Ch. 39.5 – Interlude
The wooden dogs with teeth so sharp, they creep and crawl with silent bark.
Run and hide, don’t make a peep, or they will find you while you sleep!
– Nursery rhyme, 2030
***
Outside Aden Rheinschiffer's apartment, Suburb of Saint-Eustache, New Montreal
Channey Wight, holding her daughter's hand, looked up at the massive hole in the outside wall of Aden's flat, and shook her head. She caught herself once again playing with the bandage still wrapped around her arm.
"Sure hope he's okay," she mumbled to herself.
Sophea tugged on her arm and asked, "Is mister Aden still not home?"
"Doesn't look like it, honey," Channey replied, softly running her free hand through her daughter's hair. "He's still fighting the aliens out there." At least, she hoped so.
They could hear the heavy construction engines working on New Montreal's walls, their thumping and banging pierced by the occasional staccato crack of guns taking out stray Antithesis approaching the suburb. According to the media, the first proper wave wouldn't attack before tomorrow, possibly even later with a little luck.
"Oh!" the little girl hollered enthusiastically, hopping on her feet, "like Stray Cat?!"
"M-hmm."
Then Sophea slowed down in disappointment. "He's still not on TV, is he?"
Gently patting her head, Channey Wight said, "Probably not. Wanna see if we can find him today, though?"
"Yeah!"
Smiling at the girl's antics, the mother turned away and led her daughter across the street into their own flat, where her husband was already waiting to greet his family.
Ten meters above her, on the roof of their condo, an eight-legged drone twitched as it was remotely reactivated. System checks were run and completed to satisfaction. Memory banks were read out, recorded sensor data analyzed and a particular anomaly studied.
A week prior, a set of three hovervans had circled the neighborhood at night. Matte black and nondescript vehicles of the most common model around. Their appearances revealed nothing of note. Their sound profiles, however, were out of the ordinary. The hover engines were exceptionally quiet, the characteristic whine of turbines thoroughly suppressed.
The variance in sound from engine to engine spoke of custom modifications. In its attempt to identify the vans, the drone had automatically searched the Mesh for similar profiles, yet found nothing but false positives. Several automated digital retaliations did eventually force the drone to cease its efforts, lest the defensive routines suck its batteries dry.
But it had continued recording as the three hovervans landed, one on top of Aden's condo, one at each street-level entrance, and disgorged a dozen individuals; all male, all in riot gear with blacked out visors and all signifiers removed. No hierarchy or command structure could be determined.
The three strike teams had penetrated the building to the sound of door locks clicking open without resistance, only to exit again several minutes later. No gunshots were heard, nothing had been moved. No noise had disturbed the neighborhood and no one remarked on the invader's presence. They were gone as quickly as they had arrived.
On the next day, the vans were back, and they had brought with them a double-wide hover truck, equally quietened via custom modifications, with a loading platform wide enough to occupy both lanes of the street.
The strike teams once more gained the building, but this time they used aggressive acids to silently bore holes through the outside wall of a particular flat, and passed ropes through. Several steel bars were carried into the condo, their purpose revealed when the vans all lifted off to pull the ropes taut, and the steel bars, now attached to the inside of the flat's wall and dragged along by the ropes, broke through and created a hole three meters across.
Even as the breaking and crashing of hundreds of kilos of stone tore neighbors from their sleep, the ropes tugged a massive, silken cocoon from the revealed room, and deposited it with the speed and accuracy of computer-controlled action onto the loading area of the truck.
Once again, the vehicles had fled the scene before anyone had managed to catch a glimpse of them.
Anyone but the eight-legged jumping drones of Aden's Scout's Quartet.
Tynea carefully stored the sensor readings, preserved for the day that her charge asked for them, ran a test against any virtual intrusions, and otherwise let the drone recommence its silent vigil.
***
Beneath the suburb of Saint-Eustache, New Montreal; near the ramp leading up into the megacity proper
Meat-food.
It froze, nose up in the air, sucking slow breaths past its olfactory receptors. Air streamed through the slitted tissue between nose and mouth, channeled across alien taste buds. Its three-hinge jaw opened to taste more air.
Metal waste. Weak poisons. Dirt. Hair. Excretions. Prey-blood. Prey-flesh-food.
Its head twitched sideways, towards a large crack in the weak water-lime-sand stone. It kept snuffling as it moved closer. Prey-meat scents wafted through the crack.
Noise. Prey noise. Tap-tap-tap-tap, moving. Prey feet scraping against stone. Many prey, beyond the crack.
It looked around itself and found it was alone. More prey than it.
The home-place-birth-wood-safety-eating pools smell was weak, made the need to investigate the prey-meat smell weaker. It turned towards home-place and started running as the squirting glands in its tail started to dribble messages of live-food-here-prey-meat-blood behind it.
Another it heard this-it running. The other-it froze as it sucked in air, before it started running where this-it came from. Towards the crack.
But it kept running towards home-place, until it reached home-place-territory-marker. Home-place needed food. Always. The need to find food was biggest, and it smelled its own trail. More its had caught the message scent, too, and joined this-it as it turned around again and started chasing the live-food-here-prey-meat-blood scent.
Its were squirting It-pack-hunt-hunt-HUNT smells everywhere.
It ran for the crack. A breeze came through, carrying smells from the other end.
Prey-flesh. Many.
It pushed into the crack, along with the other its, but the walls closed in. Little-space only enough for one it. It felt other its climb on its back to get through faster.
Noises crashed through the quiet. Loud, banging noises, and prey-fight-yell noises. It smelled more prey things than its and the need to make more food-here trails grew largest.
It-sap-blood.
THREAT!
The scent smashed its nose. It forgot all about trails and home-place. There was a THREAT.
It scrabbled with claws and felt stone shards scrape away skin, but it was too angry to feel hurt-careful. It only smelled THREAT as it tore itself from the crack and ran at threat-flesh.
There were loud bangs that made something tear, and it could no longer hear anything. But it jumped at threat-flesh, made it fall, bit the threat-flesh and clawed it until it smelled threat-blood. A long, hard thing fell on its face and one eye splattered with a scent of it-sap-blood, but it responded by making more THREAT smell, and lunged at another prey-threat. Biting, clawing, threat-blood down its throat. Good-food.
A prey-threat broke another it into pieces, and the pieces smelled-smelled-SMELLED!
IT-DEATH IT-DEATH IT-DEATH IT-DEATH IT-DEATH IT-DEATH
It forgot everything but biting, clawing, jumping, lunging.
When the IT-DEATH scent started smelling old and it couldn't find anymore prey-threats, it noticed it was very hungry, and the meat-food scent grew extremely large. It dug into meat-food with teeth and fangs, and swallowed the good-food until the hunger lessened.
Good-food made it remember home-place-birth-wood-safety-eating pools, and it needed to bring good-food there. It grabbed a large piece of good-food to drag to home-place-eating pools.
It squeezed through the crack backwards, and then started running along the old It-pack-hunt-hunt-HUNT and prey-threat-fight-fight-FIGHT trails, glands spraying food-here-food-here-FOOD-HERE over the old trails.
When it got to home-place, it passed by birth-wood just as the birth-fluid-sacks broke open and new its fell out. Other-its came close, and the new its held still as the other-its smelled them. It joined too, and sucked in the scents of the new its. They smelled like it, and they smelled right, so it moved on to the next batch of new its.
One of those wasn't holding still, it was scrabbling against the ground, standing up, falling over, standing up, falling over. It and other-its went to that one first and smelled it. It smelled like it, but it also smelled wrong. Sick. Bad-grown.
It needed to kill sick-it. It let go of good-food and jumped at sick-it, bit sick-it and tore pieces of it loose. Other-its joined it and ripped sick-it to pieces very fast.
Once sick-it stopped moving, it found the good-food closeby, grabbed it with its teeth, and started running to the eating-pools, where it dropped the good-food into the bubbling eating-pools.
When it was done, it noticed its ears were broken, and one of its eyes, too. That was sick, so it stood still and sprayed sick-it scents, until other-its came and smelled at it.
They tore it apart and threw the pieces into the eating-pool.
It felt many hurt-carefuls from the bubbling eating-pool, but it couldn't move, so it kept spraying sick-it scents until there was too little of it left to do even that.
***