Another thing was clear. Will was going to go through with his plan whether Adan helped him or not. What was Adan going to do if he left without him? Sit around repairing the walls until he came back? And Will had saved him from the Institute. He couldn’t forget that. Surely that had to count for something.
And so, with memories from the battle in the Basin racing through his mind, and the screams of the dying Welkin echoing inside his thoughts, he made his decision quietly, by himself, long after darkness had descended upon the compound.
Nineteen
Initialization
Adan stifled a groan. He was sore all over. He could tell that if he made any type of movement it would only bring more pain. He thought about trying to go back to sleep, but then noticed that Will wasn’t in the shelter. Easing into a sitting position, he forced himself to rub his arms and legs in order to work out some of the soreness. As expected, it brought on even more pain at first, but after a while he felt a little better.
“Will?” he called out. The winds sounded calm outside, but there was no answer.
Adan nudged the shelter door open and stepped outside. Will was nowhere in sight. He wandered over to the compound door and pulled it open wide enough to stick his head out.
“Will!” he shouted. He could see nothing but gently shifting sands. Should he head out to look for him? No, he would certainly get lost if he went very far.
He shut the door and returned to the shelter. He started sifting through crates to see if he could find where Will kept his garrick and kaff. If Will had gone out into the wastes, he would have taken them with him, but if they were still there, that would mean something must have happened to him. Had the Waymen come back for him during the night? Why else would he leave the compound without telling him?
The desert gear wasn’t in its usual place, but somehow that didn’t calm Adan’s fears. He shoved aside some of the equipment and rifled through more crates to see if Will had tucked it away somewhere else. In his hurry, he accidentally knocked over a large stack of equipment, sending metal gadgets clattering all over the floor.
He was just beginning to pick up the mess when he heard sounds from outside. He rushed outside to find Will closing the compound door behind him. His kaff was drenched in sweat and he was holding some sort of metal tool in his hand.
“There you are,” Adan exclaimed. “Where were you?”
“Oh, one of the proximity sensors went off so I went to check it out. It turns out it was just malfunctioning. I thought you could use the sleep so I didn’t wake you.”
Will stuck his tool into the sand and began to peel off his desert gear. “I heard some crashing sounds in there. Is everything all right?”
“I made a bit of a mess, but don’t worry, I’ll clean it up,” Adan said, feeling foolish he’d panicked so easily. “Is that the tool you used to fix it?” Adan asked, pointing at the shaft in the ground.
“No, that’s just a shovel,” Will said with a smirk. “I had to dig up the sensor before I could fix it.” He finished rolling up his gear and headed into the shelter.
Adan followed. The room was cramped with both of them inside, but he didn’t want Will to have to clean up the mess he’d made.
“Sorry about this.” Adan picked up a few pieces off the floor while Will stowed his gear.
“Don’t worry about it. We have more important things to do.” Will went back outside, motioning for Adan to come along. “I need to talk to you,” he said. His eyes softened uncharacteristically. “I was wondering if you’ve given any thought to what we talked about yesterday, about Oasis.”
Though he knew what his decision would be, Adan felt strangely reluctant to answer. “I have,” he began, but hesitated.
“And?”
“And I’d like…well, I think I’ve decided to…to go with you—to Oasis—to do whatever it is—”
Will didn’t let him finish, instead grabbing him by both shoulders. “I knew it! I knew you’d make the right decision.” He shook him excitedly and stepped back. “Look, I know it wasn’t easy. I was thinking about what it must be like for you this morning—having to trust someone you’ve only just met. I don’t know what I’d do if I was in your place. But you’re a better person than I am.”
“That’s not true,” Adan said.
Will gave him that intense look. There was real caring in his eyes. “Yes it is, compa. One day you’ll see that.”
Will re-emerged from the shelter wearing the extractor around his neck. He also was carrying a thin, rectangular case. Adan’s muscles tensed, like they did right before the micro-alembic treatments. Over the past couple of days he had all but forgotten about the bioseine and the Institute, but now those memories came back fresh and raw.
It was time to initialize his bioseine.
Will said it was crucial that it be done before they returned to Oasis, but Adan was still anxious about the repercussions. Part of him feared he might be crossing a line he would later regret.
“Do we really have to do this now?” he asked.
“Well, first I’ve got to check and make sure your body can handle it,” Will said, setting the case down on top of a barrel.
Will pulled out a metal rod from inside his tunic. It emitted strange patterns of orange light onto Adan’s clothes and skin. It was the same sort of rod one of the handlers had used on him in the Institute. Will studied the patterns with a tense brow and narrowed eyes. He tapped the rod on the side of the barrel and the light flickered for a moment and came back on, this time pale green.
He slipped the rod back into his tunic. “Well, considering everything you’ve been through, you’re further along than I thought you would be. I think you can handle it.”
“I won’t be in any danger if we proceed with the initialization, will I?”
“You should be fine. So are you ready?” Will rested his hand on the black case, waiting for permission to open it.
Adan took a deep breath, remembering the Basin, and remembering Will’s words. How can you just stay here and do nothing about it? He gave a tentative nod. “Okay.”
“Great. I’ll set up the equipment and get started.”
Adan’s palms broke out in a sweat as he watched Will unpack the contents of the case on top of the barrel. He didn’t like the fact that he had to be tested before undergoing the procedure.
Will pulled out three black containers. One housed a yellow crystal encased in thick plastic; another held a shiny sphere with stubs on either end; and the last contained a small concave disc made of highly reflective metal.
“I’ll explain how this all works in a bit,” Will said.
Adan waited, trying to steady his nerves as Will placed the crystal on the ground at Adan’s feet. He pressed in the stubs on the silvery sphere and it began to float in the air above the crystal, giving off strange, bluish tendrils of light. At first it startled him, but he soon saw that it posed no real threat.
“This is an energy distribution node,” Will explained. “It’s pulling power from the crystal to the other devices. Now sit down.” Will helped Adan ease down onto a pile of sacks.
“I hope these aren’t body bags,” Adan said, shifting on the canvas material.
Will let out a short laugh, but Adan remained as tense as ever. “Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing, compa. This will be over before you know it—literally.”
“So you’ve done this before?” Adan asked.
“Well, to be honest, no. But it doesn’t matter. I may as well have done it a thousand times. I know exactly what I need to do.”
“You’ve never done this? What if you mess up?” Adan tried rubbing the sweat off his palms onto his tunic. It was no use, they stayed wet as ever.
“Nothing will happen to you. I promise.” Will gave him that same confident look he always seemed to when he was put to the test.
Adan swallowed hard and leaned back onto the sacks, bracing himself.
“Now the first thing I’m going to do is a
ttach this to your forehead.” Will pressed the silvery disc against his skin. The frigid metal caused Adan to flinch as it made contact. When Will withdrew his hand, the disc held fast.
“This entire setup is pretty makeshift,” Will said.
He’s not exactly inspiring confidence here, Adan thought.
Will set the rest of the equipment down at Adan’s feet. “We don’t have access to the real esolace or the energy-mesh which powers it. So in order to initialize your bioseine, we need to replicate those two things. The device on your forehead is a modified zoelith. It will regulate the process for us, taking your zoetic pulse down for a time while I supply your bioseine with the authentication routines from the extractor.”
Will double-checked the disc on Adan’s forehead to make sure it was secure.
“What do you mean, my ‘zoetic pulse’?”
“That’s the term we use for the process which sustains a person’s life. I’ll need to shut it down for a brief time while—”
“You’re shutting down what? Won’t that kill me?” Adan sat up, terrified.
Will touched him gently on the shoulder.
“No, no. Now calm down,” he said. “Killing a person is a permanent thing so no, I am definitely not killing you. I know it sounds strange, but that’s what a zoelith does. Maybe a better way to think of it would be regulating your life processes. It will bring them down, but only for a very short time and then they’ll come right back up the moment the initialization is complete.” He produced the metallic rod he had used earlier. “I’ll be monitoring you with this activator the whole time. It’s no more dangerous than turning a lumin off and on again. You’ll just feel like you went to sleep.”
Will’s tone was no different than when he had explained how to operate the shifter, but Adan found it hard to imagine that life could be stopped and started so casually. His fate now seemed dependent on the small device attached to his forehead.
“Isn’t there some other way? I still don’t understand why I even need this.”
“Remember what I told you yesterday,” Will said calmly. “I don’t want to force you to do this. I know you’re scared, but if you’re going to go with me to Oasis, you have to go through with this.”
Adan wanted to trust him, but again, he wavered. It was not just the possibility of death that frightened him, but the possibility that the initialization might actually work. Was this going to turn him into someone else, someone like the indifferent, glassy-eyed scientists?
“You won’t feel a thing.” Will assured him. “Just remember why you’re doing this.”
The screams of that first Welkin plummeting to his death rang in Adan’s ears. It was those screams that had pushed him to make his final decision last night.
“All right,” he said, and the moment the words left his lips, a tremendous sense of relief washed over him. Things were as uncertain as they had ever been. Perhaps they always would be. But he had made his decision.
Adan lowered himself back down onto the sacks. Will touched the metal disc and the next moment everything was gone.
Twenty
Reverie
When Adan opened his eyes, he was sitting in the same position he had been in before he blacked out. Will’s hand even seemed to be in the exact same place, only this time he was removing the disc from his forehead.
“Welcome back, compa,” Will said with a satisfied smile.
“Is it really over? I don’t feel any different,” Adan said, touching his forehead.
“It went perfectly. The zoelith and the extractor do all the work, really.” Will began packing the implements back into the case while Adan stood. He was still waiting for when he would start to notice the change.
“So what’s supposed to happen now?” Adan asked.
Will slipped the extractor off his neck and held it out to him. “Try this on,” he said.
“What am I supposed to do with it?”
Will helped Adan slip it around his neck. Unlike the zoelith, the metal felt slightly warm where it touched the back of his neck.
“Open it,” Will told him.
“What? It’s solid metal. Does it twist or something?”
“That’s not what I meant. You have to use your bioseine. It’s designed to function as an extension of your own mind. Just think about the extractor and look into it with your thoughts.”
Adan ran his fingers along the smooth metal, trying to decipher what Will was telling him. “I don’t know what you mean. How am I supposed to do that?”
“Think—don’t ‘do’. If it helps, ask yourself a question, like: ‘How do I open the extractor?’ Your mind will do the rest for you.”
“Okay, I’ll try.” Adan began to think about the extractor’s appearance—the silvery sheen and perfect smoothness of the metal. He thought about the way it felt around his neck, rigid and dense. He remembered Will had told him once that it contained some sort of information and that much of what he had learned about Oasis, he had discovered through this device. But Adan couldn’t see how thinking about a piece of equipment was going to unlock it.
But the more he thought about the extractor, the more he became aware that there was a new presence inside the compound. It was like feeling that someone was standing right behind him but not being able to see or hear them. He looked to his left and right, but there was nothing there. But though he couldn’t see anything, he could feel something there. He closed his eyes and concentrated on that feeling, to see if he could learn anything about it.
What followed for Adan was more akin to experiences he had heretofore only thought possible in dreams. It was as if he were thinking about something and then it winked into existence. But unlike his dreams, this new thing felt more solid, more real; there was a permanence to it, like it had been there all along.
This presence was something separate from him and yet a part of him at the same time. And Adan sensed he could take control of it if he wanted to or simply ignore it and it would fade from his awareness. He wasn’t sure how he knew all of this. There was no one explaining it to him or telling him these things. The knowledge came like sudden insights which had just now occurred to him.
By now he understood that the thing which he perceived was in fact the extractor. And yet it was no longer merely a physical object to him; it was a part of his thoughts. He felt that he understood it now as thoroughly as if he had created the device himself. In an instant he realized all that it was capable of and the vast amounts of knowledge contained within. It was not information waiting to be learned so much as absorbed into his own mind. A sudden sense of euphoria washed over him as he considered the possibilities.
“So what do you think?” Will’s thought somehow popped into his mind, no different than his own inner voice. It had no sound. It didn’t even come to him in words per se, but he could put it in words if he wanted to.
“How did you do that?” Adan asked, realizing as he did so that he had answered his own question. Projecting his thoughts was as effortless as carrying on a conversation with himself. Like the extractor, the presence of Will’s mind felt no different than his own.
This new manner of thinking was marvelous to experience. He no longer had to worry about struggling to find the right words to communicate what he wanted to say, or worrying whether or not he might be misunderstood. The barrier between thoughts and words had disappeared.
“You’re getting it now. Why don’t you try to access the extractor, like I said,” Will’s thoughts blended into his own. He could tell that Will was aware of everything he was thinking. But instead of feeling invasive, it felt freeing. Neither one had to guess what the other was trying to say. They could exchange information in ways Adan had never thought possible.
He focused his attention on the extractor again and the knowledge inside it came rushing at him. It was like impressions or images, but they were more definite than that. It came in words and pictures and feelings all at once. He skimmed through these thought-percep
tions with incredible speed, grasping each bit of information as it passed.
He was merely getting a broad overview of what was inside at this point. He soon saw that if he wanted more detail, he could narrow his focus.
“You need to ask the right questions to find what you want,” Will coached him.
“What about Oasis?” was the first thing that came to mind. “What’s it like?” The question had barely entered his thoughts when a city flashed into existence before him.
It appeared small at first, but grew larger and larger the longer he focused on it until it stretched before him in every direction. There were thousands of buildings, each made of the same, silver gray metal. Tiny grooves ran along their length. The buildings grew progressively taller and taller the further in he went. He rushed past all of them. He had a specific destination in mind: the Institute. The moment he thought of it, he knew exactly where it was.
At the center of the city, the rising buildings suddenly gave way to open space. It looked like a giant core had been carved out of the circular city. There were buildings in the middle, but they were only a single story high and made of white, acrecian stone, not metal. He flew through the air towards the largest of these, a sprawling structure with hundreds of large panels made of yellow bismine crystal embedded into its roof.
Though the Institute, like the buildings around it, consisted of only a single story above ground, underground it had many more. His mental presence passed through the outer walls and drilled down into it, careening through floor after floor. There were no limits as to where he could go or how long it would take to get there. Everything happened at the speed of thought.
He flew freely through the hallways of the Institute as he had never been able to do when he was there before, until he found himself back where everything began—in the small room where he had awakened that first day. He saw the bed, the blank and sterile walls lit by pitiless light.
The Chronotrace Sequence- The Complete Box Set Page 14