Lazarus Rising

1.9 The Lazarus Collective

The doors slowly swung open, pushed by an unseen mechanism and a rush of warm air laden with heavy scents called her to walk through into the narrow antechamber within. Cheyenne caught her breath as the heady expanse of the room beyond was revealed to her. She stepped into the room and monetarily stood alone in its eerie vastness as the tall metal doors inlaid with the intricate logo of the Lazarus Collective swung silently to behind her.

The immense chamber she had entered was in semi darkness, looking up she could see the source of light above her stretching up into the dimly lit vaulted ceiling. Far above the light of thousand candles, a myriad of tiny flecks of starlight in the night sky lit up the room in the gentle glow of a million, distant, cosmic suns.

An infinite floor of rolling white stretched out before her. The smooth surface flashed and danced with brilliant pulses of blue light, pouring up through the bodies of a mass of drifting, giant white hued jellyfish. Bodies pulsing with a strange ethereal brightness they glided toward her, slid soundlessly under her feet and disappeared into the wall behind her. Occasional a shadowy shape loomed beneath them, like a shadow of a ghost shark, looming up, then disappearing into the depths of the deep cobalt sea. Intoxicated by the effect of movement and heady scents around her she felt as if she were suspended over a limitless ocean being swept along in a warm, intoxicating subtropical breeze.

Far from her, in the middle of the room by a twisted gothic fireplace straddled by a crouching stone giant, sat two sofa's and a semi-circular desk large enough to land her aero on. Behind it sat a man working, head bent down low, seemingly oblivious to her arrival.

Beyond the solitary table, at the far end of the cavernous hall a colossal stained glass window reared up to the ceiling cradling the towering image of a man, noble head thrust up, gazing back across the open space at her. Through this breath-taking figure, long shafts of coloured light shone creating twisting columns of glowing dust in the air, to wash gently over the monolithic granite block walls. Rippling waves of tinted rays created fluid patterns of liquid sunlight that chased each other over the glistening black surface of the stone, fusing and merging into each other in a spectacular display of living light.

She realised she was standing under a statue, the two huge round columns either side of her splaying out into two substantial feet, the protruding toes of each coming up to her shoulder. She looked up between its legs.

The small figure at the table suddenly aware of her presence pushed back his chair, stood and self-consciously straightened his jacket then walked toward her.

"The designer of this room would not have been pleased to see you do that Investigator, looking up between the Risers legs is somewhat incongruous I believe." His sonorous tones echoed across the space between them. "His intention was to draw your eye into the dazzling vista before you, to see the human captured in the stained glassed window at the other end of the room, to look in awe at his vision of the oceans below us and the statue of the liberating figure of the Riser above you. Like the candelabra above you, his intention was to ingeniously suspend your belief. I believe something appearing a religious experience was what he intended."

He had arrived, having crossed the floor while he spoke. Standing by her side he span around to take in the same visa as her, as if it were the first time he'd seen it. "Mind you tastes come and go. It's a little bit ostentatious for my liking. But it beats a corner office with a view over the Riser steel works, doesn't it? I don't think I could work with the clanging of the hammers and vacant roar of the blast furnaces ringing in my ears." He held his hand out to her. "Dr Ventner Hanzrd." He smiled, pulling up his top lip slightly to reveal a set of perfectly enamelled teeth. "Do you remember me- Ventner?"

She shook her head, she didn't. Her host was full faced, thick chested and stubby legged. His normal pale countenance and imperfect skin had been buffed to a flawless wholesome tan by machine and the sort of income that was associated with being the head of a Collective. Up close she could see his hair was unnaturally black and fingers long and thin. A surgeons fingers she thought, elegant and well crafted. As he spoke she could hear an attempt to shrug off an affected accent that sung of Old Worlder education. He was also a Lylac.