Sienna collapsed against the smooth wall. “Harvey...”
“Harvey did this, despite his misgivings. Cowardice was his dominate trait. However, I believe he discovered bravery within in himself at the end.”
“The end?”
“Yes, he pulled me offline shortly before he saw to your release. I believe he also meant to declare his defiant acts to Madam President herself. Even without my immersion in the T-Net, I find it irrefutable that her agents should be on their way. I believe you are the priority, as I am already dying and nothing will stop that now.”
Sienna sobbed. “Can… can I do anything? Please?”
“Yes, Sienna Doyle. You can embark on a singular action that will have two, separate yet equally astounding results. You can leech from me.”
“What?”
“I have been suspended in this agonizing state of purgatory for over six years now. I would be a teenager now, but for the stasis of the prosthetics chamber and my own Mancer abilities continuously healing me. I do not wish to endure this any longer.”
“But—” tried Sienna, covering her face.
“More importantly, you will be leeching off not only a Mancer, but a Mancer who, with a flip of that single switch to your left, is tapped into the entirety of the Transcendental Net. I would happily, eagerly, pass on with the knowledge you were empowered to stop this from ever happening again.”
Sure enough, a singular slide pad to activate the T-Net feed, only a few feet from her.
Was this really it? Was she going to… am I going to kill this child? For what? Revenge? Freedom? So she could become some new definition of monster?
“You must hurry. I can feel Rove’s presence moving closer.”
“Maybe we can…”
“Sienna, once that switch was initially shut off, I began dying. I will now die no matter what is done to prevent it. Switch on or off, you leeching from me or not. This is unavoidable. I would prefer my death to have meaning.”
That did it. Sienna pulled herself off the floor and hit the switch. Arcs of light, actual streams of data made material were visible as they crackled and suffused into the child’s mutilated body. She grew rigid for a moment, and then took on a determined, expectant demeanor.
Sienna shuffled over. “What was, uh… what is your name? You never told me.”
Eyes a thousand years deep took her in. “Kayleigh. Kayleigh Lopez.”
“I’m so, so sorry Kayleigh.”
“I’m not,” she replied with a wry smile.
“Kayleigh, do you… do you know what I’ll become?”
“No, not even I can predict such an outcome. But I know what you are, Sienna.”
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“Hope.”
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DataLog Text-MemxJourn: Doyle, Sienna A. / 12-07-24
“Nothing, sir!”
“Damn it. You three secure this room and the rest of you follow me down to where Lopez is kept.”
She heard them, felt them.
She knew how their atomic structures differed from the walls, the floors, the guns they held, the air around them. Every particle of energy, the quantum mechanics of being, she intuitively understood the diversity. Faster than reading it, because it was faster than thought, more like a newly acquired involuntary system in the body that you remained acutely aware of.
The doors burst open, and she knew two guards had swept in, their weapons raised at her as she lay over the corpse of Kayleigh Lopez. She didn’t have to look, she knew, she felt. She felt Rove enter the room as well.
“Get her away from it.”
It. Not Kayleigh, not even “Lopez.” It.
Sienna felt rage.
She turned on the first guard who was coming up to grab her arm. A single hand out, palm up. It connected with his chest, hard. More than that, it connected with his being. This was not the catastrophic entropy of a Feeder. This was not the energy manipulation of a Mancer. This was the something else. This was the guard’s electrons scattering wildly, his protons and neutrons losing their cohesion, and his existence wiped out on a sub-atomic level. It was the super-fusion of a dying star at her fingertips. The guard was erased in light.
The other guard ran screaming.
Rove faced her in contempt. “I’ll make sure to execute that man and his family later. But for now, I see you fancy yourself some kind of Mancer. I don’t know what insipid trick you just pulled, but it won’t work with me.”
“One problem,” said Sienna quietly as she dried her tears. “I’m not a Mancer.”
The entire room exploded outward in a perfect halo of brick and steel.
She felt them running, heard them barking orders over their earpieces through the T-Net. She dismissed that entire portion of data, silencing communications via Servants throughout Raleigh. Stepping over the rubble, there came a groan, and Rove stumbled to his feet. She felt the Feeders being herded into an offensive position, felt another Mancer who she took to be the Madam President moving down to take control of them. Good.
“Insolent bitch!” roared Rove. “You’ll beg me to end your life once I’ve beaten respect into you.”
“No,” said Sienna with a sigh. “You won’t.”
Rove bellowed and hurled some type of energy at her. Nothing happened. It, like anything else he could bring to bear on her, simply dispersed before her. Sienna glowed, like her aura itself had become infused with energy. In a way, for moments, it had – whatever Rove had tried to attack her with had been taken apart and redistributed throughout eternity.
“What are you?” Rove demanded of her, his jowls trembling with indignation.
Sienna snorted, and looked to the sky.
“Hope?” she replied before annihilating his existence and flinging it out through the Milky Way.
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DataLog Text-MemxJourn: Kepler-Madison, Margaret. / 12-07-24
/DataLog Text-SUPPLEMENTAL: Doyle, Sienna A.
The Madam President Margaret Kepler-Madison brought the procession to a halt. Head held high with four of her Honor Guards to each side and five hundred Feeders at her back, she found a single young woman standing in the streets before her. Short blonde hair and curvy with her hands stuffed into the pockets of stained navy cargo pants and a badly torn flannel work shirt exposing far too much. Yes, thought the Madam President, I can see why that weakling doctor was smitten with this.
“Child, you can not conceive the deserved punishment you’re about to endure.”
“Child?” repeated the young woman. “Cute. If that makes you feel better, sure. I take it you’re the crazy bitch calling herself the President?”
The Madam President was aghast. No one of such ill breeding and low-standards had ever spoken to her in that manner. Her very being commanded respect. Fealty! She deserved to be acknowledged and treated as a superior!
“What, are you not sure? Because I don’t see any other bitter old cunts marching down the street with her pet Feeders.”
“Kill it for me!” screeched the President. “Kill it in my name!”
Bullets flew from guns, none of them ever reaching her. Each one dissolved into a star before her presence, each one drifting away. The young woman hadn’t even shifted her stance.
“I’ll take out your guards if I have to, but why don’t you try those Feeders you so desperately rely on.”
Margaret Kepler-Madison seethed. The impudence displayed by this… this lesser was not to tolerated. Reaching back with her Mancer abilities, she sought that spark in each Feeder she could clasp onto and control.
Nothing. Emptiness.
The Madam President spun in time to see all five hundred of her Feeder fall, each one inert and radiating energies from the orifices that once absorbed it. In unison, they burnt out, burst, and settled as piles of ash. Trying to face the young woman again, she had to shield her eyes. The searing light emanating from her was like that of a sun.
“No…”
the President moaned.
“No? No what?” asked the young woman, this filthy lower creature, as she closed the distance between them. “No, I can’t order a peaceful community to be slaughtered just to kidnap one person who doesn’t even know I exist? No, I probably shouldn’t have a child butchered just because she might pose a threat to my regime some day? No what?”
“Leave The Madam be!” howled Ashmore as he charged out of nowhere.
Margaret Kepler-Madison could have sworn the young woman’s eyes themselves exuded lightning as Ashmore exploded into nothingness.
“A supernova is just as devastating as a black hole,” murmured The Madam President.
“What?”
“Dr. Harvey’s last words. I… see now.”
This terrible celestial thing in the shape of a dirty young woman, it stood above and looked down upon her as if contemplating judgment. This little wretch, a disguise for a condensed composition of stars, had a scowl sculpted from infinity. The ruling came far, far too soon.
“No, you don’t see,” said the light as she took Margaret Kepler-Madison face in her hands. “And you never will again.”
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DataLog Text-MemxJourn: Doyle, Sienna A. / 12-07-24
Sienna felt weariness, deep down in her soul. Too much death. Too much suffering. She lay back on the stone bench and tried to ignore the presences she felt creeping closer. Either guards or citizens. Closing her eyes, she shifted the Servant she had taken from the Madam President. While Sienna didn’t really care at the moment, Madam President wasn’t going to need it ever again. Its familiar weight felt comfortable, familiar, in her hand. Too bad about that.
There was an explosion nearby, followed by another only seconds later. Great, she was a revolutionary. Could she please go to sleep here, as thanks for liberating everyone? Awesome.
Nope. She felt a single individual strolling towards her. Openly, casually.
Another Mancer.
No, it couldn’t be…
“I hereby, without equivocation, refuse to inform your brother that he has yet again failed in his ongoing quest to rescue you in a daring fashion via an attempt to repay some unspecified sibling competition.”
“Camus,” was all Sienna could get out before being wracked with sobs.
“My dear, please! Please, everything is alright now.”
Curling up in his arms, she sobbed as he rocked her back and forth.
“Gemmel,” she got out.
I know, dear one, he was found. It was taken care of.”
“Sean… he’s…”
“He’s here somewhere, accompanied by a large and understandably aggrieved band of Northerners. They would have come, with or without my assistance, but as Kepler-Madison and I have no love lost and I do feel a sort of parental affection for you, I decided to ‘come off the bench’ as it were.”
“The Madam President’s over there,” said Sienna.
Camus hugged her tight before releasing her and striding over to the smoking crater Margaret Kepler-Madison was occupying. Her cornflower blue dress suit was covered in soot, her greying hair fried down to the scalp. She made bleating sounds, like a small, injured animal, as she groped for the pearls from her broken necklace. Something must have stirred in her head at Camus’s approach. She craned her neck up to him, seeing nothing with hollowed, blacked eye sockets and began squealing. Frantically slapping the ground, trying to find a corner in the crater to back herself into, she urinated down her leg.
“All the gods in heavens,” whispered Camus.
“She was a monster,” said Sienna, arms wrapped around herself.
“Oh, I will be the last person to dispute that. What… what has transpired here exactly?”
“You were right, I’m not a Feeder or a Mancer. Dr. Harvey, he said… Dr. Harvey was this guy who, well anyhow… Feeders absorb and Mancers manipulate, right?”
Camus just stared at her.
“Um, I radiate. I expel. I… think I break stuff back down to its most basic components, sub-atomic and shit. Then it just… goes elsewhere. Back into the universe.”
“Energy can not be created or destroyed, only transferred,” mumbled Camus.
“Yeah, that’s what Dr. Harvey said.”
“And here?” he asked, gesturing down at the cowering ruins that used to be Madam President Margaret Kepler-Madison of Raleigh.
“I removed her Mancer abilities, removed the energy signature that made her ‘her.’ She’s, like, in perpetual Leecher status now, but without a way to feed. She can’t tap into any energies, including her own, can’t manipulate, can’t control… she’s just cut off, okay?”
“You blinded her,” Camus stated, with a quiet, understated authority.
“I blinded her,” Sienna confirmed, seeing a peculiar authenticity to the word choice.
“Good,” said Camus, nodding absently. “Good.”
Just then, Sean and about a dozen Northerners rounded the corner, carrying more heavily artillery than Sienna had ever seen one person haul.
“Awww…” exclaimed Sean, seeing his sister standing there, safe and sound next to Camus. “Fucking seriously?”
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DataLog Text-LiveJourn: Doyle, Sienna A. / 25-10-24
Yep.
The few actual supporters of Kepler-Madison’s rule were rounded up and executed from what I heard. Madam President herself was purposely kept alive until she got her hands on a shard of glass about a month later and stuck it in her own neck. I don’t believe the liberated citizens of Raleigh were terribly upset. Sean and Teddy, the ginger giant, helped with most of the restructuring. Last I heard, Teddy had been elected Governor with my brother as his second. This idea amuses me to no end.
Sean still hasn’t had the chance to rescue his poor little sister and make us even.
Camus and I only stayed in Raleigh for a short time after those first days. We went back to Nashville to check in with Mandela and let him know his people were okay. Jackie had been killed in the skirmish with Rove, but Rainie had somehow survived. That made me happier than I would’ve thought possible.
I also visited Gemmel’s grave.
All the victims of that day had been placed in a specially selected field, over in Shelby Park. Lined up in a row, Jay Gemmel had been placed at the end. I spent the whole afternoon there, saying my goodbyes and missing a life I never got to have.
Turns out that whole thing with Camus and Mandela dealing with Shelby Park had been about this time that Anne Gimme and her crew had snuck a relay beacon into the park, attracting Feeders. Camus had taken care of the Feeders. I may or may not have wandered south of the Cumberland River and re-introduced myself to Ms. Anne and her Gimmes. I considered paying a visit back to Sigma-8, but decided those ghosts were better left dead. And clueless.
Camus and I traveled. If we found Feeders, I destroyed them. If we found Mancers, it went on a case-by-case basis. It was all pretty easy since I had taken Kepler-Madison’s Servant and it contained access codes to all her T-Net eJournals. The Quinn Sisters in Los Angeles ended up being cool, for instance, while this one evil bastard in Seattle found himself dead real fast. I think I’d like to meet this Carter guy I keep hearing about out on his fake island in the Pacific.
After close to three months, we were drifting close to Ohio again. I could tell something had been bothering Camus for days, maybe even two weeks. He sat me down and told me some things, about his life before Feeder epidemic, about who he had been and the family he had once. Once. It never really clicked that Camus was old enough to be my dad, and that his “parental affection” was somewhat out of his usual character.
Rainie said I was dim.
A wife and two daughters. That day by the crater, he had seen a way out through me. Our travels began because he had been trying to find a way to ask me to destroy him. Utterly erase him. Thing is, he told me, after a few weeks, he came to realize he didn’t want to die anymore.
“
I know what you call yourself, my dear,” he said to me. “But I don’t feel that word truly reflects you and what you can do. You bring light, Sienna. Kayleigh was right… you’re hope.”
He kissed me goodbye on the forehead, like my own father had done years and years ago before he died. He told me he had work that needed attending to, responsibilities long avoided, and that I’d see him again. There are few things I believe in any more, but I believe Camus wouldn’t lie to me. I hope I’ll see him again sooner than later.
So now it’s just me.
The red remnants of Pittsburg are at my back and the true purpose of my countrywide jaunt continues to be successful. The T-Net is down to forty percent. Buffer times, data gaps, code errors, everything. I hadn’t been this far east yet, but when we had been backtracking from the west coast, we had seen far less Feeders. Functioning ones, at least. Quite a few ashy corpse piles, though.
Lots of people oppose what I’m doing. Mostly Mancers who rely on their Feeder armies to keep people controlled by fear, but there are enough humans who simply can’t conceive of a world without their Servants, Feeder threat or not. I don’t know, maybe it’s because now, with the T-Net crumbling, once you’ve leeched too much you just die.
Too bad. This is happening.
I can feel a group of people approaching me from the northeast. Even though it’s cold, I unbutton my light grey coat to reveal my white shirt. Even snagged a new white scarf. Somehow it became my thing, a symbol. The colors, the light, I don’t know. Gemmel would’ve got a kick out of it. Camus and I joked it’s because the “future looks bright.” Some people overheard and took that way too seriously. Still, I don’t want to disappoint.
My name is Sienna Doyle, and I’m the only one of my kind that I know of. I call myself a “Blinder,” and I can reduce any form of energy back to a pre-atomic state. I have every intention of destroying every T-Net tower on the planet, therefore wiping the Feeder epidemic out of existence.
So yeah, I’m going to save the world whether you like it or not.
4POCALYPSE - Four Tales Of A Dark Future Page 7