One of the other Purple Faction leaders burst into his command center. “Were you aware that Manticorps just took out the Graviton station? Now how are we going to find what we’re looking for, without the ability to scan from orbit? There’s no way we can locate it! I thought your son was supposed to protect it! Isn’t that why you lobbied to have him placed there? Shouldn’t you have been maintaining some kind of protective barrier by using your powers?” the corpulent man bellowed, not waiting for answers.
Tempest’s emotionless mask slid into place and he calmly turned from his display and looked at the batrachian intruder. “Welcome, Rampage, please make yourself at home.” He folded his arms, repressing the anger he felt from the intrusion. “I just received the report as well. We are still gathering data about the attack. All we know is that the station crashed sixteen days ago. Escape pods were jettisoned from the structure, so we suspect there are some survivors. Supers are en route to the crash location to see if they can find anything, but the search radius is vast. This situation is well in hand. It is only a matter of time.”
“We don’t have time!” Rampage yelled, the usually innocuous gills along his neck flaring as he shouted. “If Manticorps finds it before us, they could make a play and remove all the Factions from power. Is that what you want?” Spittle flew from the red-faced man’s lips as he continued his tirade, disgusting Tempest beneath his mask of composure. “We can’t fight a battle on two fronts! We still have no idea who is attacking the Factions. You need to produce some results!” Rampage finished, his enormous chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath, jowls waggling as he shook his head in disdain.
“When we know more, you will know more. Now, I’m sure the academy needs you more than I need distractions at this time. If you want results, leave me to do my work.” Tempest turned, tacitly indicating that the conversation was over.
Rampage was technically subordinate to him, and he knew that dismissing him as if he were unimportant was probably the most upsetting thing he could do to the irascible super. Tempest let a smile creep onto his face as Rampage retreated, muttering frustrated epithets and insults he thought were too quiet to be heard.
Tempest reviewed the results of the search, which were discouraging, to say the least. The station’s altitude magnified the search area for possible debris. Also, they only had an approximate trajectory for the escape pods, and time would have added to the scattering and dispersal effect, since they were over the Pacific Rim when the attack occurred. Most of the data was extrapolated from other satellites as all the sensors on the station were destroyed and they had not recovered any of the black-box analogues.
Purple Faction included supers with all variations of powers, but they recruited hard to specialize on forming a core of supers skilled with all types of elemental forces and effects. They were relatively weak in the Psi, or mental manipulation, department, so could not mentally scan for survivors as well as the Orange Faction could have. Neither did they use augments and technology to the extent of the Green Faction. If they did, they probably could have scanned and extrapolated the most likely search sites, saving a lot of time. Maybe he could get that computer prodigy on the task. What was her name again? Something Asian. He made a note to check.
Fortunately, Purple Faction was the only one aware of what Manticorps was looking for, and they would not let this information leak to the other Factions. The fact that Graviton was attacked must mean that their mole in that organization had been discovered, tortured, and divulged the location of the station. They had been especially active lately, after decades of inactivity, which was disturbing in light of new events.
It was Tempest’s decision to maintain these infiltrators in as many organizations as possible, but it was more difficult with certain groups. Orange routinely utilized their telepaths to screen those on more sensitive missions and quickly found those who were trying to be duplicitous. Still, it had paid big dividends in the past and allowed Purple to stay strong among the three ruling Factions.
Having lost their mole, Tempest sent orders that Manticorps be monitored more than usual for the foreseeable future. While the attack could be simply retaliatory, he suspected Manticorps—rather than another Faction—was involved. They wouldn’t have made such a bold move unless Graviton was getting close to finding something. If they mobilized any forces, it may be just as simple as following them. Tempest finalized more surveillance requests and went back to his monitors.
Aurora listened to the voice in her head, still unconvinced that she wasn’t losing her mind. “I can see that I am not getting anywhere. Let’s go back to the beginning. Do you remember how you first got your powers? Way before you met Auntie or Purple Faction.” Aurora nodded, and the voice continued. “You were very young, so you probably missed a lot. Go back…”
Aurora’s vision flared to life in the dark prison, seeing images and memories fly by, recalling days at the academy, time with Auntie, life on the streets, and back to when she was still with her mother. Aurora had walled off these painful thoughts as much as she could. Always hungry. Alone most of the time. And when her mother did come home, she was often so strung out on Silk or some other drug that she was drooling and unresponsive.
She saw that day and mentally started to cringe away. Even closing her eyes tightly shut, she could still see the memory as if watching it on a screen.
Her mother staggered in, looking bedraggled and carrying some bags. After she crashed on the couch, Aurora—or was she Cass?—ran to the bags, smelling food.
There were two containers from some fancy restaurant and she tore into them, eating the contents without thought of reheating or getting utensils.
Afterward, her stomach hurt. Whether from the sudden introduction of food or the speed with which it was consumed was up for debate. All Cass could do was curl up on the ground by the couch, rubbing her cramping belly.
She must have fallen asleep because she awoke later when it had become much darker. Cass tried the lights, half knowing that there would be no power. Her mother was horrible with responsibilities. Cass lit a candle she kept for special occasions. It was one of the ‘gifts’ her mother brought home in the bags. She didn’t know who gave them to her mother, or if she had bought them for herself. Cass wished she would just buy food, but sometimes there were useful items in the bags. More often than not it was just clothes, none of which would fit her lanky seven-year-old body.
This night was especially cold, probably because of the rain, which fell incessantly. It drummed against one of the windows, the only noise in the dark. There had been a couple times recently where it got so intense that it was noisy, and Cass, who usually loved the sound of the rain, felt unsettled. She grabbed a threadbare blanket, wrapped it around herself, and laid on the couch to cuddle close to her comatose mother, trying to share some of her warmth.
Yet there was no warmth… and her mother was always warm to the point of being hot. Cass could count on putting her perpetually cold feet by her mother or cuddling up to her when Cass had a chill or needed reassurance and warmth. This time her mother’s skin was cold and clammy to the touch.
With a start, Cass scrambled off the couch as she stood evaluating her mother from afar. Was she sick? Or worse? Cass’ stomach began to cramp up again as realization began dawning upon her. Her mother was dead. She had to be. Or was she just sick? She had never seen a dead person before.
Cass approached and poked her mother’s cheek timidly and jumped away. There was no response, but that was nothing new. She tried next to lift an eyelid to see if her mother would stir. The bloodshot eye underneath stared forward, unfocused on anything.
Cass retreated, wiping her fingers on her pants vigorously, as if she could clean the touch of death off of them. Panic started to join the discomfort in her stomach.
“What now, what now?” she kept repeating, worried about her future. While her mother wasn’t the best provider, Cass at least had enough to survive. Now that was all gone. Maybe
she could sell some of her mother’s things? But to who? If she did find someone to buy valuables, how would she know they wouldn’t just cheat her?
Her mind raced and it was all too much. As she worried her fingers and slowly backed away from her mother, she eventually ended up in the corner, muttering to herself. The rest of the sleepless night was spent trying to figure out how life was going to go now that her world had changed.
“Do you remember?” the quiet voice asked.
“Please stop,” Aurora sobbed, surprised that she was crying from seeing the memory.
“Not yet.”
The memory continued.
When the next day began, Cass was tired, emotionally and physically. She had been staring at her mother’s corpse as if it would reanimate and come to get her. She thought she saw a glint of something. Was it an earring? She could definitely sell that. It flickered again as the early morning rays streamed in, illuminating her mother on the couch with their light.
Cass tentatively crawled over and looked more closely. There was something there, but it wasn’t exactly an earring. She reached out and touched it to see if she could remove the shiny silver bead, and it latched onto her fingertip. Shaking it madly, she saw her flailing caused the silver strand to stream out of her mother’s ear like a long string. She waved her hand around, trying to flick it off.
Instead, the shimmering strand flowed down her hand. She attempted to pull it off with her other hand, succeeding only in transferring the mercury-like material to both of her hands. She stared at her hands as the colors played along the surface of the iridescent reflective material.
She felt pinpricks and pressure as the material began to absorb into her skin. No, that wasn’t totally accurate. It burrowed into her skin. She could feel it crawling through her veins, cold and intrusive. Shortly after, there was a bright flash and stab of pain as the material made it to her neck, and she fell to the floor.
Her small hands felt like they were dipped in scalding water. Nothing she did would relieve the sting and it took a long time to feel normal again. She experienced intense vertigo and had to lie there, afraid to vomit up the small amount of food that she had recently been able to eat. Occasionally she would get brave and try to sit up, but the headache and vertigo would return. So she would get as comfortable as she could in the blanket and try to fall asleep.
“That was you? Why did you do that to me?” Aurora asked, viewing her young self crumpled into a ball in the memory.
“I’m… sorry. Your mother was not the best of hosts. It affected us and restricted how we could interact. We were almost feral, trying to escape, but our nature would not allow us to until your mother passed. Her self-destructive nature was deeply painful to us and all that we are. We regret how we came to you, and how excruciating the process was. We were… not gentle.”
She hadn’t thought about that day in years. It was a concentrated ball of horrible memories that she had pushed so far down that she never had to deal with them. Much different than the new persona she had fashioned in Aurora.
“You pushed me away when you went to the academy, and you forgot a lot of things I tried to teach you. You need to remember and learn this again, or I fear you will die here,” the tiny voice said.
Aurora was conflicted. She knew she needed to escape, but all of her training told her that the voices were dangerous, a possible fracturing of her psyche that had to be overcome. That she needed help was undeniable, and she was fast approaching the point of being able to try anything.
“Okay, tell me what I need to know,” she said, resigning herself to listen to the voice.
Chapter Eight
Around the Bend
Gus headed back up to the manor, deciding to go barefoot for a while. He took his time and didn’t use Dash. The cold ocean water felt good as it washed the sand from his bare feet. He tried to plan what to do next as he walked.
He would have to find some type of defenses for the island in lieu of the bio-stasis field. But what? Even if the island had some kind of ballistic missiles, some supers could withstand and tank almost any of that type of attack. Then there were the FP costs. He doubted they would be cheap.
A plan began to form, but it would require a lot of things to fall in just the right places at the right times. Given the situation, though, it was the best he had, so no sense in overthinking it. It would all depend on the capabilities of the manor. He could refine plans based on what he found there. Eventually, he made it back and felt a little more encouraged now that he had a direction. Indecision was always one of his biggest enemies, with the motivation to start a close second.
Gus ate lunch and headed up to the control room. For the next few hours, he became immersed in the defense tab. Reading descriptions of facilities and different options to unlock, scribbling notes on FP costs, and what future capabilities would become available as he unlocked higher tiers and functionality of those facilities. The longer he stayed there, the more he realized he should have done this from the very beginning.
His previous unlocks had been a little random, and he had been fortunate to choose facilities that managed to help him. He could just as easily have unlocked something useless until he was a much higher level. Most offensive items were in the tens of thousands of FP, and wouldn’t be viable for him, so he would have to get crafty with the few options available.
Every so often he would hear a high-pitched beep as he worked. It was enough to grab his attention, but so intermittent that he couldn’t tell where it was, like a smoke detector with a low battery. It began to be so irritating that Gus stopped working and tried to localize the sound. It wasn’t until he used his augmented hearing and found that he could localize a direction when the beep sounded again. After three more beeps he found an old console in the corner covered in dust.
On the screen he saw the message:
(1) message pending.
“Nick, what do you know about this?”
“Due to the bio-stasis shield, this communication network was never configured and connected to the system, so I did not receive any notice. Wanna have me do that now?”
“Yes, obviously. This looks pretty old,” Gus said, swiping a finger across the monochrome screen, then rubbing the dust off his fingertip. “How far is the range on this thing? Can I communicate with the mainland?” he asked.
“Okay, comms are linked. You’re in luck. It can relay to the mainland. You want to call home?”
“Yeah, no. Not yet. I… um, let me level up some more. I’m not quite ready for everything that calling my father would entail.”
“You can’t avoid him forever.”
“I know. I just don’t think I’m ready yet. I want to be able to stand on my own a bit before we cross paths again. He’s got a very dominating personality. I don’t want to give that up just yet.” Gus exhaled. “Sorry for being so defensive, but I need to do this myself. For a little bit, at least.”
“Understood. What about your bros? I know you miss them.”
“Yeah, that’d be good. What’s that message though?”
“Right. Well, time-stamp is from six days ago, looks like a couple days after the bio-stasis field went down. Here it is: ‘Thank you, whoever you are. We have been looking for the manor for so long. Now that we know where you are, we will be seeing you soon to reclaim what is ours!’”
Gus’ blood ran cold and his heart felt like it was being squeezed.
“You said six days, right? They could be almost here! Do you think they’re supers? Of course they’re supers if they know about the manor, who am I kidding?” Gus shouted in panic. “No, no, no. I’m not ready for this! Oh damn, Nick, couldn’t you have told me about this before?” Gus pinched his eyes shut and rubbed his temples. “And that upgrade, that’s not going to help me at all, is it?”
“Sorry, slugger. It should only work for people without Nth, as I described—”
“Hells to the bells!” Gus blurted. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you ta
lk me into that!”
“Hey now, don’t pin this on me. You were stewing in your moral quandary over there and if you recall, it was the hybrid-Nth’s suggestion, not mine. And just FYI, throwing me under the bus—seriously not cool.”
“Sorry, sorry. You’re right. It was my choice. It just sucks because I would have done things differently had I known.” Gus rubbed his face, looking at the display through one eye as he tried to think. “At least I hadn’t unlocked any facilities yet, thinking I had all the time in the world. Let me see what takes priority now.”
Gus returned to the other console and reviewed his notes on options and narrowed down his choices based on the new information. He wished he had more FP; there were so many cool things the manor could do if he just had the points.
He had worked out his next unlocks:
Remote Sensors: 1,500 FP.
Remote Sensors Tier 2: 2,000 FP.
Cafeteria Tier 2: 2,000 FP.
Training Arena Tier 2: 2,000 FP.
Brig: 150 FP.
First, he figured he needed an early warning on who was coming to the island. Nothing offensive was affordable, so he’d have to do the heavy lifting there for now. Nothing’s ever easy.
Next, the ability to raise stats on the go, which the cafeteria could help with, and third, more training in disarming and disabling foes in non-lethal ways.
Am I insane for trying to defend the island with one hand tied behind my back? Any invaders would be playing for keeps and would not have any qualms about using lethal force. He had debated when he was younger about how he would do things different than his father and brother had, but was that too idealized and naive? He had seen their way of dealing with their opponents, and part of Gus rejected that unequivocally.
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