15: Hidden Within
For the past couple of hours, Philip and Noah had been working nonstop to set up a rudimentary security camera system in Philip’s bedroom, careful to keep close to each other, so if his parents were to hear something going on upstairs, they wouldn’t suspect there was anyone else but their son.
The plan was to conceal themselves in the neighbouring bedroom once Philip had summoned Gryal. Then they would watch Gryal’s movements over the cameras, and when he returned to his Tower, they would enter transit along with him, carrying a bomb in a crate Noah had managed to...borrow.
Now all of the cameras were up, and a quick glance over Philip’s laptop screen told them there was nowhere in the room that wouldn’t be under their gaze.
Philip snuck quietly to his bedroom door. He cringed as it creaked open, but it seemed that neither this, nor Noah’s work, had alerted his parents to the stranger’s presence. They were still watching the TV, blissfully unaware that suspicious events were taking place right above their heads. Closing the door carefully, Philip retook his place by Noah’s side, who was just then closing the blue curtains.
“I take it it’s not damaged at all,” Philip said, glancing at the bomb before them.
“If I had damaged it,” Noah responded, “we wouldn’t be here pondering that possibility.”
Philip accepted that point, “I’d better get on with it then.”
Noah stepped over to the cameras to give them one last check over. Philip was left standing in the middle of his bedroom. He was about to get on with it, when he remembered something.
“Oh, wait. That person I was trying to remember. He’s my friend, Tony. He went missing a while ago, just before I met you for the first time.”
Noah looked at him quizzically, “Your point is?”
“I think Gryal must have taken him.”
“And you’re...!” Noah began to shout, when Philip shushed him insistently.
There was the sound of movement downstairs, but then all was still.
Noah continued, in a quieter voice, “And you’re only telling me this now?!”
“You know my memory is only coming back in patches. It’s only now that I remember Tony was taken. It’s only now I remember I had a best friend called Tony,” he snapped, with an inexplicable burst of anger. And just as quickly as this rage had come upon him, it dissipated.
Noah rested his head in his hand, exasperated, “Okay, we can try to rescue your friend. But his safety is not the priority. We only go after him if we have time, assuming he’s even in the Tower we’re taken to, which would be an absolute miracle. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Philip confirmed, unsure why there was still an edge to his words. “Should I take the stone with me?”
“No, we don’t want to risk it being taken from us. Anyway, I think I remember the layout well enough.”
Satisfied he’d said all he had to, and ignoring Noah’s advice to calm down, he continued with the plan.
“As the one and only loyal Mancynn,” he spoke clearly, yet not so loud that it would alert his parents, “I request a meeting with Lord Gryal Repa.”
All was silent for a moment, and then the silence was broken by a faint crackling sound. A bright light, surrounded by smoke, was seeping down through the ceiling, coming down drip by drip, coalescing before him. The pair had only a split second to react. The moment they saw Gryal’s blurred form, they ran from the room, into the one next to it.
The Lord looked around the room, inspecting the surroundings. His midnight cloak billowed, though there was no breeze. Its blackness seeped over the floor, reaching into every corner like an ink-drop on blotting paper. The figure’s smooth, white skull revolved on the vertebrae that made up its neck, the artificial light of the overhead lamps casting shadows on the underside of his face. Gryal glared, possibly trying to intimidate the boy with his permanently bared pointed teeth, perhaps thinking he was hiding just out of sight, which in fact he was.
He took one step forward, looking around the bed to see if Philip was hiding there. Something broke under his foot. Lifting it away, Gryal saw the remains of a shattered toy which had been discarded along with others of its kind on the carpeted floor. Deciding eventually that it had been a false alarm, Gryal began to return to his Tower, planning the just punishment for the worker who had misinformed him of the summons. The tendrils of his mysterious attire began to retract, pulling back to the skeletal form.
As he broke down in the beam, moving up in particulates, Philip took himself and Noah via transit onto the spot Gryal was disappearing from along with the crate, having watched him with the cameras, grabbing on to Gryal’s energy transfer.
Most of what they could see was random, light colours, no coherent shapes or outlines. They were passing up a psychedelic tunnel. Looking up, it was possible to make out a kaleidoscope of golden rings swivelling around at the top of the vertical passage. However, they did not look with eyes as we think of them. It was more their consciousnesses that perceived the experiences. Their bodies had been demolecularised, each separate molecule spiralling upwards in a tempest of merged personas. And racing past these dispersed figures were trails of slithering ones and zeros, data streams carrying constant updates within the Tower network. Gryal would not be aware of their presence, so for the moment there was no risk of discovery. Above, the opening of shimmering rings was fast approaching. As Noah had been in the Towers before, he knew the best place in the local area to teleport to the moment they materialised. Philip and Noah had to brace for a split-second reaction. They only had one shot at this.
The embarkation room of the Tower was a wide cylinder of black surfaces, littered with crates and other materials scheduled for transportation. In the middle of the room was a raised, ovoid platform. Through a heptagonal hole in the plinth the trio rose, their individual atoms coming back into their original configuration. As soon as enough of the Mancynns’ matter was solid again, Noah took them up to the rafters.
Above the bustling workplace the Mancynns secured the crate with discarded chains which looked like they were left over from some construction at this ceiling level. Once certain the bomb wasn’t about to fall to the floor far below, they got carefully to their feet. Philip was about to ask Noah what their next move was going to be, when he saw something moving over his friend’s shoulder. Seeing Philip’s face, Noah whirled around, and in one swift movement released an energy ball square in the face of an advancing minion, a squat, red creature with both eyes on one side of his head and two tusks forcing themselves through the skin on his chin. The minion stumbled backwards, toppling off the rafters and crashing onto the floor below.
“Stupid Braknagh,” Noah muttered.
The Braknagh at the embarkation control console took no notice of its fellow hitting the floor next to it, but rather focused on stabilising its Lord’s form. Gryal stood as his once Entity energy form, a shining silhouette upon the platform. Then the bones and cloak rushed in all at once, snapping into place around the eternal consciousness, looking as if they had never left. Underneath the figure, metal plates rapidly unfolded to seal up the heptagonal hole.
From above, Gryal looked like a white pinprick on the black canvas. Philip knelt on the metal rafters so as to get a marginally better look at Gryal. The Brethren Lord stepped off the platform and strolled past his gaggle of minions, stepping over the splattered corpse. As he passed over it, the darkness of his cloak fed away at the mutilated flesh of the fallen minion, corroding the corpse. Gryal was set on a route march, weaving between the piles of export materials, when he paused. Philip could not have possibly known that the skeleton was inhaling, searching out the source of the scent which he’d detected upon materialisation, but he could definitely tell Gryal was turning his luminescent eyes up to the heights of the towering room. Philip’s heart was beating a quickstep against his ribcage. Surely Gryal wasn’t going to discover them this early on in their operation? But he was not. Having found no evident source, Gryal continued on his way towards a hidden door in the curved wall, which (having anticipated his arrival) melted away, allowing him access, before sealing up again once he had passed through. And once again, Philip felt something he didn’t understand, an urge to go down to Gryal, to be by his side.
Philip jumped as Noah placed his hand on his shoulder.
“Come on. If you want to find your friend, he’ll probably be this way.”
Philip stood back up beside Noah.
“You’re sure he will be in that direction?” Philip asked, questioning the way Noah was pointing.
“Though it has been many years since I have been in a Tower, I’m sure they wouldn’t have changed the layout too dramatically.”
Having said this, he began to walk in the direction previously indicated, not jogging or running, but at a decent-enough pace. Philip followed him along the rafters and into a corridor evidently designed for the Braknaghs (but to humans it might be considered a ventilation shaft). Crouching down, the pair moved along the corridor into a network of tight passages. They came across no one, but heard several down side passageways. There came a point where the passages split into a fork, one descending into the lower levels of the Tower, the other curving to the left. Just by standing in the entrance to the descending corridor, they could feel an increase in the air temperature, so Philip was glad when Noah led him down the other path. He didn’t feel much like going somewhere where he would be cooked alive.
After rounding the bend, the Mancynns were faced with a different design of room. The cramped tunnel suddenly opened up into a wide chamber made of a transparent material much like glass. They stepped out onto what looked like thin air, looking down into a cavern far too wide to see with the naked eye, big enough to hold a small star. There were metal rings suspended from the roof, decreasing in size as they went. At an immeasurable distance below them was a fiery lake, white hot, only as large as a pixel to the Mancynns.
They looked up one at a time, taking a new interest in what lay around them, rather than underneath. On the other side of the crystalline walls were industrial machines and shaded corridors, these big enough for a man to stand tall in. A couple of these corridors had faint lights at the ends of them; others revealed no secrets as to what lay beyond. Moving past the turning machinery, Noah counted the passages from left to right, selecting the third. Just as Gryal had been able to pass through the dark walls of the embarkation room, the glassy substance melted away to form an arch, letting Noah and Philip into the next section of the Tower.
Torch brackets burned on either side of the intruders. There were no windows or defining features for the corridor to have. The only difference between it and those like it elsewhere in the Tower was their footsteps echoing up and down the length of the passage. If the Brethren Lords were to have set up a security system in this sector of the station, their presence would have been detected shortly after they’d embarked on this new route. But by their total isolation, they could only assume there was nothing watching their progress.
Boredom and suspense were battling it out in Philip’s mind. Nothing had happened since their entry into the tunnel network, not something he could complain about, but excitement wasn’t exactly rife in this portion of their expedition into the heart of Gryal’s lair either. Yet there was always that nagging thought that just as the corridor would come to a corner or an end of some description, there would be an adversary waiting to pounce upon their unsuspecting persons.
But it wasn’t an adversary as such. The corridor ended where it joined a sort of river, a flowing, wide ribbon of inky fluid. Things floated along in the stream, indiscernible, disturbing things, and through the fluid ploughed the carved pointed prow of a boat of the same bleak nothingness. On the whole, the boat greatly resembled a gondola; it was long with shallow seats fit for only one person abreast. Every part of the boat was draped in shreds of bio-luminous plant matter. At the back of the boat was the shape of a man seven and a half feet tall. There was no visible body to the figure, just a cloak concealing anything which may or may not have existed beneath. He wasn’t even certain that the cloak was tangible. To Philip, it looked more like dark air.
As the pair stepped up to the rim of the carved wood, the curls of the cloak rippled. From out of a slit in the darkness protruded a hand, pale as if it was thoroughly sun bleached. Turning the hand over, it revealed two coin sized holes etched into the palm.
“He expects payment,” Noah informed Philip in a whisper.
Philip personally thought that a carefully aimed energy burst would suffice, and even if it wouldn’t, he didn’t expect Noah to have any money with which to pay the figure, not the type of money used in this godforsaken place. Maybe an energy burst should be used for good measure, just in case. Why didn’t Noah just fry this piece of filth to hell!
The figure in the boat made a move, or rather, the air into which it moved became darker like its cloak, and the air that it left returned to its regular shade. It turned its shape of a head to look directly at Philip. If it had a head and face under its hood, Philip could not imagine it. The shadow cast by the hood seemed to prevent any concept of flesh under the veil. But either way, the teen could not shake off the feeling that he was being eyed menacingly by something more than just blackness.
“Whatever you’re thinking, don’t,” Noah warned. “Though the Furimun will have been taught to speak, his native tongue is similar enough to our own brainwaves, so he can hear what you are thinking. He exists as consciousness, not matter. He and others like him were caught up in the early sweeps of the Alpha Realm. Due to their energy construct, they ended up being dragged up into the Towers, and almost like a filter, they couldn’t find a way back out again. And on that note...” he turned back to the Furimun, “You can read my mind so go ahead, read it. Then you’ll know what we’re here to do. We can free you. You just need to help us.”
The Furimun ‘turned’ to look this time at Noah, tilting its ‘head’ in a quizzical manner.
“I think you’ll find I don’t need to pay.”
There was a pause, before the Furimun retracted the hand and raised a long, thin pole from the boat floor. With no sort of barrier preventing them from proceeding, the Mancynns stepped into the vessel, taking seats one behind the other at the front of the boat. The Furimun held the staff forth before him, and the river in front of them began to froth. Globules of the fluid oozed up above the surface level, stretching out towards them, but not being able to fully separate from the overall mass of the river. So instead of the fluid coming to them, the seemingly magnetic pull of the staff pulled them ever so slowly forwards.
They began their journey in silence, the three of them positioned in single file, Philip at the prow, the Furimun at the stern. Philip focussed his attention on his surroundings: the ethereal light sparkling through the translucent ceiling which brought up opalescent patterns on the river and walls; these walls themselves, the building blocks of the Tower both dark and crumbling in places; the sights and sounds of the goings on glimpsed through the odd unglazed window. When he saw these, the word ‘home’ sprung to mind.
Noah wasn’t overly interested; he’d seen it all before.
“You said it was consciousness, not matter,” Philip spoke in a faint whisper, so as to not let the Furimun hear him, in case he said something which could be misconstrued as an insult (though now he thought about it, if it could hear his thoughts, the volume of his voice would make little difference), “but it has a hand, we saw it. How does that work?”
Noah gave a sigh, followed by a noise like he was making up his mind, “It’s complicated. I guess the best way to think of it is that for the scenario to work there is a need for the Furimun to have hands, both to accept the money and to hold the staff. Therefore, your brain sees a hand. It’s not exactly what happens, but...”
“I get it, it’s hard to explain.”
They fell back into silence, listening to the rhythmic splashing of the fluid beneath them as it broke in the wake of the boat.
As would be expected, their centre of gravity remained at the bottom of the boat. The relevance of this wasn’t clear to Philip until he once again looked through the windows to see they were in fact travelling vertically up the Tower rather than along it. But it was only the rooms on the other side of the wall that gave away this fact. Neither the river nor the way their clothes were hanging indicated a change in gradient. Up they travelled, now gathering speed as the magnetic properties of the staff grew. The air was rushing past their faces, pulling at their rippling cheeks. If Philip had wanted to say something to Noah, he wouldn’t have been able to. It was like one of those rollercoasters which shoot you forwards at around a hundred miles per hour. Even Noah, who had surely ridden with the Furimun a number of times during his time among the Lords, turned to look at the gondolier with a perplexed expression on his face, wondering if this speed was absolutely necessary or even that safe. And unfortunately with increased velocity came a decrease in the smoothness of their ride. The passengers were buffeted left, right and centre, their heads struggling to stay in one position.
Philip understood that they were levelling off when the light coming through the ceiling above them began to move up beyond their line of sight. And into view came a bay similar to the one at which they’d found the Furimun. The boat decelerated rapidly, jolting the Mancynns forwards as though they’d hit an invisible wall. The prow of the boat inched up alongside the dock before coming to a halt, the last of the ripples in the river drifting out of sight.
The pair stepped out of the boat and onto the black floor, Philip feeling a bit queasy now that he was standing still. Noah made a slight gesture of appreciation in the direction of the Furimun, whose only response was a continued stare.
Once again they were alone in the twilight of the Tower halls. Once again they were on the lookout for anyone who might be an adversary. Once again Philip was relying on Noah to find his friend.
It was just like before; they were hearing their footsteps echoing in their ears over and over again as they walked between the high-set torch brackets.
“At least it didn’t take very long,” Philip said, reflecting on what had not exactly been a comfortable ride.
“We didn’t go very far, only a couple of dozen floors,” Noah replied. “Even if we hadn’t gone at such an...untempered pace, it wouldn’t have taken that much time. And that wasn’t as fast as the Furimun can go. Considering the size of the Towers, his kind have to travel much faster than what the speed of light is in the Alpha Realm just to get people from the top to the bottom in a short-enough time that the Brethren Lords don’t punish them. Don’t ask, it’s complicated.”
The firelight illuminated the path ahead; the orange and yellow rays flickered on the blackest of walls, lapping up the darkness. And then, rather abruptly, the surfaces upon which they spread fell away as the corridor ahead split into a fork. Philip and Noah strode up to the junction, looking left and right upon arrival. Each path looked identical to the other, so there was no clear way of discerning which led to where Tony might be being held captive. Noah took a few steps down one corridor, then came back to look down the other.
“If you’re set on finding your friend, we’d better split up,” he said, turning to Philip. “I’ll take the right, you can take the left.”
With his instructions given Noah began to stride into the shadowy depths of the right-hand corridor. Philip stood still for a moment, staring after his partner. It took this time for what he had been told to sink in and when it did he didn’t react instantly. Noah hadn’t exactly given him any warning that he was about to be left on his own. Philip was just thinking that perhaps this wasn’t the best idea looking down his designated path, but then reasoned that he didn’t have a choice. Already Noah had vanished from sight, even with the light from the torches. The way he saw it, there was nothing else he could do.
*
Not that Philip had been an inconvenience, but now he was alone Noah could move with greater speed and stealth. He put into practice the skills he’d picked up over the years as the active Mancynn, keeping out of the torch light and stepping lightly so as to make the softest of sounds. He was covering great distances in his silent strides, passing open windows and very rarely a doorway.
Just when he was starting to get to the end of his tether with these repetitive hallways, Noah came out onto a balcony halfway up the side of the large, dome-shaped room he’d been looking for. He glanced up at the holographic ceiling, which was displaying a number of files open for anyone to see, before glancing at the floor, which was a maze of electric-blue, bookshelf-like furniture, a nest of databases humming away at a frequency undetectable by humans. Also on the ground level were small groups of Tower minions, scientists probably.
Noah vaulted himself over the balcony barrier and like a cat landed on top of one of the databanks. Looking around, he saw that no one had heard or seen his descent, and for that he was glad. None of the Tower’s inhabitants were nearby, so the Mancynn swiftly climbed down, using the outward-sticking energy ports as footholds. Once on ground level, Noah jogged up to a monitor attached to the wall of electronics. Opening up one of the main systems, he found his position in relation to the rest of the Tower. Unfortunately he was not near the detention centre, where Philip’s friend would most likely be, yet there was something to be had in this room. This something was why he’d chosen this path, temporarily leaving Philip to search for his friend alone.
Once familiarised with the floorplan of the dome, Noah set off between the azure shelves. At each corner he stopped to peer around it cautiously, his senses heightened so as to detect any hostile movement. It was down his sixth lane that Noah was forced to duck behind a core drive system as a lone Braknagh came walking the other way. Listening intently for the Braknagh to come within fighting range, the fingernails on Noah’s left hand began to elongate into claws, a slight pain growing further up his arm as they did so. The Braknagh stepped out alongside Noah, inspecting the monitor on the opposite wall. Noah stood up slowly, creeping forwards. In one swipe he’d sliced through the Braknagh, his claws cutting the flesh as if it were butter. The body fell to the polished floor, and the Mancynn knelt down by it. Noah made a quick search over the corpse, looking for anything which may be of use. However, for all his (albeit brief) searching, all Noah found was some form of taser-like firearm. It might turn out to be handy in close-range combat, but there was no way he could use it to fight long distance.
He stood and looked at the frisked body, thinking that he couldn’t leave it there to be discovered. There were no gaps in the computers to stow it away. The only space was on top of the shelves or... Noah retracted his claws while his upper arm increased in mass, his muscles becoming extremely prominent. With his newfound strength, he lifted up the limp corpse and slung it over his head, letting it fly high into the air before landing on the balcony above.
Noah turned again, his muscles shrinking back to normal size, and, now wielding a weapon, continued on his way. This minor hiccough in his journey hadn’t occurred that far from the end point, so it was within a minute or so that he was walking into a wide circle in the streets of machinery. In the middle of the circle was a thick book resting on a glittering lectern. Noah strolled over to the lectern, his footsteps the only ones to be heard.
He had had his suspicions as to what the book was, and up close he had them confirmed. The cover was purple and felt almost scaly. There was no title upon it, only a symbol consisting of two crossing lines.
It was the Book of Alternity, the book of prophecy the Entities had discovered in the Beta Realm. Noah knew he really should be retracing his steps so that he could find Philip and his friend, but he just couldn’t resist taking a look at what apparently was to come. That was the point of coming here.
*
Philip had similarly found something other than bland corridor a short time previous, however this was not as interesting or as useful as what Noah had come across. At the end of the left-hand corridor was a seemingly bottomless crater. By the scorch marks on the walls, he assumed that there had been an explosion, and looking down into the space below, he guessed the blast had punctured the roof of a rather large ventilation pipe, one so huge that he could not see the bottom. The crater was far too wide to jump, and there were no ledges on which he could stand.
Philip turned, looking back down the corridor. There hadn’t been any other routes to take. At least there was no one else in sight that he’d have to fight. As his line of sight returned to the chasm, he remembered something Noah had said to him.
“Your ability to enter transit, to phase, to fly...”
Of course, Noah had followed by saying that it wasn’t flying as such, but even if it was, how had he put it, ‘long-distance jumping’, it was worth a try. Philip couldn’t remember exactly how Noah had said it was meant to work, but he hoped that it would come naturally as he attempted to cross the gap.
With this thought in mind, Philip got in position for a run-up. His breathing became deeper, his muscles tensing. He started to run, his rapid steps quickly bringing him to the lip of the crater. Suddenly, without warning, there was a sharp pain like his cells were collapsing in his arms and a boiling sensation shot down his legs. In shock, Philip stumbled, tears blossoming from his eyes as he tumbled over the edge. Wildly, he flung out his arms, and by chance he managed to get a hold of the charred floor. His arms were feeling extremely weak after...whatever had happened to them, so supporting his weight was far harder than it would have normally been. Even so, Philip was able to keep himself from falling into the abyss below his dangling feet...his heavier-than-usual feet. The downward force of his legs was too much to be pulled up onto the ledge, he wasn’t moving anywhere. Then a thought occurred to him.
On the other side of the crater Philip exited transit. Why had he not thought of that in the first place? Philip looked down and saw his legs were still more muscular than was humanly possible. Despite his better judgement, he decided to once again test out his ‘ability’. Why not? The crater was behind him so there was no chance of falling to his death, and there was no one ahead of him in the long corridor.
Philip bent his knees in preparation for his second jump. Blood vessels pulsated visibly as he paused. He pushed upwards from the ground with great ease in a forward direction. Before he knew it the air was rushing past his face, through his hair and down his jacket. From what he could tell he wasn’t halfway through his arc when the same stinging sensation as before flooded his body, only this time in reverse. The extra mass and more from his legs shot up into the front of his body, adding further momentum to his flight path. His body was propelled forwards until he crashed into the black floor. Philip gingerly picked himself up.
“How in the world can you call that flying?!” Philip shouted at Noah, though the Mancynn could not possibly hear him.
Philip stood, shakily. There was no one running down the corridor to face him after hearing his outburst, so that was a good sign. Disgruntled, and only slightly deterred, Philip wandered on, seeing a change in the intensity of darkness ahead.
It turned out that his chosen corridor led onto a balcony not unlike the one Noah had found (though he couldn’t have known this), a balcony overlooking the inside of a gigantic cylinder lined with numerous other balconies, level upon level. And each of these balconies, including the one Philip was standing on, was home to innumerable detention cells, whose doors were a mesh of bars rather than the ordered ones in human jails. Many appeared empty, though at this distance Philip could not be certain.
He began to walk around the balcony, past cells which certainly were uninhabited. He ran his hand along the cages, listening to the metallic sounds this made. Until, that is, he was stopped in his tracks by a blood-curdling roar emanating from below him, deep as anything he’d ever heard. Philip leaned over the barrier that protected him from falling over the edge of the balcony to try and look at what it could be. He did this to no avail, but he did hear the sound of tearing flesh accompanying the animalistic growls. He only hoped that he wouldn’t have to face the creature any time soon. ‘Worthless beast’, he found himself thinking, instinctively.
Further up the path he came to a ladder climbing through holes in both floor and ceiling, acting as a means to travel between levels. Through the hole in the floor Philip could see a Braknagh carrying a tray of basic sustenance walking on the lower balcony. Philip didn’t want to risk confronting that creature he’d heard, but that tray was more than likely intended for a prisoner, perhaps Tony.
The Braknagh didn’t hear Philip land cat-like behind him. There was no sense in attacking the worker, no matter how much his bloodlust yearned to. If Philip did then there would be even less chance of finding Tony. He kept his distance, not wishing to be discovered, yet near enough as to keep the Braknagh within his sights. Around the circle of the balcony he snuck, peering into