Page 42 of Scion

“Your fault,” I mutter, leaving a pained scream in my wake.

Despite that, most people are fortunately already focused on the flickering pink smoke a few streets away and barely register my passing. Those who do notice flinch away, and I get just enough time to see shock beginning to register on their faces before I’m past. Hard to blame them, I suppose. With my somatics activated like this, I’m more cheetah than human.

I don’t slow when I round the corner and see Sanctum ahead. Fire suppression drones are already working on the rooftop, but DeGov will have them prioritising the surrounding buildings. There’s a rather large pile of twisted metallic wreckage just in front of the desperately flickering remains of Sanctum’s shattered neon sign. I recognise its component parts as I fly past. A half dozen of DeGov’s rescue and recovery drones. Or what’s left of them, at least.

Those are, as a rule, not fragile. I think at this point it might be too much to hope that this was some sort of accident.

I maintain my momentum to charge through the narrow, flaming wreckage of the front door. It’s hot inside. Something to do with the exploded incinerator I can see up ahead, no doubt. The entire security hallway is a mess of crackling wires and miniature secondary explosions and so, so much blood from all the bios and people that apparently were stupid enough to try and stop whatever it was that came through here. I try to estimate numbers, but it’s hard with the way they’re all dismembered and pulpy. Probably twenty or so. I see another few scorched arms near the incinerator. Maybe twenty-five? That’d be most of the human component of Verity’s security team.

I’ve reached the end of the hallway and am inside Sanctum proper now. Two Argoses are tearing around the foyer, smashing everything they can see and roaring as much as their vocal cords allow, probably because they’re very much on fire. A single remaining living Neon user is draped across the couch, surrounded by the glassy-eyed stares and skewed limbs of his fellow customers, smiling absently and occasionally clapping in delight at the monsters’ rampage. Beneath their racket, something’s happened to the music player and it’s piping Beethoven’s Fifth through the speakers, but at double speed and with an occasional brief interlude of some sort of jazz before cutting back again.

I’m up the stairs before either bio sees me. No fire up here yet, though the damned jazz-Beethoven chimera keeps blaring, which of the two is objectively worse for my mood. More bodies in the hallway. No one I recognise, which is good. Not great otherwise. Whatever did all this has already been this way.

Fortunately, Sanctum’s Cold Rooms are at the far end of a massive maze that was rather specifically built to provide customers with plenty of time to escape, back before the legitimacy of Six-O-Seventeen, when DeGov raids were still a thing. It takes me almost five minutes at full speed to reach them. The doors are shut and too strong even for my revs, and I’m just about to resort to trying my new Plasma when I remember there’s an emergency intercom system down here. Another minute of searching and I find it. “Hey. Twenty. Time to go.”

I poke my head out, watching down the hall for any sign of movement. Nothing. I lean back to the intercom. “Now, lady. I want that file. And Verity, if you can hear me, I’ll pay off my tab if you come out too. I know there are back exits but I could really use some help finding them.”

A door opens, then closes, then opens again, the sound of female voices arguing. I wait in the hall. Eventually Verity emerges. “Your tab includes any damage out there.”

“Have you seen it?”

She shakes her head. Eyes curious. “I was just checking in on your friend here when the alarms went off. Figured the timing wasn’t a coincidence, so I might be better off waiting it out down here until you got back.”

“Oh.”

“Is it bad?”

“I mean, ‘bad’ is such a subjective term.” I scratch my nose awkwardly. “But, you should probably come with us.”

She glowers, but doesn’t argue. Always the pragmatist. “Better stick your head in there. Twenty’s not convinced it’s safe.”

“Now she wants to be in a Cold Room.” I peer around the corner of the door, spotting Jasa on the opposite side of the room. “So, I may have been wrong. Turns out this isn’t as safe as I thought.”

“Azure?” Jasa’s voice is genuinely mistrustful as she peers at me.

“Is it your eyesight or memory that’s the problem? Yes. Azure. Wanter of the file that depends on you staying alive. Are you coming?”

She scowls at me. “The alarms sounded fairly serious. No need to be rude.” She doesn’t delay any longer though.

We follow the swinging red hair of Verity, who moves with remarkable grace and speed in her high heels along the barren concrete hallways. I don’t bother asking her to ditch them; the argument would probably slow us down more anyway. I spot a cam a little farther along. “Any way for us to see what happened back there?”

Verity shakes her head, not pausing. “Backup EMP would have triggered as soon as they breached.” My cogs can hear the tiniest tremor in her tone, the stress in her voice, even if she’s doing a fine job covering it up. She knows it’s serious if I’m running. “How’d they get past biosec?”

“They didn’t.”

“So they have some themselves, then. Big ones.”

“I don’t know.” I hate that there’s a puzzled note to the admission. I should know. Sanctum’s EMP would have taken care of anything mechanical, so to slice through its biosec this way should have taken a whole pack of high-end monsters. But even then, that leaves some trace. I should have been hurrying past bodies from both sides, not burning Argoses and severed customer limbs. “I didn’t see any.”

“Oh.” She understands the concerning implication almost as quickly as I did.

“Don’t worry. Narrow spaces, down here. Even if they find us, we still have a chance.”

Jasa, hurrying along beside us, hesitates. Just a fraction of a second. Impossible to notice without my revs.

I glance at her. “Out with it.”

She licks her lips. Already out of breath from our pace. “I might… know what’s up there.”