan aimed one of the main gauss rifles and fired. The cloaked machine leapt off its perch to avoid the shot, and though she couldn’t see it clearly, Saskia caught the impression of six stout legs flexing in the air, partially obscured by a wing-like shield.

“Another hexapod,” she breathed.

Everything had happened so fast after they got through the barrier. Now, she belatedly noticed the extra dark red marker on her map, where the sensors were showing nothing but a blur against the snow. And it wasn’t the only one.

“There are two of them,” she said. “Give it everything you’ve got, guys.”

The next few minutes became a tense game of dodging and firing on the run. It was just as well she had gunners, because she had to focus every bit of her attention on avoiding direct hits from the hexapods, while also evading the smaller robots that rushed them.

One of the hexapods wavered into sight as it slumped to the ground, having taken two hypersonic shots between its wing-shields. The other lost one of its main guns, then a couple of legs, and finally its entire left side blew open.

Their own hexapod got off lightly in comparison. They lost one of the main guns, and their left shield took a pounding.

Dozens of dismembered robots lay strewn about the snow. The rest had backed off, or remained doing whatever it was they were doing up in the metal tree-tower.

The fight, it seemed, was over. But they weren’t done yet. Someone or something waited for her inside that alien structure. Several sturdy metal doors around its base lead to a network of tunnels and rooms within. Those tunnels weren’t wide enough to allow the hexapod access. They’d have to proceed on foot.

“Some of us will need to stay with the hexapod,” she said. “At least a pilot and a gunner, in case we need a quick extraction.” She gave her mum a meaningful look.

“No, Sass,” said Alice. “There’s every chance your father is in there. I need to see him again.”

“Fine,” said Saskia, knowing better than to argue over this matter. “Who wants to drive this thing, then?”

“You need a pilot, I’m your man,” said Fergus.

“I’ll stay with him,” said Raji. “I may not be the best shot, but with the help of your aiming thing, I can hit the broad side of a barn.”

“Well at least we’ll be safe from any barns that choose to attack us,” said Saskia. “Okay, the rest of you, gear up.”

The door was locked, but a couple of blasts from the hexapod’s main guns took care of that—as well as the robotic sentries waiting just inside. Damaged lights flickered, sporadically illuminating the rough concrete walls and steel panels of a long, winding corridor.

Saskia, Ruhildi, Alice, Ivan and Dave stepped into the breach, packing enough firepower to take down a small army. It looked as if they’d need it. A line of spindly death-bots came clacking toward them, wielding an array of power tools that she didn’t want coming anywhere near her face.

She opened fire, aiming for specific weak points indicated on their shared oracle interface. Limbs, sensors and joints were vulnerable, but their sturdy metal shells were quite resistant to small arms fire. Blinded and crippled by the sudden barrage, the robots ran into walls, and clattered to the floor, legs kicking in the air.

Approaching cautiously, Saskia’s team delivered the coup de grâce, firing at a certain spot in their exposed underbellies where their robo-brains were housed.

While this was happening, a human maintenance worker calmly went about his job on a nearby ladder. His head was up a ceiling duct, but there was no way any normal person in his position could’ve failed to notice the pitched battle being fought just metres away.

Further down the corridor, a woman emerged from a side room and strolled past without so much as a glance in their direction. She was dressed in colourful polypropylene and fleece gear often worn by mountaineers.

“I recognise her,” said Saskia. “She’s one of the climbers who disappeared a while ago.”

“You will be assimilated,” muttered Dave. “Resistance is futile.”

“If they’re mind-controlled, why aren’t they attacking us?” asked Alice.

“They might just be acting out whatever orders they were last given,” said Ivan.

“I can think of another reason,” said Saskia, looking at Ruhildi.

“Oh, you think whoever’s running this place knows we have a necromancer on our team,” said Ivan.

“Yup,” said Saskia. “If he sends living people after us, we can just kill them and assemble our own zombie army.”

“You know, we could just…” Ivan let the words trail off.

“No,” said Saskia. “Absolutely not. Whatever mind-control they’re under might not be permanent. I’m not gonna kill anyone I don’t have to. If the donkhole in charge of this place wants to ensure I don’t have to, I’m fine with that.”

They pressed further into the massive structure, stopping occasionally to fight off more robots, or take down sentry turrets. The further they went, the more people they encountered—all of them going about their tasks with calm detachment, seemingly oblivious to the gunfire erupting around them. As she moved, Saskia flitted through their heads, scoping out the interior of the structure.

It reminded her of nothing so much as…

“Spindle,” said Ruhildi, echoing her thoughts.

Saskia nodded. “It’s not exactly the same, but it has a similar layout.”

Like Spindle, this structure had a large hollow shaft up its centre, with elevators trundling up and down it. Unlike Spindle’s elevators, these ones weren’t rickety deathtraps, but sleek, modern-looking tubes.

Arriving at the nearest elevator, Saskia pressed the button, and surprisingly, the door just opened. They piled inside. Rinky-dink music began to play out of scratchy speakers as the capsule rose smoothly up the shaft.

“Are you frocking serious?” muttered Saskia.

“I don’t know,” said Alice. “It’s kind of catchy.”

The rest of them all groaned—except Ruhildi, who had a bemused smile on her face.

Only after they were halfway up did it occur to her that at this point, any sensible villain would cut the elevator cables, and that would be that. When the door finally opened, Saskia let out a relieved breath, and all but shoved everyone out into the room beyond.

They were fairly high up the structure now, but not at the top. Out a window, she could see a wide, flat platform, on which sat several helicopters.

“…the hell?” said Ivan, following her gaze out the window. “That looks exactly like…no. It can’t be.”

“Can’t be what?” said Saskia, knowing that whatever he said it couldn’t be, it undoubtedly was.

“That one looks identical to my dad’s private chopper,” said Ivan. “Even down to the dent below the windshield.”

“Your eyes do not deceive you, son,” said Victor Storozhenko, stepping into the room behind them.

“Dad?” said Ivan. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I could ask the same of you.” Viktor gazed down at the wreckage strewn across the mountainside. “You made quite a mess on your way in.”

“Don’t try to turn it back on me,” said Ivan. “You’d better have a damn good explanation for all the crazy shit going on here.”

“I do, but I’m not the one who will deliver that explanation,” said Viktor. “Come. Allow me to introduce you to our host.”

Saskia had a pretty good idea who that host would be. She’d dreamed about this moment; longed for it; dreaded it. Her heart was racing, and she knew she hyperventilating, but she couldn’t seem to stop. Her mum took hold of her hand. They were both trembling. She didn’t know who was trying to steady whom.

They followed Viktor up a winding ramp, and into a nightmare. The room they found themselves in wouldn’t have looked out of place in an H.R. Giger painting. There were tubes and cables and hissing pumps and pulsating flesh, intermingled in a way that screamed wrong on every level.

In the midst of it all, suspended in a forest of flesh and machines was a shrunken figure. Pale, veiny flesh pulled too tight over twisted bones. But those eyes. She knew those eyes.

“Welcome, my daughter,” said Calbert Bitterbee. His expression didn’t look welcoming. It looked predatory.