Ghosts of Lyarra

by Damian Shishkin

  The cold air was refreshing as it kissed her face; the final step to her feeling like herself again as she reached the rock wall and ascended the carved steps upwards. Every step, the light above her grew, until at long last she emerged from the passage and felt the sunlight ravage her senses. She could see the snow covered village that she remembered from years ago; now it was long abandoned and barren. Clear skies revealed neighboring mountainous peaks that she looked on with awe as they sparkled brightly with their icy coverings. Iana marvelled at the perfection of solitude about her; it was if she had stood amongst the Gods in paradise and shown the true nature of beauty.

  “A mountain doesn’t hide from the approaching storm.” Aen’s voice broke the wonderful silence. She hadn’t even noticed him as she looked about her before. “It does not run and it does not cower; it does all it knows how to and simply endures for the mountain will far outlive the short fury of the storm.”

  “Very poetic.” She added. “And very fitting considering what we look upon.”

  “I was referring to our situation.” He smiled. “But the scenery does add a nice dramatic touch. I meant that soon we will have to reveal ourselves and face that which opposes us. And once we have made our move, I fear that the storm will rage longer and more powerfully than we could ever imagine. The more I uncover about your enemy, the worse it looks.”

  “So you found her?”

  Aen looked up to the afternoon sun and closed his eyes; she could tell he was enjoying the brief moment of peace. His dark hair flowed freely down past his shoulders; the sharp angles of his face reflected the light in different shades of bronze. While she was dressed in warm and cozy clothes, Aen only wore the rubbery armored under layer of the Ifierin, and its black contours outlined the hard lines of his body in the sun.

  “I did.” He spoke after a pause. “And after some persuasion she told me what I needed to know.”

  “You killed her too?” Iana was sorry she asked; knowing the answer before it came.

  “A message had to be sent; Jyn was an unknown to his masters, but according to her files she was in constant contact with them. So I made an example of her, and left our enemies with even more questions as I sift through my answers.” He replied.

  “You know, don’t you?” she looked at him in amazement. “You know who it is?”

  “I know a few names, and I have a few faces; though the one I truly search for is going to remain hidden until the very end.”

  He wasn’t going to tell her; he was skirting about the question until he knew for sure. As much as she wanted the truth, Iana’s mind slipped back to the awful words she had last spoken to Aen before they left Egypt. Regret had built up inside her and was ready to burst out, so she decided to show her feelings to him as raw as they could be.

  “I am sorry.” She blurted out; the coy smile disappeared quickly from his lips. “I am so sorry about what I said; I didn’t mean any of it.”

  “The Queen of Heaven asks for penance from the lowly Harbinger?” his eyes were sad and serious.

  “No!” she answered. “Iana; a humble servant of your good graces, asks your forgiveness for all I have put you through. I owe you everything and up until now, have been too proud to admit it.”

  “You had my forgiveness as soon as the words were said, though all of what you said is true. It is time I sought that which eludes me; it is time I repair the damage done that keeps me from being whole.”

  She took two quick steps and leapt at him to embrace him. Iana squeezed him tightly as tears poured from her eyes in a river of released emotions; his arms were much slower to meet the embrace. The two sat in the winter sun in each other’s arms for some time before she withdrew and cupped his face with her palms.

  “I would go with you on this journey if you would have me?” She stated with a nervous smirk.

  “Then it would be I who looks for comfort in your arms when I regain all I have lost; I would be honored to have you accompany me.” He seemed so distant; she had to remind herself that he was more broken then she could imagine.

  “When do we leave?” Iana asked.

  “When the alterations to my armor are complete.” He answered. “Where we are going, my face will be recognizable if anyone remains. We are going back to where Caretaker says it all started; I am going back to where I was born.”

  —

  Inner System Solar Power Relay Station;

  Project Olympus

  “What the hell do you mean she was here since the dark ages?” Patterson screamed into the comm line at Wilson. “I thought ‘Zero was the only survivor of that stupid ship?”

  “Well, that’s what our Lyarran friend is telling us.” Wilson barked back. “And it gets worse from there. Turns out that your contractor Tanaka Jyn was a Lyarran; and was one of the survivors from the Amarra too!”

  “This is a fucking nightmare!” the General began to really freak out. “You are telling me that a high level contact was actually a fucking alien? I am losing my goddamn mind here! He had access to Olympus that could ruin us; are we compromised?”

  “No.” Wilson replied. “From early reports it seems they both…..defected; for the lack of a better word. Reports listed them as killed in action in respects to their decision and they went on to blend in with society. Tanaka played the chameleon card perfectly, while this one was more the outcast; though she did keep tabs on her old friend without his knowledge.”

  Patterson was pacing back and forth on his office floor; his mind racing to make sense of this new information. If there were no leaks in the program, they could continue without drawing unwanted attention from the Empire. But if anything Tanaka Jyn was working on leaked out, it was only a matter of time before the path led back to Olympus.

  “You need to wrap this shit up son!” he said calmer, but with intention. “You need to find out why these two outcasts were killed and who is behind it before your new partner there traces anything back here. I need another year or two to button this up; after that I don’t give a rat’s ass who knows we have armed ourselves anymore. So get this thing done and send the bitch home, got it?”

  “Yes sir!” Wilson snapped. “Avery out.”

  Patterson didn’t reply, he simply switched the comm off and swore under his breath. He was so close from finishing Olympus; so close from ensuring the future of humanity amongst the stars to have it all unravel now. It had been a week since the body was found in Alexandria and the media was having a field day with it. The fact that an alien had been so brutally killed and then left to be found had spread like wildfire; the only thing preventing the Imperial Fleet from kicking down Earth’s door and flooding the planet with Ifierin was the fact that the Council of the Dark Light was attached to the investigation. But he knew the longer it dragged out, the more likely that Earth - and all its dark secrets - would come under the scrutiny of the Empire.

  —

  Rocky Mountains, Utah

  – Former Military Installation Code Named White Rock

  It was deathly quiet inside the abandoned facility; nothing had moved in here since Council Sara Foster had ordered it stripped and shut down for good. Paint peeled from the concrete walls; ceiling tiles had fallen under the weight of water from leaky roofs and lay on the floor in pieces or hung down, still clinging to the wire frames which once supported them. Very little remained of the once busy secret base, but the feeling of familiarity rang clear to Aen as he stood amongst the mess. It was cold; not that the temperature bothered him, but he knew it would affect Iana who had insisted on joining him. Looking over at her, he could see her breath but she didn’t say a word.

  The room was broken, stripped down and empty. It began to jar his memory some, but it was like a shadow in the fog; you can tell it’s there but you can’t tell what it is. But all it was doing was stirring up the mire in his head, and with no further clarity forthcoming he moved on and down a hall.

  He found himself next in a large office with the door hanging off the hi
nges; he remembered this room and the man that resided within. An image of an older General cleared from the fog and a conversation between the man and him murmured in the background. The words weren’t clear, but the tone was hostile and threatening; obviously the two were at odds with one another.

  No more insight came from the room, so he led Iana down the hall, down a dark and dank stairwell and down to a few floors below ground. Here, the doors were gone, but the room opened up on a display specimen tank. It wasn’t familiar, but he thought it stirred a memory from someone else’s point of view. The feeling was quickly fleeting, so he moved past the display and followed a sign hanging from one side that read ‘lab’ and in a few moments he stood in the middle of what was one of the more expansive rooms they had seen thus far.

  He knew where he was, and it was not as foreign to him as much of everything else was. Aen had been here before; the room had all the telltale reminders of his last visit. They had arrived in the medical wing; the very same place he had torn apart twice over. For the first time in a long while, Aen began to remember things as the scorched walls and melted metal gurneys stirred something to clear the fog.

  His fingers ran across the charred walls as he walked; the texture of the cement and ash struck him as his memory rushed back. The lights above his eyes as he was strapped to a bed and wheeled down a hall, the smell of antiseptic and the voices of various doctors all felt like it was happening again. Aen stumbled from the sensory overload and held his weight against the wall.

  “What is it?” Her voice sounded like it was miles away, though Aen knew she was right by his side.

  “I remember.” He stammered.

  “What do you remember?” Iana asked.

  “Pain.”

  Aen righted himself and resumed his pace down the hall, the whole while his fingers never leaving the surface of the walls. Over concrete, drywall, and metal framing his fingers ran; the whole while his memory sparked continuously. He remembered the feeling of being drugged, the feelings of being trapped within his body and being detached from its senses. It was a flood hitting the dam that had been blocking his mind, as leaks formed while quick bursts of memories snuck through. His body was now on automatic as it led him to a place he couldn’t quite remember with Iana closely following.

  Looking up, or more like opening his eyes to see, Aen realized he was standing in the middle of a grand room. Above, there was a viewing lounge and the floor showed markings where equipment once stood. In the center lay a massive glass tube, one that had held something that was being studied. As he looked about the room, it shifted from a barren and stripped down dark hole and became the room as it was years ago. He saw the row of Generals in the room above; all glaring down to observe the experiment below. He saw the rows of machines whose purpose still evaded him but the sounds they made chilled his soul. His gaze followed the row until he came upon the glass container which contained the subject of the experiment; him. It was an odd sight to see; Aen was looking back in time at himself strapped into place with needles sunk deep within him. He could see the changing of the body which was once human and now becoming the shell which would arise, the weapon of his maker’s desire. Aen felt the glass beneath his palm and felt the echoes of his own screams; the dam which once had cracks, now broke completely and he began to remember everything.

  Falling to his knees, a scream of agony rose from the depths of his soul and echoed through the dead facility. In one instant, Aen went from remembering nothing to feeling every jab of a needle, every bullet and knife to pierce his flesh, and the loss of his family. He felt the stinging regret of a love never realized with Lyxia; the longing his whole being felt to be with her and the weight of the decision that carried him across the galaxy to his exile. It was the very thing he sought for, but as it overwhelmed him he wished it was something he had never found.

  Then he felt himself whisked away from his nightmares and reality both. He found himself standing on the beach of Nammaran, staring outwards to the ocean that encircled the rest of the globe. Aen wasn’t sure why he had been brought back here, but he was sure as hell not going to waste time searching for those that wanted him; the Prophets could damn well come to him! So he stood and enjoyed the view, but he didn’t have to wait long.

  “It is not the way we wanted it to go,” the voices started in unison from behind him. “But it has been none the less effective. You have peered further into the darkness than us, and discovered far more than expected.”

  “This isn’t a game.” His voice was reined in as he kept his anger in check. “I have all but declared war on the Empire. It is only a matter of time before they find us and destroy all I wish to protect.”

  “But you have planned well, and they do not look on Terra Sol. Time is on your side; for now.”

  “So you dragged me all the way here to pat me on the back?” Aen was seething in fury. “What an amazing waste of energy and effort. Surely you have more to say than just riddles and compliments or this is going to get old real fast.”

  It was a sound he didn’t expect; footsteps on the sand behind him approaching slowly caught his attention. But it was the voice that came next that caused him to turn around at last and take notice; it was a voice he just remembered and one he never thought he would hear again.

  “I didn’t bring you here to waste time.” The woman’s voice sang out softly. “I brought you here so you can see the full weight of what you will face soon, and what lies waiting for you beyond the darkness.”

  “It can’t be.” Aen stammered. “You can’t be here!”

  But the woman continued her advance on him, and he clearly wasn’t imagining her identity. In the sand before him stood the very being that began his journey; the same creature whose blood changed his and created the thing he was now. Standing in front of Aen was the former commander of the Amarra, the leader of the search for the Harbinger, and his mother; Ameia.

  “Why can it not be me?” She asked in a sultry way. “Energy doesn’t die; even the physicists on Earth agree on that. So how is it that you refute my new existence?”

  Aen didn’t answer; he couldn’t. The last time he had lain eyes on Ameia was during the recorded holo-display on the floor of the United Nations assembly, and by that point she had been dead for nearly a year.

  “I made myself worthy of the company of the Prophets with my self-sacrifice to bring the Harbinger into existence.” She continued. “And for right now I am allowed to be a single entity rather than belong to the collective energy that makes them what they are. For you, my son, I will set aside this wonderful new existence to offer you guidance; that is, if you will have it?”

  She held her hands out to him with arms outstretched; her skin shone brilliantly in the setting sun with a hue of bronze Aen wasn’t sure could ever be possible. She was more beautiful than any previous image of her had ever been and he was unable to resist in taking up her offer. His hands rose up as if by themselves and met hers. In the instant of contact, her essence rushed through him like lightning.

  “There is much you need to know, and very little you can reveal to Iana until it is time.” Ameia began as she led him down the waterfront as the waves kissed their feet. “You now know the name of that you seek, but the one behind it has yet to reveal himself.”

  “And in a world that the female rules, it is truly something that takes notice that I keep hearing the male reference to the true enemy.” Aen finally was able to speak again. “What can you tell me about this man that hides behind the curtains; pulling the strings of his puppets?”

  “If only I could reveal it all to you.” She said with a smile. “But my bringing you here borders on interference as it is; revealing the path you must take is not permitted.”

  “Bullshit!” Aen said in frustration. “Thus far all I have gotten from the Prophets has been interference. For once, can you and your newfound friends cut the crap and just set me on the right path?”

  “You are on the path you need to be
on.” She answered coyly. “Yet its destination is the thing you truly fear. For at the end of the journey, it is you that sits upon the Throne of Light; it is your destiny that you fear more than anything.”

  “And you have me save Iana only to take what is rightfully hers? This doesn’t even make sense.”

  “When one enters a star system, does the planet they seek not seem blurry or faint from the far reaches of the star’s light?” Ameia stopped and turned to him. “That is a point in time that has yet to be determined, and your life being that of an eternal leaves a lot in the in between to be interpreted. From this point, it is unclear of how you get there, but the destination is still there.”

  “So she will die after all?” he asked somberly.

  “The Mori are not as you; and though there are two left, they do not live forever and both have been around for a great long time. In the end, it is all beings destiny to join the stars and become energy once more; theirs is no different than all others.”

  “So why save her now?”

  “Because her part is not finished, and her destiny unrealized. It is not the will of the Prophets that such a great being be cut down by the Temple we created before she can complete what she started. Your enemy grows restless, and she will show herself for all to see soon. When she does, you will know the time to expose her and all her kin to the Empire of Light.” Ameia looked on seriously. “You must purge that which has become poison, and return the house of the Prophets to the light before the darkness descends. Because when he makes his move, time will be of the essence and the Empire will be pushed to the brink; and maybe beyond.”