Notes : Chapters 429 and 430 have been written and added to the queue !
Construction continues. Started super early today too. Which SUCKED.
I can't wait for this crap to be over.
But hey, at least I channeled my frustration into more chapters. So that's something. Though I wasn't able to write 431 today as planned because of unforeseen personal issues.
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Chapter 425
Red Sands Desert, Aurorean Empire
Simulation Five
The spymaster opened his eyes.
Oh.
He sat up, and looked around. He was in some kind of...library? Mage tower? Bookshelves surrounded a well appointed desk, covered in the instruments for runecraft. The space was extremely well lit, with large windows letting sunlight in. Despite being closed, the space also felt well ventilated. It ran contrary to most libraries he had seen, who instead were enclosed, dusty spaces where light was banished.
He squinted. He wasn't dead. Or at least he didn't believe so.
He swung himself off the bed, and studied the area around him. He felt good. Too good.
"Hello."
He turned to look at the young woman standing in the door.
Wait. No. Not young. Her eyes were far older than her body. And what she was wearing.
"Am I in the hells?" Asked the spymaster.
"That's your first question?" Said the apparition, with a smile.
"I wake up no longer feeling the thousand small pains of my age, and the first person to greet me is a heretic wearing an Old World uniform." The spymaster looked around, and shook his head. "But no, this was to test your response." He snapped his fingers. Once, twice, thrice, before nodding to himself. "The echo is wrong."
"Beg your pardon?"
"The echo. It's wrong." He smiled mirthlessly. "Since you don't seem to know much, and I am being detained, I will offer you this information for free to encourage continued good treatment instead of harsher methods: I was raised in the tunnels underneath Sunrise. The old complex the Sapphire Kingdom had built, back when the surface was hell. When you have to live without your sight to evade slavemonger patrols, you learn to go by sound. And echoes were the only way to avoid walking into a wall. The echo here is wrong. Ergo this space is an illusion."
The woman looked around, and a wide smile appeared on her lips. That smile was not friendly. In fact there was something utterly horrifying to it.
And the spymaster had seen what the duchess did to her maids.
"You are impressive. I suppose that's what made you such an annoying pain in the ass as an opponent." She pulled up a chair next to him, and jerked her head towards the bed. "Sit down. It's the only courtesy I'm going to give you."
He sat down, and waited.
Her smile got wider.
"I'm sure you realize you were kept alive for a reason."
"Of course. And I am sure it has to do with information. Not about Sunrise, since the rebellion and the duchy are dust and ashes. You're here because you want to know about where we got the spear." He smiled as she raised an eyebrow. "I was captured, in public, by forces loyal to their majesties. I assume they turned me over to Rebirth immediately. Crystal has had impossible levels of technological progress and expertise for a young dungeon...and used Old World golems as the basis for her armies, not to mention sits on top of Old World ruins. You are the answer to that puzzle. You are the power behind Crystal. The Old World officer who's been puppeteering this whole mess."
The apparition paused, and laughed.
"You have impressive deductive reasoning. I suppose that comes with the job. No, I'm not the power behind Crystal, nor am I of the Old World." She leaned forward, and her smile became downright vicious. "I wonder if you'll have the same reaction."
"To what you are about to say? Go ahead. I doubt you can surprise me."
"I am Crystal. And I am extradimensional. I am-"
She spoke a name. The spymaster stared at her.
"...Perhaps I was wrong in my assessment. Perhaps this is the heavens. Or the deepest hells. Excuse me."
He walked to the window, and threw himself through the glass.
*****
"There's safety locks to prevent his mind from, you know, telling his body he's dead. Or just causing a heart attack from the stress." Said Ghost as she and Alexandra stood around the body, splattered on the cobblestone. "Though it hardly matters, he knocked himself out cold when he went through the glass."
Alexandra nodded. All sim programs, at least those not specifically designed to allow you to sleep in them, flat out disconnected the second you lost consciousness.
Normally it ensured you wouldn't wake back up in the simulation, but in this case it simply stopped feeding data back to the brain, but it would reactivate once the spymaster woke up.
"We underestimated him." She said.
"I did, certainly. But this little visit served its purpose. He recognized my name, like Emylris did, and exposed a lot more of his capabilities than he probably should have."
"How's our resident archmage doing, by the way?"
Ghost shrugged.
"Still poring over the projects I gifted her. I dumped part of the hyperspace deflection on her, alongside our teleport redirection systems." The apparition shrugged as Alexandra glared at her. "What? She knows more than fucking Allya does at this point. She knows who we truly are at least. She's already a massive security risk we cannot afford to get out. Even if we'd allow her to get out alive to begin with. Might as well make use of her to her fullest. Besides, it helps motivates her. Why pay her in guaranteeing her lands, titles and legacy, when you can feed an archmage of the astral, who are by definition obsessive about their field of study, new magic? It's a massive reward and work at the same time!"
"...Fair enough." Alexandra grimaced. "I'm not the greatest at people. I mean I'm not terrible, but..."
"It was more Arcadia's wheelhouse, and you're missing a lot of memories of me learning it from her."
There was a short silence, as they both stared at the splattered spymaster.
Neither of them wanted to address what had happened. What they had found, with the merchant.
But they had to. They couldn't keep half avoiding each other, and tiptoeing around it when they had to meet.
Ghost cleared her throat, and Alexandra's head snapped up.
"I'm sorry. For...for what happened. I didn't live it. I wasn't awake. But...I'm sorry."
"Why? Why be sorry?"
"Because it's my fault. No one would have spent that much energy killing you." Ghost smiled wanly. "No offense."
"None taken. I agree they were after you. But I accept that."
They both stayed silent for a few more seconds.
"What do you think Arcie will do?" Finally said Alexandra.
"Depends on how much she figures out."
Alexandra tilted her head, and Ghost's shoulders sagged.
"Which is everything." Completed the apparition. "At a guess? She'll absolutely obliterate whoever is responsible. In every overkill way imaginable. Then...then she's going to activate Project Hegemon."
Alexandra swallowed. Ghost had to tell her what Arcadia had excised from her memory.
Like her plans to take over the European Federation, and eventually unify humanity.
"Can she do it without us?"
"She had to have planned for it the second you came to be."
"And we've given her enough cards to make it work."
Silence came again. What was there to add to that?
You couldn't really do small talk in a moment like this. Especially not between two versions of the same person.
Minutes passed.
Alexandra bowed her head...and came to a decision.
"...Do you know what truly worries me?" Finally said Alexandra. "Worries me so much that I couldn't even tell Emilia?"
"Shoot."
"They could have just nuked us. They smuggled a stealth hyperdrive this close to a station. These things are rarer than even low profile warheads. Shit, they could have used a high yield chemical explosive bomb. The starport is armored but it's no battle station." Alexandra raised her head, and met Ghost's gaze. "Whoever did this wanted us thrown into hyperspace. This wasn't an assassination attempt. The guy who carried it out might think it was. But there were so many simpler ways, even if you wanted to bury our death under the rest to avoid making the motive clear."
"...That's insane."
"Is it? You can go from Earth to Alcheryos in hyperspace. Somehow. Who's to say someone hasn't figured out how to do the opposite?"
"If they could have, they'd have crushed us. For fuck's sake, Alcheryos had more spaceborn combat power than all of Earth did when the Great Night started."
"There's a lot we don't understand here." Alexandra gestured. "Where are the Gods? Their main battlefleet? The God of Fire had an armada large enough to stamp out the entire Sagitarius Empire and whatever was left of the Great Night in a single, massive attack. Then he left a small flotilla and a battlestation in orbit, but it hasn't been reinforced. The Church lost that flotilla thousands of years ago! Even assuming it took the Gods a millennium to move their asses here, we're way past that timeline for backup. Something is wrong here. The Church is operating under restrictions and limitations we don't understand."
"We were already aware of that." Ghost nudged the splattered corpse with the tip of her shoe. "I agree that a hyperdrive assassination seems...suspicious, given the circumstances. But as Allya said, we also have to assume that the assassin didn't sign up for a suicide mission. I mean shit, if it was he would have just thrown himself at you. No, he was going to survive this."
"He'd have had the entire Federation after him, and we control most of the interstellar colonies. And that's without Arcadia getting involved."
Ghost nodded.
"I agree that it seems remarkably stupid. But it would be doable. If nothing else, we know there's rogue colonies out there. Hiding from basically everybody, way outside the nominal boundaries of human space. Rogue colonies that would take a ship, any ship, as payment for hiding someone, no questions asked."
Alexandra grimaced.
"Fair enough. But they'd be sniffed out eventually."
"I know that. You know that. People high up in the Federation, who are aware of our actual intelligence gathering capacities, plus our covert exploration program would know that. But who else would?"
"...That guy's employers. Hence why they sabotaged the hyperdrive. Though that's just a supposition." Alexandra sighed. "Any news on getting him for a talk?"
"I've gotten Trira's report. I agree with her in that a guild false flag attack wouldn't even be necessary, we could provoke a genuine one. The trouble would be nabbing that bastard in the confusion without getting caught. Or having him get killed and soul sealed."
"Can we do it?"
"With a specialized ground command AI, super-stealth tech and, you know, control of the city's guard force and internal security apparatus?" Ghost snorted. "Of course we can."
"Then let's set the groundwork. As soon as we're done gathering info, to make sure we're not kicking too big of a nest, we strike."
"Roger that."
Alexandra gazed at the tower, then back down.
"So, uh...do we clean up the corpse, or what?"
"I was thinking of leaving it for Emylris."
"Isn't she in Sim two?"
"She is, but I can port it over. I used her sim as the basis for this one. It was the most refined besides, you know, my place."
Alexandra nodded. She hadn't been in Ghost's home that much lately. She could afford her other self some privacy. Especially given how overworked she was.
"I mean you can if you'd like. But I don't think she needs to be intimidated again. Besides, why warn her we got defenestrator man here in custody?"
"That's fair."
"Also it's kind of unsightly. Plus not very accurate. He didn't impact in a realistic way."
Ghost audibly groaned.
"That's also true. I've been working on the physics but there's only so much I can do. He figured out it was a sim via echoes. Echoes!"
"He thought it was an illusion, right?" Ghost nodded, and Alexandra knelt by the corpse. Her simulated clothes didn't even get stained by the blood. Seeing bodies had stopped disturbing her a long time ago, but this one even less so. She knew it was a simulation, and the body made it clear how fake its gruesome end had been. She'd played video games on two dimensional screen projectors that had more of an effect. "I wonder why he threw himself through the window, though. I mean for him we could have been in a room in a bunker."
"No idea. I'll ask him when he wakes up."
"Right." Alexandra stood back up, as Ghost snapped her fingers, and all traces of the body vanished. "In the meantime, I'll go check up on the maids." Alexandra's expression darkened. "We've given them a stable environment to start their recovery, but there's already political bullshit trying to get in."
"Ah. The heiress?"
Alexandra nodded.
One of the maids had been the heiress to the duchy of Molro.
And the last person who had suggested she leave her fellow maids to go take her throne had ended up with a kitchen knife through the eye socket. Granted, the knight hadn't exactly put it very delicately, but still.
"Well, I leave that to you and Allya." Ghost shook her head. "One part of the job I always hated."
"Hey, if you want it, I can delegate."
Ghost smirked.
"Why do you think I keep accepting all the research projects you dump on me? I'd rather be stuck in a lab than shaking hands and talking to nobles."
"Clever. Alright, off to have a little talk. Have fun with...what's next on your list?"
"My TO-DO says I'm heading to the nuclear production facility next. But I don't have an advisor enforcing it. Especially via suspension."
Alexandra blushed, though she could have sworn she detected some sadness and wistfulness in her other self's voice.
"Shut up. She doesn't do that...most of the time."
"Why yes, now she has a lot more-"
Alexandra exited the simulation, and shook her head.
Time to go check up on her guests.