Trust No One

General Winmore had seen a lot of things in his life. He had seen the darker sides of humanity, people driven to harm and abuse others to feed their twisted desires. In a world where everyone was guaranteed their basic necessities and then some, these crimes were rare. Yet, in a city of half a million people, he still witnessed one every few years.

He had only, however, seen the aftermath of the crimes. Pavel’s attack, and Ashtin’s counterattack, shocked him into inaction. By the time Pavel started licking Ginevra’s boot, he had become so absorbed in the madness unfolding on the other side of the one-way mirror that he forgot everything else around him. “Damn. Not even Huxley could have imagined this,” he muttered.

He was returned to his senses by the sound of whirring servos as the gynoid in the room with him snapped her head in his direction. “Where did you hear that name?”

“I was thinking of one of my lieutenants,” the general bluffed. “Lt. Huxley. He has a… unique outlook on human relations.”

The gynoid wasn’t buying it, and with good reason. There was nobody named Huxley under the general’s command. There was nobody named Huxley on the entire planet. The council made sure that nobody was named after certain people, in order to prevent the kind of evasion the general was now attempting.

“I’ll give you one last chance to come clean.” The gynoid stood from her seat. “Where did you—”

Giving the general a second chance had been a mistake. He fired three shots at the gynoid. The first bullet pierced the gynoid’s left shoulder, the second her sternum, and the third her right thigh. Her leg crumpled, causing her to lose her balance and fall. He shot a fourth bullet through the window and kicked it out.

⁂

It took Ashtin a few seconds to respond, but once he recognized the threat, he summoned shields around himself, Ginevra, and Pavel to defend them against stray bullets. They remained still as alarms sounded throughout the building, masking the sound of gynoid footsteps running down the hall. No more gunshots were fired, and after a few minutes, the alarms silenced and a gynoid knocked on the door and then entered the room, carrying a rifle. “All clear. Ashtin, come with me.”

Dropping his shields, Ashtin followed the gynoid over to the next room, where the damaged gynoid lay on the floor. She began pounding her fist on the ground to communicate in Morse code. Ashtin didn’t recognize it, so he knelt down beside her and cast a healing spell. To the gynoids’ surprise—but not Ashtin’s— the spell began repairing her.

As gynoids weren’t biological beings, it did not make sense to them that a healing spell would work on her. However, Ashtin conceptualized the spell as one that heals humans, and the gynoids were inarguably human in his mind. It also helped that he had studied their blueprints thoroughly, so he was as familiar with their construction as he was with his own anatomy.

General Winmore must have also studied gynoid blueprints, for he had targeted the transmitter in her left shoulder, cutting her off from the network; the vocal system in her sternum, preventing her from communicating verbally; and the servo in her right hip, so she would have difficulty moving with only one functional arm and leg. He had not shot near her electronic brain or any of the hardware which assisted in its function. Because he had not tried to murder her, the council would not consider him a lethal threat as they sought to capture him.

“The general,” the gynoid wheezed as soon as her vocal system was functional. “Leave me and go after him.”

Obeying the order, Ashtin ran over to the window and looked down. They were eight stories up. There was no way the general had survived the fall, and there was no ledge outside the window for the general to walk along. He scanned the area for the general’s body and eventually noticed the cherry-picker parked directly below.

“He’s already on the ground,” Ashtin reported, “but I don’t know which direction he fled.” He turned back and started walking quickly toward the exit. “He’s probably in a nearby building. He would be too conspicuous on the street. I’ll help with the search.”

“No.” Ginevra stopped him in the hallway. “You have more important work here.” She led him back into the room where Pavel was waiting, shaking with anxiety from the emotional rollercoaster he had just experienced. He stepped back when he saw Ashtin enter the room, afraid he might get stabbed again. “Pavel, where did you get the knife?” Ginevra demanded.

“It was taped to the underside of the table,” Pavel said, looking down at his feet.

Ginevra walked over to the table and lifted it, turning it on its side. Sure enough, there were strips of tape hanging from the underside. Pavel had carefully peeled them off the knife, making sure they didn’t drop to the ground.

“Ashtin, where did you get your knife?” Ginevra asked.

“I made it.” Ashtin’s cat ears perked up and faced forward. “It was four or five years ago. We needed it to test the accuracy of a historic report. I relinquished it to the council afterword, but they returned it to me for this assignment.”

“Yes, but where were you storing it? In your sleeve?”

“Oh, it was in my luggage. I have a lot of useful items. If I know exactly where they are, I can teleport them to myself.”

“Could Pavel’s knife have been teleported in the same manner, if a mage knew exactly where to put it?”

“It’s possible, but it would be very difficult, and it wouldn’t explain how Pavel knew it was there.”

“There was a voice in my head,” Pavel said.

“Whose?” Ginevra and Ashtin spoke in unison.

“I don’t know. At the time, I thought it was my own thoughts, but…”

Ginevra walked quickly up to Pavel, pulled his right eyelids apart with her hand, and stared into his eye. “Hypnosis.”

“The spell is still active?!” Ashtin ran toward them, and Ginevra moved out of the way to make room as he placed his palm on Pavel’s forehead. “That would explain why he suddenly became violent and then cooperative again. Endorphins released by pain or stress override the hypnosis, but he might fall back under the spell’s control in a few hours.”

“Can you determine who cast the spell?” Ginevra asked.

“I can get an impression of the magical energy, but if I’ve never met the caster, I won’t be able to identify them.”

“Do what you can.” Before the order had left Ginevra’s mouth, Ashtin began waving his left finger in the air. He planned to cast a weak numbing spell, the weakest spell he knew, on Pavel. When it came in contact with the hypnosis spell, they would interfere with each other, and the weaker spell would be destroyed.

To varying degrees, mages could feel their own magical energy, with more sensitive mages able to feel it more clearly. Ashtin’s abilities in this regard were well above average, and he hoped to feel how his spell was destroyed by the hypnosis spell. This would allow him to get an impression of the magical energy used to cast it.

Instead, to Ashtin’s surprise, the hypnosis spell collapsed immediately. “No good. The spell was extremely weak. It could only work on someone primed to cooperate with the caster’s suggestions. It also means the caster must be close by.”

“That does not tell us much,” Ginevra said. “The mages' guild is only a few blocks away.”

“Perhaps I ought to pay a visit.”

“Not possible. No outside visitors are allowed to enter the building or interact with the city’s mages.”

“Why is that?”

“Emergency measures,” Ginevra said, then she stopped. The nature of those emergency measures weren’t in her database. If she were still connected to the network, she could access them, and yet, even though she had fielded this query from guards many times in the past few days, she had never seen fit to look into it for herself. She had not wanted to waste the bandwidth or storage space unnecessarily, and she suspected most gynoids would behave similarly. It was only because the information might be useful to Ashtin’s investigation that she thought of it now.

And upon thinking about it more, there was no logical reason she could deduce why the emergency measures should bar Ashtin from the guild building. There had been no reports of a contagious disease amongst the mages. Up until she had disconnected herself, she had been in contact with a few of them over the network, and they seemed perfectly normal.

Only a gynoid could declare such a quarantine, and would have to confirm it with a subcommittee. But once placed, few if any would question it. It was extremely unlikely that a hacker would be able to fabricate emergency measures undetected, but if they somehow had, that would explain the quarantine.

But there was another, more perilous explanation: hypnosis. A few of the more powerful mages of Earth had devised spells to hypnotize gynoids. The spells altered the signals flowing to and from the gynoids’ electronic brains, without affecting the brains themselves. It was difficult for gynoids to know that they were under the spell’s influence. What they saw and heard would not match reality. If the dangerous mage had mastered this magic, it was possible she, and all the gynoids in the settlement, were already under this hypnosis.

“Change of plans.” Ginevra leaned close to Ashtin's ear and whispered so that Pavel couldn't overhear. She still wasn’t completely confident in Ashtin’s loyalty, but she no longer had the luxury of doubt. “You must infiltrate the guild and look for the perpetrator, but you must not allow yourself to become hypnotized. Don’t trust anyone except Dr. Shreburn. As a spellbreaker, she’s immune to hypnosis. Inform her of what happened here, and tell her to periodically check you for hypnosis. Even then, stab yourself every few minutes. The pain will keep your head clear. Got it? Now go, quickly.”

⁂

Basttias had never taken medication for anxiety, so he wasn’t sure what to expect. He had been told it would make him drowsy, and combined with his lack of sleep, he expected it might render him unconscious, so he made his way to the infirmary before taking it. After sitting on a bed, he placed the tube of anxiety pills on the nightstand, then he fished another tube of pills from his pocket and placed it next to the first. In addition to the anxiety medication, he had also procured pills which help to augment a mage’s willpower, to help them resist the call of their magic.

When he had requested the anxiety medication, the gynoid at the pharmacy had handed him the tube without question. He didn’t have a prescription, but she knew he had recently learned of the dangerous mage. When he had then asked for the other pills, she had hesitated. “These medications are dangerous if taken together,” the gynoid warned him.

“I’m aware,” Basttias had assured her. “I’ll be careful, but I need both.”

That had settled things. He couldn’t risk telling her that the dangerous mage had spoken to him in his mind. Maybe he was going mad, and that had been a hallucination, but he couldn’t take that risk. The gynoid had seen the desperation on his face and handed over the pills without saying anything further. He was, after all, a historian mage, and could be trusted.

Sweet dreams, Basttias, the dangerous mage bade Basttias as he lost consciousness.

⁂

Six hours later, Basttias awoke. He had slept, but fitfully. Still, the drugs appeared to have worked. He was groggy, but he remained relaxed, even as he became aware of the gynoid sitting next to his bed. She was dressed in a simple suit with no distinguishing markings. Basttias knew what this meant. She was here to deliver an order to terminate another mad mage.

“Who?” Basttias asked, skipping any pointless introductions.

The gynoid took a piece of paper from her suit pocket and handed it to Basttias. He unfolded it and silently read the name written on it.

Ashtin Blackford