Penumbrials Ch. 01: Penumbra

Dormin checked the list of names hanging on the wall next to an array of mailboxes. 'Third floor.'

He and Adalet took the stairs to avoid the elevator camera and made sure the hallway at the third floor was empty before moving to Steen's front door with their gun drawn.

Adalet held a flat microphone to the door and heard commercials playing through her mobile's earbud. She nodded at Dormin who switched the safety off of his gun. She used the key card again and a soft click told them the door was unlocked. She opened the door slowly to see if there was another lock or chain on it but it opened far enough for them to slip into the short hallway.

Dormin checked the corner and took a glance at the living room which was empty. He gave Adalet a nod and they moved into the room on each side. The sound of a sliding door came from an adjacent room and they approached it.

Steen walked out of the room a second later. He noticed the two intruders too late.

Dormin tackled him to the ground and Adalet put her gun to his head. 'Good day, mister LaRossa. I think you know who we are.'

Steen looked up at her and sighed.

Dormin zip-tied and pushed Steen on a couch made from different coloured blocks under the watchful eye of Adalet, and then turned off the TV before sitting down in a similar styled chair across from the couch. 'So, let's start with the simple why?'

Steen glanced at Adalet who was searching the room for anything useful. She knew he was making a lot of money seeing the simple cube styled designer furniture which had a price tag which went up the more simplistic its form. The low and high cupboards were plain oblong white boxes and the contents were hidden behind nearly invisible panels that swung up or down. Most of what she found were bottles and glasses and technical documentation.

Steen looked back at Dormin. 'Honestly, I don't know the exact reason. I only got a request to get rid of you two by making it look like bad luck. I got the feeling it had to do with criminal activity you two were involved in.'

Dormin leaned back in the chair. 'And of course no names, numbers, addresses.'

Steen gave him a sly smile. 'Of course not. They pick me for my confidentiality.'

Adalet tossed a catalogue of weapons back on the shelf she had found it on. 'And how do you get your requests?'

Steen looked at her. 'Encrypted mail, which I destroy after I confirm the job.'

She hummed and nodded. 'And when did you get that request?'

Steen frowned. 'About six days ago. I got lucky in finding the opportunities to take you out so soon.'

Adalet hummed again. 'On your business account or another?'

Steen smirked. 'Rerouted through several others to my business account. I get a lot of encrypted mail so it's not out of the ordinary.'

Adalet stared at Steen for a few moments, then looked at Dormin. 'Okay, Terry says a trail to the original sender was found by Ismene.'

Dormin stood up. 'Good, then we can go.' Steen looked up at him. He pulled out his gun and shot Steen twice in the chest.

Adalet and Dormin walked back to their car and drove back home while Terry accessed the building's security system and replaced their faces on the recording from the front door camera with other ones.

***

Terry beckoned Adalet and Dormin closer when they arrived back home. 'Ismene just finished going through the connection logs of his provider and the backbones where the mail could have possibly come from. I'm damned impressed how fast she could go through all that data with the connections made around the time he got the mail.'

Adalet leaned on the back of the couch and looked over Terry's shoulder at Ismene's screens which were now full of terminal windows. 'You've got a source?'

Terry activated one console. 'Koan. His current client. Or better said, his last client.'

Dormin sat down next to her. 'So he didn't get the job directly. I wonder why?'

Terry punched up two bank accounts. 'It's possible he got himself paid twice. Once for being the contact and setting things up, the second for being the hitman. Double pay for the same job. He's a real consultant.'

Adalet straightened herself. 'So now we need to pay a visit to Koan.'

Terry switched to another window. 'Ismene's already looking for clues to who might be involved. We'll have to wait for that.'

Dormin stood up. 'Time to eat and get some rest while we can then.'

***

The clouds made the night extra dark and that was to Dormin's liking when he parked the car out of sight a bit away from the back of the Koan campus. The firm was one of several that made airships for the transition between the worlds in the known dimensions and featured a giant concrete and glass hall with two relatively smaller ones for smaller craft. Attached to the main hall on the front side was a low office tower where all but a few windows were dark. To the side and back of the hall stood truck trailers, containers, barrels, and a few large pieces of an airship hull.

Terry, Adalet, and Dormin got out of the car and checked their surroundings. The area at the back of the campus was a natural field with an occasional tree and bush. A wire mesh fence stood between them and the large hall where Koan built the airship prototypes.

Adalet examined the back area and found a warning sign on the fence. 'So, how do you want to get in? Looks like the fence is hot.'

Dormin grinned. 'Nothing a pair of well insulated clippers and gloves can't handle. Something like that never stopped me and my unit before. After that it's up to Terry.'

Terry checked her bag of electronic goodies. 'I think I have enough junk with me to get through any electronic lock. And I have a secure remote connection to Ismene.'

Adalet smiled while she felt excited to be on the officially bad side of the law for once. 'Let's go then.'

Dormin saw he didn't need to bypass the fence to avoid the alarm and cut out a hole low and wide enough for them to crawl through. He did feel a tingle going through his arms when he cut it, but the voltage was too low to hurt him. They hunched and hurried through the shadow near a steel bar fenced off section with barrels and cylinders filled with various liquid gasses.

Terry typed on her mobile. 'I receive a wireless signal here, and she's in.' She stared at the output from Ismene. 'She got into the security system.' She typed in a few commands and smiled. 'Okay, paused the camera feed at this door. Unless they look closely at the monitor it won't show.'

The three went up to the fence and climbed over it. The door was unlocked. 'I think it's not a high priority security for them.' said Dormin and peeked inside through the crack of the door.

The hall he saw was dimly lit and had two airships inside with scaffolding and various toolboxes underneath. A soft hum of ventilation fans and an occasional bleep from a machine filled the silent space. He used the scope on his submachine gun to check the other side. 'I see windows and doors, probably to offices and changing areas. No cameras as far as I can see.'

Terry checked the camera feeds on her mobile. 'I see nothing either. Seems safe.'

They snuck inside and hurried to a corner with steel racks of construction materials on them. Terry resumed the camera feed from the back and they hurried while hunched along the side of the hall to the front and next to the first door they encountered. Adalet took a quick look through a window. 'Office. Dark, probably automated lighting.' she whispered.

Terry typed into her mobile again. 'Yes, but centrally managed. I turned it off.'

They snuck into the office and huddled into a corner behind a desk and low file cabinet. Terry took out an adapter and plugged her mobile into a free network port in the wall. 'Ismene is crawling through the network now.'

Dormin and Adalet each moved to one of the two glass doors leading out of the office and peered through them for signs of activity.

Terry moved up to them a minute later. 'Ismene found the original sender's computer in the server logs, but there are no messages on the server. We have to take a look at the computer itself.'

Dormin nodded. 'You know where it is?'

Terry showed him a floor plan on her mobile with a green circle in one room. 'It's in this office.'

The three moved quickly to the office several floors up via the stairs and took up positions inside. Terry hooked up her mobile to the computer under the desk and let Ismene do her thing again.

'Got something.' whispered Terry. 'A whole load of encrypted data. I'm copying it now since Ismene can't decrypt it fast enough through this mobile.'

'Let's hope there's something useful inside.' whispered Adalet.

When the copying was done, Terry unplugged her mobile and saw a warning message from Ismene pop up. 'Shit! The security software on this machine warned about unusual activity and it alerted the security guards.' She pulled up the security feeds. 'Several guards are coming this way, elevator and stairwell.'

Dormin opened the office door a crack. 'Let's go then, through the other offices since they have connecting doors.'

Terry followed Dormin while Adalet took the rear as they hurried low across the hallway into another office, then through a connecting door into the next.

Terry checked the security feeds again. 'They have downstairs blocked.'

The lights came on on the whole floor. Dormin looked up. 'Damned!' Something moved at the desk next to him and he aimed his submachine gun.

The white furred rat species with wild long beige hair who had been asleep at its desk blinked its black eyes and groaned. 'Shit.. I fell asleep again..'

The three watched as the rat yawned and stretched, the light grey coverall hugging the two small humps on its chest revealing her gender. She rubbed her eyes, took the mug from her desk and stood up from her chair.

The moment she saw the three people in black with the man pointing his gun at her she let the mug fall to the floor.

The crash alerted the guards. Dormin heard them exchange orders and enter the office they had just came from while covering the door to the hallway. 'Shit. It's going to become a shooting match.'

Adalet took cover behind a file cabinet and Terry underneath a desk.

The door to the office opened and one female guard peeked through it. 'Ourania, right?'

The rat stared at the doorway. 'Yes?'

The guard spoke into a mobile. 'There's an engineer of ours with them.' She was silent for a moment. 'Eliminate, are you sure?' Silence for a moment again before she said 'Confirmed.' and 'Eliminate all. No witnesses.' to the other guards.

Dormin jumped up at Ourania and pulled her down to the floor. Bullets pierced through the furniture above their heads and Adalet and Terry fired back through the walls next to the door. A crash and gunshots came from the adjacent office door and Dormin fired at the door and the wall beside it while covering Ourania.

When things turned silent apart from the humming of machines and the garbled couching of one guard in the hallway Adalet crawled closer to the door and surveyed the situation. 'Everyone down, one man in rough shape.'

Dormin rolled off of Ourania and checked her. 'Are you okay? Not hurt?'

She blinked and panted. 'I think so.'

He stood up slowly and went to the adjacent office. Three guards laid on the floor in their own blood. 'Clear here.'

He went back to Ourania. 'I know this will be hard to understand right now, but your life here is over. Something is going on and they don't hesitate to kill you for it to keep it a secret. We can protect you the best we can if you come with us. Will you trust us?'

She blinked again at him and nodded slowly.

He gave her a quick smile. 'Good. I hate to see innocent people killed.' He took her hand. 'Come.'

The four of them went down the stairwell silently. Terry used the elevator management to sent it down and distract the few guards on the ground floor. Dormin and Adalet burst through the stairwell door and shot them before they realised what had happened.

To cover part of their tracks they returned the same way they came in and waited close to the fence only long enough for Terry to erase the backups of the camera feeds. Dormin drove the car back without using his lights until they were far enough away. 'I think they expected us.'

Adalet reloaded her gun. 'I got the same feeling. Or at least they knew who we were. We're not safe anymore.'

Dormin grumbled his agreement. 'We'd better pack up our things quickly.'

He drove home by the quickest route without cameras and slowed down in his neighbourhood. 'Terry, can you check my hidden cameras?'

Terry typed on her mobile. 'Already on it. No sign of activity.'

He accelerated again. 'Good. Once we're inside grab what you need. Then we drive to Karl's place.'

Dormin drove the car to the back and he, Adalet, and Terry moved into formation inside to be on the safer side. Terry collected the laptops and Ismene, Dormin collected the rest of his guns and ammo, while Adalet took point at the corner of the building providing cover if needed. When they had what they needed they went back to the car and Dormin drove away to his old friend's place.

Ourania watched Terry unfold Ismene and type into a console next to her on the backseat. 'Would this be a good time to ask what's going on?'

Adalet turned back on her seat to look at her. 'You got caught up in something we don't even know for sure what it is about.' She gestured at the others. 'They are Terry and Dormin, I'm Adalet. The short story is that Dormin caught Terry while she broke into a firm where he worked as night guard. He found the portable she's using now and someone has been trying to get it back without leaving witnesses, including me, a police officer, and now you.'

Ourania looked at the portable. 'Is it that special?'

Terry grinned. 'I don't think we even know how special she is yet. Ismene is not of any so far known world.'

Ourania leaned closer. 'I haven't seen any design like that. What software does it run? And what specs does it have?'

Adalet chuckled while Terry and Ourania exchanged technical knowledge and looked at Dormin. 'I think Terry has found someone who is up to her level.

Dormin smiled. 'Good. It's frustrating to not have anyone to talk to about certain topics.'

***

When Dormin drove the car through the neighbourhood of Karl's place, Adalet put her hand on his. 'Wait up. I don't trust it.'

He parked to the side of the road. 'What is it?' She looked around at two small groups of people hanging around at corners of the streets. 'They seem to be on edge. Something is spooking them, the way they keep an eye out in the direction we're going.'

Dormin watched the groups as they talked and gestured all in the same direction. 'Wait here. I'll go check.'

He put on an old jacket and cap and got out of the car, crossing the street and walking casually along it towards Karl's place. Close to it he noticed a car that looked too new and shiny to belong in the neighbourhood. He kept on walking and went around the block, watching a few small groups of people who seemed to be more lively than usual and another car out of place at the other side of the back road to Karl's place. He went around again to return to the car.

'The place is being watched.' he said when he got behind the wheel. 'They must have tracked down anyone I know in the city.'

Adalet gripped her pistol tighter. 'Great. They're going full force after us now. Where do we go? I have no safe house.'

Ourania looked up from the screens of Ismene. 'I have a place that no one knows about. And there's something there I would like to see if Ismene could help me with.'

Dormin turned to look at her. 'You trust us enough to help us? You don't know us or what we want to do.'

She looked at him. 'You did save me from being killed. And Terry showed me everything she knows about Ismene. It's logical to trust you when you yourself even question why I should.'

He chuckled. 'You do know there's something called reverse psychology?'

She smiled. 'And it can be looped into infinity. It's the multiple factors that define the outcome.'

Dormin smiled as he turned to the front again. 'All right. Where do we go?'

New Home Base

Ourania's directions let them out of the city and into a flatter part of the country with grasslands and forests while the first rays of the sun touched the sky. At an unmarked intersection of the road they followed she had Dormin take a right and drive down a road with cracked surface and grass growing through it leading through a part of a forest. After a while they exited the forest and arrived at grasslands with several abandoned factory buildings and train tracks leading up to them. She pointed at an oblong brick hall several storeys high with narrow vertical windows of which several were broken. 'Stop to the side of the big one.'

Dormin parked the car and they got out, breathing fresh, unpolluted air for the first time in a while.

'This used to be a test facility for various types of aircraft.' Ourania said. 'It belonged to a friend of the family and he left it to us when he moved overseas after he married a foreign woman. Technically it's still in his name, but I've been using it to do some experimental work on my own on an airship my father gave me when he retired it from his transportation business.'

She led the rest across the concrete tiles marked by grass and puddles to the entrance at the front of the building. She unlocked the door and walked into the large maintenance hall with an older transport airship parked inside.

Terry whistled at the blunt wedge shaped airship which seemed to be held together by rust brown stained paint. 'That's an old one.'

Ourania grinned. 'Yeah. Nowadays it's all about aerodynamics and round shapes, but I prefer the classic hard lines.'

The airship had a low forward slanted front which expanded in width and upwards to the end of the forward section, where two large ring engines on each side divided it from the slightly slanted full sized rear section. The airship rested on a low and slim base which ran from less than halfway the forward section to halfway the rear section while the five three pronged landing struts rested on the floor.

Ourania walked towards the airship. 'I rebuilt part of it over the years and modified the engines so that it still looks old but has more performance than many modern airships.' She unlocked the door at the front of the connecting base and stepped inside a compartment with stairs leading up to the forward section and stairs at the back leading to the rest of the airship. 'All of that work was to try out a theory I came up with and could impact worlds.'

Adalet raised one eyebrow. 'Worlds?'

Ourania nodded. 'What I've constructed here can be used to wage wars and spy on anyone who doesn't know what to look for.' She gestured at the stairs at the front of the compartment. 'I'll show you what I mean in the lounge.'

Up the stairs they found themselves in a space spanning the width of the airship. Couches and booths in a variety of grey and blue divided up the thick grey carpeted space for passengers to spend time while they travelled from one world to the next. On one side at the back were several screens and stacks of books and papers with various smaller and bigger electronic and mechanical parts strewn all over a worn part of the carpet floor.

Ourania moved over there and gestured at a whiteboard filled with quick drawings and notes hanging on the back wall. 'You know how we can travel from one dimension to the other via local dimensional connecting leaks while synchronising our matter frequency and time shift to the destination.'

Dormin looked at the scribbles on the board. 'That's the basics we were all taught in school, yes.'