Morning Star полностью

We strip our oxygen tanks and stow them in the engine rim of an old space shuttle painted with the flag of pre-empire America. So we’re left with our small packs, scarabSkin, demonHelms, and weapons. Sevro pulls up Victra’s crude maps of the tower’s interior and asks Pebble if she’s found Quicksilver yet.

“I can’t. It’s odd. The cameras are off in the top two levels. Same with biometric readers. Can’t pinpoint him like we planned.”

“Off?” I ask.

“Maybe he’s having an orgy or wankin’ off and doesn’t want his Security to see.” Sevro grunts with a shrug. “Either way, he’s hiding something, so that’s where we’re headed.”

I cue Sevro’s personal line so the others can’t hear us. “We can’t wander around looking for him. If we’re caught in the halls without leverage—”

“We won’t wander.” He cuts me off before addressing the Howlers. “Cloaks on, ladies. Razors and silenced scorchers. PulseFists only if shit gets dirty.” He ripples transparent. “Howlers, on me.”

We slink from the museum into a maze of otherworldly hallways, following Sevro’s lead. Floors of black marble. Walls of glass. Ten-meter-high ceilings made from pulseFields, which look into aquariums where vibrant reefs of coral stretch like fungal tentacles. Reptilian mermaids one foot long with humanoid faces, gray skin, and skulls shaped like crowns swim through a kingdom of scalding blue and violent orange. Hateful little crow eyes glare down at us as they pass.

The walls are moodGlass and pulse with subtle alternating colors. Now heartbeats of magenta, soon rippling curtains of cobalt-silver. It’s dreamlike. Amidst the maze are little alcoves. Miniature art galleries showcasing works of contemporary dot holographs and twenty-first century AD ostentaciousism instead of the reserved neoclassical Romanism so in vogue with Peerless Scarred. Recharging our battery packs to our ghostCloaks, we duck into a gallery where lurks a gaudy purple metallic dog shaped like a balloon animal.

Victra sighs. “Goryhell. Man’s got the taste of a tabloid socialite.”

Ragnar cocks his head at the dog. “What is it?”

“Art,” Victra says. “Supposedly.”

The tone of condescension Victra strikes intrigues me, as does the building. It pulses with artifice. The art, the walls, the mermaids, all so on the nose of what the Peerless Scarred would expect of a newly moneyed Silver. Quicksilver must know Gold psychology intimately in order to have been allowed to grow so wealthy. So I wonder, is this extravagance all something far more clever? A mask so obvious and easy to accept that no one would ever think to look beneath it? Quicksilver, for all his reputation, has never been called stupid. So perhaps this tawdry dreamscape isn’t for him. It’s for his guests.

Which makes me think something here is amiss as we reach an unlit atrium with unpolished sandstone floors perforated by pink jasmine trees and slink across the floor in a V formation toward the set of double doors that leads to Quicksilver’s bedroom suite. Cloaks deactivated so we can better see. Razors rigid and held out, metal drifting centimeters above the sandstone.

This isn’t a home. It’s a stage. Made to manipulate. Sinister in the cold calculation with which it was constructed. I don’t like it. I key Sevro’s frequency again. “Something’s wrong here. Where are the servants? The guards?”

“Maybe he likes his privacy…”

“I think it’s a trap.”

“A trap? Your head or your gut talkin’?”

“My gut.”

He’s quiet for a breath, and I wonder if he’s speaking to someone else on the other line. Maybe he’s speaking to all of them. “What’s your rec?”

“Pull back. Assess the situation to see….”

“Pull back?” He snaps the question out. “For all we know, they just dropped nukes on our people. We need this.” I try to interrupt, but he steamrolls me. “Shit, I’ve run thirteen ops just to get intel on this Silvery asshole. We leave now, that’s all slagged. They’ll know we were here. We won’t have this chance again. He’s the key to getting the Jackal. You gotta trust me, Reap. Do you?”