Chapter 28: Make It Messy

Rata Sum, the asuran capital city.

Floating a mile above the surface of Tyria, its progress in magic, technology, and philosophy were easily as far above the other races of the world as their city was above the ground. Skixx leaned silently against a wall, deep in the interior of the cubical construct that was Rata Sum, taking it all in.

Outside the morning was still young, and only a few of the city's inhabitants were up and about: a scattered handful of researchers milling toward their labs, a merchant or two making early progress on their day’s labor, and a couple peacemakers taking their posts. Entrenched in their own thoughts and without so much as a word, they all moved like sleepy phantoms across the stonework plaza. Though it had been years since he'd last seen it, Skixx knew from experience this was the hour just before the chaotic energy of asuran ingenuity would break free from slumber and burst into another day of diligent discovery. He loved it, he missed it, he envied it—he hated it.

In his years at Divinity's Reach, Skixx had easy access to the asura-gate network. And yes, that meager assignment had left plenty of free time in which he could have travelled back here. But they were on assignment, he and Wepp; Divinity's Reach was their station, and in his early naivety, Skixx had firmly held that any advancement in the ranks of the Inquest would only come on the heels of immovable obedience. So he’d stayed, taking whatever paltry assignment were sent their way and ignoring his own wishes. Until now.

Standing once more in his city, picking at his fingernails and watching the northwest plaza, he could see clearly how wrong he’d been as that starry-eyed novice. His college peers had advanced, joined krewes, and pushed their fields and careers forward, while he'd been stuck tailing peddlers of cheap technological knockoffs and running information on human goings-on to Inquest command. 

Sneering, he shook his head to clear the fog of self-reflection. He was here to do a job, one that actually meant something. Leaning further into the wall, as though to meld into the stone, he watched and waited.

Before leaving Thaumacore, Skixx had been forced to spend much too long listening to Comakk’s reiteration of Kikka's insipid instructions. His objective, it seemed, was hidden deep in the central stacks, behind security measures that should have kept Kikka from even knowing about it. Somehow, though, she did. She knew about the thing itself, she somehow knew its precise location, and she knew an impressive amount about the curator who controlled access to it. Even Skixx, galled as he was, had to admit that whoever was collecting her intelligence was an expert in the craft. It must have been one of the many Inquest analysts with a keen mind for infiltration but no stomach for applying their knowledge to more practical advantage. Regardless, Kikka believed this item, this document, to be so critical to her project that it was worth all the effort of finding and acquiring it. And the part Skixx had given the most thought to over the last day? Kikka wanted it done in an uncommonly public manner.

As Comakk had so insistently repeated, the first phase of this assignment was to be “messy,” to curry the attention of asuran law enforcement. It seemed a bit rudimentary to Skixx, but frankly, after all the overly pleasant pretense of his mission with the sylvari, a messy one would be a breath of fresh air.

Skixx drew a dagger from the sheath at his hip, flipping it invisibly into his sleeve and out of sight. By feel, he flicked the blade back out of his sleeve and into its sheath. Up and down, he did this a few more times, until someone caught his attention.

A male asura passed by, stepping down the end of the ramp and rounding its base. Crisply dressed for a day filled with documents and meetings, not the greasy work of engineering, he made a straight path toward the central stacks’ librarian console. Bony-faced and as slender as anyone Skixx had met, this fellow flipped through a handful of documents as he went, paying closer attention to the pages than to where he was walking. By years of programmed practice, though, he reached the station without misstep, ascended the platform without pause, and began toggling things on at one of his many consoles.

This was the mark.

Skixx stepped away from the wall and made his own way across the vacant plaza, making a point to be a bit more meandering in his progress than the mark had been: a few quick steps ahead, a distracted stray toward the plaza vendors, a thoughtless turn back to examine the ramp down into the plaza, and then on toward the platform. As he walked, though, something tingled at the back of his mind, a shiver of paranoia. It was the unfamiliar sense that he was being watched.

Subtly eyeing his surroundings, Skixx carried on. In slightly greater numbers now, the same groups of asura walked the plaza around him: researchers, merchants, a student or two, and some peacemakers ever proving just how worthless they were. None paid him mind. The darker corners around him were all empty, the ramps to the upper levels were clear of onlookers, and the nearby waypoint was completely exposed to his view. Everything was clear.

Skixx shook his head and shoved the feeling aside, focusing on this simple assignment. He hated when he got jumpy.

Getting across the plaza, he ascended the stairs and came around the edge of the consoles toward the curator, who moved absently about the terminals, reviewing information and entering data as he had a thousand times before. He failed to recognize Skixx’s presence at all.

Rolling his eyes, Skixx cleared his throat, and the other asura jumped, spinning around and backing forcefully into a terminal. “My ears!” the curator chirped.

Skixx raised his hands to his face in feigned embarrassment. “Oh, my apologies!” For the moment, he had to play the part of a dopily kind visitor to the stacks.

The curator waved off the apology and forced a grin, still shaking his anxiety away. “No, it's fine, quite fine. You— smoke and sparks, you certainly surprised me, though. I just get entirely too focused on my work.” 

“I take full responsibility,” Skixx said sweetly, shaking his head. “My amma always insisted that I ambled far too stealthily as a progeny. It appears to still hold true. I am extremely apologetic.”

The curator waved it off again. “Nonsense. It was a mutually created scenario of mistake. But that is neither here nor there. What may I assist you with? Keep in mind that the stacks aren’t quite open for perusal yet, but—”

“I’m looking for an emitter design,” Skixx said, interrupting him before the fool could imply he should leave.

The wiry asura shoved something jangly down the neck of his tunic and seemed for a moment to consider his options. He chose politeness.

“Yes, sir. Yes, we have numerous emitter schematics in our collection. Again, the stacks are not yet open to the public, but I could help you at least locate what you’re interested in, for later.” Turning his back to Skixx, he shifted his attention to a console at his left, beginning to tap at the neon glyphs. “Could you be more precise on the type of emitter you’re pursuing?”

“I’m told it’s classified as an onboard, golem energy emitter, model SGZ-081.”

As fast as the words were off Skixx’s lips, they were typed into the curator’s terminal. “Excelsior. I—” For a single second, the slender curator stared at the results. “I’m very sorry,” he said, piecing his words together. “We don’t seem to have any schematics by that specific—”

Skixx interrupted again, crossing his arms and smiling subtly. “I’ve been told they’re in the Synergetics vault, if that helps.” This was where things would get interesting.

“I’m sorry.” The curator shook his head. “I fear you are mistaken. There is no record of—”

Skixx lifted himself on tiptoes to point over the other asura’s shoulder at one of the consoles glowing behind him. “Yes there is. You just found it.”

The curator tried another approach. “My apologies, but the college vaults are only accessible to—”

“Deans and other authoritative staff, I know.” Skixx sneered, then shrugged. “But that's where my objective is, so that's where I'm going.” He looked past the curator at the slowly increasing foot traffic across the plaza. There were more of them now, but still everyone was consumed by their own activities, oblivious to him and the curator.

The curator, however, was very aware of Skixx and increasingly uncomfortable. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and back again, though he worked to hold himself still. “Unfortunately, my ambitious acquaintance, I am not permitted to grant that access to anyone but an authorized visitor. And unless you'd like to present evidence to the contrary, you are not authorized. If you would like to peruse anything in the main collection of the stacks, you are more than welcome. In just a few moments, I’ll grant access right there.” He gestured back at a section of console locked beneath a latched cover.

Skixx shrugged. “Unexpectedly helpful information, Fradd, but I’m not interested in the main collection.” He leaned forward, shading his face beneath the tip of his hood. With a snap of the wrist, the sleeved dagger popped out into his outstretched hand, and the thrill surged inside him. “I’d advise making an exception to your security protocol today.”

The curator backed away. “My ears! How do you know my name? Have we met? And what in the Alchemy do you need that for?” He gestured at the blade.

“The person who sent me knows quite a bit more than your name, Fradd. It’s frustratingly impressive, really.” Shaking Kikka from his mind, Skixx stepped forward again and took the taller asura by the collar, pulling him down to eye level. “So, if you’d like to keep this tunic and the innards beneath it intact, I’ll be abducting your keys now, and you will be entering the vault clearance codes for me.”

Fradd froze, staring into his attacker’s eyes. His lips trembled, but no words came out.

“Now!” Skixx growled, sliding his blade against the curator’s neck. “You may be considering heroics, but don't. Rather, consider your progeny. It’s not optimal for her to mature without a parent. This is a dangerous world.”

The curator's eyes widened. “How do you know—”

“The keys and the clearance codes, Fradd!” he interrupted, half grinning. “I suggest you stop dawdling.”

Eyes locked on Skixx, the curator slid a hand slowly down the neck of his tunic. He raised it back up with a chain in hand and unclasped the keyring at its end, pulling it off and handing it to Skixx.

Before pocketing the ring, Skixx counted. More than a dozen small, iron keys hung from it, which meant there would be some trial and error when he reached the vault door.

“And the clearance codes?” Skixx pressed. The curator nodded anxiously, his eyes bouncing up and  down between Skixx and the knife.

He rotated slowly to the console, but Skixx caught him by the hand before he could touch any of the glowing glyphs. “If you touch anything— and I mean anything other than the clearance panel, I will know.” Skixx pressed the tip of the dagger into the other asura’s back.

Sweat began to darken the collar of the curator’s tunic. Fradd nodded and moved his hand to a different panel. He typed a twelve-digit passcode, and a green light lit above it.

If Kikka and Comakk’s information was correct, that light would remain lit for thirty minutes, leaving the vault’s keyhole revealed deep inside the stacks. That was how this method of security worked. Two elements were needed to grant access: the codes known only to the stack librarians and the keys held by the college deans. The only loophole to the two-step clearance was this, that the stacks curator possessed both the passcodes and a secret set of spare keys.

“There,” Fradd said, looking at the green light. “It’s open. It’s yours. Now, please, for Alchemy’s sake, let me go.”

“Not just yet,” Skixx chided, “I don’t actually know what clearance you just entered, but I do know there are four security vaults in the stacks. To be sure you revealed access to the right one, let’s enter all four.”

“You can't be serious,” the curator stammered. For a moment, he almost appeared to have a spine. “Unlocking all four vaults is out of—”

Skixx pressed the dagger just a hair harder into his back, feeling it bite gently into flesh beneath the tunic, and Fradd tensed. Holding his breath, he reluctantly tapped the glyph combination for the second vault into the console. Then the third. Then the fourth. In a moment, all four vault lights were glowing a bright, solid green.

“I have no inkling what you could want with this emitter,” Fradd said, his hands now raised away from the consoles. “If someone told you there were valuable intellectual properties or prototypes in the Synergetics vault, I can assure you they were greatly misinformed or patently lying. Synergetics doesn’t put any of their modern developments here in the—”

Skixx jammed the blade into his back, and Fradd’s words were lost in a long, croaking gasp.

The curator reached back to feel for the dagger hilt-deep in a fleshy pocket between his ribs. But before he could find it, Skixx slipped the blade back out and stabbed it between ribs on the other side of the spine as well—it was hard to scream with collapsed lungs.

Skixx dragged the gasping curator from the console and laid him down on the stone floor, and for another minute, the slender asura mouthed words and worked fruitlessly to find the air. Skixx just stood, cleaning his blade and grinning, and the world beyond the consoles passed right on by without a care.

For now that was good. Once he had the schematics, Skixx would drag the body into the open and use the waypoint to disappear back to Brisban, leaving Kikka her precious mess, but right now he had roughly twenty-eight minutes before the Synergetics keyhole was once again hidden. Skixx found the key that opened that cover on the console, popped the lid, and pressed the button to unlock the main doors, effectively opening the stacks to every researcher in Rata Sum.

Keys in hand, he took off, slipping quickly down the opposite staircase and breaking into a sprint. He rounded the corner, racing under the waypoint that would be his escape route and glancing over his shoulder for any onlookers. He returned his attention ahead, only just seeing the shape of a small, female asura as he slammed into her, the impact throwing him aside and flinging her into a wall beneath the waypoint’s glow.

Skixx bounced back up, blood pulsing through him. The female just stood there gawking at him. The dazed idiot.

“What in the Alchemy?” she exclaimed. “Why don’t you watch where you’re going, you skritt-brained hooligan?”

Skixx only grimaced at her, then leapt back on his path toward the stacks. She wasn’t worth the hassle of anything more.

“Fine,” she called after him. “Just keep running then, chicken!”

He did, and he could feel that obnoxious female’s eyes on him the whole way, as he wove around the handful of other passersby and sprung around the next corner, which put him out of her sight and face-to-face with the huge, stone doors of the stacks. He entered his old Statics passcode, and the twin doors receded into the walls, allowing him access. With a bit more caution, Skixx crossed the threshold, and the huge doors slid shut behind him.

Just as Comakk had anticipated, the stacks were empty. Skixx hated to admit it, but intercepting the head curator just as he was opening the stacks for public access was wise. Steel chairs filled the wide space, pulled away at random distances from the stone tables that dotted the broad space, right where students and researchers had absently left them the night before. Right in the middle sat the massive, half-moon desk normally manned by more of the library staff.

All was still.

At the outside edges of the room, staircases led out in every direction, descending into deeper chambers, where the bulk of the collection’s resources were kept. These, he knew, were filled to bursting with tomes, datapads, magitechnical consoles, schematics, and sample inventions that spanned most common asuran knowledge since the rise of Primordus.

At a jog, he made his way through sets of shelves to the back right of the research foyer, to a staircase leading into the single most useless wing of the whole facility: the chambers of xeno-racial studies. Just the thought of the time and effort wasted on collecting the materials there made Skixx sneer. The Arcane Council were morons to invest in that.

A half staircase led down into the first floor of that wing. From that point, each stairwell descended even farther, until Skixx was precisely eight floors down, in a wide room, void of life and coated in thick dust: where disheveled tomes, scrolls, and other detritus sat piled up on tables in only the dimmest of light. The perfect place for the college vaults. Skixx trod lightly through the maze, and sure enough, behind several layers of old, dirty curtains covered in dust, Skixx found the still revealed keyhole, exactly where Comakk had told him it would be. That information, Skixx knew, had come from Kikka, and as he tried the first key on the ring, he hated her all the more for knowing so much. It became increasingly unclear how he’d stomach working for that know-it-all wench.

It took a few minutes, and several wrong keys, but with still plenty of time to spare, he inserted the correct one, turned it, and watched a small, door-sized panel of wall retreat several inches and slide aside. He took a step and was inside the vault, the door closing behind him.

If this had been the Statics vault, he may have taken a moment to be impressed, but it wasn’t. This was the vault of Synergetics, those ridiculous theorists who couldn’t put two resonators together for anything practical. Scoffing, Skixx made his way quickly through two rows of bare tables and into the shelved aisles that held the least of the colleges’ most treasured possessions.

Aisle four, aisle five, aisle six—he counted them off. Two sections down and four shelves from the bottom, there it was, right between some shattered bits of moss-covered stone and a small, open box of vialed liquids. Synergetics vault item 342: the SGZ-081 energy-emitter schematics.

Really, it was just a coil of vellum sheets snapped shut inside a metal tube that was open at the ends. Skixx took it in hand, rotated it once or twice, and scowled. It couldn’t be worth all this. He shook his head at the imbeciles who’d put it here and those who’d sent him to get it. Regardless, he was here, he had what he’d come for, and when he got it back to Kikka, he would finally be on his way to something worthy of him.

He spun on his heel, jogged across the room, and made his way back up the staircases that zigged back and forth from one floor to the next, until he reached the foyer once more.

At the top, he slowed his pace, stepping out coolly through the few shelves that led back to the open center of the research foyer, where he found the first researchers of the day trickling in. He’d made his move at precisely the right time. Soon someone would find his handiwork at the other side of the structure, and if they didn’t, he would pull Fradd out and make sure they did just after he’d entered his destination coordinates and disappeared away through the transmaterialization network.

The metal tube beneath his arm, Skixx approached the main doors, slipped out as another student entered. He rounded the corner and strode calmly along the stonework path that led back to the waypoint.

Even more people were out now. The city was indeed waking up, which would give Skixx even better cover during his escape. He was just—

He stopped, shooting an imperceptible glance over each shoulder. It was that sense again, the tingle that said someone was watching. He lowered a hand over his sheath and invisibly snatched the blade up and into his sleeve.

“You!” a voice cried.

Between the crossing civilians, Skixx caught a glimpse of the female who’d run into him. With strides intent and forceful for her dainty frame, the near progeny was coming at him. What, was she going to reprimand him? Skixx snickered.

“It’s him,” she called again, pointing an accusing finger. “That male there, he’s the hooligan!”

In less time than it took her to finish the sentence, Skixx’s grin turned to ice. There, trailing several yards behind her was a lone peacemaker. Their eyes met, and the awkward-looking officer attempted to wave him down, lowering a hand toward the sword at his hip as he sped up.

He passed the little female and excused himself as he cut between a small group of pedestrians. “Sir,” he called, his hand now resting on the pommel of his weapon, “I have some inquiries for you.”

Skixx moved likewise toward the officer, still at a slow stride, and he raised his hands peaceably. “Is there something wrong, officer?”

“That is definitely him,” the female chirped, right on the peacemaker’s heels. “I don’t know where he was headed in such a hurry, but just look at him—”

“Yes. Please be quiet,” the officer interrupted, still looking ahead at Skixx. “Please relinquish your parcel for a moment, sir. I have to ask you some questions.”

“Yes, of course,” Skixx consented, lowering the tube to the ground. “I have no wish to cause a stir.”

Bent over and hiding his movements with the tube, Skixx slipped his free hand into the opposite sleeve and plucked a smokeball from the lining and popped it between his fingers.

The ball hissed out smoke, and Skixx took one last mental snapshot of the scene: the peacemaker’s shocked expression, his hand slipping the sword from its scabbard, that obnoxious female gawking two steps behind him, and a pair of bystanders leaping aside from the sudden eruption of smoke.

Locking a tighter grip around the coil of sheets, Skixx spun upward and rapped the metal tube against the peacemaker's swordhand to knock it free of the weapon. In the thickening cloud of smoke, he worked off his memory, continuing his rotation as he flipped the small blade from his sleeve and jammed it up into the officer’s throat, pulling it free and rushing around him in a mad dash to the transmat.

He burst from the cloud, wisps of coiling smoke trailing off him, and looked back to ensure everyone else was still thick in the fog. Screams and calls for help echoed behind him, but Skixx ran on, wiping the dagger on his coat and sliding it back into its sheath. He grabbed the transmat disk from his pocket instead and began to enter coordinates as he neared the waypoint’s glow.

Thwick.

Something struck Skixx, and he stopped, perplexed. He’d killed the only peacemaker; he knew he had.

Passersby stood still, gawking at Skixx as he reached over his shoulder toward the stinging sensation in his back. A throwing knife stuck there, in him to the hilt, just inside his shoulder blade.

How was this possible?

With a curse, Skixx shook himself awake and lunged ahead. It didn’t matter how it was possible. He just had to reach the waypoint.

Thwick.

He felt a fresh sting, not far from the first. Adrenaline kept him on his feet, but his breathing suddenly felt labored. Had that throw caught him in the lung?

Skixx imagined he was still moving forward at the same pace, but he wasn’t. He should have been beneath the glow, disappearing from Rata Sum in a flash of light, but he wasn’t. Glancing around, he realized he was barely moving toward the waypoint at all, only feet away from it.

An arm snaked beneath his and wrapped itself back around his neck, keeping him from twisting free as another hand slipped something into his pocket.

“Mistress Kikka gives her regards,” a voice whispered. There was neither pleasure in it nor malice, no emotion to speak of at all. It was Comakk. “Your service,” he said, “is appreciated.”

Reality hit Skixx at the same moment three more stabs did, each with a twist that ripped things inside him and ground against his ribs as the blade was pulled free.

The metal roll fell from his hand, and before he knew he too was falling, Skixx was on the ground, watching Comakk run, upside-down, through a channel of screaming onlookers. And in a brilliant flash of light, he was gone.

The world closed in on that flash, an iris of black contracting around it. And when it faded, everything was dark.