Eden's Revenge (Eden Paradox Book 3)

by Barry Kirwan

  “Proceed. Let me worry about the Hohash, you focus on Kat. Does she have the information yet?”

  Aramisk nodded. “Yes, I can’t see it of course, but there was a spike five minutes ago, consistent with our objectives.”

  Qorall was monitoring this as well, from the other side of the galaxy, wherever he was – Louise didn’t want to know. But if this went wrong, if they failed to retrieve the information, it would go badly for her. Louise’s “where do you see yourself in five years?” question would change its parameters to “five minutes”, the most likely answer being “dead”. Qorall didn’t tolerate mistakes. Her own loyalties would also be tested today.

  Louise pulled up a chair. “Wake her.”

  * * *

  Kat had been dreaming of Pierre. It had seemed so real. She stirred, but restraints held her body down. She snapped fully awake. Louise was sitting next to her.

  “Louise – Arctura – what the hell is going on?”

  Louise didn’t look happy, but said nothing. On the other side of Kat’s cot, Aramisk tended a drip feeding into Kat’s left wrist.

  Kat grew suddenly desperate. “Jesus! Aramisk, let me go!” She turned back to Louise, noticing the Hohash at the foot of her bed. It was in some kind of metal brace. “Arctura, please, why are you doing this? I said I would help you.”

  Louise spoke. “Where is Hellera?”

  Kat was nonplussed. “Who? How would I know?” But with a shock she realized she did know. The dream she’d just had; somehow…

  “Qorall is devious,” Louise said. “I met him once, after a fashion. I wish I hadn’t.” She turned away.

  Kat had never seen Louise look afraid before.

  Louise turned back to her. “He doesn’t have anything like a Hohash, but he can access your node, and you can access the Hohash.” Louise leaned forward. “He’s been looking inside your head, at least part of him has, following your ‘research’.

  Shit! He’s been ghosting me! Kat wondered what he had seen. The encounter with Micah and Antonia? Qorall wouldn’t care about that. Finding Kilaney? Maybe. Pierre and Ukrull? Definitely.

  “During your last ‘trip’, your drug-induced dream, he managed to trick your Hohash into accessing the one onboard the Ranger’s ship. Kat, make this easy on yourself, because he will get the information from you, one way or another.” She leant back. “I have no desire to see you hurt.”

  At first it sounded like what any torturer might say, but something told Kat that Louise actually meant it.

  Kat tried to stall, knowing that this information was of incredible importance, perhaps enough to tip the balance of the entire war forever into Qorall’s favour. “My mind’s foggy, Louise, I need some time to think.”

  Louise nodded, tight-lipped, and stood up. “Have it your way.” She turned to Aramisk. “Do it.”

  Kat’s head swiveled in the Mannekhi woman’s direction, but her all-black eyes didn’t meet Kat’s. She turned a valve on the transparent tube, opening it fully. Louise spoke from the doorway. “Call me when it starts.”

  Once Louise had left, Aramisk faced Kat, her eyes intense. She whispered. “You will dream, Kat. There will be terrible pain. Just remember that whatever happens, it is not real; your body remains here. Do you understand? Try to remember: your body is here.”

  Kat decided to do something else instead. As drowsiness washed over her, she accessed her node and linked to the Hohash. Her mind was growing fuzzy, heavy, but she communicated, not hiding her distress or sense of panic. Erase Hellera’s location from my mind! The Hohash burst into life, like a fireworks display at close range.

  Aramisk leapt to her feet. “What are you doing? By all the Gods! Arctura! Come quickly!”

  Kat tried to focus, to stay awake long enough to let the Hohash do its job. She felt a slash inside her head, like a razor cut, and through pain-slitted eyes saw the Hohash vibrating, rattling inside the brace.

  Louise raced back into the room, took one look, and then glared at the Hohash. “Oh no you don’t!” She pulled out a pulse pistol and put it next to Kat’s temple. The Hohash stilled.

  Kat communicated again with the Hohash. Don’t stop. Make her pull the trigger. But the Hohash remained calm. Kat’s eyelids grew too heavy to stay open, and she slipped into sleep.

  Kat felt her mind falling out of her body, as if she’d become a ghost, Hades pulling her down through the floor. It was as if the ground no longer had substance for her, or else her mind had lost its grip. Kat wanted to scream, but couldn’t breathe or speak. Amidst her terror, she remembered how Einstein’s theory of relativity said that no object could move faster than the speed of light. But a mind is not an object. She swallowed, and fell faster.

  Beads of light streamed past her, with occasional violet and pink flashes of nebulae, and Kat had the sensation of travelling impossible distances in the blink of an eye, of her mind being whiplashed halfway across the galaxy. She guessed the Hohash had something to do with it. Pierre had once told her he believed them to be incredibly advanced artifacts, designed by the Kalarash themselves, and that even the Tla Beth did not know their full potential.

  The light show slowed, and blackness loomed. She saw a swirl up ahead, and at first thought it was the rings of a gas giant, but at the centre was a darkness sucking everything around it into its core. The perfectly round edge of that mouth folded inwards, as if it might swallow itself. Futile as it was, Kat flailed her limbs, trying to turn back, to stop herself tumbling into the black hole.

  She tried to remind herself that she was physically safe – her body was still back on Louise’s ship, and her mind had no gravity, so a black hole couldn’t hold her. But inwardly she screamed as she was swept into the pitiless blackness. Just as it had almost engulfed her, she saw a spherical ship beneath her, stationary near the event horizon, resisting the terrible gravitational forces streaming past it, like a pupil in the black hole’s eye. She fell straight through its outer hull.

  Everything was red. It reminded her of a vid she’s seen as a kid, of Dante’s Inferno. She had already guessed whose ship it was, and doubted Qorall would want her to see the real ship’s interior, so she persuaded herself to try and relax and ‘enjoy’ the show.

  Kat tumbled through a sky that was aflame, through clouds that twisted and wrenched amidst tornadoes of fire, and fell directly into a volcano’s mouth vomiting molten rock. She drifted in boiling gelatinous magma, crushing sound surrounding her, like bubbling thunder. Every contour was soaked in shades of red: vermillion and crimson the hottest zones, deep russets the slightly cooler ones. Kat could no longer feel any part of her body, had no sensation of limbs, torso or head, and bobbed along in the currents. She reckoned she was okay as long as she knew this was not real, or rather, that she was not really there. She could treat it as a dream.

  No sooner had she thought it, than her mind became groggy, and she could no longer see clearly. Shit – he’s playing with my mind. She focused: this is a dream, this is a dream, this is…

  The lava surged along with her for hours. Something writhed in the distance, though she didn’t understand how she could see, encased as she was in a river of scarlet mud whose temperature she couldn’t begin to imagine. But whatever it was, Kat had the impression of size, that what she witnessed was titanic, though there was no point of reference. It reminded her of a cubic frame, but each strut was a massive limb, a bone covered in purple flesh sweating rivulets of ice despite the heat. There was no obvious head. The cube-frame moved awkwardly, spasmodically, an upper joint opening, allowing it to rock forward, as another bone-like limb pounded onto the superheated silicate terrain of the ruby island surrounding it. Qorall.

  A split opened up on one of the upper limbs. A roar bellowed across the lava sea, blowing waves across the molten rock’s surface. The sound was terrifying, but agonising, too. She sensed bitter loneliness, and a pit of rage against injustices of the past. The creature howled for revenge.

  Kat still had no sensation of
her body, but felt her fugue receding. She couldn’t remember how she’d arrived, or precisely where she’d been before. Then she recalled falling through the hull of a black ship on an event horizon, so everything around her must be some kind of vast ship, where the sky must be the roof; a hollow asteroid, maybe. She wanted to get the hell out of there, but had no control whatsoever, no idea where in the galaxy the ship was, nor how she’d gotten there. The next question was why she’d been kidnapped.

  The eddies buffeted her along a channel where the lava flowed faster, away from the creature. She sped past a shore of rust-coloured rock, towards a pulsing ovoid, textured like smooth heart muscle. She tacked toward it then veered away in her river of magma.

  Kat floated like this for several more hours, coursing along, occasionally meeting organ-like masses that she supposed were part of this vessel’s anatomy. But she was losing her sense of self, and found it harder to think, as if her consciousness was only capable of perception. She didn’t tire, which made her worry she’d be trapped there indefinitely, a speck of consciousness wandering forever in a ship from Hell. Then she saw something, a faraway blue dot. She’d become so used to perceiving myriad shades of red that she’d forgotten other colours existed.

  Up ahead, the dodecahedron of blue crystal sat motionless amidst the surging fluid. She picked up speed, accelerating toward it. Her mind raced, too, knowing this was somehow sanctuary, but she feared she would be dragged away again, doomed to swim endlessly inside the volcanic tides. It got closer, and she dared to hope. She slowed down, and bumped into its exterior, which wasn’t hard as she’d expected; it was spongy and sticky, a glistening membrane. It held her in check. There was a sucking sound, and Kat squeezed through. Incredible pain, like being dropped from an oven into a glacial lake, saturated her mind, as her body was reborn inside the sphere.

  She lay on the transparent floor, naked, short of breath, her skin goose-bumped. Shivering, Kat drew her knees up beneath her and curled into a foetal position, forehead against the cool, glass-like floor. She was relieved to have a body again, and listened to her own breathing, waited till it calmed, then stood. It was like being inside a child’s marble, terrible heat and power coiling outside.

  Interrogators back on Earth for centuries had used nakedness as a form of humiliation to beat down their male or female captives. Kat stood up, chin lifted, hands on hips, the way she’d done back on Earth during a gay pride march during her University days following a threatened post-War resurgence in homophobia. This time, however, she didn’t have ‘Look me in the eye’ tattooed across her breasts.

  But her body felt younger, too perfect, and she worked out it was merely another illusion. No bruises, burns or lesions. The mole on her inner left thigh told her that this was no simple avatar simulation – someone, or rather something, had created a damned good simulacrum. Then she remembered who that ‘someone’ was.

  She doubted her lava trip was an idle gesture, or to impress, and guessed that while in that state of almost pure perception, the rest of her mind had been accessible; she’d been violated, interrogated without her consent or even awareness, as easily as she might download and review files on a holopad. That raised the further questions of why she was still there, or alive at all, and what Qorall was searching for, and why he couldn’t find it. She had no idea what it was.

  Kat blinked and suddenly her sister Angelica was there, dressed exactly as she had been at Kat’s going-away party, the night before Kat had joined the Eden Mission Academy. Her heart skipped a beat, then her fists and teeth clenched. Her sister was long dead. But it looked like her, even smelled of her sister’s favourite perfume, Orsex. Kat almost cried out, and had to hold herself back from jumping up to hug her lost sibling. Instead, she stayed put, lips zipped, waiting for whatever it was to speak.

  “Where did Pierre go?”

  It sounded just like Angel’s luxurious throaty voice, the one that used to fondue boys’ hearts. Kat closed her eyes, but they opened again, against her will. Trying to turn had no effect either. She glared at the apparition. “If I’m right, you’ve already been inside my head, so you should know what I know.”

  Angel wore her signature ‘whatever’ smile, the same one that, along with her athletic figure and Nordic looks, made boys awfully stupid around her. But this wasn’t Angel.

  “It’s what you don’t know you know that interests me.” Angel winked. “Let’s try something else then. What were you doing in Esperia’s caverns when Louise found you two years ago?”

  Good question, but she had nothing to offer there that Qorall didn’t already know; that was why he’d sent Louise there in the first place. “Curiosity. I’d never been to those caves, where the spaceship had been. You know, the Kalarash. A pal of yours I imagine –”

  Kat’s left arm burst into flame, but she couldn’t move. She tried to curse but blinding pain overwhelmed her. She screamed as she watched her skin crackle, warp and spit, her cry choking on itself as the pain blurred her mind and vision. Inside she shook, gasping for breath, hot tears running down her cheeks, but her body remained upright as if suspended by a hook. Her head turned against her will, eyes clearing so she could see the blue flames burn down to muscle, blackening bone. What was left of her arm crumbled to ash on the floor.

  Abruptly Kat collapsed, dizzy, convulsing, knowing she should have blacked out, that no one was meant to experience such pain. She bit down on her right knuckle, tried to control her breathing. Her heart had gone into overdrive, felt like it would burst through her chest.

  “What did you find down there, Kat?”

  “Nothing.” Yet even as she said it, she knew for the first time that it wasn’t exactly true. Something she’d forgotten, or not really seen at the time, but had been there, before Louise had arrived. Something else lurking in the cavern directly above the underground ocean. But Qorall didn’t wait. Her legs were next.

  Kat’s breath came in jagged, laboured rasps. With her one arm left, she clawed against the floor, tried to move away from her captor. She had nothing in her mind except the desire for no more pain, or to die, she really didn’t care which. She reached the wall.

  “Go screw yourself,” she said, then closed her eyes tight, waiting.

  Angel crouched next to her, and whispered in her right ear. “This isn’t going to work, is it? Let’s try another way. Let’s see how resistant you are at age fifteen.”

  Kat’s former fugue returned, blanking all thought until only perception remained, and then she fell asleep.

  * * *

  Louise was pacing. “Her vitals?”

  Aramisk raked a hand through her thick black hair. “We almost lost her, but her signs are calming down a little. However, he’s taking her to a deeper level.” Aramisk dropped the pad onto the bed. “She won’t survive the next one, Arctura.”

  Louise bit her lip. “Then wake her.”

  “What?”

  “I said wake her, bring her out of it. Now!”

  “Qorall will kill us!”

  Louise’s voice steeled. “I’ll think of something.”

  Aramisk shook her head in disbelief, then picked up and tapped at the pad. She frowned. “It’s no good, Arctura, I can’t break the connection. Qorall and the Hohash are each accessing her node, and neither seems inclined to let go. She’s locked in, and they’re pulling her mind apart.”

  Louise stared at the Hohash, its flashes and vibrations at fever pitch. “I’ll be back shortly, Aramisk, and she had better be alive when I return.”

  Aramisk nodded, then leant over to Kat’s contorted face. “It’s a dream, Kat, remember it’s just a dream.”

  * * *

  Kat lay face down on the beach, the sound of the surf roaring in the background. She wiggled her toes, trying to dislodge the wet sand stuck between them, towel damp underneath her after the last frolic in the waves surfing with her sister. When she was on the longboard behind Angel, nothing else mattered, not her damned exams, not even her uncle’
s odd behaviour toward her; the way she sometimes caught him staring.

  Some boys were playing football close by; there were always boys close by when Angel was around. Kat had zero interest in boys, and looked the other way whenever her sis kissed one of her many boyfriends. Angel said Kat’s time would come, but Kat was already fifteen, and reckoned her hormones had other avenues in mind.

  Kat was starting to burn; she knew she should really turn over, or get into the shade. But she wanted a deep tan like her sister. Besides, the sun could block out all kinds of things. She heard Angel stir, and cracked open an eye, squinting in the blazing sun, to see the silhouette of her sister standing above her, squirting sunscreen into the palms of her hands. Angel straddled Kat’s lower back, and began rubbing oil into her. Kat had seen Angel do this routine before with one of her vivacious girlfriends, but never with her ‘little sis’. It was the first time Angel had treated Kat as someone approaching an equal, one of her entourage. Kat decided to play along.

  She moaned as Angel’s hands rhythmically pressed down into the grooves either side of her spine, kneading the warm oil up and over her shoulders. “Oh God, Angel, that feels good!”

  Angel varied her massage routine, eliciting more pseudo-groans from Kat. The boys stopped their football. She leaned forward, close to Kat’s ear, lingering for effect. “We’re giving them long-shower material.” They both burst out laughing. Angel dismounted, and sat cross-legged next to her.

  Kat turned over, propped herself up on her elbows, letting her head roll back, feeling the sun beat down against her small breasts and her throat. “You’re killing them, Sis.”

  Angel laid a hand on Kat’s stomach, and drew circles with her finger, and winked. “But what a way to go, eh?”

  They both laughed again. Kat lay down flat, feeling as light as the cirrus clouds wisping across the azure sky. She shaded her eyes to spy a gull soaring overhead, shrieking for its mate.