“ Let’s see what they were after.” Agarik led the way inside.
This time, no creatures attacked when they opened the door. The second wolf lay dead where Agarik had shot it. The drab green paint covering the wood walls and the gray tiles lining the floor could not camouflage the dark blood spatters staining the hallway.
They passed doors, some closed, some open to utilitarian offices. Each contained identical military-issue desks, chairs, and bookcases. Some offices appeared untouched, as if the men had simply stepped away to make a cup of tea. In others, toppled chairs and scattered papers suggested struggles had taken place.
Agarik stepped into a messy room to investigate, and Tikaya chose a tidy one across the hall. She peeked in cabinets and drawers, not sure what she sought. The cause of this madness, but what would that look like?
She paused before returning to the hallway. She tugged her glove off and ran a finger along a bookcase by the door.
“ No dust,” she murmured.
That and the mostly cleared walkways outside implied things had been normal within the last week or two.
Tikaya returned to the hallway, passed an office where Agarik poked and clanked, and stopped before a closed door. Wood shavings dusting the floor drew her eye. Above them, claw marks ravaged the door and jamb.
Dread settled in the pit of Tikaya’s stomach. “Agarik? I think we want to check this one.”
Maybe it was cowardly, but she stepped aside when he walked out, gesturing for him to turn the knob. He took in the claw marks with a grim set to his jaw, then handed her the rifle.
“ Uhm?” she asked, startled.
“ Just in case,” Agarik said. “It’s loaded. Just point and pull the trigger if you have to.”
“ I’ve never shot a-”
“ If you can make a bull’s-eye with a bow and an icicle, you can shoot a firearm.” He withdrew his pistol, turned the knob, and pushed. The door bumped against something and only opened a couple inches. Pistol leading, he leaned against the door, shoving to open it further. Furniture inside scraped, and something tipped over with a crack. He peered inside. “Cursed ancestors.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Too gruesome for a woman. Wait here.”
He disappeared into the dim room, and she waffled, torn between wanting to know what was inside and not wanting to see it. Considering they had tramped past human skeletons and a frozen dead man together, she did not want to know what qualified as too gruesome.
A few bumps drew her curiosity, and she decided to force aside her squeamishness and go in. Before she could, Agarik opened the door again.
“ Sorry, ma’am, but I need you to look at something.”
“ It’s fine.”
Agarik lifted a hand first. “I want you to know… I know it won’t help anything and won’t make up for…” His gaze slipped off her eyes and settled on the wall past her shoulder. “I’m sorry I was the one to find you and let them know where to get you.” The words came out in a blurted jumble, as if he had been trying to work up the gumption to voice them for some time. “This isn’t your battle. It never was, and I hope…I hope you’re able to live through it and get home. Somehow.”
“ Thank you, but don’t feel guilty on my behalf, please.” Tikaya rested the rifle butt on the floor and touched his arm. “If it hadn’t been you, I’m sure it would have been someone else. I knew when I helped my people decrypt those messages that there might be consequences someday. Nothing remotely like this entered my thoughts, but…” She steeled herself. “Show me your something.”
Agarik led her into an office with a broken barricade of chairs, bookcases, cabinets, and a desk cramping the area near the door. At first, she did not see the bodies, but they were there, in the middle, around an odd black object, that appeared half box, half table with an utterly foreign set of symbols glowing red in the air above it. A pipe rose from one side, and six slender legs attached the construct to the floor. The dead were strewn about it. Blood stained everything, even the ceiling. For the first time since they arrived, she was thankful for the freezing temperatures. In her climate, the decomposition, the smell, would have been overpowering.
Following Agarik, Tikaya shuffled through the clutter. He obviously wanted her to examine the box, but she could not get there without stepping over bodies. Cuts and punctures desecrated them, far more than would have been needed to kill. A dagger protruded from one man’s burst eyeball. The whole macabre scene seemed too messy for the neat and efficient marines.
“ I didn’t touch it,” Agarik said as she came even with the object. “I don’t have any idea what it is.”
Symbols formed neat rows on one side of the black box, and giddiness replaced the nausea in her stomach. They were familiar in style, probably from the same language as the glyphs on the rubbings, but arranged individually instead of in groupings. Each symbol marked an indention. In the center of the box top, a red light smaller than her pinkie nail glowed, projecting a set of symbols above.
Tikaya eased around for a better look, but her boot bumped a wood stick. Not a stick, the shaft of a shovel. It and a pickaxe lay on the floor near smashed tiles. The subfloor was torn up, with exposed dirt beneath. With a jolt, she realized the contraption’s ‘legs’ stuck through the floor and into the earth.
“ How the…”
“ Looks like these men were trying to dig it out,” Agarik said. “Probably wanted to get rid of it.”
“ Yes, but how would its legs have plunged through the floor and anchored down there to start with?”
His parka rustled as he removed his cap and rubbed a hand through his short hair. “I don’t know. Magic?”
Tikaya turned her attention to the symbols again. She poked one, indenting it; it glowed red and a larger version appeared in the air with a ball spinning around it. The originally displayed image disappeared in favor of the new one. “Er.” She had best be careful; this had probably all started with some idiot pressing buttons.
She glanced at Agarik, afraid he would chastise her for touching things, but he nodded encouragingly. Dear Akahe, he thought she could figure it out and fix things.
Underneath the box, she found a couple groupings of the more traditional symbols engraved in the cool black surface. She recognized a few from the rubbings. So, this might be writing. Directions? For operating the device?
In the air above, the symbol she had pressed faded and the original diagram returned. She poked the button again, then stabbed a couple others. They all appeared in the air. Something reminiscent of an equals sign formed between two while others dangled individually. Waiting. When she did not touch anything for a moment, the symbols faded, replaced again by the original.
“ Numbers?” Tikaya wondered, though some two hundred symbols were there. She knew of one ancient language that had used a base forty math system instead of the nearly ubiquitous base ten most of the modern world preferred, but nobody had two hundred different numbers. “Numbers and mathematical symbols?”
“ Eh?” Agarik asked.
“ If that’s what these are, then maybe operating the device involves punching in different combinations to create… I don’t know. Equations for something?” Tikaya rubbed her jaw. “But how would that relate to whatever this device is doing to negatively affect the town? I don’t know. Maybe I’m all wrong here. What do you think?”
“ Uhm.” Agarik’s eyes were so blank he appeared hypnotized.
“ Agarik, I don’t mean to insult you, but can you see if Rias is here yet and bring him?”
Relief flashed across his face, but he hesitated. “I shouldn’t leave you alone.”
“ I’ve got your rifle. I’ll be fine.”
“ My orders are-”
“ I know, Agarik, but I need to stay here, and figure this out, and if it’s math-related, Rias could help. Please find him.”
After another long hesitation, he sighed. “Yes, ma’am.”
Though she had told him to go, she felt uneasy once she was alone. At least her irritability had disappeared. Agarik’s had, too, she realized. Despite his lack of understanding, he had been calm and patient while she mulled over the strange artifact. Maybe the device was the thing responsible for people acting oddly, and maybe, in her random symbol touching, she had cut off whatever it was doing or emitting. She snorted self-deprecatingly. If it had been that simple the dead men on the floor would have figured it out before the end. Besides, thinking back, she
