Ipseity (The Stork Tower Book 5)
Page 48
“Call me Jesse. If we can’t help you, what will you do?”
“It’s a race to get to my mum. I’ll find a way to get closer, but I’ll also work with her to make sure they can’t find her. Just knowing I’m not going to get pulled from the scenario is a weight off my shoulders.”
Jesse looked up and saw Cody and Gèng walking toward them. He looked at Leah and said, “How did you arrange that?”
Leah laughed and said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Jesse.”
Jesse turned to Cody and said, “We’re heading back and I want you to follow my lead. I’m going to be angry at Atherleah and rant a little bit. You need to play along.”
Before Cody could answer, Jesse turned back to Leah and said, “Be careful and let me know if we can help in any way.” Jesse then disappeared, followed immediately by a slightly confused Cody.
As soon as they left Leah said, “I’m running out of time for so many things. I’ll have a look at the cyberspace, and then I need to get to Dunyanin for the coronation.”
CYBER-SPACE
The two walked to the Tower in silence. Gèng had shifted the spaces around, so the place she had set aside to review the cyberspace was just at the top of the stairs. Leah closed her eyes and increased her perceptual awareness to maximum and stepped into the room. The signal was uninterrupted and without distortion. Leah had seen it when she’d been in limbo while waiting to be resurrected, and her mind had already started to make connections between the signal and different elements from her experience in the cyber-verse as well as the sensory items she’d downloaded from the Annoyance.
She’d already increased her rate of perceptional awareness, but now the newly formed neurons began making even more connections. Leah appropriated two of the four-dimensional matrix-processors in her PAI chip and started to work through the meaning of the different signals, trying to understand the relationship between each of the disparate images. Slowly a complete image coalesced, and she understood it. It had taken just under ten minutes real time even though she’d been staring at the signal for almost eight hours cyber-time.
Leah said, “Run it through from beginning to end.”
The room cleared and then Leah felt, more than saw, the approaching being. The temperature dropped, she was surrounded by a yellow mist which darkened imperceptibly transitioning through burnt orange past deep red until it felt like it coagulated into a solid darkness. Sounds began to invade the room as she heard the frozen mist fracture as the creature broke through the barrier of its own construction. A stale wind brushed past, bringing the sweet stench of decaying fruit mixed with the sour taste of spoiled meat. The being’s form was hidden in shadow, but it seemed to slither and fly rather than walk or glide. Its body trailed behind the head like a smear or smudge, but the face at least was clear. It was a man’s face, except for the eyes which were orientated vertically so that when they blinked the eyelids moved inward from either side. There were no eyelashes and the sclera was the same colour as the Iris, a deep violet. Each pupil was red, small, and shaped like a crescent. The face noticed Leah’s gaze just before the signal ended and a voice she’d heard before although this was pitched softer, lower and had a touch of menace, whispered, “Impressive, you can see me. To think, you were not a test, but a thief. You took their secrets, and you stole mine. But I found you, and I see you. Atherleah, you can never escape or hide from me. I will ...”
The message ended abruptly when Leah had been resurrected.