Mr. Ruins: A Thriller (Ruins Sonata Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

hutch, and I drive my way into it, between concrete heaps of bulky roaming suits, tumbled from their racks by the trim-jettisons. Beyond them, the hutch is a small space with a bolted-down desk and chair, surrounded by walls of lockers, each with its own keyplate and number. I stand in the middle holding to the edge of the desk while I look around at them. There must be two hundred, some even embedded into the ceiling.
    Mission orders. I rack my mind for some hint of which one is for me, is for this mission, but they all feel familiar. I have the sense that behind every one is a memory of something I've done or have to do, something some person like me once did and will yet do, but I don't know which one is the right one for now.
    "Ray's here," Doe shouts down the straggle channel over the Core's deep stone grind. The grinding has gotten into me like an endless scream, like a threnody for seven lost marines making up a chord. Something about this is familiar, unique, but I can't be certain.
    "Ablative layer two is peeling," she shouts. "It's gonna be close."
    The ride gets rockier as we start to hit dregs of cooling rock, and I sit down in the chair and look around at the walls, racking my mind. A mission to the core, but for what?
    I look down at the yellow maze on my chest. The black smoke oil has mostly smeared off, and I can make out the lines of it clearly. It looks like a schematic for a world, now that I think about it, with lines of magnetic and gravometric flow. Either that or the topology of a brain.
    There's something hidden underneath, a lump hanging around my neck on a leather cord. I fish it out and find a key dangling before me like a hook, the number inscribed plainly on its side.
    47.
    I scan the room for the locker it matches, find it wedged down in the corner. On my knees before it, the key goes in, the door opens, and out slides a long slim metal box, heavy. I set it on the table and unlatch the top clasp, open the lid.
    There's a thick mission dossier inside, pierced by an open metal loop in the top left corner binding the pages together, with the usual faint red ink on every page that will dissipate when exposed. As I watch, the title on the front slowly fades.
    RITRY GOLIGH – PROTO-CALICO
    I shove the dossier down into my uniform then evacuate the captain's hutch.
    The crew are gathered by the conning tower donning lava suits. Ray and Doe are kitting on their QC parabolics, Doe with her huge shoulder-mounted bondless accelerator, Ray strapping in the side-hammock for Far to ride in. They shove a knife in each boot, fasten elasteel coil spools to their belts, grab their packs full of candle-bomb, fuse, gamma-clamps, hauliers.
    La and So are holding hands, like La and Ti usually do, but Ti is down with the screw. La and Ti are twins, each as pretty as the other. Her blonde hair is in a tight bun, while So looks out of place, like a shadow. Both of their suits are covered in pockets and patches containing every possible tool we could need in the Solid Core, ready to work.
    These are all professionals. These are my crew, tones hand-picked for a chord, and already I've sent one of them to her death. These remaining are sweating, shaken, grime-stained down to their boots, and they're looking to me for guidance. I am the captain, after all. Ray gives me a tired wink. He doesn't even have a cigar stub between his silver loop-pierced teeth, that's how bad it is. 
    The sub lurches again, and La bleats out the report. "That'll be the second layer gone. We've minutes only."
    "Where's Far?" I ask, looking around. "Where's Ti?"
    Ray produces Far from behind him. The boy is terrified, and the welts in his neck are rising up again. "Give him some candy, Ray," I say, then turn to Doe.
    "Where's Ti?"
    She says nothing, looks away. 
    The sub jolts, and we all fall down. Steam pours into the conning tower top, the overwhelming smell of sea salt and sweets baking in kilns. What? Doe is at my side, whispering in my