by RMGilmour
“Level one,” she called, sighing.
A blinding light flashed across the room, and when it dissipated, the room was clean, the walls once more intact.
“I thought you said it wasn’t controlled down here?”
“Only the level of power your suit can emit. The rest is up to you. Eventually, you’ll learn to control the level yourself.”
She lifted my right arm and positioned my hand in an upward, palm out movement. Then pressed down upon my wrist and forced the top half of my hand slightly backward. It was a move similar to what we’d performed back in the dome, during the exercises.
“Pulse with your right hand, defense, will momentarily block your opponent and knock them backward. The more force behind your movement, the further back you’ll push them. At level ten, full force will paralyze them instantly. If you’re too close, you’ll feel the bounce back from the pulse and it will hit you as well.”
She then lifted my left arm and moved my hand in the same way.
“Your left hand is attack. The more force behind your hand movement, the further away you can attack them. Level ten is attack to kill. At level one, it will only sting a bit.” I hoped her version of ‘a bit’ was close to mine, but her grin suggested otherwise.
“Who’s my opponent?”
“I am. We’ll both be level one,” she said, stepping back several feet, then rose her right hand.
I saw nothing come toward me, but felt a punch to my chest. It knocked me backward, off my feet and I landed hard on the ground. I silently gave thanks that the mat below me was not concrete.
“Level one, will only knock you over,” she grinned.
“You couldn’t wait for me to be ready?” I grunted, getting to my feet.
I didn’t wait for her to respond, instead I rose my left hand, aiming it at her. But she ducked, and the green light I’d produced sailed into the wall behind her. It didn’t look as powerful as the white light the warriors had produced in the Arena, but I guessed this was my starting point.
“Do you think the enemy will wait for you?” she called, raising her own left hand.
I ducked and rolled to get out of its way, but it caught my leg, and I sucked in my breath as a needle sting pierced my calf, bringing me down. Before even attempting to stand again, I worked my right arm around to face her, but missed again.
“No fair,” I complained under my breath. I stumbled to my feet; my calf was beginning to burn. “You have an advantage.”
Though before I could maneuver around enough to raise either of my arms, I felt the pulse at my shoulder, slamming me backward into the wall.
“Would you like me to go easy on you?” she yelled at me again. “If a ward catches you, they won’t wait for you to be ready and they won’t go easy,” she said, stinging me again. “They’ll attack with everything they have,” and another to my thigh.
Before attempting to move, I raised the lower half of my arm that was now buried in the wall, and sent green flashes in every direction, as many as I could until my hand tired. But all I could hear, was laughing.
“That was fun, but you won’t hit me.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m right beside you,” she whispered.
I swung my head toward her voice, in time to see her hand pulse, sending me sliding across the wall to the other side of the room. My left side and back were forced into the wall, knocking the breath out of my lungs. My head snapped to the side, also connecting with the rock, and I fell forward, onto the ground, off the mat this time.
“I give up,” I tried to breathe. “I’m dead.”
“That’s disappointing. I was just getting started.”
If I could have opened my eyes I’m sure I would have seen her pout. Instead, they needed to stay squeezed closed, forcing back the tears that tried to escape. I gulped back air, breathing through the pain. My head began to pound from the top of my skull down to its base and my leg, I was sure, was on fire.
I lay on the floor for several moments or minutes, unsure of the passing time, hoping she was done knocking me around the room, and I blinked back the tears that threatened to embarrass me. Once I was sure my eyes were dry, I rolled over to see her standing over me.
“You call this defense?” I huffed, thinking it had to be more combat-like than strictly defensive training.
“Drink,” she said, handing me a murky green flask. “And yes, now you know what level one feels like, next time you’ll be much more motivated to start defending yourself.”
I gladly accepted the flask, anticipating the relief I knew it would bring. My leg felt relief right away and I looked down, thankful to see there had been no actual fire. My back, my head and my shoulders though, took a little longer.
“You really are fragile, aren’t you? Are you ok?” she finally asked, squatting before me.
“No, but I’m sure I will be,” I tried to laugh it off, rubbing my shoulder. I should have been offended, but compared to her I’m sure I seemed quite breakable.
“I don’t mean your body. I mean…” but she trailed off, and I glanced up at her to find her eyes searching my face for the words she needed.
“I mean… Haize told me to go easy. I shouldn’t have been so forceful. It’s not the first time you’ve been hurt… badly.”
I realized the point she was trying to make, and made the connection between the pain now and the memories associated with the pain from years earlier. And I found that I could actually think about the accident without trying to disappear into a non-existing void. Although the one final memory of that night, I was sure would still evoke a scream. But apart from that, I was determined not to disappear again. I felt stronger than who I was. I could handle it.
“No,” I said. “Even though, I really am out for today, despite your magic drinks, next time don’t go easy on me. I want to learn.”
“I figured,” she chuckled. “Ok, enough damage for one day, let’s get you home before Haize eats my head.”
“Well, there’s a pleasant image,” I groaned, but she only laughed harder as she helped me to my feet. The challenge, however, was staying on my feet. But with each shaky step toward the same shaft we came down, I had a feeling the suit I was in, was not only holding me up, but was also holding me together.
“Think you can make it up or will you need a lift?”
“I can do it,” I wasn’t sure if I could, but I had to try. And I managed to force myself up, into the air, and followed her back to the dome.
Once we were back in the long room lined with cubicles, she held out yet another flask to me.
“Do I need to ask what it is?”
“Actually, this will make you numb all over. Without it, when your suit comes off, you would feel every ounce of pain. Though the effect of the serum wears off rather quickly, so let me know if you need more.”
When she said this she wasn’t smiling, grinning or teasing. Just when I thought the worst was over, it was all about to come back to me.
“All these serums and drinks you’ve been giving me all day…”
“Thank Castor,” she uttered.
I uncapped the flask and swallowed the contents, gagging as I forced it down. It was bitter, smelled of week old trash and tasted as bad as it smelt. Though almost right away, I began to feel my body loosen, the aches and pains were subsiding, and for a moment I thought I was going to fall asleep standing up.
“Ok, you look ready,” she told me, and moved me toward the cubicle.
No, I’m not, I wanted to say but my mouth didn’t want to move. And before she activated the light, she stared at me for a moment before speaking.
“My training began at age five. When I was fifteen our planet was invaded. They were brutal. Attacking everything that moved.” As she spoke I focused upon her every word. Not wanting to miss a thing.
“They thought they could force our submission,” she continued, now staring through me. Not a sin
gle emotion crossed her face. “But we withstood every beating they gave us, every attempt to break us, only to show them that they couldn’t. And then we turned on them. No one tried that ever again.”
I wanted to question her further, amazed she’d said as much to me, and I wondered why she did. But it was her final words that prompted the most irrelevant of questions.
“You are much, much older than me, aren’t you?” My words all slurred together.
She mashed her lips together, stifling a smile.
“We all are,” she said, pushing the panel inside the cubicle, and stepping away.
I remembered to close my eyes against the light, but as I did the darkness felt too good, and I felt myself falling. And so, I forced my eyes back open, only to be blinded by the brightness. But I kept them open; I’d embarrassed myself enough for one day.
Bracing my hands against the wall, I held myself upright, preparing for the pain Lena said would arrive. And when the cubicle erased the suit from my body I felt a dull throb in the back of my head, as well as in my left shoulder and my back, my right forearm and my left thigh all the way down to my ankle. There were too many places to count in the state I was in, though so far it wasn’t so bad.
As the light receded I could feel my regular clothes wrapped around me, but when I stepped out of the cubicle my feet felt encased in lead. Though upon checking, I saw only my regular boots. I already missed the springiness of the suit, and I knew it was going to be a long walk back; I was not in any shape for running.
I turned slowly, to find Lena, just as she was leaving a cubicle, dressed in her regular warrior clothes.
“I’m not running,” I told her.
“No, and you’ll need to see Haize the moment we get back. You don’t look so well,” but she smothered a grin.
“There’s no one here that could heal me?”
“There are not enough of us. Right now, there’s only one healer. If I were to take you down there, your injuries wouldn’t be a priority; minor considering what he would be healing, and as it is we’ll be lucky if we’re back before nightfall. Haize left with Aleric earlier,” she sighed, shaking her head. “She should have stayed! We need Mason here, too.”
“Mason heals you?” I asked, trying to pinpoint any moment during the day when we may have seen Haize or Aleric leave. My mind was too numbed to worry about it though. No doubt there had been some kind of contact between Lena and Haize that I hadn’t been aware of.
“He understands the technology and Haize has taught him everything else. For as long as I’ve known him, he’s always wanted to know and master everything new he comes across.”
She stared at me expectantly a moment longer, and several questions did enter my mind, but left just as quickly.
“We better get moving,” she finally said.
As we climbed the cliff wall, Lena kept one arm around me the whole way, pushing me upward one step at a time. The river rose with us, bunched up behind us, ready to catch me should I fall. And the long walk back was the longest walk I was sure I’d ever taken. I couldn’t sense Jordan, and figured he was either back inside the city, or the serum had dulled those senses as well.
We needed to stop several times along the way as the pain crept back in. My leg and arm I could bare, but my shoulder, head and back exploded with each step until I couldn’t bare it, and I requested more of the foul fluid.
“Isn’t there an easier way,” I complained during one of our stops.
“There used to be. Until the Guardian latched onto our signatures. There were several I watched leave. They were supposed to reappear in the Colony, but they never did,” she sighed. “The technology we have here is nothing compared to what we have on Heart. And we are not yet ready to reveal our suits to them.”
It was early evening when we finally reached the Colony, and Lena led me straight to Haize’s apartment. Once inside, Haize directed me to a smaller room as Lena described my injuries. Haize instructed me to remove my shirt and sit. I didn’t argue.
She gently molded a thin grey sheet around my shoulder from my neck to my elbow. It was cool and light. I barely felt it attach itself to my skin, and almost immediately, all feeling in my shoulder disappeared.
“What did you do?” she reprimanded Lena, as she inspected me, then placed another sheet around the back of my head. “I told you to go easy.”
“No,” I told her. “No going easy. I need to learn.”
“Lydia, you’re not built like us. Our bones are denser than yours, our muscles are thicker, stronger. You can’t fight the way we do and expect to survive.”
I looked down at the grey sheet upon my shoulder, but it was no longer there. Instead, I was looking at my insides exposed. Bone, muscles, veins, blood, all neatly compacted. I gagged and looked away, squeezing my eyes shut.
“What did you do to me? Where’s my skin?” I gasped, my voice rising, I could barely speak the last word. The thought was too sickening, and my one forbidden memory tried to surface, but I pushed it back down.
“Nothing,” Haize murmured. “Your skin is still there. I’m just… looking at what’s inside and correcting the damage.”
“Haize doesn’t trust the Unit’s power here in the Colony, to heal you. She prefers to see what’s going on herself,” Lena told me.
“You could have warned me,” I breathed, trying to get my stomach under control.
“Then next time don’t look,” Haize retorted, although her tone was thoughtful, methodical as she focused upon healing me. “Better still, don’t let there be a next time.”
I couldn’t tell her no. I couldn’t tell myself no either. I had to go.
13
Memories
It didn’t take her long, it was maybe an hour later when I entered Grid’s apartment as though nothing had happened. I wasn’t completely healed, although there was no apparent damage remaining, I was just a little tender.
“Hey,” Grid said, looking up. He was seated at the table and apparently, reading a newspaper. “Dinner?”
“Yes, please,” I was starving. I sat in the chair opposite him and picked up his paper. “What is this?”
He laughed, “Just a little something Hammond and I have been working on. A collection of memories, nothing personal, just history, facts, or really anything we can remember. You can add to it, if you like.”
“I don’t know if you’d like what I had to add, my brain tends to remember mostly the bad stuff.”
“Well, you know Castor has a serum for that,” he said, placing a delicious smelling plate of meat and vegetables before me. But I couldn’t tell if he was serious, or not.
“I think he has a serum for everything! And there’s also the Central Unit,” he continued. “It can extract your memories.”
“It can, can it?”
“It scans your thoughts for a particular type of memory, copies it and plays it back to you on a screen,” he said, pointing to the window. “As though it had been recorded through you.”
“I don’t know if I like the sound of that,” I told him. “If you’re interested in anything I have to offer your compilation, I’m afraid you’re going to have to rely on me the good old-fashioned way.”
“Ok, but don’t give up on the idea completely. I have a stock of images and sounds from my childhood. It’s like my own photo album.”
When he put it that way, I second guessed my initial response. I would give almost anything to have pictures of my family, my brother, instead of having to rely on my fading memories.
My family however, had departed before me. My only pain was of me missing them. Grid’s family survived him, as far as they knew. And he’d lived through every day not only missing them, but also with the heartache and knowledge of the grief his family would have suffered missing him.
And we were not so very different from those of Heart and Rathe. All of us human. All with the same depth of love and attachment to our families and frie
nds. All missed, and missing someone.
“And besides,” he continued interrupting my thoughts. “I’m sure once you really begin to think about it, you’ll find an equal mixture of good and bad willing to come out.”
He was probably right. And as I lay his paper aside to devour the food he’d placed before me, I noticed he’d also provided me with a small stack of cream colored paper and a fountain pen - the sort I hadn’t seen since my last visit to my grandparents’ house as a child.
“Just in case the writer in you changes your mind,” he winked, knowing full well I wouldn’t be able to resist.
Instead of picking up the pen, as my fingers were itching to, I grasped my fork. I needed to eat.
“Thank you,” I smiled back at him.
I could already feel the beginnings of a new writing journey forming in my head. The history of Earth - what little I paid attention to - from 1952 to 2014. An absurd title, but it was my jumping off point, and it was quickly followed by a succession of names, dates, events, and facts, particularly those from the fifties and sixties that I thought would interest Grid the most.
“Thank you,” I repeated, now eager to leave the room. I’d forgotten how much I loved my writing process.
Several hours after I’d said goodnight to Grid, my eyelids struggled to remain open, and I looked back upon the pages I’d already written. I’d taken my time, enjoying the slow-moving feel of the fountain pen; it gave my stumbling thoughts time to form into organized sentences.
Of the events that I’d recorded, some were devastating and some exhilarating, but they were what my learned memories were willing to give up so far. However, I couldn’t wait for Hammond to read my account of King Richard III.
The following morning, I awoke before the dawn, excited to see Jordan and maybe get back to the Arena. I decided to not even look at the pages I’d written the previous evening; they would need editing before being acceptable to be read by anyone, and I knew from experience, that thirty minutes of revision could easily turn into three hours.