by Matt King
Her head perked up, nostrils flared as she turned toward the window.
“Relax. You’re okay.”
A slat of wood creaked behind him. Shadow’s head whipped to the front of the church. She let out an angry roar and held out an arm to guard him.
Before he could turn around, a shaft of white fire slammed into Shadow’s midsection, sending her flying back into the benches. Her claws dug into the floor to stop herself from hitting the wall.
He looked back to see Aeris standing between the open doors, her hands balled into fists with fire swirling around them.
“No, no, don’t!” he said, waving his arms. “She’s friendly!”
Aeris looked at him with eyes narrowed. “You know this creature?”
Shadow’s clawed hand gripped him around the chest. Before he could protest, she lifted him up and tossed him into the balcony. He landed in a snowdrift. His feet slipped on the wet slats as he fought to get back to the ledge. “Wait!” he shouted. “Don’t—”
Shadow launched herself at Aeris, who spun out of the way as Shadow’s claws came ripping through the wall surrounding the open doors. She swung twice more, narrowly missing Aeris’s head each time. As fast as Aeris was, Shadow’s swipes inched closer and closer. She lunged with her jaws opened wide, tearing through one of the columns supporting the roof over the porch and knocking Aeris to the ground. Aeris came up with her hand glowing white and thrust an open palm into Shadow’s chest, sending her crashing back into the doorway. Shadow shook her mane as she stood, brushing off the snow and splinters of wood.
Aeris took a step back. As soon as she moved to take another, Shadow was off the floor and chasing her into the woods.
Dark blurs streaked past the windows as Dondannarin and the rest ran to help.
August jumped down from the balcony and ran through the broken doorway to head them off. “Stop!” he said, putting himself in front of Dondannarin to keep her from throwing her chakram.
“Get out of my way!” she yelled.
“She doesn’t understand what’s happening. Please, just let me talk to her.”
“Talk to her?”
He turned at the sound of a tree crashing through the forest. “August!” Aeris shouted. She set off a flurry of quick blasts to create a wall of tree trunks between her and Shadow, who swiped them aside with ease. “I can’t keep this up forever!”
Shadow crept up behind her while she had her head turned.
“Look out!” August yelled.
The Elosian’s arm came swinging toward Aeris’s head. Aeris threw up her arms to block it, but Shadow’s strength sent her flying into a tree trunk. Blood flowed from her forehead. Her arms trembled as she tried to push herself back up.
Shadow’s orange eyes blazed with anger. She reached back to swing at Aeris again.
August sprinted over to throw himself on top of Aeris’s body. He picked her up in his arms, positioning himself between her and Shadow. “Stop!” he yelled.
Shadow gnashed at him and let out a sharp roar.
“I mean it,” he said. “You’re not hurting her.”
She took a step forward, her teeth still bared. He held Aeris tighter, shifting to make himself more of a blockade.
Finally, Shadow took a step back. Her angry rumbles died away with a final snort. She bent down and sniffed August first, then Aeris.
“Let go of me,” Aeris hissed.
“Wait a second,” he said. “No sudden movements.”
As Shadow retreated, he slowly let his arms unfurl. Aeris stood quickly, brushing the snow and dirt from her armor. She glared at Shadow, who answered with a rippling snarl. Off to the side, the rest of the Vontani stood nervously watching them, their chakrams ready to throw.
“Everybody, let’s just take a deep breath,” he said. “We’re all friends here.”
Aeris let the fire in her hands die out gradually. “What is this creature?” she asked.
“This is Shadow.” He reached up and scratched behind her ear. Her eyes only left Aeris for a second to look at him. “She’s Bear’s phase twin. If we show her that there’s no danger, she’ll let Bear have control again.”
He looked at her expectantly, waiting for Bear to come forward. The heavy breaths through her nose looked like two jets of steam. They settled into a calm rhythm.
“Bear?” he asked. “Bear, are you in there?”
Shadow looked back at him with defiant, unchanging eyes.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Bear turned Meryn’s device over in his hand. The back was smooth metal. The front showed him a whirlpool of blue wisps, like churning clouds. It was thinner than a pancake, and nearly the same size. “I’m supposed to do what with this?”
“Attach it to your suit,” she replied. “When you are ready, press your hand to it and think to me.”
“Think to you.”
“I want you to tell me what our next course of action will be. Either I should join you, or create a means for your escape. Using this, you can do it silently through your thoughts.”
Escape. The choice of words made him raise his eyebrows. “Are you sure about this?”
“More than I’ve ever been,” she said, taking the device from him. She placed it on the left side of his chest and pressed it into his armor.
He glanced down, noticing that the blue swirls danced at her touch. The device stuck in place. He brushed at the edges, wondering if it would fall off, but the hold was as strong as if it had been welded on.
“Does August have one of these?” he asked.
“No, but he will.”
Behind her, the Orphii’s light pulsed behind the cloud cover. They were always hovering, a beaming reminder of the battles to come. The ones that had already been bonded mulled around the exterior of the camp, keeping close to the last remaining Mountain. The Orphii never seemed to want for anything, including a job to do. They were content to observe.
His final look around the place came back to the Horsemen standing to his right. Their black overcoats rustled in the wind from the coming storm. To look at them was to learn nothing—whether they were nervous, excited, or sorry to be going along at all. They were with him because of Meryn’s orders and nothing more—as far from a source of comfort in a foreign land that he could possibly ask for.
“I used to think I could hold my own in pretty much any situation,” he said. “Not so sure that’s the case these days.”
Meryn put her hand in his. A rush of energy flowed up his arm.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “You are the perfect person for this task.”
“We’ll see, won’t we?”
She gave his hand a final squeeze before letting go to form the synapse. “Remember,” she said, as her eyes radiated the energy she held inside. “Their confidence in our cause will echo your own. Show them that they belong with us.”
He nodded and waited for the portal to form. It spread into a swirling arch of gray mist. He stepped through once it formed, without looking at what was ahead, afraid to think too long on what he was getting into. The feeling of being tugged in all directions ended when he cleared the murky membrane on the other side. He opened his eyes.
His feet were at the edge of an ocean, but there was no sand beneath his toes. The Horsemen filled in around him as the synapse swirled shut. They stood on a metal platform that formed an island in the sea. Behind them, a rushing noise roared loud enough to make his ears ring. He turned to see a colossal tower reaching toward the sky, branching off into smaller arms like a tree near the top. Water sped through the semi-transparent hull of the tower, where it transformed into a mist shooting out of the ends of the branches. Above it all, a cloud mushroomed into existence, feeding off the mist as it churned itself into a blossoming thunderhead.
The more he looked around, the smaller he felt. Off to the west of the platform was a coastline teeming with interconnected skyscrapers. To his right, city-sized ovals rested on arms rising out of the ocean. The arms of the h
overing cities extended straight down to the floor of the ocean, hundreds of feet deep and yet the water was so clear he could see it all.
A Horseman grabbed the scythe from his belt, triggering the others to do the same. They whipped around to face the water slapping at the edge of the platform.
“What’s the matter?” Bear asked. He scanned the water but couldn’t find whatever had spooked them.
When he finally saw it, there was no time to react. A metallic orb the size of a beach ball exploded through the surface to hover a few feet off the platform’s edge. Its hull glowed red as it hummed with energy. Bear steeled himself for a fight.
The orb kept its distance, floating in place as it dripped water into the ocean. After a pause, its red color shifted to yellow, then blue. The humming died down to barely a whisper. Starting with Bear, the orb floated toward each of them, stopping at eye level before dropping to the water and back in a strange sort of bow.
“Hello,” Bear said.
The orb zipped back to him. It moved in a blur one second, slow and steady another. It didn’t seem to have a mouth or a speaker, so he didn’t hold out much hope that it would answer.
“We’ve come to see Soraste, if that’s okay.”
Its metallic surface moved constantly, a shifting sea of colored wisps changing shades like a chameleon. It widened the bands into stripes of green and white flowing from top to bottom before returning to a uniform blue. When it was done, it floated back toward the water and dropped like a stone beneath the surface.
Bear leaned over the side to find it. The orb stopped its descent and shot back up to the top, breaking through the surface showing only half of its body. It bobbed, making a humming noise before disappearing into the deep again.
“I think it wants us to follow,” he said to the Horsemen. He triggered his mask and immediately remembered that he was the only one with a built-in breathing device. “Maybe you boys ought to sit this one out.”
Before the brothers could lower their weapons, the orb sprang out of the water and shot out a beam of light that enveloped the Horsemen one by one. Finally, an arm shot out to cover Bear, too, and as one they were yanked off the platform and plunged into the ocean.
The hazy cocoon of light left him with only a few inches of clearance around his armor. The orb carried them quickly through the clear upper sections of the water to the darker blue of the depths. Streaking past him were enormous turbine structures tethered to the sandy bottom with black trunks of metal. As they traveled beneath them, one of the tubes changed direction, causing the others to move in kind.
The orb zipped them along the ocean’s basement until it got to a ridge where the water took on a black hue. It dove straight down a cliff wall and took a sharp turn in what should have been the side of the mountain. Bear lost track of where they were until a faint bluish-white glow showed the inside of something he thought was a cave. After another sharp dive straight down, they emptied into a room with see-through floors and walls.
As roughly as it had grabbed them, the orb retracted its harnesses, dropping them onto the cold surface. Bear landed on his shoulder and rolled, coming to a stop with his face to the floor. Beneath him, a luminescent fish looking like a cross between a shark and an eel swayed from side to side, nibbling at a plant. As Bear rose, the room revealed itself to be lit completely by a swarm of wriggling blue creatures swimming around the rounded platform.
The orb wove between the Horsemen, pausing at each brother as if checking to see if they were okay. It then pulsed blue and white swirls as it moved along a path toward a hallway connecting their building to another, larger orb structure nearby. This time, the Horsemen didn’t wait for the machine to put them in a harness again. They marched through the arched opening to follow. Bear fell in behind them.
They were led into a chamber that looked like a combination of tech lab and junkyard. Electric pulses flowed along machines, passing through a central core that swirled like a bottled galaxy. The walls of the room were made up of towering shelves of intricate computers, but the floor was a graveyard of metal scraps and frayed wires.
Standing in the center of it all, with her back to them, was a woman hunched over a glowing cauldron. Light danced from her fingers to the sides of the well.
“I told you they would come,” she said. She spoke quietly without turning around.
A spark of energy appeared on the ceiling, swirling over the center of the room as it twisted into an arm of light that poured into the shape of a man beside her. “As you did,” he replied after fully materializing.
The orb moved off to one of the banks of machines at her side and lodged itself in a hollowed socket. The half of its surface still exposed above the machine changed from blue to white.
“Welcome to world 2036501107…4, is it?” the man said. He continued without waiting for an answer. “I am Balenor. This is Soraste.”
The woman glanced at them over her shoulder before returning her attention to the cauldron.
“John Lawson, but my friends call me Bear.” He looked around the room. “This is quite an operation. Thank you for agreeing to see us.”
“You’ll forgive me if I say that your presence here is curious, Mr. Lawson,” Balenor replied. “Your quarrel is not with us, is it?”
“No, it isn’t.”
“And yet, here you are.”
The gap of silence as the god waited for Bear’s reply felt like his first test as an ambassador. Bear’s pulse quickened. “Is there somewhere we can talk?” he asked, momentarily postponing his paralysis.
Balenor and Soraste traded a glance. She lowered her hands from the cauldron, taking away the light that churned in the center. Her features were delicate, with soft yellow eyes and a round face. She was shorter than Balenor by a foot, and Balenor barely came up to Bear’s shoulder.
“This way,” she said.
She led the group toward the far side of the lab where a load of machine scraps sat heaped next to the glass wall. As they got closer, Soraste lifted a hand toward the scraps. They began to move, scattering into smaller junk piles sorted by types of parts. Her housekeeping revealed a round circle cut into the floor. Balenor and Soraste took seats on the far side. Balenor motioned for him to sit. Bear lowered his legs into the indention. His armor clanked against the polished glass.
An ivory pit covered with a top layer of roughly-cut chunks of clear cubes separated him from the gods. Soraste ran her finger along the edge of the container, igniting the cubes with turquoise flames. The licks of fire clung tightly to the chunks, only giving off a faint glow. The light was enough to attract some of the animals floating outside the room’s clear walls, providing a soft blue overhead light to their corner of the room.
“This must all be new for you,” Balenor said, looking around.
“I’ve seen some worlds I never could’ve guessed existed before this began,” Bear answered. He addressed Soraste. “You’ve made a beautiful place here.”
“I didn’t,” she muttered. She blinked quickly, her yellow eyes testing Balenor’s expression. “I mean, I help them. Sometimes. If they want.” She took a breath to speak again only to abandon the thought abruptly.
“You’ll have to forgive her,” Balenor said, smiling nervously. “She’s not used to interacting with others.”
“I can speak,” she said to him just above a whisper.
“Yes, well, either way the two of us want you to know you’re welcome here.”
Bear nodded. The man’s voice was shaky as he said the last part of his welcome, like he was scared of being overheard. Bear glanced back at the Horsemen, who had chosen to stand off to the side. Their hands rested on their belts, marking them as ready to fight even though they seemed to be taking in the scenery.
Beyond them, back in the lab, the orb still glowed white in its socket.
“Your robot is quite a machine,” Bear said.
Balenor shot a confused look at Soraste.
“His word for ‘arti
ficial life,’” she said to him. A smile crept across her face briefly as she looked to the orb. “Ion is one of a kind. My pride. An amalgamation of voices.”
With no thesaurus in sight, Bear tried a different way to figure out what she meant. “Does he speak a lot?”
“He is not really a he. Not a she. He answers to ‘he,’ though. His choice. Not mine. Ion is everyone, really.”
“What she’s trying to say is that Ion is a collection of lives,” Balenor added.
“I’m sorry,” Bear said, looking between them. “I don’t follow.”
“Life can be thought of as the presence of three components,” Soraste replied. “Consciousness, self-awareness, and memory retention. Humans are different because they process emotion. No one has ever created an artificial life that can process emotion. Ion is the first.”
“But it doesn’t talk,” Bear said.
“Ion prefers not to speak. Words can be confused. Besides, most people only like to listen to themselves.”
“So he uses colors to talk, sort of,” he said.
“Yes,” she replied. “Colors.”
“But how is it…he, a collection of lives?”
She pointed toward the machine where Ion sat docked. “This world is a collection of 20,365,011,074 living beings.”
“Hence the planet’s name,” Balenor added, smiling proudly.
Soraste gave a slight shrug. “You can call it Series 51 if you want. I do.” She returned her focus to Bear, quickening her speech as she rushed out the explanation. “Each person exists as a singular collection of electronic data that can be bound to any creature’s body, so long as it conforms to the necessary biological structures required for a successful bonding, of course. It’s their choice. There are multiple habitats—land, sea, air—with billions of creatures that meet the criteria, creating nearly infinite combinations of potential life experiences. But they have no means to transfer their consciousness, so I assist, or rather Ion does. That’s what he is doing now: culling individual memory clusters as he facilitates the transfer of life from one organism to another.”