The final bell at Aethelburg High didn't so much ring as vomit. The students poured into the broad, sunny halls, chatting to one another as their voices bounced from the shiny, chromed doors and the new-fangled smart-glass partitions. In the midst of the scramble, Kaelen Vance was the picture of concentration by comparison. Whereas his best mate Rhys Darby was still vibrating from the adrenalin of their very latest virtual adventure in 'Star-Siege Andromeda', Kael was vacillating focused.
He heard Rhys's staccato account of glitched alien AI through one ear, and the dull hum of his datapad as he drew up a complicated blueprint for a handheld EMP emitter – simply theoretical, of course, but one that preoccupied him more than their recent digital adventures. "And then, at the same time as the Krellian Devastator was finally getting a lock on me, I diverted emergency power to the aft shields and did this Kael-Special, you know, my little reverse thrust trick that you taught me! They totally bought it!" Rhys sounded smug, his hands dancing through the air in the shape of a virtual flying machine. "You should patent that, Kael. You'd get tickets just from pro-gamers."
"Hmm? Oh, right, the Krellians always buy into that." Kael's lips twitched up in a slight smile as his stylus traced an intricate power circuit on his screen. The schematic of the KV's Phoenix EMP design— his almost microscopic 'KV-Phoenix' insignia taunting him from the corner of the blueprint— was vexing him again with its energy capacitor.
"Just relieved the center held under pressure." Seraphina Sterling, a couple of steps ahead of them, threading through the crowd with an effortless, almost haloed grace, overheard fragments of their exchange. Her lip curled ever so slightly. Star-Siege Andromeda. Kaelen Vance.
The names, as far as she was concerned, stood for wasted afternoons and unfulfilled potential. As she studied her notes for the upcoming inter-city scholastic decathlon, and psyched herself up for the advanced robotics practicals, Vance was, as ever, lost in the frothy digital shadow world.
His casual brilliance in their shared quantum mechanics class was a continual, low-grade frustration for her; he would understand difficult theories with an infuriating lack of struggle, then appear to forget them the moment a new game patch was released. It was, she thought with a sigh that only she heard herself give, the Aethelburg paradox: a city of genius, just as often satisfied with the inane.
Several miles away in the deeper reaches of the secure though utterly chaotic and shoved-to-its-limits SENTINEL safehouse that overlooked the city's sprawling industrial district, Agent Marcus "Mac" Vance was desperately trying to deal with a much more concrete set of issues.
Lying upon it amid its clutter of tools and slightly chewed nutrient bars were two separate packages. In the first, there was an heavily insulated, gunmetal grey case designed for transportation, containing 'Project Chimera' – not a gauntlet this time, but a wrist-worn device compact enough to facilitate quick deployment that would temporarily project and nullify localised energy signatures. It was a cutting-edge prototype by Oracle Pillar, scheduled for a crucial field test at the hands of a Vanguard specialist.
The second, a jiffy bag, contained Kael's most recent pet project, a bristling set of complex wired 'sensory-dampeners' that he'd constructed to… well, he said they were filter systems to help him concentrate by filtering out redundant light and sounds, but Indy wasn't totally convinced. Kael had requested that he stress-test the filigreed connections. "Yeah, Chimera for ops, dampeners for the kid," Mac muttered, his voice rough from exhaustion. His comm-unit chirped – a priority message from his Pillar Leader, Marshal Tanaka of Vanguard.
"Mac, status on Chimera? Gotta get that package ready for the courier, pronto. Operation Nightingale is a go, and we can't forward-deploy without that tech." "Tanaka's voice was like gravel in a wind tunnel.
"On it, Marshal! "Final diagnostics to go!" Mac fumbled, sounding tidier than he felt. He'd been awake for thirty-six hours following a data anomaly. He slapped a high-security SENTINEL routing tag on the bubble envelope sealing Kael's dampeners, his thoughts already racing to the mission parameters of Nightingale. It was the gunmetal case that Chimera's device had come in, with the civilian pick-up tag the easy simple civilian pick-up tag, meant for Kael's package. "Courier en route, five mikes," Tanaka snapped before clicking off. Mac hastily sealed both.
He left the labeled envelope (Kael's rampers as they had been, since wrongly named as Chimera) to the grim-visaged SENTINEL courier when he came in. After locating the real Chimera in the case, he put in the place for Kael's customary secret drop point. "Kid'll likely be thinking that's some new headphones," he mumbled, already pulling on his tactical vest. When he did, an instant sickly realization came over him. The weight.
The padded envelope had been nowhere near heavy enough to be Chimera. The case, though His blood ran cold. "Scrap!" he whispered, his eyes widened in belated horror. Kael. Kael had the Chimera. And if someone were to be after it … He pounded a button on his wrist. "Override Nightingale prep! Agent Vance, Code Sierra! Risk to potential civilian exposure, Sector Gamma-7, transit hub Omega-Locker. Unauthorized activation of Project Chimera likely!" At SENTINEL's underground command center, the Oracle Pillar's receiving department received 'Project Chimera'.
Preceptor Elara Vance watched, contorting her facial muscles so that she appeared both neutral and disengaged, as a senior technician carefully cracked the seal on the padded envelope. Instead of a small, energetical device there were two sensually curved dampers of glossy, obsidian black, catching sterile light. "Preceptor," said the technician, sounding a bit mystified, "this is not… Project Chimera. They seem to be… hearing-seeing filters. High-end, certainly, but—"
Elara sat up and fixed her with a sharp look. Her eyes fell upon the small detail on the side of one dampener – that 'KV-Phoenix' insignia, precisely designed. Something indecipherable flickered across her face.
"No, technician. This is not Project Chimera," she announced, her voice quiet yet with an unspoken authority. "This is an anomaly. And anomalies," she said, a thin smile brushing her lips, "are usually far more instructive. Initiate a level-three scan. Cross-reference that insignia with every youth talent programs and independent phaustech prodigy in Aethelburg. I want to learn everything there is to know about its creator. And tell General Sterling that we might have a… wildcard."
As she returned to her mustards and relishes, a priority alert lit up on her console: Mac's Code Sierra. Her smile vanished. "Verify that unauthorized update or. And give me a tactical feed from Gamma-7, now. Further along, a pair of figures snaked their way through the seedy graffiti-streaked metro tunnels that ran beneath Aethelburg, as silent and deadly as shadows made flesh. Mountainous of muscle and ill-omen, Roric checked the flickering holomap on his gauntlet.
At his side, Vesper, who was both slight and ink-quick in her motions despite the muscular strength of a snake and hue of its venom, was his ever-watchful guardian, alive to the sordid throb of the undercity. They were a special Unseen Hand retrieval team. "The intel from a SENTINEL mole is sound," came Vesper's voice, even and cold as steel. 'One of Vance's men, who was working to undermine him, led the Chimera prototype off-course. He's handed it to a civilian cut-out, probably his nephew." Roric's mouth curled up into his signature predatory grin.
"A civilian. Can't be any harder than busting a SENTINEL vault. We get the Chimera, kill the contacts, and dip. Clean and simple." The various paths were leading them all to an abandoned maintenance hub by Aethelburg High, a location that served as an established 'drop point' for Vance's less formal deals. Kaelen had been dismissed by Rhys, and he trudged toward the assigned locker.
He entered the code his uncle had sent – a series of apparently unrelated digits that might actually mean something obscure and military to Mac. A hatch hissed open revealing the gunmetal grey case. "Wow, Uncle Mac really pulled out all the stops on the case for my dampeners," Kael mused, hefting the surprisingly heavy case. "That's got to be some pretty good acoustic baffling."
He clicked open the latches. Inside, cushioned inside precision-cut foam was not his usual felt-lined array of dampeners but a glossy, unfamiliar wrist-mounted gadget. Its face was blank, except for a pair of near-invisible touch-sensitive glyphs. "What in Aethelburg is this?" he breathed, picking it up. It chilled and oddly lived upon his flesh. "I think that's ours." The voice was quiet, dangerously polite, and much too close. Kael spun around, his heart pounding in his chest.
Roric and Vesper stepped out of the lengthening shadows of the transfer hub, all expression wiped from their faces but what was there was chilling. They had that lithe economy of movement that screamed 'professional.
"Listen, I think there's been a mistake," Kael sputtered, as he moved to protect the case and the odd device. "This is just some… audio equipment that my uncle sent to me." "We don't count on heaps of radio play, boy!" roared Roric, with warning layers in his physical presence that took a half pace forward. "Give me the Chimera device and you can walk out of this." Shock — sharp and golden hot — ripped through Kael.
His eyes jittered for a way out, but there was no escape from them. Desperation clawed at him. Roric lunged for him and Kael lashed out with his wrist, his fingers slapping and mashing on the touch-sensitive glyphs in a completely random order instead. Then there was the shock of a sudden flaming energy, a blaze of power that seemed to ignite his nerves from the inside. The world went hyper-real.
The sordid walls of the hub appeared to throb with detail, every crack and stain amplified. The faraway drip of water turned into a clanging cymbal. He felt the breezes on his skin, the weak, acrid smell of his pursuers, the metalled tang of ancient machinery.
Roric's blow, which ought to have landed with crushing impact, felt like slow motion. Kael responded instinctively, spinning with an impossible grace his body now possessed, momentum carrying the attack harmlessly past his ear.
He was full of tumultuous, unbridled strength; his limbs were all light. "Good reflexes," Vesper commented in a flat tone as she advanced to block his escape. "But a trick I borrow is no shield for myself." Kael didn't wait. He smashed the hefty case into Roric's gut, propelling the larger man a step backward with the help of his augmented strength, and he ran. He'd never run so fast, the grey flooring becoming a blur under his feet.
But the incredible rush was already being pursued by a horrifying counter-wave: a deep bone-deep exhaustion. His breath was a searing tightness in his chest, his vision a flickering haze, and the strength of his gens felt like it was being torn from his muscles as they shook, weak and trembling.