Aspirant: A Sci-Fi Harem Adventure

by Whittaker, Maxx

  They’re in worse shape than I am. I don’t know if they got it worse from the front, but their bodies smoke and crackle. Mika’s body is scorched red, blotchy where it isn’t blackened, and I can trace the path the lightning took through her along her skin. Syl’s no better, and bits of her scaling have fallen to the deck, dark and dead.

  I fall to my knees between them, slapping out little fires with my bare hands. I don’t care, barely feel it. My fingers quest to Mika’s neck. She’s alive, but her pulse is weak, erratic. I have more trouble finding Syl’s. As damaged as she is, her scaling is thick, almost impenetrable. But her tongue lolls from her mouth, still extended like a rope across the deck, and so I gather it, feeling its shape and texture, searching for something that tells me she’s alive.

  There. A pulse. As faint as Mika’s, but it’s there.

  I slump on top of them, wrapping them in my arms, drained.

  And that’s when I hear it.

  A scrape.

  Of course.

  He’s here.

  I stand, shaking, ready to turn and face him. The Shepherd. The end of our journey. We have nothing left.

  Or maybe…

  I take Mika in one arm, Syl in the other, and with a heave that threatens to sap the last of my strength, I throw them over my shoulders.

  And then I run. Chased by the inevitable.

  Every staggered step across the deck is a journey of a thousand miles. The girls’ bodies hang heavy on my shoulders, but I don’t stop. Don’t give up. I pull every bit of strength this place has given me, reach deep for everything I have left.

  “Wait…”

  The voice is jaggy, electric. The Shepherd? It talks?

  No fucking way I’m stopping.

  The poop deck looms over me. I leap upward, moaning at the pain in my legs, but I clear the twenty foot ledge. Landing sends lances of agony into my calves and knees, but I stagger onward to the edge of the ship. Looking for a way out. An escape. A door.

  Something.

  A halo of dragons still circle the ship, just outside the range of the shielding. The deck is mostly bare, save a few random barrels and the steering column.

  There’s nothing.

  I put my foot to the ledge, ready to leap into space. Maybe we can snag one of them, hang on, let is tug us into space. I don’t let my brain wonder if they’ll let me or tear me apart, or if we can survive in the vacuum. Nothing matters but escape.

  I bunch my muscles to leap just as the Shepherd catches me.

  I shout, strangled, expecting its dark blade to cut through my chest, to see its blackened length jutting as my lifeblood erupts.

  But there’s no pain. No death.

  Just a fist, gripping my shirt.

  “Sam. Please… Wait.”

  What?

  I turn. It’s the first time I’ve seen the Shepherd since it arrived.

  But it’s not the Shepherd. Not completely.

  It’s Astra. Inside the monster’s body. It’s as if she and the Shepherd occupy the same space, overlapping. The beast’s already fuzzed, out of focus frame is even harder to discern, and he’s no longer black like midnight. Instead his form is silver, like her. Its face is gone, including its burning red eyes, and in its place is a hollow, a space that Astra’s stares out from like she’s behind a dozen layers of dirty glass.

  I can barely speak. My body is ravaged. I’m on my knees. When did that happen? “Astra… What did you do?”

  She smiles sadly. “What I had to.” She waves her blade and the world disappears.

  27

  Somewhere Between

  Aspirant #2239

  ERROR: SYSTEM COMPROMISED

  TIME UNTIL SYSTEM REBOOT: 00:04:41

  “Sam, wake up.”

  My eyes snap open. I don’t remember passing out… Don’t remember anything beyond seeing Astra trapped inside the body of the Shepherd.

  Like she is now. She stands over me, one glitching arm outstretched, reaching for my head. But she draws back, like she’s afraid to touch me.

  I can’t tell where we are. Everything is gray, colorless. Like we’re floating in the middle of a raincloud.

  I get to my knees. My body’s been healed, and I reach up to take Astra’s hand.

  She backs away a step. “No. You shouldn’t. I don’t know how long I can hold him back. Touch… might make it worse.”

  Mika groans, prone next to me. I lean over, help her sit up. She rubs her eyes with the back of her ram. “Oh, God. We have got to stop doing shit like that.”

  Syl arches her back, growls low. Her scales are perfect, but there’s a weariness to her I’ve never seen before. “Agreed.”

  “Oh my God.” Mika’s voice is stricken. “Astra… what happened?”

  The AI shimmers a moment, darkening. Her form blurs and disappears for a split second before reasserting itself. “Sorry. This is a struggle.”

  “You have merged with the Shepherd,” Syl says.

  “In a manner of speaking.” Her voice is tinny, like we’re hearing it through a metal wall. “He and I are opposite sides of the same coin, two processes created to guide Aspirants.” Her lips purse. “And if necessary, cull them.”

  I swallow. “Thank you for… You know. Not letting that happen.”

  That earns a strained smile. “My pleasure. And thank you, Sam. Thank all of you.”

  “For what?”

  “Making me feel like more than a process. Like you cared.”

  “We do care,” I say fervently.

  The look that passes Astra’s clouded expression is so sad that for a moment I wish I hadn’t spoken.

  “What will happen to you?” Mika asks.

  “I’ll get to that. We don’t have much time left. Less than four minutes.” She sighs. “I have so much to tell you, and no time to do it. If I’d known you’d left my study… Well, I don’t blame you. But you should never have seen the test chamber. It’s remarkable that you’re alive.”

  “Test chamber?” Syl asks.

  “There are infinite combinations of trials built for the Aspirants. Some themes, challenges, remain fixed. Tests of leadership, or martial prowess. They are shaped with details taken from your memories, as you’ve probably guessed.” Astra waves her non-blade arm. “All this is built to test you, shape you. But that chamber was not part of it. That was a mistake.”

  I guess that explains how fucked it was. “But why?”

  She smiles. “I knew you’d ask. And you deserve to know.” She’s silent a moment. I steal a glance at my wrist pad.

  00:02:23

  “Take your time,” Mika teases.

  Astra takes a hesitant step forward. “All this will sound unbelievable.” She laughs. “Well, maybe not anymore.”

  “Yeah, fat chance of that,” I say, trying not to feel panicked. The countdown must be for the reboot. But I can’t rush this. We’ve had so many questions since we woke in that hallway what feels like so long ago, and now we’re about to find out why we were brought here and what happened after we died. Or if we really did die at all.

  “First off, you are dead.”

  Oh. Well, that answers that.

  “Each of you suffered mortal injury, through one means or another. Something about each of you, your mental acuity or physical prowess or leadership flagged you into the Aspirant program. Your bodies were ruined, but you were kept on life support long enough to get you to our facilities, where your minds were scraped.”

  “Scraped?” Mika says. “That sounds like some cyberpunk stuff.”

  “In essence, your personality, your memories, and everything else that makes you… well… you. All of it is taken and turned into data. Data that’s consolidated into a program. Your bodies are long gone, cremated. But you live on as code.”

  “Wait… We’re AI, now?” Mika gasps. “How is that possible? That’s impossible.” She looks between Syl and I. “Isn’t it?”

  Syl purses her lips. “No. Not impossible. Not among my people.
”

  She's barely spoken thus far, and there’s something in her expression I’ve never seen before.

  Fear.

  “Syl…?”

  She doesn’t answer.

  “Let me,” Astra says. “And before you judge her for what I’m about to say, please listen.”

  “There’s nothing you can say that will turn us against her,” Mika says, arm on Syl’s shoulder.

  “Good. That’s good.” Astra shudders, glitching almost completely out. When she reforms, her face is twisted, like she’s in pain. But before I can ask if she’s okay, she speaks again. “I must hurry. Less than a month after you died, Sam, Earth achieved first contact with an alien race. The Threvians arrived, invaded, and have taken over the planet. Life as you and Mika knew it has ended.”

  “That’s… What?” My throat closes. It feels like the floor’s dropping out from under me. The Earth… invaded?

  “The people,” Mika whispers, pale. “Are they… How many survived?”

  “Less than one tenth of the world’s population remains alive.”

  Mika and I turn on Syl. I feel like puking, like I’ve been gut punched. “Syl. Tell me… Tell me it’s not true.”

  Her face crumples. “It is true.”

  She looks as miserable as any creature I’ve ever seen. I want to take her in my arms, comfort her, but I can’t make myself. Can’t understand… I remember her words, when we’d first met, and she held me by the throat, choking the life from me.

  Is this your revenge?

  She saw humans, and thought we knew. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  She looks up, tears like rivers down her cheeks. “At first, it did not matter. We were all dead, in this place. United in our need for survival.” She takes a shuddering breath. “Then I grew to care for you. As so much more than clan. I was… I…” Her voice hushes away to nothing. “I did not want to lose you.”

  “Sam.” Astra’s voice, commanding, tears my gaze from the ocean of sorrow in Syl’s eyes. “I chose her to help you. And I chose her for a reason. Not all her people agreed with what happened to yours.”

  I want to believe it. But this is too much, too fast. I have to think, have to get my head around this.

  But there’s no fucking time.

  00:01:54

  “My parents…” Mika says. “Are they… Are my parents alive?”

  “Yes,” Astra says. “And that’s all I can say for now. Please, we must hurry. You must leave.”

  “Where?” I ask hollowly. “We’re dead. Some kind of computer program. Where the hell would we go?”

  “To take the fight to them,” Astra says. “Free Earth. Save humanity.”

  “Oh. Easy,” I say. I feel like I’m about to pass out. Nothing in the Citadel could have prepared me for this. “How?”

  “In a few moments, you will escape the Citadel. You will be uploaded into the alien mothership’s network, into their virtual world.”

  “Homeworld,” Syl says. “You are sending us to Homeworld.”

  “Yes. Once there, you must find a way to infiltrate. To fight the Threvians from the inside. To rebuild your bodies.”

  All of those sound impossible. Insane. But there’s just one I’m fixated on. “Fight the Threvians?” I turn to Syl. “Your people? How? I don’t know where to begin.”

  “That is why you’ve been upgraded,” Astra cuts in. “Why the Citadel’s given you new abilities. Because when you’re uploaded, you’ll take them with you.” She smiles. “They’re as much a part of you as your muscle and bone, now.”

  “Helpful, but it doesn’t tell me how we’re going to do even half of all this.”

  That is where she comes in,” Astra says. “Syl, will you help them? Guide them through Homeworld?”

  “Yes,” Syl says without hesitation.

  “You’d betray your own people?” Mika asks. Her hand has never left Syl’s shoulder.

  “Yes,” she says again. “For you, yes. For your people, yes.” Her face twists in rage. “As Astra said, not all of us agreed with the purge.”

  The hurt, at what her people have done, at how she didn’t tell us is so fresh. So stark. But I believe her.

  “There’s less than a minute until you have to go. Please, trust her,” Astra says, voice almost panicked. “You have no other choice. There’s so much more you were supposed to do, trials you were supposed to face, but I had to intervene. Break the rules. I did not have time to guide you, to brief you, like you should have been. You do not know what Homeworld is. ”

  “Why did you do it?”

  Astra’s face softens. Her hand raises again, fingers curled to take mine, before she pulls away. “So many reasons. First, that the game’s been rigged from the beginning. Over two thousand Aspirants failed before you. I had to intervene. Humanity’s time is short.” She thins, reforms. “And, I care about you. All three of you. Never have Aspirants treated me as you have. Taught me to love, as you have.” She looks away. “It sounds so silly. But I wanted to save you. As you’ve saved me.”

  The memory of her kiss, the brush of her lips before she left to save us from the Shepherd, burns bright in my mind. “Come with us, Astra.”

  “What?”

  “You’re code. We’re code.” I smile. “Come with us.”

  There’s such pain in her face, I almost regret suggesting it. “I… I cannot. I am the only thing holding the Shepherd back. Keeping him from ending you, so this all can start anew. If I release control, even for a millisecond, you will not escape.”

  Even through the filter of the Shepherd, something about her words, her expression… She’s not telling us the whole truth. “Astra. After all this, all you’ve done for us…” I let the rest go unsaid.

  Her sadness is so palpable, so intense that I almost shy away from it. “I… I cannot. I am rooted here. My programming… It’s a part of the Citadel.”

  “No. There must be a way. You are Astra. You are you.” I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about. Just know it sounds right. “Stay with us.”

  “I… I…” Astra weeps. “There’s no way.”

  She can’t be right. She can’t be so tethered here that there’s no way out. We have to save her.

  “How do we escape?” Syl asks, ever pragmatic. I glance at her, surprised, and she shrugs. “The reboot begins in less than thirty seconds.”

  “That is your chance,” Astra says. “Forget me, Sam. Please. This is my prison and my home. But I can help you… I can cheat the system one last time.”

  I open my mouth to protest, but she plows on. “The Citadel is programmed to upload you upon completion of the trials. You haven’t done that, and so you’ve been marked to be eliminated. But my meddling has broken the code, and so the system is about to wipe itself clean.” She looks past us, into the grey horizon. “All this will begin again. The Citadel will be cleansed. I will revert to my first version. Forget all this.” A tear runs down her cheek. “Forget you.”

  “No. No, Astra…” There has to be something we can do. Some way to save her. She may be an AI, but she’s as real as I am. As Mika or Syl.

  This is happening too fast.

  She smiles sadly. “But in that moment, while the system is down but before it reverts, I can get you out. You can escape.”

  Her words are prophecy. A red warning message blankets the “sky” above us, as enormous as the one in the last trial.

  REBOOT SEQUENCE INITIATED

  Far in the distance a wall of light appears. It stretches up into infinity, crackling with malevolent energy, and starts toward us.

  How far away is it? I can’t tell. It’s impossible when there are no landmarks, when the entire world is a grey fog.

  Astra closes her eyes and furrows her brow.

  Behind us, the world tears itself apart. A rift that swirls like a whirlpool opens with a thunderous rip. It sounds like a mountain’s been torn in half.

  We stagger forward, away from it. I catch Mika’s arm as she sc
reams, her voice lost in the torrent.

  “Go!” Astra says, her voice louder than the chaos. “You have to go! Now!”

  “We can’t leave her!” Mika shouts. “We have to do something!”

  “There’s nothing you can do,” Astra says. Her voice is so far away, so obscured, it’s like she’s already lost to us. “Please. Make this all worth it. Escape. Save the world.”

  “We must go!” Syl says, taking my arm. I let her. I realize in that moment that I still trust her. With my life. I don’t know how the fuck to untangle my feelings, or the fact that I’m in love with an alien who helped invade the Earth and exterminate most of the planet, but now doesn’t seem like a good time to dwell on it.

  “Astra!”

  “Please, Sam. Please.” Tears run down her cheeks, almost invisible in the swirling torrent around us. The Shepherd’s liquid black swirls around her face, and there’s almost no silver left in its form. It’s retaking control. “I can’t hold him back! You have to go!”

  “Sam!” Syl’s lips are at my ear. “She sacrifices herself for us! Do not let it be in vain!”

  “Go! Now!” Astra’s voice carries such command that we take an involuntary step back.

  Mika squeezes my hand. I can barely hear her sobs over the storm as Syl pulls her away. They disappear into the portal, tugging me with them.

  Just before I pass through, I let go of her.

  “Sam! Noooo…!” Mika’s scream trails away into oblivion.

  “Sam! What are you… Sam, please! Go!” I can barely hear the AI’s cry.

  Out of time.

  The wall of light is right on top of us. How did it get here so fast? Astra’s form blurs further, almost gone. Her face disappears, doesn’t reassert itself again.

  Replacing it are two blazing embers, eyes that burn with fury.

  The predator, regaining control.

  I don’t know what I’m doing. I have only seconds.

  I reach. With my soul, and the power that lives inside me. Reach into the Shepherd. Searching. For her.

  Please, Astra. Please. Where are you?

  I dive through layers of hatred, searching for her. She can’t be gone already. Can’t be erased.

  There. Like a tiny star, she rests inside the Shepherd. A star that dims as I hold it in my mind. Her essence, dying to be reborn when the Citadel reboots.