Jetta consciousness nearly guttered out at Victor’s perversity, but she held her mind together with her sole purpose, forging past the mushroom clouds and the smoky remains of a charred city. She dipped in and out of ancient memories too old for Victor to have experienced, perhaps part of a collective consciousness that had persisted throughout the age of mankind. The fall of Rome. The conquest of the Aztecs. The Spanish Inquisition. Tribal massacres in the Pacific Northwest. The atrocities of Unit 731. Men, women, and children begged for mercy, but she did not know the meaning in any age or in any form. She only understood the blood on her hands, and the sickening need to tear apart those unworthy of their skin.
She sank deeper now, all ties to herself vanishing in the black depths of the beast. No way back, no connection to Jaeia or to Jahx.
All alone.
Memories came in fragmented jolts.
A woman with flinty eyes and an ugly expression smacked her repeatedly over the head. “Repent and the Lord will save you! Repent and the Lord will save you!”
A collection of knives stashed under her bed. Plans to murder her mother written in code, disguised as a prayer, hidden away in the Bible on his nightstand. Soon mother would be dead, and she would be free.
Something wet splashed her awake. Mother was standing over her, pulling back the covers and dousing the entire bed with the contents from a red container. It smelled like gasoline. “You are a wicked, Godless creature. You are the devil’s spawn. I renounce you as my son!”
She had no time to scream. With satisfaction in her eyes, Mother lifted up her hand and dropped a lighted match. Flames devoured the world.
Jetta held on tightly to her lone objective, to the only purpose her heart could understand in the midst of Victor’s torment. A black cloud of consumptive pain, fire blackening tender young skin.
I must kill Victor Paulstine!
Throwing herself forward, she catapulted into untold depths. She braced for more gruesome experiences, but when she uncovered her eyes, she found herself in the one place she never wanted to be again.
Oh Gods—
The afternoon light poked through gaps in the boarded up windows, highlighting old bloodstains on the walls. The air felt hot and dry. A few pieces of broken furniture were all that remained in the red and gray apartment.
Jetta instinctively crouched low to the ground and scurried to the kitchen, hiding below the broken sink.
Why am I here? she wondered, cracking open the cupboard door and peeking into the dimly lit apartment.
When she heard his footsteps, her heart froze.
No—no—no—
The front door slammed, and drunken feet stumbled in. A hulking shadow found its way to the cushionless couch and sat down with a crash.
“Come here, child,” called the shadow. Smoke curled from the burning end of a cigarette, wafting over and irritating her nose.
No point in hiding anymore. If anything, it would be dangerous to stay in one place.
Slowly, she crept out of her hiding place and into the empty kitchen. Her eyes darted to the entryway, the only means of escape she had ever had, but in this world she couldn’t be sure it even existed.
“I will only make this offer once,” the shadow said, blowing smoke in her direction. “You have impressed me. I have respect for how far you’ve come. Leave now, and I will give you all you will ever need to conquer this universe.”
A gray, sheened hand unfurled from the shadows to reveal her old rock dice. “You are the rightful heir to all our many gifts.”
A cold breeze raked through her. She gasped, then giggled as an infinite palette of colorful temptations scrolled out across her mind’s eye: Golden idols and marble monuments that rose higher than the sun. Not just people kneeled before her, but entire mountain ranges bowed to her image, the stars falling from the heavens at the sound of her voice. She was the creator and the destroyer. She was the God of all Gods.
Jetta opened her eyes and reached greedily for the dice. But just as her fingers grazed them, she noticed the symbols had changed. No longer were crescent doubles or triple moons etched onto the faces, but a snake swallowing its own tail. A man blinding himself. Worms feeding on a mound of disemboweled corpses, a woman strangling her child. The frigid edge of death sliced into her stomach, and in her eyes danced inside the dead lights of another world.
Jetta retracted her hand. She remembered. This isn’t about me.
(I have to kill Victor.)
She lunged into the shadows, ready for impact, for the fight. Instead, she fell headfirst into a void, flailing about in the emptiness until she spiraled down into a place hidden in the ashes.
Weak and exhausted, Jetta could barely bring herself to look through Victor’s eyes again. But this place was different from all the rest.
She saw her own reflection in the medical scanner positioned above her bed. Something hideous, an ugly lump of burn scars, barely recognizable as a human being, much less as a man, stared back at her.
“Don’t worry, my friend,” a man in a surgical mask said, placing a petri dish on her chest. “My Smart Cells will make you a new skin. Maybe then I’ll finally get a smile out of you.”
She wasn’t sure what she would feel as Josef Stein released his nanites on her body and directed them to reconstruct her mangled flesh. Aside from the tickling sensations as they worked alongside her bodily functions to begin the restorative process, she thought she’d feel hope, maybe even a hint of relief.
Nothing. Not even a hint of emotion. Only emptiness, even as she watched her skin re-form in the reflection of the scanner.
Flash forward. She stood before a mirror, seeing her new skin for the first time as Josef unbandaged her. She felt a strange unworthiness to see the flawless, smooth expanse of pink.
When she looked again, she did not see Ramak Yakarvoah. She saw someone else.
Ramak Yakarvoah is dead, she heard him think. I am reborn.
The images reassembled themselves into a security surveillance feed she watched in the privacy of her office. She turned all monitors to the reception area, where a beautiful young woman sat working at her desk, keeping up the pretense that the office was a design company in order to hide the secret laboratory underneath.
My mother—
A fair-skinned young man walked in and pretended to saddle her with excessive demands.
Father—
Crossing her arms, Ariya gave Kovan a hard time until he revealed the flowers and the gift box hidden behind his back.
Jetta lived through Victor’s quiet jealousy as she watched Ariya open up the present. The rose-embroidered handkerchief. A family treasure he wanted her to have.
“It’s perfect,” she said, throwing herself at Kovan. Jetta watched her parents make love behind her desk. Every kiss, every “I love you” chipped away at something deep inside Victor, filling him with wintry indignation. But even when Ariya turned away from the camera, he remotely adjusted the view.
He was in love with our mother...
In a painful attempt that made her cringe, he asked her mother out to dinner as she closed down the office for the night.
“Ariya Ohakn—I would be honored if you joined me for tonight at De Laj,” he said, presenting her with a bouquet of the most expensive flowers.
“I’m sorry, I have plans with Kovan.” Her cheeks turned bright red as she refused the gift. “I appreciate the gesture, though.”
It was not the first time he had asked her out, nor the first time he had been rejected. He was always rejected. Even after the death of Ramak and the birth of Victor, he was unlovable.
Jealousy turned into rage. Rage became bitter loneliness, giving rise to even darker needs. (There will never be love, never any connection; there will only be consumption. That is my means of survival.)
Of all Victor’s caustic emotions, this felt like poison in her veins. The last of Jetta stripped away in his madness, leaving her shriveled and barren.
No reason
to go on. No point to exist. She would bleed out into the shadow, become part of the nothingness that dominated the world.
Words whispered from beyond. (Wait for a time you need to feel...)
Jetta inhaled sharply. She smelled her mother’s scent. In the far reaches of another place, her pulse quickened.
Soft material pressed into her palm. Sweet-smelling perfume touched her nose.
(Feel, Jetta...)
Jetta looked down at her hand, across dual planes of existence. The rose-embroidered handkerchief; the symbol of her parents’ love. Closing her hand, she allowed the memories to flow through her.
Jetta laughed, overwhelmed with exquisite bliss, experiencing her parents’ love for each other through their eyes. She witnessed their chance meeting on their college campus, their first date in a thundering rainstorm. Days turned into months and then years, but time with Kovan and Ariya had a different meaning. They were part of each other, two souls intertwined, indistinguishable, in harmony with the mystical workings of the universe.
Jetta embraced the memories, not letting them go, holding onto them with all of her strength. She forgot the emptiness and despair that existed just beyond the horizon. To her there could only be the perfect love of two joined souls.
The world shuddered. Jetta sobered to the reality of her surroundings. Blackened walls, a sickly, bulging organ. She stood before the putrescent heart of the monster.
She had reached her final destination.
“You cannot kill him,” she remembered Jahx saying, “Death will only give rise to another.”
Her hand easily penetrated the devitalized tissue. She found the thrumming pulse underneath, the lifecord of his being. With one quick tug it would all be over.
Jetta stopped herself. What am I doing...?
She relaxed her hand. Changing her grip, she thought of all that she had learned, all that she had experienced. She remembered what Jahx had shown her, the rich tapestry of a universe full of lives and souls. I have to choose what is real.
She smiled. Now, finally, I see.
Holding on tightly to the handkerchief, she pushed herself inside the monster’s pulse and into his bloodstream. Pumped into the core of his being, she seeded the feelings and memories she cherished the most through the festering mass. Her brother’s gentle eyes and kind smile. Her sister’s infectious giggle. The smooth feel of Triel’s body moving under hers, breathing in her breath, lips pressed into soft lips. The way only her uncle could make her smile when she was in a bad mood. Aunt Lohien’s angelic voice singing old nursery rhymes. Her mother’s love, unbound and unconditional.
For the first time in her life she saw the full wealth of the love in her life and the world illuminated in her wake. She was cast out, away from the retreating shadow, away from the broken desolation of Victor’s dark conviction.
As she tried to pass back through the psionic barrier to return to her own body, a familiar shadow eclipsed her light. No longer afraid, Jetta brought herself around and touched the face of her own suffering. She whispered, (I know who you are, and I will not run away anymore.)
With that, she embraced the anathema and was freed.
JETTA WOKE ABOARD A starcraft she didn’t recognize. Everything looked antiquated, not to code. The writing on the walls was in ancient English, an outdated and never-used language—
The experimental ship.
“Hey, you’re okay,” Triel said, keeping her from leaping out of her seat.
“Yeah,” she mumbled, shaking the cobwebs out of her head. Looking down at her chest plate, she saw where someone had stuffed her mother’s handkerchief into the break in the armor.
“Who put this in my hand?” Jetta asked, touching the cloth and remembering the physical sensation during her psionic venture.
Reaching back into her shared memories, she answered her own question: Jaeia. Jetta had brought the handkerchief along as good luck, but Jaeia had been the one to take it out of her pocket to help her remember.
Thank you, Jaeia.
Jetta straightened up. No time to waste; just push a little farther. As she coughed violently, she quickly assessed her situation: We’re in the accessory passenger hold of the craft. To her left, Triel and Kurt sat strapped into two of the foldout seats. Jahx lie across Triel’s lap, unconscious and deathly pale.
“Is he okay?” Jetta asked in a hoarse whisper, unbuckling herself and moving to his side.
The ship lurched, sending her staggering backward, then forward. I’ve got to get to the cockpit and help Jaeia, she thought, sensing her sister’s frustration as the engines struggled against the planet’s increased gravity.
“I’ve stabilized him as best I can, but we have to get him back to Drs. DeAnders and Kaoto.” The Healer touched her face, slipping inside her. Relishing the sensation, Jetta accepted what little healing Triel could provide. “You as well, and your sister. You aren’t far behind him.”
The Division Lockdown Lab is gone, she remembered. It got obliterated in the diversionary tactic against the Republic Fleet. Even though DeAnders and his teams moved all important equipment and experiments from the Central Starbase to the medical frigate prior to the Alliance’s mass departure, it didn’t provide her much comfort.
I hope they made their jump to Nagoor, and they stay protected from the main fight.
“Stay with us, Jahx,” Jetta said, kissing his forehead and squeezing the Healer’s hand.
“Jetta, wait—there’s something I have to tell you—”
“It will have to wait; I’ve got to get us to safety.”
As she picked her way to the front of the ship, she spotted Victor tied up in the cargo storage. What the—?
She waved her hand in front of eyes with pinpoint pupils, getting no response. No silver-tongued devil resided there; just a drooling, mumbling mass.
“Jetta, get up here!” Jaeia said, banking hard to the left as she cleared the bay doors to the underground hangar.
“I don’t know what you did to him, Sis.” Jaeia pointed her thumb at the stupefied Victor Paulstine. “But I don’t think he’s a threat anymore.”
“Thanks, Jae,” she said, strapping into the co-pilot’s chair. Jetta ignored how sickly her twin looked and felt, instead choosing to focus on the gratitude within. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“Thank me later, okay?”
“Jeez,” Jetta said, covering her face as Jaeia swooped too low near a bridge. “And you said I was the bad pilot.”
Jaeia ignored her jab. “Do you want the good news or the bad news?”
“Oh boy,” Jetta said dryly, trying out the ship’s antiquated controls.
“Good news: I got in contact with Ferraway. Our ground team has taken over the command control room. We’ve got internal eyes on their starcraft, and they’re working on cracking their systems.”
“The bad news?”
Jaeia’s tension felt like a cold weight in her stomach. “This isn’t safe to jump in, and I doubt it can handle breaking through Jue Hexron’s gravitational field.”
“And I see we’ve alerted some Republic friends,” Jetta said, reading the green scanner blips heading their way.
“Exactly. We’ve got to make it behind Alliance lines and dock. It’s our only chance.”
“This relic couldn’t stand up to a single hit,” Jetta said, trying to take over the controls. “Let me drive.”
Jaeia raised a brow. “And to think, just moments ago you professed your admiration and respect...”
“But not for your piloting skills.”
“Too bad,” Jaeia said, pitching them hard to port.
Gripping the armrests, Jetta tried to hold onto the contents of her stomach. The ship rattled and quaked as Republic fighters grazed their hull, trying to assess the status of their prized ship.
“Got an idea,” Jetta said, dragging Victor out of the storage unit. “This will at least buy us some time.”
Despite the terrible video feed, they got a go
od enough signal to broadcast an image that Victor was alive and aboard their ship. Jetta cut out the audio, not wanting to lend any further clues of his compromised condition.
“See it?” Jetta said, pointing to the opening in the battle. “We can reach that warship if we hold this path.”
“May I remind you that I live in your stuffy head, too?” Jaeia replied, gunning the accelerator and barely clearing a stray missile.
Jetta couldn’t decide if she was annoyed or amused. Jaeia’s never been this sassy.
She grinned.
Using her uniform sleeve, Jetta contacted the Alliance command and informed them of their situation. Three of their own fighters broke from the fray and escorted them to the warship.
As Jetta and her party disembarked, she saw the Wraith in the next crosslock. Tech and Billy Don’t were scuttling around her, trying to put out the fires.
I’m sure the last thing Reht Jagger wanted was to have to re-dock with the Alliance, she thought, noting the heavy damage and smoldering shield generator. He’s probably itching to get his ship airborne as soon as possible.
One of the deck officers greeted her with a salute while medics took her brother and Kurt away to the infirmary. The battle raging just outside the dock made it difficult to hear his report.
“Accounts are unclear, Sir,” he shouted above the din. He showed her a datapad with statistical readouts and battle clips. “We did manage to deactivate most of the Republic officers, but some survived or ‘rebooted.’ Hooking up Billy Don’t again has proven ineffective.”
The mounting causalities racking up on the Fleet status report worried her. This is bad.
Jetta rung up Unipoesa. The shock collar around his neck made her arch a quizzical eyebrow. “Status report?”
From the admiral’s humorless expression she deduced Tarsha’s daring move. Well, got to give her credit for covering her own hide.
Unipoesa answered the more important question. “We’re still getting hammered. Ground teams haven’t cracked their systems yet, and they have enough sub-commanders to fill in the empty posts. We need to disable their command net or we won’t survive.”
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