Dom’s face appears in my eyes. I see him moving his mouth but slowly the face twists and turns blurs and becomes the face of an old man. He is wearing a dark gray robe. He has long grey dreadlocks hidden by his hood and a short gray beard covering his face. The wrinkles and scars that run up and down his face are proof enough that I am talking to an elder. He must have been eighty maybe ninety years old. He was the oldest human being I had ever seen. Usually most of the users and soldiers I am around are no older then forty. For the most part others surround me my age. Not even on Errikus had I seen a human like this. His eyes burned their way into my soul. I can’t hear a word he says but I know he is talking. Something about justice and what is right and what is wrong. Then for a moment his lips stop moving. There is silence. A few seconds feel like hours and then I feel the claw of the auton smack the back of my head grabbing my skull. What it has for nails dig into my skull as it pushes me forward. I try to resist. I use all of my weight to hold myself back. I feel the bones in my back pop and my muscles tighten. Last time the water was a surprise, a wake up call. This time it is pure torture.
The auton submerges my entire head this time forcing me to fall from the chair to my knees. I feel the hard ground scratch my knees and the cold floor touch my naked feet. I realize at this point my boots are gone. I am in nothing but a t-shirt and jeans. This time I hold my breath as long as I can. I was able to grasp air just before hitting the water.
Over a minute passes. On Errikus as a child I was able to hold my breath for one and a half maybe two minutes with practice. It’s been years since I have had that practice. The air bursts from my lungs into the cold water. I feel the sensation of drowning and this time the auton isn’t lifting me out. Two minutes pass I feel the water find it’s way through my throat and slowly it begins to fill my lungs. Before I can pass out or die the auton pulls me out. I feel it hit my back and I spit out water and blood across the floor. I fall onto my side spitting more and more. Drool runs down the side of my mouth. I feel like a zombie. I feel numb. The cold floor feels like it is my end. I can feel the darkness coming over me, covering me like a blanket. The auton won’t let me sleep. It lifts me up and before I can catch a good breath I am back in the cold water. It feels like a deep freeze. I wonder if this was how Dom felt. I wonder if he came up for air several times while the rest of us were playing games. I wonder if he felt the hand of God pushing against him holding him under.
Again the auton takes me up for air. The old man begins to speak again. His lips move but I can’t hear him. I wonder if he is lecturing me. More likely he is reading me my eulogy. I feel I have become witness to my own funeral. After this they will probably throw me out of an airlock. My dead body will burst and freeze inside the immer. Every experience, every vision I have ever had will be lost to space. My mind wanders for something I can say. There has to be an escape. I must have some thing of value I can use to my advantage to talk my way out of this. Even if I can just mumble a few key words maybe it would be enough for the elder to stop this torture.
My mouth moves. Nothing comes out. I can taste copper on my tongue, something they must have added to the water. I didn’t even have anything to say. The only word I could murmur was a name, “Aira.”
The elder stopped for a moment and smiled. The name wasn’t enough. I was grateful though. In my last moments alive I wouldn’t think about what was happening to me. I wouldn’t put myself in Dom’s place. I wouldn’t think about how I’m going to die on this ship murdered by my own kind. In my last moments I would think of her. I would let this body die and I would imagine the life I could never have. I thought of Earth. The Earth I had seen so many times in the nexus. I imagined the family in the park and the woman who’s name I never knew. I imagined Aira. The child would be ours. Instead of remembering their last moments of terror I remembered their smiles. Over and over in my head. I imagined Aira’s smile taking me, guiding me into eternity. This was how I was going to win.
I began to laugh. The auton pushed my face down again into the water. This time it almost seemed it was angry. It pushed my face to the bottom forcing my body to twist and turn the edge of the bucket cut into my chest. I continued to laugh when the auton pulled my head above the water. The auton placed me back into the chair. My vision was once again a blur. I could barely make out the silhouette of the elder. I wondered if he was still talking. He probably wasn’t lecturing me or talking to me at all. I’m sure now more then ever he was giving orders to the machine. The machine was nothing more then a pawn in whatever game he was playing.
It didn’t take long before the auton grabbed me again. He hit me in the chest with his metal arm. “What did you see?” I could hear again. It was the voice of the elder. Over and over, “What did you see”? The auton picked me up and tossed me to the ground.
“Everett,” I mumbled. I thought about my vision. I wasn’t going through near the hell the girl Everett had tried to save went through. What were they sacrificing her for? Was I now a sacrifice? The woman I had seen executed in stasis, it seemed to parallel the vision I had. If Everett had been caught I’m sure he would have been tortured just like this.
The auton holds my face directly above the bucket. My nose burns as beads of water run down the corners of my face finding ways inside my body. I can taste the copper on the tip of my tongue, which curls and tries to run from the sensation. My hands hang still binded by chains bleeding and numb against the ground and cold. My knees shake and I can’t feel anything below them. I feel the fear, the anxiety in every breath that could be my last. I don’t want to die. I feel like my life hasn’t even begun.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath just long enough that the auton allows. My face once again is soaked in water. I don’t fight it this time. I won’t give them the satisfaction. Then there is another voice I hear from below the surface. It is a woman’s voice. I immediately recognize it as Balkava. She is screaming.
The auton pulls me up. The lights in the dark room turn bright white. It felt like I had gone blind. My eyes slowly began to adjust. Balkava sits on her knees in front of me. “Are you alright, Sev, are you alright, answer me!” I hear her cry. I try to say her name but instead I speak the name that was keeping me alive, “Aira.” Balkava cries tears of joy. I can see she is wearing her military outfit rather then an elder robe or casual attire. In the corner of the room a soldier sits dead with his chest blown out. To Balkava’s side she is holding a small pistol. She kisses my lips.
I watch in silence as Balkava gives the order to the Auton to free my chains and leave. It frees me. The world seems to move as if it’s in slow motion. My hearing slowly begins to return. Balkava kisses me again and then stands up. She walks over to the old man who is now cowering on the floor. Balkava had shot him in the knee cripping him. I hear him beg Balkava for his life, I hear him call out the names of battles he had fought, that he was only following orders.
She looks at him and slowly brings her pistol up from her hip pausing for a second not out of hesitation but out of regret. Upset with herself for being so late. She puts a bullet in his head.
The sound of the gunshot must have made me black out. The last thing I remember was watching blood splatter across the wall behind the old man. I remember my heart beating so hard I thought it was going to beat out of my chest. I wake up in a med bay. A breather is placed in my mouth. I can feel the tubes running down into my lungs. There are scans and holos that lay around me and I can see I have multiple bone fractures, broken ribs, and a burst lung. I have several tubes running in and out of both my arms. I am pumped full of painkillers to the point that I barely feel alive. Balkava walks into the room motioning for the medic to leave.
She sits beside me. My body is broken but I turn my head to face her. Aside from training and conditioning she has never lied to me. “You’re probably wondering what you saw,” she begins. She sounds as if she is about to cry. I had not only seen something I shouldn’t have but it was something that she knew about
. “ That man I killed was an elder named Celes. He was not suppose to torture you or kill you,” a tear rolled down her eye. It was obvious that the old man had been someone she had cared about. Whoever it was she had made a decision to choose me over him. “The woman you saw him... the woman you saw the auton kill had been infected by a virus; bacteria that if left unchecked would have infected the other stasis pods and eventually the rest of the ship. A crew member on the Aelita saw it happen. We eventually narrowed it down to that woman and several others in stasis. Celes came over from the Aelita. He was ordered to put them to rest. We had no idea his methods would be so... cruel... so barbaric. I am sorry you had to see that.” I closed my eyes. She was sorry I had to see that but not sorry that it happened. She called it cruel and barbaric but her voice betrayed her. It was obvious she didn’t care about those people.
Days passed by turning into weeks. Hayden would come often and visit me and bring me lunch. Balkava never came back after that first night. It didn’t bother me. I didn’t want to see her. I didn’t tell Hayden what happened. All he knew was there was an accident in the stasis chamber and I managed to get caught up in it. He gave me a fun little lecture about wandering off and that was the end of it.
So that’s what they do. That’s what the nexus does. Someone see’s a future that the elder’s disapprove of and they change it.
The Sword of Sorrow
- Aelia - "Devon Cross was a war hero and my best friend..." "My name is Chev Mercer, when I met Colonel Devon Cross he was a volunteer. He was my squad leader and brother in arms. It is because of Cross myself and many others survived the day after judgment... it is because of Cross that I am alive." Chev gave those words at Cross-’s eulogy. Chev was a veteran of the day after judgment, a battle fought twenty-seven years ago; he was a bug hunter, commander, and my father. My name is Aelia Mercer; I am twentyfour years old and a founding member of project Nexus. I have spent my life studying alien technology, biology, philosophy, physics and pseudo science. My father told me when I was a child that there were great things in store for me. I was one of a few thousand that possessed the ability to use the ancient alien element known as Nexus. To anyone else it was nothing more then a small-crystallized rock.
The first time I used I was hooked. I was twenty years old. The military wouldn't allow anyone younger even near its location. It was discovered on Earth in the early 1800s and moved from place to place until it was discovered in a Nazi camp on a South Pacific island in 1944. From there it was moved to what was a secret military base in Nevada. There it stayed sitting in storage until someone started running experiments.
The first test subjects all went certifiably insane. Some starved, others became unstable unable to understand or differentiate what was real and what was being shown to them. The first tests, the Earth tests as I call them only lasted minutes to an hour at most. It was when we began colonizing the solar system and created a research lab on Phobos, a moon of Mars that we found ways to control the process. Now... you could spend up to twelve hours viewing the lives of strangers lost to us in time.
We created the room - the white room. It consisted of a reclined chair. White walls, white floor and a white table that held fruit and water... ready to be consumed the instant someone came back. The room was always lit and doctors and researchers kept a constant watch. The user would sit with a black visor covering their eyes that acted as a comfort from the light that would ease them into the Nexus.
The element itself was sealed away behind the wall. All you needed to access the Nexus was a touch. Anyone with the right genetic prerequisite would immediately fall into a trance like state. Anyone without could move as they want. To them it was just a rock. We discovered that by using lasers we could temporarily turn the Nexus from a solid state to a vapor. The white room would allow just enough exposure to allow the effects. Stopping the lasers would immediately allow the Nexus to transfer back into its natural state. How or why it did this we had no idea.
The first time I used the Nexus I could feel my soul being torn from my body. I remember looking back and thinking how could one body share two souls? I was a little girl... It was somewhere in the 1990s. I was outside playing with my dog. A beautiful German shepherd named Husker. That was it. I spent twenty minutes watching myself move and play and give commands. I don't even know the child's name or what she looked like.
The only thing I saw was the dog, the house, the grass and the sky. Nothing significant happened... for most users nothing significant happens at all. Before the first Skrav attack the military began subjecting large groups of users to the Nexus. Twenty people every six hours. They were trying to build a picture to change the future. Lucky for me it worked. They changed the future. My father fought the survivors of the day we judged the Skrav to death. My father became friends with Cross during that battle. Cross saved my father and a year later would introduce him to the woman who would become my mother. I am the product of our control of this power. If not for the Nexus... I would never have been born.
Colonel Ren aka Narville, the prophet, he would have told you it was fate. It was not fate. Fate was something that was always determined. This was man made. Whatever the Nexus was, wherever it came from it was a tool... it was a weapon. Narville was my teacher, my mentor. It was because of him that I am where I am now.
The monitor in front of me reads "Welcome to Phobos." I was home. I had gone on leave away from my research and away from the Nexus to the Arctic Dome. It was a beautiful artificial paradise in Antarctica full of rich old men and handsome young ones. It was a small getaway... time in the real world required by the military.
When we came over the horizon I could see it. The Erebus. A reverse engineered Skrav ship. Combining the aesthetics of the military vessel New Hope and a Skrav dagger. It was massive. Built to house thousands in cryogenic capsules. The Erebus was a seed ship. The first of its kind. Narville had a vision. He was the first to see the far future. In it he saw the human race seeding the galaxy. Mankind populated entire planets. We were a kingdom spanning all over and this is where it would begin.
It was my job to break the Nexus. Split the element into a trinity. This was the idea behind Project Trace. One piece would go with the Erebus, another with the seed ship Tritan; the third would stay on Phobos.
Cross was the one that approached me with the project. I laughed thinking he was asking the impossible. He was serious. So serious in fact they gave me an unlimited amount of funding and near endless amount of resources. I began by trying to understand what the Nexus was. It was obvious at this point that it was rare. There were only two that we were aware of and the second was only assumed to exist. I spent months theorizing and testing every earthly element I could. No diamond could cut it and no pressure could split it; well nothing short of throwing it into the sun.
After a year I was ready to give up. I had grown depressed, frustrated. I felt like a failure. All my degrees and studies were meaningless. It was at the funeral of Devon Cross I realized what I was missing.
We spent six months in the debris field above Earth. Skrav technology was archaic in design but far more advance then our own. Their ships were made of a type of metal that was thin as paper but could only be broken by the blast of a nuclear bomb or focused laser. Somewhere in there had to be the answers. We found nothing. Nothing until I found the body of Scar.
The ruins of Deimos had gone untouched. It was a reminder of the war, the genocide that had occurred. It was a reminder of the misfortunes of man and that we were no longer alone. I found his body laying hunched over on his knees impaled on a curved sword. It looked like an ancient Persian blade except it was made from a strange black metal. It was covered in strange circular designs, a part of the Skrav language, which we couldn't understand.
I pulled the blade from Scar's dead hands. His armor still looked brand new, black with thin strips of red and silver. I could see through the tears that his bark like skin had long decayed leaving nothing but bone. No
one had ever bothered to move or destroy any of the bodies on the battlefield. This moon had become more then a memorial... it was a graveyard.
The answer was here all along. Scar had impaled himself with the blade in a last ditch effort to hide it. A weapon that would be thrown away with our enemies. Maybe it was fate I found it. It tore through the Nexus and separated it into three parts. This was when I learned the truth.
Narville took me aside and told me about the future. He told me about the sun. He told me that there was a third ship. The Erebus, the Tritan, and the Aelita. A prototype built around the New Hope. Aelita meant the queen of Mars. It turns out my father had chosen it... he liked how it was similar to my own name. I was disgusted. I didn’t want any part of this future. I felt like we were betraying ourselves. If Narville and my father had their way only the strong or informed would survive. It was genocide knowing what we knew and looking the other way. There was nothing I could do. The future was spoken for. From that moment on I hated my father and never spoke to him again.
It was ten years before I saw Narville again. When I did it was nothing but his corpse. The great prophet had killed himself. He wrote three letters on the ground. I was brought to Phobos to see if I could help them decipher what it had meant. The first time I was there in years. I didn't want to go.
When I first used the Nexus I was a little girl playing with my dog. The second time I used the Nexus was only a moment, maybe a minute. It was an accident. The lasers triggered and shut down almost immediately. Technical problems. Unlike the first that was so pure, so sweet the second was a nightmare. I was standing in front of a mirror. I was pale white with red eyes. I was bleeding and breathing hard. With my right hand I wrote "Aelita" on the glass. When I came too no one knew for sure whether what I had seen was nightmare, from the Nexus, or something else. No one could place the event or even if what I saw was truly human. I had written it off as a nightmare for so many years.
Pull (Deep Darkness Book 1) Page 14