We've arrived at Vintner Station.
It's a winterized outpost consisting of five small huts huddling around a very large dome shaped central structure, with a warming barrier surrounding it. We cross into town around sundown, and I notice that the walkways are freshly shoveled, but no one is in sight. Like a ghost town.
The wind sounds eerie here.
Zenith doesn't stand on ceremony, leading me straight toward the dome. We pass into an airlock and the pressure evens out. It's a lot warmer here than outside. We're both steaming. While I wait, I steal a look at him. He's unreadable. A blank page. I hope I haven't walked myself into a dead end.
The door hisses open and the first thing that hits me is the heat. Oh, that's very nice. I rub my hands together for some friction, gazing up at the fruitful canopy of an interior forest at the heart of it all. Zenith leads the way and I spot a cluttered looking workshop to my left, and some kind of storage bay sits vacant to the right, with a few open shipping containers.
Not a soul in sight.
We circumvent the forest, heading for the far side of the dome. Zenith brings me to a conference area with a large table and multiple seats around it, many of them occupied. Another white haired, blue eyed Frame hurriedly comes over, towering over both of us. A head and shoulders taller than Zenith, and I'm barely at her chest height.
Not even.
She gazes down at me with a teary, quivering smile. "Oh my gosh," she whispers, voice trembling. "You're back!"
Again, here we go. Is everyone on Cipher-3 crazy?
"Ease off," Zenith tells her. "Keep the bear hugs to yourself. You'll blow a gasket on an Ethereal."
"I know, I know! I'm just happy to see her!"
The big Frame steps aside and I approach the conference table, where three humans are gathered. They watch me come in with bewildered wonder, I think, and they sit stunned as they stare at me. There's a long and awkward silence. Another second later the woman clears her throat, giving me a kind smile and an endearing look, wearing a pair of glasses.
"Hello once again, Nep. We need to talk."
I don't say anything, scanning the area with a hand on my pistol.
"Please, you can sit right there, at the head of the table."
Setting my rifle against it, I drop my pistol on the table right in front of me before sitting down. It's chambered. It's a warning. Sitting at the far end, the woman studies me with a soft gentleness, picking and choosing what she wants to say. The younger man next to her is shifting in his seat, staring at me like I'm inside out, and the older man has his arms crossed, lost in thought. Zenith remains standing, and the huge Frame is dwarfing a chair to my right.
Nothing is said.
I find the silence uncomfortable.
Only Taser's whirr is audible.
"Where do I even start?" the woman sighs. "I'll start with stating the obvious. Let's clear the air, because I'm sure you're confused. Nep, you have been here before. We've all met you before. We've all worked with you before."
Yes, everyone on Cipher-3 is crazy. "I just got here eight hours ago."
"What's your serial number?"
"0107."
"Over a hundred already? Listen, this is going to be hard for you to grasp, but I'm telling the truth, which we're able to verify with concrete evidence. We know–or rather knew nEPI-0023, otherwise known as Ace. Before her, we knew nEPI-0015. Before her, we knew nEPI-0009. You have never been here on Cipher-3 before this, but other Frames of your model line with your mindscape framework have. One hundred and six of them, to be precise. You are the recurrent serial model in a line of repeating nEPI Frames that continue to land on Cipher-3."
"Okay, that makes perfect sense. Why didn't you start with that?"
"Because we have no idea what we're doing or how to begin maneuvering this. The first time we knew you, with Nine, everything was completely as expected of a Pursuer, more or less. She was detached, kept her distance, and stayed to herself, but she was here sharing this space peacefully. But Nine ventured out one day and never came back. We can only presume her to be long dead by now."
I'm choosing to hear them out before I call this a load of heat sink paste.
The younger man scratches his stubble covered jaw. "She was the first we'd seen, and we were sad to lose her, but we didn't think too much of it. Thing is, a week or two later, Nep-15 showed up out of the white. It was like seeing a ghost. Feels that way right now too, if I'm honest."
"Yes, and Nep-15 was very different from Nine. She was threatening, demanding, aggressive, even sometimes violent, and she did not respond well to our attempts at explaining this. Like you were a moment ago, she was adamant on having never been here, on being unrelated to the existence of Nine, but unlike you, she refused to believe us or even listen to us."
"Almost had to gun her down," Zenith grumbles.
"In the end, she left soon after. We never saw her again. Like Nine, we had to presume her dead. Because of Nep-15's aggression, we agreed to take a different approach in the event another Nep showed up, and about a month later, Ace arrived. Nep-23. Instead of deliberately trying to explain all this to her, we opted to act as though we'd never met the other two. Mostly we were wary of any potential neuroticism like we saw with Nep-15. We hoped it would prove inconsequential to her, and she would find her own way regardless. "
"Felt like lying the whole time," the young man mourns.
"Yup," the old man adds. "Felt like shit."
The woman holds my stare. "Ace died six months ago. She sacrificed herself to a deadly feral machine so that Henna and Zenith could escape to safety."
I glance at him. "So that's why you said you owe me."
"Yeah. Because of Ace," he quietly responds, and that's all.
"I owe you too," the Frame woman I now know is named Henna says with a sorrowful look. "I have no idea how to make it up to you, but I will somehow."
Hm. Yes, I'll collect gratitude for someone else's sacrifice.
Thank you kindly, Ace. Your foolish death is to my benefit.
The woman takes back control of the conversation. "You're confused. You're struggling to make sense of it. You're listening, but you don't believe us."
I nod. "That's true. If this were the case, why wouldn't I know about it?"
"We don't know the answer to that. Unfortunately, your origins are shrouded in mystery, to us and to you. At least, to the Neps we knew before. You don't know where you came from, or who sent you, or why. Correct?"
I frown, now pushed a little more toward belief.
How did she know that?
"Only your directive," she says. "The execution of a wanted fugitive, whose identity we still don't know, who is suspected to be somewhere here on Cipher-3. That's all you know. Right?"
"Yes. You're starting to convince me. There's no way you could know any of that otherwise."
"I do, because we've spoken about it three times now. Nine, Nep-15, Ace, and now you. I'm telling you the truth. We have proof of it too. We can give that to you, if you're willing to accept it."
I sit back in my chair. "What kind of proof?"
"Ace's Failsafe SmartChip. Her body is here too. We recovered what was left of it after the machine moved on. Most of it is totally destroyed, corroded through by acid, but her head and upper torso are intact. We've been making sure to maintain what we can of her, anticipating your… eventual return to us."
The old man sighs. "Didn't think it'd take this long though."
"Right, six months," the younger one nods. "Sounds like the poor things have been through it since. I mean, that's, what, eighty four dead Neps since Ace? Not one of them made it here."
I turn to Zenith. "More corpses on Cipher-3. Are they all mine?"
He nods. "One hundred six of them are out there somewhere."
"That Frame body we came across, the one the biters were feeding on."
"Yours. Another Nep."
I run things through my head one more time, taking in the grisly information. "That's a lot of times I've died on Cipher-3."
The woman elaborates, "It doesn't seem that there are ever any more than one of you active at a time. At least, as far as we know. So long as you're alive, we don't think any more will be coming in."
"Do you think someone is monitoring my status?"
"Most likely whoever keeps sending you, from wherever you keep coming from, for whatever reason. There are a lot of obscured variables about you."
"What's the longest I've survived? Do you know that information?"
"Nep-9 was here for at least a full month before venturing out to her uncertain fate. Nep-15 was here for maybe two weeks. Ace was a week at most."
"Why is it getting shorter?"
"Is it?" She gives me a reassuring smile. "Think about it like this. Eighty four of you have landed on Cipher-3 since Ace. Most of them likely died within hours. But here you are. You've reached us. At last, we've gotten you here and can keep you safe. I have a good feeling you'll break the losing streak your model line has been on. In all honesty, you already have, just by getting here in one piece."
Zenith huffs a sour breath. "I was starting to think you wanted to keep dying, the way you were going about it. So many times you dropped dead in minutes. So many times I arrived just in time to watch you die. It was maddening. The fact that on this round you stayed put when you landed and didn't leave your pod for a while is, I think, the reason you're still here. It allowed me to get to you."
"It was snowing too hard to move, so I sat down and waited it out."
"Then the snowstorm saved your life. Don't throw it away again."
"I'll try not to." Running through things once more, it's getting harder and harder to disprove these claims of theirs. There's only one thing to do at this point. "You said you have proof. You have Ace's remains and her Failsafe."
"Yes," the woman nods. "They're rightfully yours. Along with her belongings, those that remain. You'll find her interred in a plot we made for her on the edge of the forest closest to the door. Her Failsafe is stored with Quentin."
"Yup," the old man grunts. "I've been trying to break the encryption on that damn SmartChip to absolutely no avail. Someone or something really doesn't want anyone but you Neps accessing that data."
I wonder aloud, "What will happen when I download it?"
Henna chimes in. "We're not sure, but I think you'll be able to decide what to do with it. I wonder if you can incorporate her memories into your own, and her experiences on Cipher-3 to get a jump start. That's the main reason we preserved her, for you to hopefully utilize and step off the progress she made."
"I'm… not sure how it works either," I admit. "Obviously I've never done anything like this. What if she overwrites me?"
"Might be possible," Zenith answers. "If it is, she would. Ace was bullheaded as all hell. You're meeker. She'd steamroll you. Full honesty."
"Partition her off," the older man suggests. "Keep a separate drive space for her. See what she has to say, what she has to show you. Then decide how to proceed."
The woman nods along. "By our understanding of Frame neuropathic technology, you have a few options. Keep her isolated but study her logs and memory, let her overwrite you, or merge with her. You should take a closer look before you decide. Personally, I agree with Quentin. Partition her."
"Yeah, that," the young man grins. "Maybe you could do something like dual integration. It'd be nice to rib and riff with Ace again like we used to."
"Ultimately," Zenith says with a coolness to his tone, "it's her choice. If Ace is gone, she's gone. Remember that. However fondly we may feel about her, this is a different person we're interacting with."
"Right. My bad. I got a little overeager. I'm Louis, by the way."
"Quentin," says the older man.
"Zoya," the woman smiles at me. "It's a pleasure to meet you again, Nep. If you're ready, why don't we go ahead and get started?"
I scan the room. Henna is wiggling in her seat, grinning ear to ear. Quentin is hesitant, refusing to look at me. Louis looks nervous. Zoya has a calm air to her that makes me feel relaxed. Zenith stands alert, staring at me from my left. And little Taser hovers next to my head, chirping and beeping with pleasant sounds.
There's no real way to argue against any of this. I have nothing to lose by going with it either. Besides, if I'm to find this Shea McElroy, I think climbing the shoulders of those who came before me is the perfect way to get ahead on that. As if I'm taking up the floodlight. Whatever investigating or searching Ace has done will be mine, integrated into my own processors. The week she spent here would be a couple hours or less for me.
I nod. "Okay. Let's get started. I'll download Ace's memory."