Episode 5 - The Tide Recedes, and What it Leaves Behind

  Chapter 39 - Operation: Initiate Negotiation

  “Commence operation ‘Initiate Negotiation’. Lock in and sound off,” commands Adrian, his lazy drawl steeped with authority. “Rishi, you have my tactical command, confirm?”

  “Rishi, confirming lock in. I have tactical command.”

  “Confirmed. Conrada, you have my second. Verbal confirm?”

  “Conrada, verbal confirm I can hear. I have your second for tactical command.”

  “Confirmed. Field team, confirm lock in. Nessa, you have field command. Confirm?”

  “Nessa, confirming lock in. I have field command.”

  “Confirmed. Team sound off and confirm lock in.”

  “Blake, confirming lock in.”

  “Nessa. Feel free to begin.”

  Rishi’s symbiont, the white-winged saturniid moth I now know is an Attacus, has its wings open in the central station between all six syn-screens. Two of the screens are dedicated to visual feeds, passed from Adrian to Rishi via the lock in, and simulated by Rishi’s symbiont. A third screen is dedicated to a map where his symbiont has a real-time estimate of Nessa and Blake’s position, and other dotted marks for people and points-of-interest as the information is picked up by Adrian’s network of Vespa. A fourth screen keeps a count of the time, and other key operational information ready for reference. The final two are blank, used for visual feeds with larger teams.

  The first few minutes of the operation pass without us needing to speak. Nessa and Blake enter the target offices without needing much support. Rishi sits stiff-backed, hands clenched at his desk as sweat beads down his dark brow. He never sounds stressed when we operate, and I’ve seen him process far more complicated data feeds from Adrian through to his symbiont for the Operations teams, but the physical strain is always obvious.

  The visual feeds were fascinating to me the first time I saw them. Rishi is capable of projecting both what Adrian sees through his Vespa and the sight lines of those Adrian is locked in with. The Vespa feeds are distorted, jumbled images, with sudden shapes and visual aberrations as they zoom in and out of details, or blurs as the Vespa fly between objects. Their compound eyes are capable of seeing many points of interest simultaneously, but somewhere in the daisy-chain of human minds it passes through, coherence is lost. I rarely find the Vespa feeds useful, certainly not without being locked in as well, which seems to add significant clarity on what is happening for Rishi.

  The feeds from other humans, however, have been deeply informative. For the first time, I have an idea of what other people see of their own symbionts.

  Nessa walks briskly through the hallways of the office block they’ve broken into, a bouncing point-of-view camera feed projected on one screen as if we look through her eyes, the edges fading where her clear central vision transitions to peripheral. Ahead of her stalks her own symbiont, a moving black form that barely comes up to her shin, with an outline that is distinct and also muddy, like a dream with details you only half remember and blank-spaces between memories that linger. It - he - looks back at her, his white eyes a moment of clarity on his slim face where his black coat shades to ashen-gold, set on an elongated muzzle and between bat-like ears which to me, in-person, are elegant and refined, and to Nessa are an indistinct silhouette. Her symbiont is a Felis, and a rare variety at that.

  I feel bad for Blake. I suspect they were a package deal, and it was Nessa Regina wanted when they were purchased. Not that his pure muscle doesn’t have its own uses. Only one other at Aquila has a symbiont large enough to power vehicles. It probably wasn’t a bad package.

  The feed from Blake, only a few footsteps behind Nessa, does not have the shadow that stalks ahead of them. Adrian sees what the human he is locked-into sees. Just like Pooka can only see his own kind when I am with him, mentally or otherwise.

  Pooka snores in the corner, deep asleep and chest swelling rhythmically, my connection to him numb and tingling. His black ruff of fur is squished against the wall, his paws sprawled and tail flopped between his hind legs. Even his mouth hangs open. He easily grows bored of human things.

  This Operational setup is partially adopted for me, and partially a necessity of human inability to parse the sheer amount of information Adrian’s Vespa are capable of sending. Rishi’s symbiont helps synthesize the feed with existing data, and is capable of simulating models of whatever comes via raw human and symbiont feeling - somehow taking biological understanding of momentum and distance to build three-dimension spatial models of the operations in real time, and plot them against maps Rishi has memorized to give the Operations team full awareness of how missions unfold. Getting the stream via syn-screens certainly seems preferable to the tumble of sensations running with Pooka subjects me to. And it also seems to be the preference of the only other Control support person who is not here today.

  As I watch the visual feeds, my job begins. Unlike Adrian and Rishi, I have no distractions letting me keep full focus on the field agents.

  “Nessa, camera to your left. That glass door has a tamper alarm on it,” I say aloud, spying the movement sensor above the door on their pathway. Adrian, or his symbionts, always pass my spoken words through, I don’t even pause now to confirm.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Blake’s feed shows him move closer, approaching the alarm. I can see him draw a utility knife from his pocket. He’s tall enough he can reach the ceiling when I’d need to find a chair or box to stand on.

  “Can we disable it?” he asks briskly.

  “Pop it open, let me see. Dig your blade between the casing and the wall, it’ll snap off,” I say.

  He follows my instructions while I watch Nessa spy down a second corridor, her symbiont running ahead of her, long tail sinuating in the air behind him.

  “What am I looking for?” Blake asks.

  “Cut that green wire, then pull the battery - grey box to the top.”

  The alarm is disabled shortly, a stolen city-monitor grants them access to the double doors, and they pass deeper into the building.

  I tap up my transcripts of their conversations on the tablet in front of me as they move into the next phase. “Our target's secretary said his office was an end unit. Something with windows. Based on your position, take a left here.”

  “You got this one?” asks Adrian lazily to me across the room while I watch our agents search.

  “Uh huh. You taking a break?”

  He hums. I don’t break my eyeline from the screens, but I can hear his wheelchair’s motor kick on as he exits the room. I jump with excitement suddenly, lifting my hand to point at the screen when I see something pass in Nessa’s vision. “Oi, back up, look in that one again!”

  Nessa does as requested, seeing what I saw just as quickly and marching into a receptionist’s office. The walls are decorated with a gallery of awards, but the few words I catch as Nessa moves reveal most of them are self-congratulatory ego-stroking - ‘Vice President of the Year’ or ‘Best Quarterly eNPS’. Without pause, they both continue to the VP’s office behind and begin searching. Nessa’s symbiont trails behind them, the tip of its tail curiously flicking. Nessa gaze lingers on him for a few moments, watching him leap up onto our target’s desk, sit, and promptly knock over an old mug that spills black coffee across the desk and send Nessa into a panic as she attempts to mop it up with the front of her shirt.

  “Great work,” snipes Blake.

  “Do not start with me!” immediately fires back Nessa, spinning to face him with a finger pointed.

  “Mission focus, please,” commands Rishi.

  I rub my chin as I watch both of their visual feeds. They’ve both devolved into a scrambling panic to clean up the coffee before it seeps into any electronics, desperately trying to carefully return anything they touch and wipe on their own clothing to the same place it came from. Nessa’s symbiont, entirely unrepentant, sits with his tail held straight-up behind him and white eyes gleaming in quiet judgment.

  I expected a safe in the desk, probably bolted to the floor underneath. Their search quickly revealed that was not the case, which leaves a few other possibilities. I study the map on the forward syn-screens. Back wall is glass, windows. Wall to the left and right back up to more offices, it seems unlikely there would be much room there for something.

  But… the walled-partition between the VP’s office and his reception is quite deep. It could always just be utilities running through the building, or a major structural component. But more likely it’s our target.

  Blake mops the side of the VP's desk with his pant leg where some of the coffee tipped over the edge.

  “Blake, can you take a look at the wall back towards reception?” I ask. “Let Nessa clean up after her symbiont.”

  Blake straightens and approaches the wall. He already knows what has my attention and begins lifting the awards and photos hanging there. Right on cue, the largest when shifted reveals the hidden edges of a wall panel. He lifts the picture completely off the hook, and pops his knife out again, jamming it in the crack to pop the panel open. Exactly as I suspected, the safe is mounted into the wall. And it’s a physical combination lock. Nessa was the right call! Dominion seemed like a conservative company that didn’t have enough invertebrate symbionts for too much tech in their operations, let alone among their executives.

  Blake doesn’t even wait for Rishi or I to react. “Nessa, you’re up.”

  Nessa wipes the last traces of coffee from a tablet and carefully returns it to its position on the desk. Then she gathers her symbiont in her arms, the Felis stretching to stand up with its forepaws resting on her shoulders, head looking over her back. She holds him to the safe, and a low purr begins in his throat. The dial on the combination lock starts to spin, mechanisms inside click and shift telekinetically. Within moments, the three deadbolts in the safe’s door retract, and Nessa juggles a hand free to turn the handle. Blake sweeps in to scoop the contents, taking every data-stick and tablet contained within indiscriminately.

  “Put it all back how it was,” I request. “Might as well delay them finding out as long as possible.”

  Rishi stretches his arms overhead, sweat beading down one corner of his brow. “Relatively clean,” he comments across the room at me.

  I keep my eyes on the screen as they finish up. “The picture is crooked, fix it.”

  “Path out?” requests Nessa.

  The eye markings on Rishi’s symbiont's wings glow vermillion, on the maps in front of us a route highlights in a similar shade of red.

  “Back out towards reception, then we’ll take a different exit once you get there,” says Rishi.

  I relax back in my chair, frowning slightly as I watch our agents make their way back through the office building. It’s not over, it won’t be till they are clear. But it did feel slightly too easy. Distance has a way of calming the adrenaline I used to feel sneaking in myself. I know that from the back seat, it’s easy to see every mistake, every misstep, every poor judgment call. And easy to forget how in the moment that analysis of the self is so hard to do.

  Another couple of days, and I’ll feel that rush again. Aster’s sign-off on my first field operation approval since my grounding has come through.

  I tent my hands as I brace on my desk, standing to stretch my legs. We’ll be here another few hours watching them make their escape from Dominion. Rishi will then sleep through the lock-in wearing off, or try to distract his mind from whatever residual connection remains when Adrian stops feeding him information by other means. He usually plays crossword puzzles. I’m terrible at them, but it's fun to help when he gets stuck.

  Pooka snores and shifts slightly in his sleep. I spin in my chair and stick out one foot to jostle his side. It sinks into his mass, his edges fading and chilling me to my bones. I shiver and withdraw with a start.