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An idea formed in Gabriel’s mind.

Sir?” Cato’s barely suppressed panic was evident in his voice.

Follow my lead and jump on my mark.” Gabriel ordered.

He angled his arm to throw the grenade as the possessed Ogilvy got closer and closer.

Sir!

Go!” Gabriel shouted, bolting to the right as he tossed the grenade at Ogilvy’s feet, who walked unheedingly forward just as it detonated.

The explosive wave of flash-heated plasma melted straight through the floor at Ogilvy’s feet. It wasn’t powerful enough to shake the structure of the scaffolding, but it did generate enough force to knock Ogilvy backwards. The possessed commando let out a bloodcurdling scream as he fell down, even as the swarm of alien particles protected him from harm.

The squad followed Gabriel’s lead and sprinted right.

Grav-belts!” Gabriel shouted as he leapt off the far edge of the scaffolding, hitting the activation button on his gravity belt as he jumped.

Gabriel felt his innards being pulled straight down as the gravitational pull suddenly changed direction. Without the gravity belts, the squad could have run along the entire circumference of the spherical chamber without falling off; but although the chamber’s artificial gravity was cancelled out by the gravity belts, the effect wasn’t powerful enough to counteract the moon’s own gravity.

That was the idea.

Instead of falling flat against the wall, Gabriel and the squad hit the side and kept on falling, sliding towards the bottom at high speed like water circling a drain, towards a quartet of square openings at the bottom. The Faithful below opened fire, and Gabriel and the squad fired back. Hitting moving targets was hard, especially when you were the one moving, but several shots still hit their marks, and the Faithful scattered as they took casualties.

That’s our way out!” Gabriel yelled, pointing to the square openings, “go!

Given the topsy-turvy geometry of this place, each opening was probably another corridor leading to a sub-chamber below; and so plunging back into the labyrinth was the squad’s best way out. As they slid towards the bottom of the chamber, the squad used their momentum to slide back to their feet.

Several jumpers drew their deadly, armour-cutting swords, and tried to close the gap before the squad could make their escape. Viker dropped one with a concussive shot to the chest, sending it flying backwards and ‘up’ the side. Bale performed a forward roll, evading the otherwise decapitating swipe of another sword, and rolled straight into the hole, followed by Cato, Viker, and Gabriel.

As they fell, the squad kept enough of their wits about them to hit the buttons on their gravity belts, deactivating the gravity cancelling effect. Gravity’s direction shifted abruptly by 90 degrees, pulling the squad members down towards the ‘floor’ of the corridor instead of continuing to fall straight down into the next chamber.

As the squad recovered their orientation, the remaining fighters leaned over the edge and kept shooting down at them. From the squad’s perspective, the shots were travelling horizontally, even though the sub-chamber ‘behind’ them was actually below them. When they returned fire and kill one of the attackers, the body fell down only to hit the ‘floor’ – or the wall – of the corridor.

The multidirectional gravity would certainly make the fight more interesting.

Straight down!” Gabriel ordered, activating his gravity belt again.

Gravity abruptly reoriented by 90 degrees again, and Gabriel fell off the ‘floor’ and straight down, kicking back and forth against the walls of the vertical corridor to slow his descent. The rest of the squad followed his lead, reactivating their belts and dropping like stones down into the chamber below, where they landed more or less on their feet.

New plan, sir?” Bale asked.

We keep moving,” Gabriel replied, “or we die.

THE OBSERVER

Night came and went quickly on Asgard, thanks to its unusually fast rotation as it orbited Odin. Before long, it was time to get up and start another day at work. Aster was up before the sun was, the better to prepare for the day ahead. The children needed some convincing to trust the imposing maganiel android – especially since it lacked a Human face – but ultimately they climbed into their learning pods without complaint.

Aster didn’t like leaving them alone with an armed escort robot, but the conventional household android couldn’t fight, and she would sooner entrust a mindlessly loyal machine with childcare duties than her scheming mother-in-law. Besides, if everything went according to plan, she could be rid of Jezebel Thorn for good.

It was the same route to work as always: a twenty minute mag-train ride straight to J.E. Co.’s head offices. But the journey felt more tense than usual, perhaps because she was about to violate her employment contract in multiple ways. She kept her eyes glued to her smartphone for the entire journey, wondering if she was being followed or watched.

As the mag-train stopped and the doors slid open, Aster joined the shoal of people who poured out onto the platform. She was trying hard not to look suspicious as she walked to the elevators, a little too hard as she barged into someone by accident. Aster ignored the man and kept on walking, marching straight through the elevator doors.

Aster and her colleagues all proceeded in silence down fifty or so levels to the research labs and queued up at the security checkpoint. There, everyone was required to check their personal electronics into storage before passing through the scanner gate. Aster passed through the checkpoint without incident and headed straight for her office, giving only perfunctory greetings to her colleagues as she passed them.

Once she was safely in her office, she began rummaging through the storage cabinet in her desk. There was all sorts of junk in her drawers that she had yet to clear out, but she eventually found what she was looking for: a spare blue data chip.

The data chips were actually colour-coded: blue was generic company information, yellow was confidential, red was highly sensitive, hence the red chip hidden in Lawrence’s office. Lawrence would have known about the colour-coding system; come to think of it, so would Jezebel if Lawrence had been her mole. But a blue data chip would arouse less suspicion, and Aster could pass off the colour difference as a necessary deceit to smuggle it out.

Plugging the chip into her computer, Aster deleted the generic reports and other data, instead installing a simple tracking program and keylogger from the company’s in-house security software box. That way, whoever tried to access the chip’s contents would reveal their location to the company’s security techs.

Aster removed the chip and slipped it into her pocket. Coming up with a decoy chip was easy, getting the data chip past the security checkpoint and out of the building was the real challenge. The same would go for the red chip.

Aster left her office and headed to the main laboratory floor. It was almost reassuring to see everyone starting the day like nothing had happened, flitting back and forth with data pads and other equipment, even though the company’s future was still in doubt. Thanks to her, its fate would probably be sealed.

Avoiding eye contact with everyone as she passed, Aster slipped into the side office where the activation key safe was and stood in front of the biometric scanner. The scanner flash-scanned her eyes and the door popped open. Aster snatched the chip out of the safe and stuffed into her pocket, with the blue decoy chip in her other pocket.