by S. S. Segran
“Perhaps this might allay your concerns for now: I was killed, and Reyor twisted my intentions to get you here.”
Kody stuck a finger in his ear and shook it. “Sorry, I thought I heard you say you were killed.”
“I was. Let’s get going, I’ll fill you in later if we have time.”
Kody followed; his head even more muddled than it already was. “Um, not to undermine you or anything, but won’t there be some kind of warning system in place that’ll tell the people monitoring me that I’m no longer connected to their device?”
“I’ve disabled it.” Looking around to make sure no one else had appeared, Mokun swiped a card over the scanner by a familiar door. “Hurry now.”
Kody hobbled into the chamber. Inside, the previously-red projections of prefrontal cortexes hovering above Aari, Tegan, and Mariah were mere slivers away from turning completely blue—just moments from complete repurposing. He felt sick.
Mokun slunk toward the beds where the friends lay. His face was inscrutable in the dimness, his shoulders tense. As Kody attempted to attune his abilities with little success, he caught the old man’s whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“How are we supposed to free them?” Kody asked, glancing nervously at the door.
“Each one of Ian’s—Dr. Nate’s—schematics pertaining to the CUBE passes through me. It’s a lucky thing your friends are still in stasis. By design, repurposing someone is a long process as you have to build on top of each layer. Undoing it is quicker in theory; all it takes is to knock everything down. At least that ought to be the case when they haven’t yet awoken, like these three.”
“So, Jag . . .”
Mokun’s expression soured. “He’s fully repurposed. If we dragged him back here and tried to undo what’s been done with the little time we have, it could mean permanent damage for him.”
Kody leaned on his staff as the man crossed to the back of the room and took a seat behind a giant monitor. It was still difficult to form full thoughts and all he wanted to do was curl up on the floor and slip into the darkness of slumber. Even being free, things somehow remained hopeless.
The silence stretched on longer than was comfortable. Kody grabbed a chair and pulled it closer to his friends, nibbling on his thumb as he watched the blue in the projections ever so slowly eat up what remained of the red. He wanted desperately to do something, to stop the madness. He felt so alone. Jag was gone. Aari, Tegan, and Mariah lay as unresponsive as the dead. No one knew where they were, which meant there would be no rescue.
The only person he could count on now was the man who had concocted the entire nightmare in the first place; the man who had put into motion so much death and destruction; the man who’d uplifted a monster that the prophecy warned about—the prophecy that was probably the friends’ sole reason for being.
His head started to hurt. “How long will this take?” he called softly.
Mokun growled. “Using this input is too slow. I’m going to try something else.”
He rounded the desk, picking up two thin gloves and a device with a strap, and positioned himself in front of the beds. As he slid the device over his eyes, Kody realized what it was. “Is that VR?”
“Yes. It’s a 3D haptic interface. Hopefully virtual reality will make my work faster.” Mokun pulled on the gloves and squeezed his hands into fists. Lines of white came to life, racing vertically along each finger. The underside of the digits glowed with swirls not unlike fingerprints. Mokun held out his hands, carving complex patterns in the air, sometimes rotating his wrists as if turning a dial, other times swiping a hand across as though searching among files.
Without any way to tell time, Kody had no idea how long they had left before Jag would come looking for him. To keep himself sane, he attempted once more to bring his abilities to bear. He’d barely made any progress by the time his head started to pound again.
Mokun uttered a quiet exclamation. Kody’s eyes snapped toward the projections. The red on Aari’s prefrontal cortex had started to push back against the blue, two armies struggling for control over the battlefield. Kody watched with bated breath as, millimeter by millimeter, red engulfed more territory until not a speck of blue was left. Then, slowly, slowly, red gave way to a beautiful, bright green.
Kody buried his face in his hands. “Thank God.”
Mokun pulled off the headset, huffing out a breath, and looked at his wristwatch. “Thirty minutes left. I shouldn’t have spent so long at the damn computer.” He prepared to slip the headset back on, then hesitated as he scanned the remaining two projections. Barely any red was left in either. “I will only be able to get to one of them in time.”
Kody’s pulse stuttered. “Come on. You did it once, so now you’ll be able to get through it faster, right?”
“Even so, I’ll be too late.”
Clenching his teeth, Kody pushed himself off the chair and sat on the bed closest to the door. Tegan, resting on her back, looked distraught even in sleep. For all her fearlessness when awake, she looked so small now, at the mercy of forces outside her control. He rubbed his thumbs over her forehead, smoothing the tension away. “Fight it, Teegs,” he whispered. “I’m not about to lose both you and Jag.”
“I don’t think speaking to her will help,” Mokun said as he re-entered virtual reality. “She can’t hear you.”
Kody ignored him and leaned over Tegan, curling his arms around her head, his cheek resting against her brow. He closed his eyes and synced his breathing with hers, gradually opening up his senses again. He went slowly this time, pushing aside the frantic urge to access his abilities all at once. Like a flower unfurling its petals after a long winter, he felt them surface and settle inside him, fitting perfectly back into his being. He squeezed his arms tighter around Tegan’s head. “Just hold on, okay? Hold on.”
He wanted to check the projection but was terrified to see what he’d find. Summoning every bit of his will, he glanced up. There were only two red pixels left. His face tingled, warning against the tears about to be fall. “No. No, Teegs. Please. You can’t do this.” He sat up, gathering her against his chest and rocking back and forth. “Don’t. Please don’t. Just a little longer. Stay a little longer. I’m begging you, Tegan, don’t you dare leave us, too.” His voice broke at the last words. Not knowing what else to do, he hugged her closer and refused to look back at the projection as the silence stretched on.
Behind him, Mokun suddenly clapped his gloved hands once. “Ms. Ashton is in the clear.” There was the sound of the headset slipping off, then a stunned exhale. “What in the world?”
Kody looked up. His mouth fell open.
Three red pixels now glinted on Tegan’s projection.
“Strange,” muttered Mokun. “Whatever you’re doing, keep at it while I work on her.”
“How much time do we have left?” Kody asked with a sniffle, wiping his sleeve against his nose.
“Seventeen minutes.”
As he held Tegan, Kody turned his head to look at the other occupied beds. Mariah’s prefrontal cortex was now a spectacular green; beside her, Aari’s eyelids fluttering as consciousness started to return to him.
Maybe we’ll be okay after all, Kody thought. An image of Jag’s face flashed in his mind and he flinched. Maybe not.
The glow from Tegan’s projection lit the white linen around him. He watched as its lambency on the sheets gradually shifted from blue, to red, then to green. With a long, grateful sigh, he laid Tegan back down and went to join Mokun, collapsing his staff and slinging it across his shoulder. “That was close.”
“Very close. We must wake them. There are only six minutes left, so there’s no time to be gentle.”
It took forceful shaking to get all of them up. Their sluggishness was alarming but at least their eyes were open and aware. “If Jag comes in now, we won’t have a fighting chance,” Kody hissed to Mokun.
The older man produced four bottles. He lobbed one to each of the friends. “Drink up.”
Kody uncapped his and took a whiff. “Rytèrni!”
They gulped down the contents of their bottles as Mokun filled them in on their predicament in as few words as possible. “And with Jag monitoring you, he’ll be here soon. You have two choices: escape without him, or try to subdue him. The latter has never been done before, especially not with someone of his abilities.”
“What about tranquilizers?” Aari asked. More of the grogginess left him the closer he got to the end of his drink. “You’ve got a ton of them, I’m sure.”
“But what’s subduing gonna do if we can’t turn him back?” Kody countered.
“You currently have trackers in you,” Mokun said. “We could cut them out and throw him off, or you could use it to your advantage. You’re right, turning him back using Dr. Nate’s equipment likely won’t work, but—”
“We’ve been friends all our lives,” Mariah interrupted bleakly. “I know this sounds naive, but maybe if we just talked to him—”
Mokun shook his head. “He’s too far gone for us to quickly and safely undo what’s been done.” He ran his tongue over his teeth, fingers drumming against his thigh. “There might be one other method, but it’s never been attempted before as far as I know.”
“What is it?” Tegan asked.
“Using Jag’s own mind to rewire his brain.”
Aari seemed doubtful. “You make it sound like they’re separate entities.”
“They are. The brain takes care of survival functions. Chemical reactions aside, it has no place for something like love, or will, or hope. Those manifest from a higher reality which only the mind can bring forth. The catch with this method, though, is twofold. First, he needs to be conscious. He cannot be dosed with tranquilizers. The second is that it will require your combined abilities. This means I’ll need the four of you to come along with me.” Mokun looked at his watch again. “Two minutes left. So which is it?”
Tegan put her bottle aside. The drinks had done wonders for all of them; their gazes were bright, and their skin glowed. “All five of us are needed to stop Reyor. If we try to escape now without Jag, it’ll either work out in our favor or it won’t. If we do manage to leave, how are we supposed to get him back again?”
“I don’t want to take off without him,” Kody said. “Whether or not he’s broken from the repurposing, I really don’t care.”
Aari grunted. “I’m not gonna leave him behind either. Will our abilities come back soon?”
“In time, yes,” Mokun answered, “but not at full capacity. Telepathy will likely take longest to return.”
“Alright,” Tegan said. “So how do we do this?”
“Very quickly.” With his eyes glued to his watch, Mokun fished four necklaces from his pocket and held them out; Kody recognized the group’s pendants dangling from the black strings. “Come, we have little time to prepare.”
Victor sat on the flat rooftop of Paloma’s restaurant, leaning against his bag and balled up jacket, absently rubbing a palm over his stubble. His hands quavered; all he wanted was to bury them in his wolfdog’s fur and ground himself. He loathed being separated from Chief, yet whenever it came to Anya, he was willing to part with the dog so she could have a friend when he wasn’t around.
He turned his face into the bracing wind that gusted in from the Balearic Sea. It seemed that Valencia could be a cold place in the middle of a late December night, but he welcomed the salubrious chill that helped cool his scalding thoughts. The headaches had returned as soon as his injuries had been looked after. Sleep had always been difficult to come by, more so now with the whirlwind of events and losses. The painkillers helped some, but what he needed was . . .
What did he need, aside from the longest rest of his life?
On the back of the wind came his answer, a sensation more than a word: Atonement. Atonement for his countless failures, the latest of these perhaps being the most shameful and grievous. Repentance for treading darker paths over the last decade, for not holding himself up to the standards of a Sentry. Repentance for turning away from people—friends—when they needed him.
Repentance for failing to save the two individuals who mattered to him most.
He removed the silver rings from his middle fingers and held both up in the moonlight. The letters E.C. reflected from inside one band, T.C from the other. He pressed them to his lips, then slipped them back on.
A beam of light flashed from the top of an apartment complex several blocks down the road. A second later, a responding flash lit up from another building some distance away, followed by a third deeper in the city. Victor rested his chin on his fist and tuned his hearing in the direction each of the lights had come from. He caught snippets of conversation in Spanish from Valencia’s night watch. They sounded weary, but muted chuckles occasionally accompanied the exchanges. Strange as the sound was to hear when the entire world had gone quiet, it warmed Victor and he found himself wanting more. It made the future seem less bleak, if only for a moment.
I guess we’ll always find a way to make do. Our species started out in tribes and went forward from there. We’ll do it again. His musing soured. At least, we had that chance until you dropped the ball. Well done, Colback.
He hadn’t spoken about the shame corroding his insides; not to Marshall, not to Nadia. They didn’t need to hear anything beyond his failure. It stung, though, every time he thought of the League knowing who it was that had brought the prophecy to a screeching halt, perhaps even over a cliff.
Having made a name for himself as the Knight of the North was something he resented deeply. The ridiculous moniker had gained traction that was almost sacrosanct and elevated him to a level of lore that inadvertently alienated him further from the other Sentries. He hadn’t asked for it. The expectations, the unwarranted admiration—it was another reason to keep to himself. All that the other Sentries knew was his ability to get things done in the field. Most of them had no inkling of the murky depths he’d sunk to, nor what had transpired during the years he’d divorced himself from the League.
And he didn’t want them to know.
When the Elders had assigned him to protect the Chosen Ones, he had allowed himself a modicum of hope that he would be able to redeem himself for his transgressions. The Council hadn’t said anything to him directly about what a disaster that turned out to be, but it wasn’t hard to imagine their distress.
Victor pushed himself to his feet, rolling his clenched shoulders while he paced the rooftop. He’d replayed the scenario half a dozen times, wanting to come to the conclusion that there really was nothing he could have done to stop the friends from being taken. Reality, unfortunately, was not so kind. He could have done just about everything differently; stopping the kids from running ahead when they’d leapt out of the truck, or even leaving them far from the airport and meeting Jag by himself.
Every time he scrubbed through the memory, better approaches surfaced, and he wanted to throw his head against a wall. They had suspected it was a trap, so why hadn’t he been more judicious?
Because I trusted the kids. Sawyer said he’d seen them handle themselves, and I decided to let his words lead my decision. Victor pressed his hands to his face. No. That was an excuse, no matter how true it might be.
Perhaps it was to test the Chosen Ones? No, it wasn’t that either, though he sensed he was getting closer to the crux.
He leaned over the half-wall of the roof, catching sight of the sidewalk fifteen feet below. Even in the dim light, a sprawling stain of dried gore was stark against the lighter pavement. Whose body had fallen there?
The longer Victor stared at it, the hotter his blood boiled. He gripped the wall, knuckles turning white, and shoved himself away, continuing to pace.
It was the prophecy he’d wanted to test—and the universe, or whatever had deemed this world worthy of creation. In all his life, never once had he taken issue with the ancient verses but, upon learning who the Chosen Ones were, he’d been dumbfounded. Mortified. An
gry. Although he trusted the Elders, on this he had to question their pronouncement. Clearly there must have been some mistake. Kids, teenagers? Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, flung into a battle they didn’t ask for? Yet, if the Elders were correct and they were the ones the prophecy alluded to, surely the universe would guide and protect them at the height of trouble.
Victor dragged a hand down his face, letting the thick ring dig into the bridge of his nose until it hurt. In his impertinence in wanting to challenge the universe, had he really gambled with the most vital pieces of the prophecy? And now Reyor had them, her poisonous claws wrapped around their fates.
Idiot. Them having powers and being able to combine abilities wasn’t enough proof for you? The Elders really fumbled the puck tasking you to watch over them, didn’t they?
“Eh, mijo!”
Victor spun around, fists raised. Paloma’s weathered face beamed as she emerged from the roof hatch. She waved a familiar packet in the air. “Need smoke?” she called out in a stage whisper.
He lowered his fists and shook his head. The old woman shuffled up to him, gave him an appraising look, and began to rub small circles against his back with one hand, the other propped against her ample hip. Her gray curls had been released from their usual bun; the strands reached her chin, making her look even more like an older version of her granddaughter.
Under her soothing ministrations, the tension that had gathered along Victor’s spine abated. He gave Paloma a little smile. She tutted up at him and pointed at her temple. “Hurt here?”
Victor shook his head again.
She lowered her finger to her chest. “Here?”
His eyelids slid halfway shut and his jaw tautened. She took his large hand in her smaller ones. “Mi pobrecito.”
The tenderness of her voice, twined with the compassion in her honey-brown gaze, nearly caused his walls to crumble. Only by sheer will did he not get misty-eyed. “Thank you for being here,” he said hoarsely.
She tightened her grip and led him back toward the makeshift nest he’d created. The two of them sat and Paloma pulled out polvorones wrapped in wax paper from the pocket of her apron. Victor’s stomach growled at the sight of the round shortbreads. “Where did you . . .”