The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere 077: Justice and Kindness (

Inner Sanctum First Floor | 12:01 AM | Third Day I touched the tal, and as it had yesterday, the complicated set of impulses from the various functions of the security center flooded into my mind's eye-- Though absent the transmission of Old Yru's city center, which now conveyed only a connectivity error. It was strange to consider, in the darkness, that it was now past noon, and the second day of celebrations - and the cleanup for the parade of the first day - were probably in full swing. At this point, it felt difficult to imagine the events of the bicentennial ceremony taking place on the sa planet. ...well, I suppose this wasn't actually the sa planet. But you know what I an. Anyway, instead of focusing on that, I pivoted my mind towards the various feeds of data. Though they'd been locked the previous day, they seed to freely available now-- Presumably the asure which restricted access had been disabled, presumably when we'd first returned to the area and Sacnicte had been showing everyone the recording of Bardiya's murder. I decided to review the data Anna had just recounted first, since it wasn't impossible she was an accomplice sohow, and just assud we would take her at her word. Using a logic bridge for a purpose you hadn't before was a little disorienting (it'd been pulled up for the last ti) but I slowly started to make sense of it. Again, there were two data feeds that reported who was currently in the sanctuary. The first inferred who was in what location specifically based on their passage between the different sections: The Inner Sanctum Bioenclosure, the Guest Bioenclosure, the Arboretum Bioenclosure, and the Sanctuary Underground. The data was literally unchanged from when I'd last seen it; as had been the case with Durvasa, Sacnicte and Yantho were still reported as being present in the bioenclosure, despite their death. ...Literally unchanged. Now that I thought about it, wasn't that rather strange? "That's... Odd," I said out loud. "The system is still reporting Anna as being above ground, even though she's down in the basent." Linos frowned. "That is strange. Could the system be compromised in so way? That might explain quite a lot, actually." "No, that's not the case," Anna spoke up from down below, now sounding a little irritated. Evidently, we were starting to distract her from her work. "Since there's no clean point of transition akin to the bioenclosure gateways, the system checks people proceeding underground at checkpoints instead. They require a little space, so they're usually where the passage expands to its full size, rather than directly at the staircase." "Oh," Linos said, rubbing his head. "That makes sense, I suppose." So it's possible to be a little underground while not being 'underground' as the system defines it. That felt important to keep in mind. Second was the system which reported the number of living humans in each bioenclosure, the thodology of which was still a little uncertain to . It also reported the sa figures, with the exception of two less people alive in the Inner Sanctum, for obvious reasons. I decided to take a quick look through the visual feeds too. As Sacnicte had told us, most of them seed to have been deactivated, especially in the area we were in. Out of curiosity, I checked the one covering the conference room, and discovered it was one of the few still operational. I started reviewing the recording just in case there was any sign of whatever I'd thought I'd seen, but it was so dark that it felt hard to make out anything. I searched for the section where Theo ran in with the candlelight, but the angle but the whole area behind one of the big pillars-- "What are you doing, Su?" Kam, who had evidently also attuned to the logic bridge out of her standard drive to be a busybody, said. "Uh, just looking back at when Theo left the room to see if there were any clues," I said. She squinted, despite the fact this didn't actually help with logic bridges. "Doesn't look it to , I fear. Though it's darker than a Yuloian sumr." Yuloi was the one part of Outer Sao that wasn't in the League. It was right near the center-rim, where the Great Lamp never got close to, and was famous for being relatively miserable at all tis of year. (Though it made up for this by having amazing food.) In any case, I had to agree with her. I decided to check another feature Sacnicte had briefly ntioned - the one that cast the Anomaly-Divining Arcana every fifteen minutes to check for incantations. That could be essential in figuring out how the Power itself has been suppressed. ...but unfortunately, I could find no clear record. it picked up Seth and Ptolema's healing incantations, though, and Anna's divination, so had the system been specifically sabotaged? I wasn't sure off the top of my head how that could be accomplished, though. Maybe - assuming the theory about them making use of the old eris tanks was true - the area around the pantry was a blind-spot for this, too? That felt... Plausible. Though checking closer, there were so strange incantations cast in the underground - complex Aetheromancy too sophisticated for to make sense of - so ti recently; about a half hour after we'd first arrived at the main hall. That indicated that sothing had been going on. "Hey, who here is most familiar with spatial distortion Aetheromancy?" I asked. Linos hesitated, then raised a hand. "I wouldn't call myself a master, but it's part and parcel with transmutation, so I've picked up bits and pieces." "Could you take a look at this incantation the system observed?" I stepped aside, inviting him to co forward. "I don't recognize it." He looked troubled, but wheeled himself over to the logic bridge regardless, Zeno watching closely. He pressed his hand to the tal, and frowned. "...mm, I've seen this before," he said after a few monts of thought. "This is the Phantasm-Projecting Arcana, a technique from around the turn of the millennium - it was being pioneered when I was still in university." "I know it," Ezekiel said. "It's used for summoning intangible objects, isn't it?" "Anyone could've deduced that much from just the na, Ezekiel," Kam said, rolling her eyes. "It's a little more complicated than simply summoning them," Linos said. "Specifically, it lets you turn any area of space, whether it contains an object or not, into a 'phantasm'; a sort of ghostly pseudo-object that can be moved around regular space without affecting or interacting with it in any way. It can then be either reverted or discarded at will. It doesn't really have any dical applications, but it's used in things like complex repairs to equipnt that can't simply be replaced, or experints that require sudden changes to an object's environnt. And it had so applications in manufacturing for a few years before my discipline, uh, killed it all off." He coughed. "Can't think of why it would be used here." "Could sobody use it to, like, pass through one of the sensors without the system noticing them?" Linos shook his head. "No, any intangible objects going through walls would set off the defensive incantations just as much as smashing them." He curled his lip, confused. "And besides, this looks like it was only used on sothing very small - about the size of a human hand." He hesitated. "Though, uh, it couldn't have literally been a human hand. It's incredibly dangerous to use on anything alive, let alone only part of an organism." "Maybe they used it to open a locked door?" Ptolema suggested. "Or steal sothing?" Linos made an awkward laugh which tamorphosed mid-way into a puzzled hum. "It's... Not impossible, I suppose. But it'd be like using silverware to eat junk food." That was a comnt that showed Linos's age. Nowadays, you could get a set of pure silver cutlery at a distribution house without even spending any luxury debt. It was just pretty gauche. I shook my head. I couldn't keep getting distracted - at this rate, Zeno would lose patience. I opened the logic bridge access records. Imdiately, I was struck by how badly the information was formatted, to the point that even through a logic bridge - a system famous for eliminating almost all the cumberso aspects of human-machine interfacing - it felt awkward and slow to sort through it. Records were excessively broken up by both locations and half-hour intervals of ti, with no chanism to easily search them for anything specific. Further, there were no direct records for if two logic bridges in the sanctuary had been in communication with one another, only if the communication it had made was internal or external to the sanctuary. So the only way to check was to find one usage entry, and then search everywhere else for one that matched the ti so closely it could be reasonably assud they had been the ones communicating. It was like it was designed to be user unfriendly. At least it only tracked communication. It would've been a nightmare to sort through if it just tracked any sort of activation, period. "What are you looking for, Su?" Kam asked curiously. A couple other people had also tapped the bridge idly by this point, including Ran and Seth, and even Zeno was now looking on curiously. "Just give a second," I said quietly. This had attracted more attention than I'd hoped. It was going to be pretty embarrassing when it probably ca to nothing. I checked what I knew first to get the hang of it. As Anna had said, the logic bridge from the administrative core had established a connection at 11:13. Then, we'd established one back at 11:15 from the main hall - or 'Sanctum Great Hall' as it was formally designated on the system. I could see a connection had been established from the security center too, so Sacnicte must've still been alive at that point-- Well, presumably. Then, I moved over to the section that would hopefully cover the printing room, 'Eastern Inner Sanctum Entrance Area'. I accessed it-- I blinked. "I'm going to give you one more minute, so hurry it up," Zeno said impatiently from behind. "With you all crowded around that thing, I'm starting to wonder if you're conspiring an escape strategy in silence. Don't think I'm not watching your every move." The words barely registered. I couldn't quite believe what I was seeing; that I'd actually been right. But there it was. At 11:00 exactly, communication had been established from the printing room. Kam seed to pick up on what was going on, raising a hand to her mouth. "What the... No, surely not." I went back to the records for the administrative core and checked that sa ti, but found nothing, even when I went to the previous half-hour section and checked that too, in case Lilith had been slow to pick up. But I wasn't willing to give up that easily at this point. If we assud the culprit was trying to throw us off, they would have surely accessed it from sowhere else. So I went through all of the underground records for the ti too, starting from the area closest to where we'd spotted the figure in the hall-- ...and there it was. In the 'North Inner Sanctum Underground', another logic bridge communication, also at 11:00 exactly. "Oh shit," Seth, who was also still attuned, said, his voice very quiet. He glanced sharply towards Lilith, who was still where we'd left her, staring at the floor. Kam bit her lip sharply, while Ran looked in my direction, a severe look on her face. "What's going on?" Zeno asked, starting to frown. "Don't keep us in fucking suspense." "Y-Yeah," Ptolema said, while Ophelia also looked in concern. "You guys all look really freaked out. "They were just looking through logic bridge data, so far as I could tell..." Linos said, looking puzzled. "I feel like I might be missing sothing." Oh, right. If you didn't know where we'd found Lilith, it wouldn't make total sense, would it? "Su, you should explain it," Ran said. Kam, for her part, was biting her lip, looking intensely contemplative. Yeah, this is your theory, my unceasing sense of universal background guilt said. You need to take responsibility. I frowned. Taking another nervous glance at Lilith as I considered what might co of this, I cleared my throat. "Uh, okay, so," I said. "Rember a few minutes ago, when Kam was talking about whether this was planned, or sothing the culprit had done on the spur of the mont?" A few people nodded. "I was thinking about it, and with how perfectly everything played out to create a chance to kill Sacnicte - and Yantho, I suppose, however that happened - it felt more likely it was deliberate, or at least partially deliberate. Soone trying to create chaos to move things around and manufacture an opportunity." Saying it out loud, it almost sounds like a reach, huh. But then, so much about this situation was insane it felt hard to tell what was reasonable and what wasn't. "That, ah, makes more sense to ," Theodoros said, nodding. There was a strange look in his eyes... "If it were just what happened with Lilith and hit, and maybe the call the culprit sent, that could be a coincidence... But with the Power being ddled with, that altogether seems too much." "Mmmmm, yeah," Fang said, nodding a bit. "I'd put it like, 2/3 in that direction, I guess?" I nodded, quickly resuming the explanation. I wasn't very good at speaking to a whole room - if I hadn't practiced anything, I needed to keep talking constantly, or I'd lose the thread of what I was trying to convey. "If we're assuming that soone engineered the window to murder them on purpose, then there's a couple things we can assu. Firstly, that there has to be an accomplice working with whoever killed them. No one can get in or out of here without being noticed, but soone had to have issued the summoning, and soone had to have blocked the Power. And probably to pose as the monster we saw in the hall, too. ...right?" "Right," Linos said. "Could that thing really have been soone in disguise?" Ptolema asked, looking skeptical. "I an... It really didn't look like a person." "A disguise can do rather a lot, Ptolema," Kamrusepa said. "You'd be surprised." "I an, um... It could have been a golem, perhaps...?" Ophelia offered. "We actually have a policy here against golems outside of the control of the system," Linos chid in. "It's part of our more general approach to weapons; beyond what we strictly need for security, they're considered more of a risk than a help, in case of situations like... Well, like this one." He frowned, crossing his arms. "That's not to say soone could have built one independently, but it would be difficult." "Could've been a real ghost," Fang said. "Don't joke around at a ti like this, Fang," Kam chided them. "Hey, it's not impossible," they said, putting their hands in the air. "I an, you gotta think out of the box in a situation like this, right?" Their expression flattened. "But no, I agree. It was probably just a guy." I nodded. "Secondly, we can assu that to enact a plan like this, whoever the culprit was outside of our group would need so ans to communicate with their ally within it. Now, since there's nothing on the records to show how that could've been possible--" "Fuck , girl, could you please arrive at the point before we all fall asleep and the culprit slits out throats?" Zeno demanded, gesturing with her scepter. "You discovered sothing, right? Just get to it. We're not idiots, we'll piece it together." Ezekiel, to the side, nodded along with this sentint. I hesitated, thrown off. "Uh, so, I eventually thought that... Maybe what happened with Lilith and hit wasn't quite as it seed. So I decided to check the communication record to see if anyone had been in contact with the room we discovered them in around the ti of the scream." I scratched the side of my head. "And, uh, it turns out that soone was, from sowhere underground nearby. Right before it happened." The room fell silent for a mont. "Wait," Seth said, his eyes widening as he started to understand what was being suggested. "So what we saw... That was planned too? And hit--" "Let see this," Zeno said, her tone suddenly stricter and more severe. I stood out of the way again, and she tapped the logic bridge. She paced on the spot for a mont, then stared intensely ahead. "I don't fucking believe it," she said, gritting her teeth. "We've been played." She advanced imdiately towards Lilith. "H-Hold on, I don't get it," Ptolema said, looking anxious. "What does that prove? Sobody called them right before it all happened, and that attracted the golems?" "Don't be stupid, Viraaki," Ezekiel said, turning to look at the girl. "We saw them already. They don't deviate from their movents unless they see a target, and they wouldn't have been out the hall, they must've already secured in there. The summoning wouldn't have been to attract anything. It could only have been to give instructions." "Instructions...?" She seed genuinely unable to make the logical leap. "Lili wouldn't do that," Ophelia, who was following better, said. "She's just a child. She wouldn't shoot her own mother." "Except she's not just a child, is she," Kamrusepa spoke, echoing my thoughts from earlier. "We all heard what hit said in the dining room." "That shit isn't that simple, Kam," Seth said, frowning. "Don't talk about stuff you don't understand." "Don't presu what I understand!" she objected, pointing a finger. I frowned uncomfortably. There were few things more awkward in the world than hearing people argue about sothing that directly affected you, but without knowing about it. "It's obvious she has so deeper issues," Kam continued, saying the words 'deeper issues' in the tone so loaded you could kill soone with it. "But she can clearly understand adult concepts, and if there's a reason she might not have normal feelings towards a parent--" "She wouldn't!" Ophelia insisted, then blushed, looking embarrassed. "I an... You've seen the way she clings to her. Even if it's complicated... Even if she isn't quite sure who she is, that's true! I have to believe as much!" "Be sensible, Ophelia," Kam said firmly. "We've only seen the most superficial aspects of their relationship. That proves absolutely nothing." Ophelia frowned deeply, withdrawing into herself with a disquieted look. "But wait, Lilith couldn't be the culprit," Theodoros said. "I an-- She was sitting by the logic bridge the whole ti, wasn't she? No one said they ever saw her leave, even the people who were there the whole ti. She'd have to... I don't know, have killed them with poison darts, or sothing." "It doesn't matter if she literally killed them or not," Ran said grimly, also looking at the girl. "Regardless of whether or not there's a third conspirator, the point is, she could've been the go-between." She tensed her jaw. "I don't want to believe it either, but the timing of the call is too perfect." "We don't know that whoever she was talking to was the culprit," Seth said, taking Ophelia's side. "It could've been about the golem attack, or-- I don't know, it's not certain." Zeno was standing over Lilith now, looking at her with a contemptful expression. She continued to show no response, even as the aquamarine-haired woman staring down gripped her scepter tightly. "This is not, and I stress this in the first of turns, a concession of innocence for the rest of you," she said. "As the boy points out, it seems unlikely this girl is the one who killed the two servants. But this does fucking stink to high heaven at the barest minimum, and frankly, I'm feeling less inclined to buy the oh-so-traumatized act." She made eye contact with Lilith. "Kid, I'm going to give you one chance. Tell us what happened in that room." She offered no response, simply holding her hands around her knees and staring at the ground, her face placid. Zeno's expression slowly twisted. "You know who I am, little girl. You must, even in your... State. Do you think I'm incapable of getting the truth out of you?" In the body she was in, and even, well, period, Zeno did a pretty bad job of coming across as conventionally intimidating. For all their obvious skill in the Power, they had a certain ridiculousness - over-aggressive elitism and pride, along with obviously thinking they were by far the smartest person in the room - with an affect that made them co across as smaller, as opposed to soone like Anna, who had a naturally greater presence regardless of how she looked. But that skill was there, and it lent a weight to their words. It was easy to forget she was the father... Uh, creator of the entire discipline of Neuromancy. The Power couldn't command the human mind directly, but above and beyond what could be achieved through the mundane use of chemicals, it possessed indirect ans to make it suggestible, to go soft. Gods, I'd been subject to a couple during my acclimation treatnt. "Zeno," Linos said warily. "I'm not sure this is the right way to handle this." She looked to him, irritated. "Again, Linos, I really do not think you appreciate the weight of our current situation." "She's Hamilcar's niece," Linos replied. "And she's just a child. Even if she has been sohow manipulated--" "What of it? He could be dead. He could very well be behind all this." She snorted. "And Eshk, you heard what the redhead said a second ago - she's right about that much. Anything could be going on inside the brat's head. For all we know, she could think of herself as a three century old man." "Tasteful," Kamrusepa said dryly. "There's a thousand ways that sort of shit can turn your brain into a soup, especially since her parents were stupid enough to do it when she was a literal child," Zeno went on. "She could be completely delusional about what's even going on around her. It certainly wouldn't contradict anything I've seen of her behavior thus far." "You-- You can't say things like that!" Ophelia said, upset. "We've been in class with her for years! She might seem a little strange sotis, but she's just an ordinary girl!" "I don't have ti for these hysterics," Zeno said, with a dismissive gesture. "You're not, like..." Fang said, "...seriously gonna torture her, are you?" "I'm not going to 'torture' her, but I am going to use the Power, yes," she said bluntly. "It's more likely than not she knows the identity of the culprit. We can't let a chance like this slip away." I felt an unpleasant twinge in my gut. I was starting to feel bad I'd even brought up the idea at all. ...but was I, really? I an, this was a nightmare situation. Maybe Zeno was right. If we truly valued our lives, maybe we couldn't operate on normal moral standards. Maybe we had to do everything in power to extract a potential advantage, or else be filled with bitter regret at the next lifeless face we had to see. Ran took a few steps to stand to my side, glancing at tiredly. It wasn't much, but it helped as a small gesture of comfort. "This is nuts," Seth said, his tone sowhere between anger and anxiety. "We haven't even tried talking to her yet." "That's true," Linos said, nodding. "We should... Take her aside, sowhere with a less tense atmosphere than this. Even if she she's culpable of sothing, she could still be in a vulnerable of state mind." Zeno rolled her eyes. "Fuck, this is absurd. I've seen crabs with better survival instincts then you assholes." "We... We don't need to do this!" Ophelia said, holding a hand to her chest. "hit's recovering! She might regain consciousness soon! She'll be able to tell us everything!" "She won't recover," Lilith suddenly said. Zeno frowned at Ophelia, not having noticed what just happened. "That woman could ta..." She stopped, her eyes slowly turning towards the girl. Lilith was still sitting as she had been before, her posture unchanged. Hands around her legs, face pointed downward at the floor, eyes glazed over. Her small and frail-looking body was moving so little that, at a distance, you could mistake her for a strangely-positioned corpse. And yet, she had definitely spoken, even if it had sounded very unlike her. The tone was incredibly quiet, and though she always spoke with little emotion, this had a strange, haunted affect to it, like she was barely even present within her own body. "Her soul has already been claid," she continued, "even if the flesh endures for a ti, it is of no consequence." Zeno stared at her cautiously, her posture tense. But after a mont had passed, she seed to regain her confidence, relaxing a little and smirking. "See? All it took was a little threat to make her drop the act and transition to sothing else. Gods, and you were all getting all child-psychologist at , like most of you are even adults yourselves." "Nothing will endure. It will end," Lilith continued. "It will all end. End, end..." Regardless of whether this was so kind of act, it was a little unsettling. Even when she wasn't speaking, she kept moving her mouth, like what we were hearing were just fragnts of a much larger speech. "What's she saying...?" Seth said, his brow furrowed anxiously. The room had gone from noisy to very quiet now, everyone watching Lilith. "It doesn't matter what she's saying!" Zeno said, gesturing outwardly. "It's all just so inane performance. We don't have ti for this." She looked back to Lilith. "I'll ask again. What happened in that room with your mother? With hit." "Mother," Lilith mumbled. "Yes, your mother," Zeno said flatly. "Don't get existential on , now. What happened with the two of you?" The girl kept opening her mouth and closing it again, like she was trying to speak but nothing was coming out. Her eyes appeared to boggle even wider than before, like there was a pressure coming from the inside of her head, threatening to split it open. Sothing about the pose started to resemble a person frozen just as they were about to throw up... But then, after a few monts, she suddenly stopped, her expression turning placid. Slowly, she raised her head. Zeno started to scowl again, and spoke with impatience. "Well, co on--" "I shot her," she said, her tone starkly calm compared to a mont earlier. A lurch of surprise ran through the room, with a few people outright gasping. Even if this had been the theory - my theory - I'd never expected to hear a straightforward admission, at least not like this. Linos's mouth practically fell open, and Ophelia, who'd been defending her, looked the most shocked of all. Even Zeno seed a little taken aback. "It's as Utsushiko hypothesized," she continued, in that sa serene tone. "We were in the room with the printer, with the door sealed and hit watching the windows in case anyone approached us from that direction. I was sitting next to the logic bridge, and so knew right away when the ssage arrived instructing to shoot her. I stood up and kicked at her arm, then disard her before she could realize what was happening. Then, avoiding the heart, I shot her once in the chest." "What the fuck," Ezekiel muttered. "After that, I moved her up against the printer, then stepped outside in the hallway and shot the executive unit of a passing golem patrol to create an explanation for what people would discover upon arrival. Then I slamd the door shut before the vanguard units could arrive. Then, I sat down in the corner until everyone arrived," she concluded. "That's everything that happened in that room." The room was silent for a mont, collectively taken aback. I, specifically, had no idea what to say. Lilith had always been strange, but this was like the person in front of us wasn't even her anymore. That she'd been possessed. "Wow," Fang said, with a little nervous laughter. "Huh." "No..." Seth said, shaking his head in dismay. "You can't be serious, Lili. I an--" He looked towards . "Sorry, Su, but this shit doesn't make any sense. I an, what are the chances of a golem patrol coming at the exact right mont? And what would she have done if her mom had died, or if she hadn't been able to disarm her? The whole idea's full of holes." I didn't know what to say in response, so I just looked away uncomfortably. He turned back towards Lilith. "Did sobody put you up to this, Lili? Whoever broke into that room?" "Yeah," Ptolema said, nodding along. "You can tell us. You don't be scared." "It was communicated to that the golem patrol would be coming, so I waited just over a minute before opening the door, so that," she paused sharply and strangely in the middle of the sentence, like a skipping record. "...I'd have the cleanest shot at it's logic engine. As for mother, her death would not have been an unacceptable outco. If that eventuality had taken place, I would have simply injured myself instead." "Injured... Yourself?" Seth asked warily. She nodded distantly. "Yes, that was how I was to proceed in the event of failure. I had intended to shoot myself in the waist area. Fortunately, it did not need to... ...co to that." Once again, the room seed dumbstruck. "T-This is really creepy," Ptolema said quietly, her voice anxious. "What's the matter with her?" "It is... Rather unsettling," Kamrusepa said. "I an, she couldn't have-- She can't be serious, right? I an, it's like Ophelia said. She's always been kinda weird, but... Talkin' about killing her own mom? Or even shooting herself?" She started to look angry, or maybe just flustered. "C'mon, Lili. Stop this." Lilith stared ahead, her eyes as cold as a vacuum. Ophelia, who up until this point had simply been watching with an anguished expression, started to weep a bit, her face scrunching up. "Why..." she said, her tone pained. Zeno blinked, then rallied again. "Y-Yes, why? If you are confessing your guilt, then what was your motive?" "I already told you," she said. "I was instructed to do so over the logic bridge." "Instructed by whom?" She demanded. "Hamilcar," she said. Zeno's eyes went wide for a mont, and then she frowned sharply. "What?" "Your uncle told you to do this," Linos stated, as if trying to parse the idea. "Yes," she said. "That is, he at least gave that specific instruction. But both of us are servants of a higher power." "Now wait just a mont," Zeno said, her tone growing harsher. "I've known Hamilcar for years. He's a fool, to be certain, but he wouldn't--" "What sort of higher power? The gods?" Kamrusepa interjected. "No," Lilith replied, her tone still completely level. "She who was given form and then defiled. She who exists outside of ti, yet gives it shape. She from whom all things of substance originate, and to whom all shall return. Our mother--" she paused. "And executioner."