Iver was grateful she couldn’t see the ground seven hundred meters below. The lower levels of the massive spires surrounding her faded into inky darkness when she glanced down from the narrow platform. A full moon hung in the night sky, casting silver reflections across the gleaming surfaces of the Protectorate’s edifices.
She forced herself to focus on a small walkway of the adjacent spire, only four meters away and six meters down. She’d practiced making the jump in her gym for weeks. But there was no way to replicate the primal terror that grips a body teetering from unimaginable heights.
Iver checked that her gearpack and tacbelt were secure one final time. Adjusted the mask of her quantum bodysuit and pulled it tight around her goggles. It was all systems go, if only her body was willing.
She took three steps back, flattening herself against the railing on the far side of the platform. She had five meters of runway. Iver sucked in air, clamped her eyes shut. Her mother’s voice drifted unbidden into her mind:
“If you don’t move forward, you’re better off curling up and dying.”
Rage flashed deep in her stomach and Iver bolted. Her foot pounded the edge of the platform and she launched herself into oblivion.
For a moment that seemed like forever, she felt weightless. The night air wrapped around her.
Then time hurtled forward like a raging river and the walkway rushed toward her.
Iver landed and tucked into a roll, instantly realizing she’d overshot. Her momentum carried her crashing into the heavy metal maintenance door. She bounced off it and tumbled toward the walkway’s lip. As her feet slid over the edge, Iver slammed her hands against the metal treads and activated the neomagnets in her gloves.
Her body jerked as the gloves clamped to the walkway. Muscles straining, she pulled herself up.
Iver quickly moved to the maintenance hatch and pulled an AXS card from her belt. She swiped it over the security reader beside the door and waited as the card hacked passkey codes. It cycled for ten seconds too many as Iver watched for passing surveillance drones. The lock clicked open and she swiftly stepped inside.
She activated her quantum suit’s cloak mode as she climbed down a service ladder. Thousands of tiny lenticular lenses laced into the material of the bodysuit refracted visible, infrared, and ultraviolet light, making her virtually undetectable to the human eye and thermal signals.
Iver sighed in relief as she stepped into a utility tunnel. She’d made it inside Constellation Spire. Four levels down to reach her objective: the exclusive resort of the Catalyst Society.
///
“Gentlemen, ladies… we are about to witness an incredible clash. A collision of nigh-indestructible forces. This is the match you have demanded, and we are exhilarated – adrenalized! – to fulfill your demands,” bellowed the announcer dressed in a glassy orange suit.
He stood in the center of a large round grandstand usually employed for music or stage performances. The main platform was encompassed by transparent lexan plates. Standing on opposite sides of the grandstand were two burly men clearly built for battle: blunt carbon fiber rings fused into their knuckles; protective shells affixed onto alloy straps embedded into their skulls; taut, bloated muscles augmented by proprietary gene therapy treatments.
The seats surrounding the platform were filled with hundreds of patricians from every spire in Avalon, adorned in ostentatious gowns and ornate suits.
“Prepare for a skirmish for the ages.” The announcer’s voice, amplified by his headset, rose to a howl. “To my left, the deadly Gloam Rage!” He paused as the crowd cheered and clapped. Gloam Rage raised his meaty arms into the air, basking in the adulation. “And to my right, the lethal Apex Hook!” The applause grew even louder as Apex Hook smashed his fists together and sparks flew from his knuckle rings.
The announcer stepped onto a small rostrum in the center of the platform that lowered him out of sight. The two combatants slowly circled each other. Members of the crowd took to their feet, their faces twisting into vile grimaces as they shouted for bloodshed.
The next instant Gloam and Apex charged toward each other like stampeding bulls. The impact shook the lexan plates as they slammed together. Veins throbbed as their arms grappled for dominance. Gloam wrenched his forearm under Apex’s shoulder and swept him to the floor. Apex hit the ground hard. He locked onto Gloam’s arm and heaved him to the floor with him. They rolled across the platform, struggling and failing to get top position.
From her perch inside a ventilation duct ten meters above the grandstand, Iver watched in disgust. These clandestine arena fights pitting augmented outer district migrators against each other were the rage among the highest echelons of Avalon society. They were also illegal.
She tapped her tacbelt and a one-centimeter wide m-drone detached from its compartment, quickly drifting through the vent slats and downward. Guided by Iver’s neurotech implants, it maneuvered above the crowd to hover near the back wall.
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She activated the m-drone’s camera and initiated the livesig.
In an instant, screens across Avalon were hijacked by Iver’s pirate feed, replacing the official Consortium SigLink transmissions with footage of the pit fight in real time. In the bottom right corner, an overlay designed to look like beams of light emanating from a target symbol – the infamous logo of “The Beacon.”
The Catalyst Society crowd grew restless, booing as the combatants continued to grapple on the floor. Apex and Gloam convulsed as electricity surged through the platform, forcing them to tumble apart. They jumped to their feet and slowly circled each other, fists clenched, fiber rings gleaming.
A roar erupted as Gloam landed a haymaker, snapping Apex’s head sideways as blood sprayed from his nose. Apex recovered quickly, blocking more blows. He pounded Gloam’s torso with a torrent of thunderous punches, backing his opponent against a lexum plate.
Iver rotated the drone away from the brutal fray to pan across the audience. As the m-drone’s camera zoomed in on individual faces in the crowd, she recognized the Chief Executive of SantoCorp, Hrad Torril, on his feet and screaming for blood. In the seat behind Torril sat a brittle-faced woman in a flowing green gown. Iver ran a recognition scan that flagged the woman as Glora Newlim, one of the top Consortium Shareholders. The drone cam next moved to frame Semastius Masuy, the Executive Director of Vselennaya Spire. Seated around him were four stunning young women who were clearly not his wife.
Then a portly man wearing a black, flowing overcoat struggled to his feet and quickly shambled past the battle raging on the grandstand, making a beeline for the exit. As Apex and Gloam continued to pummel each other, nervous murmurs rose from the crowd. Heads began to turn away from the fight. Iver panned the audience and saw a woman shake her companion's arm to whisper, “We’re on SigLink.”
As word spread, people activated their microLEDs. Voices rose in alarm and more audience members began moving toward the exit.
Iver grinned in satisfaction. No better rush than to watch these morbidly opulent hacklappers as their guts churned. She deactivated the livesig and called the m-drone back. The society members had discovered the infiltration sooner than she wanted, but she’d exposed enough pillars of Avalon society to make it worth the effort.
The drone zipped through the vent slats, silently clipping itself into a compartment on her tacbelt. Iver crawled toward the opening at the far end of the duct.
Another surge of electricity from the floor of the grandstand jolted Apex and Gloam, causing them both to collapse to the floor. The amplified voice of the announcer cut through the crowd noise, echoing off the chamber walls.
“Ladies and gentlemen, there has been a privacy breach and we have locked the level down. We ask that everyone remain in your seats while we analyze what occurred. For your safety, no one will be entering or exiting this level while our security teams investigate.”
Iver froze when she heard the announcement. A level-wide lockdown was not something she’d anticipated. She swung from the opening where she’d removed the exhaust vent and gracefully hopped to the floor of the narrow maintenance passageway, reactivating the quantum suit’s cloak mode.
She could hear voices from the lower level, clipped and aggressive. She quickly, quietly slunk out of the passage and onto a walkway stretching across a cavernous bay. She glimpsed movement below through the grates and stopped dead. Three warders in crisp blue uniforms sporting Catalyst Society emblems ran across the lower deck.
“Check the south exit corridor. I’ll sweep the rest of the level,” barked the tallest of the three.
Two warders charged through the doorway on the far side of the bay while the tall one lingered behind. He switched on the flashlight embedded in his glove, the white beam tracing the corners and walls of the dark room.
The warder’s light glanced over Iver but the cloak held. She knew if he lingered on her for more than a few seconds, the warder would notice inconsistencies in the way shadows bent around the dead spot created by the quantum suit. Luckily he was hurried, not looking for a barely visible intruder, and quickly turned to shine the light toward another corner. As soon as his back was turned, Iver began creeping toward the walkway’s egress. She slowly slid the door open, glancing down to make sure the warder was looking in the opposite direction.
Her heart stopped as the door’s tarnished track emitted a shrill creek.
Iver bolted. She could hear the warder speaking into his transmitter, alerting the others. She dashed around a corner and down a corridor leading to a stairwell doorway. She swiped the AXS card over the reader, peering down the corridor for any movement. The door slid open and she charged through.
The warder galloping up the stairs didn’t know what slammed into him. They tumbled halfway down the flight, a tangle of limbs. Iver pushed herself off him, alighting on the lower landing. The warder struggled to his feet and drew his raser, squinting at the ghostly figure below.
Iver launched an m-drone and triggered the shield optics in her goggles. The warder aimed his raser just as the drone emitted a 5000-lumen pulse, blasting the stairwell with white-hot light.
Leaping onto the handrail, Iver cat-walked past the blinded warder. She gripped the railing and kicked out, hooking his neck with her legs. She wrenched him sideways, using the momentum to carry him over the bannister. He fired a bolt into the wall as he plunged downward, hitting the steps below with a thud.
She landed on the lower steps to the far side of the moaning warder. Iver could hear voices on his transmitter demanding updates as she opened the exit door and rushed onto the lower level.
Crowd noise carried down the corridor. The auditorium filled with Catalyst members was close.
Iver ducked into an alcove and quickly unzipped her gearbag. She pulled out indigo blue pants and a jacket, quickly slipping the formal wear on over her quantum suit. Her face mask, gloves and goggles were shoved into the gearbag and slipped under her jacket.
She took a deep breath and wiped the sweat from her forehead, hoping she didn’t look too lustrous as she stepped into the auditorium and blended with the Catalyst crowd. A small group of members unaccustomed to being told what to do were clamoring in outrage at the indignity of being detained. The chief warder at the main gate was doing his utmost to keep the entitled throng in order, but he could only do so much.
Iver spotted an elderly woman in a sequined gown and matching cloche standing on the perimeter of the crowd. She approached the woman from behind and feigned bumping into her.
“Oh! Apologies, miss,” Iver said as her AXS card copied the old woman’s Catalyst ID.
When the warders finally allowed the crowd to begin exiting, the scangate identified Iver as just another Catalyst Society patron.
