Metastasis, Part 13: Dungeon Diving
Part 1: Quarantine
Part 2: Odd Jobs
Part 3: Shuck
Part 4: The Old North
Part 5: Dirty Dave
Part 6: Multipliers
Part 7: Kilogold
Part 8: Analysis
Part 9: Reversal
Part 10: Miss Meta
Part 11: The Fourth Consortium
Part 12: Young Ghost
Synopsis(spoilers ahead if you want to read the story from the beginning)
Victor Meta is a time traveler who lived with his wife Janet and his young daughter Mira in a quaint timeline on the edge of obscurity. However, one day he was ambushed by soldiers of the Legion, and was forced to ally with a con artist named Shuck to save them from certain doom. By carefully manipulating time, he was barely successful, thanks to additional help surprisingly provided by his own daughter, now an adult time traveler.
But all of that pales in comparison to the revelation that Mira brings. They were not alone in being targeted. The time traveling family of Meta has been attacked throughout history. Ghost, another Gatekeeper who helped Dante Meta escape the coordinated assault, has joined the effort alongside that same Meta to find the masterminds behind the attack. And now, they all are working together to unravel the mystery of the Legion's ability to coordinate throughout time.
Ghost flipped through the journal. “So… here’s something.”
Everyone had been milling around without much direction. Even the shock of dead bodies being in the room had worn off, as they had no strange smells or signs of decay with their local time bubbles keeping them perfectly preserved. Victor looked up from his own journal that he had been unsuccessfully attempting to decipher. “What did you find? I thought none of the information you had was conclusive.”
“It’s not, but there is a common location listed. It’s listed as Misty Cove, but it has actual coordinates. We could go there.”
Victor jumped to his feet and ran over. Looking at the garbled mess of letters and numbers on the page that Ghost was looking at, he wondered aloud how Ghost could possibly guess that. “This code is unlike anything I’ve seen before… how are you able to figure it out?”
“It’s simple, really… by shifting each letter by the listed starting number, and then running through a replacement algorithm, you end up with a key. Then, you apply this to the following page, and…”
Ghost closed the journal. “Ah. I almost forgot, explaining their encryption scheme is both tedious and rather inconsequential. Let’s just say I’m a master codebreaker thanks to my infinity power, and leave it at that. But while this location is not the only one listed, it’s the only location listed between multiple journals. Even with all their encryption, they still don’t include any more information than necessary, so I can’t say what the significance of any one location is. But the fact it appears in multiple journals means it is our best lead.”
Ghost wrote down the coordinates and handed them to Victor. “Can you jump to that time and place?”
Victor frowned while reading it. “It’s… right here.”
Ghost raised an eyebrow. “Wait, what? Are you serious?”
“Yes… where we are currently standing, that is these coordinates. This location is right here, only in the distant past.”
Ghost looked at Dante Meta. “Alright, here’s what I recommend then… each Meta currently here jumps to slightly different points of time, taking along either me or Shuck for extra protection. We investigate the place, and then we all regroup at the same point in time within the premises.”
Dante nodded. “Not a bad idea… and I presume that we don’t want to loop in any additional Meta because of your concern about espionage and compromised individuals?”
“Precisely. Time travel makes coordination for rendezvous rather easy, as you all should know.”
Victor spoke up. “Now, wait a minute… surely I’m not the only one who sees that we have three Metas, but only two non-Metas. Should we depart in two groups, or three with one person being alone?”
Ghost shrugged. “Figure it out amongst yourselves. Dante is paying my bill, so I’m with him. See ya.”
Dante disappeared with Ghost as Victor turned to Mira. “What do you think, Mira?”
“Is that even a question? We should stick together, of course!”
Shuck shook his head. “Do you not see, Mira?”
Mira looked at Shuck with irritation. “What? What am I missing?”
“We can cover more ground if we split up.”
Victor considered it, but finally decided to agree with Mira. “No… I think Mira is right. It’s too much of a risk to get separated. Our rescue effort before wouldn’t have succeeded without Mira showing up. I don’t want to repeat that mistake.”
Shuck shrugged. “Well, fair enough… let’s just get going.”
The next moment, they were in the proper time period. The castle they stood in consisted of well cut stone, with opulent rugs and curtains of red lacking any additionally identifying features. Victor looked around, confused at the number of various creature comforts, including furniture and bookshelves well stocked with reading material. “I thought this was would be some kind of cave network? Misty Cove doesn’t exactly sound like the name you give to a castle.”
Shuck grabbed a torch from a wall sconce, already looking down a dim hallway. Though many windows let in some natural sunlight, the amount of fog restricted it, and the hallways themselves had a scarcity of torches. “Well, if I was going to write a code, I still wouldn’t name the secret headquarters Hidden Castle or Base That We Must Keep Hidden From Our Enemies at All Costs. That would be imbecilic.”
Mira laughed, spinning around to walk backwards as she poked fun at Victor. “Yeah, Vic! Get with the program! This is cloak and dagger stuff… you can’t expect everyone to spell everything out for you-”
There was a light click as Mira’s foot hit the ground, and Shuck immediately grabbed her to hold her in place. “Mira… don’t… move.”
The electro caster held the torch closer to the ground, and grimaced. “Well, shock of all shocks… the castle is booby trapped.”
Victor’s pace quickened at the statement. “Booby trapped?”
Shuck rolled his eyes, handing the torch to Mira to hold while electricity arced between his fingers. “Yes, also called the art of messing with your enemies while absent… but luckily, I’m something of a hobbyist when it comes to these things… just give me a second aaand… ”
Another click sounded, and Shuck desperately grabbed Mira and dove back into the room. The maneuver just barely outpaced the hallway walls slamming shut, which would have crushed anyone still standing in that deadly area. Mira breathed heavily, face pale from the near death experience. “By the rift…”
Shuck was also breathing heavily, and rolled over onto the floor next to Mira from his position practically on top of her. “Good… thinking, Mira. That last second gravity pull gave us the extra speed we needed.”
Victor pulled both casters to their feet, using his own gravity casting. “That wasn’t Mira… that was me. For two people so very sure of yourselves, you aren’t very cautious…”
Mira sputtered. “Well, what are we SUPPOSED to do? We need to figure out this mystery, and the only way we can do so is by exploring!”
Victor laughed. “Well, maybe if you learned to read between the lines… we could learn everything we need without being pulverized into paper…”
Mira and Shuck stared at him blankly. He sighed. “Books. There are books in here. They might have more useful information in them.”
Mira didn’t see the point. “But… they will be heavily encoded, right? I was hoping for some actual adventure, not more sitting around looking at books I don’t understand…”
Shuck grabbed a book and flipped through it. “Well, we will still need to be careful… no telling if the books are also booby trapped. But he’s right. Inside a secured location, there will be less cryptic information. After all, the people making it still need to use it, and any level of encryption makes it harder to use. Look, this is written in plain text!”
Everyone crowded around the book as Shuck read. “Hmm… interesting. Appears to be an asynchronous communication ledger for coordinating activities. People write what they need, and other people give them the necessary information to complete it. Locations of resources, code words, agents to…”
Shuck looked at both Metas. “Well, don’t just stand there! Grab your own book, and get reading!”
Several hours later, Victor had copied the contents of several books, but felt like they were missing something. “All of this might be useful later on… but it could be a red herring.”
Mira groaned. “Are you kidding me?! We don’t even know if this information is real?”
Shuck flipped through another book. “Is that really possible? There is a lot of specifics here. It would be difficult to fabricate this much information… here let me cross examine-”
Shuck tripped, slamming headfirst into the shelf and burying himself with books as the entire thing fell over. Victor and Mira pulled the piles of books off of him as well as the now destroyed bookshelf to the side. Mira was considerably more concerned than Victor. “Shuck! Are you okay? That looked like a nasty fall.”
Shuck stood up, rubbing his head. “I’ve taken worse knocks, so… whoa.”
When they saw it, the Meta were speechless too. Behind the bookshelf this whole time had been a massive vault, coated in black with a golden wheel. Shuck immediately started inspecting it, tapping on the metal face cautiously. “Now, this is interesting… this material appears to be some form of energite. Definitely not something normal for the time period.”
Victor crossed his arms. Though he knew Shuck was right, he did not know how Shuck would know such a thing. “Let me guess… just another hunch? Another good guess about something that you really shouldn’t know about?”
“For the love of… relax, Victor. Gatekeepers are often knowledgeable about energite, especially the higher class ones. It’s hard not to be, when it’s so ubiquitous in the highest quality of weaponry.”
“I thought you said you were only class four?”
Shuck turned around, annoyed. “Are you being for real right now? We just discovered a vault with god knows what inside of it, and you are choosing now to grill me?”
Victor crossed his arms. “Perhaps I would be more trusting if I didn’t constantly have this nagging feeling that you are hiding some very crucial details. For example, if that summoning card you have isn’t Isgor, than who is it? Surely, if it wasn’t him, then you would have no qualms about telling me? For that matter, why didn’t you use that card instead when we were leading that rescue?”
Shuck clearly did not like that final question, and turned his attention back to the vault. “I don’t answer to you! You are lucky I’m still tagging along, as I don’t even have guaranteed payment from you!”
Mira was now joining her father Victor in his skepticism. “Wait… that’s a good point. You had a summoning card this whole time, and you didn’t use it when my mother was about to carried off to gods know-”
Shuck was busy arcing electricity as he manipulated tumblers. “Everyone, shut up! This is delicate work, if I’m not careful I’ll lock down the whole thing…”
Victor grew more angry. “Stop dodging. That thing is an unknown artifact, likely using the very finest in lock technology. You nearly died while saving Mira here from a simple pressure plate trap, you can’t lie and say that this vault can be opened so-”
Shuck finished with the combination lock, and spun the center wheel as the door began to open. “What was that Victor? I couldn’t hear you over the sound of ME PROVING YOU FOLDIN’ WRONG.”
Thanks for reading! If you are enjoying the story, you might also enjoy some of my other published work on Amazon! It’s set in the same fictional universe, but follows different characters.
Gatekeepers, Book One: Unquestionable Truth
Gatekeepers, Book Two: Order of Gravitas
Same post on Minds