by Essa Hansen
“Ready?” Threi donned his trademark smile.
“You’d love me to say I was born ready, wouldn’t you?”
“Atta boy.” Threi jogged down a flight of steps to a wash of iridescent light.
Caiden tugged at the stiff vambraces. The mask captured his breath, hot on his cheeks and loud in his ears. He followed awkwardly, steps laden with dread and quickened by curiosity. In the circular room below stood a platform cut in half by a rind that arced up and out of sight. Needles on thin arms poked the rind in a circular frame as if to pull one area taut.
Caiden whirled on Threi. “She’s inside a universe … What’s wrong with it? Why?”
“Touch the rind and it’ll kill you. It destroys almost all organic matter. Understand?” Threi marched to the side of the platform. His fingers worked at instruments, poking luminous diagrams and plucking dimpled forms. “It’s rather complicated to get data through, but the Casthen have had centuries to perfect it.”
No one can survive getting in. The perfect shield. Caiden stood transfixed by the rind’s brilliant storm of white, cerulean, and pink. Within the framed area, its roiling calmed enough to make out sand and pools and a figure walking to the viewing platform. Not so much a figure as a column of pale murk drawing nearer. Clearer as Caiden squinted for details and the milky rind settled.
Threi shoved Caiden forward. “My new probationer, Prime. Something special. A surprise you’ve wanted for a while.”
“Special …” The machines enhanced Çydanza’s thin, sandy voice as if it vibrated off the whole rind.
Caiden clasped his hands so they wouldn’t shake, but the tiny armor bits over his fingers jittered.
“Special how, Threi, what have you found?” A familiar voice? As Çydanza approached, the cloudiness settled. She was human: her tanned features distraught, russet-brown hair piled atop her head, brow drawn together, and lips pressed thin.
Caiden’s heart stumbled. “Mother?”
She stopped one pace from the rind’s calm surface, which revealed more of her details every moment. Caiden recognized each line in her face, the scratch scar on her temple, the stern set of her mouth, and her brown eyes strong and kind.
His pulse ramped and his throat tightened. A layer of his soul was shredded by the sight, releasing guilt pent-up by the accelerated years. Soon.
He gasped in a sob and stepped forward, but Threi’s hand smacked onto his chest.
“The rind will kill you,” he warned.
Caiden stood inches from it, and so did his mother, doubly blurred by the rind and the tears stinging his eyes.
“Caiden.” Her voice was soft and low, the voice that had rocked him to sleep when he was four, soothed him when he was injured, reassured him when he was full of doubt. “You survived, you ran, didn’t you?”
Guilt sluiced through him. The frenzy of the beasts. Red sand. Splintered bones.
“You froze under that rock as the beasts bit me, tore my body in two, the entrails pouring, blood spraying across the world— you did nothing.” Her calm, measured voice bored into him, each word a dagger reopening wounds in his mind. The memories gushed out like lifeblood.
“I was … fourteen. I was just a boy.”
“You didn’t save anyone, Caiden, except yourself.”
His armored hand trembled an inch from touching the rind. He clawed it back and shoved Threi’s arm away. “I ran.” He choked. Armor chattered as he quaked. “I ran, and I lived. But you …”
His mother shook her head. “And tiny Leta, the sweet girl, she ran bravely after you and was trampled underfoot, neck smashed by a boot, legs mangled, until the beasts found her tender flesh and ripped through her chest in one bite of so many teeth—”
“Stop it!” Caiden lunged with a balled fist, but Threi caught his wrist and hauled him back, arms around him.
“Easy!” Threi hissed by his ear. “This rind will strip your flesh off.”
Tears gushed down the inside of Caiden’s mask. Haste and loathing and fire throbbed in him, but he had nowhere to go, nothing to strike.
His mother sneered and ran a hand up her face, into her hair to let it down. “Your sweet Leta crushed and devoured, poor girl, a pity, since what a fearsome match you two would have been: wisdom and power together.”
Dewy vapor steamed about her head. Her hair paled to waves of sun-bleached brown. Wisps of gauze congealed into a crown of blue chicory, and twenty-year-old Leta’s flower-pink lips smiled at him, her hazel eyes glistening with adoration.
Caiden choked on a hitched breath and twisted around to Threi, ripping from the man’s restraint. “ Çydanza is a vishkant?”
Threi perked an eyebrow and shrugged. “Surprise.”
CHAPTER 31
CASTHEN PRIME
Caiden cursed under his breath. No wonder no one had ever killed Çydanza: an impervious species in an impassible universe.
He surveyed Threi for reaction or clue, but the bastard was deadpan.
When he turned back to the rind, he looked into his father’s steely gaze. Memories teased through Caiden’s head like a scratchy, pulled-on string. Be strong.
She had been leading the Casthen for longer than most could remember. If what the young vishkant in Emporia had told him was true, Çydanza’s age meant she could only see his deeper memories, not recent events or thoughts.
“ Çydanza. That old life is behind me.”
“No, boy, it never will be behind you,” his father said, face beginning to morph between red lacerations and the diamond-shaped punctures of jaws. “You should not want it to be, despite what your friends have told you.”
The crew. Their faces, words, the many moments swirled in Caiden’s mind. Older vishkant couldn’t see recent memories, but where was that cutoff, for Çydanza? Caiden shut his eyes and focused. What Çydanza could perceive or become was controlled in part by his own awareness— so he focused on nothing, as Panca had taught him: Focus on nothingness, just be here, breathing and present. Let your thoughts slide off and away.
Caiden opened his eyes. His father’s bloody visage melted into lavender cloud, frothing over a spongy, transparent skeleton beneath. New skin congealed over a fine-boned face. Cerulean eyes stared. Sunny hair fell over lace-clothed shoulders. An unfamiliar person.
This was the real her.
Caiden strangled his hate into a manageable thread. He needed to concentrate.
“You want to kill me!” she exclaimed, but her expression remained bored. “Like Threi did when I first uprooted him from Unity, but you see how lucid he is now, how much progress he’s made, how many smiles he wields? You were born and bred in the machine of Casthen, but perhaps you are secretly angry that I shipped you off to the wrong place, and for that I apologize, you are due better, but you’re home now, child, and we must shape and sharpen the untempered blade of your rage.”
Caiden focused on Çydanza’s cerulean eyes, her hard, bored face. “I have control of my anger.”
“No, Caiden.” Her voice chafed. “Or is it Winn? You said yourself once that Caiden is dead, but have you earned a new self yet? I see your anger, it comes from love, not fear, and if we’re going to change the temper of your steel, we need to heat that anger further. Helplessness is the source of it, so you will obey or I will have that young vishkant friend of yours brought here to the joy of all my enforcers— can you imagine? Vishkant are so pliable when young, so primed for impression, whether they wish it or not.” Çydanza laughed: a stale sound sawing up and down her throat.
Caiden’s armor rasped together as his muscles coiled.
Threi paced by in front of him to break the trance. “No need for threats yet. He’s special, remember?”
Çydanza leaned closer to the rind, bathed by its pink resplendence. “That you are, Caiden, Winn, I see your lust for justice, your yearning to belong, your violence that you think the slaughter poured into you so you can pour it back out onto someone else; you’re one of us, equal, strong, and worthy— you belon
g now, and you are worth something to me.”
“Valued because I’m expensive.” Caiden’s fingers itched to strangle the apathetic dullness from her face.
“I was saddened to lose the nophek operation, as the gloss research from RM28 alone has saved seven hundred thousand lives and resurrected twelve extinct species— not a poor bargain, in my mind— but I am heartened that at least we recovered you in the fallout, child. You are worth a whole society.”
The absurdity of that idea left Caiden speechless. The mask suffocated back his fuming breaths. Tremors jabbed the ill-fitting armor against him.
Threi stepped in. “Well— as you said, Prime, a blade’s no use to us unsharpened. Come on.” Threi gripped Caiden’s shoulders and spun him.
Bursting with energy and questions, Caiden let himself be led off the platform.
“Threi.”
“Wait until we’re out, soldier.”
Caiden wrenched his shoulders free and marched, expelling his fire into motion.
When they were clear of the atrium and back in lightless, intimate halls, Caiden erupted and slammed Threi against a wall.
Threi raised his palms. “So, you’re familiar with vishkant. Initiation into Casthen is her dredging up memories and secrets, for blackmail or torture. She makes ammunition of the things we care about. So, we tremble and obey.”
“Does that mean there’s something you care about?” Caiden shoved Threi into the wall as he released.
Threi chuckled. “No, I help her out of the goodness of my heart. This way.”
Caiden strode after him into a lift with barely enough room for two. He ripped his mask off and loosened buckles. A rapid pulse raced through him, throbbing where the uniform fit too tight.
“Explain,” Caiden said. “Or I’ll rethink not slugging your smug face.”
Threi was pressed to his shoulder. It wouldn’t do any good to thrash the bastard up. Although Threi had said himself before: sometimes it was all about feeling better …
The man smiled wider as the door opened and he stepped out onto the top of the structure and the vista Caiden had seen from the air: various sizes of universes blistered the planet’s side in pockets of vague, vibrant activity. The nearest ones were riots of greenery and flocks of pink and orange creatures.
Threi stepped to the edge of the roof. “ Çydanza can see parts of our long-term memory, but at her age— damn ancient— she can’t see our most recent experiences or ambitions. She’s also less capable of grasping immediate thoughts, especially if we keep our awareness away from touchy subjects. I didn’t tell you the full plan before in case you were so fixated on the details of it you revealed it to her or turned her scrutiny onto me. Her deep belief that she’s untouchable is an arrogance that keeps her from being suspicious.”
It probably also contributed to her casual cruelty, if death or retribution wasn’t a punishment she ever feared.
Caiden said, “Explain now then. Vishkant can’t be shot, burned, electrocuted, suffocated, or sliced, since they’re essentially particle clouds. And how would we lure her from her universe?”
“She can’t be lured— I’ve tried with every excuse, emergency, threat, and every single Graven trick up my sleeve. She’s too smart to leave. And there’s no way in. The rind is impassable for every other species I’ve tested except vishkant, and Çydanza doesn’t allow vishkant on the Harvest for that very reason. The one time I tried to sneak one in … went badly. When I scanned the Azura’s rind in Emporia, I knew I’d finally found a solution. We can bridge one universe with another: fly inside with the Azura’s universe to protect us. That’s the easy part.”
“What’s the hard part?”
“Mature vishkant have a defense mechanism, a neurological attack.” Threi fished a little machine out of his pocket and held it out in his palm. A holosplay field of dimpled air sprang above it, projecting light in a three-dimensional space. “We call it a memory flood. Victims are faced with every fear and doubt, every horrible memory, all of the derision and self-loathing they’ve internalized, twisted into visions and a real, whole-body experience.”
Footage filled the holosplay: a scene in Çydanza’s viewing room. It streaked as Threi scrolled through clips, the rind always the same but the figures before it— and who Çydanza became for them— different each time.
Threi stopped scrolling. The clip played through. Çydanza reached her hand through the rind. It unmade her arm into scintillating particles that re-congealed into flesh and blood on the other side. She extended her fingers to the shoulder of an Andalvian whose skin rippled terrified mauve, blackening into shivers where Çydanza stroked their neck. In the silent footage, the Andalvian flailed at their own scalp, clawing pieces of spiny hair away, then chunks of flesh, frantically digging into the soft bone.
Caiden covered his mouth with a hand, stomach turning over.
Threi said, “I’ve seen victims go insane, hemorrhage, self-mutilate.Çy will use this ability against anyone who tries to attack her.”
Another instance: this xenid simply wailed and wailed, limbs curling inward, spasms crushing them to the floor where they screamed until exhausted, eyes blank, mouth still agape.
“I’ve tested the extent of it, and substances to inhibit neurological reaction, but they don’t work. The memory flood requires direct contact, but no armor or clothing can block it. The pheromones also make it more real.”
Another: a mauya stripped out every hair and every feather-petal from every wing until she was a crumpled mass of puckered skin.
“The brain stimulus continues after the person is physically released. Nonlocal memory is affected too, as are highly augmented individuals.”
More: a chketin cracking their skull repeatedly on the floor. A man walking straight into the rind, layers of body boiled away. Dermis, then tendons snapping, fat melting, bones splintered. Caiden watched in horror as clips played, Çydanza crushing souls from the inside out. The victims that didn’t grow violent were reduced to puddles, mental capacity drained. Casthen soldiers hauled out the brain-dead and the bloody heaps. Sometimes with shovels.
“Enough.” A flash of hate seared through him. “You ‘tested the extent of it’— does that mean these victims are xenids that you sent in, knowing what would happen?”
“That’s right.” Threi’s expression hardened.
Caiden took a step at him, fists itching to fly.
Threi shut down the holosplay device and strode to Caiden, using all three inches of his superior height, stopping close enough that Caiden inhaled that waxy lily scent. Caiden shoved an elbow to make space between them but Threi seized his upper arm and twisted him around into a choke hold with the speed and strength of accelerated decades.
Caiden’s blood cut off, cinched by armor that squealed as Threi’s biceps flexed. Seconds of consciousness left, his vision sizzled, and Threi said breathily in his ear, “Don’t forget you agreed to follow my plan when you accepted this deal. You agree with my end goal— you don’t need to agree with my methods.”
Electric pressure dammed up in Caiden’s left arm’s augmented muscles. He went to release it in a superhuman pull free, but Threi let go and pushed his back so he stumbled away.
The man’s voice was all business when he resumed. “The memory flood requires focus that only the oldest vishkant can muster. She can’t keep it up forever or repeat it frequently, it takes a heavy toll to sustain. Multiple individuals can be affected at once, and I’ve thought of pouring a small army on her to try to exhaust her energy, after finding a way in. But now that I have you, there’s no need for an army.”
“Me …” Caiden’s jaw throbbed; his head sizzled with oxygen. He scowled and fought the urge to cough, trying to not give Threi the pleasure of reaction.
Threi walked to the edge of the roof and gazed over the Casthen domain, cutting a regal figure with his shoulders erect and hands perched on his hips. He was shadow, backlit by bright worlds and a sea of stars. “The Azura gives me
the means to get into y’s universe, but I doubt I’d psychologically survive her memory flood. I’ve faced my past reflected in Çydanza for years while she revels in trying to break my walls. The memory flood … that circumvents walls. But you. We can make you indestructible.”
One little push, and Threi would go tumbling over the edge. A pity Caiden still needed him. “Explain.”
“Two reasons. First, you have only fourteen years of secrets and hurt for her to work with to try to destroy your mind, but you have twenty years of emotional intelligence to resist it. And, you’re now equipped with the mechanism to relive the worst of your memories in realistic detail.”
“The repeating nightmares.”
“That side effect is species-specific, and memory jogs aren’t commonly used or commonly survived outside of rare Cartographer application. But because of it, you’re exposed continually to all the things Çydanza would use against you.” Threi swayed with excitement. He ambled closer, and Caiden resisted the urge to back up. “The Casthen have a machine that we can reverse-engineer to hold you in that memory loop— in an incubation sleep— so you can face your trauma until it doesn’t faze you anymore. That, combined with tasks involving real nophek, will numb you to the horrors that Çydanza will use to break your mind and your focus.”
“You,” Caiden growled, “promised a way to eliminate the nightmares!”
“I promised a way to solve the memory loop, not eliminate it. This is how you get free of them: control and acceptance. Imagine walking through your history without the slightest reaction, just peace that it has built you into who you are, that it’s behind you now, and that you’ve gotten revenge for everyone you lost and saved millions more from the same exploitation. You’re the only creature who could become impervious to Çydanza. Only you.”
“What a lie.” Caiden scrubbed a hand through his hair. The motion jabbed armor into him. Bruises and sprains twinged from the holobia chase, but the pain echoed every phantom bite from the dreams, every mile run, every kick and jab in the transport. “Not free from years of horror, just living them over and over in one go. If I do it, if I kill that part of myself, but Çydanza still ends up killing me—”