(Rewritten) Ch. 41 – How to Sniff

"One foot in front of the other. One more step. Come on, you can do it!"

– Shingle Bells, "rescuing" a small group of elderly people who had too much fun at a party

***

A glance at the map told me that we were about four hundred meters out from the facility now. We'd…really barely covered any ground so far, and this crater was very large.

Hmm. Was that to our advantage? Would the hordes of Antithesis at the edge just not pay attention to the little gnats scurrying around miles and miles away, until it was too late and the gnats had become xeno-mulching blenders?

Where were they heading, anyways? A place with people? Oh, that would be bad. I'd planned on killing them for points, and leave calling in large-scale bombardment until we were in a pinch, but waiting too long might make that bombardment more damaging than the flood of Antithesis itself.

I pulled up the samurai app, located the red blotchy swarm to our east, and checked along its south heading. There were a few farmsteads here and there, already marked devoid of inhabitants, as well as a bunch of very large mechanized tree farms. No towns or villages. The swarm was moving parallel to the highway. If it kept to it, it would eventually hit the banks of the St. Lawrence River, smash through several settlements there, and reach the megacities of Quebec and New Montreal.

But the swarm was still growing. It was already long enough that it would take it another day just to pass our area. I suspected that it would pick up hundreds of thousands more, before it made it to the megacities, potentially crossing the million mark more than once.

Some fiddling let me contact support for the "Family", which I knew was the local sort-of-but-not-really-authority for samurai operations. Facilitators more than regulators of us, really. They'd be responsible for connecting individual requests of bombardments with the relevant trigger-pullers.

I sent a text message:

> Tinea: <<location marker>> Swarm; my intentions are to kill as many as I can over the next few days. Please keep an eye on the swarm and kill it if it threatens to get too close to settlements.

> Automated Reply: Set priority please: Low - no danger within 24h; Medium - engage ASAP; High - immediate action REQUIRED

Well. I wouldn't be asking them to merely keep an eye on things if I thought someone was going to die today.

> Tinea: Priority Low

> Automated Reply: Thank you. Your request has been entered and will be reviewed within 12 hours.

Alright, due diligence done.

We moved a little less than a hundred meters eastwards, and, perhaps five minutes later, came to a halt peeking out behind a new pair of trees, looking up.

The Four dangled upside down, and from what I could see and smell or taste, the vents on its back were closed. No seepage of paranoia-inducing gas, though some particles of it clung to the alien all the same.

I grinned to myself and tickled the underside of one of my antennae. At least I know for sure I can detect these fuckers even when they're hiding. Along with any other Antithesis that've been exposed to it. Antennae are awesome.

I so had to get myself some sniffs of more Antithesis models, so I'd recognize them anywhere. Although Sixes didn't seem to have a particularly distinct smell, they did cause slight tremors I could pick up on, as did Fives—which also had the nerve agent slowly evaporate off of their quills.

Ah, but freshly born Fours that were solitary and hadn't produced any gas or agent yet, they might not be detectable to my olfactory senses…

Did the hives themselves smell of anything?

Focus. Back to the topic. Ambush the ambush.

I whispered to Leah via the aug, "Any visual filters that let you see the thing easily?"

"Its temperature is equal to the surroundings, and it doesn't give off any ultraviolet lighting itself, but the hard armor plates do reflect it nicely, better than any of the bark or foliage around. During the day at least."

"Gotcha. I can also smell-taste this one easily enough."

Leah looked over at me and grinned at my questing antennae, which obviously made them rotate towards her. Ugh. I really, really couldn't keep the direction of my thoughts secret, could I?

"Wanna try out your new gun?"

Leah looked at her gun for a moment, then sighted, and pulled the trigger without much fanfare.

The reaction of the muffler rammed rude fingers through my sensilla, shoved crackling frissons down my spine, stinging like nerve damage. Even Leah shuddered.

This wasn't the uncomfortable void-feedback of the Foxteeth, this was the rules of physics taking revenge on us who dared impose our will on them. I almost puked from the overstimulation and suffered a spiking headache.

The Four lost its grip on the tree and crashed through a few scraggly twigs until it broke itself on the ground, where the plant matter around the bullet hole already began to blacken and fall apart slowly. The nanites.

I was still wincing from the twinging pain, just relieved it was slowly ebbing. Leah started at my groan, but I waved her down and slowly, carefully, drew my antennae through my fists. It wasn't comfortable either, but it did help with the echoing twinges.

She was still staring at me with uncharacteristically wide eyes flitting back and forth between my antennae and my face, so I moved over and hugged her while I talked to Tynea.

"Tynea, that muffler isn't gonna work. That thing hits so hard it'll make me falter and stumble. Would a more advanced version still fuck with me so bad?"

No, the Mark II Inverter outperforms it considerably for less spill, and the Mark III also confines the crash-dissonance to its area of effect. Forgive me, I had only calculated that it would not harm you, not whether the dissonance would cause pain. Even a little more distance will lessen the effect greatly—its strength is inversely quadratic to its range.

"Okay. Distance is fine. I'll be fine. A warning would have been nice, though."

I will endeavor to improve my prediction algorithms to that end.

I nodded my acceptance, and moved on to checking our surroundings again.

Tinea, I've scrubbed through the recordings of the drone since its release. There should be another two model Fours hiding within one hundred and one hundred and fifty meters respectively.

Two spots on my minimap gained highlights fairly close nearby, and two small screens played the recordings. I noticed that our little drone's motion detectors had caught them setting up and highlighted the respective timestamps. The closer one was almost an hour old, and the other only about five minutes.

"Leah, we've got another two potential ambushers, and I don't know if there are others. Ready to keep going?"

"Mm." She was rather distracted still. Worried about me.

"Alright. Let's stay a little apart. That muffler on your gun is hard to bear, but apparently it'll be less of an issue if I'm just a ways away. "

"Was it painful?" she asked, looking worriedly at me.

"Like the worst feedback ever." I took the sting out of my words with a proper squeeze.

"Oh. Okay. I'll be more careful about firing, then." Leah was looking down at her firearm's silencing gadget. She seemed a lot less enthusiastic about her Vanguard gadgets now.

So much to unpack, there. Is it just the unfortunate effect it had on me? That using the muffler on the rifle was her idea? Or, does it also have something to do with being kidnapped because she was a samurai?

"Leah," I said, leaning into her so she'd look at me instead of her gun, "as long as I have a little distance, it won't be a problem. There are better versions of the muffler we can buy, too. If we have to."

"Okay. Yeah," she nodded and returned the hug, before letting go again and gripping her weapon tight. "Good to go."

"Relax. Seriously. It doesn't cause me injury, I'm not hurt."

"Yeah. It's just…It feels wrong, after you saved me, and stuff. I didn't even notice until you made a noise."

I nudged her gently with my shoulder and smiled up at her. "And it's still not your fault. It started as a miscalculation by my AI, and it'll end as a learning experience. I'm okay with how things are going, alright?"

"... Alright."

It didn't quite seem like I'd guessed at the correct issue. But…we had to keep moving if we ever wanted to make it home.

"Alright. Let's go kill Antithesis, and not get ambushed, yeah?"

"Yeah."

Leah did look a little better. Still, I was surprised by her strong reaction to something that had been beyond her control. It seemed that somehow, something about that situation messed with her.

A solitary raindrop bumped into my sensilla, and I looked up to see darker clouds covering the horizon, ponderously moving our way.

"Well, shit. Leah, I think it's gonna get wet in, like, half an hour or so? Tynea?"

The first drizzle will hit in a few minutes. There is a thunderstorm building a little further out. It's also moving this way, and will arrive in perhaps an hour and a half.

Leah tilted her head, and said, "I don't think we're making points fast enough to get a fighting vehicle in that time, to be honest. We're buying too much stuff along the way."

"Hmm, yeah. Let's go take out one or two more groups, and then get some rest? It'll let us talk and plan, too."

She looked at me questioningly, but just nodded, and we moved.

I tasted heavy air gathering moisture and tried to get a sense for what it'd be like to sense anything through actual rain.

The few drops that splashed across my antennae just rolled along, picking up dust and cleaning me off. It was a nice feeling, like a micro massage. I'd gathered lots of dirt without realizing, and apparently the design of the sensilla and stems included hydrophobia, which meant I was receiving a natural shower.

Oh, I'd have to think about antennae hygiene! That was a new one, and it had me strangely excited. Huh. They were extremely sensitive to touch. I could barely stand touching them just to relax them, how'd I brush them down? Or did I just wash them? That seemed to work nicely with the rain, after all, and it wasn't so intense. It really felt rather nice.

The drops did seem to leave behind streaks of chemical contamination though. Not very much, due to the hydrophobic nature of my sensilla, but I could detect acids where the drops struck and rolled off.

Oh, would the rain wash away any traces of gasses I could use to sniff out ambushing Fours? Well, that might be a problem. Or would the humidity end up depositing them on my antennae? Ah, but that at least would warn me about an ambush before they'd drop on me. Or something.

Uff. So much I needed to discover to understand. What an experience. This antennae stuff was so much, but also so frigging epic! Best purchase ever.

Uh, except for boobs.

Nah, antennae.

But boobs… Dang it. This…this was something that could incite a war between me, myself, and I, wasn't it?

I think the conundrum showed, because Leah giggled at me, after staring at my face for a few minutes. I decided that deserved tickle-revenge.

Which I'd have to save up, because I needed her out of the Sleeve before I could do that.

I opened a new text window in my HUD, named it 'Tickle Time' and added a tally.

Yes, I was fully prepared. For anything!

Fast movement caught the corner of my eye.

***