Adan rolled his man onto his back to engage the other one and immediately regretted his decision. His opponent was too quick. He brushed past the assessor under Adan’s control and leapt on top of Adan’s own body before Adan could get his assessor to react. Adan sent his man diving in to help as his own arms strained to keep the attacker’s zoelith at bay. It dangled a finger’s breadth from Adan’s forehead. With his assessor, Adan tried catching his opponent off guard, aiming the zoelith at his enemy’s forehead, but the other assessor deflected the attack with his forearm. His opponent shifted his weight, sending Adan’s assessor crashing into the base of the chromium bed.
Despite the failure of the attack, it provided just enough of a distraction for Adan’s bioseine to squeeze his body out from under the attacker and reach for his zoelith. The two of them tossed and rolled across the floor in a jarring brawl, fighting for control of the device.
The attacking assessor was surprisingly quick, but every time he tried to deactivate Adan with the zoelith, Adan’s body would somehow evade it at the last possible moment with an uncanny agility Adan did not know he possessed.
Adan threw his assessor into the fray. He pressed wildly with his attacks, stabbing the zoelith whenever he thought he had a chance of connecting, but he always ended up hitting the floor or some other part of the man’s body.
Realizing he would probably never land the zoelith where it needed to go, Adan dropped it and focused all his efforts on wresting control of the one possessed by his enemy. As his opponent brought it up for another strike, Adan’s assessor wrapped both hands around the man’s wrist. Adan’s own body then sprang unexpectedly, catching the man’s other arm and twisting it behind his back.
The Developer’s assessor writhed furiously, attempting to get out of the two holds. Adan and his assessor got slammed and jerked around, but they held on.
In the sheer chaos, Adan’s assessor managed to somehow come up with one of the loose zoeliths. The device came smashing onto the enemy’s forehead and the body went limp. The fight was over at last.
Adan used the zoelith on his assessor and Adan watched the body fall with his own eyes. It felt almost strange to be back inside his own body after all the mental jumping around. He half wondered if he’d find the bioseine still in control, but everything felt normal except for the waves of weakness now washing over him. It took almost all his strength just to remain standing. Adan needed Gavin’s help now more than ever.
He checked the Annex schematic and saw two more assessors entering the prison sector and heading his way. He sent a mental command to close the door and scooped up one of the zoeliths. It felt so heavy, he wanted to let go, but instead he pressed it onto Gavin’s forehead, hoping he would have enough time. He held it there for what seemed like forever, but Gavin did not stir.
With each heartbeat the last bits of his strength seeped out from him. The incoming assessors were close to entering his hallway. Adan checked to see if he could gain control of either of them and found that their minds were still open; the Developers had not yet taken control. Perhaps they were waiting until they got to the door since the assessors could move faster under their own power.
But Adan didn’t want to give up on Gavin—not yet.
As the patrol moved into the hallway, he examined the zoelith to see if it had been damaged somehow in the fight. It was a bit dented, but from his connection to it he could tell that it was in perfect working condition.
His grip on the device began to slip. He tried grasping it tighter, but he had so little strength left. The fight had taken everything out of him and the solec was long gone.
The assessors raced down the hall. They were six doors down, then four, then two. At one door away, Gavin’s head moved and his eyes fluttered open. He stared blankly at Adan.
“Gavin, are you okay?” Adan asked breathlessly.
A puzzled look came over Gavin’s face. “Should I know you?” he asked, raising himself up on his elbows.
That was when the door slid open and the assessors burst into the room.
“There’s no time. Help me!” Adan hurled the thought into Gavin’s mind as the enemies charged in.
He didn’t wait to see how Gavin would react to his plea. He turned to face the assessors just as the first took a swipe at him with a zoelith. From the slight delays in the man’s movements, Adan could see he was now under the control of the Developers.
Adan ducked and went after the mind of the Dev controlling the lead assessor, hoping that somehow his own body, or better yet Gavin, would give him enough time to gain control of his opponent.
Finding it in almost no time, he weathered the vertigo inside the Dev’s thoughts, searching for the consciousness of the assessor in front of him. But this mind was different as well. Nothing moved; everything was congealed into enormous blocks of information, opaque and inscrutable and just as confusing as the swirling, whirring minds of the others. Adan had to touch his thoughts to the large, mental structures before they became transparent enough for him to see what was inside.
On a hunch, he blazed a path around the edge of the enormous mass of blocks. He emerged at a dense cube with a thousand fractured images of the assessor he sought. Passing into it, he gained control of the Dev’s link to him and found himself inside the assessor’s body.
Gavin was on top of both of the attackers, trying to deactivate the other assessor with the zoelith. Gavin was quicker than either of his opponents and once the man under Adan’s control ceased to be a threat, Gavin soon overcame the other man’s resistance. He swung the zoelith around and connected it with his forehead.
Adan held onto the mind of his own assessor long enough for Gavin to use the device on him as well.
In the midst of the struggle, Adan’s body had fallen to the floor. Back in control of himself, he tried to get up, but found it painfully difficult. His head exploded with pressure as he sat up. His legs wobbled so feebly they could not bear his own weight.
Gavin steadied him with an arm.
“Well, you look like you’re in bad shape, whoever you are,” Gavin said. “You can tell me about those assessors later, but right now you need some help. If you’ll open up your mind to me, I’ll see what I can do.”
Adan hesitated, recalling the embedded memory, but he was in such a pitiful state he really didn’t care what Gavin did to him at this point. He sat down on the edge of the bed and soon felt Gavin’s mind reaching into his thoughts. He sensed his presence, but couldn’t tell exactly what he was doing.
Gavin seemed to know what he was looking for, though. It didn’t take long before he pulled back out and Adan’s thoughts grew clear again.
“You have Developer access,” Gavin observed in obvious surprise, “I don’t know how you got it, but I used it to pull some patches down for you from the viand stream. Apparently you were suffering from the aftereffects of too much solec—a rather dangerous drug and not something I’d recommend in the future. You should start to feel better soon, though.”
“Thank you. I’m already beginning to feel the change.” Adan stood up, strength returning to his legs. “I think we’d better get out of here, though. More assessors are on the way.”
Gavin studied him worriedly. “You haven’t even told me who you are.”
“I’m Adan. We met each other out in the Vast.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t remember you. They must have wiped my memory.”
Adan stared back at him in dismay, his hopes of escaping Oasis vanishing in Gavin’s vacant expression.
Forty-One
An Exchange of Memories
“Do you remember anything about your time in the Vast?” Adan asked, doubting Gavin would help him if he no longer knew who he was.
“The Vast?” Gavin’s mind felt tense and brittle, like he was afraid to think too hard or too much. “Where is that? The Developers never venture outside Oasis. It’s far too dangerous.”
Adan forced himself to keep calm. There had to be a w
ay to restore Gavin’s knowledge.
“I met you out in the desert—what they call the Vast—and you told me about how you escaped this place. You even left some of your memories in an extractor. I could share some of them with you. It’s not much, but it’s all I’ve got.”
Gavin hesitated. His thoughts drifted in a maze of second guesses, and thirds, and fourths, and beyond.
“If I’m in this cell it’s because I’m slated for remapping. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“Not really,” Adan confessed. “But you’re probably the only person who can help me right now.”
Gavin sat down on the edge of the cart and drew a deep breath. “I don’t know about that, but I’ll do what I can,” he offered. “Go ahead and share what you know.”
Checking the schematic one last time before he transferred the memory, Adan saw that at least a dozen assessor patrols were heading in their direction. Every single member of the security force in the Annex had been dispatched to his location as far as he could tell. Thankfully, the Annex was a large complex. The closest group was made up of only two men and they had not yet reached the prison sector. Thought transfer was extremely fast, but sifting through the memories would be a lengthy process. He hoped Gavin would be able to find out what he needed in time.
A faraway look graced Gavin’s face as the memory transfer ended.
“These Welkin—they must have been something special for me to have risked my life for them,” he mused.
“Yes, they are. But how could you possibly have realized that already?” Adan asked.
Gavin could not have gone through all of the memories in such a short amount of time. And yet his mind was brimming with insights that weren’t there a moment before.
“I’m a memorant. We grasp things rather quickly.”
Adan wondered what else memorants were capable of that he didn’t know about.
“So what do we do now?” he asked.
“I don’t know. That depends on your disposition,” Gavin answered.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if I’m here, it means that I obviously failed to stop the Developers. The question now is, do you want to help save the Welkin or are you just trying to get out of here alive?”
The frankness of Gavin’s remarks startled Adan. Ever since he had entered the Annex, his only thought had been of survival. He had forgotten about what he originally came here to do.
“Without the virus, there’s no way to stop the Developers, is there?” Adan asked.
Gavin’s mind swirled enigmatically. “There might be. But I’ll need to share a memory of my own with you before I can tell you what it is.”
Adan needed little time to think things over. As desperate as he was to get out of this place, if there was anything he could do to protect the Welkin he had to try.
Once again, Adan opened himself up to Gavin. This time the memories and impressions came rushing in the opposite direction, flowing like translucent threads, wrapping themselves around his thoughts.
The impressions solidified into a scene from Gavin’s past. It was the last thing he remembered before waking up inside this cell. He was walking down one of the wide black paths towards the center of the city. All around him people dressed in grays and blues walked by without a glance, their eyes as glassy as the pavement. They streamed into the buildings by the hundreds in orderly fashion, forming dazed and lifeless lines, like walking corpses.
For no apparent reason, the crowds parted as Gavin passed through one of the many intersections. After that the memory cut off.
“That’s it?” Adan asked as his own thoughts returned. “Why did I need to see that?”
“Because that must be where I was captured. And you’ll need to recognize it when you see it.”
“You want me to go looking for it?”
“Yes. So you can find out who captured me,” Gavin replied.
“I don’t understand. What good will that do?”
“You’re not thinking like a Developer, Adan. In the memory you gave me, I claimed to have erased my presence from the esolace. But someone still detected me when I entered Oasis and that had to be a Developer. And you have to find out who it was.”
“But wait—how is that supposed to help the Welkin?”
“Because it will give us access to the miasma channel. That’s the key to everything. The memories you shared with me made it sound like some kind of meta-channel, something that could give us access over and beyond even what a Developer has. But the knowledge of how to use it has been erased from my memory. Whoever did that must know about it now, if they didn’t already. We have to find out how to use it again if we’re going to save the Welkin.”
“Will have me access to an unregistered channel. That’s what I’ve been using to get this far.”
“But even that channel will have limits. The miasma channel gives access to everything. It can even be used by a memorant outside of the esolace. It’s a sort of primitive backdoor into anyone’s mind. Whoever has access to that controls Oasis.”
“You found out about it from Darius last time. Do you think he’s the one who captured you?” Adan wondered.
“It’s possible, but it could have been any of the Developers. Whoever it is, you need to find them, or at least the memories they took from me.”
“You think they kept your memories?” It had never occurred to Adan that the Developers might actually keep the memories they erased. If Gavin’s memories had been preserved, could his own still exist somewhere as well?
“Yes, for further study. That’s standard procedure.”
“What about my memories? Do you think they still have those, too?” For the first time since he could remember, Adan’s hopes of finding his past seemed to be more than mere ephemeral wonderings. They took on actual weight and solidity.
“Most likely. But there’s no time to look for them now. You have to track down whoever has the miasma channel first. We can’t think about ourselves if we’re going to save the Welkin.”
Gavin’s warning melted Adan’s hopes before they could even fully form. But he was right. Saving the Welkin was more important than any one single life, even if that life was his own.
“What do I do when I find him?” Adan asked.
“You will have to knock him unconscious in order to get the information you need.”
“Isn’t there some other way?”
“No, the zoelith completely deactivates the bioseine. The only way to connect to another person’s mind without special equipment is if they’re unconscious.”
Adan wavered. “I don’t know. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
“You won’t have to hurt him—not badly anyway. Sometimes these things have to be done.” A note of impatience ran through the undercurrent of Gavin’s thoughts. And wondered how much of this was Gavin the Developer speaking or if Mendigo was still in there somewhere as well? It was probably the best way, but Adan had misjudged Gavin before.
“Look, you can explain the rest to me on the way,” Adan told him. “The assessors are coming. We’ve got to get out of here before they get any closer.”
“I can’t go with you. You’ll have to do it on your own,” Gavin replied.
“But why? I can’t just leave you here.” Adan had risked everything to save him and now Gavin wanted him to just walk away?
“Adan, I’ve been stripped of my access to the Dev channels. They can and will take control of my mind at any moment. The only reason they haven’t yet is because it takes a short time after reactivation for someone’s mental signature to propagate through the esolace. You have to deactivate me as soon as we finish this conversation. If I go with you, they’ll use me to get to you. I’m just like any other member of the Collective now. But the miasma channel is our equalizer. Find it and everything changes.” Despair and hope mingled together in Gavin’s thoughts. This was not an easy decision for him to make. He wanted to be free as much as Adan, but it just was
n’t possible.
“No.” The word hardened in Adan’s mind as he prepared his defense. He had gotten this far. He would find a way to get Gavin out as well. “I won’t leave you.”
“There will be no hope for any of us if you stay.”
“I won’t abandon you. I know what it’s like to have your memories taken.” Looking at the chromium cart Gavin was sitting on, he thought of all those long, torturous hours inside the Institute. Alone. Forgotten. Unknown.
“Adan, don’t you think I would go with you if I could? But if you’re going to save these people, it has to be this way. You have to go without me—now.”
“But I can’t,” Adan begged.
“It’s the only way.”
Adan couldn’t think clearly. One moment, what Gavin was saying made perfect sense, the next it seemed utterly foolish. All the while, the assessors were drawing closer.
“What about Numinae?” Adan asked, grasping at anything that might make Gavin come with him. “Do you think he would want you to come here just to die?”
“Isn’t that what he did with Illiud?” Gavin asked. “He sent him to Oasis to die, didn’t he? And without him, I probably never would have left. Maybe he sent me here just so I could help you.”
Gavin’s words ripped Adan’s heart in two. For all he knew Gavin was right. But then why did it feel so wrong?
“But if he created us,” Adan’s thoughts came tumbling out, “our lives must mean something, right? He wouldn’t want us to just throw them away. I’ve lost my past, my memories, everything. Whoever I was is gone forever. But I won’t let them take that from you if there’s anything I can do to stop it.”
At that moment, Adan didn’t care if the Developers sent the entire Collective streaming through the prison door. He was going to leave with Gavin or stay there and die defending him.
Adan could tell that his words had affected Gavin, but his response was not what he expected.
“Adan, I wish I could have known you better. You are an honorable man in a world that has forgotten what that word means. But I do not wish to be responsible for your death either. If I leave with you, neither of us will survive. If either of us are to have a chance, you must go alone.”
The Chronotrace Sequence- The Complete Box Set Page 30