Chapter Two

His uncle's house was a sprawling mansion, set in an industrial district way out on the outskirts of New London. A former owner had probably lost a battle with the city as the pulse-train tracks were right beside it, the sound of which rose to a roar as it flew past in a neon flash.

It was gothic. Isolated. Close to a noisy as hell train. Not a house that he would have imagined his uncle choosing as a place to live.

It had cost Christian a bunch of credits to get there, hailing an aircab from the jail. He had crossed the smoggy skies of New London while he dwelled on what could have happened to his uncle.

Christian walked up the front steps to the house and pulled the police tape off the door. He let it trail from his fingers into the wind. He tapped the keycard against the scanner and the large door gave a small hiss and swung inward.

Lights flickered on automatically revealing the prints of police boots that tracked through the thick dust. As Christian stepped through he had to push a cobweb out of the way. The house felt truly abandoned.

Where are you?

The door opened into a large foyer showcasing a majestic oak staircase that led up to the second floor.

Christian let out a low whistle.

In it's time this would have been quite the place.

Christian explored the huge house methodically. In each room drawers had been left open and their contents upended onto the ground. Furniture was knocked over. The police hadn't bothered to clean up after themselves. Typical.

The whole thing made no sense. Why did he leave everything to Christian exactly two years after going missing? That seemed like a very deliberate and calculated move. And why hadn't he bailed Christian out sooner if he was in trouble?

Another thought occurred. Perhaps his uncle had committed fraud and was relaxing somewhere living off the profits. Christian imagined his uncle laying on a beach with this missing 'biomechanical doctor'. While fanciful it was at least a positive outcome.

Fake your death and give me this big old house to re-start my life. Thanks. Doesn't explain this ring and the key though.

He inspected the fancy ring again, hoping for some epiphany. No-one in his family had ever worn something like this. Frustrated, he continued to search the house and couldn't fight the growing feeling of unease, an instinct developed from his time in the military. The sort of feeling that tells you something's up two seconds before the bullets whizz past.

The first thing that he noticed was that his uncle collected... oddities. He picked up a helmet that was left resting on a coffee table. It was something like a knight of medieval times might wear. But it looked bizarrely new and it had an authentic weight to it, the metal was thick and heavy. As Christian turned it over, he saw how they had worked the metal inside into bracing for the skull. The front of the helmet was decorated with the same sigil that was on the ring - an ax and a sword crossing over.

I don't remember him collecting antiques.

He set the helmet down. It quickly became clear that it wasn't the only historical artifact in the house. Leather vambraces, boots made of plate mail acting as a doorstopper to the kitchen. There might have been weapons too but the police would likely have taken them.

He went up the big oak staircase exploring room after room that branched off from the corridor.

The upstairs hallway was lined with artwork and photos. It was the only place where you could guess that a person lived here, with a small collection of framed personal photographs – the rest of the house felt anonymous, like a museum.

Christian looked at the photographs, seeing himself in a picture that was in the center of the collection. He was maybe six years old at the time. His mother was there and his uncle James was crouching next to him. His late grandparents were smiling arm in arm in their backyard. It had been one of their rare family barbeques, graced by his grandmother's old Vietnamese recipes for marinated chicken. A happy day.

He lingered on his uncle's frozen face.

Where are you? What did you want me to do?

Then it hit him.

The layout of this place doesn't work – this hallway is too long.

He stepped backwards, looking carefully at each end.

He had been in every room yet there should be a decent section of the space unused. The hallway had no more doors to it, at least none he could see.

He went back to the start and began pulling off the pictures and paintings from the hallway wall one by one and setting them down. He worked his way back to the very center – back to the family photo. He tried to pull it off, but it was stuck.

Gotcha.

He gently worked his fingers around the corner of the photo frame on one side and felt the indentations of a hinge. He gently pressed his finger on the other side of the photo frame and it popped forward with a satisfying click.

Well, well.

The photo swung open. Set into the wallpaper behind it was an asterix shaped keyhole.

Christian couldn't help but smile. It had been so long since he had smiled, the expression had to crack its way up his stern cheeks, the scar on his lip pulled tightly.

His uncle wanted him to find this. That was the only thing that made sense in all of this. Christian fished about in his pocket for the key and then pushed it into the lock giving it a twist. The lock gave a pop and the safe-door swung open to reveal...

A biometric hand-scanner.

Well, shit.

Christian hadn't been expecting that. He stared at the black screen that had the image of a right hand outlined in green. The scanner certainly changed things. If someone but the intended owner tried to hack into it then it could be rigged to blow up and injure or kill a potential thief.

All Christian had to go on was that his uncle meant for him to get this far. Why else give him the key? Hoping for the best, Christian slowly held out his right palm until it was parallel to the scanner. He pressed his hand down against its cold surface.

For a second, nothing happened and Christian worried that his fear of triggering an explosive might come true, but instead, the scanner gave a small pulse and an affirmative bing sounded.

"Ring of Valor detected. Entry granted"
Ring of Valor? He looked again at the ring on his finger.

It hid an access key. Smart.

Then, an entire section of the hallway moved backwards and as it slid to the right, Christian had to almost shield his eyes, as lights in the secret room pulsed on, revealing a gleaming white laboratory.

What the hell is this?

The laboratory was twelve foot by twelve foot in size, with each of the three walls covered in screens, switches and keypads. A strange contraption, a white circular pedestal four feet in diameter dominated the center of the room. It had power cords snaking across the ground from it like roots from the stump of a huge tree, with the top made from thick white frosted glass.

That wasn't the strangest thing though.

What held Christian's attention was a note, stabbed to the wall by a hefty iron dagger. One weapon of the collection had survived then. The hilt was made from twisting iron with a blue gem inlaid in the pommel, unlike anything Christian had seen before.

A creeping sensation curled in Christian's stomach. He'd found this room, sure, but still nothing made sense. He stepped over the power cords to the note, pulled out the dagger and took the scrap of paper in his hand.

The rushed scrawl read:

Dear Christian,

If you are reading this then everything I feared has come to pass and I desperately need your help.

Please activate the spawning plinth by pressing your palm against the hand-scanner below and then step onto the podium.

Whatever happens, do not panic.

I'm sorry it has come to this.

Your uncle,

James T. Lee

P.S.

Take the dagger.

If he had questions before, they had just multiplied tenfold in his mind.

Spawn plinth? Bring the dagger?

He re-read the note. Below on the console was another hand scanner with a red blinking light.

Some kind of communications tool?

He thought it through. This seemed like very advanced tech. Perhaps his uncle had discovered something he shouldn't and had needed to go into hiding. The plinth could be some kind of comms device that hacked into intelligence services or perhaps military hardware. Had he been abducted to replicate the technology if so?

Christian shook his head. What would a dagger have to do with any of that?

Christian looked at the weapon. Like the helmet, the dagger was legit. Plain steel, sharpened to a fine point and evenly weighted. It was significantly longer than his military-issue knife. This dagger was made for killing men.

Christian had seen his share of close-quarters combat. More than he cared for, in the war-torn towns at the edges of the great republics. He had eventually scaled the ranks in the special forces before being promoted to Captain and running his own ill-fated mission.

Having a weapon in his hand brought the memories back, wrapping his heart like barbed wire. He shut his eyes. But in his mind he was already back there, running uphill, screaming her name, knowing it was too late. His lungs burned against the acrid stench of the town and his breath came out in great clouds against the cold.

Panic rose in him.

I won't get there in time.

He shook his head and grunted. After a moment he found his hand holding the dagger trembled slightly, his knuckles white. He swallowed hard and blinked the nightmares of his past away. The red light from the hand scanner mentioned in the letter blinked below.

I won't let my uncle down as well.

He pressed his hand against the scanner. It lit green.

The podium in the center of the room began to power up, lights around the base of it flicked on and the white glass top begun to glow with a bright white light. Christian felt the room lift with static energy.

His mouth went dry as he stepped up onto the plinth's surface, still gripping the dagger tightly.

What is this thing?

Just then, he felt a pressure on his foot. He squinted down to see that a white material was enveloping his foot, he tried to lift it but it was stuck down to the platform. His other foot was stuck as well. The white material advanced in angular leaps up his ankle then shin. He swiveled round, like a skier, his feet trapped in the forward position. It looked like a kind of matte paste that was emanating up from the base. It passed his shins, up to his thighs and when it got to his waist, he tried to stab the dagger into it to lever it off. Instead, it locked his hand in place and continued to advance its way up Christian's right arm and chest.

Shit.

He had a flashback of being pushed into cryo-sleep, the guards holding him under the water until the case slid back over his face and the water began to freeze.

He thrashed as best he could but the white cement only crawled farther up his torso, encasing him like the rough angular mold of a statue. His arms were now immobile, and it jumped to his neck.

Christian clamped his mouth shut as it covered his face. He tried to stretch against it but the material was like iron and it locked his in position. He felt the material shoot up his nose, then it encased his eyes and everything went black.