Chapter Twenty-two

Epur si muove

 

Sunday had caught everyone moving around, trying to analyze what exactly happened during the night. Mirrors, crystal dogs, the capture of drug dealers in the subway part of the city, gunshots and explosions in the north dock. The press were having their share of the cake that day, and Edinburgh had become the focus of world attention thanks to Nevermore. The police held a press conference in the early hours trying to calm things down but, even so, it wasn't enough and a whole series of outlandish theories and conspiracy rumors flooded the main social networks.

The truth is, that Sunday morning had caught both, the local authorities, the SID, and SIGN, wondering what on earth had happened. Hundreds of soldiers had been deployed to different parts of the city, helping local agencies to identify different spots where MAPs had been emanating, but where they had been found the most was in the harbor where the strange explosion had occurred.

Investigation teams arrived at the site an hour later after fire crews and the FRT had ascertained that it was safe to proceed. The bodies of the strange attackers, at least those not hit by the blast, had been taken to MCITHQ for a full autopsy, along with pieces of others found nearby. The body count had grown considerably since six o'clock that Saturday evening, where nothing foreshadowed what would happen as the hours passed.

And it had all started with someone whose body had disappeared without a trace.

"Hmm..." murmured Philip, thoughtfully. "Well... so basically we have over fifteen bodies come from nowhere."

He was leaning against the tactical SUV that he and Zi used to move around the world. Over the hood Zi was also looking thoughtfully. They were accompanied by Stuart and Portman. They were all staring at the still armed mirror box on the second floor of the SIGN parking building.

"We have a girl who was murdered for who knows what reason and her body vanished into thin air."

"We have another one of these paperweights," Stuart said looking at the mirror box.

"And our new friend," Zi sighed, and looked behind her.

There, sleeping peacefully in a pet carrier box, the pug puppy was lying on Zi's jacket.

The pup slept most of the day after the night's adventure, but had woken up and eaten and drank normally, but within the hour he had fallen into a new stupor. The few examinations that had been performed indicated that there was nothing abnormal inside the animal. It showed no signs of any abnormality, with the exception of that layer of mirrored fur that appeared and disappeared with changes in light. It didn't seem to bother the cub in any way.

"We know the shadow girl cut off the head. We found the body, and then it disappeared until this ghost app that was in the memory banks was activated."

Philip pursed his lips as wrinkles formed on his forehead. "It's like the body was a bait."

"These guys can manipulate chain reactions just by changing small parts. Who knows what the hell they were trying to do. We don't have much despite the bodies of those guys who attacked us," Stuart said.

"So there's a chance this was all orchestrated by them to get the guys who wanted the body."

"But why? I mean, this girl, who she was?" asked Zi, shrugging.

"Well at least we know where those guys came from… thanks to the detective," Stuart said with aplomb.

Everyone looked at each other with somber gestures. "This is a new kind of problem that was already proposed some time ago," Portman said.

"Still, if that's correct. What the hell were they looking for with this girl?"

"The music of the spheres." They all looked toward Oxy's avatar, who was walking around the box.

Stuart frowned. "One of the oldest legends related to the fey, the Other Side, and alchemy."

"Some feys, few actually, are obsessed with some types of music. For example Mai, her case is somewhat similar to Sil, she can compose through her body, although Mai doesn't need any enhancement. Liz is always humming some notes that she does not remember where she heard. There are so many cases over the years."

"But this girl wasn't a fey," Philip pointed out.

"BTB," Oxy said. "We know that depictions in some ancient grimoires associate the bard and his instrument with the Music of the Spheres. For all we know the music he always plays has some relation to the ley lines that run beneath the Gate Trees. Maybe that day when Sil first observed him was in the Orbital Belt and she may have become obsessed with it."

"Seriously, who the hell is this guy?"

"He's as old as the Shadow People."

"Pfff, we don't even know how old they are. If the rumors are true maybe they don't even have time."

"Some say it's possible he knows all the secrets before the Great Exile."

"What a headache," Philip said.

"That's not all." Emmeline had just come upstairs, and her face exhibited a look that would have been more than enough to cow the bravest. She approached Philip and handed him a folder.

"What is this?"

"We're going to know more shortly, but the teams just found that out."

Philip opened the folder and read the contents while taking some pictures. After a few seconds where his face changed, from his angry look, to an expression of surprise and confusion. He silently passed the folder to Zi who also read it.

"How sure are we that her parents didn't get a surrogate womb?"

"We're not sure yet," Emmeline said.

In the papers she had just handed them, they could read that according to the medical records, and the period photos, Sil's mother had never given birth to a girl. In fact, there was almost no pre-birth data, and the photographs that the couple had taken just weeks before they appeared with the child did not show that her mother had ever been pregnant.

"We have no records of any kind?"

"Apparently at the time the girl was born the couple was not connected to any kind of device or social network. Nor in the mother's records, is there any medical history of pregnancy."

"But they are her biological parents."

"Yes, there' s no doubt about that."

Everyone looked at each other even more confused.

"Seriously. Who the hell is this girl?" Philip asked.

***

To each his own

The diffused neutral light of the room illuminated the pearl gray walls of the MCIT morgue, and drew shadows of uncertain contrast on the two figures who currently occupied the room. One of them breathed the smell of the chemicals used to clean the room. The other, covered with a sheet on the examination platform, was no longer breathing.

In front of them, at the far end of the room, the cold storage cubicles, with their doors polished like mirrors, gave back an image that was hard to the detective.

Grant sighed, as he looked at the shrouded body in front of him as mist came out of his mouth.

It was hard for him to think that it had all ended just a few hours ago. But it was even harder for him to accept what he had in front of him, covered with that sheet.

That damned moment, where he had uncovered the soldier's face, after opening a hole in his neck. That had changed everything and, in the last hours, he had been asking himself questions he had never asked himself in his long years.

Because the moment he removed the tactical mask, Grant froze. He had wanted to help him, but something petrified his every move. But it was not the profuse amount of blood that flowed from the poor wretch's mouth, nor even the choking rales that were trying to reach him that froze him.

That man had on his face a real indescribable terror, like that reflected in Grant's face. They were staring at each other in disbelief. The soldier stopped moving and stood there with an expression of terror in his eyes that took the coroner a long time to close his eyelids because even he was terrified. Those eyes in their last moments had seen the unspeakable and absurd in the world.

Grant stood there, not knowing what to do for several minutes, while the rain soaked him from head to toe, and washed away the large pool of blood the soldier had left behind. He didn't move until Stuart dragged him away from the explosion, then, when the other police cars arrived on the scene, they shook him and tried to shake him out of his state of shock. But they too were left with similar expressions at the sight of the lifeless soldier.

Grant took a deep breath and slowly pulled the sheet away from the man's face.

It was him.

The same face. The same wrinkles, nose, and even an imperceptible mole near his left ear. A mirror reflecting his own death.

Grant had decided to enter the immortality program because maybe in the future he wanted to see other planets. He liked his work as a detective, but he did not dismiss the possibility that he might be able to do much more with his life. He was over eighty years old, although he didn't look it physically. The problem with such a long existence in the world was that one often lost sight of what death was. Or rather, what was it really like to be human, if there is no death?

Yet, there he was. Contemplating himself in that cold corpse tray. A joke of the universe that made him witness his own finiteness and how death was still there. Often ignored, like something that happens to someone else, until it came out of the shadows to tap the shoulder and say "everything dies, and you'll be there someday too."

How? When? And why?

Grant couldn't understand at what point the life of that double of him could have been twisted. What must have happened to him to end his life there? On a planet, or rather universe, that was not his own. How bad could the odds have been for him, to end his life that way? Be that as it may, his other self had not killed the cops, he had merely disarmed them.

He pulled back the sheet a little more on the left side and his feeling of grief was even greater. Grant looked at the hand of his double. On Grant's own hand the mark of the wedding ring from his last marriage was long gone. But on this individual's hand was an exact copy of the wedding ring from his first marriage.

Would he also have children like him? Wherever he came from, what would happen to his family now? Would they just consider him gone?

Grant covered him again and touched the digital controls on the body tray. It lifted off the examination platform and floated slowly to one of the cubicles and a door opened. The cold storage entrance completely engulfed the body and closed.

The old detective pulled from one of his jacket pockets the card Philip had given him only a few hours earlier. It was a business card of the Nevermore Institute, with the raven emblem and the SID emblem. On the back was a contact code.

Grant pondered it for a few seconds.

Maybe in the future it was time to make some changes in his life, before the embrace of death, with its cold shroud, caught up with him too.

***

Cleo leaned back in her chair, and placed her bare feet on the desk full of papers with numbers and bills, and stretched out her toes in relaxation. Her blue eyes fixed on her virtual guest with a mischievous grin.

Ralph Oakley smiled nervously.

Although he was in a meeting where it was only his avatar that was present on Siren Island, he couldn't shake the feeling of strangeness of the image before him.

He was a man in his thirties, with a certain youthful air, with neatly combed hair and wearing a rather expensive suit, although his clothing did not match his physical persona. The truth was that his physical self, at that moment, was in his underpants in his London apartment. Yet the habit does not make the monk, and he had an important position. He was the link between government agencies in UK and the Nevermore Institute.

[Can you repeat that, please?] Oakley asked, as qbits rendered beads of sweat on his cheek.

"We want one of the dragon eggs that are about to hatch, in exchange for taking care of the problems during the operation in Edinburgh."

Is this woman kidding? Oakley thought to himself. How could she think that the Ministry of Defense would give anything in return for a disaster that yourselves caused?

But the situation was intimidating, even if he wasn't physically present.

He was in a rather large study room, richly decorated, and filled with shelves of books and accounting folders.

The long golden hair and the girl's clothes were distracting him. The fey girl gave him an innocent smile, while wagging her long golden tail. The horns, also golden, peeked out from between her hair and the evening light was streaming in through the wide windows behind her.

She was not a common fey. Cleo was a dragon fey. Her horns and golden tail were a clear indication that she was a monster girl, albeit a truly beautiful one. She wore a dress of light fabric, sleeveless, and with some gold trim around the edges. The slits on the sides of the dress were, so to speak, something that left too much to the imagination. Although who was behind her was no slouch either.

She was accompanied by a taller fey girl, brown skin with some freckles on her cheeks, blonde hair and green eyes that sparkled like emeralds. Though in contrast to Cleo, the girl wasn't smiling at all, and looked at Oakley with a gaze as cold as the Siberian taiga. She wore a short-sleeved shirt, one-legged trousers and a tweed vest. On the left side of her pants, buckled to the belt, hung a tactical sword.

"And what do you think?"

I think this dragon has had several lizards escape from the nest. Oakley gulp, trying to maintain his composure. [I honestly don't think the Chamber of Commons is going to agree to such a request, ma'am…]

"You don't think it's a fair price?"

[… ]

"We're talking that the damages in Edinburgh would cost approximately thirty-four million E-feb. I'm offering a hundred million to pay for the fix. I simply want something in return. The government is making sixty-six million, it's a good offer. The structures damaged during the operation are not too many, and the nano-VNMs can repair the damage in a few hours, the money is only for public relations."

[No, it isn't. That could be raised in a short time from the money collected for reserve tickets.]

"We're talking about how much? Thirty years until the dragon reaches a size of about three meters? I'm offering an extra sixty-six million to be paid, right now."

Shes out of line, but she is right about that.

"You can discuss it with the prime minister and let her do the calculations. She's much better."

She is an IA, of course she is. At what point did this turn into talk of damage awards in a trade exchange? thought Oakley. [I'll have to ask.]

"No problem."

[If you'll excuse me.]

"One more thing," Cleo stopped him before he disconnected, and waved her fingers and sent a photo with a report to Oakley. "I don't want just any egg, I want the blue one."

[Ok, I'll check it out and have the answer shortly.]

"Hurry up, if possible I want the egg before it hatches. Oh! Something else."

[Yes?] The man asked, with a tired gesture.

"I won't take no for an answer," Cleo said, changing her laughing face to a serious expression, as her blue eyes flashed with a menacing glint.

Oakley tilted his head, nervously and his avatar disappeared.

"Do you think they'll accept?" asked the fey woman behind her.

"They will… it's a good offer. They know that technically we had no way of knowing there was a creature inside the mirror, and the damage isn't too much. To them the blue egg is worth the least. Let them keep thinking that," she said and smiled mischievously. "Come on, Hanna. I want that egg!" Cleo squealed excitedly.

She jumped up from her chair and bounded across the room as she unfurled golden wings with pink membranes that had been folded and hidden in her abundant hair. Her long hair moved in an arc and shone with all the splendor of the setting sun.

"Are you going to London?"

"Yes. Are you coming?" Cleo asked, as she threw open the studio doors and her wings went back into hiding.

Hanna sighed wearily. "Please try to keep your shape," she said and followed her. She took it upon herself to close the doors as Cleo walked away humming Beethoven's Ninth Symphony through the wide corridors.

Above the study doors was written Nevermore Treasury Department.

***

The old man was looking at the painting in front of him. Sitting on a red velvet bench ruined by the passage of time. He was a room of yellowish marble, through which a pale and dreary sun was filtering, illuminating a layer of dust that had accumulated the dust of decades.

He wore a brown suit and a beret crowned his head, while his weathered hands rested on a cane with a golden handle decorated with the beak of a phoenix. Wide wrinkles crossed his pale face and his glassy eyes scanned every part of the canvas.

It was Christus in de Limbus by Jheronimus Bosch. The painting was enclosed behind a force field that prevented dust from accumulating on the piece. Something that contrasted with the appearance of the place that seemed to have been forgotten by the hand of man.

The sound of footsteps, approaching behind him, did not distract him from his abstraction of the work. Nor did it distract him, when Mr. Cold took a seat beside him and his gaze lingered for a moment on the artwork. The injuries he had sustained during the fight and from the explosion were completely gone.

"Sometimes I'm glad some of these works are kept in places like this," the old man said. "You want to know why?"

Indrid Cold did not answer him, and just looked at him with his eternal calm expression.

"Because of the DEs. It terrifies me to think what would happen if someone, or some people, with too much imagination saw paintings like these for too long."

"There are much worse things going on today."

"Yes, there are, my friend. But there are some artists who connected with something in their paintings. Something that is far beyond description, and so, simple religious meaning. Imagine what would happen if an DE happened that was going to bring all the horror that some painters, or writers, captured in their works."

"It has happened before."

"For that very reason I am glad that many horrors have been forgotten in places like this," the old man nodded and stood up as he made his way out of the room, followed by Mr. Cold.

Outside it could be seen that the place was an immense museum completely abandoned. But whose paintings and sculptures were still in place, guarded by crystals or force fields that had remained active, despite the years that had passed.

"What do you have for me?" the old man asked.

"They have a handle on the violet stone technology."

"Of course they do. Although I can't imagine where they could have gotten it from."

"They are looking for the Music of the Spheres too."

"I suppose they want to get it through the AFT. Still it's complicated to know how much progress they may have made. Your operations to stop the interventions have been fine, but I can't imagine you're going to succeed with them. Whatever has to happen, will happen. It doesn't matter how many interventions you make or how many small pieces you can change in timelines."

Mr. Cold said nothing and let him speak.

"Both, you and the humans and feys still think that Dark Events are something that need to be investigated and prevented. I don't think so."

"I don't think they can be prevented. But at least mitigate their impact for the survival of life."

"For several years I thought so, but now, I don't think so. DEs are simply a common occurrence in the evolution of the universe. The decay of the laws of physics is something that occurs with expansion. It is only an egotistically anthropocentric point of view that leads us to think that things should be different."

"Consciousness is what creates much of those DEs."

"Consciousness as such does not exist, old friend, only patterns that gather like a hive. We think we are different because we can use our brains a little better than other species, but that still doesn't mean we can change the determinism of the universe. We're all bound by rules so we don't throw ourselves down each other's throats."

Indrid Cold held out his hand and the old man received what was a crystalline piece of rock.

"Oh! The crystallized Unnamable," the old man said with some surprise and examined the object against the light. "Where did you get it?"

"A fey from the other side."

"What do you want me to do with it?"

"Analyze it to see if the composition is the same. We don't know how but they have the violet death too."

"These are dimensional horrors. How do you expect me to-" the old man did not finish his sentence and smiled. Mr. Cold had vanished and he didn't even know when he had done it.

The old man put the crystalline piece in a small tube he carried in his coat, and slowly walked down the stairs and then to the entrance of the abandoned museum.

Outside, a luxurious autonomous car was waiting for him and drove him through the forgotten streets of a big ghost city, that had been invaded by vegetation. The old man was content to look at the scenery, as the car drove around blocks, that were blocked by huge collapsed buildings, and had been transformed into places where trees and wild animals were now running free.

The car finally left the city and left behind the corroded sign that welcomed the city:

Indianapolis. City quarantined since 32 S.A. No trespassing.