Chapter 62 - Everyone Wants a Kanryx (Patreon)

A hand pushed up through the floor next, then a shoulder, and the rest of him followed. The Guardian rose the way a man climbs out of water, slowly, with that green eye on his head locked on her the whole time.

A panel opened in her field of view.

[NEW MISSION ASSIGNED]

[Objective: Extract four (4) Kanryx specimens from the dungeon.]

[Reward: 50% progress toward Level 8.]

[Bonus: Additional specimens above the required four will be evaluated for further compensation.]

[Failure condition: Removal of mutation evolution.]

She read it twice. The second time, slower.

Removal of mutation evolution.

“What do you mean by removal of mutation evolution? I just earned that. I fought for it. I put it inside my body. Right now there are people upstairs hunting me down for this exact evolution, and you come tell me you’re taking it away from me?”

“That is the condition, yes.”

“That’s the condition?” A short breath. “Listen. I don’t care about whatever lover’s spat you, the system, and the portal have got going on between you three. That’s not my problem. I earned my evolution and the right to it. Who the hell decides somebody can walk in and pull it out of me? What is going on here?”

“Lower your voice, Operator.”

The green eye did not blink. It held her steady, and the calm of it was worse than if he had raised his.

“I set the mission. I set the condition. That’s it.”

“You? Not the portal?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’m angry with the right person.”

“You are. And your anger makes sense. It is not, however, useful.” He folded his hands. “The Great Realm Portal rarely concerns himself with what happens inside a dungeon. Almost never, in truth. But the situation with the Kanryx has him worried, curious. He is watching this matter, and I have to bring him results. This is the shape those results have to take.”

“So the punishment is your idea?”

“The punishment is the lever I have to make sure the work gets done,” he said. “Yes.”

“He can be as curious as he wants. I’ll give the mission everything I’ve got; that’s not the issue. The issue is being told I might lose what I bled for because somebody upstairs got curious.”

“The Portal is not comfortable with an evolution system he doesn’t control. The one he gives is, in his view, powerful enough. It’s what every traveler crosses worlds to get. Everybody fights for it because everybody wants it.”

“And he doesn’t like that I have another one.”

“He does not.”

“Even though mine takes nothing from him.”

“It exists outside of him. That’s the problem. He can’t trace where it came from, and he can’t control it. For him, that is enough to be a problem.”

“What else?” she said.

“There are open questions: why the system won’t speak about it, where the formulas came from, why the system disobeyed him when he asked straight.”

“So I’m paying for something the system did.”

“You are not paying. You are being used as a way to get answers. This is a special case, Operator, and this is the way I have chosen to handle it.”

“He gave me a formula,” she said. “At the end of the last trial. As a prize. So he can’t hate the mutation evolution that much. He literally fed it.”

“He is curious about what you will do with that formula. That is not the same as approval.”

“Then why give it to me at all?”

“Because his curiosity about what you’ll do with that formula sits closer to interest than to anger. For now.” His hands came down to his sides. “But the fact that you carry an evolution that didn’t come from him, that you’re using a path that isn’t his, is still a kind of blasphemy to him. That is the most I am permitted to say on the subject, Operator.”

“So you’re telling me there won’t be other formulas. Not like the ones the system was handing me.”

“As I said. We do not know where the system got those formulas. The one the Portal gave you at the end was something he pulled out of the system before sending him elsewhere. And for now, Operator, there is nothing more you need to know about that.”

She watched him. He didn’t move.

“I require only that you complete your mission. And I give you my word, because I keep my word, that if you do, you will never face this kind of restriction again. You will never be told again that your mutation evolution can be taken from you. Not by me, not by the Portal, not by any other administrator.”

He believes it. Or he’s a better liar than the system was.

“Last question.” she said.

“Ask it.”

“Why don’t you just take them? You. The Portal. You’re supposed to be all-powerful in here. Walk in, grab the Kanryx, walk out. Why do you need me?”

“Ah.” The eye blinked, and the corner of what passed for his mouth lifted in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “A fair question. When a dungeon is created, Operator, the administrators are guests. The dungeon is a single point that opens in a location where something of significance has occurred. There are millions of significant events, but we speak only of those that may alter a world, a universe, or a fundamental law. Administrators such as myself open the door. We do not carry anything through it.”

“So you can’t physically take anything out of here?”

“Correct. If I, or the Portal, or the system before me, were to remove anything from this place, we would lose the right to open this door again. The dungeon would close to us forever. The price is not worth what we would gain.”

“So you want me as a smuggler?”

“You also receive things from us, Operator. At times we will need things in return. When a traveler arrives in a world, what they earn with their own effort and their own blood is theirs to keep. That right belongs to you, not to us.”

“That’s why the system was negotiating with Eron over the Kanryx? The trade?”

“Something along those lines.”

She ran her free hand down the strap of her pack.

“And if I walk out with seven instead of four?”

“Then we will speak again, and that conversation will be a great deal more pleasant than this one.”

The Guardian gave her a small bow, then turned, walked to the closest wall, and passed through it as if it were a curtain. Gone. She stayed where she was for a second.

Shit. Shit. Seems like everybody wants a Kanryx for their collection.

“Tera. Looks like I don’t get one damn rest break in this place. Is there going to be a point where I make it somewhere quiet and sit down for a few days?”

Try thinking about it from a different angle. If you walk out with a Kanryx, maybe more than one, you might be in a spot to negotiate with the Guardian for more access. Compounds. Samples. Who knows?

“No. I don’t have the head for that right now. What worries me is that the explosions stopped. Everything’s gone quiet up there. We need to get out, Tera. Now. These humans are normal, but who knows what they’ve got, so let’s go.”

A heavy click cut her off. Then another, running along the frame of the door she had come in through. The locks engaged one after another.

They sealed the exit. Operator, there are people in the security room we were in earlier.

Every light in the lab went black. The white panels died, the Kanryx tanks went dark, and then the red emergency strips along the ceiling came on, washing the floor in a low, dirty light. Napoleon’s eyes brightened, two clean cones of light from the front of his body that lit the floor better than the emergency strips had.

“Thank you, Napoleon. Thank you.”

She closed her eyes for a second and activated Technological Sense. The lab around her turned gray. Nothing under her feet, nothing in the floors below, no live equipment, no power signature anywhere. Just Napoleon lit up next to her. Then she looked up, and far above her, there was a pocket of energy in the security room.

They cut everything, so I’d stay down here.

With the pack tight across her back, she crossed to the door. Pulled the master key off her belt and slid it into the lock. The key turned. Something inside the door clicked, but the door didn’t open. 

She set her hand against it and pushed hard. It didn’t move. The interior bolts were locked, the kind that engaged manually, and whoever was upstairs had thrown them before they cut the power.

“Shit Guardian,” she said out loud. “You could have waited a few minutes with the mission. We could have been out of here.”

She kept her palm pressed against the door.

The revolver. Try the revolver.

Step by step, she backed away from the door, watching her boots. The acid patches were still on the floor in a few spots, and she did not want to find one with her heel.

“Napoleon. Light the floor for me. I don’t want to step in that crap.”

Napoleon angled his head down, and the beams of his eyes ran across the floor in front of her, the dried patches showing dark against the rest. She stepped around them, moving as far back from the door as the lab allowed.

“Napoleon. My shoulder. Now.”

He jumped. She felt the small weight settle against her shoulder; the legs gripping her jacket the way he always did when he wanted to be close for a fight.

She drew the revolver, lifted it, and aimed at the lock plate. She fired.

The shot was heavy, but not the same recoil that came off the bracelet, the kind that used to feel like her arm was about to come apart at the joint. The revolver kicked, but it remained manageable, and after the kick there was no pain. Best decision she could have made.

The shot landed, and the lab went white. The blast slammed back into the room; the pressure shoving against her chest, and she clamped her hands over her ears too late. Smoke filled the space in front of her, hanging there, slow to settle.

Shit Tera. I almost went deaf.

She waved her free hand to clear the smoke in front of her face, and as it thinned, the door came into view.

It was bent in the middle, folded inward as if someone had hit it with a wrecking ball. The bolts that had been holding it were broken off, hanging from their housings. The opening on the side was clean, wide enough for her to fit through with the pack.

She looked at Napoleon on her shoulder.

“Napoleon. I’ll say it again. These bullets are a lifeline, and we have to know when to use them. I don’t have unlimited ammo. We can’t afford to run out.”

Napoleon shifted his weight against her jacket.

She walked toward the door, stepping around the acid, and slid the pack off her shoulder. Passed it through the gap first. Then squeezed through after it, one shoulder at a time. Napoleon followed easily through the gap.

The corridor on the other side was dark. Only the red emergency strips were live, and they painted everything in long, ugly shadows. She turned toward the elevator and reached for Technological Sense again. The elevator was dead. No power, no lift signal, just an empty shaft.

“Napoleon we go to the stairs.”

Not my favorite option.

A tremor came up through the floor before she got there. Then a sound, far above her, a low grinding that climbed in pitch as it got closer. She reached for Technological Sense again and looked up.

It was coming down through the floors, a vertical column of metal, cylindrical, dropping fast, about eighteen feet tall and seven across. At the bottom there was a circular head, spinning on its axis, eating dirt and concrete on the way down. She could feel the heat of the motor inside the column, pushed past its operating curve, and whoever was driving it was not babying the machine. They were burning it.

Inside the column there was no person, just machinery from top to bottom.

“Napoleon. Back.”

She moved toward the stairwell door, away from the path of the thing coming down, and she pulled Napoleon off her shoulder and set him on the floor next to her.

They’re punching a hole down to us. They don’t care what they destroy on the way.

“Why? They had the security room. They could have brought the power back up and taken the elevator like normal people.”

Apparently, for Eron, you are worth more than this entire place. We already know he knows things we don’t. And a dungeon means travelers can leave any time. He doesn’t want you to leave.

“It’s getting close.”

A wall to her left split apart, and the silver drill burst through it, hit the floor with a noise like a building collapsing, and kept going. It punched through the floor and dropped. The stairwell was right next to where it landed, and there wasn’t much for the drill to chew on at that depth, so it just fell, taking the stairs with it. 

Concrete and rebar peeled away on the way down.

She clamped her hands over her ears again and stayed against the wall. With Technological Sense up, she could track the drill all the way down. It hit the bottom floor and detonated.

That hole is wide enough for people. Wide enough for whatever else he wants to send down. We don’t know what kind of tech this world has.

“Tera. That disgusting third eye of his. I didn’t even want to name it when I saw it, I almost shit myself the way it was looking at me. Like it wanted to eat me. Or like I was its long-lost love or something. We need to get the hell out of here.”

She moved to the edge of the hole the drill had left and looked down.

The shaft was a mess. Smoke, fire in some of the lower levels, and twisted rebar bent out from the walls at angles that looked sharp enough to cut. But the stairs were down there too, in chunks. Some sections were still attached; others were just gone.

She glanced at her left forearm. The mutation evolution bar was sitting between seventy-three and seventy-five percent.

“Predictive Planning would mark every step down for me. I’m not an acrobat; I’d miss the first landing and fall through the rest.”

Hey. If you fall, at least when you hit a hundred percent, you’ll be tougher.

“Thanks, Tera. Real useful.”

She kept looking down. The stairs on the third floor below her were still intact for a stretch, then broken, then gone again.

Napoleon snapped to attention next to her, his front legs bracing against the floor, his body shifting into the posture he used when he spotted a threat.

“Operator. Something is coming.”

She looked up. Two drones were descending through the hole the drill had made. She drew the revolver.

“Napoleon. If they’re armed, attack.”

Napoleon shifted into a combat posture.

The drones reached her level and stopped, hanging in the air across from her. She scanned them. Simple builds. No weapons that she could see. No turrets, no grippers, no payloads. Just sensors on the front, and a small speaker.

A voice came through the speaker.

“Please. Hear me out.”

She knew that voice.

That bastard. It’s Eron.

“I’ve been worried. I lost track of you for a while, and I feared the worst. We opened the tunnel so you can come up safely. You don’t have to face anything else down in that place.

“Please, just hear me out a moment. I’m not trying to hurt you. Nobody up here is trying to hurt you. You’re in danger from everything down there. You’re the most important thing in that place. I’m sending...”

“Napoleon. Destroy the drones.”

Napoleon launched. He didn’t pause, didn’t wind up, just jumped, and he caught the first drone in the air. His front legs came down on it and split it across the middle in one clean motion. He hit the second drone before it could turn, sheared it the same way, and landed against the far wall, sticking there with his back legs. The two halves of each drone fell into the hole and spun out of sight.

“Tera. I can’t stay up here any longer. How do I get down?”

Napoleon let go of the wall. He dropped into the hole.

“Napoleon!”

She ran to the edge and glimpsed him bouncing off one wall, then the next, his webs flicking out and catching, his body using the shaft like it was an obstacle course built for him. Then he was below her, lower, lower, gone into the smoke.

“Tera. Napoleon is acting more and more on his own these days.”

His priority is protecting you. He’s developing more personality the more he has to protect you. That’s what it looks like.

For a while she heard nothing from him. She leaned over the edge, and the smoke and the red light made it hard to see anything specific, just movement, the small shape jumping from one side of the shaft to the other while the floor numbers dropped.

“Napoleon, don’t go too far. Be careful.”

A minute passed. Three.

“Napoleon, answer me.”

“Here, Operator.”

Son of a bitch. He scared me. And I say that with love, God help me.

“Floors ten and eleven are sealed,” Napoleon said. “Same situation in other areas; floors thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen have debris too heavy for us to move. I don’t have the capacity or the strength to clear concrete and iron of that size. But floor twelve is open, Operator. The only option I see is to enter through floor twelve and look for another way down to floor fifteen.”

“Okay, come back up so we can make a plan.”

Napoleon looked at her from below, then looked at the hole between them.

“Operator. There are three floors of difference.”

Napoleon opened his mouth and started shooting webs, not the usual thin lines but small web-spiders, firing them at the walls around the opening of floor twelve to build something that covered the gap.

“They aren’t as strong as the nano threads, Operator, but they will hold your fall for now.”

She looked down at the mat. Three floors. Not twenty.

Jump now. We don’t know what Eron is going to send next. We don’t know what abilities he has. He’s a special case; we know he had a conversation with the system. He knows things we don’t.

Yeah. Also, that disgusting third eye of his. And after everything I’ve been through in this place, three floors is nothing.

The pack came off her shoulders, and she held it against her chest, then stepped to the edge of the hole.

Three floors. Just three floors.

She took a breath and jumped.