“So,” Andrea said, a glimmer in her eye. “How are things with you and that boy?”
“Ummm...What?”
“Taylor,” she said, her eyes all serious. “I am the leader of the Dark Knights. All I ever get to talk about is weapons and wars. Don’t let me miss out on the only opportunity to have a little girl talk.”
Oh dear, Taylor thought. Of all the people in the world, Andrea had just chosen one of the least girly people and asked her to have a girl talk. “Well, ummm…could we please talk about something else?” she asked.
Andrea rolled her eyes and huffed, “Fine,” she said. “But we are going to have this conversation soon. You’re not running away from this.”
Taylor tried to change topics as soon as she could, and the first one that popped into her mind was about Chris and Commander Reagan.
“That child,” Andrea sighed. “She has gone through much more than she should have been able to bear.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
A knock came from the door, and a Dark Knight entered. He kneeled to the ground, “Empress, the security council requests your presence.”
“Very well,” she stood up and turned to Taylor. “Guess our conversation has to wait for another time,” she smiled.
“Fine,” she grumbled, annoyed with the fact that she hadn’t been given an answer to her question. Silence dominated the air once again, only this time a different thought spoke inside of Taylor’s mind.
I lied to her.
***
2-2
Chris listened to the low hum as the elevator sank down into the ground. She felt a force on her feet as the metal box slowly came to a stop. The P.A. system pinged and the doors slid open.
She stepped out into a wide hallway. The walls were all snow white, as though this were a hospital, which it technically was. The area was completely empty, which also made sense, considering who this place was now holding captive.
She stopped right in front of the wall, “Open,” she said.
Nothing happened.
“Open Sesame!”
Still nothing.
“Pretty please with sugar on top?”
The wall remained still.
Oh right, she thought. “Open shutters,” she said, remembering the phrase Commander Reagan had used before. The voice system cross-checked her voice, trying to confirm if she had been given access.
“Opening,” a familiar robotic female voice said.
The wall rumbled and sank into the ground, revealing a glass barrier behind it, and behind the glass barrier was a large white room. A sole bed occupied the whole place. Well, it was more of a table really. On it lay a man with his limbs bound by energy bonds.
Razy, she thought. After the whole incident in his confinement unit, the Dark Knights had managed to modify the floor right above his and turn it into a close replica of his previous cell.
She placed her hand on the glass wall. The scanner confirmed her fingerprints and sounded a beep, letting her know she had access. A door cut out of the glass and sank down into the floor. She walked through the opening towards Razy’s bedside.
His eyes were closed and his face was calm, as though he were in deep meditation. But Chris knew what his eyes truly were. She could not forget that voidal black she had seen within them earlier.
A shiver ran through her as she walked to the monitor at the foot of his bed. Since they had to modify this unit anyway, she had asked them to add a few things to it. These new instruments were supposed to make it easier for her to diagnose him. But she had a fleeting suspicion they weren’t going to be much help.
“Let’s see what’s wrong with you, shall we?” she peered into the monitor. She spent nearly an hour checking every last packet of data the machines had retrieved from their scans.
Nothing, she sighed. Absolutely nothing.
His vitals were all normal. In fact they were much healthier than normal. She hoped she would find something in his body vitals, but she wasn’t surprised she didn’t. Based on what the Empress had told her, she knew that Razy was acting out of character. That meant his brain was the organ that was affected. And most of the time, a brain condition never left any traces in the body.
“Run brain scan,” she said.
“Request acknowledged. Running brain scan,” the feminine voice said. A part of the ceiling slid open and a small metal sphere lowered into the room. The sphere opened up to reveal a laser. A sharp shade of red shone onto Razy’s forehead in a bright beam of light. It slowly moved around, scanning every part of his brain.
Chris waited in silence while the scan finished up. She couldn’t help but think about her father, and all that did was sadden her. A lot.
You idiot, she cursed herself. You wanted to come here. Stop acting all sappy.
Her ‘pep’ talk didn’t really help her either.
“Scan complete,” the voice interrupted her thoughts. An image showed up on the screen in front of her. She looked at it, then squinted, and looked at it again.
This can’t be right, she thought. Not a single anomaly existed inside Razy’s brain. Not a single sign of any abnormalities.
But this means, she stiffened. There was only one clue left. One small shred of weirdness that might help explain all this.
When Chris had performed an energy scan on his body, she had felt a certain void sucking her in, as though it were trying to consume her. She had initially written it off as something her imagination conjured up, but now it seemed like it was the only viable lead she had to all this. She wasn’t planning on doing an energy scan again just to confirm the existence of that void, though. The last time was scary enough. She had no clue what would happen if she did that again.
“Ethosien,” she said. Her leaf green, crystal bracelet glowed bright white, and extended out, wrapping around her as though she were a mummy being bound in cloth. When the light died down, Chris was in her emerald-green battle armor.
Her visor turned on, giving a greenish tinge to everything around her.
“Open contact link to Aliea Academy,” she said. “Direct link with Commander Carlos.”
“Establishing contact,” a feminine voice said.
“Verifying cadet status.” another voice said, this time male.
Aliea’s systems, she realized. Aliea’s communication systems usually had a buffer zone to validate the identity of each and every caller before opening up a contact link. It was usually done to prevent cyber-attacks or anything else of the sort.
“Validation complete. Patching Commander Carlos to Cadet Christina.”
Christina, she chuckled. No one ever called her that anymore. She wasn’t too fond of that name either.
“Link open,” the feminine voice said.
A video feed opened up on the corner of her visor’s screen, a little too small for her to properly look at.
“Project video feed,” she said.
She felt a mechanical vibration go through her helmet as it adjusted its components and extended a projection laser. She pointed herself to the white walls of the room, and the image projected onto it.
“Chris?” Carlos looked through, his face confused.
“Hey girl!” Trisha jumped into view as well. “What’s up?”
“I need a little help here,” Chris said.
Trisha’s face turned more serious. “Oh god, what’s wrong?” she asked. “Is it a condition we can’t treat?”
“Umm well...we’re actually not even sure what it is in the first place.”
“Ah,” Trisha said. “Can you beam us the vitals?”
Chris nodded. She worked the controls on the monitor in front of her and transferred the scans and medical data to her suit. From there she got her suit’s software to upload it to Trisha via the open link.
“Got them. Cool,” Trisha said, and looked down as though she were holding a tablet screen.
Chris bit her lip as she waited. A hundred things ran through her mind, the number on
e thing being how Trisha was feeling right now. Chris had never really considered how she might have felt about letting Chris go instead of her.
Was it alright for me to come instead of her? she thought.
“Ugh,” Trisha looked annoyed. “Razy looks perfectly normal.” she said. “Brain scans are okay, his body is totally fine. He’s in an amazingly healthy condition. In fact it almost seems like he’s too healthy.”
“He’s been facing mental disorders for a while now,” Chris said. “Just a few hours ago he went completely berserk. Exhibited a different personality as well.”
“What?” Carlos jumped.
Chris was taken aback. Had she overlooked something obvious?
“Chris,” he said, his voice almost a whisper. “Did you take an energy scan of his body?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“Did you feel a void inside of him?”
Chris’s heart jerked, her hands trembling at the thought of that dark sphere that nearly consumed her.
“Chris?” Carlos asked again.
She nodded, “I did. I felt the void.”
“Oh god,” Trisha said, her voice husky, her hand on her forehead.
Chris was utterly clueless, “Guys? What’s going on?”
Carlos was too speechless to talk, so Trisha took over instead.
“We know what Razy has,” she said. “It’s an extremely rare condition called the Tenebrae EcQuest, which roughly translates to Eternity of Darkness in the Dark Knight’s native tongue. It has occurred only to Dark Knights so far, and fewer than ten cases have been registered in the past millennium.”
“But this is good right?” Chris asked. “Now we know what Razy’s condition is.”
“Which is exactly why we can’t treat him,” Trisha said.
“What?”
Trisha paused, hesitation clearly written on her face. “Chris,” she said, her voice deathly cold. “The Tenebrae EcQuest has no cure.”
***
2-3
The Tenebrae EcQuest has no cure.
The words echoed in Chris’ mind over and over again. Those words meant she did not have an answer to Razy’s problem. They meant that regardless of how much she searched, she wouldn’t find an answer to his problem. But worst of all, they meant Razy was no longer a patient, he was a lost cause.
“Chris?” Trisha spoke through the live link. “Chris, are you okay?”
Chris stumbled a bit as she sat herself down on his bed.
“I know it’s a little too much to take in,” Carlos said. “But you’ve got to keep a clear mind. You of all people should be able to do that.”
She breathed deeply and nodded. “What’s our course of action?” she asked.
“Our top priority right now is to find a way to treat his symptoms so that he survives longer,” Trisha said.
“Should I tell the Dark Knights about Razy’s condition?” she asked. “Since it occurs to only Dark Knights they may know something about it that we don’t.”
“Yeah, that’s a good idea.”
“We should go research this as well,” Carlos told Trisha. “We might be able to find something in Aliea’s database.”
Trisha thought about it for a moment, and then nodded her head. “Fine, let’s do that then,” she turned to Chris. “Keep us updated. I want to know every little thing that happens after this.”
“Will do,” Chris said.
“Over and out,” Carlos said and the feed cut off.
Silence took over the confinement unit again, but it lasted just a moment. Seconds after her conversation with Carlos and Trisha, Chris heard the sound of the glass door lowering for someone else.
“Hello, Christina,” said a voice.
Chris didn’t need to turn to know who she was talking to. Only one person called her by that name.
“Hello father,” she said, her eyes still fixed on Razy. If her father didn’t want to look at her then she did not wish to see him either.
Commander Reagan walked over and stood on the other side of the bed. “I see you have continued being a healer,” he said, disappointment in his voice.
“Yes, father,” she said. “I am still a healer.”
“You know it is not a noble position, Christina.”
“Nevertheless, it is the position I desire.”
His fist slammed against the glass wall behind Razy’s bed, “It is not the position the daughter of a Dark Knight Commander should choose.”
“I believe we solved that problem years ago did we not?”
“Running away to Aliea does not mean you have forsaken your place as a Dark Knight, nor does it mean you have forsaken your family.”
“I did not run away from the Dark Knights. I renounced them.”
“Odd for you to come back to such a place then, isn’t it?”
“I came back thinking, hoping, that you had changed.”
He laughed wildly, “I? Change? You want me to change?”
“I did not want. I hoped.”
He grunted, “Hope all you want, daughter of mine. But nothing will change the fact that you abandoned us. If your mother heard of this…” he stopped, his fist quivering.
Chris sat still, watching her father from the corner of her eyes. She did not know how to react. The topic of their mother was not an easy one to face. Chris had never met her mother before. All she knew was that she had left her and her father when she was very young. The rest she neither asked nor wished to know.
Chris never really thought about the fact that she actually had a mother, which was mainly because she didn’t have a single memory of the lady. Her father though, was filled with memories of her. It made sense for him to find it much harder to push her away from his thoughts. She wondered how often he thought about her. Chris remembered hearing that her parents had met when they were very young. That just made it harder for her father to move past it.
“You…” he said, his voice quiet and defeated. “You don’t care about any of this at all do you?”
“I care about myself enough to face you and follow what I wanted to do. I care about you enough to come back to the place that held me prisoner my entire childhood.”
“FOR THE LAST TIME, YOU RAN AWAY FROM US. YOU ABANDONED ME,” Commander Reagan yelled.
The confinement unit’s P.A. system blared, “On request of the Empress, the following cadets are requested to head to the council room immediately. Sorcerer Q, Dark Knight Taylor, Cadet Christina, Commander Reagan. The Empress is awaiting your presence.”
Perfect timing, Chris thought. I can tell the Empress about the Tenebrae EcQuest.
She stood up, “I believe we have been summoned,” she said and walked away, not turning back to look at her father.
Her body felt numb. She couldn’t tell if she was smiling, frowning or glaring, if she looked happy or if she looked sad. She couldn’t tell what emotion she was feeling. But then again, she’d never been able to.
It was a quick trip up the elevator and to the council room. It felt even quicker all alone. Chris didn’t look back to check where her father was.
You abandoned me. His voice echoed through her thoughts.
“No,” she mumbled. “You abandoned me.” She pushed through the dark door and entered the council room.
The walls were obsidian black, and in the center stood a wide table, with ten chairs on the short side, and twenty on the long one. It had a strip of blue light around the edges, giving it an eerie look. The lights in the eight corners of the room were bright enough to illuminate the whole place. But even with all the light, Chris could feel a signature darkness inside the room.
“Welcome, Chris,” the Empress stood up from her seat on the short side farthest from the door. Taylor and Q stayed put in their seats on the longer side.
“Uh, wasn’t Commander Reagan with you at Razy’s confinement unit?” Q asked.
Chris opened her mouth to answer, but her brain was struggling to supply her with an answer to what had happened.
“Yes I was,” Commander Reagan stepped into the room in his full suit of battle armor. “What of it?”
“Nothing,” Q said meekly. “Just asking.”
The Empress sat down, “Now that we’re all here, we can finally get to business,” she said.
“What’s going on?” Taylor asked, her face anxious and eager all at once.
“Though the Palace of Darkness is the Dark Knights’ stronghold, we have many towers all over Drakon,” she said. “The reason I’ve called you here is because we’ve just lost contact with one of the towers closest to us.”
“Equipment failure?” Q asked.
“Why would she call us here for something like that?” Taylor scolded.
“Each tower has plenty of back-up communication devices,” the Empress said. “It is unlikely for all of them to fail at once.”
“You believe something is jamming the communications then?” Taylor asked.
“We don’t believe so. We know,” she said. “We sent out a drone an hour ago, and we abruptly lost communication with it a few hundred yards from the tower.”
“Were you able to gather any imagery?”
“None that is useful. Just pictures of a calm tower in the desert sands.”
“That’s just weird.”
“So what do you want with us?” Taylor asked.
“I need one of you to go take a look at the tower,” she said.
“Taylor and I will go,” Q said.
“Actually, just one would be-”
“Taylor is a much better scout that I am, but I don’t want to risk sending her alone when we don’t even know what’s going on with the tower,” Q said sternly. “Both of us will go.”
The Empress waited for a few seconds. “Fine. Both of you can go.”
“Thank you,” he smiled.
“Empress Andrea,” Chris said.
“Yes Chris?”
“I would like to talk to all the healers who took care of Razy at any point in time.”
Andrea’s eyes glazed over with happiness, “Do you have a lead? Can you heal him?”
A blow struck through Chris’ heart. I can’t tell her, she realized. Not now.
The Quest Saga Collection: Books 1 - 5 Page 68