Chapter 12 (Rough Revision)

The Mystery of the Rat's Nest is concluded.

The entirety of the ship's history began to unravel before my eyes. Snapshots taken from securi-drones and stationary cameras, flashing like an analog film reel from antiquity. Most of it I couldn't make sense of, but a sliver of understanding took hold somewhere in the part of my mind that thought with feelings instead of words.

Perhaps the most eerie thing is that some of it was familiar. Of the thousands of images that flashed by, I would occasionally see a non-human that looked like a younger Spence. But mostly, the images were static and unchanging, plucked from the ship's past, spent sleeping in a state of high security lockdown. And even still, images would sometimes flash by that were so alien to me, they were simply incomprehensible.

Then, Jade appeared next to me, holding my hand. The unravelling imagery washed away and the environment took shape as a low resolution virtuality; a moving image speckled through the filter of a snowy canvas. We were standing on an ovular mound, which distorted in such a way that the horizon appeared to be at most only ten feet away, refracted through a fisheye lense.

"What's going on here Erk?" Jade asked me, clenching my hand with force.

"There's so much I want to tell you Jade…" I put my hand on her shoulder, looking at her impossibly green eyes. The jade green eyes for which she was named. I thought back to Virgil's eyes, and Spence's eyes, which were identical.

"What's happening to the ship Erk?"

I paused to think, looking at the hazy yellow horizon that stretched off in ways that could not be reconciled with the physical properties of the real world. "It's going home." I laid out matter of factly.

"Home? Do you mean the ship's home?" her grip on my hand lessened. Emotion flooded into me, but with it, a clarity of the situation at hand.

"My home…" I released her hand, and let go of her shoulder, turning abruptly so that she was facing my back. "The Unita mountains."

"You have to stop it Erk!" Jade grabbed at my arm, but I pushed her off.

"I can't stop it, it's not up to me." I looked off into the horizon, and the distortion congealed into a brick pathway leading into a mountainous landscape. I traversed the path, waving Jade to follow behind, and without looking, I knew that she would. "The ship is in control."

"What?" Jade questioned from behind. "What about all the people above? The people in the Underlow, or Midtown?"

The wince of pain crept into my chest, because I knew that they would all die. "It just needed me to flip the switch," I continued as I traverses the brick path. "It's not my choice. I never have a choice." I turned back to look at her, and felt tears rolling down my cheek. "There are so many things I want to tell you, but only one thing I can bring myself to say."

"Tell me whatever you want to!" She ran up to me, motioning for a grab at my arms, and pulled me into a tight embrace.

She was still a little bit taller than me, but I still wanted to protect her. I wanted to give her everything, in that moment. Release everything I was holding onto -- about Chandra, and Hadley. Her father, and the fact that he had a real son. She had a real brother out there. And about me. About me and Virgil, and what the ship jogged out of my memory. But I realized I had to protect her from all that.

"I love you," I admitted, and felt her grip loosen from around me. "Ever since I knew what that meant… I knew it was you." Still holding me, she pulled back into a noticeable gap in our embrace.

"Erk.…" She let go of me. "I see you as a brother."

And with that, the mountainous landscape boiled away, replaced by a dark pit. Rage overtook me, and I pushed her away from me.

"I lost everything!" What I had pieced together between the dreams, her eyes, and the logic of the virtuality rushed into my forehead. The entirety of the virtuality stretched off into obscurity, taking Jade with it.

I was alone in a dark place, accompanied only by the orange glow of the orb.

"Get rid of it all," I commanded the glowing sphere.

The orb pulsated, and thought in my head in such a way that recalled memories of the stranger from my dreams, "Get rid of what?" The stranger asked, and the orb shifted into a mirror image of myself.

"I don't want to remember you, or the dreams anymore," I yelled furiously, eyelashes damp with tears.

"I will, but only under one condition." I waited, silently for the stranger's response. "Course correction. Send me to Cutshaw."

I nodded, and the stranger dematerialized, leaving the orange sphere in its place. The tears began to evaporate from around my eyes and down my cheeks. Memory of the chemical smell, went away. Memory of the black blood faded. And the defogged green eyes were once more shrouded by a thick haze.

The snowy resolution of the virtuality thickened, until it was totally obscured by undefined globules of pixelated smudge. Then within fragments of seconds, even those pixels disappeared as they were wiped away by smaller pixelated granules, leaving only blackness.

I opened my eyes, and I was back in the chamber. Many of my worldly concerns having been lifted as such that I couldn't even have said what was missing. The memory of the dreams was gone. All that remained was a fog obscured glimpse of those eyes.

Removing my hand from the orb, the orange glow flickered off. The orb was just a floating ball of transparent plastic, with a large crack splintering off into gashes along its surface.

"It was damaged…" I mumbled. I glanced out of the corner of my eyes, and saw that Jade was pulling herself off the ground, I offered a hand to lift her up, which she accepted. "What happened after you left?" I asked her.

"Ugh," she grunted. "The orb let out a shockwave and it threw me off my feet. That was a couple seconds ago." She looked at me and frowned with concern. "What about you?" Before I could answer, the rumble of the engines piqued, and the room violently shook in time with with crackling roar of the engines.

"S**t!" I exclaimed. "The ship is going to take off." I looked over at the orb, and placed my hand on it again. Instead of entering the virtuality again, the antigrav field it was floating in dispersed and the orb fell to the ground, splitting in half where the crack had been.

Scanning over the chamber at a glance, Hadley was rolled over into a ball, recovering from the pain of his arm being sliced off at the elbow. And Finnic with his last remaining friend were looking over Hadley with noticeable worry. I eyed up a hypodermic vial strapped to Finnic's belt.

"Use the 'cone!' I shouted over the bass rumble of the engine's revving. Finnic looked back at me, nodding before bending over to administer the drug.

Turning back to Jade, "That thing was the ship's AI core." I gestured down one of the newly opened doorways with a pointing finger. "We have to blow the engine, or this ship is going to rip through half of the city."

Jade nodded, wearily, and half looking away. "We need to talk. When this is over."

I nodded, and looked back at Hadley, who was getting up with the help of Finnic and the tricone. "Can you use a weapon?" I yelled across the room.

The man looked up at me with a sickly grey face. "I can use my Longarm pistol, but can't hold the plasma dagger left handed."

I nodded, and stowed the discarded plasma weapon on my belt. "We gotta go. The ship will take awhile to lift off because of the damage, but we have to hurry."

We ran down through the corridor at the far end of the chamber, and I recalled the security images from inside the AI's virtuality. It was foggy, but I had a general idea of where we needed to go. "I think the elevators are shot, but there's an access tube with a ladder that goes from the engineering deck to the engine." I looked around at the confused people, and pointed at Neo-Emlish text sprayed onto the corridor's wall. "That says Engineering in Neo-Emlish print."

Everyone traded confused looks with me.

"You learned a lot in there?" Hadley asked, tilting his head back toward the AI-Core chamber.

Then rapid beam fire forced us to jump around the corner of another corridor for cover. "Securi-drone…" I shrugged. Eyeing up Finnic and the other heavily armed thug, "Take it out. Before backup arrives." The two nodded and leapt back into the corridor, exchanging shots with the SAMS.

After a short breather, I peered around the corner to get a better look. The two thugs had the hovering securi-drone pinned up against a wall, and were causing it some seriously fatal damage.

"Let's move, quickly," I suggested back to Hadley and Jade.

Jade went first, and I helped Hadley around the corner. He turned back to me with a grimace, and I expected him to comment derogatorily. But instead, "When you touched the core…." He stumbled over his breath, "For the second that we were both touching… I saw a lot." Jade looked back at us curiously. "For what it's worth, I get it. And I'm sorry."

Jade chimed in, "That's reassuring…."

"I'm serious," he retorted. "It doesn't change that I'm a Unitan soldier, and the Kavalli are our enemies. But I'm sorry for that too. You're no different than humans."

"Maybe a little different," I spoke with a turn to Jade. "Humans keep reminding me that I'm not one of them."

"Erk," Jade rolled her eyes. "It's the drugs making him talk." She stormed off down the hallway.

Hadley coughed out a weak chortle, and we stared at each other with grins for a few moments. "Never thought I'd feel sorry for a heartbroken Kaval", he stood up straight and patted me on the back before pulling the Longarm out of its holster and following the others. It felt oddly, brotherly.

I trotted behind them, slashing the twitching security SAMS with the plasma dagger on the way by. Regathering my position at the front of the line, I struggled to recall directions at some intersections, but before long we came to the access tube. I looked down the tube with the ladder, but the sudden uproar of the engine shook me off balance, planting me on my butt.

"D****t!" I cursed. "We only have a couple of minutes, once it reaches a certain elevation the ship's gonna blast through the city. Probably destroy itself and all of us in the process." I looked at the grimacing humans. "Probably…."

Jade looked down the access tube, and then back up at the rest of us. "Erk and I will go down. You guys gotta get Hadley out of here. There's no way he can make it down in time with one arm."

They nodded in agreement, and I gestured down a nearby corridor, "There are escape pods down there. Go."

With that, the three men departed, and Jade looked up at me with caring eyes. "Think this will be the last Adventure of Jade and Erk?"

I shook my head and grinned. "Can't finish before we have that long talk, y'know?"

She laughed, and held back a welling up of tears in her eyes. "Well, let's get on with it." She climbed through the hatch, and began her descent down the cramped tube, and I followed in tow.

Dropping from the ladder, we each fell about seven feet from the tube onto a metallic platform. The engine compartment was huge, with multiple storey vents slanted along each side of the room, like the gills of a fish. At the far rear end of the room, an opening fully exposed the room to the outside, where plasma exhaust vented from the gargantuan plasma engines. Plasma and electricity sparked off of the engine's many long and perforated thermal exhaust pipes, zapping wildly at large venting portals beneath. But one coil not far off from us was particularly active. Plasma fired off in rapid succession bursts, looping off of the engine like a solar prominence snaking off of the surface of a star at a rate of a couple of times per second. The energy kept working its way back to one singular obstruction -- something wedged into the coil.

Jade gestured to the abnormality, and we nodded at each other before jogging toward it. Our boots clanged metallic thuds against the floor, but struggled just to be barely audible over the roar of the engine. We slowed to a halt, approaching the pipe. Though we were close to the coil's bulbous tip, the chaotic diffusion of plasma fired from the engine to the obstruction midway across the tube, jittering around like flashes of rapid fire lightning. The obstruction appeared to be a bladed weapon with a small orange sphere -- similar to the AI-core -- built into the hilt. Though, the weapon was only ten feet or so down the coil, the deadly plasma sheets made it impossible to approach.

"Now what?" Jade shrugged, and looked at me.

"I'll do it," I suggested, eyeing up the blade.

I took a step toward the exhaust pipe and she grabbed me by the hand, "You'll die."

"We'll all die if I don't. And I promised your dad…."

Frustration overcame her face, as her eyes narrowed and a pout formed over her lips. She opened her mouth, but the protests were cut off by an uptick in energy. We both turned on queue to look at the destructive tube, and were shocked to see that the plasma energy was no longer rooting itself to the lodged blade, but instead was branching off back the way we came from.

We were both taken aback by who we saw when we turned to look back. It was the black clad man from the tech den, holding above his head, a blade of similar make to the one wedged into the coil. The plasma curled around the edge of the blade, and he yelled out to us. "That weapon is imprinted to Kaval genetics!"

Despite the chaos around us, and the severity of the situation, I thought back amusedly to something Jade's father had taught me while I was being trained. Genetic imprinting, classic NeoTech, he said, as he gently sliced the air with his extremely rare Neo shimmerblade. I smiled, and tucked the memory back behind the scenes of the current state of affairs.

I climbed up onto the perforated pipe, grabbing the tip and hoisting myself up. Jade grabbed hold of my ankle as I began to straddle the pipe, preparing to walk across, "Careful."

I grinned mischievously, and propped my feet onto the pipe. I began the balancing act down the coil, which I figured to be less than half a foot wide. Crossing over the venting portal, I glanced down and momentary vertigo shot through my heart. My neck tensed, caught off guard by how far off the ground we were. The crater was far below, and we were beginning to pass over the skyline of the ruined old city. We couldn't have been that far from the plate holding up the Underlow. I regained my cool, looking forward at the blade -- I was halfway there.

The tightrope walk was like trudging through a storm. Five feet seemed to stretch out in space and drag on in time with each fractionally closer step, stretching and dragging on the closer I got to the blade. Five steps, ten steps, and then just out of reach. I grabbed for the hilt and wobbled with held breath while I regained the uneasy balance. Two more careful steps brought me closer to the weapon, and reaching out for another attempt to grab the hilt, my footing slipped. Feet scrambling in the air to find something to plant firmly against, I kept my eyes fixed on the hypnotizing orange sphere worked into the blade. Falling forward, my fingers wrapped around the hilt and my grip tightened, as gravity pulled me down, the sword gave into the steel pipe, sectioning it.

With the force of my weight dragging us down, the blade gave way from its resting place and I somersaulted through the air. Flipping face down with the old city far below, I twitched my tail instinctually and braced as it wrapped around the thermal exhaust pipe. My tail tightened, and pulled on my pelvis as I dangled. Stomach churning from visceral pressure, I blinked twice and swallowed down the pain. Then, a sudden aftershock in the sagging pipe jerked me half a foot lower. I looked up to see my tail still wrapped around the sliced tube.

The sword had cut nearly all the way through and the pipe was held together only by a small interior coil that sagged gradually under the combined drag of the damaged pipe, and myself.

"Erk!" Jade yelped. I looked up to see her reaching over the edge of the portal's gap. Much too far for me to grab hold of.

I winced at the sound of creaking steel, before the pipe snapped in half. I fell briefly again before being yanked by the tail, and slamming my chest against the now vertically aligned pipe. I looked up past my legs at the dangling pipe, hanging on by a thread of steel coil, and then back at the sword tightly gripped in my hand.

Let's see if this really is a shimmerblade.

I focused on the sphere in the hilt, imagining what I could do with the sword. A few moments passed, and the blade retracted, folding into itself. Good start. I continued to focus and the weapon continued to fold inward, until it was little more than an extension of the hilt. With the bulk of the weapon tucked away inside itself, I stowed the compacted weapon on my mag belt to free up my other hand.

With all limbs free, I managed to maneuver myself rightside up with relative ease. I could feel Jade's anxiety piercing me across the gap as the sound of creaking steel returned. Holding back fear, I began to climb the vertical pipe, using the perforations as foot and hand holds. The creaking turned to a groan, and the dangling pipe sagged momentarily just before the sound of something snapping. I sprang upward and released my hold on the pipe as it fell straight down, leaving the interior steel coil flailing in the wind. I grabbed hold of it, tugging it taut with my weight.

I was able to climb the coil back up to the rest of the pipe without incident, panting nervously as my hormone levels dipped and I was safe on the pipe again. I slid along the remaining section of pipe, closer to the engine, and lowered myself back down to the floor once I had passed the portal's ledge. Jade was already waiting for me as I fell to my knees with a pounding heart. She hugged me without saying a word, and I closed my eyes forgetting for a fleeting moment where we were.

When I opened my eyes again, I could see the black clad figure, with his blade still somehow harnessing the sheet of plasma. Maneuvering his blade in a semi circle, he swiped at thin air, and the plasma curtained behind him, exploding against the front end of the engine. There was an explosion, shooting off a massive fireball where the plasma had done its damage. Jade pushed herself off of me, and we both stood at attention, backing away from the volatile engine. The remaining exhaust pipes started to explode off of the engine, like rockets shooting through the hull of the ship, while the pipe I had just been familiarized with simply shot out a sudden burst of flame from the sectioned hole.

We ran over to the black clad man, and watched as black smoke billowed out of the engine's every orifice. The ship's lighting cut out, replaced instead by pulsing red emergency lights, accompanied by a baritone siren that cut through the sound of the exploding engine with second long wails.

The black clad man flourished the blade in his hands -- a near identical shimmerblade to the one I had acquired, save that it had instead of orange, a green orb instead. He held the blade's hilt in both hands, presenting it in a defensive dueling stance. I stood straight, accepted his challenge, and pulled the compressed blade from my belt, extending it with ease as I focused on the sphere.

Jade stepped back, "What do you think you're doing?"

The black clad man laughed through the filter of his mask. "Consider it double jeopardy. If he can defeat me, I'll pay you the credits and give you my blade. If he can't I take the blade, and keep the credits.

Jade grabbed my shoulder, and I looked through the corner of my eye. She was hard to read, but after a few seconds she patted me and released her hold. "I'll find us a way out of here," she smiled, and stepped away before running from the devastation of the engine room.

My attention fixed back to the black clad man, and we locked neutral positions as a burst of black smoke fired out and shrouded the space between us. I saw a flutter behind the obscuring cloud, and managed to bring the shimmerblade up for a horizontal block as the tall man erupted from the smoke. The weapons clanged in between two siren wails, and the man's cloak rippled around him almost indistinguishable from smoke.

Three more strikes, two high and one low sweep, countered with two blocks and a backward somersault. And then I lept in with a two handed lunge, which the warrior sidestepped with ease. The man used the momentum from his dodge to spin around and slash one handed at me, as if fencing. I narrowly ducked his counter attack, feeling the wind of his blade as it passed by my forehead, and trimmed a couple of wild strands off my bangs.

I released my left hand from the hilt, twisting into a fist directed at the man's torso and connecting with a barrier of padded leather, and followed through slashing at him with an underhand swing of the sword. He sidestepped again and countered with a palm heel to my cheek bone. The blow came hard. Unprepared, I toppled over.

Seizing advantage, the man leapt into the air with a downward plunge of his sword, but I rolled sideways and sprang to me feet. His sword stuck firmly in floor, I pounced for a return strike, but he flourished the blade again, carving through the metallic surface with ease.

My attack cut through the air, and I felt my footing give way as I stepped on the damaged section of floor that he had just sliced his way out of. I tripped, and took a knee to the face. A spurt of black blood painted the air from my nose as I stumbled backward. He used my momentary disorientation to follow through with another one handed lunging strike, but I managed to side step it. He was already prepared, locking my upper body up with his elbow, and throwing me to the ground.

I looked up at him as his sword plunged toward my face. Instinctually, I thought about contracting the shimmerblade, and tossed the weapon toward the man as it compressed. He flinched, stumbling back with surprise and took up a defensive stance, but the sword flew over him as it shrunk to little more than hilt. I rolled toward the man, somersaulting to my feet and following through with a handspring that fired me into the air. I plunged toward him and straightened out with a double legged drop kick that hit him straight in the chest.

He flew onto his back, and his fumbled weapon skidded out of reach. Landing on my feet, I grabbed at the air and found my falling shimmerblade's hilt instead, extending it with a twist and holding it to the neck of the black clad man sprawled on the ground. I wiped the blood from my nose with my free hand and stared with intensity at the masked man as the scene around us pulsed with red light.

His mask depressurized, releasing its grip from his face, and he shook it off. My jaw dropped, and I pulled the blade away, grabbing hold of his hand and helping him to his feet.

He coughed hoarsely, "I didn't say yield." The man held a tight grip on my hand and locked onto my eyes, with a jade green stare. He clenched his jaw with a serious underbite, but it gave way as a smile crept over his old lips.

Old Spence burst out laughing. "It's a joke, you beat me fair."

I exhaled, joining him with nervous laughter. When I saw the eyes, I thought for a moment that my suspicions were vindicated. He had Virgil's eyes, and as far as I could tell an identical shimmerblade. He fought with warrior prowess that I had only ever before seen wielded by Virgil.

Another explosion interrupted our reunion. We looked over to the engine erupting in smoke, and a huge wall of flame overtook a large section of its rear end. Then, another explosion, followed by the burning section blasting off through the rear opening.

"We don't have much time!" Spence yelled over the upticked destruction, and gestured to one of the multi-storeyed gill-like vents in the hull.

We ran to the vent, which was releasing a thick cloud of smoke into the open space outside, and peered over the edge.

"It's too far to jump!" I shouted, indicating below to the rooftops of the old city as ship raced past.

My vision scanned for any solution. I paused on a cloud of smoke, thinking I could make something out from behind the dense shroud. A bicopter appeared out of the black obscurity, and pulled in close enough that I could see the pilot behind cockpit's windshield. It was Jade.

"That's my little Jay!" Spence cheered.

I looked at him curiously, "She hates that nickname y'know."

"I didn't know," he recoiled.

The bicopter pulled up closer, tilting toward us as a side hatch lifted up mechanically from its hull. We looked at each other and shrugged.

"You first," I gestured.

He shook his head, and grabbed me by the belt, and around the scruff of my neck. Despite being multiple centuries old, the tall neo-human was still strong and tossed me with ease. I skidded across the floor of the bicopter, and came up hard against the opposite side of the craft's hull. I struggled to stand on the tilted surface, making my way to the hatch and holding onto a safety bar with one hand while reaching out with the other.

Spence threw his shimmerblade first. It twirled blade over hilt through the air, and into my hand, where I immediately retracted it and threw it behind me.

The old man braced to jump, knees bent, crouching and ready to spring. Then another explosion. Black smoke and flame overwhelmed him as they fired out of the exhaust vents. A second later, and fire fissured through the hull. The engine compartment crumbled, falling down to the city, and the copter pulled away from the carnage.

"No!" I yelled, as g-forces tugged me away from the opening. I slammed hard against the opposite wall, and the hatch slammed shut.

The doorway leading to the cockpit slid open and I stepped through.

"What an escape huh?" Jade looked back at me smiling. "So the man in black was grandpa?"

I shook my head, and her grin waned.

"Spence didn't jump."

Reviews

[Wathanya.5KY3]

Oh boy, twist after twist and excitement after excitement. Ah, teenagers and vital information can sometimes be a recipe for disaster. I'm kind of glad your story doesn't fall into the boy-likes-girl-and-girl-likes-boy-too cliche, but I'm kind of sad Jade -- thinking Erk wanted to talk about their relationship -- chose not to listen to Erk when he was about to tell her about her brother. And the stranger in Erk's head is still a mystery to us all. Also, Old Spence knew the ship like the back of his hand? Interesting.

I feel like this chapter has a good flow, though I was very confused about why Old Spence was there and how he got into the ship without Erk's help.

I thought this was gonna be the last chapter since you originally told me you'll have 10 chapters, but it seems you changed your mind midway (which happens quite often; there's absolutely nothing wrong with that). I had already read and responded to your comment on my review in chapter 9, and I can't wait to read the new chapter 10 and chapter 13. Especially now that I'm left hanging with the Academy's response to Erk's application (I actually forgot they were applying for something since it was only briefly mentioned in the early chapters).

Endings tend to be lengthier than we anticipate, and a 1000-word chapter is almost always not enough. I'm glad to hear there will be a book 2. You certainly have the skill. Have you thought of publishing (either traditionally or self-pub) this series after it's edited and polished?

[JT Godin]

I have definitely been actively thinking about and looking at publishing... most likely self, via Amazon, but I am going to try pitching the complete manuscript to a few publishers.

A few of the lingering questions will be answered in chapter 13, but there are some cliffhangers that won't be addressed till the next book. I've got some really big plans for some of the characters that appeared in this book, I just hope I can flesh out all of my ideas in the book I have planned (which ideally will be just a little bit longer than this one.)

I messed up early on calculating chapter length, and have been rolling with it. Given the way this story has been told — events happening mostly sequentially between two POVs — it's a little bit difficult for me to go back several chapters and upheaval the story. I did find an alternative for the complete work, however... Artwork has always been a planned aspect of this story, so I've decided that I'm going to sometimes put a page break where there's a turn in the chapter, and use the next page for chapter relevant artwork. The idea is that it'll be an easy place for people to stop reading other than the end of the chapters.

[Wathanya.5KY3]

There are not many publishers who would publish novellas, but I know at least a few would come up if you google "novella publisher." This period is the rise of novellas since many people are less likely to have time and emotional energy to commit to a full novel. And you always have self-publishing, but if you go down this road, prepare for decisions you never had to make before, like book and cover design or price.

Hmm... This chapter is already quite long in my opinion. Cliffhangers are fine in a series; just make sure it is clear to readers. Some people are very angry when they're stuck. Though, I think will have already been hinted that there will be a second book if Erk also got accepted. A few examples of great cliffhangers I remember are actually from games. The God of War game ended with a perfect post epilogue cut scene: Kratos dreams about Thor visiting their home, hinting that there will be another game including Kratos kicking Thor's butt. And then there's how Hitman (the first season) ended with Burnwood not rejecting a certain person's offer to "be partners."

I think putting artwork in your book is a great idea. Though you might want to try drawing digitally (like on your phone or drawing pad), as photographing pencil-and-color-pencils artwork doesn't do well digitally, speaking from experience.

[JT Godin]

The additions I was thinking about would be pretty small. 3 or 4 sentences at most.

As for the artwork, I was thinking of doing mixed media. For the coloured pencil drawings I've done, tonight I'm going to try scanning them and touching them up in GIMP, and see how it they end up looking. I've also considered doing water colour — I started a painting a few years back that took place in the same universe, and it was actually coming out pretty well. I've seen a few artists on deviant art who do futuristic city scapes in water colour and it's a pretty jarring effect. In my mind it really encapsulates what I imagine from the term 'tech noir' .

[Wathanya.5KY3]

Sounds like a great idea. Good luck with that! I'm sure it will be time and energy consuming, but also rewarding. :)