Chapter 14 #2
Officially, the bulletin claimed the level had been closed off due to an issue with life support.
Total bullshit, of course. There was nothing wrong with the deck’s life support systems. If there had been, Titan would have had to evacuate and close off the entire slums since the systems for those four decks were interconnected.
Since the rest of the slums had maintained business as usual, she had to believe someone was lying.
A day after the first bulletin announced the sealing of deck 16, a second notification went out proclaiming the situation under control and citizens could resume their normal business.
Giving up on learning anything of use from the official channels, Gus switched over to the message boards and gossip sites.
Unfortunately, there was nothing of note to find there either. Not that Gus had held much hope.
Next, she brought up a whisper site. Technically, they were considered gray. Not part of the criminal underbelly, but also not quite on the right side of the law.
Here was where you went to find gossip regarding the major players in the gangs and pirate clans. It was where you’d go to commission one of the local information guilds. People also posted job announcements that weren’t quite on the right side of the law.
Most threads were written in code so as to prevent prying eyes from realizing the truths hidden in plain sight.
Gus had become a bit of a savant at navigating these whisper sites. The secret was that they weren’t too different from any other biome. The trick was filtering out the noise; Gus had a lot of practice with that.
Except this time, there wasn’t much to find.
No one was talking about deck 16. Nothing so much as a murmur.
Strange.
Normally, the site would have been abuzz with job postings.
This gang needed a safe cracker for a little gig.
This group wanted someone with experience salvaging Tsavitee tech.
On and on. Little things and big. Sometimes assassination requests were couched as rodent extermination.
Then, there were the endless requests for information from the guilds.
However, there was only suspicious silence where there should have been rumors and half-baked conspiracy theories.
“It’s been scrubbed,” Gus murmured.
Quite thoroughly, from the looks of it.
Odd as it was, that thoroughness was the very reason Gus doubted she was dealing with a professional.
“So—someone with the skills but not the experience.”
Someone experienced in controlling the narrative would have known not to take everything. The very absence was telling.
Gus accessed the cameras on sixteen.
“Blank.”
Someone familiar with the terrain then. Definitely not an outsider.
Those from Titan would have known not to mess with all of the cameras. They would have known that security might be willing to overlook a few strategic blank spots—especially if you greased their palms—but blacking out an entire level would have drawn a massive response.
“I’m going to have to go down there, aren’t I?”
There was no helping it. Caius and the question of whether he was still alive and in need of rescue would have to wait. Anandra took priority.
Gus didn’t care for most things, but she did care about keeping her word.
The possibility that someone had gone after Anandra was unacceptable. Not just because she’d told him she’d keep him safe. She’d been careful to cover her tracks. If someone had taken him, it meant she had problems that she had avoided considering until now.
Unease slid through her before she stifled it.
First things first—she needed to figure out where in the spine she was.
The hammock swayed as Gus shifted to eye the drop below her feet. It was a long way down if she slipped.
Gus didn’t let that stop her as she reached for one of the smaller trunks, getting a firm handhold on it before sliding off the hammock.
Clinging to the side of the tree, she took a good look around.
Spotting a gap about ten feet below that might be just big enough for someone her size to crawl through, Gus headed towards it.
To her relief, it was exactly what she’d thought. Gus squirmed through the narrow opening, her cloak adding a few more pieces of bark to its collections. Then she was finally out.
Perching on one of the intertwined trunks, Gus took stock of the situation.
The walls of the spine were covered in a dense canopy of vegetation that partially obscured what was written below. Gus could just make out the large block number for eighteen several feet up the shaft.
That meant she’d come to a stop somewhere between decks eighteen and seventeen.
Not bad. She didn’t have far to go then.
Gus started her descent. The climb wasn’t difficult, the width of the tree’s trunks making it easy to find purchases for her feet and hands.
All she had to do was try not to fall. Something she managed quite adeptly.
It wasn’t long before she spotted the faded sixteen denoting her destination.
Before parting with Titan’s Lord, Gus patted its side and pressed her forehead against the warm wood of its trunk. “Thank you.”
She thought she might have imagined the faint pulse from within the tree and the way a twig seemed to brush her cheek before she pushed away, darting across one of the rickety bridges the inhabitants had built to reach the tree’s trunk.
Once across, Gus paused to take in the overgrown garden that served as this level’s green space.
It wasn’t as well maintained as those on other decks, overgrown in places and withering in others. She looked up, finding dead branches hanging off one of the ornamental trees. The nearby shrubs were also in need of a good pruning.
Gus fought a growing sense of frustration as she took in what looked to be a powdery mildew on several species of flowers.
She tsked under her breath. Such an easy thing to fix.
Whoever was responsible for the garden’s upkeep wasn’t doing their job.
An oversight Gus would have to remedy later.
For now, she sent a smattering of her energy into the plants around her to tide them over and correct some of the imbalances before leaving the garden behind and heading into the slums.
Stepping onto the main concourse, she found the surrounding area quiet. An all too familiar hush blanketing the shops. Those who’d visited a war zone or stepped foot into a place after a major disaster knew this feeling. This sense of strained anticipation and fear.
The locals were waiting to see how much of the fallout would land on them.
“When Titans war, it’s always the small and weak who reap the consequences,” Gus observed softly.
For most of her life, Gus had counted herself among their numbers. Smaller. Weaker than everyone around her.
But not today.
Today, she was the Titan. It was uncomfortable to realize that she’d be the one raining down death and destruction on the surrounding populace if she found what she suspected she would at Natalie’s.
And yet, Gus didn’t deviate.
She kept going, heading inexorably toward her destination with a grim resignation and a faint hope that she was wrong. That in a few minutes she wouldn’t have to show these humans what it meant to break a vow to the forty-three’s weakest member.