It was late evening when the helijet landed in a patch of anonymous ground surrounded by trees. Though Coral could barely turn her head, the buildings in the distance seemed vaguely familiar. Was this the university? Before she could take in any more, a black felt bag was pulled over her head.
‘Oh, come on!’ she cried, but her voice was muffled by the bag.
Her wrists and ankles were uncuffed, then a pair of metal hands half lifted, half dragged her from her seat. She landed on her hands and knees on what felt like grass, and for a moment whatever had been blocking her comms failed. She mightn’t have noticed if it hadn't been for the bag. Her dim heads-up display brightened and the signal indicator blinked on.
‘Ludokrus?’ she whispered, getting to her feet, feeling a cold metal grip around her wrists. ‘Are you there?’
Before he could answer, the bag was ripped from her head and Welis’s glared down at her, a nasty smile on his face. ‘So, the little alien has a comms piece, does it.’ He snatched a handful of her hair and hauled her up till she was practically standing on tiptoes. ‘Hidden away, is it? Give.’ He held out his free hand.
Coral hesitated. She’d forgotten about the augment’s augmented hearing.
He jerked her higher, threatening to tear her hair out by the roots.
‘All right, all right. Give me a chance, will you!’
She felt behind her right ear, unhooked the earpiece and dropped it into his meaty paw.
He let her go. She slumped to the ground as he held it up between two stubby fingers and examined it. ‘Very useful. Thank you.’
His stainless steel smile was the last thing she saw before the bag was pulled back over her head.
* * *
Albert’s cell was painted a rather unpleasant green and contained nothing but a narrow, fold-down bed, a wash basin and a toilet. The stout steel door had a small barred window two-thirds of the way up, currently covered by a hinged metal cover on the outside, and a narrow food slot at the bottom. His built-in comms were blocked, and there was no news console or infotainment unit. Not even a mirror. Glass was banned, presumably because it could be broken and used as a weapon. A small square of polished stainless steel was bolted to the wall above the wash basin, and Albert amused himself by studying his reflection and making vision adjustments to correct for its imperfect surface.
It seemed his analysis of where they were holding Krilen had been right. Now he was being held there too. The old Biological Research Facility in a far corner of the campus of Theia University had been closed for renovations a few weeks earlier after a nasty toxic spill – right about the time of Krilen’s supposed illness. A couple of decades earlier, the building had been upgraded and converted to classrooms, but a portion of its original layout had been kept as part of a historical display; six of the original basement cells reserved for dangerous mental patients.
As they brought him in, Albert noted they passed three open cells and that he was placed in the fourth. He guessed the one on the end contained Krilen, and the one between them, Andop. Or what was left of him.
He’d also been right about the corruption of Valax. There were flaws in the system, but ones of such subtle complexity that even he struggled to follow their intricacies. Which suggested they weren’t of Eltherian origin.
Who then?
The Thanatos.
If you wanted to keep an eye on a species living just fifty light-years from one of your most important, longest running experiments, the simplest way to do so would be through their own planet-wide computer system. A system that stored everything and provided free access to everyone.
Was that why Krilen had kept things to himself and ran several secret projects; because he suspected their perfect system wasn’t quite so perfect after all?
There was an ancient conspiracy theory that reckoned a shadowy group called the Ruling Council really ran Eltheria. It was the stuff of legend, the plot line of many third-rate books and virts, and he’d always dismissed it as fanciful fiction. Now he wasn’t sure.
The best way to control anything was from behind the scenes, and the Thanatos would only need direct contact with two or three actual agents. They would then exploit unwitting dupes, in it for whatever they could get – wealth, influence, personal power. Even here on Eltheria where nanomachines and Basic shops provided all the necessities of life, people still sought power for the sake of it. Especially, ironically, the already wealthy and powerful. It seemed they could never get enough.
A disturbance in the corridor outside roused him and he stooped to listen at the food slot, boosting the volume of his hearing as he did so. He heard the sound of footsteps, muffled voices and the banging of cell doors. Two of them. Two more prisoners. The children. His heart sank. His deception hadn't worked after all. They’d caught them too.