It distracted him from his thoughts and worries. Again, it appeared to reach deep inside him and conjure up his years of training, pushing away his resolve until he nodded automatically.
He was a lieutenant in the Galactic Coalition Academy, and he had a duty to his Admiral, he remembered. Yet for the briefest of moments, the memory did not feel like his. It felt alien. Implanted. A fake.
Yet, once again, as soon as that mutinous thought arose, it was banished by a quick move of the Admiral, and an even quicker spike in the confusion claiming his mind.
‘At 0:800 we received a report detailing an attack on 10 United Galactic Coalition worlds,’ the Admiral said gravely.
Carson’s once stiffly held hands opened with surprise, his fingers jerking open as he held them crooked against his legs. ‘What?’ His pounding heart now beat even faster. So fast, in fact, it felt as if it would burst, taking his chest with it.
The harder it beat, the more serious the situation felt. And the more serious the situation felt, the more he forgot about Nida. The more his doubts just washed away with the pressure building within.
‘There is no time to discuss this. We need you in the operation centre now. We have to organise a counter-attack. Now,’ the Admiral snapped sternly as Carson rocked back on his feet.
‘We need you,’ Travis said again, his voice dipping low with emotion.
Despite the situation, Carson still shook his head.
Despite the fact the Admiral and his best friend had just told him something terrible was happening to his beloved United Galactic Coalition, he somehow held onto her name.
To Nida.
To his determination to find her.
To his need to find out what was going on.
And just in that moment, as he remembered her name, something strange happened.
He could swear he heard her calling out to him.
A whispered, croaked ‘Carson’ vibrating through the air around him.
His eyes shot wide open as he suddenly turned around the room.
‘Carson,’ Travis snapped, ‘what is it?’
With a beating heart and panting breath, Carson shifted his head from side to side, as if he thought she would miraculously materialise right out of the air.
But she didn’t.
And he didn’t hear it again.
‘Carson Blake, this is serious. We need to know that we can rely on you. Can we rely on you? Can the Galactic Coalition Academy rely on you?’ Admiral Forest barked, her voice dipping low with authority.
It got his attention, because it was designed to get his attention.
He turned back to her, clapping a hand on his mouth as he tried to push back his confusion, as he tried to make sense of his experiences.
But no matter how hard he tried, no sense was forthcoming. Instead the Admiral snapped her request again, and Carson found himself nodding. Because he had to. That was his job, right? Despite how strange the situation was, he couldn’t forget his job, right? Even if he had somehow changed the timeline, he couldn’t forget the Galactic Coalition Academy.
Could he?
Before Carson could question anything, before he could think, before he could investigate that whispered name, he found the Admiral and Travis leading him forward, out of his apartment, and down towards the Academy grounds.
What happened next happened quickly. They took him into the operation centre, and set him to work. There was no time for distraction, there was no time to stand there and think.
Just action.
And the fog, all encompassing and all pervading. It owned him completely. It seeped into every last corner of his mind, cancelling out his questions and whispering in his ear that she was dead.
Gone.
If she was gone, he had to hold onto what he had left. The United Galactic Coalition. He had to protect it.
Because that was all that mattered now.
Chapter 7
Cadet Nida Harper
Though she had managed to whisper his name, the second she had, a robotic arm had injected something into her neck. It had caused her eyes to roll back into her head, and she had laid there, slumped, incapable of moving save for her ragged breath.
Though several more visions tried to assault her, she would not succumb to them.
So she just lay there, listening to Carson’s breath, and trying to figure out what in hell was going on.
For this was hell.
Or perhaps it was the future?
Yes, the future.
She forced her eyes open.
In order to do so, she had to draw on the same strength she had used to force the entity to open the time gate.
She just bore into her centre of power, and tapped every last reserve she could.
What if this was the future of Remus 12? What if the scientists around her were the Vex?
She knew they had to be technologically sophisticated; the fact they could induce visions that seemed so real they were indistinguishable from actual reality, was testament to that fact.
But why were they doing it?
What was the point to all this?
She wanted to ask, but of course she couldn’t use her throat—she could barely move, let alone speak. So instead she lay there and she tried to use her mind instead. She tried to deduct what she could from what she’d experienced.
When she had opened the time gate, maybe she’d broken something? Maybe she’d done something to the entity?
Of course, that made sense.
As Nida realised that, despite the fact she was numb, a cold wash of dread spread through her.
What if she had done this? What if she had corrupted the entity?
She knew that every time it used its power, it became weaker, and more liable to corruption. And when Nida had forcefully opened the time gate, surely that had taken an immense amount of power.
The dread continued to build in her, and as it travelled up her bones and stomach and back and legs, it reached her head. As it did, she swore she started to drown under it.
What if this was her fault?
Yet just as soon as that thought claimed her with crippling guilt, another one took hold.
If the entity had corrupted completely, surely reality would have broken. She wouldn’t have been left here, wherever here was. She wouldn’t be tied to this hospital bed as Carson Blake lay beside her, his dead gaze locked on the ceiling as visions were forced into his mind.
No, this didn’t make sense.
This wasn’t the entity corrupting.
So perhaps it really was the future.
She returned to that thought just as she saw a shadowy figure walk towards her. The closer it came, the better she could see it. Whatever drugs they were pumping into her system were affecting her vision.
Eventually she recognised white hair, black eyes, neck ridges, and blue spots.
Vex.
Though Nida’s eyes were stuck open and she could no longer move them, the Vex came into view as it checked one of the medical devices lodged into her neck.
It was a woman, and her face had a fixed look of concentration.
Nida stared at it, incapable of looking away.
As the woman manipulated the device, she briefly looked down at Nida, then typed something into a device on her wrist, and promptly walked away.
Perhaps the Vex thought Nida was so far gone that she was unable to see, but it was the first time her captors had been so indiscreet.
She was doing it. She was gathering information. The longer she remained conscious and the harder she fought against the visions and her weak body, the more she would find out.
It was her only hope. And quite possibly, it was Carson’s too.
She frantically wanted to shift her head so she could see him again, but she could no longer move. So instead she stared up at the ceiling.
Come on, she thought desperately, you can do this. You have to.
It no longer mattered that Cadet Nida Harper had once b
een the worst recruit in 1000 years. In fact, her life at the Galactic Coalition Academy seemed centuries ago now. And if not centuries ago, then centuries into the future. The point was, she was alone. There was no one to rely on, and if she didn’t have the gumption to rely on herself, then there would be no escape.
Not for the first time, she tried to call on the entity. She tried to locate it within her, she tried to discover whether it was there, whether it was okay. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t lock onto the sense of it. Deep down, buried underneath her all-encompassing fatigue, she thought she could feel it, but that was it. The presence in her mind was gone. The power in her hands had also disappeared. Whether it was the drugs or the fact the entity was immeasurably weakened by opening the time gate, Nida didn’t know. The conclusion was still the same. She had nobody else to rely on. It was now completely up to her.
Chapter 8
Carson Blake
He didn’t stop. Nobody would let him stop. They showed him the message, and the footage of 10 United Galactic Coalition worlds being attacked by some kind of race he had never seen. It was fantastic, impossible even. Yet as soon as he thought it was impossible, he was distracted yet again.
Distracted.
He kept going back to that word, because everything happening to him felt like a distraction. Every time he wanted to withdraw into silence to contemplate what was going on, something else would be thrust in front of him. Some new attack, some new problem. He felt stretched; he felt thin. But he kept going, because people were relying on him, and the fog in his mind told him he had to.
Yet it ate at him. Every second it ate at him that he couldn’t do anything for Nida, that he couldn’t find her, that he couldn’t figure out whether she really was alive.
He didn’t have time to contemplate that thought once again, though. Just as he withdrew into a rare moment of silence and solitude, Travis came marching up, demanding that Carson prepare the Force for their next mission. They had to train with the TI implants. They had to inspect their weaponry. They just had to do something, because, god dammit the United Galactic Coalition was being attacked.
Everything felt . . . dreamlike. Except it didn’t. It was absolutely, 100 percent, convincingly real. Everything he fell, every detail he saw—it was all perfect.
And whenever he questioned what was happening, he was distracted again.
Again, and again, until Carson felt like nothing more than a robot.
He wanted to go back to Nida, he needed to find out where she was, yet he couldn’t abandon the United Galactic Coalition, not now, not considering what was happening.
. . . Right?
Or at least that’s what the fog told him.
So he went from situation to situation. From battle simulation to battle simulation, from training session to training session.
Or maybe he didn’t go. Maybe his mind wasn’t really there, just his body. He felt strangely detached, spread out as if someone had rolled his mind thin.
So he went about his tasks, for he did not have the ability to stop himself. And though he could not appreciate the truth of that thought then, he was correct.
Carson could not stop himself, for Carson was being controlled.
Chapter 9
Cadet Nida Harper
She fought harder now. Every time she drifted into her vision, she simply ignored it, finding her way back to reality quicker and quicker.
She had never felt resolve like this; she had never been in a situation as dire as this. For whatever reason the Vex were feeding these illusions to her, it was clear they were after something.
Information.
Though her visions didn’t last that long, they always contained the same content. Questions about the entity. Where it was, how to access it.
No matter what happened and what she endured, she didn’t move.
Or rather, she no longer proved to the Vex around her that she could. She remained as still as was possible, forcing her concentration into a point to ensure she did not lose consciousness again.
She’d heard of technology like this before. Whispers, mentions, but nothing as perfect as this. There were several intelligence agencies of the Kore Empire that had once obtained alien technology that enabled them to discretely, torture suspected spies. And the term ‘discrete’ torture was not a misnomer. Apparently, it was a type of neural holographic technology that could be hooked up to one’s brain, forcing someone to inhabit their memories in dreamlike scenes. Using it, the Kore Empire could force their victims to relive some scenario, or they could manufacture some new scenario to find out how their hapless prisoners would react, or to find some fact buried deep in their mind.
It wasn’t perfect though. For one, it didn’t work on all races, and for another, it was very, very dangerous.
Yet the more Nida surveyed the scene around her, the more she realised that was what was happening here.
For some reason it wasn’t working on her though. Perhaps it was the entity, perhaps it was something else, but she could fend off the visions with ease.
Yet fending off the visions was useless if she couldn’t get out of here, if she couldn’t do something to save Carson.
He still hadn’t moved. Not once. He hadn’t whispered her name. He hadn’t done a thing. In fact, as far as she was aware, he had never once woken up.
Which meant he was ensconced in some vision, right? Just like hers. One that simulated the Galactic Coalition Academy perfectly, one that tried to force him to reveal critical information.
. . . .
She had to do something.
That thought called on her strength. It brought it up, it held it before her, and it begged her to do something with it.
She wasn’t the best recruit in the Academy, but she had learnt something in the past few weeks on Remus 12.
She could be anything. She could do anything. It depended on the situation. The entity had taught her how to use power, how to rely on it, and Carson had taught her never to give up.
So in that moment Cadet Nida Harper grew up. She took hold. She faced the challenge.
As she did, her senses cleared further until she could finally hear the room around her in full. Everything from Carson’s breathing to the hum of the machines, and finally to the people speaking.
Every one of their words, every one of their movements—she could hear them. And though she still did not choose to move her head, her vision resolved completely until she stared up at the ceiling in perfect detail.
She was back.
But not completely back. She still couldn’t feel the entity. It was blocked off from her somehow. It felt as if a wall had been erected between her and it.
She didn’t let that stop her.
She pressed out with her senses and she listened to the conversations around her.
Mostly it was banal, just scientists talking about their devices and the readings they showed. Then she heard somebody new walk into the room. As they did, the other scientists drew into a hushed silence.
‘What progress have we had?’ A man snapped.
‘We are having trouble with the touched. But she is sedated. We will continue to try.’ Somebody answered.
‘Not good enough; she is the most important one. We have to find out everything we can about how she accesses the Goddess. We need to unlock her secrets. Alter the simulation. Do what you have to do. We have to find out.’
‘Yes, sir,’ one of the scientists managed.
‘And what progress have we had with the human male?’
‘He has put up little resistance. We are finding a great deal about the Galactic Coalition’s operational capabilities.’
‘I see. But redouble your efforts to unlock the secrets of the woman. We need them.’
‘Yes, sir,’ the scientists said as one.
There was a hiss as the door opened and then closed again.
Nida didn’t move.
But she thought. In fact, her brain pract
ically burst with sudden activity as she tried to understand what had just happened.
So she was right. This was all some kind of trap, some kind of simulation to unlock the secrets in her and Carson’s minds.
‘We need to change track,’ one of the scientists said from the other side of the room, their voice echoing loudly with frustration. ‘We need to manufacture a situation emotional enough to distract her into revealing the information we want.’
Nida zeroed in on what was being said. She concentrated on her hearing, tried to focus all of her attention on comprehending their words.
‘We must unlock her secrets of the Goddess,’ somebody else repeated, ‘without them, the attack could fail.’
‘Do you think I need reminding of that fact?’ Somebody else snapped, their frustration and exhaustion obvious as their voice wavered up and down.
‘We are all tired, but we must press on. Increase the activity of the machine. We need to pull her into another vision.’
‘It could kill her,’ someone pointed out.
There was a moment of silence.
‘We have to try. We have days until the event.’
Another tense silence filtered through the room.
The simple statement of ‘we have days until the event’ stilled every scientist in the room.
Then Nida felt it.
The robotic arm pulled up from the side of her bed and injected something into her neck.
Instantly a vision formed around her, yet this time she went with it—she did not fight it.
She plunged herself into the vision with resolve and determination.
She would not be ready for what she would face however.
Chapter 10
Carson Blake
Every time he tried to think of her, he was distracted. Every time he tried to question what was happening, he was distracted.
And the distractions were cruel.
Everything appeared designed to tax him emotionally, to keep him so broken he wouldn’t question what he was doing, he would just put one foot in front of the other like a good soldier should.
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