The tall, black-clad figure of Zinnai Savita Ké glinted into shape with a sigh of expanding air and a shower of portal radiation overspill, her e-familiar, Zac, following in close attendance. She never travelled on her own these days, not since being recruited by Insight anyway. Being in a world of conspiracy, unexplained tech, and poly-cortical chimeras did that to a person.
She found herself in a narrow, musky-scented corridor, with a flight of wooden steps at one end and a large stained-glass window at the other. Next to the window was a door; which was big, solid, and made of oiled oak; with an unwieldy iron handle and matching black studs decorating its surface.
“Very medieval,” she commented to Zac, raising an eyebrow. “I guess we go through there.”
The drone bobbed twice in agreement, “You want to go together, or should I take point?”
Ké pondered for a moment. Things felt different this time. There was something about the atmosphere that set her psi-spikes jangling, “You go first, just don’t kill anything. Well, not unless it tries to kill us first.”
“Got it boss. Truth be told, I’m finding being associated with blood and gore all the time a bit tiresome these days. There’s more to my story than that,” Zac floated towards the door, extruded a planar field, and pushed the handle down. The sound of bolts being withdrawn echoed down the corridor, and he nudged the door open with his prow. On the other side was an expansive patio; floral decorations arranged in psi-jamming patterns around its balustrade. Standing together, near the far wall, were Arch-Teron Mise and an acolyte, which Ké’s HUD identified as Novitiate Brime, as she expected. The acolyte was kissing the Arch-Teron’s fleshy chest, his golden robes pulled aside, and his mitre lying discarded on the patio flagstones.
Ké coughed and the startled priest pulled his robe together, swivelled his head around, his jowls flapping, and mouth open. Recovering his composure quickly, he said, “Agent Ké. What brings Insight to my little haven?”
“Witness reports,” Ké responded. “Several complaints have surfaced about your activities. You know the sort of thing: disappearing novitiates and so on.”
“I know nothing of disappearing novitiates,” Mise replied, a cold, arrogant, certainty underpinning his quietly spoken words. “As far as I’m aware, the entire college is present and correct.”
“Ah, now here’s the thing, we found out four of your novitiates are androids, disguised to look like their missing doppelgangers. So, we did a bit of survey work in the Edge Sea, and it turns out there are four bodies deep beneath the water in the Corridors Sound,” she said. Then touching her bottom lip with her index finger, she smiled. “We haven’t pulled them out yet. But I’m betting that when we do, they’ll be our missing novitiates.”
“That doesn’t implicate me, though. Does it, Ké?” Mise sneered. “I’m just an innocent enjoying the company of this delightful young man. I have no connection with any others, missing or otherwise.”
“Regrettably, for you anyway, we have a large network of informants behind us, Arch-Teron,” Ké said. “And one of them came to us with some information; a Doctor Allman, who specialises in genetic alterations. And it turns out an elderly man with a posh voice, just like yours, had an unusual procedure. Very unusual.”
“What of it?” Mise snapped, his eyebrows narrowing. “There must be thousands of well-spoken older men on this habitat.”
Ké smiled again and took a step forward, “Ah yes, that’s true, but only one had their genetic profile altered to make their semen a highly deadly toxin. Fortunately, the doctor is quite meticulous and recorded the genetic profile of his patient.”
“That’s inadmissible in any court. Patient confidentiality,” growled the Arch-Teron.
“Indeed,” said Ké. “That’s why they sent me. I don’t stand on legal niceties.”
There was a moment when everything stood still as realisation slotted into place.
Grabbing the acolyte, Mise pulled a thin metal tube from his robes and pressed it against the boy’s forehead. “I’m sure you know what this is.”
“It looks like a shock-rod, boss,” Zac said, moving to one side to flank the priest.
“Correct,” snarled the priest as he moved towards a small gate in the floral arrangement. “And now, I’m going to make my way to my slip-craft, parked in front of the rectory. If you try to stop me, I will release an energy pulse into his head.”
In a flurry of motion, Zac hit the rod, and took the full force of the blast, sending it and him cartwheeling across the floor, but before Ké could grab the priest, he drew a small, ugly gun from his robes. “That’s a pity. Now I’ll have to deal with you. Don’t bother trying to use your psi-powers. I’m sure you’ve already noticed, this lovely floral arrangement has a psi-blocking pattern. I rather like my privacy.”
He raised the gun and pointed it at Ké’s chest. “Goodbye, Agent Ké. I won’t say it’s been nice meeting you.”
Before he could squeeze the trigger, the boy novitiate leapt to his feet, kicked the gun from his hand and locked the Arch-Teron in a vice-like neck-hold.
“What the freg?” Mise gasped. He tried to wriggle free, but the boy’s arms were like rods of steel.
Ké smiled grimly and strolled over to the fallen drone. “You okay, Zac?”
“A bit shaken up, boss,” the drone buzzed. “But nothing a couple of hours in the workshop won’t fix.”
She turned to the priest and, nodding at the acolyte, said, “You should have realised, Mise, you’re not the only one who can use androids. Once we were on to you, it was a simple matter of placing one of ours into the college.”
Slipping the fallen drone into her pocket with the words, “You did good, Zac”, Ké turned on her heel and marched back to the oak door.
“What about me?” Mise wailed. “You can’t leave me at the mercy of this machine.”
She looked back, momentarily tempted to end it right there, and said to the android novitiate, “Bring him. I suspect he’s going to spend a long time in one of our secure facilities, planet-side.”
The android nodded, and half carried, half dragged, the former Arch-Teron to his destiny.
Later, in the Chapter House, Ké looked in on Zac in the workshop. A tech was bent over him, with bits of his circuitry splayed around his bench. “How’s it going?”
“I’ll have him back and working in next to no time,” the tech said. “I heard about the incident. Makes you think, doesn’t it? We’re supposed to trust the priests, and yet there’s the Arch-Teron firing toxic jizz down the throats of adolescents. I just don’t get it.”
“He got off on seeing the terror in their faces, after experiencing his own ecstasy, I guess. It was a quick acting poison, so they didn’t suffer for long – maybe a few seconds of realisation, then paralysis and death within two minutes,” Ké shook her head sadly.
“I suppose it’s not that different to your poisonous fingernail glands,” the tech said.
Ké scowled, “The intent is. I don’t like using the glands. The whole point of his adjustment was the terror.”
“So, what are you going to do with him? We can’t prosecute; he’ll have every political string yanked so hard, they’ll end up giving him a medal,” the tech replied.
“It’s not up to me, but I expect he’ll end up in an Insight internment facility on some barren asteroid. Hopefully, they’ll remove his weaponry. I’m almost tempted to volunteer to do the procedure myself, but I doubt that’ll fly with the agency,” she said with a wink. The tech shuddered and returned to tinkering with Zac’s innards.
“While you’re here, I’ve got a few upgrades you might be interested in. It seems to me you could do with an offensive capability,” the tech said.
“The more the merrier. What have you got?” Ké said, her eyes lighting up.
“Let me finish with Zac here, and come down to see me in say, half an hour, and we’ll see what I can dig up for you,” he replied.
“You’ve got a deal. Just make sure Zac is okay. I miss the little twit,” Ké said.
“I heard that,” Zac’s voice buzzed from his carapace. “I miss you too Zinnai Savita Ké.”