Lilijoy sent a message to Anda asking him to log out, even as she piloted the craft in a vaguely north-east direction away from the factory-mine and her tribe. She knew that some of the clans had access to satellites, typically those from well before Guardian’s rise to power, as they had no computer systems worth consuming. There were also plenty of other techniques for ground surveillance, everything from balloons to stealth drones. Lone Star prided themselves on their air superiority, so she wasn’t incredibly worried that Sinaloa was tracking her directly, but she certainly couldn’t rule it out.

Out of caution, she was acting with the assumption that Sinaloa had seen her in New Manaus and probably knew when she left and her direction of travel. Originally, that hadn’t worried her much, as there was no way for them to intercept her in a timely manner without running afoul of Lone Star’s interceptors. That all changed if they had previously established a covert presence somewhere nearby.

She wasn’t running away, but she was very interested in finding a secure location from which to reconnoiter the situation.

How else would they track me? Perhaps plant a device on the hovercar? Am I being paranoid?

It was one thing to risk her Inside self, but Lilijoy had no intention of falling into any more traps. It was also much easier to change plans when there was only herself and Anda involved, and no particular time pressure.

I wonder if they tried to mess with the tribe? They might get more than they bargained for if they did.

An image of Pinton making Sinaloa operatives run laps crossed through her mind, and she couldn’t suppress a laugh.

"What’s so funny?” came Anda’s voice, followed by, “Why are there bugs in here?” which was followed by a hilarious hopping dance from the tall Maasai warrior as he tried to brush away the thousands of midges that had been basking on his warm body. The interior of the hovercar didn’t have quite enough room to accommodate his full height, so after the first time he banged his head he adopted a kind of hunched shuffle while waving his arms frantically.

Needless to say, this disrupted the midges, and soon the interior of the hovercar was thick with the tiny flies. Lilijoy kindly arranged for none of them to go in Anda’s mouth or nose while she curled up in hysterics on the floor.

Yup. World class.

A few minutes later, when the midges were settled down and Anda had regained what dignity he could, Lilijoy explained the additional passengers, and the more problematic possibility of a Sinaloa ambush at the Piles.

“...and let me just stop you before you start explaining how it’s just me overthinking things,” she said when he tried to cut in. She ignored the surprised expression on his face and continued. “I want to do this my way, and if it all turns out to be for nothing, it will still be good training.”

“Actually,” Anda said, “I can’t see any reason not to be cautious. The only information you don’t have is just how bad it would be for Sinaloa if they got caught violating Corp neutral territory. They’ve been on a kind of probationary status for years. It could spell the end of their clan if they step too far over the line. They have plenty of enemies who would love to find an excuse to destroy them, even a relatively feeble one.”

That did make Lilijoy feel a bit better, as it lowered the odds that Sinaloa had swept up or otherwise disturbed her tribe.

“Exactly how far does the area around the factory-mine extend?” she asked.

“Ten kilometers, though it’s not like there are any markers.”

“That’s a big perimeter,” she noted. “So if we circle around and approach from a different direction, it’s unlikely they could intercept us.”

“Assuming they can’t track us in real time. If we take the worst case scenario, then they might be able to maneuver quickly enough at ground level. There’s no reason they can’t cross the neutral area, if they’re polite about it.”

“Great. I hope we’re doing all this for nothing.”

After a few minutes, she was able to find a small ravine, long dry, that would protect them from the wind. She piloted the hovercar to a stop and released the midges to form a cloud around it. While she waited for the insects to assemble, she checked her status. She didn’t really need to, but it was on the way to checking on her midges. Besides it was a nice way to center herself.

STATUS: Disciple, First Circle

Stage One

Nanobody count: 5,182,228

Integration: 97%

Stage Two

Replication Units: 417

FLOPS Equivalent: 10^17.1

Integration: 70%

Secondary/Support: 4 identified

Communications: Stealth Mode

Sensors: Passive

RE Reserves: 0

Personal Quantification: Ranking Display

Options | Logs | Data | Reference | Menu

At this point, she had complete control over what the status showed, but she had tried to integrate as much as possible from the automated systems she had inherited from Emily. That included the somewhat enigmatic ranking system associated with the system as a whole. She could only assume that it had been meaningful in the context of a community of Tao System users surrounded by external support structures and data tools.

Isolated as she was, she couldn’t guess whether it was supposed to reflect one’s position in a command structure, a security clearance level, or something else entirely. The formula for determining the rank was complicated to an extent that Lilijoy hadn’t bothered to predict when she might hit the next threshold, that, and she enjoyed the feeling of surprise when her system decided she merited a new title.

Disciple, First Circle. I wonder if that will ever mean anything? Maybe someday I’ll try to find out if there is some lost repository of Tao System data hiding somewhere. It’s probably buried under a mile of ice, if there even is such a thing any more though. I suppose I could look for the place where Emily lived in Brazil as a starting point.

She continued to assess her various projects and support systems. Along with the satellites, now midges, she had mostly been focused on rebuilding her Rank Five skin bugs into the scaled approach that Anda had given her. That hadn’t required a huge amount of new cultivation, just attention, so during the long trip with Anda, she had worked on it while Jiannu worked on making satellite units. Her skin system was still far from complete, but now she didn’t need to worry about the stiffness and lack of flexibility she had encountered before.

And now to the midges.

She was pleased to note that the attrition from their journey, and Anda’s flailing, was only about a hundredth of the creatures. She ordered them to maintain an equal distance from each other while getting as close to the craft as possible, and the result was a thin layer of midges flying just off the surface of the vehicle. Lilijoy felt a little disappointed that it wasn’t more of a vast cloud surrounding vehicle, but the math checked out.

About three million midges, over about half a million square centimeters. Still should be enough for my purposes.

She started scanning through the midges for anything emanating from the craft. Any tracking device wouldn’t be so blatant as to constantly emit a signal, but her midges would happily fly over the same spot for hours. It was what they were best at, in fact. Whether a tracking device was active or passive, she was pretty sure that an hour or two would be enough to confirm its presence.

To kill time while she waited to catch a signal that probably didn’t exist, she experimented on a small group of midges she had reserved. She was a little handicapped by the lack of rare earths, but it wasn’t hard to pry out a small amount from the vast network of structures in her brain. The vast majority of her swarm had only the most minimal Tao System components, just enough to co-opt their instinctive behaviors. A few thousand had a more extensive network of Stage One flowers permeating their tiny brains, enough so that she could control their movements more directly, and receive some simple sensory information from them.

She was still experimenting with exactly how that might work for her; it wasn’t obvious how to convert their neural signals into something she could interpret with her own senses. She had played around a bit, learning how basic visual elements like light and darkness manifested in the signals she was receiving from the tiny flies, and how they detected shape and movement.

I wish I’d started with mammals. Rats would be good. I bet their visual systems have much more in common with mine. After all this, I’ll have to visit Old Manaus and collect the local population.

Still, midges was where she had started, so she resolved to keep working on the problem in front of her. She carefully built a parallel nervous system in one of her little friends, matching it neuron by neuron, connection by connection. It wasn’t overly difficult work, as it made use of her system’s hardwired abilities to mimic neural structures, and the midges had very few neurons to begin with, just over a hundred thousand total.

Still, there was certainly a bit of a learning curve adapting to a different set of neurochemicals, and the decidedly non-human configurations. If it weren’t for the extensive documentation of fruit fly brains available online, it might have taken her days, or even weeks, but as it was, she had a working Tao Fly after a couple of hours. It behaved exactly like a normal midge, which was only a triumph due to the fact that she had disconnected its original nervous system entirely.

It’s a shame these aren’t the biting kind, she mused. That would make the next stage of this so much easier.

The practical utility of her swarm had never been her main interest. She had been thinking of them more as vectors by which she could introduce Tao System elements into enemies and thereby interfere with their systems. As long as she had a certain density of midges between her and her enemy, she should be able to actively control her own satellites as they made their way into her opponent’s brain, while she stayed at a reasonable distance. She still had no idea what she might be able to do with that ability, beyond what she had done to Mo, but she hoped that eventually she would be able to do more than simple sabotage.

The problem now was how to deliver the payload. Midges had carbon dioxide receptors in their antennae, so her working plan was to send them into her opponent’s airways when possible. Skin contact could work, possibly, but it would take a long time and be quite wasteful, something that might work outside of a combat situation.

At the moment, she didn’t have any extra satellites anyway. They were all being used to control the midges, and she didn’t have the rare earths to make more.

A message from Anda arrived.

I’m assuming you haven’t found a transmitter?

How about I take the car, and check things out.

They probably won’t be looking for me, and there’s

no danger if the car is clean.

Anda had been cultivating in the hovercar while she played with the flies. She made her way over and opened the spiral hatch.

“That sounds like a good idea. Maybe you can bring back some chunks from the Piles so I can prepare a little,” she said.

“Yeah, I figured I would drop by the factory-mine," he replied. "I messaged someone I know who’s still there, and they haven’t seen anything out of the ordinary, but it’s not like they keep a particularly close eye on the area. There are automated systems for that. The troubleshooters are there to respond to unexpected visitors and other anomalies, but really, for most of them, it’s just a chance to earn a few credits for getting away from their troubles.”

“Okay. I’ll find some shelter around here. Stay in touch, and try to be back before sundown. I want to go back Inside, and I’d rather have you here when I do.”

Anda looked skeptical. “You think that’s a good idea? Quimea really got in your head last time. It might make more sense to give up on the Inside for a while and see what you can coordinate out here.”

“I want to try again. He may suspect that my Charm resistance is much higher than it should be, but I don’t know that for sure. Maybe I can make something happen.”

Mostly, she was just intensely curious about Nandi’s Boon, and didn’t really want to wait weeks or months to find out what it was. There were also a couple of half-formed ideas floating around in her head that she wanted to try if she got a chance. That reminded her…

“Anda, can they tell whether I’m logged in or not?”

“If they’re looking very carefully. Your logged out body still has the most basic signs of life, as if you were in a coma. It’s pretty tricky not to betray some hint of animation beyond that. If they still have you encased in stone, then they would never know.”

Good. I can go back in and experiment some more before anyone bothers me. Who knows if they’ll bother anyway. I did leave pretty abruptly.

After some basic contingency planning, Anda drove off in a midge free hovercar. The factory-mine wasn’t more than an hour away, so if everything went to plan, he should be back in time to be there if she was talking to the Doctor. Even though she could effectively split her consciousness to be both Inside and Outside, she would need to make use of her motor circuits to talk. Either that or talk on the Outside and pass the signals through. Either way, she didn’t like the idea of being somewhat compromised and alone in the wastes as the sun was setting.

That was when the predators came out, after all.

***

A few minutes walk down the dry ravine she found a small hollow in which to shelter, where water had once run freely and eroded the earth from under a rocky outcrop. Lilijoy could almost imagine the place as it once had been, shaded by enormous trees, covered by thick vines and creepers that fell to the rushing waters of the stream. Her shelter had probably been a deep pool, populated by some kind of exotic fish or frog that had never been seen by modern humans.

Now the ground beneath her was hard and cracked. She could still see the remains of ancient roots that had made their way under the stone and into the hollow, the last vestiges of the jungles that had burned so many years before. At least the radiation levels weren’t bad, with only a rare crackle in her consciousness as some particle carried in during a windy season dust storm decayed.

She settled her back against the stone and began her cautious login process. As before, there were no issues with her bodily integrity, and her senses were muted and covered. Clearly, the stone covering her head had been replaced.

In many ways, this was a relief, as she wouldn’t need to hide her facial expressions. Since she was still using the same motor circuits for both bodies, it would have been annoying to remain utterly still on the Outside.

Now, where was I?

Before she had pulled herself away to focus on the issue of Emily, she had been able to activate Nandi’s Boon and cover her hand and wrist in diamond mana. That had somehow made her hand able to pass through the stone, or more likely, brought her hand to some place else entirely. She had been very careful to return her hand to the same position it had occupied within the stone before she withdrew the mana, since she didn’t know what the possible consequences would be if her hand returned from... elsewhere into solid stone.

Since then, it had occurred to her that what would be a bad idea in normal circumstances might be the very thing she needed. If her hand exploded, or detached, or otherwise became injured, it might be a ticket to respawn. She got a chuckle out of imagining what her captor’s reaction would be if she were to pull that off.

Unfortunately, it was not to be. Her hand assumed the position it was in before the mana activated the boon as soon as the mana was withdrawn.

Her next experiment was to see whether she could convince the boon to extend further down her arm. As before, any excess mana she sent flowed off her glowing hand and back into her mana channels rather than causing any change. She tried to manipulate the mana in the glove directly, and while she was able to pull out a single strand of white iridescence, it didn’t seem to change the size or any other characteristic of the glowing gauntlet. Still, it was something new.

Now what can I do with a single thread?

To her internal mana sight, it looked much like she was wearing a glove that had started to unravel. When she mentally pulled on the thread, it stretched out farther and farther. Thankfully, unlike a real woven glove, it didn’t seem as if pulling on the strand of mana caused the rest of the glove to fray or otherwise fall apart. Soon, she had pulled out several feet of mana as thin as spider silk. It seemed to originate from the cuff area, but she found it wasn’t hard to move it around to start from the end of her index finger.

She entertained herself for a minute by wiggling her hand and finger in circles, causing the mana silk to spiral and flow in graceful curves.

So now what? she wondered, as the entertainment value of the activity waned. Is it a magic finger whip? Do I fish with it? I’m not sure I’d want to find out what I could catch. Also, I don’t have a hook.

The thought of catching things gave her another idea. She was no master weaver like Mr. Sennit, but she knew a thing or two about string and knots. After a great deal of frustration, she was able to gain enough control over the thread to tie a simple loop on the end using a bowline knot.

There! Now lets see if there’s anything else in here with my hand.

She wasn’t expecting much, as her working theory was that her hand was crossing over to some kind of between space. She had read enough fantasy to know that many kinds of movement skills relied on a parallel dimension, often full of shadows or something of that nature.

So she was quite surprised when her loop snagged on something after only a few casts. She couldn’t pull on it with her arm, but she could reabsorb the mana carefully into the glove and thus reel it in. Her mana sight didn’t allow her to see what she was pulling in, so it wasn’t until the loop reached her hand and she was able to grasp the item that she had any idea what treasure she had pulled from the great beyond.

Whatever it was, she could only feel it. At first she thought it might be a broken stick, or a small bundle of the same, but as she manipulated it through her fingers, she realized that the sticks were tied together, and that they had flared ends. Not very much like sticks, more like… bones. It seemed oddly familiar, but it wasn’t until she thought to use Scan that it all fell into place.

Finger Bone Necklace (Goblin)

fashioned by a Novice Jeweler

This isn’t some random item. This is mine. I wore it once.

A memory of the final hours at Fort Groveship passed through her mind. The smoke, the soot. Her goblin disguise.

In the Trial.