Should he let him go? As stubborn as Eren was, he would find new and inventive ways to frustrate Drae’s best efforts until he got what he wanted anyway. What was the point of saving a man who didn’t want to be saved?
He blinked in surprise as a wave of ice-blue lights filled the cabin. Random, unannounced visits from Kats were not part of his normal existence, but this was a damn weird week.
“Mesme?”
It is I. I have but a moment, but I wanted to learn how Eren is doing.
“He is miserable and wretched, but it’s actually looking as if he’s going to survive the detox. After that? I don’t know. I can’t keep him locked up once he’s regained his lucid mind.”
You worry he will pursue a renewed attempt at suicide.
“I do. He’s hurting right now, and I don’t mean from the detox. The only cure anyone has ever found for grief is time, and he’s refusing to allow himself that time.”
Caleb believed it was important to save Eren. That he was worth saving. I believe he is worth saving. Do you believe he is worth saving?
Drae sighed and rolled his eyes at the ceiling. “I do.”
Then we must ensure we save him.
ASTERION DOMINION
51
* * *
KIYORA
Kiyora One Generations Clinic
The form on the medical cot glowed the color of honey dipped in a pool of stardust. It was due to the kyoseil, of course, for this body included almost three times the amount of the mineral they normally used in Asterion bodies. The kyoseil spun through every vein, every bone, every tendon.
As requested.
The med tech nodded to Dashiel, and he approached the cot as this new version of Nika stirred. Her lashes fluttered, a harbinger of her eyes opening to reveal gilt-flecked luminescent teal irises. Her lips curled up on seeing him, even as she blinked furiously. “This is…” her throat worked “…whoa.”
He frowned in concern that threatened to plummet toward panic. What if he’d done it wrong? What if the formula Asterions had relied on for hundreds of millennia existed for a reason, and throwing the balance out of whack had brought ruinous results? “Are you all right?”
“I am…it’s just….” She pushed herself up to a sitting position and gingerly draped her legs over the edge of the cot, then reached out to grip his arm for stability as she swayed unsteadily. “I can see all the kyoseil wavelengths in my normal vision. An endless rainbow of energy flowing through everything.” She shot him a pained grimace. “This is way too disorienting. I need to work out a way to tune out, or at least tone down, all these…we’ve been calling them ‘strings,’ but in this volume they’re more akin to pervasive waves.”
“I’m sure we can tweak your ocular programming to filter some of it out. Can you stand?”
“I think so.” She eased off the cot until her feet touched the floor. After a long, deep breath, she let go of his arm and slowly turned in a circle. When she returned to facing him, she was smiling. She brought a hand to his cheek. “Ceraff with me for a minute. See what I’m seeing.”
“Absolutely.” He switched on the visual k-band and followed the string weaving across the scant centimeters between them—
“Damn.” He stumbled backward, fumbling for the wall to brace himself. “You’re right. This is disorienting. Yet….”
“Beautiful.”
“Yes.” He gazed at her, at the shimmering waves of color dancing around her body, and the words caught in his throat. “So beautiful. Do you feel any different?”
“I feel like I got dosed.”
“Okay, but other than that?”
“I feel as if…these insanely powerful emotions are welling up inside me. I’m bowled over by our incredible interconnections, by the power flowing—”
The door opened and Nika—the original—burst into the room. “—in and through us.” The words left both their lips simultaneously.
The original stared at them for a split-second, then came over and wrapped her arms around them both.
Because he was in a ceraff with one, he effectively was with the other as well, for they shared a mind, to a far greater extent than he’d appreciated until this moment.
He shook his head roughly, stepped out of their embrace and hurriedly severed the connection to the ceraff. “Sorry. That was a little too much to absorb. How are you going to function like this?”
“Once we dial down the visual stimuli—” They cut themselves off in unison, giving one another identical looks of consternation. “We should try to—ugh! Hey, has our nose always curled up crooked on one side?”
He laughed, shaking his head in wry amusement. “Yes, it has.”
“Great. What we’re going to do is….” One of them—the original—backed toward the door. “We’re going to not be in the same place at the same time doing the same thing. I’ll, um…Dashiel, I’ll see you at the Initiative in a little while.”
Because she would be staying here, at his side. He watched the door close behind her…then pivoted toward her twin. Gods, his head already hurt. “But you’re still experiencing whatever she’s doing now?”
“Walking down the hall, muttering to herself about our crooked nose and making a new, better-informed list of questions to ask Parc.”
“And she’s experiencing whatever you’re doing?”
“Yes.”
“Even this?” He cradled her face in his hands and pressed his lips to hers. “Am I kissing two of you at once?”
She grinned against his lips, gilded teal eyes dancing in amusement. “In all the ways that matter, you are.” She dropped her forehead to his, and he felt her sigh in his arms.
Then she backed away and gave him a sharp nod. “Come on. We’ve got a lot to do and not much time to do it in. Alex will be here soon.”
Perrin fidgeted in the clinic waiting room, for no good reason. Nika’s procedure was for all intents and purposes a simple regen, only in an extra body. While also keeping the existing body. Plus, with an overdose of kyoseil. Okay, so it wasn’t a simple regen. But it posed no risk to the original, so she had no reason to be worried. Except for the risk inherent in being a Plex….
She watched Parc cross the breadth of the waiting room for the third time in less than a minute. He acted as anxious as she felt, on top of carrying around so much responsibility for what was soon to come, never mind whatever other crazy notions routinely ran amok in his head.
“Parc, you’re making me dizzy. Sit with me.”
He glanced at her in surprise, almost as if he’d forgotten she was there. “What? Sure.” He came over and plopped down on the couch next to her, then immediately began tapping his feet on the floor. “So, Ryan’s gone again. He vanished from the Initiative as soon as I was up and walking around.”
“I know. I’m sorry. But he stayed by your side the entire time you were unconscious. I had to bring him food up from the cafeteria and everything.”
“He did?”
“Yes. He cares a great deal about you.”
“Not enough to stop being angry at me, apparently.” He groaned and sank lower on the couch.
The doors leading into the clinic remained closed and silent. “Parc, he’s not angry at you. He’s hurt.”
“Oh, trust me. He’s definitely angry at me.” The fingers of his left hand began drumming a beat on his thigh. “What do you mean, ‘hurt’?”
“Well, I’m merely speculating here, but—”
“But you understand people. How they think, what they need. Speculate away.”
She wished she had as much faith in her abilities as he seemed to. “I suspect he’s hurt because to him, when you became a Plex, it felt as if you were saying he wasn’t enough for you. As if you created a copy of yourself to go out and experience all sorts of thrills and adventures in the world that he wasn’t giving to you.”
“No, that’s not at all why I did it!”
“Then why did you do it?”
He stared a
t her strangely, blinked and looked away. “Because it was there to be done. It’s the bleeding edge of technology and our evolution as a species. It’s exciting and dangerous and new, and I couldn’t resist the lure of it. Basically, why I do everything I do.”
She laughed, though it came out a little stilted. “Did you talk to Ryan about it beforehand? Explain what you wanted to do, and why?”
“No. I just…did it. You know, like everything else.” The drumming intensified. “So do you think if I tell him he’s enough for me, he’ll forgive me?”
“I think it would be a good start, but you’re probably going to need to show him, too.”
“How?” His expression darkened. “By killing off my copy? I don’t…I can’t. He’s me, as much as the me sitting right here with you.” Abruptly he leapt up off the couch. “Ask Nika what it’s like.”
Perrin spun around to see Nika—a Nika—emerging through the doors to approach them. She looked the same physically, but the mysterious, thousand-meter glimmer in her eyes told a different story. Transformed, yet again…and with the act, Perrin’s closest friend fell further out of her orbit.
An aching, empty sorrow welled up in her chest. A part of her had known way back when Nika discovered her true identity that one day she would lose her friend. Nika’s world was so big now, populated by intergalactic allies, immortal power brokers and monstrous enemies. Perrin had no doubt Nika would do anything to save their people, no matter the cost to her personally. No matter if it meant becoming something else, something greater, something Perrin could never understand.
She covered up any sadness behind a bright smile as she stood and met Nika halfway. “Did it work?”
Nika’s gaze blurred and unfocused. She brought a hand to her lips. “It did.”
52
* * *
NAMINO
Camp Burrow
Joaquim dropped to the floor beside Parc; a trickle of blood seeped from a cut on one temple, and his shirt was soaked through with sweat. “All right. We managed to retrieve another drone from the armory, get it in the air and send it to the Rasu’s processing center on the outskirts of town, all without getting killed. I hope our trouble was worth it.”
“It will be.” Parc regarded Joaquim dubiously. “Do you want to spend a few minutes at the repair bench, or maybe the shower, before we get started?”
Selene dropped to her knees across from them, looking little better than Joaquim did. Her lower lip was busted and flyaway strands of once-blond hair appeared to be singed.
Parc considered feeling guilty for asking them to so blatantly risk their lives for what was scarcely more than a hunch…but his hunches were hardly ever wrong. Besides, Nika would soon be on her way here, and she was counting on him to have answers when she arrived. The clock was ticking.
Joaquim shook his head as other people—Grant Mesahle and the two Humans, Marlee and Caleb—joined their growing circle. “Nope. I’m good. Let’s take a look.” Joaquim’s wrist flicked, and a pane instantiated between them.
“Hells. This place got bigger.”
The drone hovered near the sprawling Rasu compound on the northwest periphery of the city. It almost resembled a traditional fort, complete with a defensive barricade bounding a series of circular structures that surrounded a towering spire at the center. The uniformity of the aubergine Rasu metal made it difficult to distinguish many individual features or assign them a purpose.
The apex of the spire was another matter, however. A violet glow leaked out through a dense, orb-shaped matrix situated below a needle-like cap.
Parc scratched at his left leg while he scrutinized the visuals; the skin was so new it glistened, and also itched something fierce. He’d caught several glimpses of the distant compound during his torturous trek across the city, noting the heavy traffic to and from the area and the frequent visits by patrolling Rasu vessels. The compound was important, and he had a hunch as to why. “The violet glow is one of their power vortexes, similar to what Nika encountered on the stronghold platform. My guess? It’s powering the needle.”
Grant studied the image. “Those vortexes generate a ton of power. So far as we know, only one thing they can be running here would require so much fuel: the quantum block.”
Selene frowned. “But we don’t know that for certain. In fact, they could be running hundreds of high-energy devices. For one, they’re clearly doing something with all the material they’re hauling into this compound.”
Parc let the debate fade into the background while he focused in on the needle at the spire’s apex. “Show the scene in infrared.”
Joaquim entered a command on the module in his lap, and the view flipped to a heat map of the region. Cardinal filaments spilled out of several heat blocks to wind through the concentric circles at ground level.
Parc gestured to the streaks of cardinal flowing through the compound. “No, there’s power everywhere, fueling whatever they’re doing in all these buildings. Zoom into the apex.”
Joaquim silently complied, and a raging ball of crimson spewing upward like an erupting volcano filled the screen.
“See? All the power from the vortex is flowing up into the needle. But the needle is just…sitting there looking pretty.” Parc crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s generating the quantum block.”
Joaquim rolled his eyes at the low bedrock ceiling. “But the quantum block was activated long before this tower ever existed.”
“They probably kept it stowed on one of their ships until they could build it a more permanent home.”
“But why bother? Why would it need a more permanent home?”
“I don’t…” his head twitched “…oh. Nika says it might be similar to those Rift Bubbles the Kats are handing out like candy. For whatever reason, they apparently work better when situated on the surface of a planet rather than in orbit.”
Grant narrowed his eyes at Parc. “I’m not going to lie. It’s a little weird, you talking to Nika back on Mirai.”
“You should be the one talking to Nika back on Mirai. Anyway, maybe it’s as simple as the closer it can get to the center of the field the device is projecting, the better it functions. Or maybe it uses the planet’s interior to spread the interference pattern. The reasons don’t matter.” He jabbed a finger toward the pane. “That’s the quantum block.”
“All the power is getting drawn in by a massive engine for some purpose.” Selene conceded the point. “It’s a reasonable assumption.”
Joaquim nodded. “Great. So how are we going to take it out?”
Selene pulled her singed hair out of its tail and ran a hand through it, then frowned as several pieces came away with her hand. “We don’t have any weapons powerful enough to blow the needle up, assuming we can get anywhere near it.”
Grant shrugged. “If we can take out the vortex powering it, it will kill the block for a minimum of a couple of hours, which is time enough to get a lot of survivors off the planet and a lot of soldiers onto it.”
The Human, Caleb, spoke up for the first time. “The first question needing an answer is this: are the Rasu so arrogant in their superiority that they haven’t bothered to implement proper security protections at this compound? Or are they paranoid to a fault, in which case nothing is getting inside there. Not weapons, and certainly not us.”
Joaquim scowled. “The mere existence of the quantum block implies they’re…if not paranoid, at least thorough. But it’s a good point. We need to find out for sure.”
Selene matched him scowl-for-scowl. “How? In case you haven’t noticed, our resources are severely limited.”
Parc butted into their sparring—or flirting, he wasn’t sure which. “Can you program the drone to kamikaze into the compound, then watch to see what manner of defenses respond to the incursion?”
“Nope. Quantum block, remember? I can’t remotely reprogram the drones, and I can’t call them home to alter the programming, either.”
It was easy to forget how
much of their daily lives—their tools, their weapons and even their bodies—relied on quantum programming. In fact, if not for the kyoseil woven into their bodies providing them some protection, every Asterion would probably have dropped dead the instant the quantum block was switched on.
“We’ll have to get close enough to the compound to test the defenses ourselves. And by ‘we’ I mean all of you.” Parc pointed to his still-healing leg stretched out stiffly in front of him.
Selene shook her head. “But then they’ll know someone is out here, fighting back.”
“Good!” Joaquim threw his hands in the air. “It’s about time they felt threatened.”
“Guys, if whatever we send in is innocuous enough, it could be mistaken for leftover tech, flying around blindly with no master to direct it.”
A devious smile grew on Joaquim’s lips. “Or, it could be the opposite of innocuous.” He twisted around and shouted toward the left corner of the bunker. “Rogers, the DAF Command armory has shoulder-fired SALs in stock, doesn’t it?”
The colonel’s brow furrowed up, but he nodded.
Selene dropped her head into her hands. “Again? We just got back from the armory and nearly lost our skin escaping.”
Joaquim was already climbing to his feet. “This is worth one more trip. A couple of SALs will take out that power vortex from two kilometers away.”
“If the defenses are weak.”
“Right. So let’s find out how strong they are.”
Marlee guzzled a bottle of water while she watched the others step through their usual pre-mission routines. Selene secured a tactical belt over her hips then motioned for Grant to join her outside the supply room. “Grant, you’re in charge while we’re gone. And if we don’t come back, it’s up to you to take care of these people until help arrives.”
Inversion (Riven Worlds Book Two) Page 31