Chapter 132 The Glass War
The Archive was no longer a passage. It was a slaughterhouse.
The sharp lights of the facility flickered and went out and the red strobes of the emergency alarm turned. The tanks were the only constant source of light in the disordered darkness--or, to be more precise, it was the creatures which were pouring out of them.
CRASH.
A tank to my left shattered. A Subject 9--a humanoid, whose chitinous plating had been welded to its skin--charged the nearest body of refugees.
"Back!" Ryker hurled in its direction, and dashed into its path.
With the press of bodies he had no space to swing his sword in the proper way. He attacked it with the pommel, and broke it through the faceplate of the monster. The Star-Metal rattled along the bone-armor. The animal screamed, and stabbed at Ryker with one of its claws which flicked off his armor.
"There are too many!" Jaxon shouted, and as he fired his rifle he plunged into the darkness. On either side they come!
It was a bottleneck corridor. We were caught between the closed blast doors at the door and the rotunda upon which the tank of Kael was. There was safety between us and safety, dozens of released experiments,--the unsuccessful sketches of the ideal world of Valerius.
"Form a phalanx!" Baron bellowed.
The Wolf Alpha had moved all the way. He was a giant barrier of brown hair and sinew, and he was just as tall as shoulder to shoulder with the few other remaining armed militia. They erected a wild and frightened line of defence about the civilians.
At the back of the building the women and the children were huddled in tears and covering their heads with the floor.
"Sato!" Ryker called out above the wailing of a Spider-Hybrid. "Get that door open!"
Below the tank of Kael was the control console of Dr. Sato. Her fingers danced over the holographic keyboard with the dripping perspiration falling off her chin.
"I'm trying!" Sato screamed. The encryption is polymorphic! Each time I break a code, it writes itself! It's an AI defense!"
The body of Kael convulsed inside the central tank.
His silver eyes fluttered wildly following the data streams that we could not perceive. He was waging the war within the machine.
"Intrusion... Identified," the synthesized voice of Kael went on stuttering over the speakers. "Valerius... is... watching. To the locks, he is... perverting power...
"Can you stop him?" Running to the console I enquired. My ring was cloudy, my strength used up at the gate and I laid my hand on the glass. "Kael, can you hear me?"
Kael looked at me. His eyes dimmed, and in place of the silver, the brown of the human beneath showed.
"Elara," the voice softened. "I see... the code. It is... heavy."
"Drop the firewall, Kael!" Sato urged. "The refugees are dying!"
A scream cut through the air.
One of the creatures, something slithery that consisted of clear jelly and fangs, had avoided the attention of Baron. It seized a militia man and pulled him on to the blackness of an open cell.
"No!" Jaxon followed him with pointless shots, but it was too late.
"We are losing ground!" Vane yelled. He was holding a pair of revolvers, and was on a supply box. "Ryker, we need an exit now!"
Ryker took the head off a Subject 7 and stared at the blast door at the far end of the hall. This was a chunk of neutronium-reinforced steel. Indestructible.
"Kael!" Ryker shouted at the tank. "Open the door!"
Kael shut his eyes inside the fluid.
The code started to change on the screen changing red to green.
"Rerouting... Life Support..." Kael's voice announced.
"What?" Sato froze. "Kael, no! Rerouting life support power to the door mechanisms will cause a failure of the tank! Your heart will stop!"
"Calculated... Risk," Kael replied. Probability of survival... group... 80 percent higher.
"I won't let you!" Sato wept, in an attempt to revoke the order. "We just found you!"
"You didn't... find me," Kael said. "I... waited."
Kael was jerking violently inside the tank. The tubes that attached to his spine had light flowing through them. He was making the system follow through with his own bio-electricity to bridge the gap in the power grid.
CLANG.
The great blast doors in the end of the hall shook.
HISSS.
They began to open.
"The door!" Jaxon shouted. "It's opening!"
"Go!" Ryker ordered the civilians. "Run! Don't look back!"
The refugees scrambled on to the gap widening. There was mayhem--up went people on the greasy floor, children were being carried by their parents, and the injured crawling along as speedily as possible.
"Cover them!" Baron fought back the monsters with the line, roaring.
I looked at the tank. Kael's skin was turning grey. The blue fluid was growing black.
"Sato, we have to get him out!" I replied, and seized the emergency release lever.
Pull this, he dies at once," Sato sobbed and her hand was hovering over the handle. "He's integrated, Elara. The door controller now is his brain. Should he lose contact, the door closes down.
Ryker appeared beside us. Black ichor covered him and his chest heaved.
He looked at Kael. Kael looked back.
The Intelligence Officer did not have any fear in his eyes. Only a quiet, digital resolve.
Go, General, Kael said to himself. "The Queen... is watching. Win."
Ryker touched the glass with his hand.
Ryker said, "You were the best of us, Kael.
"Ryker, we can't leave him!" I pleaded.
Fingering the door, Elara, he's holding the door, Ryker said, his voice cracking. His sacrifice is nothing in case we remain.
He grabbed me by the waist. He caught Sato by the collar of her lab coat.
"Move!"
We ran.
We ran in the corridor avoiding the swinging bodies of the experiments who were still in their cages.
Just as the last of the refugees were squeezed through the blast doors we arrived there.
I looked back one last time.
The animals had got to the rotunda. They were swarming the tank. One of the Berserkers was smashing the glass with the fists.
Inside, Kael didn't flinch. His head was looking at the ceiling, and miles away in the code.
The glass shattered. The blue liquid rushed out.
Kael bent over, supported by the wires.
The blast doors were closed, and the monsters fell on him.
BOOM.
The lock fell on with a finality which trembled the floor.
We were in a new passage. Safe.
There was silence again, stifling and oppressive.
Sato dropped down the wall, burying her face with her hands. Jaxon was standing looking at the closed metal door with his knuckles white on his rifle.
"He opened it," Jaxon whispered. "He opened it for us."
Ryker had turned his back to us, and was gazing along the long, white passage of Sector B. He didn't speak. He didn't move.
Next he raised his hand and wiped the slime on his face.
"He gave us a lead," Ryker said. His voice was cold. Dangerous.
"What?" Vane interrogated, examining his empty magazines.
Ryker swiveled about, saying: Before the feed cut. Kael had sent me a packet on my datapad.
He tugged the apparatus at his belt. The screen was glowing.
It wasn't a map. It was a schematic.
PROJECT: ASCENSION
ADDRESS: The Spire (Orbital Launch Complex)
"The Spire?" I asked, confused. "Our Spire is gone."
"Not ours," Ryker said. "Theirs."
He pointed to the diagram.
"Station Zero isn't just a lab. It's a dock. It is not a building... the tower in the middle... the tower Valerius is. It's a Space Elevator."
"An elevator?" Vane looked up. "To where?"
"To the Aether," Ryker said. "To the ship in orbit. That is where they are storing the data of the Clean Slate. There the actual control center is located.
Ryker looked at the door, which, Kael had killed.
Ryker did not just open a door; Kael did. He provided us the keys to the castle.
"We're going up," Baron realized. "We're going to the sky."
Yet first--first, Ryker thought, and saw to the charge of his Star-Metal sword--we must clear the lobby. Valerius believes that we have died in the zoo. We will demonstrate to him what will happen when the animals escape.
Give me a new load of a clip, Jaxon said, loading a fresh one.
"For Kael," we repeated.
We moved out. The Menagerie had been left behind us, though the war to the sky was only now starting.