The Fire Inside

by Skye Ryan

  Suddenly, Mrs. Danvers began convulsing, her eyes opened wide and rolled to the back of her head.

  “What’s happening!” shouted Rhyssa as Corvan ran about the small space, fiddling with equipment and reading print outs.

  “She’s had some sort of reaction,” he told them and everyone, including Davis, watched with sad eyes. Ms. Tran walked into the room, and her normally stoic face crumbled into extreme sadness as she watched her friend convulse.

  Rhyssa grabbed her as she made to sprint to her friend’s side.

  “No,” Rhyssa warned. “Corvan’s trying to save her.”

  Ms. Tran nodded and whimpered. Rhyssa held her as she silently cried. Lia ran to assist Corvan, her mind automatically tapping into hundreds of medical texts on the human bodies and illnesses.

  They worked steadily over the next few minutes to stabilize her. They rotated and switched places, each silently communicating what each was tasked to do. After ten minutes, it was of no use. Mrs. Danvers opened her eyes to see Corvan, smiled and then expelled her last breath.

  “NO!!” Corvan yelled and screamed. “She can’t die! The cure works! The cure works!” He continued trying to start Mrs. Danvers heart and Lia was forced to make him stop, his sounds of agony wounding her worse than any Probity punishment.

  “She was—she was so healthy. How could she—how could she die?” he wondered aloud.

  Lia moved Corvan to his room and laid him upon the bed. He seemed incoherent as she removed his shoes and socks. Lia held him as he cried for a long time. She waited until his tears had dried and he lay in a light and fitful sleep before creeping out of the room and into the hallway. She tiptoed down the corridor and stopped when she heard intense sobbing and crying. She moved to a door and quickly opened it. Rhyssa was in the study, sitting on a chair. Her sobs racked her entire body and she moved with the force of them.

  Lia didn’t know Mrs. Danvers well, but in the brief time she had known her, she had seemed a kind and wonderful soul. Lia pulled the door closed and walked inside. She moved next to Rhyssa and then pulled her into the circle of her embrace, running her fingers through her hair.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  O ver the next few days, Corvan seemed driven to synthesize the cure. Lia had tried to assist him, but he had seemly curt and angry and had only said he didn’t need any help. Lia comforted Rhyssa as best she could, and between bouts of her crying and her ever increasing nightmares, she allowed Rhyssa the comforts of her body, letting her expend her grief into pleasure. Corvan tried to make contact with his networks, and after a day of silence the resistance answered his call. The voice over the communication module was frantic however, and Lia stood back and listened while Corvan spoke.

  “The virus has spread to every sector,” the black garbed man was saying. Only his eyes were showing, a sign that even in these times anonymity from the Empire was necessary.

  “I can imagine,” Corvan acknowledged, “But what I have developed works. For the most part,” Corvan added, his face becoming shadowed in sadness before smoothing out. “There may be a very, very small portion of the population that will react to the agents in the compound. But field tests performed on the infected show a clearing of the virus in up to three days. Two or less if they were extremely healthy before they fell sick.”

  The black garbed man nodded. “Yes, yes! We will liaison with you within the day. We are working with the rebel armies to disseminate the vaccine.”

  “You all are working with the rebel factions?” Corvan asked.

  The black garbed man nodded. “Yes. Desperate times create strange bedfellows. The rebels cannot make money off people who are dead.”

  “And as far as the Empire is concerned,” the man began, “It is a slowly dying beast. We only pray those who survive its burning can rise from the ashes.”

  “Yes,” Corvan agreed. “One can only hope.”

  “We tried reaching some of our contacts on Geides,” the man was saying and Lia’s ears perked up.

  Corvan flinched and sneaked a peek at Lia who was staring impassively at the screen.

  “We tried, but our sources tell us that everyone there is dead or dying,” the man concluded. Lia couldn’t hear. She couldn’t breathe. She could do nothing but stare at the screen uncomprehending.

  “The ravagers have already descended upon many of the places there,” the man was saying but Lia was still in a state of shock, “They even took the Probity.”

  Corvan spoke with the man for a few more minutes and they worked out the logistics. After the transmission ended, Corvan stood and walked over to Lia. He embraced her tightly and then pulled back to look at her face.

  “Are you okay?” he asked and she shrugged.

  “I don’t know. I mean, I know I should feel—I should be relieved. But—I just. All those innocent girls. Those women who I knew day in and day out who had done nothing but be born to their status. I can’t—I don’t know how to feel.”

  Corvan held as she shook. Her body could produce tears, but she couldn’t quite synchronize her response with how she was feeling. Her programming was confused and lost. So, she stood in his arms, shaking with disbelief and a dim sort of sadness. She lay in bed with Corvan that night, her mind mulling over what happened to the souls of people when they died.

  She had scarcely put herself into sleep mode when she heard something from the far end of the complex. She climbed gingerly out of bed and out the doors to the hallway. The sound seemed to be emanating from outside the complex, behind the wall. She tapped into the security console and allowed her field of vision to be filled with what the monitoring devices could pick up. She gasped when she did. There were Empire tanks outside, and they were trying hard to ram down the gates of the Corvan’s stronghold.

  Lia ran quickly to Corvan and shook him hard. He groaned and tried to pull her under him. She fought him and shook him once more.

  “Corvan, get out of bed.”

  “Mmm,” he told her and cuddled up further into the blankets.

  “Corvan! There are tanks outside!”

  At her sharp and insistent tone, Corvan shot up and wiped the sleep from his eyes. He rolled out of bed and pulled on his clothes quickly.

  “Shit,” Corvan cursed, “Someone must have been monitoring my calls. We’ve been found out. We’ve got to go. Luckily, I have planned for this event.”

  Corvan pushed a button on a wall and it lit green. He opened his closet doors, pushed at the wall within in it and revealed a set of stairs. He pushed Lia onto the stairs and they clattered downwards in their bare feet. Lia was astonished to see that they had descended a short cut into the lab. He grabbed various devices, vials and odds and ends. He barked a few orders at Lia, who obeyed without question. After throwing everything into hover bags, they moved to a wall and it revealed a long tunnel. They ran quickly down the tunnel with the bags hovering behind them. A set of double doors sat at the end of the hall and Corvan typed in a series of codes on the wall beside the doors. The doors opened with a soft whoosh, and Lia saw that they were on some kind of underground tarmac, a starship sitting right atop it. Rhyssa, Ms. Tran and Davis were already there in front of the plane. They all quickly got inside and pulled the doors closed.

  Rhyssa ran to Lia and gave her a long kiss and Lia pulled back. She could see shock on everyone’s faces including Corvan’s as she moved away. Corvan didn’t slow down however. He got the ship up and running. They were shooting down the black tarmac and were airborne when the first bomb went off, destroying the west wing of the stronghold.

  Lia looked out the window and down at the devastation. The stronghold was exploded in places, on fire in others and some places were filled with Empire soldiers on foot. Lia could hear a soft but steady hum and her programming quickly filled her in on the noise. It was an anti-detection device. Many star ships flying in enemy space employed them, but due to their cost and the extremely long wait to purchase one, most star ships were equipped with state of the art ballistics
instead. They flew quickly into the stratosphere and into the freedom of space. The continued for several minutes before everyone finally decided to relax. They were safe.

  Corvan contacted the black garbed man once more. Corvan was gesturing wildly at the screen and she could surmise that he was trying to get the rendezvous with the resistance pushed much closer than a few days. After an hour of negotiation, Corvan agreed to rendezvous with the resistance as soon as they reached the base at Illium. Satisfied, Corvan unstrapped himself from the captain’s chair and walked back to Lia who wouldn’t look him in the eye.

  “So,” he began, “You and my stepsister.”

  “Yes,” Lia told him and finally looked at him, feeling guilty, but strangely unashamed.

  He shook his head. “I should be angry. I should hate you right now.”

  “Yes.”

  “But I don’t.”

  Lia didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing. “All I know, is that I’ve grown to love you over this short time. You. The real you. Not this body you’ve been housed in. I have to trust that you’ll make your decision when the time is right. And I have to trust in that decision.”

  Corvan walked away and Lia looked down at the floor, her mind buzzing with questions and her programming at a standstill. They reached the surface of the base some time later and Lia followed the others off the ship, still reeling from the earlier conversation.

  They were met by a convoy of trucks, each filled to the brim with resistance fighters that were heavily armed. They were also soon met by a tall, dark, brown-skinned man dressed proudly in a heavily starched and pressed resistance uniform, his eyes sharp and cunning and his arms folded rigidly behind his back.

  “Corvan Jax,” the man greeted them as he drew closer, “I am here to escort you to a resistance base. Do you have the necessary equipment?”

  “I do,” Corvan answered and with a nod, the man had a team of people grab the bags and load them into a truck.

  They rode in relative silence, with only the steady murmur of low frequency radio bursts and soft conversations surrounding them. Lia watched Rhyssa from the corner of her eye and then regarded Corvan. She stopped short when she saw Rhyssa looking back and Corvan turned to her, his gaze considering.

  They arrived at another star ship. This one was an old Empire combat ship, equipped with electron powered blasters, bullet powered automatic weapons, and laser arrays. Lia tiredly climbed aboard after everyone and sat up the seat, wishing that she could really go to sleep and perhaps dream. Anything to get her mind away from the situation with Rhyssa and Corvan. She pulled the thin blanket she was given up to her chin, silently reveling in her need for human mannerisms while trapped in her artificial body. She was a machine, but her soul, her essence, felt human.

  She continued to ponder as the ship powered up and left the port. They cruised at a light altitude before climbing to critical mass and leaving for orbit.

  Once in space, she felt as if she could breathe. She felt a light tap on her shoulder. She looked up to see Rhyssa.

  “Can I talk to you for a moment?” she said and Lia nodded.

  “Of course,” Lia answered and they sauntered off into a corridor with Corvan watching from afar.

  “I think I love you,” Rhyssa began and Lia shook her head, “I can’t--,”

  “No,” Rhyssa told her, “I know you can’t really reciprocate, and that’s okay but--,”

  Looking into Rhyssa’s sad eyes, Lia made a snap decision. She pulled Lia further into the ship and gently took her hand.

  “Look,” Lia told her. “I have something to tell you and I hope after I do, you will still feel the same way.”

  Lia heaved a sigh and then began to tell Rhyssa everything: the Probity, the escape from the planet, being trapped in the AI unit and finally, falling also for her stepbrother Corvan. Rhyssa said nothing for a long time. Her jaw was clenched tightly and she leveled a hard gaze at Lia.

  “So, all this time, all this time and you were human!” Rhyssa said loudly and Lia shushed her.

  “Please Rhyssa, understand I was in a difficult situation. I had no one I could trust.”

  “But you could have trusted me. And you didn’t.”

  “Rhyssa, I didn’t know how you’d react--,”

  “But you told my brother. You told him and you were able to make things work with him.”

  “That’s because--,” Lia began to explain and Rhyssa cut her off.

  “I am so angry right now. I thought I had finally found something—or someone I could trust. And turns out, you were just lying the whole time.”

  “Rhyssa, it wasn’t like that.”

  “Were you and my brother laughing at me behind my back the entire time?”

  “No, Rhyssa. We weren’t. In fact, your brother didn’t know about us until earlier today.”

  Rhyssa considered this for a moment and then shrugged. “I don’t think it matters, you still lied, you still let me get close to you, knowing full well everything wasn’t real. Was how I made you feel real or did you fake that too?”

  Lia shook her head adamantly. “No, what we shared was sacred and special. I would love to explore what we have in more depth. I just need a chance to figure out how I feel--,”

  Rhyssa snatched her hand from Lia’s grip. “Well let me make it easy for you. Go fuck yourself.”

  Rhyssa stalked off angrily and Lia breathed in deeply, willing her emotions to settle. Watching Rhyssa walk away from her was like twisting a knife in her gut, and for a minute, she dreaded going back into her human body, where the emotions were probably ten times more intense. She sighed and shook her head. She didn’t know what to do.

  Lia wondered the huge ship, her mind in disarray for a bit, and then began walking back to the bridge. The ship lurched once, then twice and after the third time, Lia was sure they were being attacked. An alarm sounded and the rush of feet could be heard hurrying through the corridors.

  “All hands on deck!” a voice announced through the overhead speaker system. Lia’s eyes widened and she rushed to get to the bridge. She was there when a group of people boarded and took over the hold below.

  “They’re on board!” one of the lieutenant’s shouted. His men scrambled to take back the hold, but ultimately were forced to try sealing it off from the rest of the ship. It didn’t matter however, and the men down there slowly advanced throughout the ship, fighting and killing. Lia suspected if she had a heart, it would be pounding with fear right about now. Fear and apprehension. The doors to the bridge flew open and debris flew everywhere. Lia covered Corvan as the metal flew about and a large piece became embedded in her arm.

  She pulled it out painlessly and looked at it. Being inhuman at that juncture was luckier than not. If she had been human, she would be bleeding to death by now. Corvan gave Lia a look of emotional pain before speaking.

  “Thank you,” he told her simply.

  Lia nodded. “You are always welcome Corvan.”

  A group of Councilmen came strolling into the bridge, their steps steady and sure. She instantly recognized the leader. It was Councilman Ezra. Lia cursed beneath her breath. She could only look as he shot most of the members on the bridge and made his way to the center of the room.

  “This ship is being claimed for Empire purposes,” he told them loudly. “I suggest everyone here put down their weapons and give up. If you do this, you will be spared, and your cohorts given a chance to prove their innocence.”

  Lies, Lia thought. They were all lies. Lia knew that they were all doomed to death. The Empire never negotiated with anyone, and by their mere virtue of being on the ship, that told Lia that their hunt for freedom was over. They’d be taken in and killed. She listened to the Councilman drone on triumphantly.

  “Your time of running from the Empire’s rule is over. It is time to surrender, to the Empire, to law and order and to me.”

  Lia wanted to roll her eyes as he talked but stayed still. “You have been disseminating lies, tell
ing everyone about a virus that does not exist. You will be punished for this unless you give up now and declare your loyalty to the Empire.”

  At this last statement Lia wanted to snort. Lies? She thought. He was the one to speak of the virus as lies! She had seen for herself the devastation it had wrought, and the people it had infected and killed. She shook her head and saw Rhyssa walk in behind the group of Councilmen. Lia shook her head imperceptibly only to see Rhyssa walk right up to Councilman Ezra with a smile. He smiled back at her and then looked over at Lia.

  “Thank you for alerting me to the whereabouts of my lost property,” he told her and Rhyssa stared back in delight. “I will be collecting her now and I will take on the task of reuniting her mind with a body.”

  Lia shook with fear for the first time. She noticed how he didn’t say her body. He said a body. He didn’t even plan on putting her back together the way she’d been born. She was disposable to him, something that he could switch out and make into whatever he so chose. She knew at that moment that she couldn’t let herself be taken. If she did, she’d die a thousand times over.

  She looked over at Rhyssa, her face filled with hurt and betrayal. Rhyssa looked back in shame and suddenly, Lia was filled with an inexplicable anger, a feeling that rivaled her growing sense of helplessness. She looked about herself and saw a discarded blaster in the hands of a dead resistance fighter. She gave the Councilmen leave to continue talking and slowly made her way to the blaster. She surreptitiously pried it from the dead man’s fingers, and gave a short prayer for the man whose life had been cut short. Rhyssa saw what she was doing and was herself backing up slowly behind the group of men. Lia clutched the blaster in her hand and saw from the corner of her eyes that Corvan had procured a weapon as well. He was stealthily moving over to fire.

  Rhyssa stepped behind the first man and pulled out a wire. She began strangling the man who struggled and gurgled.