“Ohmygosh,” he said, cheerfully slurping down the thick green liquid energy drink on the rocks. “The Neon Octopus Overlord herself. Soda. Right here in the room.”
“Soda, this is Chip. He’s my IT guy, and he’s a fanboy of yours.”
“Hi, Chip,” Soda said. Then she crossed to Ari and fixed her with a cross stare. “You didn’t say why you called me here. Why am I here?”
“Oh, it won’t take long, your majesty,” Chip said. “We just need your password for the Secure Information System.”
“You don’t have to call her majesty, Chip.”
Soda started to deep breathe. “First of all, I kind of like majesty. And second, Ari, are you out of your mind? You called me here just for a password you could have gotten over the phone? I was sure there was more to your plan.”
“We can’t share information like that over the phone,” Ari squeaked. “It wouldn’t be secure.”
Soda crossed the several feet between her and Ari in a flourish of tentacles and wrapped one around Ari’s neck, giving her flashbacks. “Listen, sweetie. Let’s get one thing straight. Secure went out the window when we got invaded, okay? Now we’re just trying to make it to tomorrow.” She tightened the tentacle a little.
Ari could still breathe, but she was getting nervous.
“So you and your stupid rule following mindset will have to adjust. Can you do that?”
“Hey,” Ari answered, “at least I’m not wearing yoga pants. Ew.” Maybe Soda was cutting off a little of her airway after all. The details around her came into sharper focus. It’s the little things you notice when stressed. For instance, Soda was a pretty neon blue color today. Ari very much liked that color. When Soda was that color, sometimes Ari almost forgot what a pain in the ass she could be. This was not one of those times.
Kirian jumped in between them. She had a dagger poised at Soda’s soft underbelly. “No tentacles, Soda. Use your words. You know Ari’s just trying to help.”
Soda released Ari. The tension in the room eased.
Ari gulped in a few deep breaths. “If you’d just type in your password please, that would be great. Then I could get on with trying to save this galaxy.”
Soda slithered forward to the keyboard. “Sorry, Ari. The last couple of days have been hard for all of us. And at least somebody around here is doing something productive.” She tapped in the password and hit enter. The system came online. Soda looked around. “I get why I’m here, and why your It guy is here. I even get why your she-ra bodyguard is here. But him I don’t get. Why is he here?” Soda frowned at Ray.
“I’m here because the dice say we’re all toast unless Ari puts on the magic ring I gave her.”
“A magic ring? Seriously?” Soda asked.
“Thank you,” Ari said, throwing up her hands. “Somebody else gets how stupid that idea is.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Soda said. “Magic rings are incredibly rare and badass. If you don’t want it, I’ll take it. It would probably look better on me, anyway.”
Ray jumped in. “If anybody other than Ari could have used it, it would have been mine. Only a Staar can use it, Soda.”
“Pity,” Soda said. She turned her attention to Ray. “Are there any other magical trinkets you’ve got up your sleeve, Ray?” Her tentacles threatened him. “If I find out you’re holding out on me, then so help me.”
Ray took a few steps back.
“I said knock it off,” Kirian said. Her sword was out again. She leaned in to whisper to Soda’s bulbous head. “This is your last warning, Soda. I won’t speak next time you threaten somebody in this room. Next time, you lose a tentacle.”
Ari watched the scene unfold. Of course she wanted power. And to stay alive. And to save the galaxy. She had hoped that her newly awakened Staar magic would help. That she wouldn’t have to take a chance on a mythical magic ring that had the power to transform her completely. She didn’t want to lose herself completely in the process. “Look,” she said to Soda. “You don’t know what you’re asking for. Ray said that the ring would change me. I put it on once, and trust me, it’s not something you can just use and then throw away.”
Soda looked at Ari. “So it changes you. What’s the big deal? Life is change. And besides, you could stand to be a scooch less annoying.”
So much for Soda understanding what she was going through. Ari took her seat in front of the computer monitor so she could get down to the research now that she had the password. “Settle down, you guys. Just give me a few minutes to figure out what the deal is with these crazy Hitherware people.” She tapped in the search parameters and squirmed into the office chair to get more comfortable. “You guys just carry on or whatever.”
“Hitherware!” Soda announced. “I remembered something about the stories I was told on the intergalactic crossings. They said the Hitherware people had the ability to travel from one dimension to another.”
Ari stopped what she was doing. She swiveled around in her chair to face Soda. “Are you saying we’re up against a force armed with technology we’ve never even approached?” She got a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Soda shrugged. “I told you. What I’ve heard is nonsense, nothing but ghost stories told by crazy people on long interstellar space flights. Far space loonies used to tell of a Staar-killing, evil wraith capable of unfathomable destruction.” Soda paused when everybody turned to her at the same time. “Oh, now I see it. Maybe there’s something to those old stories. I don’t remember any of the details. It was too long ago, and I was sure it was all just a bunch of hokum. Anyway, that’s what I heard. Although space pirate stories aren’t known to be the most reliable sources of knowledge in the galaxy.
“You think?” Ari shot back. She swiveled her chair back to the monitor and typed even faster.
Ray made his way over to the pastries. “Wait a minute,” he said, grabbing the blueberry one. “You said interdimensional, right? Because that does not bode well for that crack in the middle of Arcturis Square.”
“What’s he talking about?” Soda asked. From how her face was bunched up around her beak, she was clearly spooked.
Ray pointed out the window.
Soda slithered over to the window and looked out. “Uh-oh.”
“Have you seen that sort of thing before?” Ray asked.
“Have I seen a giant crack in the sky and in the fabric of space and time in the middle of a capital city? No. I haven’t. I’m guessing none of you guys have either, and that it’s not good. Especially with my whole interdimensional baddies theory.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen it,” Kirian said, not bothering to look. “I already know it’s not good.”
Chip crossed the room and gasped at the crack in the sky. “Do you really think we’re about to be attacked by Interdimensional creatures? Because honestly, I figured that kind of thing only happened in video games.”
Soda shook her head. “Unfortunately, kid, I think we’re about to find out.”
5
The conference room door flew open. Everybody took a step backward. Kirian and Ray pulled out weapons. Ari spun around again.
They put the weapons away when they saw who had entered. It wasn’t an alien invader; it was just Fleek.
Ari’s heart was still racing. “Oh my gosh, Fleek. Please never jump scare me like that again, okay?”
Fleek ignored the jump scare comment. He looked terrible. His eyes were bloodshot, his Mohawk was a cheap, inky blue color, and his clothes were dirty.
“What the hell happened to you?” Ari asked.
Fleek’s eyes searched the room. “Okay, who turned off the fractals?”
Unless Ari was imagining things, Fleek’s eye was twitching. “What happened to you, Fleek?”
“I told you, somebody turned off the fractals.”
Ari exchanged worried glances with the other Overlord candidates. “Fleek, we saw you less than twenty-four hours ago and you were fine. What’s really going on?”
Fleek seemed to notice all the sideways glances in his direction. Which was odd, because for as long as she’d known him, he had never given a damn what other people thought. He found an empty chair at the table and threw himself into it. “I told you. The fractals are calling to me. They’re trying to contact me, I can feel it. But they can’t get through.”
“How?” Ari asked out of curiosity more than anything. “How can you tell? Oh my gosh, what is that smell, Fleek?”
Fleek just sat back and closed his eyes. “It’s your turn to tell her, Kirian.”
“Oh for stars sake, Ari, stop judging people,” Kirian said. “Wait. That’s just what Ray said, that the dice were having trouble getting through.”
“Yes, Fleek,” Ari said, ignoring the judging comments. “According to you and Ray, there is a problem with magic getting through. Maybe it’s some kind of blockade. It’s affected the internet too, everything except simple calls and texts. It’s why we needed this system up and running.” The moment she said it, she wondered if that might be the reason she was having trouble with her Staar magic. Or it could be she simply did not understand what Staar magic was or how to use it before Fleek showed up with three-dimensional fractals calling her Spectra.
She decided to him to see how judgy he could be. Maybe she could turn the tables on him. “And the only idea we’ve come up with so far is for me to take the portal back to Vega and get a magic ring of power that Ray gave me last Christmas.”
Fleek stood up. “Yes! And this ring of power will help us turn all the magic back on, right?”
Damn, thought Ari. Regular Fleek is back and not judging. That was fast. “We don’t know for sure, Fleek. We don’t know if it’ll work.”
“Where’d you get the idea from in the first place?” he asked, losing none of his enthusiasm. It was annoying.
“Ray’s magic dice,” Soda said.
Fleek clapped his hands together. “Okay, let’s do this. Vega here we come.”
Ari squinted at him. “Just for the sake of pointing it out, you realize that we’re trying to stave off an actual apocalypse here, not trying to get you your next fix.”
“Hey,” Fleek said testily. “My fractals saved your ass. They saved all of you, but specifically you, Spectra.”
“Don’t call me that,” Ari said.
“Why not? It’s your Staar name?”
“Says who?”
“The fractals. What about your magic from before? The Staar stuff? The Spectra stuff? You did impossible things. That has to count for something.”
Ari stopped and looked at him. “Yes, I was able to remove the alien invaders’ force fields with a wave of my hand. But I don’t even know how that even worked.”
“The point is it helped. And it was awesome,” Fleek continued. “Why can’t you believe in your own magic?”
Ari didn’t have an answer for him. It was complicated. Because it’s not real, because there’s no time. Because she couldn’t just believe everything as he did. She sighed. “It helped, that’s true. But I can’t count on it. Fleek, I can’t stop what’s coming.”
Fleek didn’t answer. He got up to look out of the window. “Um, guys. Am I the only one who sees the crack in the sky and the portals? Aren’t those things what the chessmen came through last time?”
Soda, who had left the window to sit down, went back to check. She cleared her throat. “He’s right. Those weren’t there a minute ago. If you idiots are done arguing, it looks like we’re almost out of time.”
Ray took a few steps forward until his nose was in front of the glass. He whistled in the most annoying way possible. “That can’t be good.”
Ari was determined not to look. She had work to do. “Stop interrupting me. I have to figure out what to do. As usual. I want something real, Ray. We have to concentrate on the facts, not our hopeful imaginary magical friends. We’ve gotten out of other scrapes before. We’re going to fix this. And we’re going to do it the same way we always do.” She said it, but she didn’t mean it. Not at all. She had a gnawing sense in the pit of her stomach since before the crack in the sky. A feeling that there might not be a way out of this one. She wasn’t giving up hope, but she also didn’t want to pin the lives of everyone in the galaxy on a false one like the ring.
“I have bad news, boys and girls,” Soda said. “We’re about to have company. The portals are back, and there are weird looking aliens streaming through them. You took care of those portals last time, Ari, with your magic, remember?”
Ari swiveled back to the computer and started frantically typing. “Forget the magic. We’re vastly outmatched. My little hand waving will not get it done this time.”
“What’s your deal with magic, anyway, Ari?” Fleek asked. “What will it hurt to get the ring and put it on?”
Ari slammed her fist on the desk. “No magic, Fleek. It’s not who I am. I don’t believe in it. I’ll leave the magic to you and your dice, and Fleek and his fractals. I’m not like you guys. And stop interrupting me,” Ari said. “Is it so much to ask to not be interrupted when I only have one chance and a few moments to save all of our lives? Oh wait, I found something. It says here that the Staar bounty hunters have been after this guy for years. Pops into and out of civilized galaxies and…” She continued to read silently as the classified file got dark and violent fast.
“What do they do?” Chip asked.
Ari swallowed. There was no way she could tell him what she had just read. He didn’t deserve what was coming. Nobody did. Keep searching, Ari, she told herself. Something here has to help.
“They breached the front doors,” Soda said, looking out of her vantage point at the window. “We’re going to have company.”
“I hope you found answers, Ari, because we’re just about out of time,” Ray said. “What are we going to do? We’re trapped in here. It will not take them long to find us.”
“Come on, people. Just give me a few minutes.” Ari continued searching for information. The head enforcer of Hitherware was known as ‘The Devourer’. There wasn’t a lot of information on The Devourer, but Hitherware started as a legitimate company that went rogue around half a century ago. That was right around the time the Staar bounty hunters stopped looking for Soda. That made Ari a little happy. If everything went sideways and they all died a horrible death at the hands of interdimensional baddies, then at least some of the blame could be placed on Soda. The only other thing she discovered was that Soda was right, and the group was known to travel illegally and interdimensionally, but nobody had been able to figure out how they were pulling it off.
Ari ignored the growing panic sweeping the room behind her and kept searching. Ah, here it is. Hitherware. She hoped she could find something useful and fast. While she searched, she tried to take stock of the situation. On her side, she had friends, an alliance of powerful Overlord candidates, new inherited magic she didn’t understand, and a sense for the first time in her life she was where she belonged. Unhelpful.
Working against her was the fact that an illegal and interdimensional alien extinction wave was on its way to wipe out the entire galaxy. Also not great.
For the first time, she missed the odd voices in her head. The ones that had saved her life in several past incidences. Ray said they were voices of Staars, speaking to her, since she herself was part-Staar, a one in a million chance that couldn’t be a coincidence. Hey, Staars, now would be a good time to start speaking to me again. With that thought, she closed her eyes and concentrated for a moment. She didn’t believe in magic per se, but she now knew she had power she didn’t know about before because of her heritage. And she believed in the voices in her head. Those were real and had saved her life. She waited. Nothing. Crap.
A beep from the Overlord Secure Information System caused her to open her eyes. It was a new message. A new message! That meant that something made it through the blockade. She scanned it. The message said stated some civilizations outside of Arcturis saw our request for help. They said
their units would arrive shortly. “Guys! We got a message. It says help is on the way!”
The group celebrated.
“Wait,” Ari said, rereading the message.
“What is it?” Chip asked. “I know that tone of voice. That’s not a good tone of voice.”
Ari frowned at the message and then turned to face the others. “I don’t understand, the time stamp on the message is from ten hours ago. Why did it just now get through? And if the troops who were supposed to help us were arriving shortly ten hours ago, then where are they?”
Soda peered down through the window. “If they’re here, I can’t see them. I can’t see anything except the creepy looking, black-cloaked aliens streaming through the portals.”
Screams rang out in the hotel.
Kirian went to the conference room door. She held up a hand to quiet everybody. Then she opened the door and listened. “They’re coming. It’s time to go.”
“But Froggy and Floyd aren’t here yet. And I’m not finished,” Ari hissed.
“You are now,” Kirian answered, giving her a severe look. “Let’s go, people. I scouted a secret way out on my way up here earlier today.” She listened again. “They’re close. We have to go. Fast and quiet.”
Ari relented, got up and went to the door. Kirian was right, she could hear more screaming and movement downstairs.
Kirian crept down the hallway past a couple more conference rooms and a bathroom. She kept going until she reached the exit to a set of utility stairs. She paused with her hand on the handle. “Okay,” Kirian whispered to Ari. “If we get separated, I want you to go one floor down and take the door on the right. That hallway will take you to a fire escape out of the building and into the forest behind the buildings.”
Ari nodded.
Kirian placed her head sideways on the door for a moment to listen. Ari couldn’t believe how quiet the group behind her and Kirian had gotten. Screams from elsewhere in the building do that.
Finally, Kirian silently opened the door. Seeing the movement, Ari went forward to follow Kirian through the doorway. Only she bumped into Kirian, who hadn’t gone through.
Overlord Alliance: Book 2 of the Neon Octopus Ally Series Page 3