The Silent Room: Part 28

Tricket

The shadows drifting around the stone walls of Watcher Hall thickened, further blurring the line between the virtual projections of the Watcher Collective and the reality that contained its heart. The arches soaring somewhere overhead were completely obscured now. At the Watcher Table a soft hiss drew attention to the slow wisps of dark mist drawing in on itself as the Watchers began to solidify back into their corporal forms.

Tricket pulled back into the darkness around the edges, hunching his shoulders and bowing his head. Becoming again the forgotten one, the not to be concerned with one. He did not look down at his own battered form slumped in a wheelchair and stuck full with sensors and manipulators. Anger and grief would not aid him in his battle. Only cunning. And invisibility.

They should perhaps have been more wary of him. He’d been with them a long time. Once upon a time, they had known he was capable of far more than being their humble power source and vassal to be commanded without complaint. Here in their sanctum, he had found the safest place to hide from them.

He smoothed his hands down his mentally projected butler suit, their preferred costume for him, muted the crisp of his white collar, blended the the black edges of his coat tails. Blurred his presence just that small bit.

With a final rush the Watchers solidified. In an instant the anger in the room was a palpable, ripping thing. Their great jaws ground together; foam dripped from their chins. The Collective Unison was completely broken by their hatred for a full moment before they snapped back into oneness.

“Find him,” spoke One. His voice jagged and forced. “Find him now.”

“Find him,” echoed several of the others.

Out in the corridors, Tricket felt the guards snapping to attention and moving out in formation under the force of their release command. The first set of locks slid home.
Already guards neared the Silent Room and its emptiness.

With a laser focus he tracked the path of the secret pass he had been trying to block from his mind, held the lock spring on a single important door.