The overhead lighting flickered and then fizzled as the invisible force field of the firearm lockout cycled down. Victor, standing in the doorway, removed a pistol from his suit pocket and aimed at her head.
Metal screeched and gears snapped. Shots fired. Jetta looked down at her chest, expecting to see bullet wounds. Instead, she only saw an immense shadow. M’ah Pae stooped in front of her, shielding her from the bullets.
“Dad, no!”
Victor disappeared behind double-sealed doors, locking them from the other side.
It took Jetta a moment to grasp what had just occurred. M’ah Pae, the Motti Overlord who tore my family apart—
...just saved my life.
No, Jahx said, hearing her thoughts. Josef Stein did.
Jaeia grabbed her and pulled her out of the way as the Motti Overlord toppled over. The Liikers buzzed and shrieked as their master’s inky biofluids spilled out over the white tile. Some immediately deactivated, while others desperately tried to patch up the gaping bullet wounds.
Jetta knelt down beside his head as the Motti Overlord rasped and wheezed. His single red eye, the one that haunted her dreams, was splattered across the floor, leaving him blind.
Jetta touched his mottled skin. It felt cold and waxy. Still, she felt something beyond the cadaverous surface release from smothering darkness, from an unrelenting agony capable of crushing the strongest will. She felt the purest joy, and deepest gratitude.
“Thank you,” he whispered, “for saving me.”
JETTA GRABBED HER GUN off the floor. “Stay here,” she said to the rest of the party. “I’m going after Victor.”
“I’m going with you,” Jaeia said, picking up her own firearm off the tile.
“No.” Jetta pointed to Triel, Kurt, and Jahx, who still hovered over the fallen Motti Overlord. “I need you to stay here.”
“I didn’t ask what you wanted.”
Jetta was taken aback; her sister never spoke to her that way.
Softly, but in an unyielding tone, she added: “He didn’t just get to you, Jetta. This is my fight too.”
“Okay,” Jetta said, running to the door. “Let’s get him.”
Across their bond, Jahx whispered, His words are his strength; he can speak to the power inside you. You must silence his voice or he will destroy your soul.
Her jaw tightened. Jahx wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know. Besides, she wasn’t going to give him another chance. This time I won’t give him the opportunity to surrender.
“No. Wait,” Jahx said out loud. “You cannot kill him.”
“Why?” Jetta scoffed, tearing off the side panel to manually override the door lock.
“Death will only give rise to another.”
Jetta looked at her sister quizzically.
“You got it,” Jaeia pointed out as the doors cracked open.
“Go!” Jetta shouted, straining to hold them open so Jaeia could fit through.
Fighting her instincts, Jetta followed the trail of psionic dissonance. She kept her eyes peeled for Liikers or Republic soldiers, but all of his private personnel littered the hallways and clogged access doors, completely deactivated by Billy Don’t’s broadcast.
Finally, as they entered a private hangar, Jetta and Jaeia came to a halt. The ancient terrestrial ship she had seen in flashbacks was docked on the center platform and hooked up to fuel lines.
“Up there.”
Jetta followed her sister’s gaze to the control tower as Victor pushed aside a limp technician to access the flight prep sequencer. He’s going to try and take off.
She aimed her gun and took a deep breath. After taking her time to find the perfect target, she slowly exhaled, and pulled the trigger. The shot shattered the tower window and hit him in the left shoulder, knocking him off his feet.
Jetta wasted no time, taking as many stairs at a time as her dying body would let her to get to the top of the tower.
“Jetta, wait!” Jaeia said, not able to keep her pace.
No time, Jetta thought, gritting her teeth and ignoring her twin. She kicked open the tower door and barreled through. “It’s... over!” she said between breaths.
Victor leaned against the far wall, blood spilling from the bullet wound and staining his perfectly white suit. He readjusted his glasses with shaking hands.
Jetta aimed at his other shoulder as Jaeia stumbled in. “Surrender and I might not shoot you again.”
Victor laughed. Though weak at first, it rose to a maniacal howl. He tilted his head and said to Jaeia, “You’re letting her make all the decisions, just like always, aren’t you, Captain? You outrank her, and yet she always calls the shots. You’re weak and pathetic. No wonder you were always left behind.”
Jetta grimaced as her sister’s emotions jerked away from her, whipping her across the psionic plane.
“Don’t listen to him!” Jetta said, falling to her knees as a hammer of pain crashed down upon her skull.
“Shut up, Jetta.”
Under the power of Jaeia’s second voice, Jetta’s mouth clamped shut. She could barely pick up her head to see her sister’s face. Bolts of pain held her in place as Jaeia walked toward her, firearm drawn, face slack and vacant as if she had been unplugged.
Victor’s lips drew back over diamond teeth. “She has never considered your feelings. You were always an afterthought...”
Even through their inner channel, her voice came out as nothing more than a croak. Jaeia, please!
In her sister’s mind, a dark reality unfolded.
Jaeia was alone in their old apartment, left behind while Galm took Jetta and Jahx to the market to barter for food and supplies.
The memory of Galm’s words rang hollow in her ears. “I only have three tickets. I’m sorry. Please stay behind and try to collect some water for supper. Behave, Jaeia.”
Sitting in the corner, gray eyes just above her knees, she stared at the rock dice in the middle of the entryway. Jetta and Jahx had stopped in the middle of their game, but left the dice in place to pick up where they left off upon their return.
Gray eyes misted over, and hands tightened into fists. Jetta felt her sister’s pain as she kicked the dice into the corner.
(Always forgotten.)
Time shifted forward to their regimented days in the Core Academy. Endgame matches, won with three minds working together, yet with one voice, dominant and inflexible, often rising above the others.
We should move the fighters into orbit, take out their ground units after our medical units have a chance to retreat, Jaeia suggested through their bond.
Jetta saw herself in her sister’s eyes, her appearance as intimidating as her tone. No. We’ll nuke their base.
But we will kill our own troops, Jaeia protested.
She couldn’t believe the callousness of her own voice. But we’ll win.
Preconsciously, Jetta had been aware of her sister’s opposition to her aggressive tactics years ago, but she had never seen the events play out from her sister’s perspective.
I never knew, she thought, feeling her sister’s frustration in a new light.
Jetta could barely stand the torment. Her mind spun and dove like an out-of-control starfighter as her sister’s mind recreated Jetta’s reckless and inconsiderate behavior.
(Jetta, why did you leave?) Jetta heard her sister think. (Am I that easy to abandon?)
(No, Jaeia!) she cried back. (I never left you!)
The voice changed. (You never really cared about me. You never really considered me an equal. I am nothing but your slave.)
Fingers pried at her jaw. A sharp pain, cold metal taste in her mouth. Jetta’s perspective flexed back to the control tower room as Jaeia rammed her gun down her throat.
“You never cared,” Jaeia said, her voice bereft of emotion, gray eyes a dull void.
Jetta’s attempt at speech came out in a drooling garble around the barrel of the gun.
“You should have joined me,” Victor sai
d to Jetta, placing his hand on Jaeia’s shoulder and flashing his diamond teeth. “Now you will die.”
TRIEL DIDN’T KNOW WHAT to do. The Motti Overlord was dying from his wounds, but none of his biology made sense to her, nor did she dare immerse herself in the psyche of a Deadwalker.
“There’s nothing I can do,” she said, shaking her head and scooting away from him. “I’m sorry.”
“Please,” Kurt pleaded with her, comforting his father. “Please, you have to try.”
Jahx laid a hand on her arm. “No. This is as it should be.”
Triel watched the Kyron brother lay his hands on the Motti Overlord’s face and whisper to him in a language she didn’t understand. The room filled with psionic vibrations as Jahx continued to chant in hushed tones.
“What is he doing?” Kurt asked her, hypnotized by the phenomena.
Listening with all her senses, Triel tried to grasp what was transpiring between Jahx and M’ah Pae. It felt similar to what she had sensed Jetta and Jaeia do when they stole knowledge from other Sentients, but on a grander scale.
He’s absorbing him...
“Jahx,” the Motti Overlord choked over rusted gears. “I can’t stop them. You have to stop them...”
“Stop who?” Kurt asked.
M’ah Pae gingerly held onto Kurt with his manipulating arm as Jahx pressed an ear to his crusted lips, trying to hear his last words. “Your mark... hope and redemption... the key... to salvation.”
“Jahx,” he said, sputtering black fluid. With his pincers he removed the ocular implant from his fused socket and offered it to Jahx. “Take my son home.”
Triel felt the unnatural clicking inside the Motti Overlord’s chest come to a halt. Kurt Stein did not utter a sound, grieving in silence for his father.
“What did he tell you?” Triel asked, helping Jahx to stand again.
Touching her face, he showed her what he learned.
Triel watched Josef Stein enter the design of the triplets’ tattoo into an old computer interface, hope and conviction strong in his heart. She saw Cause For Earth highlighted in bold, its secret plans laid out across the screen. Blueprints for a device packed with trillions of Smart Cells appeared, and the equation pointed to a resurrected blue and green planet.
The image muddled, malformed by terror and despair. Josef Stein sat alone in his lab as the world turned to ash. She felt the tiny critters slide and crawl down his throat to combat the Necro Plague decomposing his body, turning him into a shell of eternal rot. She experienced his pain, his glimmer of hope that somehow his Smart Cells would extend his life and preserve his mind against the infection, that he would not transform into one of the hideous creatures of his own creation.
She wanted it to stop right then, but Jahx showed her more. Bright lights hurt her eyes as Victor stared down at her, scalpel poised above her eye. “This won’t hurt for but a second.”
Dead flesh, cut away, replaced with cold metal. Survival meant the consumption of living tissues and fusion with precious machinery.
(Please, Jahx, I don’t want to see this.)
The memories slid ahead. A ship filled with some of Josef’s closest friends and co-workers, brilliant scientists who had helped him build and code his Smart Cells, ransacked by Victor’s followers as they tried to escape the dying Earth. They didn’t recognize Josef in his freshly wired skin.
They tried to reason with him—“Dr. Stein, what are you doing?”
“Josef, please!”
“We’re your friends!”
“We can help you!”
Blood painted the decks. Triel lived Josef’s nightmare as he bludgeoned his loved ones with his newly fused mechanoid arm.
Victor’s voice, always in his head: “You didn’t think I’d let you spend eternity all alone, did you?”
Those he trusted best, those who had helped him conceptualize Earth’s last hope, infected, melted into translucent-skinned humanoid machines: monsters just like him. The other Motti. The creators of the Liikers.
An authentic, cohesive thought crystallized in his polluted mind: I have destroyed all that I loved.
Jahx pushed her forward to the Overlord’s most recent memories. Triel saw the bulbous Motti ship nearing their world. Chaos and rebellion buzzed inside the enclave.
Oh Gods, she thought, sensing adaptation to chemical restraints, and an anomalous gain in autonomy.
The Motti lost control.
Now a new order directed the collective, driven by a hunger for pain and death.
Josef Stein’s warning rang loudly in her ears. You have to stop them.
“The Dissemblers!” Triel said, breaking away from Jahx. “They’ve taken over. I have to stop them.”
“What?” Kurt said.
“Triel of Algardrien,” Jahx said, his blue eyes showing brightly against pale skin. “Do not be afraid. Josef Stein lives on. So will you.”
Suddenly it all made sense to her. All the times she had purposely underperformed in her training, why she was so afraid of her father’s expectations. The countless times she ran away from home. Fleeing Algar. Why she didn’t want to believe she was the next Great Mother.
Most importantly, why she was drawn to Jetta, and why she loved her so fiercely.
“I understand now.” Triel took Jahx’s hand and brought it to her cheek. “Thank you.”
JAEIA, MY SISTER, MY twin, Jetta projected. You have always been the better part of my soul.
With a gun rammed down her throat, Jetta tearfully reconstructed the first memory that came to mind. A simple one, a lie she told her starving twin when they were only four years old.
“I won this at the food scramble. Take it,” Jetta said, offering her a strip of dried meat.
Huddled under their cot in the entryway of their old apartment, Jaeia looked at it longingly but refused. “No, Jetta. It’s your turn to map. I’ll be fine.”
“Jahx and I already ate our shares,” Jetta said, pushing it into her sister’s hand. “I’m stuffed.”
It was tough lying to her telepathic sibling, but by that time Jetta had figured out ways to circumvent their shared thoughts. She had given Jahx part of the meat strip, so she clung to that truth and avoided the lie; she had not eaten that day, nor had she won the food in the scramble. Instead, she had chanced stealing from a miner. It made Jaeia anxious when she took such risks, and she didn’t want her twin to worry more than she already did. Besides, a few scrapes and bruises from the chase down the engine core didn’t amount to much when faced with the prospect of starving.
Hunger gnawed relentlessly at her belly as she tried to convince Jaeia that she was sated. “Eat it, Jae. I promise I’m full.”
(I love you)
(I would give my life to save yours)
“Jetta...” Jaeia said, taking the strip reluctantly. “I know you’re hungry.”
Jetta gave her a rueful smile. “Eat it. I’ll get more tomorrow.”
“Thank you.” Jaeia hugged her, bumping her bruises and making her wince.
Jetta kissed her cheek, still holding onto her twin. “I will do anything for you, Jaeia.”
The gun pressed further down her throat. Jetta could feel her sister’s hand tightening against the trigger, testing its resistance as Victor whispered in her ear, poisoning her mind with loneliness and abandonment.
(Jaeia, I am your biggest admirer,) Jetta said, sending the thought blazing through the psionic planes. She conjured memories of her sister negotiating peace between warring alien worlds as an Alliance diplomat just like she had forged temporary truces between rival child labor gangs on Fiorah.
The gun rattled against her teeth.
(I depend on you—I look up to you!) With everything she had left, Jetta poured all of her respect and amazement at her twin, fighting against the tide of Victor’s pain. (You have always been my guide, my anchor, my best friend! I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness for the things I’ve done,) Jetta cried. (But know that I have always loved you, an
d that you have always been the best part of me.)
Jetta gagged as the gun was yanked out of her throat.
“You bastard,” Jaeia said, slugging Victor in the stomach. “Stay out of my head!”
The old man careened backwards, striking his head against the shelving. Despite the blow, he remained conscious, his rage all the more palpable.
“You are both so weak. You disgust me.”
Jetta and her sister collapsed to the floor. Wriggling worms filled her insides, stretching her belly. She writhed on the ground, tearing at her own skin, trying to dig out the parasites eating her from the inside out. Bloodied and mad, Victor lifted his cane, taking aim at her eye.
His words are his strength; he can speak to the power inside you. You must silence his voice...
Jetta reached for her gun, but her brother’s final warning rendered her inert. Death will only give rise to another.
Victor will be reborn, she heard her sister realize. His evil cannot be killed.
I have to try! Jetta shouted back.
Stripped of her physical abilities, Jetta resorted to her only other means of destroying Victor. She blasted head-first into his mind, unprepared for what lay beneath.
The first layer of Victor Paulstine’s mind housed the illusion he had created of himself and the evil that resided in his heart. She became the madman wielding the scalpel, carving out eyes and ears and delicately rerouting the voluntary functions of his subjects. With every slice she seethed with an anger so violent that she bucked against her own identity, refusing to believe that the world was anything more than a despicable place that needed her vision, her control.
I must kill Victor Paulstine, she reminded herself.
Jetta pushed on. Time zoomed backward and forward in a confusing mishmash. She found herself outside, in a backyard, the ground covered with colorful leaves. A brisk wind blew in from the north as the sun hid behind fluffy white clouds.
The hands before her looked small, childlike. In front of her a squirrel, nailed down by his feet, screeched and twitched. She watched her chubby hands slice off its ears and pop out its eyes with a butcher knife. Then, slowly and methodically, she peeled back its skin, relishing its screams.
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