29. The next floor down

Link to Tilted Spire Timetable
 
The group were quiet as the elevator descended the shaft. Jaden held onto the controls, contemplating what horror Nexion had in store. Marius was crouched on the ground looking through their small hole. His cats-eyes watched the darkness for any sign of the end of the line. Fureva-Yung stood silently, staring at her tattoo, brushing the small dots of light with her free hand.
“Nox, have you ever scanned Fureva-Yung’s tattoo?” Jaden asked, absently watching the large woman contemplate her mysterious life before waking up in the Endoval forest.
Jittering on the spot, also contemplating the final confrontation with Nexion, Nox was startled out of her revelry.
“Huh? Oh, I don’t think so,” She looked up at Fureva-Yung, “Could I?”
 
Fureva-Yung shrugged and offered her arm for Nox to see. Scanning through the layers of skin and circuitry into the fundamental building blocks of tissue, fat, nerves and bone, she was surprised to see how integrated it was. What they had taken for a simple tattoo was a tiny computer network fused with her biological systems. Powered by the body's electrical energy, it was hard to discern where the meat ended and the technology began. Nox contemplated the tattoo system. Had it been with Fureva-Yung since birth, or was it more recently installed?
 
“Huh, I’m not the youngest?”
“What?”
“Fureva-Yung, her cells, the technology that makes up her tattoo, everything can’t be more than a year old.” Nox turned to Fureva-Yung, “How long since you arrived at Celeron?”
“Yeah, about that, right?” Marius answered as Fureva-Yung stood silent.
She said nothing. She had nothing she could say. It was true, her conscious memories only went back to waking in the forest and being attacked by margr. Militia found her and brought her back to Cerelon. But what of the flashes of memory from years of living? Those memories were confirmed as genuine by Nox’s visit to the spaceship and the bracelet she now wore.
“Sure,” Marius said as if it were common knowledge, “That’s what happens when you travel via transporter.”
“That makes sense. The system records your pattern, and you’re formed of elements at the destination. See, another reason to travel to the datasphere.”
“Only problem there is we didn’t know if you could come back,” Marius replied the all-knowing father figure.
Nox grumbled into Fureva-Yung’s furry side, “That’s what the teleport is for.”
 
“My magic arm?” Fureva-Yung said, not finishing the thought. She was a little lost in what she’d just heard.
“Well, we know it's not magic now,” Jaden commented, “Just a pile of tiny wires and circuitry.”
“It’s still magic!” Nox defended her furry friend, “There’s magic in the world, see?” And between them, Nox made her tiny ball of light float up before ‘popping’ on the roof and disappearing.
“Yeah, you transformed from a grubby girl to a beautiful young woman,” Marius added. Nox stuck out her tongue.
“That was clean water, a lot of scrubbing and a pretty dress.” She replied, but the thought took hold.
“If I’ve changed, do you think I should change my name? Maybe…Phoenix!”
“Phi-nox,” Fureva-Yung said and made Nox laugh.
“Yeah, Phi-nox!”
 
Marius went back to looking through the hole in the floor. The shaft descended hundreds of metres before four more doors appeared in the wall. The gaps between doors were twice as high here as they had been above, indicating that each of the four floors was twice as high.
“I think we should explore those levels and clear out anything nasty, “ Jaden said when Marius told the others.
Nox physically slumped against the wall, and even Marius didn’t look convinced it required the extra effort. Nexion was the problem. Fix the problems with the A.I., and everything else would work for them, not against them. Fureva-Yung had no opinion on the matter, but Jaden was firm.
“Do you want to get to wherever we’re going and a whole four floors of enemies descend on us?”
Marius sighed, “Look, what if we compromise and check out the last floor?
 
No one was very pleased with that solution, so it was the one they went with. As the capsule lined up with the last door, Marius gave the signal, and Jaden let go of the controls. The capsule shuddered to a halt, and Fureva-Yung opened the doors with her ‘magic arm’.
 
Outside, a circular corridor wrapped around either side of the elevator shaft. The plain white wall facing the open door was lit by a blue-green light that streamed across the wall at a low angle. Fureva-Yung stepped out and turned down the left, while Marius stepped out and turned right. Nox followed Fureva-Yung as Jaden stayed in the elevator capsule rummaging in Bellyache.
“I’ll just brace the door and stop Nexion from trying any nasty tricks,” Her muffled voice called after them.
 
On either side of the elevator, something had pulled panels off the walls and torn away the electrical parts inside. Components scattered all over the floor around the shaft made the footing treacherous. Behind the elevator shaft, the floor dropped away two metres, leaving Marius, Fureva-Yung and Nox standing on small platforms with handrails. The floor below was a sea of conduits, cabling and other wiring, all connected to a structure at the far end of the room consisting of three tall pillars. The blue-green light glowed up from underneath the platforms, filling the space with eerie shadows.
 
Nox wondered if the column was connected to the larger energy-gathering and directing apparatus they had found throughout the Spire. The last time she’d tried scanning one, she’d been thrown across the room. The time before that, she’d been thrown out of her body. Prepared for anything, she reached out and connected with the columns.
 
And something connected with her.
 
The first Fureva-Yung knew something was wrong, Nox was on her back, hands stretched out around her neck. Not expecting an attack from Nox, fureva-Yung was surprise and stepped back. Her foot landed on one of the loose components that slipped out from under her. She tripped back, hitting the railing, which gave way under her size and collapsed. Fureva-Yung looked up at Nox’s dead-eyed stare as she fell backwards the two metres onto the uneven floor.
 
Nox had only a little more time to gather what was happening. The flash of energy had been expected. The freerider that had leapt across had not, and for a moment, her body moved at the wim of the intelligence now in her head. She fought back control stepping back from the brink of the platform.
No! You can’t do that! This is mine! Who are you?
The entity did not answer.
 
Below, Fureva-Yung could feel something squirming around underneath her. With a groan, she rolled to one side and reached behind her, pulling out a six-legged robot. Its body was no more than a box fifty by twenty-five by fifteen centimetres, currently bent where she’d fallen on it.
“Sorry,” She said to the creature as it reared up on four back legs in a display of anger. Having enough of smart machines, Fureva-Yung stood up and grab the platform. With a quick jump up she swung herself up and back onto the platform.
 
Marius ran around the elevator shaft and found Nox standing still up against the far wall, her eyes unfocused and glazed. The sound of clicking claws from the pit drew his attention to the four boxy robots climbing the walls towards them.
“I guess I can’t help you,” He said to Nox and turned on one of the robots. He picked one off the wall with his armoured hands. It squirmed and hissed like an angry cat, making him lose his grip. The box pivoted in the middle bringing two of its four claws around to grab hold of his arm. With surprising strength, it pulled itself out of his grasp and climbed his arm.
 
In her mind, Nox wrestled with invading entity for control. Again she gained the upper hand and focused her mind on the being. There was an intelligence, something tangible in her world of the mind that she could get a hold of. She read its simple thoughts and found only two directives:
If machine, control.
If biological, destroy.
She wondered if this simple fraction of life was causing Nexion to turn against his biological creators. This could be a virus, and they could create a vaccine from it. Taking a mental breath, Nox started breaking down the invader.
 
Outside in the blue-green room, the robot withdrew small sharp tools from under its boxy carapace and pointed them at Marius. Fureva-Yung had just reached her feet as a robot leapt off the wall and landed on her arm, a power drill poised to strike. The drill bit pierced her chest. A third started climbing up Nox’s leg. Currently in control, she dodged aside, and the clawed legs missed their mark.
 
She responded with a grunt of force and her hand whipped out at the three metal attackers. She missed one, but the other two shuddered under an invisible psychic blast. Marius dodged his and studied their action, working out their motivations for attacking. It seemed to him that the squashing of one had marked them as threats. Possibly a show of friendship would help calm the situation? Other than that, a greater threat could possibly pull their attention. He tried the former. Dodging an attack, he couched down and carefully attempted to straighten bent boxes and legs.
“Here you are fella. We’ll have you right as rain in no time, “ He cooed at the creature. Misjudging his position as Marius shifted to crouch down, the creature turned, its claws hitting empty air and fell off the platform.
Fureva-Yung didn’t care for motivations. With one meaty hand, she grabbed the one drilling into her chest and flung it across the room. The wobbly flight and satisfying crash were all the motivation she needed.
 
Another robot fell from the wall onto Nox clawing at her with a serrated blade. The shock of the heavy weight pushing the blade into her shoulder distracted Nox enough to lose the fight for control of her body. The entity flung Nox at Marius. Unlike Fureva-Yung, he was forewarned that attack could come from that quarter and easily held Nox at arm's length. Fureva-Yung pulled out her chain and swung the heavy links until they purred. She sent the loose end whipping out after the one of Nox, smashing it off her slim shoulder to fall to the ground with a clatter of bent and damaged parts. Marius picked up a third robot, turning it over to see if he could find a manual shutdown. When he failed to find one, he threw a punch, but it fell from his hand and escaped injury.
 
The two robots of the platform attacked Marius and Fureva-Yung. Behind them, Nox once more took control and sent out three more Psychic blasts. Injured robots started raining from the walls. Marius hit his cracking its boxy shell.
“Ooh, shinies!” He exclaimed in delight as riches of components spilled out.
At the edge of the platform Fureva-Yung waited patiently as another climbed the wall towards her. She swung out her chain, overreached and lost balance. She fell again, the robot following, its drill ready to strike.
 
Jaden by this time had wedged the door open to her satisfaction and followed the short corridor around to join her companions. There she found Nox seemingly catatonic, Marius prying the innards of a robot out of its shell, and Fureva-Yung being attacked by a similar robot with a drill. With only a moment’s hesitation she leapt off the platform and onto Fureva-Yung, knocking the breath out her.
“Sorry about that,” She said as she turned her unique genius onto the attacking robot. With a giggle and a few components, she disabled the creature for a minute, long enough for Fureva-Yung to grab it and start pulling off its legs one by one.
 
On the platform, Nox was back in control. Using the energies of her Psychic blast, she focused it down to a scalpel edge and started dissecting the invader in her mind. It was a fraction of a greater intelligence, but not Nexion. She knew the taste of his mind; this was something much more powerful. As the tiny intelligence gave up its secrets to her probing blast, Nox knew that Nexion was only another victim, just as they were.
She blinked.
 
The battle with the robots was over, and her friends were gathered, Jaden and Marius sorting through cyphers and other components, and Fureva-Yung took great joy pulling apart a robot with her bare hands.
“II think we broke Nox,” Marius said as he cooed over another cluster of circuitry and dropped it into Jaden, waiting Bellyache.
“We?” Fureva-Yung retorted, rubbing the bruises now coming up red on her back. An electric jolt zapped through her from the robot. She waited to see if she gained a new memory and was disappointed that nothing happened.
 
“I’m not broken. In fact, I broke it!” Nox said with a self-satisfied smirk.
“NOX!” They collectively cried, “What are you up to now? Causing problems for Nexion?”
“No,” She replied thoughtfully, “Something else. I only dealt with a sliver of its intellect. I think it is whatever has infected Nexion, listen,” And she went through the intellect’s two-step plan for domination.
“Control or destroy, the hallmark of any good fascist state,” Marius commented absentmindedly as he patched up the scrapes she caught in the fight, “We know a nasty intellect with just that sentiment in mind, don’t we?”
 
Before Nox could answer, the column at the end of the room flashed, and more robots fell to the floor.
“Urgh? Good robots or bad robots?” Nox asked as the new robots swarmed over the bodies of the fallen.
“I don’t know…” Marius replied as a squeaking, scraping sound from the elevator caught all their attention.
“The clever little buggers,” Jaden swore and ran around the hallway to find two of the small robots pulling out her wedged, “Very clever!” With the tip of her steel-capped shoe, she kicked them off the wedge.
“Time to go!”
 
Gathering everyone in her arm, Fureva-Yung ushered the group into the lift. In their haste, Marius tripped up on carapace of a dismantled robot and sprawled face-first halfway through the door. Jaden dipped her hand into her satchel and pulled out a small cypher the size of an egg. Depressing the narrow end, she threw it into the room ahead of the swarm of oncoming robots. The cypher snapped, and the robots scampered away from the magnetic forcefield it projected.
 
The two who had worried the elevator door now turned on the party, leaping for Fureva-Yung and Nox. Fureva-Yung brushed one out of the air, Nox didn’t know what hit her. It landed with a smack on her shoulder as its carapace slowly morphed, moulding itself to her skin. Nox screamed as the liquid metal slowly melted into her body. Her psychic blast followed, hitting the two robots in the capsule and another crawling outside the door.
 
“Why don’t you just give it a rest,” Jaden said, expertly prying at the molten robot on Nox’s shoulder and disabling it. Connected to the machine, something about Jaden’s touch passed to Nox. Her eyelids fluttered closed, and she slumped to the floor of the elevator, “Nox, I didn’t mean you!”
Reaching for the telepathic connection that had always linked the two of them, Jaden followed it to Nox’s unconscious mind.
Wake up. There’s still work to be done. She thought, sharing some of her own dogged resistance. Nox’s eyes snapped open.
Jaden now turned her attention to the robot drilling into Fureva-Yung’s arm, “Yes, and you too, little pest.” With a touch, the robot fell off Fureva-Yung, to be snatched out of the air by the big woman
A robot leapt for Marius. He sidestepped it into the lift. Bringing down his armoured fist he smashed the robot flatinto the ground. Looking at the one moulded into her skin with disgust, Nox reshaped it into a ball and tossed it out of the capsule.
 
The doors closed, and Jaden, her hand on the controls, took them back to the surface.
“Are we sure we’re clear of those monsters? Nox?”
Nox, busy patching up Fureva-Yung, scanned the capsule. Below their feet, on the outside two robots clung.
“There,” She said, pointing through the solid metal floor. Jaden stopped the lift.
“No problem, I’ve got it,” The uninjured Marius said before thrusting his whole hand through the hole in the floor. As expected, the robots leapt for the bait. As soon as Marius yelled, Fureva-Yung pulled him up, yanking his arm through the hole and scraping the robots off to fall back down the shaft. Marius’ yell from the robots became a shocked gasp as his whole shoulder bent oddly and dislocated.
“I…I told you…. it would…. work,” He stammered between breaths.
“I’m sorry!” Fureva-Yung gently put Marius back, “I forget how fragile you are.”
“Hey! I can hit you with my other hand,” Marius brought up his left hand, still shielded with a forcefield, though his pale face looked like he might faint from the pain.
 
Jaden started the capsule again and saw Nox watching her.
“Hey, I’m sorry I put you to sleep like that. I didn’t expect that disarming the robot would send you catatonic,” She said, reaching out and brushing sweaty hair from Nox’s face.
Nox shrugged, “I didn’t mind that, it sort of felt nice,” Nox smiled wistfully. “But you did something afterwards. You…came and found me…you…protected me,” Nox struggled for words. She tapped her head, “ I can still feel you.”
Jaden stared back, not knowing what to say or think. Had she violated something sacred to the girl? In trying to save her, had she abused their connection?
Nox stepped across the capsule and leaned into her side, “Thank you.”
 
The capsule doors opened, and they stumbled out on the ground floor of the Spire. Marius wandered off, clutching his shoulder and looking for Temila. Fureva-Yung fingered her dressings as Nox and Jaden tiredly leaned on each other.
“We need to make you that armour, Fureva-Yung and quick,” Jaden said, exhausted, “Just not today.”
“Tomorrow?” Fureva-Yung looked up with genuine feeling.
“Yes, tomorrow.”