The Mage-cuffs—silver-rune-inlaid manacles—were in her hand, but she could see the blood on the floor around Lafrenz. She poked the other woman with her foot, then knelt down as Lafrenz twitched away.
The cuffs snapped onto the woman’s wrists, but Lafrenz just chuckled bitterly.
“Too late, little girl,” she whispered. “You’ve met the Orpheus weapon once, haven’t you? I watched the news. That was version thirteen.”
“What do you mean?” Roslyn demanded.
“You don’t even know, do you?” Lafrenz laughed bitterly. “This was Project Orpheus, Finley’s long-term plan. Everything we did with the Republic was to set up this place. We were going to rule everything.
“But it kept failing. Complex thirteen, though, had potential to be a weapon. You met it.”
“The toxin,” Roslyn said quietly.
“Toxin.” Lafrenz coughed bitterly. “The most complex piece of nanotechnology and magitech ever developed, and you call it a toxin. We can override the human brain with magic delivered by a nanite. Did you even know what you were fighting?”
“I need to know how to fix the damage it did,” Roslyn told her. “I don’t care how it works.”
The Mage laughed and lifted her arm weakly, showing her wrist-comp.
“You should have cared,” she replied. “Because I just activated a go-to-hell plan…and you and all of Nueva Portugal are going to hell.
“Complex thirteen wasn’t self-replicating, which made it a tactical weapon at best. A failure both at the original goal and as a weapon.”
Lafrenz coughed again, spitting blood up on the floor. Roslyn could recognize the signs of thaumic burnout. There was nothing she could do for Lafrenz—the amount of blood on the floor suggested that the other Mage was already blind.
The other woman had intentionally overloaded and killed herself to not be taken prisoner.
“But this was a research lab, and if I couldn’t control all humanity, I could sure as hell find a way to damn them,” the dying woman said. “Complex twenty-two is a self-replicating nanoplague. It will infect everyone. It will control their brains—and we never did work out how to give them orders.
“They just kill.”
Lafrenz giggled.
“Seems appropriate, since you killed me,” she told Roslyn. “Enjoy what you’ve unleashed, Navy bitch.” She coughed up more blood, turning bloodily blinded eyes toward the younger woman.
“And when they catch you, I’ll see you in he—” Lafrenz’s words dissolved into choking coughs…and then silence as Roslyn stared down at her in horror.
34
The Marines returned in that silence, six of them circling around Roslyn with weapons trained on Lafrenz.
“Is she…” Knight trailed off, looking at the pool of blood.
“Dead?” Roslyn replied. “Yeah. Lethal thaumic burnout. She killed herself trying to kill me…but not before she triggered a go-to-hell plan. Corporal, I’m pretty sure she came from her office, that way.”
Roslyn pointed toward the door Lafrenz had entered from.
“Find a computer. Any fucking computer. She says she released an updated version of the toxin. It’s a self-replicating nanotech plague that affects people’s minds with magic.”
All seven of her companions were silent for several seconds.
“Is that even possible?” Bolivar asked. “This was an UnArcana World, I don’t know much about magic…”
“I didn’t think so,” Roslyn replied. “But it would explain just about everything we saw in the victims in the quarantine zone. We need more data—how it works, what they were trying to do.
“She said the current versions of Orpheus were useful weapons but failures at the main goal. I need to know that main goal,” she continued. “That’s on you, Knight. Go.”
She turned to the rest of the Marines and tapped into the command channel.
“Mooren, Killough,” she barked. “The situation here has gone very weird and very bad. Report.”
There was no answer.
“Knight, is the drone relay up?” she asked, then realized she’d already sent the cyberwarfare Marine ahead.
“We lost the tail end while you were fighting Lafrenz,” Andrews told her, their voice grim. “No warning, no report from Mooren and the rest. Just…silence.”
“Fuck.” Roslyn looked at the map. She needed options. She couldn’t leave her people down here to an unknown fate, but she also needed to address the Orpheus lab’s GOTH plan.
“Bolivar, take a look at this,” she instructed the Guardia officer. “Do you see the same probable linkage I do here?” She tapped a spot as she projected a hologram. There was a gap between what they had mapped, but it looked like there should be a route through.
“I do,” he agreed. “What do you need?”
“Take Knight’s Marines—the Corporal is going to stay here and get into the computers—and head for the surface,” she instructed. “If Lafrenz is telling the truth, we just hit a scenario so far beyond our worst case, I didn’t even consider it.
“I need you to get in contact with the Cardinal-Governor and with Captain Daalman,” Roslyn continued. “The quarantine has to go full lockdown. No one leaves the city. No one leaves the peninsula.”
She took a deep breath and met Bolivar’s gaze as best she could through their mostly faceless hazmat helmets.
“No one leaves the planet, Victoriano,” she told him, using his first name for the first time. “Full planetary lockdown and quarantine until we know more.”
“I…see the need,” he admitted. “But you don’t have that authority…”
He trailed off as she pulled a parchment-wrapped datachip from a pocket on her armor.
“I bear a Warrant of the Voice of the Mage-Queen of Mars,” Roslyn told him. “The chip will confirm my authority. Full planetary lockdown.”
“I understand,” he agreed, staring at the crowned-mountain seal of the Protectorate on the parchment. “What will you be doing?”
“Taking Andrews’s Marines and finding the rest of the people I brought into this hellhole,” Roslyn told him.
“We all need to move, now.”
The threat of imminent apocalypse was surprisingly effective at getting even Martian Marines to find an extra scrap of speed. The fire teams split at Roslyn’s instructions, two exosuits following Bolivar out toward the surface as three gathered around her.
That was going to leave Knight dealing with the computers alone, and that,
