by J. N. Chaney
“It’s almost like someone beat us to it,” Awen said.
“Kane?” Sootriman asked.
“Maybe,” Awen replied. “He doesn’t exactly strike me as the intellectual type, though.”
“So-Elku,” TO-96 suggested.
The others turned to him.
“Possibly,” Awen replied. “If he survived the episode with Kane, which seems doubtful, maybe he made it in here and took whatever was in the box.”
“Feels like something a Luma would be interested in,” Ezo said. “I mean, you are, so why wouldn’t he?”
Awen nodded, pinching the bridge of her nose in irritation.
“Well, there is a bright side to all this,” TO-96 said merrily.
“What’s that?” Ezo asked.
“If we are stuck here indefinitely, at least we have what could be the metaverse’s largest library to keep us occupied. We could, as you say, read ourselves to death.”
“Not funny, ’Six. Not funny.”
“Oh.”
* * *
The four of them had spread out and begun searching for anything of interest in the library. As promising as the supposed data drives were, without the proprietary hardware to access them, they remained worthless. TO-96 had already examined several of them, hoping to find a common connection port or frequency. However, the devices were devoid of all known interface types and went back onto their shelves.
The books and scrolls, while fascinating in and of themselves, lacked anything distinguishable to TO-96. Even though the data dump from the stardrive gave him a wealth of knowledge, at least to get them this far, it lacked whatever language was written on the old parchment. Still, something about the text seemed familiar to Awen, like she should know it from another life, as if it was calling out to her. In the end, however, the books and scrolls went back onto the shelves beside the data drives.
Ezo had already tried to get Awen to enter the Unity. She’d refused, saying she still wasn’t ready. And that was true, at least marginally. But she’d made it sound like a health issue when, in reality, it was based on fear. Sootriman came to her rescue and told Ezo to leave her alone then proposed the idea of having everyone spread out. Awen was grateful for the reprieve. She would enter the Unity, maybe even soon. But she needed to breathe, to think.
She wandered down one of the radials that stemmed from the room’s center, her fingers gently brushing along the spines of data drives. There was so much here—more than she could learn in a thousand lifetimes. And all of it had just been sitting dormant for centuries. She hated to let it go to waste, hated that it might sit here for more centuries before someone figured it out—though, if So-Elku was the one with whatever had been in the box, maybe he’d figure it out.
Maybe he’ll be back. The thought filled her with a sense of dread that crept along her skin like a newly hatched ganglion filapod. Of course, if he did survive the battle with Kane, he wouldn’t have had much time to linger and would have stolen what he could, intending to return when it was more convenient.
That book, or whatever had been in the box, was the key to this library, and she cursed herself for letting him have it. But it wasn’t her fault. It just felt like it was. Maybe if she’d gotten everyone here sooner. Maybe if she’d stopped Kane. Maybe if she’d hurt So-Elku back on Worru. Maybe if she had… she shuddered with where her thoughts led. No, she wasn’t a murderer. Not like the Republic. Not like the Marines. Like Magnus?
The search went late into the afternoon until TO-96 warned everyone that the light was fading. They dared not stay in the open after dark, so they retreated from the library, exited the temple, and made their way back to their headquarters.
It was Sootriman’s turn to prepare a meal, and she did her best to create something palatable out of the Indomitable’s remaining foodstuffs, which were running out. She succeeded at not making anyone vomit, and that was saying something. Ezo’s dish the night before had caused both women to run to the nearest bathroom.
“At least the Novia believed in really big toilets,” Sootriman said, “or else you would have been wearing this, my dear.”
* * *
The days turned to weeks as Ezo, Sootriman, and TO-96 continued to map the city while Awen returned to the library to search for clues. She was beginning to feel at home in the temple, despite learning nothing more about the marvelous inhabitants of this once-vibrant planet. Each night around dinner, Ezo asked if Awen had entered the Unity yet, and each time, Awen gave him the same forlorn look.
No matter how much she wanted to view this world through her other sight, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. And worse, her fear of doing it only grew with each day that passed, further distancing her from the explosion in the rotunda. At some point, however, she knew she’d have to enter the Unity, at least to satisfy the growing rift her fear was creating in the team, though she wasn’t sure what it would solve. Even with all the knowledge in the cosmos, the only way they were ever getting back was if they could build a ship or if a ship came to rescue them.
The four sat around the table they’d placed in their makeshift dining room. TO-96 and Ezo had rewired some of the Novia’s strange lights and hung them over the table. TO-96 had also figured out a way to resuscitate sections of the building’s solar arrays, which he directed to power the portions of the building the team lived in.
The discovery of power had come none too soon. After the Indomitable’s stores ran dry, finding food compatible with humanoid physiology was a matter of life and death, as was the even more important job of finding potable water. But TO-96 had proven himself yet again by salvaging the Indomitable’s sole surviving water-reclamation unit and protein synthesizer. While neither was meant to sustain life, they would allow the team to get by until something better could be figured out.
TO-96 had already discovered several edible varieties of flora, some of which didn’t taste half bad. Additionally, he’d managed to kill, skin, and cook a dozen small birds, which he’d given “a gastrointestinal acceptability rating of ninety-three percent.” The GAR, as they’d come to know it, became the source of more than a few jokes whenever the cuisine wasn’t up to the patrons’ standards—mostly on the nights that TO-96 cooked.
“It may have a GAR of eighty-seven percent,” Sootriman said and spit the green mash back onto her plate, “but it has a Sootriman palatability-and-tolerance rank of zero.” Thus, the GAR-SPAT index was born and helped the team manage more than one dark night.
However, there was no amount of levity that would lift the depression that began to plague the team as weeks turned to months. Awen was fairly sure that the others wondered how life was going for everyone else back home, just as she was—not that she imagined Ezo and Sootriman having family, per se. They didn’t seem like homebodies. Still, life as they’d all known it had changed, possibly forever.
For her part, Awen wondered how her parents were doing. She wondered if news of her mission had reached them yet and what explanation had been offered. If it was up to So-Elku, she imagined he would have lied, concocting some horrible story about the traitorous dau Lothlinium Luma. Would her parents believe the lie and be even more disappointed in her than they were already? No, she doubted that the Master even cared to attend to such things. Instead, if Willowood were still alive, perhaps she had sent them a holo-transmission or even made contact in person. That was the kind of woman she was. Awen hoped she was still among the living.
As each new day turned up fewer and fewer discoveries, the pressure on Awen to enter the Unity mounted. Whatever tech, whatever ships, whatever new toys were discovered, the team found an equal amount of disrepair. Ships had been swallowed whole by the jungle, drive cores long drained, systems rusted out. Even if Ezo and TO-96 could make something void-worthy, no amount of solar power would charge a core, at least not without sending it to the sun’s surface. Each day that passed was a reminder of how stuck they really were and how much Awen’s giftedness was their only remaining hope.
It had been three months since their first excursion to the temple together. Ezo sat at the dinner table, pleading with her. “But you might see something inside the Unity to help us,” he argued.
How many times had they been through this? Ezo was mad. He’d probably blow at any second. And he had every right to. The truth was, all of this was because of her. Sure, the longer days had something to with it, as did the stress of being trapped in an alien universe. But in the end, his frustration was Awen’s fault, and she couldn’t let that go.
Awen swallowed her bite of food and stared out the window as twilight fell, a deep-purple hue summoning the black of night. Sootriman had prepared the evening meal, but Awen had suddenly lost her appetite. “I know, I know.”
“I don’t think you do, Awen. Frankly, I’m tired of being patient.”
“Ezo, please,” Sootriman soothed, taking his hand.
He yanked it away. “I’m pissed at you, Awen. Splick, I’m more than pissed.”
“That’s enough, Ezo.”
“No,” he said, glaring at Sootriman. “She has the power to see things we’re missing. It’s been… it feels like it’s been years.”
“Actually, it’s been sixty-three days, two hours, and—”
“I don’t care,” Ezo said, his lips drawn tight over his bared teeth. “It’s time. Whatever it is you’re waiting for, whatever it is that’s holding you back, it’s time to get over it.”
“That’s it, Ezo!” Sootriman said, standing. “I’ve had enough of this!”
“Well, so have I!” Ezo yelled.
“Me too!” TO-96 said. He bumped the table hard as he stood. The others glared at the bot. “It felt like the right thing to say.”
“Sit down!” Ezo ordered the bot then turned to tell Sootriman the same. She tilted her head at him, and he thought better of it.
“Don’t you even think about telling me what to do, Idris,” she said, cool as Antaran ice—voice low, words measured.
“It’s not like you’d listen anyway,” Ezo mumbled.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.”
“He insists you don’t listen,” TO-96 said.
“Not now, ’Six.”
“No, I’d like to hear him out, Idris.”
TO-96’s voice suddenly changed to a near-exact mimic of Ezo’s and Sootriman’s, saying, “You know how she can be ’Six. She’s always, like, ‘Don’t tell me what to do, Idris’ and ‘I know better than you, Idris’ and ‘You’re just going to get caught, Idris.’”
“Would you just shut up already?” Ezo yelled.
“But I was only trying to—”
“No!”
“As you wish, sir,” the bot said.
“He’s right,” Awen said softly. Time seemed to stand still as everyone looked at her. “Ezo’s right. I probably will find something that we’re missing. I’m just… I’m afraid, that’s all.”
“Well, I think it’s about time that—”
Sootriman gave Ezo a look that said she would tear out his lungs with her pupils.
“I think it’s time that we listen to your fears,” Ezo said, taking his seat once again. Sootriman sat down, too, followed by the bot.
“Back there, in the rotunda, I got scared. I mean, really scared.”
“We were all scared, Awen,” Ezo said.
“Let her talk,” Sootriman said.
“I saw something.” She took a deep breath. They’d think she was crazy. Unstable. Would they even believe her? “It was Kane.”
“What was Kane?” Ezo asked. Sootriman raised her palms at him and gestured for him to slow down. “Go on.”
“There was something about him, something very wrong. Do you remember how he seemed like he was talking to someone else?” Awen asked, and everyone nodded. “Well, he was talking to someone but not in the physical realm.”
“You’re saying he was possessed or something?” Sootriman asked.
“Something like that. I’ve never seen it before. Never read about it. It was as if another being was living inside him.”
“Like a parasite,” Ezo offered.
“Maybe. All I know is that it scared me, and I…” Awen’s words hung in the air while the others waited. This was the heart of it, right here. She was face-to-face with what she’d been avoiding. “I don’t want to go back in the Unity,” she finally said. Tears welled in her eyes.
The truth was, the image of Kane’s other self had shaken her more than she’d realized. To say that it had unnerved her would be an understatement.
“The image of his face—it haunts me. And I’m just afraid that as soon as I go back in, he’s going to come for me.” She could feel the tears running along her nose and down the sides of her face. She mashed them against her skin. “And make me do terrible things.”
“What terrible things?” Sootriman asked.
Awen was weeping now. She wiped snot from her nose as Sootriman came around the table and put her arms around her.
“I had thoughts,” she said with a gasp. “Thoughts of killing Kane. Of doing things to his body and causing him pain in ways I’d never thought of before.” She let out a deep breath, her lungs shuddering, lips fluttering. “It’s like it wanted me to kill him. It asked me to break my vows as a Luma.”
“There, there, love.”
“No, it’s worse.” Awen buried her face in her hands, embarrassed. Shame filled her heart like an ocean wave surging into an underwater cave. “I… I wanted to slaughter him. To do what the images in my mind said to. I want revenge because it’s the only thing that will heal the pain.”
She sobbed, and Sootriman held her, rocking in time with Awen’s labored grief, like a mother with her child. All of the pain Awen had carried from the mwadim’s palace, from Abimbola’s prison, from the Elder’s Hall, from the Novia’s temple, and even from Sootriman’s den pooled in her heart and poured from her mouth. She saw the bodies of her friends scattered in the skyscraper on Oorajee. She recounted her master’s betrayal on Worru. And she felt her vulnerability under Kane’s destructive gaze here in Itheliana.
Sootriman’s arms cradled her as Willowood’s had outside the Grand Arielina. Awen remembered confiding in Willowood that she’d wanted to give up, to just be done with everything. She’d told Magnus the same thing. And neither of them had resisted her, neither had told her that she couldn’t. But they had told her to consider other factors before making her decision. And in the end, she chose to keep going, to keep pursuing what she felt was right.
But what is “right” on Itheliana, so far away from everything I ever knew? She was, after all, in a completely different universe from the one she’d been born to. She wished Willowood were here—Magnus too—to help her decide what to do.
“Listen,” Sootriman said after Awen felt herself calm down. Awen sniffed, wiping her nose with her sleeve. She was being so unladylike, but she didn’t care. “I don’t know how the Unity works, so I won’t pretend to. You’re the expert there. But I do know that you saved my life with it—with your power. Kane tried to kill me, but you overcame him. You won. And since it’s my life we’re talking about, I get to tell you that you’re stronger. You’re stronger than Kane and whatever that other thing is. You hear me? You’re stronger.”
Awen nodded her head, her face hot and wet.
“And you escaped from So-Elku,” Ezo said, picking up Sootriman’s lead. “Twice. You resisted his attempts to get you to open the stardrive too. You did that, Star Queen.”
“If it is my turn now,” TO-96 said, “I’d like to add something.”
Awen smiled and let out a small laugh. “It is.”
“I reviewed footage taken in the mwadim’s palace that I found on Republic servers. It is better not to ask how I obtained this, mind you. But the fact that you stood up to the Republic ambassador and held your own with the mwadim, much less survived the explosions, is exemplary. There is even footage of you saving a Marine in the street from a falling block
of concrete. It would have killed you both. But you saved both him and yourself. I do not think I am using hyperbole when I assert that you are an amazing woman, one who…” The bot hesitated, perhaps processing more holo-footage. “One I am proud to call a friend.”
“Thank you, TO-96,” she said, trying to compose herself. “Thank you, all of you.”
As Awen sat upright, she felt Sootriman kneel down beside her. “I need you to listen to me carefully,” the woman said, her deep-brown eyes pleading with Awen. For the first time since meeting her, Awen noticed pain behind Sootriman’s eyes. “What that voice said to you, that thing about revenge, it’s not true. I’ve been there. I’ve walked that road. Revenge never heals you. It only masks your wounds and then makes them worse. You understand? It never heals you.”
Awen nodded, letting the truth of Sootriman’s experience confront the lie in her mind. And it was working. “Thank you. I understand.” Awen took a deep breath, feeling as if the weight of the world had been lifted from her shoulders. It was the best she’d felt in a long time. She felt ready, reminded of who she was. While her friends’ encouragement hadn’t eliminated the sense of risk she felt in the pit of her stomach, she at least knew what she had to do next.
“Tomorrow,” she said with her chin raised. “Tomorrow, I will go back to the temple and enter the Unity of all things. But only if you come with me.”
6
The four-day journey from Worru to Capriana Prime had worn out So-Elku. No, that wasn’t it. The pressure of living under Kane’s threats had worn him out. The constant head games, the manipulation, the condescension. On top of it, the Luma master was quite sure the admiral had gone completely mad. Or worse.
So-Elku dried his face with a towel as an incoming communiqué chirped in his quarters. He swiped open the notification hovering a few centimeters off the mirror’s surface. “What is it?” he said, dabbing his cheeks.