Mistrunner 3 - Chapter 30 - Olympus (Patreon)

Overconfidence bordering on arrogance will always be an issue for Mira. She never sees a problem she doesn’t believe she can overcome. And given her track record, she’s probably right. But I’m terrified of the day she discovers otherwise.

Patrick Ward

As I walked through the corridors of the Pacifician headquarters, I chose not to push my luck. Instead, I kept to little-used hallways and did everything I could to avoid notice, even going so far as to use Stealth and Camouflage to mask my presence. They might be capable of seeing through Mimic, but I suspected that it took the active use of a skill or cybernetic to do so. After all, they hadn’t immediately figured me out before, and they’d taken the trouble of adjusting their Mist shield to better detect me. So, it stood to reason that they couldn’t tell I was an imposter at a mere glance.

However, I also knew that they were all at least somewhat connected. Their society had been described as a hive mind, and the fact that they all looked and acted similarly seemed to support that. But there was some individuality there as well, so I had to believe that they weren’t always completely connected to one another.

Otherwise, I didn’t stand a chance.

I had a plan for that eventuality, but considering Patrick’s admonition not to blow everything up, I didn’t want to resort to the utter mayhem that would follow copious use of explosives. Or at least that’s what I told myself. In the back of my mind, though, I thought the world would be a better place if the entire Pacifician facility was swallowed by a giant ball of fire.

Maybe I really did have a problem.

I pushed those thoughts aside as I moved through the facility. Most of it was precisely what I expected to find. They had rooms set aside for housing the addicts, a couple of cafeterias, a huge kitchen, and the counseling center I’d seen in my first visit. And that was just the first floor. The rest of the headquarters was more of the same, and my cursory inspection suggested that it was precisely what it appeared to be. There was no evidence – aside from the androids who’d tried to take me into custody – that the so-called Pillar of Heaven was anything but a charitable organization whose goal was to help the less fortunate.

And the more I saw, the more I’d begun to doubt. Perhaps I’d misinterpreted the things I had seen outside of Fortune. Maybe Freddy and the Templars were mistaken. Or he could have simply been lying to me. It wouldn’t be the first time, and I knew it wouldn’t be the last, either. More, it wouldn’t be that difficult to take advantage of my predilection toward cynicism to convince me that the good guys had evil motives.

Still, I continued my search until I reached the top floor, which was another set of domiciles occupied by homeless men and women. With my initial inspection done, I returned to the ground floor, where I found a hive of activity. The blue-robed guards had begun to swarm as they presumably searched for me.

More than once, I was forced to hide from particularly attentive guards, but for the most part, they ignored me. At the same time, I continued my search for anything out of the ordinary. Eventually, after I’d found nothing for hours, I started following a set of random guards as they combed the building. Predictably, they found nothing, and after a while, they led me to precisely what I was looking for.

I hid behind a corner as I watched the blue-robed and blonde guards approach a blank wall. One of them stepped forward and placed her hand on the wall. The second her palm touched the surface, I felt a hum of Mist in the air. Then, a holographic display faded away to reveal a sliding door, which opened to reveal an elevator. The trio of guards wasted no time before stepping into the elevator, and once the doors closed behind them, the holographic display reengaged, presenting itself as an unmarred wall.

I found an out-of-the-way corner, engaged Stealth and Camouflage, then waited for another group to appear. About thirty minutes later, a pair of guards repeated the actions of the first trio, stepped into the elevator, and disappeared to wherever the elevator took them. Presumably, down, but I couldn’t be sure. For all I knew, the building was dozens of levels taller than it appeared, and it was all hidden by an advanced holographic display.

Unlikely, given the practical issues with something like that, but I wasn’t prepared to disregard the possibility.

Instead, I remained in place for another couple of hours, and in that time, I saw multiple groups use the concealed elevator. In addition, the guards’ activity seemed to die down, probably because they assumed I’d run away. I was beginning to wonder if that would have been the right course of action.

Nothing said I had to actually find Cyrilla’s brother, after all. I could just tell her I tried, and leave once Patrick finished his suit. Results were never part of the deal. So, it would have been much smarter to just cut my losses and head back to the Leviathan where I could spend my time on training instead of going up against an advanced alien civilization with unknown capabilities.

But I was too intrigued to stop short of discovering the truth.

That probably should have been an indication that my approach wasn’t entirely rational, but I was well-versed in ignoring my own good sense. So, I kept watching and waiting until, at last, the headquarter returned to what I considered a normal state. Once it did, I dropped Stealth and approached the door. As I did so, I was careful to look like I belonged, and I copied the guards’ mannerisms right down to the way they walked.

Or at least I tried to.

I wasn’t a great actress, but I had still practiced enough that I thought I was passable. Even so, the guards had a subtly odd way of moving that I knew I couldn’t completely replicate. Indeed – I couldn’t even put my finger on just what made it stand out. I just knew that it was odd.

Whatever the case, I hoped I wouldn’t get too much interest if someone happened to see me. When I reached the concealed door, I was careful to put my hand in precisely the same place that the others had, but to my surprise, I got no response. I could feel something beneath the holographic display – probably a security measure meant to keep anyone but the Pacificians out.

So, I had another choice to make.

I could probably Misthack the system and open the door by force, but that would almost assuredly trip some sort of alarm. Even if it didn’t, I couldn’t be sure that the intrusion would go unnoticed. In fact, I couldn’t be sure of anything; the Pacificians had already surprised me twice, and I didn’t want to experience that a third time.

Which left me with my second option: abducting an android and asking some very pointed questions. Of course, that came with plenty of dangers, too. Aside from the obvious issues with subduing and interrogating someone without raising the alarm, I had to worry about the supposed connection they shared with their hive mind. I was already convinced that they weren’t always in contact with one another, but I wasn’t so naïve as to believe that that wouldn’t change the moment one of them was threatened. So, it was clear that I had some work to do.

With that in mind, I found an empty domicile, settled in, and got down to it. As was usually the case, my solution hinged on my Misthack ability. I had a few innate abilities that could mimic Ghosts – like Plague – but they were too broad for what I had in mind. So, I started building a new Ghost from the ground up. It was a tedious process, but it was one I’d grown accustomed to enduring. And in a lot of ways, I enjoyed it. Sure, there were parts I loathed, and it was often frustrating, but the sense of accomplishment I got when I finally created a working Ghost that did precisely what I wanted it to do was absolutely worth it.

And that wasn’t even considering the positive reinforcement of seeing my progress on my status sheet, which was reward enough all on its own.

In all, it took me two more days to come up with a working prototype and another day after that to refine it to the point where I expected it to work flawlessly. In that time, I was forced to move a couple of times when various addicts or homeless people were assigned to the room I occupied, but that wasn’t unexpected. It was why I’d continuously kept Stealth active.

Doing so for long periods of time gave me a headache, but at least my Mist reserves were more than up to the task. Credit to my constant training, I suppose.

In any case, while I worked on the Ghost, I managed to remain undetected. Moreover, the state of the facility seemed to normalize, giving me a better opportunity to affect my interrogation. So, it was with some optimism that I finally emerged from my Ghost-crafting session to select a target.

The problem was that they almost always moved in pairs. Or trios. So, I had to wait some time before the opportunity for abduction presented itself. Still, I remained patient, letting Patrick know what was going on every step of the way.

He inevitably told me to be careful, but I could tell by the tone of his voice that he never expected me to follow his advice. Which kind of annoyed me until I remembered that I was deep in enemy territory about to abduct and interrogate an android that was mentally connected to hundreds of others who possessed the firepower to do me in. So, maybe he was right to doubt my commitment to caution.

In any case, my opportunity came when, against all odds, I found a black-robed Pacifician tasked with cleaning one of the rooms that had been recently used by an addict who had since moved on.

I pounced, Misthacking the android in question and cutting them off from any non-verbal communication. The structure of the Ghost really was an ingenious design that featured an ability to search out any skills or abilities meant for mental communication and shut them down. I’d spent hours studying Secure Connection so I could get a sense of how such abilities worked, and it had paid off when I saw the panicked expression on the android’s male face.

As soon as the Ghost took hold, my hand darted out, and my fingers clamped around his throat before I pushed him back into the room he’d just cleaned. Even as the door shut behind us, I pushed him onto the cot and growled, “Answer my questions, and I let you live. Lie or refuse to answer, and I’ll end you. Got me?”

The black-haired man nodded. I hadn’t even noticed the different hair color at first, but now that I had, it just looked wrong, especially considering that he otherwise looked remarkably similar to any of the others. Like his robes, the hair color seemed important in its distinction.

“Do you have any idea who I am?” I asked. I still wore the same face I’d used to impersonate a blue-robed guard.

He shook his head, then pleaded, “Please don’t kill me. I’ll do whatever you want.”

That sounded remarkably human, which piqued my curiosity even further. So, I asked, “Why are you wearing black instead of blue? And why aren’t you blonde like all the others?”

“Uh…”

I hit him. Not hard enough to cause real damage. More to get his attention and show him that I meant business. Like I’ve said before, I’m not a fan of torture. I’ll do it, but I don’t consider it an effective means of interrogation. Now, the threat of death if someone doesn’t answer my questions? That’s better, but only marginally so. Still, I had to work with what I had.

“You know what? I’m not doing this,” I said, realizing that I was being a little stupid. After summoning a pair of handcuffs from my arsenal implant, I bound his hands. Then, I pulled my personal link from the Hand of God, found the port at the base of his skull, then jacked in.

I immediately regretted it. The moment I tried to assault the defenses, I knew I’d made a huge mistake. In the split second before I felt my brain get fried by the backlash, I used Rewind, which allowed me to backtrack from the black-robed android’s system without any repercussions.

I let out a gasp and muttered, “What the fuck was that?”

“Um…I don’t know?”

“It’s in your brain,” I accused. “If anybody knows, it should be you.”

“Uh…I don’t…I’m not exactly used to this body, okay? I didn’t think it would be like this…”

“What are you talking about?”

“I thought I’d hit the jackpot, you know? They told me I could get a new body without all my issues. I could live forever, too. But what they didn’t tell me was that if I wanted to progress, I needed to give up more and more control. Like, I’m mostly still me, you know? Without the addiction. But if I wanted to get new colors, I have to –”

“New colors?”

“The robes. The hair. That kind of thing. There’s brown, then black. We’re about as low as you can get. But after that are the blues. The reds next. Then the silvers. And the golds. Finally, there’s purple. Those are the real Packies.”

“Packies?”

“The…uh…Pacificians. The aliens. Some of us are…you know…it’s just a term of endearment. Like buddy. Or friend.”

“Right. So, you made a deal with the aliens. They gave you a new body and everything. And what? You get to be their janitor?” I asked, remembering that I’d found him cleaning a domicile that had been recently occupied by an addict who was going through dust withdrawal. Not a clean proposition in the best of the times.

“No. I mean, yeah. Sort of. I just have to do this until I can advance. But the problem is that when you do, you lose a little bit of yourself, you know? I had a buddy named Rex. He was like me. Good guy who’d give you the shirt off his back. But he found the Pillar of Heaven before me, and…well, he’s a blue robe now. Except he’s not him. Not really. There’s something missing.”

“Like his humanity,” I said, knowing precisely what he meant. It was the same with all the blue-robed guards I had seen. There was something altogether discomforting about the way they walked and talked. Even the way they looked at other people sent a chill up my spine. So, I knew precisely what he meant.

“I dunno about that. Can you help me? Get me out?” he asked.

“I don’t think it works like that,” I stated, and I saw his expression change. It had gone from hope to anger and then to resignation, all in the space of a second. Perhaps someone could have managed to extricate him from the Pacificians’ clutches, but that was definitely outside my expertise. “I need some information. Like I said, if you give me the information I need, I’ll let you go.”

He sighed. “S’pose living as a damn robot is better than dying,” he muttered. “Do you know what the worst part is? No junk. Not that I’d feel like using it or anything. Those kinds of feelings are…gone. I guess everything else’ll go when I climb get a better color than black. Least I’m not a brown. Those guys…”

I really didn’t want to hear about the loss of his genitals, so I just moved on with my questions. And I learned a few disturbing things. First, the city on the mountain was called Olympus, and it was populated by a rigidly delineated society. No one really wanted for anything, but life was definitely better for the gold-robes than it was for the black-robes. The ones in the brown robes were those who hadn’t taken to their conversion quite as enthusiastically as the Pacificians thought they should. As such, they were removed from the city.

In addition to the basic structure of Olympus, the man gave me the information I really needed. Chiefly, that the Pacificians weren’t without allies. They regularly traded with other aliens, and had formed a strong alliance with a race of elven aliens who had a Rift delving operation nearby.

I also learned that Olympus was basically impenetrable. He didn’t know the specifics, but according to everything he’d been told, the city was a fortress meant to withstand even other alien forces. After all, the Pacificians were not a popular race, largely because they existed by poaching the population of other alien societies. That didn’t endear them to anyone, and I was a little surprised that anyone would treat with them.

In any case, I’d learned everything I needed to move forward, so after knocking him out via another Ghost, I left him behind. It took a while for me to get free of the building, but I managed it via a combination of Stealth and Camouflage. I abstained from using any other Ghosts, mostly because I didn’t want to risk alarming the Pacificians. If they were on guard, the next part of my plan wouldn’t work.

Eventually, I made it back to the Leviathan, where I found Patrick asleep on our couch. A few bits and pieces of machinery lay next to a couple of empty food containers. Clearly, he’d been working hard. Hopefully, that effort would pay off.

But in the meantime, I had another mission to plan.