Devil's Bargain (partial)
For Brigit's Flame, November Week 2. This grew all out of proportion, so this is only about half the whole story. The rest of it, should you be interested in seeing how this ends, will be going up in the next entry.
Hopefully the flashbacks will display right. I tagged on the style=light to the link so that the blockquotes hopefully won't go wonky on anyone's screen.
"The invention of the first transdimensional Gate was a grave disappointment to its creators. The dimensional milieux was vastly more complex than anticipated, and all the current theories of dimensional structure were woefully inadequate to describe--let alone allow humans to traverse safely--the transdimensional landscape. What lay beyond the Gates was named simply 'the Flux' for the incomprehensibly vast ebb and flow of information that even the most advanced computers--let alone the human brain--could not interpret.
"However, the Flux was rich with a multidimensional particlewave that was eventually dubbed 'quine'. It did not take long for the budding field of dimensional physicists to devise a method of converting quine into the more familiar arcanos energy that had fueled everything from human life-patterns to utilitarian spellforms to galactic exploration. The systematic harvesting of quine through pinprick Gates situated on naturally-occurring dimensional nodes quickly boomed into a multi-trillion credit industry.
"Nevertheless, this seemingly limitless energy came at a cost. Unpredictable Flux-surges through the Gates were common and occasionally overran all containment efforts within the harvesting facilities, leading to property destruction and loss of life through dimensional translocation. Additionally, the first harvesting teams learned another important lesson about the Flux: it was not unoccupied, and its denizens were as incomprehensible and dangerous as the Flux itself...." -- Barrowman Thane, Through the Gates: A Transdimensional History
He ran, the jagged rocks of the passage pounding into his feet even through the thick soles of his boots. His pack was still on his back, bouncing a bit on his shoulders, but he couldn't take the time to shrug it off. He just kept going, his breath ragged in his lungs, his mind ticking away the seconds.
61... 62... 63....
"NO! Stay back, Stine!"
"But...!"
"You'll get pulled in! Just stay back!" Thirty seconds since they'd noticed something wrong. Thirty seconds since the harvesting portal had flexed dangerously wide, exploding outwards in streaks and spikes. Thirty seconds since Till's foot had gotten caught and her boot, then her ankle disappeared into the Flux. Just thirty fucking seconds, and she was already half-drowned in it, the translocation wrapping coils of nothingness around her as it pulled her in. It was agonizing to watch: the planar shift crawling up her torso made it look as if someone was erasing her from existence. She couldn't even fight. There was nothing to fight against, just the slow alignment of planar spin shifting her atom by atom into the Flux.
He ran, ducking under the conduits, leaping up the last set of stairs. He hit the passage portal at a full run, so fast that he crashed into the corridor wall, ricocheted off, then pounded up the long incline to Habitat.
154... 155... 156...
"What can I DO?" His voice was too high, he knew, too panicked, but the adrenaline had him by the throat. This was exactly what they taught you to fear in the Academy, and they never taught you how to deal with it because there WAS no way to deal with it. Getting caught in the Flux was like getting caught in hard vacuum: you pretty much kissed your ass goodbye. Oh, Till had her emergency kit on, was keying in the sequence for the shield spell as he watched, but it was like a suit against that same hard vacuum: it couldn't save you, just delay the inevitable.
"Stine, fuck's sake, get a grip! Calm down." Till took her own advice, drawing in a shaky breath. The Flux was up to her breasts. The shield popped into being, a green halo of scintillating light disappearing into the Flux below her chest just like the rest of her. "The alarms've gone off by now. The sensor spells probably've been shot by that surge. You and Betel need to give S&R the coordinates we were harvesting. The feel of the quine, that weird spike. Everything you can. Understood?"
45... 46... 47... The Flux was up to her collarbone.
He nodded, though they both knew how little all that would help. The Flux would float her, the currents strong and unpredictable. The only Search and Rescue missions that succeeded were those that jumped in practically on the person's heels. And the caverns were so quine-addled here that they'd never gotten their internal comm spells to work. It'd take him long minutes to get there and fill Betel in, another howeverthefuck long before the Search and Rescue team could dive in.... Too long.
52... 53... 54... All he could see was Till's hands and her head. Her phosphor-green eyes were wide, reflecting the shield spell. "Pray for me," she whispered, and then she was gone, the Flux closing over her like water.
Stine turned and ran.
He shoved through the outer and inner doors, the mudroom, the buffer room, and pulled the quick-release on his pack. It hit the floor with a thud and a clank. Habitat was so cramped it'd only slow him down.
295... 296... 297...
"Till? Stine? That you? What the fuck happened, the alarms are going crazy but I can't--" Betel's eyes widened as Stine flew into the control room. The arcanos console in the air behind him was blinking like a holiday display, but whole swathes of it was murky-dark where the surge had burned out the sensors. "Oh fuck, what happened? Where's Till?"
Stine shoved past Betel's chair, throwing open the door to the key cabinet so hard it banged against the wall. Betel pulled his feet in just in time not to get hit by it. He always was faster than Stine. Better quine-senses, too. Maybe if he'd drawn harvesting duty that morning and Stine had been left to watch the console.... "Gone. Surge. She got sucked into the Flux."
"Oh, shit." Betel closed his eyes, then startled to attention, turning back to the console with remembered protocol. "The q-processor's log is fucked, what were the coordinates?" As if Stine could rattle off a thirteen-dimensional number off the top of his head. It took Betel a precious second (352...) to realize what he was asking and call up the logbook himself, cursing softly.
Stine's hands rummaged past the extra emergency kits and old Academy manuals, finally laying on what he was looking for: a gray, seamless box inscribed with Hyperion Energy's sigil. He pulled it out, falling into a chair without looking. Betel's fingers flew over the inputs out of the corner of his eye, signalling for a search dive that would come too late. Stine closed his eyes for a moment, mind running through the meditation forms at light speed--
360...
--before he breathed power into the correct spellform, held his fingers in the correct position, spoke the correct keyword in the correct tone. The sigil accepted his authorization and opened, the box splitting and the top flipping back.
There were a lot of keys inside. Each glowed like a jewel, a barely-physical access spellform inscribed with identifying sigils. The intrinsic control spells for the Gate were a string of bright white globes. Three matched sets of armor and offensive kit sat along the bottom row as midnight-blue pyramids. Stine grabbed a set, mind forming the keyform to unlock them. The armor slid into his aura, layering it with steely blue. The weapon kit fired along his nerves like electricity, making his fingers and mind tingle with arcanos. The kit's console appeared before his eyes, and Stine banished it impatiently. Hopefully he wouldn't need it.
Keys to the landing grid, the passage portals, the emergency overrides.... Stine ignored them all and snatched the two golden spheres in the upper right corner, dropping the box onto the table.
Betel caught sight of him as he ran out of the room. "I got an acknowledgment but--where are you going? Fuck. Stine!"
Stine ignored him. He didn't have time to explain.
380... 381... 382...
Confinement was an unmarked door at the end of the cross-hall, behind three passage portals keyed to their auras as base staff. He felt it when he passed the inner ward that kept Confinement a quine-free area. It always made Stine's inner ears hurt, much like they'd hurt when he'd first arrived and the quine had started humming in his bones, so much wilder than the arcanos he was used to.
"Stine! What are you--ow, fuck, I HATE that--doing?" Betel's eyes widened as he saw the keysphere glowing in Stine's hand. He glanced at the door, then at Stine again. "Oh no. No no no no, bad idea. REALLY bad idea." He grabbed Stine's wrist when he raised the key, his long fingers stronger than they looked, strong enough to make Stine's armor kit flit a notification across his vision. "NO. Stine, this is suicide!"
390... 391... 392...
"She's been in the Flux almost seven damned minutes, Bet. The divers aren't going to be able to find her, and you know it. No human, no human spells, can. This is the only way."
"That thing would rather eat us than help us, you know that! It nearly killed us when it came through!"
"I'll offer it something it wants more than eating us."
"What?"
"Its freedom." Stine shook off Betel's hand and slammed the key into the Confinement portal. The door shimmered and disappeared. "Now are you going to back me up or not?"
Betel bit his lip, eyes flickering from door to Stine and back again.
429... 430...
"...let me get kitted out," he said, softly. "For all the good it'll do. Three of us barely held that thing last time. It'll eat the two of us for lunch." He turned and ran back down the hall.
"Maybe," a deceptively human-sounding voice said from inside. "Maybe not. Come on in, lunch, and we can discuss it...."
Stine called up the offense kit's heads-up console, carefully did not stop to think, and stepped inside.
Hopefully the flashbacks will display right. I tagged on the style=light to the link so that the blockquotes hopefully won't go wonky on anyone's screen.
"The invention of the first transdimensional Gate was a grave disappointment to its creators. The dimensional milieux was vastly more complex than anticipated, and all the current theories of dimensional structure were woefully inadequate to describe--let alone allow humans to traverse safely--the transdimensional landscape. What lay beyond the Gates was named simply 'the Flux' for the incomprehensibly vast ebb and flow of information that even the most advanced computers--let alone the human brain--could not interpret.
"However, the Flux was rich with a multidimensional particlewave that was eventually dubbed 'quine'. It did not take long for the budding field of dimensional physicists to devise a method of converting quine into the more familiar arcanos energy that had fueled everything from human life-patterns to utilitarian spellforms to galactic exploration. The systematic harvesting of quine through pinprick Gates situated on naturally-occurring dimensional nodes quickly boomed into a multi-trillion credit industry.
"Nevertheless, this seemingly limitless energy came at a cost. Unpredictable Flux-surges through the Gates were common and occasionally overran all containment efforts within the harvesting facilities, leading to property destruction and loss of life through dimensional translocation. Additionally, the first harvesting teams learned another important lesson about the Flux: it was not unoccupied, and its denizens were as incomprehensible and dangerous as the Flux itself...." -- Barrowman Thane, Through the Gates: A Transdimensional History
He ran, the jagged rocks of the passage pounding into his feet even through the thick soles of his boots. His pack was still on his back, bouncing a bit on his shoulders, but he couldn't take the time to shrug it off. He just kept going, his breath ragged in his lungs, his mind ticking away the seconds.
61... 62... 63....
"NO! Stay back, Stine!"
"But...!"
"You'll get pulled in! Just stay back!" Thirty seconds since they'd noticed something wrong. Thirty seconds since the harvesting portal had flexed dangerously wide, exploding outwards in streaks and spikes. Thirty seconds since Till's foot had gotten caught and her boot, then her ankle disappeared into the Flux. Just thirty fucking seconds, and she was already half-drowned in it, the translocation wrapping coils of nothingness around her as it pulled her in. It was agonizing to watch: the planar shift crawling up her torso made it look as if someone was erasing her from existence. She couldn't even fight. There was nothing to fight against, just the slow alignment of planar spin shifting her atom by atom into the Flux.
He ran, ducking under the conduits, leaping up the last set of stairs. He hit the passage portal at a full run, so fast that he crashed into the corridor wall, ricocheted off, then pounded up the long incline to Habitat.
154... 155... 156...
"What can I DO?" His voice was too high, he knew, too panicked, but the adrenaline had him by the throat. This was exactly what they taught you to fear in the Academy, and they never taught you how to deal with it because there WAS no way to deal with it. Getting caught in the Flux was like getting caught in hard vacuum: you pretty much kissed your ass goodbye. Oh, Till had her emergency kit on, was keying in the sequence for the shield spell as he watched, but it was like a suit against that same hard vacuum: it couldn't save you, just delay the inevitable.
"Stine, fuck's sake, get a grip! Calm down." Till took her own advice, drawing in a shaky breath. The Flux was up to her breasts. The shield popped into being, a green halo of scintillating light disappearing into the Flux below her chest just like the rest of her. "The alarms've gone off by now. The sensor spells probably've been shot by that surge. You and Betel need to give S&R the coordinates we were harvesting. The feel of the quine, that weird spike. Everything you can. Understood?"
45... 46... 47... The Flux was up to her collarbone.
He nodded, though they both knew how little all that would help. The Flux would float her, the currents strong and unpredictable. The only Search and Rescue missions that succeeded were those that jumped in practically on the person's heels. And the caverns were so quine-addled here that they'd never gotten their internal comm spells to work. It'd take him long minutes to get there and fill Betel in, another howeverthefuck long before the Search and Rescue team could dive in.... Too long.
52... 53... 54... All he could see was Till's hands and her head. Her phosphor-green eyes were wide, reflecting the shield spell. "Pray for me," she whispered, and then she was gone, the Flux closing over her like water.
Stine turned and ran.
He shoved through the outer and inner doors, the mudroom, the buffer room, and pulled the quick-release on his pack. It hit the floor with a thud and a clank. Habitat was so cramped it'd only slow him down.
295... 296... 297...
"Till? Stine? That you? What the fuck happened, the alarms are going crazy but I can't--" Betel's eyes widened as Stine flew into the control room. The arcanos console in the air behind him was blinking like a holiday display, but whole swathes of it was murky-dark where the surge had burned out the sensors. "Oh fuck, what happened? Where's Till?"
Stine shoved past Betel's chair, throwing open the door to the key cabinet so hard it banged against the wall. Betel pulled his feet in just in time not to get hit by it. He always was faster than Stine. Better quine-senses, too. Maybe if he'd drawn harvesting duty that morning and Stine had been left to watch the console.... "Gone. Surge. She got sucked into the Flux."
"Oh, shit." Betel closed his eyes, then startled to attention, turning back to the console with remembered protocol. "The q-processor's log is fucked, what were the coordinates?" As if Stine could rattle off a thirteen-dimensional number off the top of his head. It took Betel a precious second (352...) to realize what he was asking and call up the logbook himself, cursing softly.
Stine's hands rummaged past the extra emergency kits and old Academy manuals, finally laying on what he was looking for: a gray, seamless box inscribed with Hyperion Energy's sigil. He pulled it out, falling into a chair without looking. Betel's fingers flew over the inputs out of the corner of his eye, signalling for a search dive that would come too late. Stine closed his eyes for a moment, mind running through the meditation forms at light speed--
360...
--before he breathed power into the correct spellform, held his fingers in the correct position, spoke the correct keyword in the correct tone. The sigil accepted his authorization and opened, the box splitting and the top flipping back.
There were a lot of keys inside. Each glowed like a jewel, a barely-physical access spellform inscribed with identifying sigils. The intrinsic control spells for the Gate were a string of bright white globes. Three matched sets of armor and offensive kit sat along the bottom row as midnight-blue pyramids. Stine grabbed a set, mind forming the keyform to unlock them. The armor slid into his aura, layering it with steely blue. The weapon kit fired along his nerves like electricity, making his fingers and mind tingle with arcanos. The kit's console appeared before his eyes, and Stine banished it impatiently. Hopefully he wouldn't need it.
Keys to the landing grid, the passage portals, the emergency overrides.... Stine ignored them all and snatched the two golden spheres in the upper right corner, dropping the box onto the table.
Betel caught sight of him as he ran out of the room. "I got an acknowledgment but--where are you going? Fuck. Stine!"
Stine ignored him. He didn't have time to explain.
380... 381... 382...
Confinement was an unmarked door at the end of the cross-hall, behind three passage portals keyed to their auras as base staff. He felt it when he passed the inner ward that kept Confinement a quine-free area. It always made Stine's inner ears hurt, much like they'd hurt when he'd first arrived and the quine had started humming in his bones, so much wilder than the arcanos he was used to.
"Stine! What are you--ow, fuck, I HATE that--doing?" Betel's eyes widened as he saw the keysphere glowing in Stine's hand. He glanced at the door, then at Stine again. "Oh no. No no no no, bad idea. REALLY bad idea." He grabbed Stine's wrist when he raised the key, his long fingers stronger than they looked, strong enough to make Stine's armor kit flit a notification across his vision. "NO. Stine, this is suicide!"
390... 391... 392...
"She's been in the Flux almost seven damned minutes, Bet. The divers aren't going to be able to find her, and you know it. No human, no human spells, can. This is the only way."
"That thing would rather eat us than help us, you know that! It nearly killed us when it came through!"
"I'll offer it something it wants more than eating us."
"What?"
"Its freedom." Stine shook off Betel's hand and slammed the key into the Confinement portal. The door shimmered and disappeared. "Now are you going to back me up or not?"
Betel bit his lip, eyes flickering from door to Stine and back again.
429... 430...
"...let me get kitted out," he said, softly. "For all the good it'll do. Three of us barely held that thing last time. It'll eat the two of us for lunch." He turned and ran back down the hall.
"Maybe," a deceptively human-sounding voice said from inside. "Maybe not. Come on in, lunch, and we can discuss it...."
Stine called up the offense kit's heads-up console, carefully did not stop to think, and stepped inside.