#second serpent

Before they met, Martin Hightower led the Public Relations department of Schmidt & Foster orchestrating cover-ups and quelling any public dissent through half-measures and political strong arming.

Eckehart had all but officially emancipated himself from his father, who was the CEO of Schmidt & Foster at the time. Schmidt & Foster is kept exclusively in the family (mostly because it is run by a few shadowy peoples who have investment in them for spooky reasons, but that is neither here nor there for your ask), so when Elias (Eckehart's father) died mysteriously, Eckehart was ushered in to take over the organization for him. Eckehart would have much rather lived an obscure life under a different name, making a career out of city planning to fight Schmidt & Foster from the bottom, but he ended up in the exact position he'd always hoped he could avoid.

Franklin Belks, who was Elias's long-time COO/friend, was understandably worried that idealist Eckehart would try to shake things up, bring Schmidt & Foster to heel give power back to the people. He was fully set and ready to either have Eckehart assassinated or otherwise make him unfit for the job. However, Martin, his right hand man and trusted employee, offered to take up the task of keeping an eye on Eckehart.

Eckehart is understandably wary of Martin from the very beginning, knowing that he is Belks' inside man because he isn't stupid. Martin, however, is surprisingly frank with Eckehart, and throws him a curveball: Yes, I'm here on behalf of Belks. Yes, I'm here to spy on you. But I'm not going to. Not really. I'm here to work for YOU.

Why? Well, in the first book, you're not really supposed to know why. Although readers will eventually find out.

Over the next couple of years, Martin earns Eckehart's trust. He seems to hold a kind of admiration for Eckehart and his ideals, and reminds Eckehart often of what a great leader he could be if he gave himself an ounce of credit. Eckehart starts to see a softer side of Martin-- a person who is seen as a cold slab of concrete by most-- and eventually comes to confide in him. The two come up with a plan: a plan to dismantle Schmidt & Foster in one fell swoop, right out from under Belks, and give power to the Allied Districts Council. When the story beginnings, they're three months out from the political transition deadline and are about to put their plan into action.

In the darkness, a familiar, metallic scent stung at her senses. Blood. Old.

A tunnel walled from top to bottom in tile stood before them. Clinical white surfaces now held the grey pallor of dust, the mark of years resting over long-dried streaks of blood and decay. Bodies, now skeletons, were scattered along the corridor. Clothes clung to the bones—the sterile suits of doctors, the flimsy dressing gowns of the sick. Some wore protective vests, Schmidt & Foster issue, heavy and falling off of what remained of them. No cannon residue, no marks from knives or other melee weaponry, no holes where fabric or armor may have been punctured. The ones who carried guns had not drawn them.

Seung stepped lightly over the ground, moving to catch up to Rhen and Antoni. The two were not surprised, moving through the corridor.

“What happened here?” Seung asked. She noted the patterns of crimson, high arcs of arterial spray, flecks against the ceiling.

Rhen avoided Seung’s eyes. Antoni looked back at her with an odd smile. “Project Bloom happened,” he said. He pushed a gurney out of their path. The skeleton splayed on top of it hit the wall and rattled. Seung had never found the need to respect the dead—no dead man but her father, anyway—and didn’t start now. But she noted Antoni’s brazen countenance, coupled with Rhen’s quiet, and filed it away.

The tunnel was long—at least a mile, by Seung’s estimate. It sloped downward, crawling deeper into the earth. A pressure that was not just altitude began to build, a disquiet that felt both familiar and new, growing with each step. Seung slowed to a stop. Rhen and Antoni turned to look at her, halting their progress. Rhen’s ever-present smile was gone, replaced with cold resignation.

What she wouldn’t give, at times, to have Ehren’s insight.

“You haven’t brought me here for the view,” Seung said, gesturing to the bodies at their feet. Their numbers increased the farther down they went. Whatever had ended these people, it had taken advantage of the natural bottleneck. No way out but up.

[...]

“What is this place?” Seung asked.

“A very old Schmidt & Foster facility,” Rhen replied. “We think it predates the Spacebelt Catastrophe. It was abandoned. Project Bloom repurposed it and the resources left behind.”

“Project Bloom?”

Antoni stepped forward to cut them off. Rhen raised her hand, halting him. She did not look away from Seung. “An experimental trial in cast oil exposure, funded and sourced by the Liberation. Anecdotal evidence supported the hypothesis that cast oil exposure in certain quantities to certain people caused valuable mutations—the next step in evolutionary development.”

They weren’t her words—too practiced and concise. How many times had she rehearsed this explanation? How many times had she rattled off the words in broken mirrors, or heard them spoken in her presence?

Seung nodded further down the hall, where the door to a freight elevator loomed ominously. “Why was it blocked off?”

“A leak of cast oil aerosolized,” Rhen said. “The facility residents were already exposed, but they closed off the area to minimize the damage to the rest of New London.”

“How long?”

“Four years ago.”

Seung looked down at one of the skeletons by their feet, draped a patient’s gown covered in blood but long since dried. Empty eye sockets. She remembered H, the eruption of blood as his eyeballs had burst—the fat, pulsing worms that had pushed them out.

“These people didn’t just die of exposure.”

“Not just,” Rhen agreed. She took another step forward, careful. Seung stood her ground. “The airborne cast oil initiated a space-time anomaly. A crack into the void opened.” Rhen hesitated, considering her next words carefully. “Something came through.”

“Something,” Seung huffed.

COMING SOON