Chapter one: Ophelia Ludenreich
A small Lernean voidyacht docked with the Voidstation 304.8. A routine procedure that takes no more than twenty minutes, even with an inexperienced pilot who doesn't know which way is down past the normalcy bubble.
This ship was small enough to not need tethering to the Voidstation, instead settling down at section twelve, the landing pad G. It was of a typical Lernean design - retaining the characteristic three-engines aft section, but instead of the multiple distinct hulls of their larger voidships, the smaller yacht had triple bulbous glass cockpits on its nose, still giving an impression of three “heads”.
When the ship’s thrusters came to a halt, and the landing gear grabbed the surface of the pad G as securely as a drunkard holds on to his bottle, the forward ramp descended, and the pilot walked down.
It was a woman wearing a dark blue tunic over straight trousers of the same color. A wide belt with a brass ring buckle sat tight on her thin waist.
Her skin betrayed her origins, mixing the glowing cinders-like Aeolian roots with the light gray ashen colour of a Hallstadter. The result was neither and both, neither here nor there, unlike the woman herself who most decidedly and fully was in this place and in this moment.
That was the impression she gave off: a someone who's living completely in a single moment, fully aware of everything that happened around her, constantly scanning the surroundings with her bright green eyes and always ready to react to anything the surroundings might've thrown at her.
Her name was Ophelia Ludenreich, known to the select few people in the local group of universes as the best person to hire if you wanted this or that property to change hands without the consent of the property’s current owners.
She walked down to the landing pad, waved at the ground crew of technicians and cybermages then patiently waited for them to approach her ship. A short exchange of greetings and money followed, and she left them to tend to her yacht’s mechanical needs.
Short trip to the station’s rentrooms later, Ophelia found herself in a part of the station rarely visited by most of its inhabitants without a good reason. The rusting walls of passageways were covered in dust and signs - some of them warning the trespassers of imminent danger to their lives, some completely unreadable, written in long lost languages.
Yet she followed the twisting and turning path as if she was at home here, in this whispering warm yellow twilight of flickering lightbulbs and humming power conduits.
Ophelia stepped into the dark room, filled with the scents of a choice of deshreti incense - sweet, bitter and glimmering like the distant filament currents. Her steps sounded muted, as if she was walking on a thick layer of soft wool.
The light blinked and lit up in front of her. A table lamp gently pushed the darkness away, and a small table with the two chairs appeared out of it.
One of the chairs was taken by the tall woman, who the light couldn't rid of the darkness completely. Her hair, her eyes appeared to resist the lamp’s push and remained charcoal black, as dark as the deepest Void - contrasted against her ash-white skin and lips of deep crimson.
The woman's attire was in a complete disagreement with her face’s palette. A dress, gathered of the pieces of cloth painted in all the colours of the visible spectrum was adorned with brass pins carrying ancient symbols. A wide collar on her long neck had various coins of different peoples of the Void sewn into it.
“A child returns home.” The woman said in a low distant voice.
“A child answers the call.” Ophelia replied, lowering her head with respect. “Madame.”
“Oh, Ophelia…” The woman suddenly laughed. It was a strange laugh, seemingly devoid of emotion, yet still somehow not hollow. “It was I who should be paying respects to you, the best thief in the local group.”
“You're still my teacher, Madame.”
“So what? You're not a part of our family anymore, Ophelia. I would dare to say we're equals now.” The woman rose from her chair, came closer to Ophelia, put the hands on her shoulders, followed by a kiss on the cheek. “I'm simply Vex for you now. Welcome home, darling.”
“Ma… Vex…” Ophelia touched her cheek where the Madame's kiss still burned, then smiled. “Let's sit down and talk business first… and everything else later.”
“Of course, business first.” Madame Vex sat back down and waited for Ophelia to take a seat. “And a whole lot of everything later.”
Chapter one: Till Deadeye
An echo of voices reverberated along the long corridor of the Voidstation 304.8. A corridor the same as many others like it: a passage wide enough to fit two bulky service bots side by side, lit up by the humming yellow lightbulbs hanging from the high ceiling as a collection of perfectly round wasps’ nests.
Voices belonged to a number of men, some in security uniforms, some in medical gowns. Voices drifted though the conditioned air, bouncing off of the columns that adorned the walls of the corridor.
All voices except one. One of the men didn't have a voice anymore. He was now a dead body, lying on the floor of the corridor, and all the other voices circled around him.
“He looks reasonably well,” the security chief of the Voidstation 304.8 Till Deadeye covered the dead body with a white cloth and got up on his legs. “For a dead person at least.”
“Not every death should be a mess, chief.” Kiriakos, a medic, said. “Sometimes it's just a nice clean wound straight to the heart. No guts spilled, no dismemberment… just a puncture.”
“That's sad.” Till looked up at the voidstation’s wall. “Even in death he was denied a chance to make an impression.”
“Who do you think he'd be able to impress, you? Or me?” Kiriakos chuckled looking at the dead body under the cover. “He'd need to implode to do that.”
“I wonder why he didn't…”
“Because what killed him was just a piece of metal, travelling at high speed.”
“A piece of metal, huh…” Deadeye carefully touched the hole in the wall with his long pointy fingers.
“Not every piece of the void debris has the reality-twisting properties, chief.” Kiriakos shrugged. “Sometimes it's just junk flying at the right angle to be accelerated by the force of gravity inside the station’s normalcy bubble. A piece of junk, that's all.”
Deadeye rose on his toes, looking into the hole in the wall with his right eye, the one that looked grey and lifeless after the Void touched it.
“The external crew has already patched up the outer layer of the station, chief.” One of the security guards told him.
“Good, good…” Deadeye kept looking into the channel drilled through the station’s walls. “Did you inform the cybermages of the incident?”
“Yes, chief.” The guard nodded. “It was added into the official records.”
“And the piece of debris?”
“Admitted into the cybermages’ vault.”
“But I thought it was just a simple piece of metal?”
“It was.” Kiriakos got back into the conversation. “But it was exposed to the Void for long enough that nobody wants to risk leaving it in the open. What if it suddenly turns sentient, integrates itself into the station system and begins demanding a tribute?”
“I damn sure cybermages wouldn't want to pay a tribute,” Deadeye stopped looking at the hole in the wall, hid his hands in the pockets of his coat and turned his gaze to Kiriakos and the dead body still lying on the station’s floor.
“Unless the tribute could be paid in people.” He said, spitefully.
“Till,” Kiriakos walked up to him. “You hate cybermages so much, it makes me think there should be some story behind it.”
“There is no story.” Deadeye shrugged. “They just get on my nerves by being arrogant bastards all the time.”
“I think they would say something like: ‘that designation can't be applied to our kind because we do not reproduce the same way as humans so being illegitimately born is not an insult by definition’.”
“Are you sure you aren't one of the brassheads, doc?” Till gave Kiriakos a light punch to the chest, as if checking that the medic was still made of flesh and blood. “And I don't give a damn about what they would say.”
Chapter two: Ophelia Ludenreich
She waited. The crawlspace above the entrance to the cybermages’ vault was uncomfortably narrow, barely enough to fit a human. Yet she waited there for an hour. And then another one. She waited patiently for the cybermage to come open the doors.
The Voidstation was recently bombarded by a stream of the void junk pieces and some of it was recovered by the station’s guards. The standard procedure in this situation was to admit the void debris to the Vault before it does anything unexpected like driving people crazy or giving them superpowers or both.
So she knew someone was coming and kept waiting, keeping a watch-shaped round cage with a round medusa-like creature inside it close to the hatch.
After two hours and a couple scores of minutes more, her patience was rewarded: a robed figure came to the Vault’s door clanging its brass limbs and joins and whirling its gears. The door didn't have the usual keyhole or a hi-tech keypad or a microphone to say the codeword into. The cybermages didn't trust such simple technologies to guard their secrets. Instead the one standing before the door took a wire under its robes and plugged it into the small round socket near the door. It needed just a second to transmit the passcodes, confirm permissions and grant the cybermage access to the vaut. And all of it in a manner hidden from the human eyes and ears.
But the gelatinous creature in Ophelia's hands got terribly excited after hearing what was transmitted by the cybermage. So excited, in fact, that now it couldn't stop repeating those electric signals over and over.
When the cybermage left the Vault and walked sufficiently far away, Ophelia took out the maintenance hatch cover and jumped down into the corridor before the Vault's door. Her tunic and trousers gave way to the black voidsuit, with tge utility belt and the suit’s helmet in her hands.
She put the helmet uder her arm and took out the watch with the playful gelatinous thing. A short cable went from the watch to the door’s socket and transmitted the signals the creature so loved repeating.
The door let out a quiet beeping sound and slid apart, revealing an airlock behind it.
After the door closed behind her, Ophelia took a small glass flask out of her belt. Something crawled inside it. Something with segmented body, many shord claw-like legs and a needle sharp proboscis. Ophelia grimaced in disgust and opened the flask, quickly putting it to the back of her head.
The thing inside sprung forward feeling the warmth of the living flesh and darted out of the flask, its proboscis piercing skin, muscle and bone with equal ease. Soon it was lodged in Ophelia's brain and its body started to burrow in her body along her spine attaching itself to it.
Writhing in pain, Ophelia fell down on her knees and was barely able to put the voidsuit’s helmet on before the machines started pumping air out of the airlock.
When the inner door opened, Ophelia got back to her feet and holding on to the wall looked inside the Vault, feeling her body lose weight as the normalcy field in the airlock dissipated.
The Vault was a hollow sphere, a ball of pure Void inside the Voidstation. It was yet another defence against the intruders as the cybermages didn't need neither air nor gravity to function properly.
But it wasn't the last defence - just in case the intruder would bother donning the protective voidsuit as did Ophelia. The containers on the Vault's inner surface weren't stationary. The moved, they changed places and jumped back and forth in seemingly chaotic pattern. Only the mechanical brain of the cybermage was working with the speed, sufficient to analyse the everchanging movements of tge containers and find the true order behind the curtains of an apparent chaos, making finding the right container possible.
Living human brains were too slow for it. That's why Ophelia used the creature in a flask to overclock her brain, to give her the processing power of a cybermage for about a minute. After that the specially bred parasite would die and eject itself from her body, taking several weeks of her life away and leaving her with a nagging headache and another scar along her already scarred back.
She had to be fast. Ophelia jumped forward, her eyes glued to the spot on the sphere, where she, travelling with the right speed, should be able to intercept the right container at the right time to open it.
She had one chance.
Chapter two: Till Deadeye
“Chief!” A deputy ran into the security chief’s office when Till was yet contemplating if it was worth to begin doing any work.
“What's happened?” Till rarely saw his deputies move at such speeds when things didn't involve bad food and weak stomachs.
“It's a massacre, chief…” The deputy breathed heavily after a run. “It's a bloody massacre…”
“Who, whom and where?” Till asked and noticing that the deputy is too distraught to deal with the chief’s manner of speach, repeated the questions in more digestible form. “Who is massacring whom and where?”
“Serpents!”
“A snakes on the station?”
“Crimson Serpents! They're chasing down Voidwalkers all over the station… it's an all out gang war!”
Crimson Serpents were fighting the Voidwalkers… Which is as much a normal occurrence as a cybermage enjoying a glass of whiskey while surfing the filament current.
The two had nothing to fight over. Crimson Serpents, led by a man known as the Wraith, were running the protection racket and specialising in disappearing the right people for the right money. They were plain and simple thugs and hitmen.
Voidwalkers and their leader Madame Vex, on the other hand, were never simple. They were almost esoteric in fact. Thiefs and security experts both, they adhered to some strict code of rules Till never bothered to learn.
The two gangs never clashed, Till could swear they barely ever interacted with each other. Yet now they were fighting everywhere in the human parts of the Voidstation.
“Well don't just stand there!” Till barked at the deputy and started putting on his coat. “Get more guard at the marketplace, the living hub and the docking and storage areas. Get everyone out there and armed, tell those who called in sick they're miraculously healed!”
“Yes chief!” The deputy ran off, surpring Till with his speed a second time in one morning.
The station was in chaos. There were people running, screams echoing, gunshots in the distance and cybermages scooting along the ceilings in their spider form to avoid trampling anyone and getting their robes dirty.
“What now, chief?” The deputy asked, after they finished gathering the men, pulling some of them from beds and at least one from an orgy in the Shades. Nobody was all too happy about it but it is better to be pulled out of bed by the deputy delivering orders than by the part of the bed desintegrating in an explosion.
“Well… now we try to contain what's going on to the minimal levels of violence possible… Shit, I'm talking like a brasshead.” Till clenched his hand on the gun. “We go in and we shoot everyone who resists. Arrest everyone else. Rinse and repeat. Starting from the marketplace.”
“What if they shoot back?” One of the guards asked.
“Oh they will, they definitely will.” Till didn't know how to say to them that a good portion of them will end up on one of the Kiriakos’ beds and some of them in his cold storage. “Just shoot faster, and remember: you aren't battling some Void horrors or a Lernean raiding party or the rogue Halsttadt general… it's simple thugs with guns. They are as afraid of being shot at, as you are.”
“Very inspiring, chief.” Kiriakos, who just walked in, gave him a slow clap.
“Look, I had to say something.” Till shrugged. “How's the situation in the hospital?”
“Almost at capacity already, and judging by your speech we’ll definitely need more beds… but we'll manage. All under control.”
“Good.” Till nodded then turned back to the guards. “We're starting at the marketplace. Three groups, three entrances. Try to funnel everyone who tries to run away towards the fourth corridor - in this way we can meet, regroup and follow them after clearing the place. And try to not shoot each other…”
“That's absolutely a good advice.” Kiriakos gave the guards one of his professional scary smiles. “But chief, maybe just let the gangs shoot each other… they'll calm down sooner or later.”
“Yeah, doc. They'll calm down, but no sooner than either the Wraith or Madame Vex will blow up half the station. Or do you think they don't have any explosives on hand?”
“The Crimson Serpents sure do…” Kiriakos scratched the back of his head. “The Voidwalkers probably won't do anything so straightforwardly brutal… as a last resort they could unleash a plague or a swarm of insects, but I don't think they will blow up anything.”
“And how is a plague better?”
“Ye, chief, you're right. A plague is more work for me… go get them boys!”
The violence is not any news to the station. It was always present. Put a good number of people in a closed environment and you inevitably will get conflicts. Of course most of them can be resolved by a long and careful search for a compromise and mutual understanding but why do that if you can get better results by mutual punch to the face?
But most of it was always confined to the labyrinthine corridors and the service spaces of the station. Those were the places that not only were perfectly suited for violence but bred it. The run down dimly lit spaces covered in rust and dust gave anyone a thought “yeah, that's where some unfortunate soul should be mugged and murdered.” And when those thoughts reached critical mass, someone inevitably got mugged, murdered and left for the service bots to sweep and decompose as organic waste.
But what happened now at the marketplace wasn't usual business. It was an all-out confrontation, the violence spilling out of the dark narrow pathways and into the bright light of open station halls.
A group of guards Till went in with tried to move from cover to cover but soon found itself broken up and scattered along the rows of stalls and stores. From what he could gather, others didn't fare much better.
What followed was a frantic rolling battle with the Serpents not yielding even a bit of ground without a fight and the guards pressing on despite it.
More than once Till used all six shots of his revolver and had to stop and reload the thing while hiding behind anything that reasonably could stop bullets.
In the end, all three groups met up in the middle of the marketplace with the Serpents retreating through the corridor Till had predicted they would. The guards were many man short but victorious.
But it was only the beginning.
Chapter three: Ophelia Ludenreich
Usually Till Deadeye would've been happy to find a woman in his bed after he returned to his quarters from work. Finding two women in his bedroom would've been twice the luck.
But the woman who sat on the edge of his bed and the one who stood beside her weren't that. They weren't luck at all.
“Ah… Ma’am Vex of the Voidwalkers… of what's left of the Voidwalkers.” Till adressed tbe woman on the bed and tiredly leaned on the doorframe. “And her… associate?”
“Ophelia Ludenreich.” The second woman introduced herself.
“Doesn't ring a bell.” Till smirked. “Did we meet before?”
“I left the station before you were appointed the security chief.”
“How fortunate for me. You haven't witnessed the full extent of my incompetence.”
“Don't undersell yourself, Deadeye.” Madame Vex said.
Instead of answering her words in any way, Till unglued himself from the doorframe and stumbled towards the bed. No matter how scattered his mood was, he noticed how Ophelia tensed up and how Madame Vex gave her a sign to relax. “Of course, in this state I'm not a threat to any of them, let alone both,” he thought leaning forward and searching for something under the bed.
“Where is it… where is it…” He repeated as he moved his hand. “Aha! Here it is!”
He unceremoniously pushed Vex’ legs away and dragged a bottle of cheap Phoenixian brandy from under the bed. The cork went off and a large portion of an extremely disagreeable liquid went scratching down his throat.
“You are in the presence of Vox Vacui, detective!” Ophelia started. “Behave yourself…”
“Bah!” Till interrupted. “I'm a security chief who chiefly fails at security. I can't security anyone, even myself. So I don't care. Vox vacui, vox populi, vox whoevery… you came to a wrong place Voidwalkers.”
“Till Deadeye, look at me.” Madame Vex said. “Look at me. With both of your eyes.”
“To see what? To see how devoid… colourless you are? So much so, you put on these stitched up rags to compensate?”
“To see what you must do, before this Voidstation descends into chaos.”
“Didn't it already?”
“No, not yet.” Vex slowly shook her head. “But it is on the brink. And I hate to say it is my doing. My and Ophelia's.”
“What, you’ve murdered the Wraith's favourite puppy?”
“I stole this,” Ophelia held forward something resembling an egg in her hand. “From the cybermages.”
“You? A simple human stealing from the cybermages’ vault?” Till laughed, took another gulp of brandy and coughed when it didn't go where it should. “Even if that can somehow be true… the brassheads would've been all over me, nagging me about searching for ‘an illegally and wrongfully extricated object’. And they don't. So you are lying.”
“Is she, Deadeye?” Vex’ gaze was as sharp as a needle through Till’s brain. He closed his left eye with his hand and looked at Ophelia again. Then put a bottle of brandy between his right eye and her.
“And what if she doesn't?” He asked. “She stole some egg from the cybermages. Okay. What's next? A rainbow dragon will hatch from it and make this Voidstation its lair?”
“It's a codex.” Vex said. “A biggest codex of knowledge known to exist. A UniCodex, that once unlocked can reshape reality to its owner’s will.”
“Yup, definitely looks like something that should be held in the brassheads’ Vault,” Till grinned. “And should never be stolen. But of course you lot just couldn't keep your hands to yourselves…”
“The Law of Possessions dictates…”
“The Law of My Ass says you shouldn't touch things that will blow up in your face, Voidwalker.” Till sighed and sat down on the floor, leaning on the wall in front of Madame Vex. “But it all still doesn't explain why the cybermages are silent about it.”
“It surprises me as well, detective, but it's the least of my concerns.” Vex shrugged. “Since someone told the Serpents that the UniCodex is in our possession.”
“So much for secrecy, eh?” Till smiled. “Even the Voidwalkers can't keep all their secrets…”
“I am looking into it,” Vex’ eyes flashed red. “And I will find who did it, and they will answer for it.”
“That's good. But that doesn't solve any of the problems.”
“That's supposed to be your job, isn't it?” Till noticed the brown notes of disgust in Ophelia's voice and hurried to cover his right eye with even more brandy.
“My job is supposed to be to look for the misplaced cargo and solve the marketplace quarrels!” He said angrily. “And occasionally remove dead bodies from the station’s corridors. Not to deal with a bloody uprising, stolen reality-bending artifacts and the thief too professional for her own good!”
“I…”
“You saw it when you took it out of the box! You could've put it back there and then! Heck, you got into the Vault once, you could've done it a second time - and put this stupid thing where even the cybermages wouldn't be able to find it!”
“But I…”
“Oh yes,” Till waved at her with the bottle. “You're a thief, you take things out of boxes, not putting them there… how easy, just make it someone else's problem…”
“Till Deadeye.” Madame Vex stood up from the bed. Her presence was such that even in his increasingly drunken state Till shut up and rose from the floor as fast as he possibly could.
“Till Deadeye,” Madame repeated. “Take the UniCodex and find the place it belongs to. It is the biggest threat to the station’s security so it is your duty to deal with it. We will take care about the rest, I give you my word.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” Till mumbled. Then took another swing from the bottle. “I still hate it.”
Chapter three: Till Deadeye
“The chemical analysis of your air exhaust indicates that your body is currently processing levels of ethanol exceeding the cultural norms of official visits.” The cybermage’s gears whirled disapprovingly.
“Yes, yes, I'm drunk, boo-bloody-hoo, shame on me, what's new?” Till raised his hand and tried to move the cybermage out of the way. The cybermage's brass body didn't notice the push. “Let me pass, brasshead!”
“As a security chief of the Voidstation 304.8, you have a clearance sufficient to be admitted into the computation and prognostics centre, but we still need you to state the goal of your visit first.”
“The station is in deep shit.”
“I believe that there were no records of any severe sewage malfunctions on any of the Voidstation 304.8 levels…” The display that served as the cybermages’ face confusingly blinked. “Pardon me, it was a figurative speech intended to convey the urgency of a situation at hand. Unfortunately I couldn't properly comprehend it at first as I uninstalled parts of my linguistics module in lieu of more applied physics and matherial science…”
“But you get it now, don't you?” Till’s blood began reaching the boiling point. “You said yourself it is supposed to convey urgency! Let me pass!”
“Of course.” The cybermage moved aside. Till rushed past him, not paying attention to the prolonged long-winded eloquent apologies that followed.
The computational centre was an information hub from where the cybermages guided, - some might've said “ruled”, - the Voidstation. A large round room with the domed ceiling, deeply steeped into the sounds of clicking relays, humming of the electric generators and the staccato of large computing machines.
“My name is Till Deadeye, the security chief of the Voidstation 304.8.” Till announced, trying to get the attention of the collected cybermages in the room. “I need to speak to the Hub Controller.”
“.. .----. -- / - .... . / -.-. --- -. - .-. --- .-.. .-.. . .-. / .- -. -.. / .. - .----. ... / .- .-.. -- --- ... - / - .... . / . -. -.. / --- ..-. / -- -.-- / ... .... .. ..-. - --..-- / -.-. .- -. .-..-. - / -.-- --- ..- / .-- .- .. - / ..-. --- .-. / - .... . / -. . -..- - / --- -. . ..--..” The cybermage in the centre of the room beeped out in fast binary speech. From this and from it being connected by a tangled mess of cables to the console with multiple blipping lights Till deduced that it must be the current Hub Controller.
“The Controller currently is busy with calculations extremely important for the functioning of the Voidstation 304.8. Can you postpone your visit for several reasonably sized human units of time?” One of the cybermages translated for Till, making him shake his head.
“I can't. The station is in grave danger. You should've seen the reports of an uprising at the marketplace…”
“Yes, the reports and death certificates flood the Computational Hub all day. But the violence between humans does not endanger the station’s existence according to our computations.”
“You're missing something,” Till thought about presenting them the UniCodex that he was keeping in his coat’s pocket but then decided to keep it to himself for now.
“The Wraith… the human who started the uprising,” he said instead. “He's looking to get his hands on a weapon that can blow up the whole station.”
“.-- .... -.-- / -.. --- . ... / .... . / .-- .- -. - / - --- / -... .-.. --- .-- / ..- .--. / - .... . / ... - .- - .. --- -. ..--..” The Controller beeped out in confusion.
“.... . .----. ... / .- / .... ..- -- .- -. --..-- / .... . / .-- .- -. - ... / - --- / -.- .. .-.. .-.. / -- --- .-. . / .... ..- -- .- -. ... .-.-.-” The other cybermage explained.
“.... . .----. ... / .- / ... - ..- .--. .. -.. / .... ..- -- .- -. / - .... . -. .-.-.- / .. ..-. / .... . / .-- .. ... .... . ... / - --- / -.- .. .-.. .-.. / - .... . / -- --- ... - / .... ..- -- .- -. ... / .... . / ... .... --- ..- .-.. -.. / -... .-.. --- .-- / ..- .--. / --- -. . / --- ..-. / - .... . / .... ..- -- .- -. / ..- -. .. ...- . .-. ... . ... .-.-.-” The Controller said in a mentor’s tone
“Hey, I understood that!” Till interjected their annoying beeping and whistling. “You aren't helping me by giving the mass murderer advice on how to increase the mass of his murders.”
“.. - / .-- .- ... -. .----. - / .. -. - . -. -.. . -.. / .- ... / .... . .-.. .--. / - --- / -.-- --- ..- .-.-.-” Controller said.
“Why?”
“.... ..- -- .- -. ... / .- .-. . / -. --- -. -....- . ... ... . -. - .. .- .-.. .-.-.-”
“The humans aren't essential? Oh, you shiny brass…” Till pulled as much oil and brass laced air in his lungs as he could and tensed his lips into an extremely unsightly shape, then whistled out the sounds of the binary speech. “..-. ..- -.-. -.- / -.-- --- ..- / .- -. -.. / .- .-.. .-.. / -.-- --- ..- .-. / -- . - .- .-.. / -... .-. . - .... .-. . -. -.-.--”
“.-- . / -.. --- / -. --- - / .-. . .--. .-. --- -.. ..- -.-. . / - .... .- - / .-- .- -.-- .-.-.-” Was an answer that left him thinking if the cybermages were really utterly oblivious or just had a twisted sense of humour.
“Anyway,” Till wiped his brow and tried to calm down. Talking to brassheads always got him riled up but it was necessary. “This… This weapon. According to my source it was stolen from the station’s Vault.”
“That is impossible.” The cybermage said with unexpected brevity.
“But not completely…” It corrected itself. “There is a miniscule but non-negligible probability of such an occurrence. We will run a diagnostic and accounting routine now.”
It turned away from Till and pressed few buttons on the Controller’s console console. An additional monitor slid up out of it and lit up.
“All objects stored at the Vault are present and accounted for without possibility of error.” The cybermage said, looking at the flickering monitor.
“Are you sure?” Till tried to make sense of what the monitor screen was showing but it all looked like a jumbled mess of pointless characters. “Can you… I don't know… run the diagnostics again? Maybe the records are tampered?”
“There is no need, security chief. Our records system is resistant to any possible tampering by employing a distributed self-maintaining system of chained blocks. All contents of the Vault are present and accounted for.”
“Well then…” Till shrugged. “Turns out my source wasn't as good as I thought.”
“It is indeed so, security chief. But you say it was an object of power that was stolen from us, correct? You wouldn't know who is currently in possession of it, would you?”
“I mean…” Till clutched the egg of the UniCodex in his pocket. “If that source… if they were lying about it being stolen… Then surely I must double check their other information first.”
“That is a reasonable conclusion, security chief. Please do so promptly and inform us of the results through the usual secure channels.”
“Of course I will, mage. As soon, as humanly possible.”
Chapter four: Ophelia Ludenreich
The pair of the Crimson Serpents gangers were startled when the maintenance hatch cover blew up into the corridor in front of them. Both took out their weapons and pointed them at the cloud of smoke, readying themselves to whatever might've came out of it.
They weren't ready for a woman wearing a dark voidsuit, who stepped out of the smoke oblivious to their presence.
“Hey, lady! Stop right there!” One of them cried out, finally getting her attention.
As usual, whoever gets ordered to stop right there, does anything but. In this case, the woman jumped to the side and off the wall, landing right in front of the ganger and taking his weapon out of his hand with one swift move.
Only to find the weapon of the second ganger pressed against the back of her head.
“My friend told you to not move.” Said the man who still was armed. “You better listen to him, or else.”
“I want to meet with your boss.” The woman said, dropping the gun on the floor and rising her hands up. “Tell him Madame Vex sent me.”
“Madame who?” The ganger behind her chuckled. “Madame Runaway? Or Madame Tailbetweenherlegs?”
“...”
“I don't think boss would want to see any of your kind, lady. Not alive anyway.”
“Hey! What's going on there?” Ophelia heard a voice from behind the corridor’s corner.
“It's one of them Voidwalkers! Says she want to meet our boss!” The man behind her replied. “Should I shoot her?”
“No, wait.” The voice sounded closer and its owner stepped into the corridor.
It was a man in a suit. Clean shaved, short stubby hair on his head. Dark amber eyes on cinder-brown face.
“Looks like you've caught a pretty big fish here, Jezz. Bigger than your size for sure.”
“But Aspid…”
“No.” The man they called Aspid turned away. “Cuff her and take her to my quarters. I want to deal with her myself.”
Soon Ophelia found herself cuffed to the chair with her hands behind her back in the quarters of Aspid, Crimson Serpents second in command. Not the best possible situation but at least there was no gun pointed in her head here.
Aspid stood looking at her with hateful gaze. There was enough hate in it to power a small voidship. He dropped his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, revealing the crimson snake tattoo on his right arm. The tattoed snake looked at Ophelia with as much hate, as the man himself.
“Nice tattoo.” Ophelia smirked. “Wanna see what I have on my arms?”
“You shouldn't have come here, Voidwalker.” Aspid said, with almost a pity in his voice. “Why couldn't you stay hiding with your kind… that would be a sensible thing to do, don't you think?”
“Well…” Ophelia canted her head to the side. “Let’s say I wanted to be on a winning team.”
“Winning what? An unlimited power or whatever that thing is supposed to give?” Aspid spat on the floor between her feet. “What a waste…”
“A waste?”
“You see…” He pulled a second chair and sat on it in front of Ophelia. “We had a perfect life. A contract here, a racket there… money keep flowing into our pockets, the guards look the other way when needed, cybermages do not care.”
“But now…” Aspid leaned forward, almost into Ophelia's face. “Because of you. Because of you and that thing. Everyone is against us suddenly. Even the uncaring brassheads soon will take note and dump us all into the Void. Wraith sacrificed everything and for what…?”
“But this… thing… can bend the reality itself. Surely the men of your calibre can find a use for it?”
“The reality…” Aspid leaned back and looked at the ceiling. “The reality is we bent ourselves and dropped our pants. And now we're waiting to get fucked. Even if Wraith get that thing, gets that power, he’ll use it for himself and we here are screwed no matter what.”
“And what if you get it?”
“I don't want to bend reality any more than a well placed bribe can.” He smiled. “If you ask me, all this ancient stuff belongs in the museum.”
“So you see what my problem is, Voidwalker.” Aspid stood up from the chair. “My life is ruined and as far as I know, you are the reason for it. What do you think I should do with you? I'll give you a hint: it involves the airlock and doesn't involve any voidsuits…”
“Well, Aspid… I think I understood you.” Ophelia looked him right in the eye. There was a click and in a moment she showed him the metal cuffs dangling from her finger of her freed hand.
“And I think,” she continued. “I think I can help you with getting your life back to where it should be. How about that?”
Chapter four: Till Deadeye
Following the unsuccessful meeting with the technomages there was only one place on the Voidstation 304.8 where Till could get any answers. And it was the place where no sane person would want to go.
The Underside.
A closed off and quarantined section that was fully autonomous and self-governing down to the laws of physics. It refused the gravitation constant and took the laws of conservation as more of a loose guidelines.
Deadeye had to pull the rank on the cybermage controlling the door to the quarantined area and passed through feeling that he got granted passage mostly because the brasshead did not want to bother itself with the human who it decided was so willingly walking to his doom.
The Underside was almost impossible to navigate. The up could be down the right way could in a blink of an eye turn left and the very air filling the hallways threatened to leave him if he woud be breathing too much. And on top of that the usual station’s architecture here was twisted and bent into the dazzling escheroid shapes. Stairs melded into dreams and nightmares folded into pathways.
Yet he pushed through, periodically announcing who he was and what he was searching for. Partly to remind himself of it and partly to make sure the thing he was looking for knew he did.
That was the worst thing about the Underside. There were things there. Living things. Living, nameless, unnameable things. Things that were known only as “the Things”.
They were exactly the thing he was looking for. And he went forward, avoiding the pockets of acidic cleptomancy and the areas of rapid cartography until he finally found it.
The thing that he faced was too complicated to comprehend with the simple mortal eyes. Its fractal anatomy would break any human’s vision receptors into tiny shards as bottles and glasses are broken in a raging bar brawl. The thing reflected and refracted and retracted and reset itself unto itself infinity times infinity to the power of infinity and anyone looking at it and trying to follow will have their eye nerves tied into tiny tight knots in a nanosecond.
Yet Till’s right eye had seen worse. The eye that had seen the naked emptiness of the Greater Void laughed at the thing’s inverted recursive reversiveness.
The thing slithered and withered and tried to eat his brains and was extremely surprised to find that brains were held in a hard bone box.
“Every box has a key, detective.” The thing said in an overwhelmingly quiet screech. “Every key has a lock, every lock has a door. The cybermages would know that. Their goddess would've taught them.”
“Is that a riddle?” Till grumbled.
“A riddle is a box that is a lock…” The thing hissed. “And you are in possession of a box that is a key.”
“Do you mean the UniCodex?”
“The key… the key that opens the lock that opens the door that locked us in here and in now.
“We… I… The things in front of you hid it. Hid it in a box belonging to the cybermages, so that nobody would use it.
“Yet they… the other things, the things that want to get out of the box, they let humans know where the key is.
“And when one human leader refused to give them the key after learning what door it opened, they, the other things, infiltrated the other human leader.”
“So that's how Crimson Serpents knew that the UniCodex is in the Voidwalkers' hands. The Wraith works for those ‘Other Things’... I thought it was Madame Vex.”
“Names… so many names… humans always name things. Names hurt, names make things more human…
“But yes, both us and the other party contacted what-who you call ‘Madame’ and convinced them-her the key should leave the station. They-she unsucceded.”
“Do you want the key?” Till kept the egg of the UniCodex in his hand and his hand still in the pocket of his coat.
“If we did… if we wanted… we wouldn't have hidden it, we wouldn't have given it away.
“You brought it here? You have it? You shouldn't… you should've… The cybermages could've put it back… No they wouldn't, they would try to study it…
“Yet bringing it here… the other things will know. You should leave. The other things will know. You should leave. You should leave!”
Chapter five: Ophelia Ludenreich
“So you're saying she knows where the artifact is?” The Wraith spoke to Aspid, completely ignoring Ophelia’s presence.
He was surprisingly short for a man with such a grand name and reputation. But is anyone woud be stupid enough to make a joke about it, they would very soon find out the reputation was well-earned.
Though the amount and severity of the visible scars on Wraith's face should be enough to give anyone a hint to not joke around the man.
“She says so.” Aspid answered.
“Yes I do!” Ophelia moved half a step forward, squeezing between Aspid and Wraith. “The security chief has it. May I go home now?”
“The security chief? But how!?” Wraith squeezed the top of his head with his hand. “Not now! I know you're happy to find your keys but don't… Oh… Is he? Where? So our deal is off? … Tell me! …Fuck …”
Both Aspid and Ophelia watched Wraith arguing with himself while seemingly having a skull-splitting migraine. “Does he do it often?” Ophelia's eyes asked. “No idea. Not in front of me.” Aspid shrugged.
They choose to remain silent.
“Well then.” Finally said Wraith. A streak of blood ran from out of his ear along the neck. “You just had to say it out loud so that everyone coud hear it, haven't you? Aspid!”
“Yes?”
“Take her and toss her out of the nearest airlock.”
“Sir?”
“You heard me! It's over… everything’s over.” Wraith suddenly looked desperate. “We need to jump the ship while we still can. The station is done. They will have the artifact in a moment…”
“I have a yacht that can take you anywhere in the Void.” Ophelia said.
She stepped towards Wraith, uncuffing herself again and placing her hands on his shoulders.
“But only if you can pay for the ticket.” She said, smiling.
A pair of long ribbon-like millipedes burst through the sleeves of her voidsuit and slithered onto the Wraith. He didn't react on time and two pairs of chitin mandibles pierced his skin, injecting a deadly mix of toxins into his body. He made a sound resembling an old worn-out engine grinding its gears to their doom and fell on the floor.
“Is he…?” Aspid asked.
“Gone.” Ophelia said. “And don't worry, this venom doesn't leave ant traces. Every medic will conclude it was a stroke. I guess he was too excited after learning what I had to say… You saw him behaving like a madman, didn't you?”
“I sure did… And I sure hope it was only the madnan ravings, the station being done and whatnot.” Aspid looked at her, then paused for a few seconds. “You need to disappear. I'll take it from here. And don't worry, I will keep my word: no more chasing that child's tale about an artifact.”
“And no more war with the Voidwalkers?”
“No more. We have nothing to fight over.”
“I'll see myself out then.” Ophelia smiled. “Good bye, Aspid.”
Chapter five: Till Deadeye
“They know now.” The thing said. “The other things… they know you're here. They know the key is here. You shouldn't have brought it here. You should run. Run!”
And so he ran. He ran through the hallways, he ran up and down the stairs, he ran through the walls and long forgotten pathways. He ran untill he had nowhere to run.
The things were onto him. Not those things, the other things. The things that wanted a box that was a key that opened the lock of a door into a box that was a Voidstation.
They were all around creeping and slipping and stepping and sliming their way into a box that was him. He was a box, he had a lock and those things tried their hardest to pick it.
Yet he resisted. His lock wasn't the most complex or most secure, no better than any other lock of a box that is human. His lock was broken. Rusted. Stuck. The other things broke lockpick after lockpick, one after another, yet it won't budge.
And then he stopped. He ran far away so that only the other things surrounded him. No other thing than other things.
He took the egg that was a box that was a key out of his pocket.
“This is it.” He said simply, looking into egg with his dead eye. The egg was surprised by the sudden attention and sparkled into life.
“You, things… other things…” He continued, as the spark in the egg grew brighter. “You want the key to open the door… but you forget: if there is a door that has a lock that has a key, and the key goes in the lock then there is a key inside a lock inside a door inside a box and so can be a door inside a door inside a door and it can be opened!”
The other things stopped. The other things shivered. The other things screamed…
…When another door opened. The door into the naked pure Void opened where there was a box that was a human that had a door that was an eye…
And the other things moved again, still screaming and scooting and flying out of the box that was a Voidstation and into the boxless space that was the Greater Void.
Till felt them flying through him and felt the tug when the Void put its cold lifeless fingers through his eyesocket and was ready to fly away to where all the other things went, yet he also felt the touch of other fingers. The gentle touch of warm human hands. The deep voice.
“Close your eyes, Till.” Madame Vex said. “Close your eyes and close the door.”
And so he did.
Chapter six: Ophelia Ludenreich
They sat at the table at one of many Voidstation's cafés. The security chief and the professional thief chatting and smiling to each other over a cup of coffee. It was a situation about as weird as it could possibly be. Buy the station around them wasn't surprised - the station had seen weirder.
“So you'll be leaving now?” Till asked her, clearly expecting a certain answer.
“I will.” Ophelia said, not wanting to disappoint him. “It should make your life easier.”
“Sure it will.” Till shrugged. “But I hoped you'd take this thing off of my hands.”
He took the egg-shaped object out of the pocket and presented it to Ophelia.
“I… I can't.” She shook her head.
“Why?”
“You do know what the Law of Possessions is, don't you?”
“A convenient excuse to steal?”
“It's more than that, Till.” Ophelia looked at the egg of UniCodex. “Every thing in the Void is searching for its true owner. And if it found its way to you…”
“I don't feel like I own it though.” Till said. “I'd rather it keep searching for another one… and preferably ways and ways away from the place I live.”
“Unfortunately, that's not how the laws of the Void work. If the key would want to leave you, it will.” Ophelia glanced aside, where someone wearing colourful Voidwalker clothes walked past them. “I wouldn't dare take it off of you.”
“But you took it from the Vault and then gave to me…”
“I'm not you, Till.” Ophelia shrugged. “The thief doesn't have their own possessions. As it is, we're mere conduits, transferring things from place to place and from person to person.”
“How convenient…” Till shook his head and hid the egg back into the deep pocket.
“It has its positives.” Ophelia smiled, then stood up. “I should go, chief. No point in overstaying my good luck here.”
“I have to follow you to make sure you've left.” Till stood up as well.
“If you say so, chief.”
Chapter six: Till Deadeye
Till watched the three bright engines of the lernean voidyacht lit up outside the station’s normalcy bubble. He watched them get dimmer as the yacht got further and further. He saw how they disappeared completely after the small voidship was picked up by the filament current and began its travel to the destination unknown to him.
He didn't ask where she was going.
He didn't ask if she's ever coming back.
She was someone else's problem now.
As she should be.
Now there was only one thing left to do. Till donned the voidsuit, put the helmet on and breathed the stored air, pressing the key to open the airlock. The Void greeted him on the other side of the door, watching with curiosity from outside the normalcy bubble.
“After locking the door, throw the key away.” Till whispered under his breath and threw the egg-shaped object that was a box that was a key far-far away out of the airlock.
