Wormhole Cultivation [Book 2] - Chapter 38: Conflict's End (Patreon)

My words put Delgado on alert. She picked up her tablet, checked something, and raised an eyebrow pointedly.

"Where did he go?"

"Who?" I asked.

"Johnson," she said, still keeping a stony face.

"How do you even know he's not on his jetboard?" I asked.

"Because I planted my bug in his jumpsuit, not on the board or the armour."

Now it was my turn to be surprised and work my eyebrows.

"Wow!" I said.

"Fill me in," Artem asked.

"Delgado planted her own bug on Johnson. In his jumpsuit."

Didn't think she'd actually help me.

Wait. Who said she was helping me?

"Is there one on me too?"

I wrapped my jumpsuit in my Space and scanned it for anything foreign. Not the most reliable method, but working with a spatial pocket meant the skill of distinguishing separate objects came in handy. I'd used a similar trick to sift sand out after training in the hall.

A small, thin plate, like a fish scale, turned up in my left pocket. I reached in for it, but the damn bit of plastic seemed to have fused to the fabric. I had to scrape it off.

I widened my eyes in outrage and looked at Delgado.

She said: "I know you'd have preferred I let your little feud run its course, but that would've been entirely irresponsible of me. Are you in contact with the master right now?"

Of course, responsibility had been the whole point of this manoeuvre!

Still, the argument could wait. I was losing time and opportunity.

"With Artem Mykula. Honestly, I don't know whether to be angry or impressed," I said, getting back to the point. "So you're saying he's dropped off your radar."

"Dropped off," Delgado confirmed, then slid the tablet across the desk. "Put him on speaker, let's talk, the three of us."

I took the tablet and routed the call through it.

"Artem, you're on speaker," I said.

"Hi, Delgado," he said.

"Seen each other today. Do you have the coordinates where the signal vanished?"

"It's in the canyon, a few kilometres from the test site."

"Can you send a few of your 'birds' to survey the area?"

"Already done. But the survey will take time. Besides, I don't know exactly what I'm looking for."

"A portal," Delgado and I said at the same time, and exchanged a glance.

"The signal's gone," Delgado explained, "which means he either destroyed the bug, or he's in a shielded room. Reminder: I put mine in his jumpsuit pocket. It's not easy to find, and getting rid of it on the move, through armour, is even harder. So my money's on him using the evacuation portal prototype for his own purposes."

I nodded, fully agreeing with the assessment. Though that meant the bastard had written off a portal for himself before I even managed to! That set off a flare of anger in me.

"In that case, I doubt I'll find anything without a search team," said Artem. "If he thought this through, he'll have thought through how to mask the portal too."

"Don't you have any birds that can see through holograms?" Delgado asked him sarcastically.

"He could've sunk the portal into stone, the way we did with the Federation portals on the kalamari planet," I said.

"Exactly," Artem agreed. "So we'd better focus on tracking his board's route. He'll have to get back on it before returning to the lab. I've overlaid his flight path on the campus map. He's not heading straight for the main entrance to the Hall of Technology …

"The roof of Dormitory Four. I can't see his board!"

"Be more precise. What does that mean?"

"That none of my birds… I see him."

"Specifically him?" Delgado asked. "My signal hasn't come back."

"Neither has mine," said Artem, "but what was that, if not him jumping on board again? And now he's flying straight for the Hall."

"You didn't register any Space Qi flares?" I asked.

"This is campus, Jake. Something's flaring up here every second, and I don't have a bug with microsensors stuck to his armour anymore."

"What's on that roof?" Delgado asked.

"A backup compressor station for a few neighbouring buildings. One of my ‘birds’ is circling it now… There's a spot here shielded from view on all sides, even from above. You can arrest him now," said Artem.

"For what?" Delgado asked. "He got rid of the bugs, that's not a crime. He's smart, he must have figured Jake would be watching him. In his shoes, I'd have done everything I could to shake off surveillance too."

"He clearly didn't stop there!" I said. "I'll bet you anything he messed with my portal!"

"And what would that get him?" she asked, shaking her head. "You're right here. He thinks I'm chewing you out, not discussing his route. I don't see the payoff."

"There has to be some setup," I said, not very convincingly.

"Such as?" Delgado asked. "He'll reconfigure it so the portal detonates in your face?"

"More like so the portal slices my face open."

"Isn't that exactly what you were trying to make him do?"

"I wasn't trying to make him do anything," I said. "I was giving him a chance to show his true rotten colours."

"Jake!" Delgado brought her palms down sharply onto the desk, though without an aggressive slap. "If he actually made some changes, find them, document them, and call me. Otherwise, you are forbidden from continuing this conflict. You're welcome to quit if you don't intend to keep working. I won't hold you back. You're not much use to us as it is; you're focused on the wrong things. We've got an invasion bearing down on us! Your squabbling is eating up time and resources."

"I didn't start it!"

"Then be the one who ends it!" Delgado said, in the tone of a mother telling a child to be smarter. "You said you're a rational, reasonable person. Prove it.

"Go. And try to look like you've just had a proper dressing-down."

As if I hadn't just had one.

Well, maybe the dressing-down could've been sharper, but I'd have much preferred it if Jonson had been the one on the receiving end.

"Understood," I said, trying not to let the anger creep into my voice.

"Good. Go. Mykula, call me back. I want to talk without Jake."

"One second," he said. "Bye, Jake."

"See you," I muttered.

Shame Delgado had cut in on him, I'd had a few more requests concerning Jonson… Then again, maybe it was for the best, since they weren't entirely rational. I'd spent this whole time trying to make Jonson angry, and now I was the one furious as hell.

That was the state I was in when I got back to the project zone.

Jonson already had a whole flurry of activity going. My portal had been moved back into the test lab. Two technicians were swapping out its batteries.

"A-ha!" Jonson announced cheerfully. "Our manipulative hero returns!"

"What's going on?" I asked him, nodding at the portal behind the armoured glass in the test lab.

"As I said, I think you cheated somehow to make a broken portal work. So we're going to run a few tests without you!"

"You fucked it up!" I said with a grin. "And now you want to pin it all on me."

"And when would I have had the time?" Jonson objected, fairly convincingly. "I only just got back from the field. Every one of your settings, every one of those obvious gaps you left for me — all unchanged." He even shoved a tablet into my hands. "Here's the diagnostic data."

I ran my eyes over the readings.

It was flimsy evidence at best, since the portal didn't have a proper internal self-diagnostic system. To keep the size down, it ran a heavily stripped-down version.

I waved the tablet off and shoved it aggressively into Jonson's chest.

"I don't believe a single word out of your mouth! And I'll only believe you didn't touch the settings or the construction once I've taken the portal apart screw by screw."

I let go of the tablet, but Jonson made no move to catch it, and the piece of plastic hit the ground. I took a step towards the door of the shielded lab, but Jonson blocked my way.

"That's exactly the problem!" Jonson said. "I won't let you within ten metres of the portal. Your portal is garbage. It simply cannot work as it should. The maths doesn't add up. And the one factor that maths doesn't account for is you. Every single time we run a test, you're right there. Literally centimetres away, even though that's against safety protocol. And every single time, the portal works. I don't know how you're pulling it off, but I'd bet money it won't work without you."

"Out of my way!" I ordered.

"Or what, you'll attack me?" he asked. "I'll defend myself!"

I felt a faint ripple of Space, and saw something shift beneath his robe, thickening his shoulders. He flicked his hands and vines dropped out of his sleeves. Jonson himself took a step back and settled into a stance.

"Bring it on!" he said. There was a clear hunger for revenge in his voice, so I suspected that despite having no armour, he was genuinely ready for a fight. He'd probably replayed our last scrap in his head more than once and done his homework on the mistakes. Unlike me.

I didn't have time for this shit.

"Pascal!" I called out.

"The Order's just had some questions come up about your friend," he answered, with a sly grin. "I'm the senior researcher in this room, and I'm ordering you to start that thing up!" he barked through the glass at the technicians handling the battery swap. "That's an order, damn it!"

"And it could cost you your lives!" I barked back. "Jonson has clearly made changes to the construction!"

"This piece of shit just wants to hide the fact that the portal doesn't work at all and he's propping it up with some technique! Switch it on! That's an order."

The technicians exchanged a glance and, in unison, backed well away from the portal to the farthest corner. Then one of them pressed a button on his tablet. Idiot!

I monkeyed left, went around Jonson, and then right again toward the door. The door started to open, but slowly. I felt something flying at my back, so I dissolved into mist and slipped through the gap.

A vine struck the door with a loud crack right behind me.

I was inside the lab, and I could feel it with my arse: the membrane was about to go wild this time, and I was too far away. I monkeyed closer, not entirely sure whether I was solid or still half-dissolved, and wrapped the ring in my own Space Qi.

The fluctuations had already begun, the membrane started to bend. The black disc warped, buckled, and burst out of the metal frame, slicing through one side.

It flew straight at my face, and Jonson's vine tore into my back. It burned between my shoulder blades; my vision went dark for a moment. I ducked and deflected the black disc just enough that it didn't take my head off.

I looked back and halted the disc with my will.

In the doorway.

At a shallow angle, inside Jonson's chest.

His arms dropped off. The lower half of his body hit the floor, splattering blood and chunks of lung. The larger, lower portion of his heart rolled toward my feet, still twitching with each contraction.

The upper part of Jonson had time to see it all, as gravity and momentum dragged him toward the portal, which hung frozen almost horizontal. The upper half sagged, but on the other side of the portal gravity pulled another way, so he flipped over like a sinking boat and pitched face-first into the portal. His face hid, and the membrane fell apart.

What was left on this side of it hit the floor with a wet, meaty sound.

Jonson was dead, but my troubles were only beginning. At least Delgado's great wish had come true: the conflict was over.