by Amy DuBoff
Gasps sounded from the women behind her.
She glanced back over her shoulder with a grin. “This is nothing.”
Ruth looked like she was about to respond when a pulsing alarm began echoing through the hall.
“Move!” Jason shouted from the end of the line.
Raena ran through the new opening into the hall, searching the walls for signs of a stairwell. Eight meters forward, she saw a sign for one and dashed ahead to open the door.
It, too, was secured by a lock, but Raena smashed in the door in short order and propped it open to make it easier for the group to follow.
She raced up the stairs to the next level, reaching out with her telepathic senses to locate the other women. They were there—somewhere close.
At the top of the first flight of stairs, Raena busted open the next door and waited for the first women to catch up. She wedged the door open and continued ahead once Jason was in sight at the rear of the group in the stairwell.
“They’re coming, I can feel it,” he said privately in her mind. “Be ready for a fight.”
A smile touched her lips. “I can’t wait.”
The floor looked identical to the one below, and Raena spotted a security door to the right that corresponded to the location of the holding cells on the lower level. She immediately set to work breaking down the door while Jason took up a defensive position on the other side of the group to the left.
As soon as the door came free, Raena was struck with a wave of telekinetic energy. There were definitely people with abilities inside, and not just the prisoners.
Standing in the center of the hall were two dozen acolytes dressed in light gray and six High Priests robed in black. They stood calmly with their hands at their sides, glowering from beneath their hoods.
Along both walls of the hallway were holding cells like the floor below, except there were two women in every cell—and each held a small child in her arms, ranging from infant to toddler.
“Stars…!” Ruth breathed behind Raena.
The High Priest standing nearest the doorway fixed his gaze on Raena. “Brave, but foolish, for you to come back for them.”
“It’s over,” Raena replied. “The Priesthood has been dissolved.”
“No, you can’t just vote us out of existence,” he sneered. “This isn’t about politics or even control. We’re here because Tarans need a push forward that they’re unwilling to make themselves. We’ve done what everyone else was too scared to do. You’re living proof that our efforts were not in vain—just look at what you can do.”
“I’m not some tool you can manipulate,” Raena spat back.
The High Priest’s thin lips parted in a smile. “We don’t need to manipulate you. More powerful forces are at work.”
Raena’s heart skipped a beat. “You’re insane.”
“The Aesir aren’t the only ones who’ve read the patterns. We, too, have seen the paths and know what is inevitable. We were ready, and everything is as it should be.”
They knew they’d lose here? Then what have they planned? Raena took a slow breath. “Surrender now.”
“Oh, you’re not the least bit curious?” the High Priest asked.
Now that the baiting was obvious, Raena committed herself to ignoring his statements. It’s probably just lies to distract us. We need to lock them down.
Raena reached for the pulse gun secured at her waistband—a few well-placed shots would take down every enemy in the hall.
“If you won’t ask, I’ll just tell you,” the High Priest continued. “When the Bakzen became obsessed with the rift, they needed to be eliminated—they were breaking down the fabric of space. We had hoped to imbue them with ambition to reach beyond our reality here, and they did… just not in the way we’d intended.”
“Do we let him continue?” Raena asked her brother.
“For now. I have a suppression net ready to go if they try anything.”
The High Priest cocked his head, seemingly to pick up on the telepathic exchange. “That, there—the power for remote communication, the ability to travel without physical motion. Those are the abilities we have tried to achieve. The way you can project yourselves is just the beginning. To travel in the dimensional realm beyond our own—that is where we can find true enlightenment.”
“That’s what you want? Enlightenment?” Raena scoffed. “For that you’re willing to wipe out an entire race, imprison generation after generation, distribute a neurotoxin for mass telepathic control—”
“For one who could so easily read the energy patterns in the fabric, you have failed to see the connections.” The High Priest shook his head. “It was you who showed us the way. We had spent a thousand years trying to perfect one physical form, and we’re so close, yet you’ve refused to share in our vision to take the final necessary steps. But when your mind traveled here to Tararia from so great a distance with the Aesir working in unison, we realized we had been focusing on the wrong thing. We had been seeking one physical form that could take us to ascension, and so we had missed what was right in front of us—the untapped potential of the collective whole.”
Raena drew her pulse gun in one fluid motion and leveled it at the High Priest. Her heart raced, dreading the Priest’s next words. “What are you saying?” she demanded.
The High Priest’s eyes flashed. “We have already transformed the population to serve us. All those minds, networked as one—that’s the only vehicle we need.”
“The neurotoxin, it’s—” Raena’s telepathic warning was cut short by a concussive wave through the air.
She tried to fire her pulse gun but her muscles wouldn’t respond. She was frozen in place by a telepathic hold.
“Jason?” she called out through her hazy mind.
“I hear you,” he replied. “We need to break through the hold—the High Priests are going to try to astral project through the spatial tear.”
Around them, all the women were frozen in place, as well. Their eyes were vacant, as though they were unconscious.
“What will happen if they succeed?” Raena asked.
“I don’t want to find out. Fight it! They don’t have us contained like the others.”
The High Priests had closed their eyes and an electric hum in the air was growing more intense every second.
Raena forced back the shackles trying to contain her mind. She was stronger than them—she wouldn’t be controlled.
With a cry, Raena broke from the telepathic hold and fired the pulse gun. The beam dissipated around a bubble of telekinetic shielding protecting the High Priests.
Behind her, Jason dashed through the crowd of captive women to stand next to Raena.
They reached out telekinetically toward the shield and tried to force their way through. With each assault, the women in the hall paled and winced.
“They’re drawing on their energy,” Raena realized.
“Shit!” Jason shook his head. “If we force it, we may break their minds.”
“There has to be some way—”
The electric hum in the air rose to a deafening roar, and an aura of white light formed around the High Priests and their acolytes in the hall. The light concentrated into a beam, which shot up through the ceiling.
“They’re going for the tear!” Jason shouted.
Raena took her brother’s hand and closed her eyes. “Come on, we can’t stop it alone.”
* * *
An electric hum filled the air, interrupting Wil’s thoughts. He was about to question the other Agents when Quadris suddenly stopped in his tracks just shy of the shuttle outside on the hilltop.
“You can’t stop us,” the High Priest called back to Wil.
Everyone froze.
The fok…? Wil immediately recognized the signs of a telepathic suppression net around himself, stretching as far as he could sense.
Only Quadris was unaffected. The old man stood with his arms at his sides and eyes closed, a white aura forming around him.
Is this what he was waiting for? Wil shrugged off the suppression net and took a step toward Quadris. Mid-stride, a beam of white light burst through the ground in front of him, mingling with the aura around Quadris. The beam shot into the sky, fed by a thin tendril of white light snaking from each individual standing on the hilltop.
Stars! Wil’s breath caught in his throat. What are they doing?
As Wil watched the energy flow from the individuals into the shared column, the answer became all too clear—the Priests had separated their consciousness from their bodies and were using others to give them the boost they needed to make a run for the spatial tear. It was such an obvious move in hindsight, but he’d been too focused on his immediate surroundings to anticipate the action. Regardless, they couldn’t be allowed to reach the tear.
Wil immediately extended his consciousness to assess the column. It was indeed racing toward the location of the rift, but not as quickly as he could project on his own. However, there was also no way he’d be able to snare it. As strong as he was, the High Priests were a fair match. He’d need help.
“Raena, Jason!” Wil called out. The white column had broken through the shielding that had always shrouded the lower levels of the island, weakening it just enough that he hoped his thoughts could make it through—and that whatever had subdued the other members of the TSS hadn’t paralyzed his children, as well.
“Dad!” Raena replied, panic clouding her mind. “The High Priests, they’re—”
“I know. Up here, too,” he told her. “We need to stop it. Together.”
Jason’s presence joined them. “Are the three of us enough?”
“We’ll have to be.” Wil held out his hands toward the blinding column in preparation.
His children gave him a mental nod and he felt them prepare for action.
Simultaneously, they reached out to the column, tracing the individual threads drawing energy from the people on Tararia. It wasn’t just those standing on the hilltop and down in the facility, but rather every person on the planet. Additional threads extended toward the column from the moons in orbit and the other worlds beyond. A network was forming, and the more involved it became, the harder it would be to stop.
This needs to end now. Wil began ripping away at the tendrils attempting to merge with the core column, trying to be as careful as he could so as not to harm any bystanders, but speed was imperative.
Raena and Jason backed him up, sheering away the connections. They needed to find the control point for the neurotoxin to keep the tendrils from rejoining.
Wil dove into the column, struggling to keep himself separate from it—to pass through without becoming one.
There it was, deep within the Priesthood’s isle. Four High Priest’s had joined together, merging with a bioelectronic interface not unlike the controls Wil had used in his ships to win the Bakzen War. But this time, the technology was against him. It wouldn’t stay that way for long.
Raena and Jason traced their way to the site, as well. Wil could feel their rage over what the Priesthood had done, and he let that fuel them—to fuel him.
A lifetime of manipulation, of disregard for others in the selfish pursuit of “enlightenment”. It meant nothing. The Priests weren’t worthy of using others for their own ends—no one was. Wil had used people himself, and it had almost destroyed him. His only chance at atonement was to make sure that abuse of power could never happen again.
Driven by that imperative, Wil and his children cast a shield around the four central High Priests, choking their access to the Taran citizens they sought to tap as living power sources. Together, they raised the shield, sheering off the tethers.
Soon, the tendrils from the bystanders were all disconnected. Only the link between the members of the Priesthood remained. Their greed would be their undoing.
Wil extended himself to access the energy in the distant rift—the place where he had always felt most alive. As he did so, he forced Raena and Jason back. This was something he needed to do alone.
He rounded on the High Priests, surrounding them with his mental presence. “You’ve lost.”
“We have only just begun,” they replied in chorus, fighting back against the shield he held around them.
Wil could feel their confidence—the sense of entitlement that had stripped away their conscience and driven them to commit unthinkable atrocities. Such arrogance… In the end, it held no real strength. Not like the power Wil held, rooted in a desire to help others and unite rather than divide.
The High Priests strained against the shield, but their efforts were in vain. Wil had them cornered.
“You’ll never advance without us,” they protested. “We must ascend!”
“No. We don’t need you—we never needed what you’ve become.” He stabbed telepathic spires into the minds of the High Priests at the center of the network, crippling them. “You’ll never use people for your own ends again!”
All the bitter anger from the decades of manipulation and sacrifice flowed out of him, entwining with the energy flowing through the High Priests. It seeped into them, poisoning them just like it had poisoned him through years of guilt over what he’d been forced to do.
The Priesthood had stolen his youth, his innocence. They had almost cost him his wife, his children, his parents, his friends—his own life. He thought of the billions who’d died as a result of his actions and the trillions more who were counting on him now to deliver them a better future. His responsibilities to others and the Priesthood’s demands had pushed him almost to his breaking point.
But he’d prevailed. He was stronger than them. And they would never hurt anyone else.
Wil drew the sweet power of the distant rift into himself—more than any other had ever drawn alone. He held it within until he could hold no more. “You wanted power?” he said in the broken minds of the High Priests. “Well, here it is.”
At once, he released the barrage into the network linking the High Priests and their acolytes.
The column of white light exploded into a wave that rippled across the sky of the planet, trembling the ground and sending a shockwave through the air.
The bystanders on the hill collapsed to their knees, and Quadris fell limp to the ground—his mind broken, along with all the others in the network. He would forever be a shell of himself, a fate worse than death, but only fitting after what he’d done in his millennia-long lifetime.
Wil released a shaky breath as his hands dropped to his sides. His eyes stung with tears of relief behind his tinted glasses. Regrets that had weighed on his subconscious for decades were finally gone, his long overdue vengeance served.
For the first time in his life, he was free.
Wil took in the island around him. The energy had shifted—the darkness that had plagued the island was no more, leaving it quiet and peaceful now that the electric hum had faded from the air. Is it really over?
“Sir?” one the of the Militia guards called to him. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” Wil shook his head, gathering himself. This is the best I’ve felt in years! “Secure Quadris. We need to find the others.”
Minutes passed as the Militia guards and Agents began working their way through the lineup of Priesthood associates.
Each High Priest and acolyte had the same blank expression. They’d never recover to their former selves, but eventually some of their thoughts would return. For those whose minds had been broken, those thoughts would forever be a reflection on one’s past—rehashing wrongdoings that would become a manifest nightmare in their daily life. Some members of the Priesthood would likely never see their actions as wrong, but perhaps, for some, it would be a chance for their own atonement.
If nothing else, Wil had Quadris’ confession. Once that was transmitted to the broader population, they could begin to unify.
“Dad!”
Wil heard Raena’s voice call to him from behind.
He turned to see her running toward hi
m with Jason, and a group of women were being tended to by the TSS complement.
“Thank the stars you’re okay!” he embraced his daughter, and then son.
Raena and Jason beamed at him.
“Psh, it was no trouble,” Jason said with the wave of his hand and an even broader grin.
“What you did… that was incredible.” Raena shook her head.
“It was a terrible thing to do to anyone,” Wil replied. “But they needed to be stopped, and now they can never hurt anyone else.”
“Sir!” one of the Agents interrupted. “We’re getting reports that all remaining Tararian Guard ships have stood down.”
Wil glanced at the High Priests and acolytes from within the underground facility being led into shuttles. “Those on other worlds were part of the network—they’ll all be like this, if we ever find them.”
Raena nodded. “Imprisonment alone wouldn’t have been enough.”
“Now they’ll be imprisoned in their own minds,” Jason agreed.
His daughter crossed her arms, slowly shaking her head. “What about these women and their children?”
Wil drew a slow breath and released it. “The children are clones, but they wouldn’t have been imprinted with a new consciousness at such a young age—anyone already in the Priesthood’s fold would have been one of the linked acolytes. We’ll set their mothers up with a new life as best we can, and either the children will remain with them or they will become Wards.”
Raena frowned. “That’s no way to begin life.”
“We can’t help the way we’re born,” Wil told her. “It’s what we choose to do with our lives that matters.”
Jason rubbed his sister’s back as he glanced at the TSS members going about their work. “I should probably help out.”
“Right.” Raena pulled herself from her thoughts. “Things are probably a mess at the estate. I should get back.”