“It didn’t please Lord Tunderek at all to lose so many of his insiders. I had never seen him lash out in anger before, because he’s so calculating. Tong-Chang was safe, but the next target was chosen to replace her.”
“Are you referring to Doctor Valkoi’ves Rakendaya?” said Shingu.
“Not exactly, but you have the right time and place. I was supposed to grab the boy who was there, whose given name was also Valkoi’ves. He is a prodigy at all things technological. He would have been converted like so many among the Hulda’fi, but he would have been the one to help another man working for them to stabilize wormholes. The doctor that I took ended up being a good man for the job, which is how and why the Hulda’fi can get around with stable wormholes now.”
“Stable wormholes? That sounds like fantasy. Our best attempts thus far to make it a reality resulted in the delta warp drive and communication relays.”
“I’m aware. None of us thought such a thing was possible until a man from Earth appeared on Dereskoo by serendipity. He had been testing a machine he’d built when it sucked him through the galaxy and into the frozen wastes outside of the underground facility. We interrogated him for three days, running a check on his background in case he was a liar or a spy sent from Lutoume. The one human girl among us knew nothing of him either. His name is Doctor Ethan Wilde.”
The sound of another girl choking and coughing off-screen was then picked up by the camera. She said, “Sorry,” her voice faint.
“An Earth Human managed this? Is this facility you spoke of where the scientists worked to perfect wormholes?” said Shungdi.
“No, they worked in the manor basement. The facility that I spoke of is an evil place. When we girls develop suspicious symptoms we are sent there for the laeknar to run tests and extract a deep tissue sample. That was the lie. We were sick for days after it every time. I should point out, at this time, that the Hulda’fi who stay male are told to have their balls tied or removed. So far as I know, they all obey at the threat of death. Lord Tunderek, however, only claimed to be tied.” She parted her shirt and pants that she was wearing, and revealed two circular scars. “What they extracted from us was our unborn children.”
“Why would they do a thing like this?”
“The sisters who work in that lab use our samples to make genesis nectar. It is nowhere near the volume that is was made two and a half centuries ago, when Aelfs and Ginserei managed to wipe out half of our populations for the sake of this miracle medicine, but I found in my research that an average of fifty packets of genesis nectar are made every month.”
“Fifty!”
“And it gets worse. The same lab workers use the nectar to restore limbs on the injured Hulda’fi, yes, but they also use it on boys who are convinced by the Lord and Lady to become girls. I know there are transgenders in the galaxy who have a legitimate need for such a procedure, but these boys are driven by desire to please Lord and Lady Tunderek. I don’t know how many of them, if any, remember living as boys. Even still it gets worse. The vast majority of the genesis nectar is then combined with a species of seaweed that is harvested or synthesized, as well as numerous other chemicals, to make a nameless drug. We referred to it as a taste of divinity, because Lady Tunderek smokes it all of the time. When teams are given missions of terror, they’re blessed to wear beaks over their masks to inhale it. It’s what messes with our minds and allows us to teleport at will.
“When I learned of this, when I learned that the Lord and Lady were unhappy with me, I decided to sabotage the facility and frame one of the sisters for the incident. The cameras at the facility saw me helping out around the place. It was my attempt to salvage my favor.”
“Helping out how?” said Shungdi.
“Sometimes I cleaned equipment. Sometimes I filled out paperwork. On my last day before the sabotage took effect, and I was called on assignment here on Elysium IX, I replaced the bookkeeper. She was our sole human from Lutoume that I had mentioned earlier. Before that day came she had been called upon to suicide bomb the second ring of Natt Halvaegs.”
“The human behind the incident of Natt Halvaegs was one of the Hulda’fi? Are you sure?”
“If I had the Lord and Lady’s records in front of me, I could tell you more than that. I could tell you every incident, every plot they stood behind. If you wanted to know why there was rising tension between the four races, only for the Hulda’fi to strike when it did, it’s because the Hulda’fi were behind it all in a calculated effort. Lord Tunderek planned it all.”
Il’lyse buried her head in her hands and sobbed. She said, “I can’t take any more of this. All I wanted was a week of fun, and what I got was a lifetime of asking myself what I did, or what memories of mine are even real.”
Seconds later Zoi’ne appeared on the right side of the camera. She put a hand on her sister’s left shoulder while Tong-Chang put another on Il’lyse’s right.
“I think that’s enough for now,” said Tong-Chang.
“Agreed,” said Zoey, “but I have something to add to this recording since I have some information pertinent to what all has been said. That’s alright, right?”
“This is unusual,” Shungdi said, “but we can allow it.”
Tong-Chang gave up her seat and stood behind the sisters as Zoey sat down on it. Zoey had in her hands a personal computer.
“Hello,” she said, “my name is Zoi’ne Thalassas, known in certain circles as the Lady of Earth. Over the past couple months I have looked up as much information as I could about the Hulda’fi, the Fjorfolias, and the name Tunderek since Soror Valide once said it to me. The article I found from when Admiral Chan-Yeol Fjorfolia was promoted suggests that his wife is more ageless than any Aelf. In the previous recording, Il’lyse mentioned that Lady Tunderek was older than the alliance.
“However, I found one article with that name, and it referred to a secret facility that was founded and shut down at the end of the War of the Galactic Expanse. It was home of the Tunderek Program and place where it was believed that super soldiers were being engineered. However, all the scientists had been killed in a fire, and every test subject was believed dead. Rumors by the time of this article were that someone might have survived and gotten away, but there wasn’t sufficient evidence to support them. If what I found is true, and if Lady Fe’remene Fjorfolia is indeed this sole survivor, then it would place her more than a century past Aelfen life expectancy, and yet she appears to be without age, in addition to remorse.
“All of this is unsettling, but I believe, also, that there is a bigger game they are playing than what we can see. We have no way of knowing until it is too late. That is all. Thank you.”
* * *
The sleeping arrangement made for five people was not at all what Il’lyse was used to. She had lost track of the times in which she slept with no less than two other people at once, or the amount of noise she could hear both during and afterward. She had the couch to herself, which was plush and long compared to the last one she rested on. The condo was quiet.
Somewhere outside of the condo, the embassy guard camped where they could keep watch on the residence, the ways up or down the building, and the medical camp across the street that seemed to have calmed in its activity before everyone inside of the condo called it a night.
Dasos had offered his bed to either Shungdi or Il’lyse, but the Ginserei princess told him under no uncertain terms that he was neither sleeping on the floor nor leaving her alone. So they snuggled on his bed and slept.
In another room, their sisters cuddled well past the time when Il’lyse had passed out. She stirred from her slumber in the middle of the night when someone tried and failed to sneak to the front door. It was Zoi’ne, who was putting on a pair of boots that Il’lyse couldn’t make out in the dark.
“What are you up to?” Il’lyse whispered.
“Crap,” said Zoi’ne. “Hey, don’t worry about it. I’m getting rid of something we don’t need. You can go back to sleep.”
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“You aren’t planning to run off, are you?”
“What, me? Never.” They giggled. Il’lyse wondered how much of her reflection she saw in her little sister, but she was too tired to look further into it. “Lyssa, get some rest. When you’re awake, you’ll be able to live your own life again. I promise.”
“Hurry back, Zoi’ne, but be more careful sneaking around. I might have to give you some lessons on that.”
“Right. I’ll be here before you know it.”
Il’lyse turned away and went back to sleep. She didn’t hear her sister after that. The morning light was the next thing to pester her by shining itself against her face. She stretched and got up from the couch. Her leg was still sore from the day before. Was a leftover slice of pie a good breakfast? It might be, but she didn’t go to the kitchen yet. Instead, she caught both sight and sound from her brother’s bedroom door opening.
Shungdi was the first to come out of it, though she went for the bathroom. Dasos spotted Il’lyse and walked into the middle of the condo’s main space.
“I’m glad you’re still here,” he said.
“Where would I have gone?” Il’lyse said. “I don’t have our sister’s freedom, you know.”
“Guys?” said Tong-Chang. She had stepped toward the living room through the hallway. “Where’s Zoey?”
“What do you mean? Isn’t she with you?”
With a few waves of her right hand in front of her face, Il’lyse let her Aelf senses become unfocused. Her hand preceded itself by a quarter of a second, but no more.
“She’s gone,” Il’lyse said. “Where would she have gone?”
From the bathroom, behind the closed door, Shungdi said, “Somebody cut their hair in here. There’s a bunch of it in the trashcan.”
“How much hair? How long?”
“I don’t know. Maybe fifteen centimeters or more? It’s more than Dasos ever has on his head.”
“Why would she have done that? Unless . . . no. Tonny, where did you put my suit?”
Tong-Chang pointed toward the walk-in closet and then opened the door that was closer to the living room. She probed the space with her head in so many directions at once.
“It was right here,” Tong-Chang said. “Wait. The mender is still here, and so is this.” She held out a black cord.
The pieces came together. The impact was greater than any punch or kick that Il’lyse had ever felt. Damn her injured leg; Il’lyse might have gone off to take the fight to the Hulda’fi if she was able. Running off in the night was her thing. It would have been a suicide mission, though. She would have gone in without any markings of a leader and gone down fighting. Zoi’ne wasn’t that stupid, was she?
When you’re awake, you’ll be able to live your own life again, I promise.
“Oh no,” Il’lyse muttered.
[ 55]
Dasos hurried out of the condo. Il’lyse had told him what she would have done if she were in Zoey’s place. He dialed the police captain on his cell-comm, but received no response. There had to be someone who knew where Zoey had gone off to.
“Wait!” Il’lyse said. She stumbled out of the door, putting on one of their sister’s winter boots over the pants that she was now wearing.
“You shouldn’t be out here,” Dasos said.
“Who’s going to recognize me as myself? Besides, you don’t even know where she’s gone, and I’m not letting you go after her alone.”
“What about your leg? It still needs to heal.”
Il’lyse hopped on her left foot with a ridiculous level of speed and jumped. She swung around when her arm hooked onto Dasos, causing him to stagger before Il’lyse positioned herself on her back. She then pointed forward.
Her energy was triumphant as she said, “To our sister!”
“I’m not carrying you the whole way, wherever we’re going,” Dasos said.
“She’s getting further away the longer we argue about this. Now let’s go.”
“Ugh, fine, but you’re in charge of typing the messages on my cell-comm while I support your legs with my hands.” He handed his device back to her with one land and grabbed the side of her side with another.
“Hey, it’s not my fault you only have two hands.”
Tong-Chang called out from the door, “What do I do?”
“Keep yourself and Shungdi safe, Tonny. If we’re not back by dinner, the rest of the pie is yours.”
They moved down the stairs, and Dasos turned left from the stairwell away from the park. Already there were two directions that Zoey could have gone — three if anyone counted the roof. It wouldn’t take long for there to be a thousand directions, let alone the distance that Zoey had gone in an untold number of hours. Dasos kept repeating to himself that maybe she’d gotten lost. Maybe she’d ended up in a broom closet somewhere like she kept saying would happen.
“Oh, look!” Il’lyse said, pointing to a police officer who was standing next to a motorcycle at one street corner.
“What about him?” said Dasos.
“See if we can borrow the bike. Then we can catch up to her faster.”
“You’re insane.”
“You’re listening to me.”
“That I am. Cold, infinite beyond, let’s go.” He jogged to the officer.
“Hi! Please let us steal your bike.”
“We’re not stealing the damn bike, sister. Good morning, Sergeant. May I please borrow your vehicle? It’s sort of an emergency.”
The sergeant stood silent for a moment. His stare showed no expression while he looked at them. Dasos returned a stare of his own with pressed lips, and he saw Il’lyse’s pout in the reflection on the man’s sun visor that hung from his helmet.
“You must be Cadet Thalassas,” said the officer at last. “I’ve heard much about you from the others.”
“Good things, I hope,” said Dasos.
“The answer is no.”
“My sister hurt her leg yesterday and we have to hurry. I can’t get ahold of the captain. Do you know any other way we might be able to get to where we need to?”
“Most of the department is working to round up the Hulda’fi, who have decided to gather on the corner of Eighth and Mahogany. We can’t spare anyone else, or their vehicles, who is on duty.”
“That’s where we need to go,” said Il’lyse.
Dasos said, “Have you seen the video that I sent the captain last night?”
“I have not, but I heard a few rumors about it,” said the sergeant, who raised his head a centimeter or two, his visor directed at Il’lyse. “I had heard that the both of you were to keep a watch on someone.”
Il’lyse said, “All the more reason we need your bike. It’s a long story and we’re in a hurry, like Dasos said.”
“If my bike should go missing . . .”
Dasos said, “Then I will write about it in my final report to the captain as being my fault. My shift isn’t for another nine hours or so, but let me do this.”
The sergeant clicked his mouth and grit one side of his teeth.
A moment later Dasos and Il’lyse got on the motorcycle. There were a few safety protocols beyond wearing boots, which the two of them each had covered in a less than impressive manner, but Dasos would have to deal with those later.
While they rode off, Il’lyse said, “Wrong sister, by the way!”
* * *
Here she was, once again in the thick of things without a plan. Zoey had stolen off in the early morning with the Hulda’fi suit that Tong-Chang had repaired for the sake of pictorial evidence. Zoey now crouched, with her hood up, over a rebel who had died earlier. The girl before her still had a mask and a pair of gloves.
She reached down for the mask when someone approached from behind. It was another Hulda’fi, who said, “You, are you ready to leave?”
Her first thought was to attack the one rebel, but she didn’t know their skill level or how long it would take. Zoey had no idea how many other rebels were around her right now
, either. She was bad with rushing forward into things, but she wasn’t quite so hopeless as that.
How could she respond? In her normal voice? That was too risky because all of the Hulda’fi were bound to know it like they would have known her face if Zoey were to turn and look their way. She thought about doing a low voice like Il’lyse once did during the masquerade, but that too was risky.
Imitating several of the peppy girls that she knew back on Earth, including her first girlfriend, Zoey decided on a high voice that could make someone’s head hurt. She said, “Yeah, just about. I needed to replace my mask and gloves, you know?”
“Well, hurry up,” said the Hulda’fi behind her. “We need to board the stiern-boat and activate the wormhole.”
Elysium Shining Page 49