by A. K. DuBoff
“If there’s anything left to run over,” Kaiden interjected.
The dented floor and walls near Toran illustrated his point, which was underscored by a pile of twisted metal that appeared to be chair remains and perhaps a handful of shelving units.
Toran shrugged. “Don’t knock it until you try it. Folding a chair or two is surprisingly empowering.”
“I’ll bet,” Kaiden muttered under his breath.
I examined Toran. “Let me guess—you chose the shield, in the test when you were waking up.”
Toran nodded.
“What about you?” I asked Kaiden.
“The wand, of course,” he responded with a matter-of-fact tone like it was the most obvious choice in the world. “Didn’t you?”
I shook my head. “No, the sword.”
“Shame. You’re missing out.” A ball of sparkling white light appeared over the palm of Kaiden’s outstretched right hand.
“Not in here!” Colren cut in.
The orb faded from his palm. “The demonstrations will have to wait for another time, I suppose.”
“Like when you can’t accidently vent us into space by hurling a rogue fireball at the viewport.” The commander smoothed his black uniform.
“I’ve gained a lot of control since then,” Kaiden countered.
“All the same,” Colren continued, “now that there are three of you—one from each discipline—we need to seal the Master Archive.”
I glanced at the men’s faces as they each nodded gravely. “Sorry, did I miss something?”
“The Darkness is advancing,” Colren replied. “If we don’t seal the Master Archive, it will be consumed and we’ll have no means to reset the worlds after we stop the Darkness.”
“Right, I figured out that much from context. But what was that about ‘one from each discipline’, and why us?”
“Oh, we’re the divinely gifted almighty ones,” Kaiden quipped. “They do like to skip over that part of the initiation briefing.”
Colren groaned. “It’s hardly that dramatic. You see, when the part of your consciousness that exists outside of spacetime was re-knitting with your new body, you were tapping into your most ancient genetic history—drawing on fragments scattered throughout the crystal backups from back in the time when the crystalline network was still forming. We know of a place that is believed to be the origin of the crystals, and there’s a sanctuary around it to protect the Archive if ever there was a threat in the future. That sanctuary needs to be activated by three individuals embodying the tenets of ancient culture—strength, protection, and higher-self. By aligning with one of those tenets, you were imbued with the skills and predisposition to embody its ideals. Together, you can activate the safeguards around the Master Archive and buy us time while we figure out how to stop the Darkness for good.”
I pursed my lips. “Nope, that does sound pretty dramatic.”
Kaiden made a flourish of vindication with his hands.
“Regardless,” Colren pressed on, “we need you. Sealing the Archive will be your first mission as a team, and it’s imperative that you’re successful.”
Toran grunted. “No pressure.”
I took a deep breath, my nerves fraying. “Okay, so we have some sort of ancient abilities now. But how does the sealing work? Are there any instructions?”
“No. That is for you to figure out,” Colren replied. “I’m sure it will become clear when you arrive.”
“Yeah… not buying it,” I said. “This all still sounds crazy to me.”
Kaiden laughed. “See, Toran? It’s not just us saying so.”
Our eyes locked for a moment, and the apprehension I’d been feeling since I woke up started to melt away. As bizarre as the situation was, others were facing the same set of impossible circumstances. I don’t know if it was a byproduct of the extraction procedure or something else, but I felt at ease with Kaiden and Toran. I’d always been one to know within a few seconds of meeting someone if we’d get along or not, and I could tell that my two teammates were my kind of people.
“We can talk more once we reach our destination.” Colren pulled out a communicator from his front pocket and made an entry. “There’s no reason for us to linger here.”
A moment later, a woman’s voice came over the comm, “Jump in T-minus five minutes.”
“Not again…” Kaiden murmured.
“Get strapped in,” Colren instructed. “ I need to get to my pod in Central Command.” He rushed out of the room.
“We’re about to do a spatial jump?” I asked, apprehension pitching my voice. Interstellar travel was common enough between the dozens of Hegemony systems, but I’d never left my home planet. I hadn’t yet wrapped my head around being on a spaceship, let alone the notion of traveling through hyperspace to another system.
“Don’t worry. It’s every bit as disorienting as it sounds,” Kaiden flashed me another grin and jogged toward the hallway door. “The pods are this way.”
Hesitantly, I followed him with Toran close behind.
Kaiden led us down the corridor to one of the interior doors a dozen meters past the previous room. The chamber contained six oval pods arranged around a circular center console. An open transparent cover on each pod exposed an ergonomic couch within.
Without hesitation, Kaiden hurdled into the pod furthest from the door and began securing a harness. “Make sure the straps are tight.”
“Very funny,” Toran growled as he squeezed himself through the opening of a pod to the left of the door.
I jogged around to the pod on Kaiden’s right so I could examine how he had buckled his harness. After making a quick mental note of the configuration, I reclined in my pod and began clipping the belts across myself. “Is all of this really necessary?”
“See what you think after the jump,” Kaiden replied.
Just as I cinched up the last strap, the same announcer came over the comm again. “Jump in T-minus one minute.”
“Good luck!” Kaiden called from next to me as the lids to our pods slid shut.
In the enclosed space, my heartbeat and breathing were almost deafening.
“Jump in T-minus thirty seconds,” the announcer informed through a speaker inside the pod.
A static charge hummed in the pod, and I felt heavier—like I was being sucked against the seat.
At the ten-second mark, the announcer began a final countdown. “… Two… One.”
Next thing I knew, my stomach was in my ears and my heart was at my feet. Reality elongated around me, then everything went black.
3
“Elle. Elle!” A voice roused me from the blackness.
My eyes shot open.
Kaiden was leaning over me, releasing my harness. “You passed out.”
I groaned as I propped myself up on my elbows, realizing I was no longer strapped down. My head ached. “What just…?”
“Congratulations! You just completed your first spatial jump.” Kaiden smiled down at me.
“I felt like I was being turned inside out.”
“Yeah, good times.”
I pressed the heel of my right hand to my temple. “I guess being strapped into the pods is a good idea, after all.”
“I thought your opinion would come around,” Kaiden replied, pushing back from my pod to give me some space.
“You’ll get used to it,” Toran’s voice boomed from across the room. “Come on. We’re being paged.”
Still feeling like my stomach was lodged in my throat, I lurched out of the jump pod. “Where are we now?”
“That’s a very good question,” Kaiden replied as we exited the room. “They haven’t exactly been forthcoming with the logistics about our mission.”
“I feel like I’m in a dream.” The throbbing in my head was beginning to fade, but the physical sensation enforced that what I’d just been through was real.
Kaiden offered a sympathetic smile. �
�I’m still trying to get over that feeling myself.”
“None of this makes sense,” Toran said. “Colren’s account of why we were chosen doesn’t really explain it.”
I scrunched up my nose. “Yeah, that whole thing about getting an ‘immunity’ from the Darkness? What is the Darkness, anyway?”
“The cloud appeared after an emergency reset where I was,” Kaiden said. “I’d never seen anything like it—freaked everyone out.”
“Yeah, same with me. My friends and I weren’t sure if we should tell anyone.”
“No one else saw it?” he asked. “I thought planets like yours had a crystal in the town square or something.”
“We do, but that wasn’t where it appeared. We were out by one in a canyon.”
“A localized reset, then?”
I nodded. “We’d go up there to play around.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Doing what, rock climbing?”
“We’d jump off a cliff.”
His eyes widened. “I was not expecting you to say that.”
I smiled coyly. “I have an adventurous side.”
“I used to collect rocks!” Toran looked down at his hands and sighed. “There wasn’t a lot to do on Dunlore.”
I awkwardly patted his huge shoulder. “Something tells me we’re going to have plenty of adventure coming up.”
We took the corridor to a nearby lift, passing by two groups of soldiers and a handful of solitary officers who cast us sidelong glances. I suspected that everyone on the ship knew who we were, at least in a general sense, and I found it odd that given our apparent importance we were expected to show ourselves around. Granted, it seemed like Kaiden had been given a proper tour and knew his way to the various locations of note; maybe they considered him our guide.
We entered the lift and rode it up two decks. I barely perceived any movement, unlike the elevators I was used to back home.
Kaiden must have noticed my awed expression, because he looked me over and chuckled. “It’s just a lift, Elle.”
“To you, maybe! I still can’t get over the fact that I’m on a spaceship.”
The door opened, and he smiled. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”
We stepped out and took a corridor to the left past a pod room and a weapons vault until it terminated at a door. Kaiden placed his hand on an adjacent panel. Rather than the door opening, a blue light blinked and a chime sounded.
“What’s with the security?” I asked.
“This is the entry to Central Command,” Kaiden replied. “I suspect they don’t want people barging in right in the middle of a sensitive maneuver.”
“I guess that makes sense. It just struck me as strange after they’ve left us to wander around on our own.”
“They run the ship how they want it run,” Toran said. “You know how boss people can be.”
The door slid open, revealing Colren standing on the other side. “That’s how us boss people are, huh?”
Toran turned bright red. “Sorry, sir, I didn’t mean—”
The corners of Colren’s lips curled up with amusement. “All things considered, that’s an appropriate title. You’re not officially military soldiers, so I’m not your superior officer beyond my role as captain of this vessel.”
I eyed him. “But we also don’t have much of a choice about being here.”
“That was one of the things I wanted to talk with you about,” he replied. “Let’s get settled in the conference room.”
We followed him into the open area beyond the doorway. Central Command appeared to be a cross between an administrative operations center and the starships’ bridges I’d seen depicted in media. I knew the technology existed, but I’d never witnessed it in person. Everyone around me seemed in their element, but I couldn’t help doing numerous double-takes as I studied the room.
The area nearest the entry door was flanked by two crescent-shaped workstations equipped with monitors, a touch-surface desktop, and a number of holographic displays with complex readouts that may as well have been in another language. The four crew members working at the consoles glanced up at us as we passed by. Based on their tempered reactions, it seemed that they must have seen Toran in the past; if anything, my bright fuchsia hair drew more attention. Even as the workstations drew my eye, I was awestruck by the attention to detail in the blue and gray crew members’ uniforms and their effortless use of the complex systems around them. I’d never thought of Erusan as being a backwater world, yet seeing the Hegemony ship, I realized just how much I’d missed out on.
Further into the bridge, a single command chair was surrounded by four additional consoles, all facing toward an expansive viewscreen spanning the curved forward wall. The domed ceiling above was inlaid with a ring of lights, and additional lighting around the baseboard of the perimeter illuminated the space to almost daylight levels. The starboard wall contained a row of a dozen pods like the one I’d used for the jump, though these were arranged vertically.
My eye was drawn to the front viewscreen by the glow of a purple-hued planet below. Despite the strange color, the cloud cover looked similar to my homeworld… except it was in another star system.
I was about to visit another planet.
Excitement welled in my chest despite the confusion and uncertainty swirling in my mind. Though the circumstances were far from ideal, this was the kind of adventure I’d fantasized about for as long as I could remember. I could be scared, or I could embrace it for what it was. This was my chance to prove myself. I didn’t want to mess it up.
Colren led us to the left toward a separate conference room with seating for twelve. A transparent wall separated the room from the main bridge. As the commander passed through the entry door, he passed his hand over the wall and it altered to opaque off-white.
“Please, take a seat.” He gestured to the near side of the table while walking around to sit in the center across from us.
I grabbed a chair to Kaiden’s right while Toran sat to his left.
“So, the mission…” Kaiden said on our behalf.
“Right.” Colren folded his hands on the tabletop. “This planet, Crystallis, holds the Master Archive. Only a handful of people in the upper echelon of the Hegemony know its location. It’s imperative that this site be protected at any cost.”
“And all we have to do is ‘seal it’?” I asked, trying to get myself in the right frame of mind to embrace the bizarre scenario.
He nodded. “Yes, but I suspect that will be more complicated than it sounds. As we understand it, regular people aren’t allowed to access the Archive. We know it’s there, in the sense that we can see how everything around it behaves, but we can’t get to the thing itself.”
Toran tilted his head. “Like dark matter, only… not?”
“The technology behind the crystals predates our civilization by millennia. Though we don’t understand how they operate, exactly, we do know that this world is the hub of their power. What little we have been able to glean from the world has spurred all our scientific advances—from our jump drives to the device that harnessed your hyperdimensional consciousness and the bioprinter that created these new bodies for you. If we have any hope of finding a solution to this Darkness infecting our worlds, the clues will be down there.”
I crossed my arms. “And only we can access that tech, because we’re the only ones who have been modified by it. I’m not sure if that makes sense or if it’s insane.”
“Convenient, if nothing else,” Kaiden responded.
“Sounds like a safeguard to make sure outsiders can’t get too much, too fast. Need to master one development in order to advance enough to get the next,” Toran hypothesized.
Colren inclined his head. “Quite possibly.”
“Okay, say we seal the Archive. Then what?” I asked.
The commander looked each of us in the eyes. “Then we figure out how to fight back.”
“Not to be t
oo self-deprecating here,” Kaiden said, “but are we really the right people to take that on? Three untrained strangers, and you’re pretty much tasking us with saving all of known civilization. I mean, c’mon.”
“Yeah, I just graduated secondary school a month ago,” I interjected. Opportunity or not, the realist in me recognized that I was in way over my head.
“It’s not an ideal scenario, I know,” Colren said. “We won’t force you to do anything, but I’ll lay out the case in as compelling a manner as I can. As of right now, we don’t know what this Darkness is or where it came from. All that we do know is that you are the only three people to have encountered it on your worlds and made it out.”
I raised my hand, and Colren inclined his head for me to speak. “I still don’t understand the technology behind our bodies materializing here on the ship, but I’ll ignore that for now. What I really want to know is how you knew to be at our worlds to have us ‘download’ at that time?”
He nodded and took a slow breath. “We’re still getting our bearings, as well. The short version is that we have information regarding the Darkness’ advance, and we have been waiting near the impacted worlds with the hope that we might be able to extract a few people.”
Kaiden folded his hands on the desktop. “You keep glossing over a lot of details. I’ve been here for more than a week now, and you still won’t explain anything about the Darkness or how you knew our abilities would manifest.”
“There’s not a simple answer to that besides all of the pieces falling into place,” Colren stated.
“Well, we’re listening.” Kaiden tilted his head.
The Hedgeman representative leaned back in his chair. “Okay, well, for starters, there’s more to the Master Archive than we typically discuss on public forums,” he began. “We talk about the records being a documentation of what’s already happened… but there are also records of events that haven’t happened yet.”
My heart skipped a beat. “Pardon?”
Next to me, Kaiden froze. “Do you mean…?”
Colren nodded. “We think that at some point there must have been a universal reset.”