Chapter 21
“This one’s engrams changed again.”
A figure lifted his head, looking more annoyed than anything, as garbled sounds issued from his mouth that no human vocal chords should have been capable of making.
He stopped, visibly calming, before scratching in annoyance at the back of his head.
“Start over,” He ordered. “Administer another dose… no… a one-third dose of the sedative. Monitor closely, if the brain waves don’t calm below one third of their current state, apply another third dose.”
“Yes sir.”
“This is taking too long,” He grumbled. “The children’s minds are in constant flux, it’s disrupting our every attempt.”
“Adults have too many societal connections, we run risks with every one we subvert.”
“Yes, I am aware of the reasoning. That doesn’t change the flaws in our results, however.”
“Yes sir.”
*****
Seb listened in silence, trying to process what he was hearing.
Brain waves? Subversion? What is this, some bodysnatchers crap? It really is an eighties scifi plot, isn’t it?
For all his disdain for the tropes he seemed to be dealing with, Seb was growing more and more anxious with everything he learned. The presumption that had been pushed during the war was that the aliens were too different to have infiltrated human communication lines.
Digital communications were considered suspect, certainly, but face to face had been the de facto means of securing the most secret pieces of intelligence in play. If the invaders were literally among them, as it now seemed completely confirmed, then everything had been doomed from the start.
They knew about the off site colony, they timed the attack intentionally, He thought with certainty.
He could no longer be entirely certain that even his current situation was entirely hidden. If the enemy were willing, and able, to go to these lengths… then anything was possible.
For the moment, though, he had to put that aside.
Getting the kids out was the immediate priority, he’d worry about existential dread later, when he had time to break down and cry.
The problem is, how do I get them out?
Even as an adult, this would be a daunting task, but in his prime he could have snuck down maybe and grabbed the kids one by one, tagging the cavern for a return rift point.
As an eleven year old, even a reasonably fit one now, he was going to have a hell of a time lifting even the kids…
and that would still leave two adults in the cave and at the mercy of the invaders.
Of which he knew they had none.
More than that, though, he was eying the computers he could see and almost drooling.
That can’t be what it looks like… Seb thought as he stared at one of the machines.
The computer itself was a nondescript box, he only recognized it for what it was due to the cables running to the monitors. Flat screen monitors, no less, that he’d have been comfortable using in a couple decades or so.
What caught his eye, however, was the ports he could see on the front of them.
There’s no damn way they’re using USB in 1986.
He couldn’t be sure, but it looked really close.
I have to get closer.
He didn’t know how they’d gotten power and comms down this deep, but Seb supposed that the answer was the same way he’d gotten there himself. He took some time, looking for anything that looked out of place, but only saw tech close to the victims in the hastily assembled lab environment.
I see cameras, but they’re all pointed at the beds. No one is looking at the shadows… why would they, I suppose? No one else can get here, after all.
Seb started crawling, staying close to the shadows and the cave walls, never taking his eyes off the gurneys and the people around them as he moved.
Getting closer took time, of course, more than he wanted to be spending. Seb just hoped that his mother didn’t wake up while he was out, that would be a hell of a lot to explain.
As he crept into place, though, Seb took in more and more details.
The computer didn’t use USB, but it looked closer than he’d have preferred it to, to be certain. It also wasn’t running anything remotely like normal operating systems from the eighties, much to his jealousy.
It doesn’t look hyper advanced, though. Old by my standards, just not old enough.
What that meant, Seb had no clue, but the implications were worrying all the same. It was pretty clear to him at this point that the invaders had been intertwined with the digital advancement humanity experienced through much of his life.
There was absolutely nothing good about that, no matter what angle he looked at it from, but for the moment he could only set that aside and look to the problem right in front of him.
Keeping eyes on the adults who’d been speaking, he slipped in amongst the equipment strewn about the cave and got as close as he dared. The drones scared him most, but they were just… still.
On standby? Maybe they really are just drones controlled by a VI, or an external controller?
They still looked creepy standing there, and as he moved around them, Seb saw them shift and change.
At first he thought they were reacting to him, but then he realized that he was seeing them from different angles and each angle showed a different dimensional cross section of the whole…
but not one of them was complete, because he physically and mentally couldn’t see it with his three dimensional eyes.
It was a concept he was familiar with, but only as a mental exercise. Seeing it in reality was twisting his head into places he didn’t know that he wanted it to go… not that anyone ever asked his opinion on that, least of all his own brain.
That much is familiar territory, at least.
Seb froze as one of the adults walking around came over in the direction he was hiding, not even daring to breathe at first as he stared from the shadows and waited to be found.
*****
“This batch is already a failure, move on to some of the more destructive tests. We’ll start fresh with a new batch from another area later.”
“Yes, Sir.”
The head researcher scowled as he looked over the bodies on the beds, irritated by the waste of his time and resources.
These… humans… their brains are unusual, unlike anything we’ve dealt with before. They’re wasting so much of their computational power, it’s absurd. Somehow, below their conscious thought capabilities, they’re… adapting to our influence. Even the adults don’t last as long as they should.
He scratched the back of his head idly, looking over the children as they lay there in motionless silence.
The children are even worse. They defy every attempt to maintain control, driving out the implanted persona within days. Adults take years… but even years is unlike any of our other conquests.
He looked around, “We’re out of time. These subjects are now considered useless. Let’s see how much it takes to break them on every level we can while they’re still viable for that, if nothing else.
*****
I’m out of time.
Seb listened to the… man, he supposed… talk, each word causing him to become more and more tense. He didn’t know for sure what the guy was talking about, but not a single word of it boded particularly well for the kids involved.
The issue was, of course, that he didn’t exactly have the strength to do much at the moment.
Stupid eleven year old body… not that I was ever a muscle man as an adult, I suppose.
He crept closer, eyes glittering as he refused to look away from the people as they loomed over the unconscious children and their chaperons. The invaders… or their puppets, he didn’t know which, not yet, but one or the other… they were chattering between one another now in fast speech.
It was still English, though, which surprised him. Rapid fire, faster than anyone he’d ever heard speak before, but unmistakable human and unmistakably English.
When one of them reached for a tool that sent every instinct Seb had screaming bad touch and body horror at the highest volume possible, he tensed as his mind raced.
Attack them? Am I insane? There’s no chance I’ll be able to do anything against this situation, even assuming the humans are as frail as a couple of them looked, they’d still body an eleven year old! And that’s ignoring the drones…
He took a deep breath, eyes darting around.
There’s got to be a…
Seb’s eyes froze as he spotted something.
No.
He pulled back into the shadows, crawling more than anything as he slunk around the equipment while keeping eyes on anything that was moving. Everyone, everything, was focusing on the unconscious people, though, and none looked in his direction.
He got to his objective and marveled at it for a few seconds before he could actually begin to formulate a plan.
I know they didn’t invent these until the twenty fifties. He thought as he examined the power lead that he knew was carrying enough power to fuel a particle accelerator.
What the hell is going on?
Seb didn’t know what to think, but at the moment he didn’t have time to worry about it. He traced the cable back, but it vanished deep into the caves, leaving him to debate his options.
Tracking it back will take too long… but… looks like there’s enough slack here to work with. I just need… that.
That was a tool someone had sloppily left around, likely after the installation of the power system, but Seb wasn’t questioning his luck. He slipped it off the cabinet he was hiding behind, taking care that it didn’t scrape metal on metal, and carefully checked it out.
Practically identical. What the hell. No, not now. Figure it out later.
His movements were far from expert, but Seb managed to get the tool open and in place around the cable.
Ensuring that he had the tool by the insulated grips, and knowing he was about to absolutely destroy every OSHA rule for handling this equipment written several decades into the future, he closed his eyes…
prayed to a God he didn’t know if he believed in, and put all his meager strength into it.
*****
“Ok, start with this one. We’ll have to peel back the skin along the spine to access the neural bundl-”
The speaker was cut off as the lights abruptly went out, and all sound aside from their breathing and speaking died with it.
“What happened?”
“We’ve lost power.”
“On a reactor? And we’re still alive?”
“Someone get a light, the reactor must be intact, it has to be something else.”
There was a brief sound of people moving around in the dark, occasional stumbles and muffled swearing in both the human language and… not…
Then a flash of light returned, causing everyone to turn in that direction… only to be instantly blinded as the flash erupted into a pulse that was physically painful to human eyes.
The roar that followed was anything but human, however.
“What the hell was that?”
“I think one of the breknari came into contact with the power lead!”
“That’s impossible!”
A second flash, bright enough to be seen even in their flash blinded state, set another round of yelling. The unnatural howl filled the air, drowning everyone else out for a moment before it died.
“Everyone, be silent! Do not move, the power conduit must be disconnected.”
“That’s not possible, those can’t disconnect accidentally!”
“The flash burn on my eyes says different, shut up and stand still. Are the Breknari intact? Breknari, report!”
Nothing but silence answered.
“Ok. move carefully. Find a light… touch nothing else.”
A childish giggle echoed off the walls in the pitch darkness.
“What. The…?”
*****
That might have been a little over the top, Seb thought as he slowly crawled behind another console, carefully keeping the business end of the cable from coming into contact with anything he was touching.
Looks like a few megawatt equivalent of power is enough to take down the drones at least… but I can’t believe how bright that was.
Seb was still seeing blotches on his eyes, despite having looked away and closed his eyes before contact both times. The reflection off the cave walls had been enough to blind him through clenched eyelids, at least briefly. He didn’t envy anyone looking right at it, that was certain.
He hadn’t meant to giggle like that, honestly he hadn’t, but the barely controlled panic in their voices had brought to mind an old joke.
A child’s laughter is the most beautiful sound in the world.
Unless it’s 3am, dark… and you don’t have kids.
I can work with this.
*****