The Wild Ba’Neesh Chapter Eight ©2019 Fay Thompson All Rights Reserved

Mick and Elias fell into an uneasy silence with both of them thinking about the relative presence of Kiena, if, from different perspectives. This floater was military grade and virtually soundless, its disk shape giving it no real front or back. The driver’s seat was more a designate than a fixed seat. This meant that any of the perimeter seats could become a driver’s seat or run the automated systems. Most children could program a vehicle destination by the age of eight and many did. Almost all vehicles used generic operating systems so people could travel worldwide with minimal difficulties. Only the big transports and commercial craft had specialized systems and even those were based on intuitive concepts.

To Mick’s eyes this floater had a lot of extra stuff. The central cargo area had built-in containers including one with a pretty good supply of food and drink. He could guess that the other containers held weapons, medical, external shelters and gear. It wasn’t a large floater, not like the other one Elias had shot. When the weapons fire hit the other floater it’s cloaking had flickered and the holoscreen had shown a larger vehicle. He could guess the other one was a multi-person transport. There were only five seats in this floater. That likely made it faster than most.

Elias was keeping himself turned toward Mick both watching and watchful. Mick was thinking. He’d actually slept for a goodly amount of time in the tree, he’d eaten and while he could use a bathroom break, it wasn’t a desperate urge, yet. He was worrying over his situation. He didn’t really know what was going on. In a game his lack of game knowledge would make him easy meat. He didn’t like being easy meat and usually he read up and studied games long before he joined any so he could evade the common pitfalls. He knew this wasn’t a game but gaming was the best foundation he had to analyze the situation. He needed information. He could guess that this security guy would eventually make a move on him with or without Kiena’s visible presence.

Mick knew that Kiena only showed up when she wanted to, not every time he called out to her. He couldn’t trust his safety on her assistance. And besides, he kind of wanted to ditch her and all of them if he could get back to his real life. He was pretty worried that his real life had vanished, like it never really existed in some way. That really disturbed him.

Although he’d been around Kiena for a couple years, he had avoided thinking about her. She was like a game person, fake and a bit mean. She bugged him, made him feel odd, lacking. He couldn’t imagine what she might be doing when she was both invisible and silent because he didn’t tend to think about her as real, until now.

He couldn’t afford to ignore her any more as that lack of knowledge could kill him and he didn’t want to die. He was becoming increasingly curious about her now since he was in her power and she was effectively screwing with his life. He figured that the security guy’s private slate, the one still on his lap, held all the goodies and it wasn’t privacy blocked. He needed to separate from the guy far enough to snoop and see what this guy knew that he didn’t. He needed to find out his mom was okay and, he needed a plan.

The floater slowed and sounded a destination alert. Both Elias and Mick watched as it dropped down to skim the ground following a badly decayed, heavily overgrown roadway. The shelter was a tunnel entrance on that abandoned roadway, mostly obscured by bushes and dangling vines. Mick understood from the visuals that Elias had chosen a remote location, somewhere in the Reserves. That meant there wouldn’t be civilization too close except for Reserve Teams. He could guess Elias had avoided any nearby teams too.

The Reserves were large areas of formerly inhabited land that was being cleaned up, allowing nature to heal the wounds of the too-rapid human population growth and sprawl of earlier generations. They hadn’t gotten to road removal in this area yet and Mick knew that tunnels were often left intact so long as risk of collapse was minimized. He’d had to study the International Reserve Act in his classwork. Like all children and healthy adults, he had worked on a clean-up team in the Reserves for three weeks out of every year from the age of five. It was a mandatory citizen activity although individual nation-states ran their programs differently, every human being was considered a citizen of the planet and as such, they were part of the clean up.

The floater came to rest a few hundred yards deep inside the hillside tunnel. That would put dirt and stone overhead, an effective screen against easy detection. It was dark. The tunnel’s lights had long-ago been removed and recycled.

The lights inside the floater automatically compensated.

“Well.” Elias said. “We have arrived.” He was trying to figure out a way to test and see if the entity was active.

“Right.” Mick sat up and stretched a bit. His analysis of the inside of the floater had shown a collection of hand-held torches mounted just inside the main door. “I think you should take a torch out and look around, make sure no big, bitey animals are sleeping in here with us. I can run the exterior lights too but the tunnel should be checked for signs of bad cracks, you know the drill. You’ve done Reserve Work, right?”

Elias didn’t comment. Order-born Soek didn’t work on Reserve Teams, they weren’t official planetary citizens. Instead he said, “And you?” Elias stood up. He wasn’t against checking around outside. A normal security detail would include evaluating an unknown location. He could guess Mick had ulterior motives, like snooping on the floater. Good for him.

“I need to use the facilities.” Mick answered. It wasn’t exactly a lie, all floaters had built in crappers in the bottom of the craft through a trapdoor and ladder.

“A weapon?” Elias asked, expecting rejection.

“Yeah, right. Uh, no. Find a stick or something. Likely the floater would have scared away most anything big enough to eat you. Besides, I bet you have skills.”

Mick was already standing up. Elias was only a little bit taller than he was if much more developed, muscular like a trained fighter. His appearance made Mick jealous. He knew that he looked like a too-thin scrawny boy. Tall enough, but he barely exercised enough to pass his physicals, not enough to be athletic. Now he regretted not pushing himself a bit more.

Elias didn’t argue. There was no sign of the entity but he wanted to learn more. He felt that he needed to build trust with Mick, become a person, find out what was really going on. So, it delayed DireSec’s arrival by a few hours, Jordy would expect him to use the opportunity to the best advantage. Now that the kid had mentioned security, he wanted to check to be sure there wasn’t any sign of pursuit.

Elias knew that sometimes a Vrill-wave half-sigil would be better at detection than any mechanical sensor. But, he didn’t want to do source work where the boy could see him doing it. He was pretty certain the boy had zero training and he intended to keep him that way. “Fine.” He pulled down two torches and stuck the second in his waist loop. He took along a couple nutrient bars from the food storage locker and a fresh bottle of water. What he intended would take at least an hour. “I’ll head inward first to see if the tunnel is blocked, it might be necessary to leave quickly and having two exits is better than one. I’ll check the opening where we entered second. I’ll be awhile.”

Elias stepped down onto the old road surface. It had a soft and mushy feel under his boots. That meant this road was laced in oil-based plastics. Durable and flammable. Not an ideal combination, no wonder the teams hadn’t started recycling these roads yet. He headed off into the darkness.

Mick locked both exterior doors and made sure the top iris hatch was in its locked position. They could be pushed open for safety but not entered from the outside without a lot of effort. It gave him some privacy. He pulled off the wretched pack, pulled the trapdoor open and hurried down the ladder. Talking about the bathroom had increased his urgency so it was with considerable relief that he used the facilities. He spent the next few minutes examining the tightly-packed storage lockers surrounding the facilities. They were jammed. It was clear that whomever owned this private ride was maxing out for all kinds of possible events. In one container he found transport sacks and as soon as he touched one he liked it. He was that way about his clothing too. His mom said he had some kind of allergy to synthetics. He knew what he liked even if they weren’t modern all the time. Modern had its limits in terms of comfort.

He headed back up the ladder carrying the sack. The exterior cameras no longer showed Elias but there was a heat tracker that was following a moving dot in one direction. Rather the spy guy than him. He walked back to his seat and glared at his pack. What he wanted to do was play with the man’s slate and figure out how to use the weapons and gadgets he had in a pile. What he did was upend his pack and dump his dirty, wrinkled clothing on the floor, along with the disgusting rotted sack.

He separated his clothing from the bones and then ripped what was left of the sack open. In the better part of what had been the sack was a skull, and it wasn’t human. He frowned. It looked like Kiena all right. His skin tried to crawl around. They were non-human bones but they were like human bones. They were whatever she was, obviously. Did that mean they were her bones? If so, didn’t that mean she was a ghost? Ghosts didn’t blow up city electric systems. He was getting something wrong here.

He carefully opened the brand new transport bag and put the skull inside first. He wanted to just shove the bones in quickly and be done but even as he reached for one he felt his guts twist. It was the wrong bone. He frowned. There was no such thing as right and wrong bones. Still, he paused over another bone and it was first. He discovered there was an order to the packing of the bag and he couldn’t deviate. It got easier. They didn’t smell and when he touched them there was a feeling that flowed into him that he liked. Was that Vrill? He arranged the bones as they demanded he arrange them, right down to the tiny bones. That reminded him of his bone, the one in his pocket. He pulled it out last and was going to put it on the very top but his hand wouldn’t lower. He stopped. She had suggested a string, like he wear it like a necklace. There was string in the medical kit, and scissors. He brought out the cord. He had to widen the hole a bit more but finally he had made it into a necklace. As soon as he got it over his head he felt relief. Was that her feelings or his?

He scooped up the remains of the bag and shoved them into the recycler, hitting the button to remove the waste. He brushed at the floor with his boot to disperse the remaining dirt. That left his clothing. He pulled off his soiled shirt and found the cleanest shirt in his pile. He took the time to change all of his clothing right down to his underwear and socks. Among the built-ins was a small laundry machine that he filled with the first load of his dirty clothing. He made two other small piles because he didn’t want bone and corpse dirt on his clothes.

There were wipes in the medical unit that he used to clean the inside of his pack and then he moved the transport bag into his pack. It was what she wanted and somehow, it was what he should do, just because. The logical part of his brain told him he was being stupid. But, first things first. He filled the rest of his pack with nutrient bars and filled his mother’s jug with fresh water. He pulled out the real food and a juice and deployed the flip-up table on his chair. Elias was still walking away from the floater, according to the heat sensor. That meant this tunnel was fairly long and it curved toward the right. Mick watched a few times and saw the man was pausing, sometimes circling and then walking on. It was clear he was discovering something out there but it hadn’t really stopped him. So, that was okay.

He powered up the slate and once again marveled at how massively advanced it was. Clearly, what was available to the general public was crap.

It took him the better part of thirty minutes to work through the upper files to find what he wanted, recent communications between Elias and someone named Jordy. His boss? It was an ongoing conversation about the city electrical event. Mick scrolled back to the first mention and started reading aloud. He wanted to hear the conversation like it was inside a game, it made it feel more strategic and real. He even mimicked Elias’ voice for the one side and a deeper voice for the other. In games, you could often develop a sense of opponents by how they spoke, their tone, their inflection and word choices. He guessed Jordy was around the same age as Elias and they seemed tight, like real life friends. That made him a bit jealous too, were both of them Soek? Why did they know each other?

Most guys didn’t get along with him too well, even when he was little and his mom was in the play groups, he was called anti-social and immature.

At some point he became aware that something had changed. He looked around. The Elias dot was moving back toward the floater but that didn’t feel like the change he sensed.

“Kiena?” He asked aloud.

“Continue the story.” She answered from nowhere and everywhere.

She’d been listening? Mick tried to feel irritated or annoyed, but instead he felt some relief and that was just stupid. So, he went back to reading the two parts. He learned that these men worked for an organization called the Directorate and a branch called DireSec. That explained a few things. What was more difficult to understand was their references to Ba’Neesh and a situation and who was OrderSec? They had sent a message to OrderSec almost like this Order group was also in charge. Two bosses of one group sounded strange.

He learned that there were three different groups chasing him. The local Anti-Terrorist Team, DireSec and OrderSec combined and a third group called Tule Soc. DireSec was not worried about the locals. He watched footage of his parents being interrogated and his entire bedroom being torn apart and bagged. The locals were calling him the likely suspect. His parents were upset but they hadn’t been home when it happened and they weren’t being blamed. They were taken for additional interviews to places Mick didn’t recognize but they sounded like downtown somewhere.

There were interviews with his psychiatrist, and a message about him being on a watch list for years for anti-social behavior. His grades were examined and discussed and then they latched onto his game choices, noticing his preference for RPG and solvers. All of this was woven in with strategy between this Jordy and Elias. It became clear to Mick that this Elias guy was a top guy, maybe a number two and his expertise centered on tech. The Jordy guy was a boss. It was massively complex, particularly when they were discussing the deployment of Tule Soc operatives. They clearly viewed Tule Soc as a serious enemy.

Mick sat back when the majority of the conversations were sorted and looked at. Some of them were marked for further study. These guys were pulling apart his life in great detail. Why? He was exactly nobody special, an adopted boy.

“They have to be looking for you.” He said. “You did this. You blew up the grid. I’m the mask hiding you.” He accused.

Elias had reached the floater. He tapped on the door. “Mick?” He asked loud enough to be clearly heard inside.

“Yeah?” Mick didn’t want the spy guy inside, not until he had some kind of defensive plan.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, sure. Cleaning my clothes.” He answered, not sure why he added on the last.

“Laundry?” Elias frowned at the door. Why was the kid cleaning his clothes, did he have a fetish? The visual state of his bedroom when Anti-Terrorism arrived to film it suggested a slob, not a neat freak.

“Yeah. I had blood on my shirt.”

“Oh, right.” Elias recalled the kid’s knife-cut shoulder. The memory startled him. In retrospect he could grasp that cutting out the locator had to have been forced. She had forced the kid. They had force against them in common. Why hadn’t he thought of that earlier?

“You want me to join you or finish the detail out here?” Elias wanted to do the wave. He could guess DireSec would be running trace and would pick up such a Vrill spike easily. Tule Soc might to, but he could bet DireSec had better tech, at least enough to arrive in the area first. It wasn’t like he wanted to take on Tule Soc alone although he remained uncertain of both Mick and the entities capabilities. Too many unknowns.

“Go ahead and finish.” Mick answered.

Elias shrugged, no doubt the boy was exploring the floater. He would have in the boy’s place. It didn’t matter. That the kid was running his slate irritated him, but that too didn’t matter. Whatever he learned would just be wiped out when the team arrived. Better to forge trust. “Okay. I’ll be back later.” Elias tapped again and then Mick watched him move out of the floater’s lights and toward the tunnel opening.

“He is sneaky.” Kiena said.

“Yeah, he intends to bonk me on the head or zap me or take a stunner to me and then give me to his DireSec Team or those Order people, whomever they really are. I need to learn his weapons and devices. I need some damn skills. Why did you dump me into this game without any skills or creds or buy-ins or nothing?”

“Good plan.” Kiena said, “Will these attack types cause blood? I like blood.”

Mick glared around in general as she was invisible. “You’re going to let him bonk me after I took care of your bones all by myself.”

“If it is enjoyable.”

“Enjoyable? This isn’t fun.” He wanted to throw something at her.

“Oh, he’s doing a working.” Kiena interrupted him.

Mick automatically pivoted to face the direction Elias had walked toward, the tunnel entry. “What do you mean?” Mick asked, distracted. “What’s a working?”

“He knows the Vrill and the Vrill knows him. Interesting. Those drone things, can you get one out there to watch him?”

Mick blinked. That was actually a good idea. He called up visual drones and found out the floater had three sizes. The middle size drones were missing, shot down by the floater earlier. That left a dozen of the tiny eyes and two big weapon drones. He deployed two eyes to “Find the target, observe, transmit and return.” It really wasn’t much different from a game, just slightly different commands. He knew he was fast at learning new games. He just needed time.

Within moments the drones flitted to the tunnel opening and out into the sunlight. Once they adjusted for glare they were able to locate the target. Elias.

“What’s he doing?” Mick stared at the holo. Elias was picking up handfuls of dirt and making half-circle rings away from the tunnel entrance, starting with the largest ring and continuing inward.

“He is making a sigil.” Kiena said with a great deal of curiosity. “But, only a half. Why only a half?”

“I don’t know.” Mick shrugged. “You mean half a circle? That looks like the drawing of a wave front, not a target.”

“Explain a wave front?” Kiena asked.

“You know, like the ocean. Waves moving toward a shore, only in my physics class they draw waves like that sometimes or as squiggly lines.”

“A Vrill wave?”

“I don’t know. Look, he’s drawing a Cleopatra eyeball at the bottom center. What’s that for?”

“To see.” Kiena’s voice sounded excited because she was.

Mick walked over to the Vrill multiplier. “How is he accessing your Vrill stuff. Look at the gauge, it’s dipping.” He squealed and jerked back. “It’s trying to suck me out.” He yelled.

Almost as soon as the wave began, it ended. The machine’s gauge returned to normal and Mick no longer felt the pull of it. He stared at the holographic screen receiving drone footage. Elias had gestured and audio picked up a word, a familiar cadence on it. He had that weird sounding voice thing too. Mick didn’t like that a bit. He replayed that part and heard the word “Searchers.”

Mick patted himself, rubbed his forehead and tried to feel the invasion of it. Nothing happened.

“He did what you do and I don’t feel like I have to search for anything.” He blurted out.

“It wasn’t directed at you.” Kiena replied.

“Directed. You mean those words, that special sound thing, it can be directed at, it’s not just like a loudspeaker affecting everyone in hearing?”

“Precisely.”

Mick stopped twitching and watched Elias turning his head slowly from right to left. “What’s he doing now?” He asked.

“He’s seeing if there are searchers approaching from those directions.” Kiena was watching avidly, deeply interested, learning.

“Can you see too?” Mick asked.

That penetrated.

“Hurry, a bowl and water.” Kiena ordered, the whip of Vrill just glazing the edge of her words.

Mick didn’t need the extra incentive. He pulled a bowl out of the food container and filled it with water. He placed it on his seat’s table. “Now what?”

“Let’s look through.” Kiena said, manifesting before his eyes. She was in her more solid form, enhanced by the extra Vrill of the multiplier. She looked real. She was staring down into the water. Mick tried to angle in around her horns. He could only see a little bit but it was enough. The water was looking out across the landscape like he was on a drone, searching.

“Oh hell no.” He gasped. “That’s like magical shit.”

“Yes.” Kiena agreed, well pleased with the few seconds of viewing that had taken place. The boy was proving useful.

“Magic doesn’t exist.” He shook his head. Vrill. Magic. Energy. Elias causing something to flow away from him in a wave and return with imagery. Magic. That wasn’t possible.

He watched Elias deliberately scuff his dirt drawing until no trace of it remained. If Mick hadn’t seen it happen then he wouldn’t have believed it.

“Return drones.” He called out aloud, hopeful Elias had never known they were there, watching him.

“How can I possibly fight that? Those other guys, they are like him too, they have abilities! I’m doomed.”

“Where did he learn, Soek boy?” Kiena’s voice had that edge again and once more she was invisible.

Mick was getting the idea manifesting had a price, a Vrill price. He stored that for later thought. Learning meant school, school meant books or teaching slates.

He plopped down on his seat and asked Elias’ slate for class slates.

The laundry machine beeped while the machine was searching. He swapped loads and dumped his cleans on another seat and sat back down. Stored in the system memory were eighteen years of study starting at age five. Eighteen? Mick did the math, that made this guy the equivalent of a Doctor. But, he’d never heard of the school, it was called the Citadel.

He went back to reading aloud, just the class headers. Beginning Casting, Advanced Embedding, Group Speech, Identifying Sigils, the list went on and on with subjects he’d never heard of. And, when he opened the one on Speech, there were vids of men in long, dark robes teaching and his screen filled with a study guide. It was all here. Probably back to the guy’s first Gen Ed class at five-years-old.

“Could I learn this stuff too, Kiena?” He asked. “You say I’m Soek and he’s Soek. If he can, I can, right?”

“I will prevent him from bonking you while you sleep, at least for a while.” She answered. “We will examine his guides with interest and see what they have taught him.”

“You know.” Mick looked up and to his right even though she was invisible, he was getting a sense for where she was. How was that possible? What had she told him back when she blew up the electronic grid, that electricity was inhibiting him or something. Did she mean electricity interacted badly with Vrill? “You know, Kiena. Elias made a big display of turning off my molcom, but these security guys, if they are good, like gaming good, they will have a way to turn it on from a distance, and take me out. I think that’s Elias’ plan. Get his team here and take me out. I bet they know something about you too. Those two Ba’Neesh females, they knew everything in their eyes. Are you like that when you are like they are?”

“I’m not like they are.” Kiena answered with derision, “But, my eyes are like theirs.”

That seemed a bit contradictory to Mick but he was learning not to get her upset. So, she wanted to feel superior, he just wanted her to protect him instead of hurt him. He believed she could do either on a whim. How to be whimless? That was the ticket.

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