[Black Noise | Part Six - Descent] by Pundit [clostridia@bigfoot.com]

Legal : The characters in this story are copyright Archie Comics and SEGA, and are used without permission. This story itself may be freely distributed without the consent of the author, provided it remains unmodified. The author asserts his right to be identified as the creator of this work, and therefore its owner.

Note : Hi, this is Pundit, for those of you who are unfamiliar with me. This is the second part in another series (Shades of Grey was the first). Oh, and it's advisable to read Shades Of Grey before this series, although that's not exactly essential.

Comments/flames/criticism, and other delightful things are encouraged; feel free to send them to <clostridia@bigfoot.com>. And if you haven't noticed, there are no, and there will never be, any fan-characters / self-inserts / liberties-with-the-continuity / delightful-ripoffs-of-the-chaos-emeralds in my writing.

Admittedly, I did take quite a lot of advantage of Kragok's character last series, and wrote a few whopping bloopers before I finally discovered a shop selling Knuckles comics (err... about six months after they cancelled it).

Anywayyyy.... with that I'll leave you to the story. Do enjoy it.
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Every group of friends has to have a favorite haunt, a place to retreat to and spend hours talking. Part of the appeal of this place in particular is that almost no one comes here - because the entrance is hidden in plain sight.

It's evening now and the wind blows strongly, filling their ears with a steady whoosh. Below, the streets are filled with a multitude of people scurrying from point A to point B, polluting the air with that inescapable sound of humanity. High up here though, the noise takes on a distant, muffled tone, as if it comes from another world very hazily linked this one.

There they are then, the four of them gathered together as a group, and yet so very individual at the same time.

He perches on the waist high barrier, straddling safety and a vertiginous fall rather nonchalantly. With due justification however, because he can fly, or more accurately, glide. Still, there have been one or two invariably fatal falls - nobody knows whether they were accidents or not - of people without the ability to defy the equation Potential Energy = Mass * Gravity * Height.

He leans back just a little further and gazes at the darkening sky, thinking about life in general, thinking about what his father said, thinking, thinking. A quiet and morose figure casting a long shadow in the creeping bluish-grey gloom of twilight.

No need for words.

***

No, he'd prefer not to think all that much, since he's on a mission from his particular god - Dimitri. It doesn't pay to think while on a mission. Much better to operate on instinct and training. Really, thinking does get in the way sometimes...

Crap. Stop thinking, stop thinking. He takes a moment, and forces himself to relax.

Then he exhales, and continues creeping along the corridor, determined not to let that little incident with Kragok in the hospital distract him from his next objective.

***

'You didn't tell me, did you? You didn't care to tell me!'

Her voice is dreadfully sharp and accusatory. It claws at his scars. Scars which he thought healed years ago. And he prepares to reply in kind, like a wounded animal snapping at an aggressor, only catching himself at the last moment, biting back his retort.

'Yes, I didn't.'

It blunts her attack for a moment, but she renews it with vigor.

'You didn't care about our son, our love, whatever we had! Just another thing to you! Nothing mattered to you!'

She rears back and lunges forward, arm coiled like a striking cobra, and slaps him. It doesn't hurt physically as much as it tears at his heart.

'And I didn't hear it from you! My friend had to call and tell me, Locke! It was all over some mindless television show! You didn't even discuss it with me, never mind the tomes, the ethics! You just did it!'

'I wanted to protect you from the truth.'

'Oh, yes, he wanted to protect me from the truth.'

'Of course I did!'

It comes out a pained shout.

No, you just didn't dare. You didn't. Admit it.'

Flat.

***

Slow, methodical work.

Every once in a while, he pauses, and takes a moment to blast the life out of any watching video cameras that might be nearby. They do so ruin the experience.

Well, at least the corridor's as empty as it'll ever get - he doesn't actually want to go for death unless he has to. Whereupon he doesn't have, and has never had, any problem with it at all.

***

He recalls the first time he experienced loss, about ten years ago, when his father took him to the Floating Island. Memories, disconnected, fragmented and so, so far away. But there is one thing that sticks in his mind, the one discord in the feelings of excitement and interest he experienced when presented with the virginal wilderness of the Floating Island.

And that was the face of his mother as the shuttle departed, as he waved cheerfully to her, and she waved back, hiding her sadness, just looking into his eyes as she became a mere spot on the ground to him, fading off and disappearing.

He compresses his jaw.

***

'What's the matter with you? Why didn't you say anything? Why don't you say something! Speak! Speak!'

Before her eyes, he seems to grow just a little smaller. Withdrawing and pulling back into himself beneath her onslaught. It makes her furious, because he didn't talk very much then, and won't talk very much now. Not to her. By now, she's mauve with rage.

'I am through with you. I am...'

She closes her eyes for a moment.

'Very disappointed.'

Mute. He stands mute.

But oh, that look, into her eyes. Diamond hard and impenetrable. And the sense of purpose.

She tears herself out of the wheelchair, wobbles once, steadies herself, and is gone.

***

Ah. The objective is in sight. A solitary door in the wall - all he has to do is enter, plant the device, and leave.

Except it isn't quite as straightforward as that.

He darts into a little depression in the wall. Dimitri did specify rather explicitly that there were to be no witnesses, and after all, what's one more dead body? Carefully, almost tenderly, he extracts a length of thin fibre from his backpack. It's his favorite weapon - clean, silent, simple. Not like the incredibly spectacular, complicated special effects they supply him with these days.

The fibre has two handles attached to each end, both grips worn smooth with years of dedicated service. And yes, it did take him years to master this. Timing's the key, really, as he has learnt; establishing the proper rhythm is vital.

Just two more steps...

Right. Here we go.

He leaps forward as the guard turns in surprise. His right arm travels in an arc over the head of his victim, and he brings both fists together again, forcefully squeezing. Tighter and tighter, piling pressure on and on and on. He sees his victim's hands flutter ineffectually to the transparent thread.

You'd think any sentient being would shrink at the thought of killing another member of the same species, but the thing is that he doesn't see the guard as an echidna. Oh no. He sees the guard as bit of a bother.

A bother with a crushed throat and a serious case of hypoxia.

***

'Guys? What about some dinner? I'm so hungry I could eat an echidna!'

The plaintive cry of a crocodile with a superfast metabolism, and a bad case of empty stomach.

'Come on, guys.'

He impatiently nudges the nearest one.

'Oh, all right. Let's go. One of these days, Vector, I swear you're going to have to go on a diet.'

'Fat chance of that.'

There is laughter, as they make their way towards the door.

***

There. He's more or less reasonably certain of it, but decides to hold on for about ten seconds more to make doubly certain. It's the little details like that which separate the insanely good from the merely mediocre.

But what doesn't bother to mind the gap between the insanely good and the merely mediocre is the element of chance, which has the power to transform the slickest operation into a fully fledged gold-embossed cock-up.

So it's a grossly comic moment when the door swings open with a rude bang, and a rather absorbed crocodile trips on the spreading red puddle.

***

'I swear, it was a shock to see him standing like that in the middle of the corridor. Wearing a business suit, of all things.'

He idly realizes that he's actually being earnest and sincere to Remington. Remington, of all people, who incarcerated him for weeks, whose priorities once included eliminating him.

'Are you sure it wasn't some kind of mix up?'

Remington leans forward and removes the cup of caffienated ditchwater from the vending machine, and takes a sip out of pure habit.

Spit or swallow?

Swallow. Keep it down, keep it down...

'Pretty certain. In fact, you should be able to pull his records from the database I brought in. 'D' group, Black Ops section. Face, biometric profile, genetic hashes, the works.'

'I'll get Teri to run it. Tommorow.'

'No, not tommorow. Right now.'

A brief moment of hesitation. He places the cup very deliberately on the table, folds his arms, and looks.

'Right. And just why do you wish to drag in two technicians and an archivist from their homes this time of night?'

'I've got a feeling. A strong hunch.'

Remington looks away for a moment, and rubs his tired eyes with the back of his hand.

'Okay then. Okay.'

***

Oh bugger.

There is a brief instant which lasts longer than an instant, as five pairs of eyes independently parse the improbable scene presented to them.

He reacts just that bit faster, and his fist describes a graceful arc beginning near the floor, finishing up above his head, his right foot following through smoothly, almost daintily. Perfectly executed forehand.

It decks the wretched armadillo, who wheezes in discomfort, not that he has any time nor the inclination to observe the results. His instinct tells him to go for the target and to heck with the consequences.

He darts for the other entrance, a distance away down the corridor behind him.

'Oh no you don't!'

It's the worst possible thing which can happen to him - being tackled from behind by a rather surprised and simultaneously very angry echidna. He feels a solid grip on his right heel, and pitches forward ponderously, face inexorably accelerating in the direction of the floor.

Out comes the stiletto, like a metal snake.

Down goes the stiletto, flashing, glinting in the light.

And a cry, as his target clutches his wrist in pain.

He scrambles to his feet, aware of a very pressing need to put as much distance between himself and this group as possible. This motley, disruptive, threatening group.

The door bangs once, flakes of rust floating down like autumn leaves, and he's through, hurrying into the warren of stained, neglected piping. In a few seconds, he's through that too, and pushes past an unyielding door stiffened with age. Then he realizes that he's standing on a spidery metal catwalk that judders alarmingly with each step, and that it's the only thing which prevents elementary physics from having sixty stories worth of fun with his body.

No, don't think.

It is the work of a moment; he extracts a beige box from his backpack, lovingly resting it on some pipes under the catwalk, wedging it in with a loose piece of metal. From here, it really looks like part of the mess which forms the roof of the building.

He hears the shouts of his pursuers behind him.

The door creaks open.

He turns to face them very very slowly.

His face is a serene sheet of peace.

Then, as quick and sudden as a cobra striking, he vaults over the edge of the railing, and is gone.

One or two individual screams from the crowd in the street actually manage to make it all the way up here.

***

Peaceful, peaceful.

A nice whisky, some Gershwin, and thou. Thou being a book he prefers to think of as a person.

No interruptions, thank you - it's an unspoken request he hopes Remington will honor, not that unspoken requests count for very much in this working environment. They count for even less when you're one of those dime-a-dozen technicians.

Then there is a little harmless beep, as insignificant as an antbite and every inch as grating.

'Yes?'

He bites of the end of the word as he says it, aware that it does not put him in the running for Mr Congeniality.

'Remington here. I want you to come in now - need your help with the database.'

He hears the dismally heavy emphasis on "now".

Then a soft click, and he heaves himself to his feet, grumbling. The clock on the wall reads two hours to midnight.

***

The agents have been busy.

Microscopic arms wave and thrash like hairs, wearing the walls ever thinner, until they are paper thin, until you can see the red river flow, a boiling, roiling, unsettled rush.

They were given the command many hours ago, a command sent from a master station, relayed through several cascades of transmitters located throughout the city. A cascade initiated at the touch of a button.

They have used the time wisely - they were programmed to.

Reproducing, spreading, insinuating themselves through the body like so many parasites in a corpse. Building replicas of themselves with the basic constituents of all matter. A perfectly organized society, some dedicated to the execution of the primary objective, others dedicated to reproduction, still more dedicated to supression of the immune system.

Time's up.

***

'He is definitely not a pretty sight.'

Remington reaches over with a gloved, corpse yellow hand, and flicks the black rubber sheet back. Kragok raises an eyebrow.

'That's him. That's the Covert Ops guy I spotted in the hospital. Okay, let's turn him over, just to confirm. Give me a hand, Mighty? Thanks.'

And before Remington can protest, Kragok and Mighty reach over and invert the body in mid-air, placing it back on the table gently. The metal panel in the back gleams cold grey, a harsh, inhuman patch in a field of organic red. Kragok absently fingers his metal arm.

'Yes... it's a little something we devised for the covert ops people who need to look perfectly ordinary and non-descript, and those who were too prissy for the real hardware. It takes standard cyber modules, and can do some rather fascinating things by diddling your biochemistry...'

He hesitates a moment, and breaks off, not noticing that Remington's gone just a little whiter.

'Just what was he doing when you spotted him, anyway?'

'He'd just strangled a security guard - we went after him, but he got away for a while. Then we cornered him at the railing. And he jumped.'

'Righhhtt...'

There is a brief embarrasment as Kragok and Remington speak at the same time.

'But the question, then, is what he was doing in both places?'

No one has any idea.

***

He takes a sip from his glass, and fastiduously wipes his lips with an embroidered napkin.

'There's something i'd like to find out, Lara.'

'Yes, Wyn?'

'Could you please tell me what you were doing just now? Where you went?'

She bites her lower lip, and rears backward against the hard surface of the chair. Then she shakes her head just once.

'Not now, please. Not now. Can we just enjoy this dinner?'

Pleading.

'Fine, fine. As you wish.'

He does his best to smile, and backs down.

'Waiter?'

'Yes sir.'

'I'll have the Foie Gras, and the lady here...'

She nods.

'The lady here will have the chicken cacciatore.'

***

Time.

Literally billions of these tiny things gather at the rhythmically pulsing red walls. As one, they band together, clumping and clumping, forming a thick white sludge. As one, they begin the full-scale manufacture of a particular organic chemical, pushing megadoses out through their membranes, dissolving whatever remains of the walls.

Thick white sludge.

When the break comes, it starts slowly at first, little trails of red streaming from thin breaks. Wispy trails, as insubstantial as mist, and as inconsequential.

The heart beats once more, and the blood surges forward; a tidal wave of pressure. And the walls react by exploding.

***

The first messages were broadcasted, picked up by strategically placed receivers in the tallest buildings of the city, and relayed in encrypted form to the central receiver, deep within the wilderness. There was a gradual snowball in the number received, peaking at a frequency of six hundred a second, and then subsiding gradually.

'Oh, lovely, lovely.'

There's something seriously perverse about a roboticized four hundred year old who ought to be downright staid and restrained, and instead insists on jumping up and down like a little boy, clapping with loathsome glee.

'Excellent, as a matter of fact. Interpret those numbers for me, will you?'

'We received seven thousand three hundred and twenty four ASEs - that's acknowledgement and successful execution, indicating completion of script approximately five minutes ago. We also have about eighty thousand more idle, and ready for orders.'

'Wonderful. And now, would you please call the Technology Now headquarters?'

'Yes sir.'

***

He lifts the tray with that unquantifiable blend of ease, familiarity, and a hint of bored tiredness that suggests a certain level of experience. There is a hint of a glide in his imperturbed stride, and his face is carefully blanked, brushed over with a look of vacuous hospitability.

Except that he doesn't think he can maintain this facade for very much longer.

Because he feels quite under the weather, and definitely has a cold, complete with running nose, which is an absolute taboo in the food and beverage line - people do not like to see a waiter having violent sneezes over the chicken cacciatore. Particularly in a top-flight Michelin star restaurant.

So far, he's managed to get by with quick visits to the toilet, and surreptitious sniffles when no one's looking.

Toilet. Yes, definitely feeling under the weather. He'll probably ask for the rest of the evening off.

He charts a course among the tables, padding silently towards his target - the table containing that distinguished couple. Obsequiously, he slides the tray onto the table with a flourish.

Then there is a twinge that feels like ten thousand red ants have latched onto his insides, and are now biting down violently.

He hesitates, and starts to cough, but catches himself just in time.

A little scatter of red lands on the white damask tablecloth, as blatantly obvious as George Bush at a Mensa gathering, and as potentially embarassing. The woman, whom he recognizes as Lady Lara-le, looks up in surprise, staring at the red dots.

How embarassing.

Then he vomits blood all over the chicken cacciatore.