20 - TYSE

CHAPTER TWENTY

S omewhere, something is buzzing .

I turn over in bed and shove my head under the pillow, ignoring the buzz until it stops. There is a moment here where I imagine what the buzzing might mean for me, but it's quickly overtaken by the need for sleep, so I just drift off.

The next time the buzzing sounds, I reach over, grab the phone off the nightstand, and throw it against the wall.

This time I drift back to sleep chuckling.

Moments later, there is a pounding on my door.

I sit up, throw my pillow, get out of bed, and stumble over to the door. "Whoever you are, ya had better be ready for a fight because I'm gonna kick the livin' shit outta ya." I throw it open, growling into empty space. Then I look down. "Fuck." A small child. Little girl, about seven. Big brown eyes and mismatched clothes. "Anneeta. What. The hell?"

She sniffles, drags a sleeve across her nose, and sighs as she holds out her hand, offering me a disposable phone. "Someone wants to talk to you." Then she turns those giant brown eyes up to meet mine and smiles, revealing the space where her front teeth used to be just last week. "Would you like to come have tea with me today?"

"No." I feel a little bit bad for being so blunt, but I fell for this once. Tea with Anneeta is a mud-like mixture of boiled weeds scavenged from the outside walls of the tower and the biscuits are made of paper.

I take the phone, then search my pockets for a coin to pay her. But I'm wearing boxers, so I hold up a finger. "Stay right there. Be right back." I close the door on her and redirect my attention to the phone. "Whoever this is, it had better be good."

Stayn's voice comes back at me as a yell. "I've been calling you for five fucking hours, Tyse. And don't try and tell me your phone was dead, because it wasn't. You could've at least texted a reply."

"Sorry. I was sleepin'."

"It's five-fifteen in the afternoon, you worthless bum. I've got a job for you. So get your ass up and get on it!"

"What job?"

"There was a disturbance—five fucking hours ago!—down in the tower's lower levels. I need someone to go check it out."

I rub a hand across my eyes, sighing. "You waited five hours for me to answer the phone so I can check out a couple of vandals in the basement? Why didn't ya just send Anneeta to check it out?"

"Because that location is magnetically locked. No one has been down in that sector since the god left. It's not a vandal . It's somethin' else—ya know what? You don't need to know why I want you to go check it out! You just need to get your ass down there and then report back when you're finished!"

I hold the phone away from my ear and look at it because he's seriously pissed off. When he's done, I yawn into the phone as I ask my next question, doin' this just to make him angrier. "What's my take in this?"

"Your take ?" He's growlin' at me now.

Which was the whole point of me asking the question. I kinda love pissin' Stayn off. He's very excitable. "Yeah. What do I get if I go check out this disturbance for ya?"

He knows I'm just tryin' to wind him up so he gets a hold of himself and blows out a long breath. "How about dinner? Come by tomorrow at seven?"

"Me? Dinner at the Kuiper residence? You're not afraid I'll corrupt your daughters?" I wince and smile at the same time. It's a touch too far, even I know this.

"You so much as look at one of my girls, Tyse, and I'll cut your fuckin' balls off."

"I'm kidding. I'll check out your fuckin' disturbance and report back. And your girls are sisters to me. I'd never."

I hear a semblance of a chuckle on the other end of the line. Then another sigh. "Sorry. I know. I'm just wound up today. Weird shit's been happening all over the city since last night. A power outage, a security hack at the Empire Building, communications are all messed up, and this fucking tower disturbance." He huffs out a sigh. "I'm short men."

"Obviously. That's got to be the only reason you're relying on me for anything."

"Not quite. I can trust you to keep your mouth shut, that's why I called you. And you live in that stupid tower, so you're close anyway."

"Well, now I'm intrigued. What do ya think I'm gonna find down there that you need me to keep my mouth shut?"

"Not sure. But I don't want to talk about it on the phone."

My eyebrows shoot up. "Whhhhhyyyyyy?"

"Tomorrow. Dinner's at seven. Dress nice. Or, at the very least, take a fuckin' shower. The location coordinates for the disturbance are on the notepad of the phone. Get back to me as soon as you know anything."

The call ends with a single beep as I'm pulling up the notepad. I flip through the options, find the notepad, and read the location. Sector 4, quad H minus 5, floor 2. Fuck's sake. I've never even heard of these locations. Are there even stairs to get down there?

" Tyyyyyyyse . I've got to goooooo ," Anneeta whines from the other side of the door.

I'd forgotten about her. "One sec, kid. I'm coming."

I pull on a pair of tactical pants, grab a coin from a glass jar on the short counter in the semblance of a kitchen, and open the door back up. "Here." I toss the coin high in the air, making her gasp. But this one's got reflexes and that little hand snatches the coin before it can even think about hitting the floor and rolling away.

Anneeta smiles at me, showing off her new, toothless gap, then turns and bolts off down the hallway.

She's one of the few bright things about living in the ruins. There aren't any other kids here. The tower isn't anyone's first choice of residence and while it's true most of its inhabitants are poor, illiterate, and addicted to the spark, they're still smart enough not to try and raise families here. They either get their shit together and get out, or they allow the city to sterilize them for coins and stay.

Anneeta is a special circumstance. A warning for all women who choose this lifestyle to be careful. Her mother's been dead for nearly four years now. Long enough that I doubt the kid even remembers she had a mother.

As far as I know, Anneeta lives on her own, making money running messages inside the tower like the one she just did for Stayn.

But we all take care of each other in here. We are, as they say, cut from the same cloth. Anneeta's edges are just a little more tattered than most, but she's still one of us and everyone looks out for her.

I close the door thinking about the little girl and what a dismal, depressing future she has. It's not her fault her mother was addicted to the spark and was too far gone to take care of the pregnancy one way or the other. Being born under the influence of the spark is a very rare thing these days. Ever since Stayn took over as chief of patrol, and Basil, our friend from the War College, took over as Council head, there have been no births from spark-addicted women living in the ruin.

They sweep the tower every new moon looking for pregnant women, test them on the spot and then take them out by force if it comes back positive. But Anneeta came along before the spark reforms, so she's stuck.

She will never leave the tower. The spark changed her brain while she was still developing in the womb. She's more than addicted to it now, it literally runs her body.

She can wander the tower and the ruins outside, but if she were to cross that imaginary boundary between the Tower District and the Canal District, she would get maybe three or four steps before collapsing. If she wasn't given a dose of spark within the next several minutes, she'd be dead.

It's an extreme case. All of us inside the tower live off the spark. We're all addicted, but we can leave. There would be sickness if we stayed away too long, but we'd be OK again eventually. Even if we never came back. Total withdrawal would be miserable, for sure, but we would not die the way Anneeta would.

No one knows how long she can live like this, running wholly on the spark. She's the only kid we've got in here at the moment—hopefully the last as well—so it's kind of a case study.

Some do-gooders from outside have tried to rein her in. Tried to make her settle with some of the more responsible adults on the ground floor and live a more traditional life with some schooling and regular meals. But she slips away when anyone gets too controlling. Just… disappears without a trace.

The tower people—the more superstitious ones, at least—think it's the spirit of the tower god protecting her like she's his and his alone. But I think she just knows this place too well to be found. Knows all the nooks and crannies to hide in. Hell, she's probably got a whole road system mapped out in her head that winds through the vents and ducts.

At any rate, the do-gooders have given up on the idea that she can be tamed and now she just does as she pleases.

It's not a bad life if you ask me. Sure, she's missing out on a lot as far as the outside world goes, but freedom always did come with a price.

The phone buzzes in my hand, signaling a message. It's Stayn. You had better not go back to sleep! I'll come into that tower and kick your fucking balls in if you're not already on your way .

My smile is wide when I text back, Who is this ? And when I get a mad rash of messages in reply, I ignore them and toss the phone into the trash. He's just really easy to wind up. Being chief of patrol does that to a guy, I guess. But I don't feel sorry for him. If he didn't want the stress, he shouldn't have taken the job.

I do get my ass in gear, though, pulling on a black tank and the same boots I've been wearing since I was discharged from the Sweep Army seven years ago. Then I fasten my battle belt to my hip and leave, shrugging on a canvas jacket as I make my way towards the central stairwell.

I'm on the tenth floor of the ruined God's Tower. It's only marginally safe as far as structure goes, but it's quiet. Most of us prefer to live down below, closer to the ground. There are maybe several dozen people living above me—the tower goes up fifteen more floors from here—but there are no stairs, only ladders, and the plumbing is iffy on the best of days.

Tenth floor is private enough for my standards. Anything higher is just a nuisance, and I'm nothing if not a practical man. It's the only reason I live in Tau City in the first place. I wasn't ready to give up the spark after I was discharged from Sweep. There's no ruin in Delta, where I grew up. There's a god living in that fuckin' tower. Nasty one, too. Lots of rules and traditions. Which makes for a nice city, I guess, but there's always a tradeoff.

My god came with a lot of expectations, which—after seven years of war—I was no longer interested in accommodating. Tau City not only had a still-functioning ruin, it was close to the base where I was stationed at the end of my service, so I applied for War College and got accepted. That's how I met Stayn and Basil.

Having both grown up here, and coming from respectable families, neither Stayn nor Basil ever got addicted to the spark. But no one in Tau City cares much if ya are. As long as you can still function outside the ruin, it's just another way to unwind. Like a fifth of whiskey at the taverns or a whore on Friday night.

I'm still in control. I do get out of the tower, but not nearly as much as I used to. I've just lost interest in climbing my way up the political ladder the way Stayn and Basil are.

I don't want to lead. I don't want to follow, either. I just want to be left alone.

Living in the tower is free, the spark is free, and it suits me. So why the fuck not?

I do work. Sometimes. Both inside and out.

It's the perfect tradeoff if you ask me.

I nod at some people working on a mural in the wide hallway as I pass by and enter the main stairwell. It's entirely probable that this ‘quick job' turns into an all-day thing because I don't even know how to get that far below ground. But if there is a way down there, my best guess is that the main stairwell is where that route starts.

On any given day there are between three and four thousand people calling the tower home. It's a lot when you see them all in the same place, but still a very tiny percentage compared to the nearly two million living outside.

Of course, you almost never get all the tower people in the same place at the same time, but as I descend and the noise becomes increasingly louder, I wonder if they're not all down in the main lobby right now.

When I come around the curve between the second and first floors, I can't believe my eyes. Because it really does look like everyone in the tower is here.

I pause on the steps and lean in towards a man about my age. "What the hell is goin' on?"

"ID's." He doesn't look at me. Just stares intently down at the crowd.

Now that I know this is government business, I can pick out the social workers standing behind a table near the entrance. "They're giving out ID's?" I cross my arms and frown. "Well, that's not suspicious."

"Yeah," the guy says, turning to look at me now. "How stupid do these people have to be to start rattlin' off all their information to the fuckin' government?" He scoffs. "There's no way I'm getting trapped in their tracking system. I just barely got myself out."

I nod, agreeing. Not that I'm out of the system—I'm not. I would have to leave Tau City and start over somewhere else if I wanted to be invisible. Too many friends in high places here.

Everyone in the tower is addicted to spark, that's true. It's an unavoidable side effect. But they're not all here for that reason alone. Some of them just don't want to participate in society. Like me. And ditching your official ID is the only way to do that. That's why no one in here has a phone. It's how they track.

Only disposable phones are ‘technically' allowed inside the tower, temporary things that are susceptible to the spark and run out of battery after three or four interactions. But all phones are temporary in here, even if they're not disposable. The city just figured why waste perfectly good phones on the tower people when they can make an inferior product that costs less to produce, charge the same amount for it, and make a tidy little profit off the degenerates who don't want to be good little citizens and participate in the general welfare of society? By which I mean be taxpayers.

No phone, no ID. No ID, no job. No job, no taxes.

No government likes shit they can't tax, including people.

That's why I didn't much care that I shattered my phone against the wall. That's why I threw the one Anneeta gave me in the trash. All phones sold in Tau City have an official tracker on them that allows them to function, including the disposable ones. But they die in less than a day, even if you don't use them for the maximum number of interactions.

There are just as many people in the tower on the run from the patrol as there are true addicts. To them, the offer of an ID and a phone to keep it on is nothin' but a trap, just like this guy said.

The crowd on the stairwell is growing thicker by the second with onlookers trying to decide how bad off they are. Do they need the ID to get a city aid package? Or can they hold out?

There's at least a thousand people down in the lobby below who can't hold out, I guess. Because they are clamoring for a chance to get tracked.

I've only ever seen this done once in the last seven years and it was before Stayn and Basil took over.

So. I guess they're no different from everyone else when it comes to coin.

A part of me always knew they were not any different than the other government officials that came before them, but it still burns. And it's disappointing.

So I sigh and just shoulder my way through the crowd until I make it to the ground level. The staircase does keep going down, but you have to walk around the backside of the stairwell to find the opening for it.

There is a thick crowd of people coming up to see what's going on, same way there was coming down, but after a single floor it thins out. Mostly because that's where the stairwell ends.

I walk a little further into the small lobby so I can see down all eight of the hallways that fan out from the stairwell like spokes, then sigh. Because I don't see any more stairs. Not out in the open, at least. So I guess I'll have to start pulling open doors.

I choose a direction and walk, checking out doors. Upstairs there are open stairwells at the end of every hallway, plus several hidden somewhere in the middle, and they are mostly marked. But down here, that doesn't seem to be the case.

An old woman is standing in a doorway smoking, her attention fully on the crowd at the bottom of the stairs. But when I stop in front of her, she turns her eyes up to meet mine. "Can I help you?"

"I'm looking for stairs going down. Do ya know of any?"

She points her chin in the direction I was heading. "End of the line that way." Then points her chin the other way. "End of the line that way too."

I'm not sure if this means there is a stairwell at the end of each hallway or not. But I don't hang around to ask because I spot Anneeta staring at me just a few doors down.

"Thanks," I tell the old woman, then walk over to Anneeta. "Are you spying on me?"

She shrugs up one shoulder, unimpressed by my intimidating question. "Maybe. Or maybe I just wanted to watch you get yourself lost trying to find the basement."

"How'd you know I was going to the basement?"

She taps her head. "Doors can't stop me, Tyse. I hear everything."

"That's a creepy answer. You should probably not tell anyone you've got the god inside you."

She scoffs, then full-on laughs. "If they don't already know that, they're kinda stupid, aren't they?"

I laugh too. "Probably right. Anyway. You wanna tell me how to get to sector 4, quad H minus 5, floor 2?"

"No. But I'll show you." She turns and starts running, weaving her way through people in the crowded hallway. I just watch for a moment, trying to decide if I should play this little game with her. But then she looks over her shoulder and yells, "Come on, Tyse! I'm the white rabbit and you have to follow me!"

A part of me knows this is just another tea party invitation, something I should definitely decline. But it could take me hours to find sector 4, quad H minus 5, floor 2 on my own. And she'll probably get me there in ten minutes.

So I follow, losing sight of her several times when the hallway splits and zigzags. And I realize that the hallway is kind of a ramp. Slowly, very slightly, angling downward. At the bottom of this gradual drop Anneeta is waiting, sitting on a concrete step. Her right arm is raised over her head and her finger is pointing up at the ceiling.

Not all the lights are working down here—the spark must be low—but there are enough still sputtering for me to see that it's not the ceiling she's pointing to, but something spray-painted on the door she's resting against.

It's a circle with a lightning bolt crossing through it from left to right. "What's this?"

"The rabbit hole. Do you want me to go with you?"

I reach for the door handle, find it unlocked, and pull, forcing Anneeta to get up and get out of the way as I open it.

Looking in, I find that it's pitch black and smells stale. "Where does this lead, Anneeta?"

"Down."

"Down how far?"

"Mmmmm." She hums a little, shrugging up that shoulder again. "Maybe… six levels."

"Is that sector 4?"

"Nope. It's Sector 1. All this is sector 1."

"Sector 1 is six levels? Fuckin' hell. How many levels down is sector 4, quad H minus 5, floor 2?"

"Umm…" She shrugs again, but with both shoulders and hands this time. "A bigger number than I can count. A lot. But I can take you, if you want."

"You've been down there before?"

"Of course. I've been everywhere. But down here, mostly in my dreams."

"I'm not sure that's helpful."

"You say that now because you don't dream the way I do. But if you follow me, you will."

"I will what?"

"Dream the way I do."

"Am I gonna get zapped with spark, or something?"

Anneeta laughs, a very childlike giggle. "You've already been zapped with spark, Tyse. That's why you live here."

"Right." I'm suddenly very sorry I agreed to this job. "How high can you count?" I ask just so I can get an estimate of how far I'll need to go.

"Twelve."

I squint my eyes at her. "No one ever told you about thirteen, eh?"

"Thirteen is forbidden. It's bad luck."

"Well, it's still a number. And if you know thirteen, you know fourteen. Then fifteen. Can you see the pattern?"

"Yes. But thirteen is forbidden."

"Whatever. Lead the way. Let's do this." I wave a hand into the darkness, inviting her to go first.

I expect her to balk at least a little. But she just takes off into the black without hesitation. A moment later, just as I'm pulling a torch off my belt, the way forward illuminates.

Again, like back outside, not all the lights are working. So it's a disorienting sputter of semi-darkness instead of actual illumination. "Are you doing this?" I point up at the lights when she looks over her shoulder at me.

She stops, waiting for me to catch up. "No. It's just the god."

"There's no god here, Anneeta."

"Then how do the lights come on?" She falls in next to me, walking again.

"Some kind of sensor? I've seen them before. Where I grew up, there was a god. And there were sensors for everything. All the lights were automated like this."

"Really?" She sounds astonished. "Did you ever meet the god?"

"Oh"—I laugh—"hell yes, I did. I was always in front of that fucker being punished."

"Punished?" She stops walking and looks up at me, hands on hips. "For what ?"

"For… whatever. He was an asshole."

"What city did you grow up in?"

"Delta."

She's standing right under a light so I get the full effect of her crinkling nose as she stares up at me with squinted eyes. "Where's that?"

"All the way across the sand sea."

"Really? Did you come here in the tunnels?"

"Yep. I sure did."

"One day I'm gonna leave and I'm gonna use those tunnels to do it. Maybe I'll go to your city. Would you like me to say hello to anyone when I get there?"

I grab both her shoulders and turn her around. "Less talking, more walking."

She laughs a little, but does as she's told, keeping quiet and on task until we reach a real stairway. "This is the way down to the lower sectors."

"All right then. You can leave me here, if ya want. I think I can find it."

She shoots me a smarmy smile. Like she wants to tell me I'm full of shit, but she holds that in. "You can go first if you want. But I'm gonna follow just to keep an eye on you."

"Is the god telling you to do that?"

"What god? There's no god here, Tyse."

"Right. Whatever then. Let's go." I start down the stairs, hopping four or five at a time just to see if I can lose her. But she keeps up, jumping onto a railing and sliding down it to pass me, leaping off at the last minute when she gets to the landing. Then she waves a hand, letting me pass.

She's a weird kid. She's always been a weird kid. But I've never had this long of an interaction with her before, so I guess I never realized just how weird.

Clearly, she's in control of her situation. Which both makes me feel better and worries me more when I look too closely at what that means.

Everyone knows there's leftover tech in the tower. Obviously, it's how we get the spark. But there might be more going on in here than anyone realizes. And right now, I'm getting the impression that it's got something to do with this child.

But that's a problem for another day because I've been watching the sector numbers as we've been descending and we've reached a door with a large number four painted on it. So I stop and point to it. "Sector 4, right? How do we get to quad H minus five?"

Anneeta looks down into the black stairwell that might go on forever for all I know. Then she looks back at me as she simultaneously counts on her fingers and recites the alphabet. "A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H. That's eight. Which means four floors down, eight quads in."

"How do you figure that?"

"That's just how it works. It's sector 4, level H. Four, four, four."

"What about the minus five?"

"We'll deal with that when we get there."

I squint my eyes at her. "Are you sure you know where you're going?"

She tsks her tongue at me. "Are you sure you know where you're going?"

I throw up my hands. "Fine. Lead on."

We go down again, three more floors, then she stops at that door. This time the white spray paint says four dash four. Anneeta looks over her shoulder at me, smirking, as she opens it. Again, the lights come on when we enter the new dark passageway. But in here, they do not sputter. Nor are any of them dark.

In fact, I think I can hear a hum. Like… there's a generator.

And if I didn't know better, I'd think the power was getting stronger.

But that's not supposed to be possible.

Surely Stayn knows how deep this tower is. He did give me coordinates, after all, so he's got some kind of blueprint of the place. Though I haven't seen any indication of them, there must also be security sensors down here, because that's how he got an alert. But does he know there's full-on power? I mean, the whole point of taking out the god was to take out its power. The spark is supposed to be something residual that can do small bits of work, but not with any reliability.

Everyone knows the god's power comes from a series of massive generators deep under the earth and that power can last for generations, even after the god is gone, because each god had thousands of banks of batteries for storage. I've never actually seen one in person with my own eyes, but while I was in Sweep I saw lots of things on vids and a battery bank was one of them. It was like… well, I couldn't really grasp the size of it until a marker was placed to give it perspective. The battery bank was ten times as big as the megalopolis above ground. We were told it could run for several centuries before actually drying up.

The tower in Tau City has been decommissioned for three hundred and twenty-five years, so it should be nearing the end of its life.

Battery banks are normal. Spark is normal. Generators running full-on power three hundred and twenty-five years after being decommissioned is not .

I look down at Anneeta and find her wide brown eyes already looking up at me. "Can you hear that?"

She nods, but doesn't say anything.

It's easy to see Anneeta as some kind of unfortunate accident. Poor girl, people say. She'll never have a life outside the spark. And it is sad, so I kinda agree on this point.

But what if… what if she's not an accident? What if there's something going on down here we're not aware of and she's a part of it?

I put my hands on both of her shoulders and bend down, looking her straight in the eyes. "Anneeta, what do you know that you're not telling me?"

She throws me that one-shoulder shrug she likes to do and averts her gaze. Which means she wants to lie, but hasn't made up her mind yet.

"Does the god talk to you?"

She looks back at me. Sniffles. Thinks. Answers. "I told you he did."

"A real god, Anneeta? Or… something else?"

"What else would it be?"

"I dunno. You tell me. What does this god talk about?"

"You."

"Me?" I laugh and stand back up. "Why the hell would he be talking about me?"

Her whole face screws up, like this question has confused the fuck out of her. "Well, it's a game, isn't it?"

"What's a game?"

"The Game of Gods. That what he said."

"The god says he's in a game?"

"No. The god says you're in a game."

"Do you know where this god is? I think we have things to discuss. Can you take me to him?"

"I can't take you to him."

"Why not?"

"Because. He's…" She spins in a quick circle, spreading her arms out. "He's everywhere. All around us."

"Well, what does he want with me?"

She stops spinning, looking a little dizzy for a moment, then laughs. "He wants you to lose , stupid." Then she just takes off, racing down the hallway. The lights above her flashing on, illuminating her way as she runs.

I yell, my words chasing her. "How do we get to the minus 5?"

"Come on! I'll show ya!"

Fuckin' kid. She's cute, I'll give her that. But the weirdness kinda cancels it out and I'm losing interest fast. It's hard to tell how much time has passed since we started this journey, but it's got to be an hour, at least. Which means it'll take another hour to get back up from this point alone. And we haven't even reached our destination yet.

The lights above start flickering off in rapid succession all the way down the hallway, so I have to decide what to do. I could leave Anneeta down here. I'm not worried about that. She can find her own way back, I'm sure. But I'm here. It's got to be close now. It would be a waste to just give up and leave without getting the information I came for.

So I set off after her, the lights coming on to light my way with a kind of sluggish reluctance that I didn't notice when I was watching Anneeta.

"You're imagining things," I mutter under my breath. "This weird kid is starting to get to you."

Maybe. But I can't deny that I do hear a generator and the line of lights above me is rather bright.

Eventually I catch up with Anneeta again. She's lying on the floor now, directly under a light. This is when I notice her outfit. They are always kinda strange. A patchwork of things. She's wearing a skirt—she likes skirts, and they are always kinda poofy and made of weird fabrics only little girls wear—but she never wears just a skirt. She's a girl who likes layers. Which makes sense because Tau City has a dynamic climate. It's hot during the day, sometimes extremely hot, but nights are always cold. And the temperature isn't regulated inside the ruins. There's enough power for lights and whatever mechanicals are used for plumbing. You can run a few small appliances, clocks and shit. But there's no conditioned air like there is in the city beyond the ruins. No cooling, no heating. So layers are a must.

But Anneeta's layers are odd. Mismatched things. Discarded things, most likely. Striped tights, fuzzy leggings, or sometimes she wears two skirts at once. One practical layer under, one poofy layer over.

Still, they make her cute and give her a kind of whimsical innocence that stands at odds with the tower all around her. Her shirts are adult size, but cut up to fit her better. And again, she's always got layers on her upper body, long-sleeved Henleys and thermals running down her arms covered by a vest of some sort.

Today she's wearing brown tights, a light-blue ballerina skirt, a long-sleeved tan Henley, and a cropped fuzzy vest. Her feet are in boots of brown leather that go halfway up her legs. Her hair is long and brown and almost always a mess and her face a little bit pale because she doesn't get enough sun.

But the funny thing is—as haphazard as this all seems—it also comes across as… put together. Like some fashion person personally picked out all these things and dressed her up for a runway show for eccentric children.

It works.

And I don't like that it works. It gives off a feeling that her sloppy put-togetherness has purpose .

"Well?" I ask.

She doesn't move. Just lies there in the floor looking up at me, smiling. "I'll leave you here. But I'll wait."

The door has a big white H minus 5 painted on it. I run the coordinates through my head again—Sector 4, quad H minus 5, floor 2. "Is floor two on the other side then?"

Anneeta shrugs her shoulders against the floor. "I've never been in there. Not even in a dream. This is as far as I go."

"You can't come? Or you don't want to come?"

"Can't."

"Why not?"

"Because…" She sits up and looks over her shoulder at the door, her head slowly tipping up to look at the H minus 5. Then her eyes meet mine, flashing a serious expression at me. "There's too much power in there. It will make me sick. Can't you feel it?"

I'm about to automatically say no and roll my eyes, but I realize I actually can feel it. It's… like… a disturbance in the air. Electromagnetic something or other. Which is a word I don't actually know the technical meaning of, but I've heard it enough during my time in the Sweep to understand that it fits here in this particular situation.

So I nod. "Yeah. I feel it." Then I offer her my hand, which she takes, and I pull her to her feet. "You don't have to wait."

"I know. But I will. It's my job to keep an eye on you now."

"Is that what the god told you?"

She nods. "That's what he said."

It's easy enough to dismiss her talk of gods. Or it would be, if a god didn't actually live in this tower at one time. But I don't dismiss it. I'm not sure what she's seeing, or hearing, or feeling or whatever, but it's real to her.

Which doesn't mean it's real to anyone else. Electromagnetic fields are like that. They can really fuck with your perception. So I make a mental note to ask Stayn—once I report back—if we could maybe get some kind of health care for her.

It's the least I can do after all her help.

"All right then. You wait if you want. I'll be back." Then I open the door and walk through into the dark.

Unsurprisingly, the lights overhead do not turn on when I take a few steps. I had a feeling it was Anneeta doing that on the other side of the door, and now it's confirmed. But it's fine. I just get my torch out and turn it on. It's bright enough to light up the entire length of the hallway—which, from here, makes the next door look very tiny, it's so far away.

When I finally get to the end of the hallway and open the door up, I find myself on a stairwell landing. I'm halfway between two floors. Assuming two is up and one is down, I go up. But the number painted on that door is a one. Then I remember that the numbers are negative, and my assumption was wrong because floor two is below.

I go back down, confirm that the new floor is indeed two, and pull it open. Immediately the electromagnetic humming stops and the new silence is deafening. Not that the hum was loud to begin with. Extremely low frequencies don't have to be loud to do what they are meant to do. But once you get used to the background noise, the absence of it is dramatic.

No lights in here either. This makes sense because if the hum is gone, then the power is too. Which is a direct contradiction to what Anneeta just told me. That she can't come because the power is too strong.

Unless… the hallway is a kind of gate, meant to keep her out.

This seemingly easy job is turning into a spectacular mystery.

I keep walking forward, shining my torch on the walls, looking for another door or… something. This is the end of my coordinates. But it is immediately clear that this is not a hallway that leads somewhere, it's a room. The actual destination.

"Well, fuck." I mutter this, scrubbing a hand down my face in frustration. Is this it? Because all I see is a bunch of tech towers of some kind. About nine feet tall and placed end to end so when seen all together they appear to be a solid wall. I'm not an expert in tech, ancient or otherwise. My time in the Sweep was mostly spent killing people and clearing shit, not studying relics.

But once I take a better look at them, they are familiar. I've been enough places to recognize these towers as something archaic. I was in a firefight once with some Outland deviants in the Outlands Terminal and we were stuck in a room like this for two days waiting for backup. One of the guys with us that day was a techie and he called them server towers. Which was like… a god's brain or something.

These are most definitely powered down. Which just adds to the mystery. Because something has to be going on in here, otherwise why would the sensor go off?

This question snaps me back into a more practical reality and I go looking for that sensor. My torch scans the walls for something that might detect motion.

I find them—hundreds of them, actually—mounted on the ceiling. All aimed down at the maze of walkways that exist between the server towers.

One of them, when I point my torch down at the floor, is ever-so-slightly blinking a blue-green light.

It's in the direct middle of the maze and that's when I realize there's a glow emanating up from the space below it.

My fingertips dance along my battle belt and a moment later I've got the VersiStrike in high ready as I move forward towards the nearest entrance to the cluster of servers.

The Versi comes with its own torch. I tap it on with a practiced fingertip as I slip my other light back in place on my belt. Then I walk forward, carefully and silently, eyes darting around, expecting something to happen.

A maze of server towers really is the correct way to describe the room I'm in. Sometimes when I turn a corner it's a dead end, a looming black tower acting as a wall. So I have to retrace, try again, then again. I've got no idea how long I stumble around trying to find the center because time seems to have stopped. Literally. The display on the Versi where the time should be has no readout.

But it's a while and I'm starting to get frustrated when I see a slight shift in the light levels around a corner and up ahead. Obviously, there is no one in here with me. And no attack is imminent because it should've happened already. So I walk faster but keep the Versi at high ready anyway.

When I get to the corner, I'm just about to turn when everything around me becomes a waterfall of blue. I take a step back in surprise, release a round from my weapon, sending flechette darts everywhere, and then let out a breath, feeling stupid.

I lower the Versi and look at the floor, shaking my head.

My augments came to life. That's all it was. Just my fucking implants. And the waterfall of blue is nothing but commands left over from some old mission or something.

Then, just as quickly as it appeared, it's gone. And in the darkness, the glow I've been looking for is back.

But it's what's in the center of that glow that has me scratching my head.

Because it's a woman.

A scantily dressed woman asleep on the floor of the ruined god's brain room.