TH - Book 2 - Chapter 41 - Silver Sculptor

“I’m not afraid of heights but walking over these rickety bridges, in the dark, over what appears to be a yawning abyss… it’s a little unsettling,” I said quietly as Skyler, Grey and I slowly made our way to the next support.

There wasn’t much to the bridges between supports. They were unsupported metal walkways, just barely wide enough that two people could pass each other, with metal grate flooring and flimsy metal railings. They were probably quite sturdy at one time, but after years of neglect, hanging over a salt water bog, they were starting to show their age. 

“Well, it’s not like I can blame you. Who knows what’s in that shit,” Grey commented as she wandered ahead, hands behind her head like she didn’t have a care in the world. “You know there are a couple huge water treatment plants down here that try and filter all this crap out of the water. Unfortunately they’re trying to clean a pool the same size as the city, and every time it rains more and more shit ends up getting washed down here.”

She paused for a moment, and turned back to look at Skyler and me. “Still, it could be worse.”

“How could it possibly be worse than this?” Skyler asked. “I can almost smell the refuse through my mask.”

“In Calgary people live under the main city, and when it rains it carries chemical runoff from the factories down below. The gangs actually used to dump bodies in ooze to get rid of them, or so I’m told,” Grey casually explained.

“Really, that’s horrible. How can people possibly live like that?” Skyler asked.

“You’d be surprised. People can pretty much live anywhere, if they’re desperate enough. The situation is slowly improving though. A friend of mine has spent the last year slowly improving the local infrastructure so the locals don’t have to fight over scraps anymore,” Grey said, before pausing once again. “Anyway, my point was things can always be worse. That water is disgusting, but at least it’s not going to melt your skin off. Probably.”

“I know that was probably meant to be comforting in some way, but I assure you it wasn’t,” I muttered.

Thankfully this bridge was completely solid, and didn’t sway or even creak on our way across. That didn’t stop me from practically sprinting the last couple feet to the concrete support. As soon as Skyler finished crossing she came up behind me and rubbed me on the back until I calmed down.

“I don’t see the same blood and gore we saw on the last support,” Skyler announced once I’d gathered myself.

“But still a lot of structural damage,” I noted. “The debris hasn’t been cleared either, so the damage was probably pretty recent.”

Grey nodded. “My guess is whoever used to live here saw what happened on that other support and hightailed it out of here before the antithesis could reach them.”

Crouching down, she placed a hand on the floor for a moment before shaking her head. “I’m not detecting any abnormal vibrations here either. If we are chasing an SV-Seventeen, it doesn’t seem to be trying to communicate right now.”

“Can you pick up the vibration from their movement? A pack of antithesis has to make a lot of noise when they’re running around, right?” I asked.

“Not through all the background vibration. Keep in mind, each one of these supports is keeping an entire city block suspended above us, so I need to try and filter all that noise out too. I don’t have any specialized catalogs for this sort of thing, just using the nantites as an extension of my senses, so it’s quite difficult. I’m sure I could pick out strange, irregular patterns, but footsteps? Unfortunately not,” Grey admitted.

“That’s unfortunate,” I muttered. “Now what?”

“Now we fall back on the original plan,” Skyler declared. She held out her hand and half a dozen of her scout drones started orbiting it. “I sent a drone to every nearby support looking for anomalies, and we follow the path of destruction the antithesis are leaving in their wake.”

As the drones shot off into the darkness I leaned towards Skyler. “Are you sure you can handle this, and searching the Canal walls for other tunnels?” I asked. “I know scouting takes a lot of your focus.”

“It’s fine. The ones checking the walls are pretty much automated, they’ll just send me an alert if they find any anomalies,” Skyler explained. “I’ll have to concentrate while searching the supports though, so I’ll need you to watch my back.”

“You don’t have to worry about that, I’ve always got your back,” I whispered, giving her hand a little squeeze.

With a deep breath in Skyler’s eyes closed. I could see the REM behind her eyelids as she struggled to not only direct so many drones at once, but also focus on all their camera feeds. 

While she did that I paced around the area, inspecting the carnage, checking out the roof of the Canals, even checking over the side of the platform, pretty much inspecting every possible angle the antithesis could come from. I did hear Grey giggle at my slightly over protective behaviour, but I chose to ignore it.

Skyler’s eyes shot open again after a couple minutes. “There wasn’t any damage on the neighboring supports, so I had to extend my search. There’s a lot of blood on the platform directly north east of here, but no damage. I honestly can’t tell if it’s from the antithesis, or some sort of fight between the locals. It’s kind of hard to tell without bodies.”

“And you haven’t seen any more damage on the surrounding supports at all?” I asked her, confused.

“None,” she confirmed.

“That’s actually not that surprising, if you think about it,” Grey said. “If the SV-Seventeen is as smart as a regular Seventeen then it probably just let the other antithesis follow their instincts, and rampage around the first two platforms. But, the instant you killed that repeater it realized that someone was after it, and it reigned the others in.”

“Then, this is a false lead,” I said.

“It’s possible… but it’s also possible that it couldn’t suppress the instincts of the other antithesis enough to prevent them from killing, and harvesting easy targets. It’s not like the regular Seventeen, which has direct control, it’s more like an oversized six which can give orders in a much wider area,” Grey muttered. She stared into the darkness, towards the support in the north east for several long moments before turning back towards Skyler and me. “Right now it’s our only lead, so it’s worth checking out. Can you keep looking while we move Rain?”

“Not easily,” Skyler admitted. “Someone could guide me while I control the drones, but I don’t think crossing one of those narrow bridges while my attention is elsewhere would be safe.”

“That’s no problem, I can help with that,” Grey declared. 

With a flick of her wrist she sent a glob nanites flying into the shattered debris littering the support. Within seconds that small orb began consuming the mass of broken wood and metal, growing until it was the size of a basketball. At this point it grew pseudopods, and lashed out, pulling in more debris to fuel its growth.

Once the mass had grown to the size of a small animal it stopped consuming, and slowly slithered back across the platform towards us.

“What’s that for?” I asked suspiciously.

“Well, if Cleansing doesn’t feel confident walking across the bridge while monitoring her drones, I thought I’d offer some motive support,” Grey declared, pointing at the blob.

As if moulded by an unseen sculptor, the mass began to take on a shape. First, the back elongated into a long flat board, then the center hollowed out slightly, leaving an indent as the material from that area pushed to the side. Slowly, the mass turned into a crude, but comfortable looking chair. 

Once the chair finished taking shape six liquidy pseudopods shot out of the side of the chair, pushed on the floor and raised the chair up of the floor. Once it reached what I could only assume Grey thought was an appropriate height, these pseudopods began to inflate, taking on a much thicker profile. It took a minute, but when she was done Grey had created some sort of easy chair walking around on elephantine feet.

“I know it’s not the prettiest thing in the world, but it can carry you safely across the bridges while you monitor the drones,” Grey declared. “And it’s not only safe to use, but it’ll act like a safety device in an emergency, changing shape to both protect you and carry you to safety in an emergency.”

“Now, I know not everyone trusts my nanites, even though I have complete control over them, so I leave it up to you whether you’ll trust me to get you safely to our destination or not. If you don’t want to use the chair I’ll disperse it, and we can find another way to lead you across.”

Skyler eyed up the contraption, poked it a couple times with a finger, then finally slowly sat down in it. 

“And it won’t change shape, or grab on to me or anything?” she asked suspiciously.

“Only in the case of emergencies. It’ll just be a regular walking chair otherwise,” Grey confirmed.

“If it’ll help us track down the antithesis faster, I’ll give it a try,” Skyler begrudgingly agreed. “But the instant I don’t feel safe on it, I’m abandoning it.”

“That’s totally fair,” Grey agreed before turning on her heel and marching towards the nearest bridge. “Now, onwards girls. We have some antithesis to catch, and I don’t want to fall behind.”