The Legacy of the Void

Chapter 5

Cairn stood beside the platform while Marcio and the others fanned the square. He knew they were wasting their time, but he also knew he couldn't leave without them, no matter how he might want to. Instead, he amused himself by playing back the audio he had recorded, playing with filters on the harmonics over and over again. He finally gave it up, knowing his limited means wouldn't get him what he wanted until he could have peace and quiet. A short, scrappy woman came to lean against the platform beside him. Her brown eyes were always in motion, and it only made him nervous when she paused for longer than a few seconds on one object in particular.

"Hey Z," he said socially. Of all the members of New Athens Underground, Zeeal was the closest to a friend he had. This fact didn't bother him, but everyone knew who he was, what he was, and they all treated him differently. Some openly despised him, some pitied him, but Zeeal simply treated him like a normal person. "Find anyone?"

"No." She finally let her gaze settle on him. "You?"

"I wasn't even looking," he replied absently. His head tilted slightly as if trying to filter a whisper, but he couldn't find what he was still missing.

"We might as well head back. We have audio, we have visuals, we'll find her."

"And then?" he asked carefully.

"Depends, doesn't it?"

"It shouldn't," he said softly. "She should be safe until the leaders decide."

"Well, Hlenea is in town, so it'll probably go your way."

"Z, if it went your way, we'd never recruit anyone."

"Better than Marcio, who recruits too many," she replied hotly.

He shrugged, shouldering his bag that housed his equipment. "Come on, before the rest start to file back. I'd like some peace to work."

She nodded, and started to scan her way back out of the crowd. Z was the absolute best to have in a crowd, but if one wanted to make friends, she was as likely to shoot them. She'd earned the nickname "Trigger" in the wider circles of the Underground, and with good reason. Cairn shook his head at the thought. He hated his nickname, no need to think about hers.

The abandoned warehouse that the Underground had procured was about two blocks from the outskirts of town. It was completely refurbished inside, but had enough sensors on the outside to give warning of any intruders. Z and Cairn parted ways at the entrance, with Z to give a mission report to the visiting Elders, and Cairn to get to work. His office, as he viewed it, was set at the very top of the building. There was one benefit to his particular skill set, and that was the simple fact that he was left alone when he was working. Unless there was something more important going on. He set up his equipment, sat down with a sigh, and fervently hoped Marcio didn't come back with anything new. He needed time, and peace, and quiet. Nothing that Marcio embodied.

As he got his latest surveillance set up to run through a few filtering programs, he thought about Marcio and why the other man bothered him so much more than he used to. Cairn was a few years past the Lalatian prime of twenty, and he'd been drug along by the Underground for the last ten years in one role or another, but in the beginning, he'd been just as much a recruit as the next person, and just as much under Marcio's spell. Marcio's gift was in his beliefs. He believed in the cause. He believed in their eventual victory, and he believed that every single person he recruited could be the person that changed the tide of the covert war against the Overlord. However, when he had been assigned to helping find the moles after a few too many recruits when rogue, he'd fallen back into Cairn's path, and they'd started off on the wrong foot ever since. Cairn was very good at what he did, but he was not flashy. He preferred to hide in the shadows, and for good reason, but Marcio wanted the spotlight, and as long as they were assigned together, one was going to have to be miserable.

A faint beeping startled Cairn from his thoughts, and he tapped on a few worn keys until he had the pure audio he had been looking for. Excluding the movements of Michael, the only android in the crowd, he then filtered out the simple noises of life until he had the tiny fillip that had registered in his mind before. He played it again, and again until he was absolutely certain. Pulling up the visuals he had also placed, he mildly cursed. Simple computer programs were not his forte, audio was. But he also needed visuals. After narrowing down his selection he finally caught a glimpse of just who he was looking for. With a tiny movement of her wrist, one of the onlookers stood apart. No natural wrist moved that way, and it confirmed what he already suspected, that another non-humanoid element was in play. Zooming in on the image, he could only make out the lower half of her face, but it was enough to start. Typing in a few key search items along patterns he recognized, he let his computer whir along until a single match came back. For several long, uninterrupted seconds, he stared into the face of Alya.

A knock on his door interrupted his reverie, but he let the image stay up. He was going to have to share it with the group anyway. Turning, he watched as Zeeal came in the door. She took in the monitor in a glance.

"Well, you said she was Lalatian."

"I did. Do you know who she is?" he asked, unable to hide the faint edge of excitement in his voice.

"That says Alyaria Herimatia. Should I know her?"

"Look at her alias." He said helpfully.

"Alya Garron. That sounds human."

"It is, and, more importantly, it's the last name of the man Michael is based off of."

"She named herself after the android? What sort of idiot would do that?"

"She's no idiot, trust me." He leaned back and couldn't help the smile that spread. "She's the granddaughter of his creator."

"That is Arianya Heliose's granddaughter? How can you be sure?"

"Because I ran the data. She has an artificial right hand which, by the looks of, she's made extensive alterations to. And who else would have access to the information needed to make contact with Michael? I've watched the video, I've listened to the audio. She's our person."eZ's eyes started to sparkle with malice. "But what is she doing with the monster?"

"You'd have to ask her, but whatever it is, it's not good for him."

Her gaze sharpened on him, and he experienced an unwelcome prickle of apprehension. She was dangerous and deadly when she looked at anything like that. "What makes you say that?"

"There's a very faint static sound that comes from him after the communication ends. If he is anything like a standard android, he ran a program to override."

"Of what?"

He shrugged. "You'd have to ask him, or, better yet, her, but if I had to guess, he wiped her from his data banks before going back to the station."

"Why would he do that?"

"Really?" he asked with some surprise. "That the lot of you fail to understand how the other side operates amazes me." His words held a certain bite to them. He had spent the majority of his life facing the same, repeated close mindedness Zeeal was giving him. She just continued to glower, so he offered a tiny olive branch. "If there is a connection between android and Lalatian, and the Overlord were to find it, hellfire would rain down on us all."

Z just snorted. "You think too highly of this girl, and the damn android for that matter. It's just a machine, a machine trained to kill."

Cairn shook his head, dropping down the info that was so vital to their cause, but completely lost to the woman beside him. "He was not created for that life." He went back to work, completely ignoring her, and in short enough order she left. Only when she was gone did he pull up everything he could about Alya Garron. He knew at that exact moment he had to be the first to find her. He might just be her only hope.