Equilibrium of Terror: Part 2

by Eddie R. Hicks

  Jainuzei’s head moved back and forth between the two. He was hesitating while he tried his best to make himself appear like an intimating force to Jazz. Alisha or Hannah; Chloe or Jazz. Jainuzei couldn’t decide. Jazz knew it and needed him to keep guessing, keep him on the bridge or Chloe was going to have a bad day.

  Alisha’s stasis net vanished, she was free. Jazz quickly ran behind and grabbed her. Alisha was Jazz’s hostage, and he saw that hateful glare Jainuzei gave him in response. Jainuzei stayed on the bridge, and continued to aim Jazz’s katana toward him in an imposing manner.

  “Release her!” Jainuzei said.

  “Drop your weapons, all eight of ‘em,” Jazz said.

  “Jake!” Alisha yelled. “You fucking asshole, let me go!”

  Jainuzei took several steps closer to Jazz, Jazz inched Alisha’s body over the ledge of the bridge. Her feet dangled above the dip below as she began to scream, kick and shiver. Jainuzei stopped and began to grit his herbivore teeth.

  “You would not dare!” Jainuzei said to him.

  “I killed Jason without hesitation,” Jazz said. “What makes you think I ain’t got it in me to finish her?”

  “Jake please!” Alisha begged as she continued to try to break free from Jazz’s grip.

  “You are better than this,” Jainuzei said.

  “Naw man, been thinkin’ about what you said earlier, about me not being the hero of Earth,” Jazz said, while he looked at how close Alisha’s body was away from the bridge. “And you’re right. I ain’t no fuckin’ hero, I’m the anti-hero. I do bad things, to get the good results I want.”

  “Jake,” Alisha said to him.

  Jazz double-checked where he held Alisha’s body. She was still dangling in the air, but was an inch away from the ledge of the bridge. “Don’t Jake me, you brought this upon yourself,” he said to her. “After all it was you that wanted me to see a therapist. Well guess what? I did and you know what she told me to do?” He released his grip on her. “Let go of you.”

  Alisha’s body began to fall off the bridge as she began to scream loudly.

  Her hands reached up and grabbed a hold of the ledge, delaying her deadly fall. Jazz entered stealth afterward as Jainuzei as expected dropped his weapons and raced toward Alisha to pull her back up.

  “Now you see me,” Jazz said as his cloaked body rolled past Jainuzei and toward his plasma katana laying on the bridge. “Now you’re dead.”

  Jazz waited for Jainuzei to pull Alisha back up, then plunged his blade into Jainuzei’s back. He held back just enough for the end of the blade to stay inside Jainuzei. Had Jazz pushed the entire weapon through him, he would have impaled Alisha in the process. If Jazz truly wanted Alisha dead, he would have straight up pushed her off the edge rather than drop her close enough for her to grab onto the ledge. Jazz played kendo with her enough to know her reflexes were on point.

  A burst of electricity shot away from Jainuzei’s body, Jazz figured his blade cut through his armor’s battery pack. The shock from the discharge sent Jazz and Alisha flying backward, as Jainuzei’s limp body slumped over. Alisha wasn’t moving, but she was breathing from what Jazz was able to gather while he got back to his feet. He reached toward Jainuzei to pull his blade out from his back. It wouldn’t budge, it looked as if it was fused with Jainuzei’s armor. The green glow from his blade ceased as well, the electrical blast shorted out the wiring inside it.

  “On second thought, you like weapons more than I do,” Jazz said as he walked away from his body. “You can fucking keep it.”

  “Hannah, stand down it’s over,” Chloe said as she aimed her rifle toward the back of Hannah’s head.

  “Ha!” Hannah yelled as she reinserted the first gem.

  “Don’t do this Hannah, we can help you.”

  “I’ll kill you.” Hannah inserted the second gem then stood holding the disk over her chest, two gems were in it and the third was firmly grasped in her hands. She waved it back and forth in a taunting manner over the last slot, laughing and giggling in the process.

  Chloe hesitated to pull the trigger.

  Hannah didn’t hesitate to place the third and final gem in.

  The gems slotted onto the disk started to glow vibrantly and interacted with the oval wormhole gate. The wormhole opened up and connected to what looked like pink and red clouds, like a nebula out in space, only they didn’t get sucked through the wormhole as expected. Was something blocking them? A force field perhaps? Chloe thought.

  Chloe lost control of her body. Hannah lifted her hand causing Chloe’s paralyzed body to levitate and her grip on her rifle to loosen and let it crash to the floor. It was mind control, but different from before where the voice of the goddess simply told Chloe what to do and she couldn’t resist. Hannah had total control over Chloe’s body. Suddenly Hannah stopped her delightful gaze toward Chloe as she began to yell and scream as she collapsed to the floor.

  “Mommy!” Hannah screamed. “Jazz why did you do that!”

  Something Jazz did got Hannah extremely agitated, and it bought Chloe a few more minutes of life as Hannah turned her attention away from her and toward Jazz as he entered the room. He had a magnetic pistol aimed toward Hamah. Shoot her! Chloe yelled internally to Jazz, not that he would hear her thoughts, though she wished he did as his hesitation only made matters worse.

  What was going through Jazz’s head was likely the same thoughts that went through Chloe’s. Hannah was a danger, no doubt about that, but at the same time was just an insane woman, being controlled by aliens from the beyond. It was that feeling of sorrow for her that caused the two to debate if dropping her was the right thing to do.

  Jazz dropped the pistol and his body began to levitate like Chloe’s, Hannah had them both mind controlled. Hannah walked between their two floating bodies laughing hysterically.

  “Oh Jazzy,” she said to him. “Remember when I was a little girl? Remember all the dolls I used to play with and how I wanted you to play dolls with me? But you never did, you promised to, but you and mommy were always too busy, then you went to war! But now you’re here, now you can return that promise!”

  Jazz and Chloe’s bodies came back to the floor, though neither of them had control, Hannah still did as she made Chloe reach for her combat dagger.

  “You two can be my dolls!” Hannah forced Jazz and Chloe to face each other. “Now what shall we have you two do, oh yes I know! Remember Cedar-Sinai? Remember when you two met? Let’s play!”

  Like a group of puppets putting on a show, both Jazz and Chloe were forced to fight in hand to hand combat. Jazz was forced to remove his armor and fight bare-chested. They were reenacting their first encounter, and if it was going to play out exactly like it did years ago, Jazz’s armor was going to get in the way.

  “You two fought,” Hannah said as Chloe’s mind controlled brain threw Jazz to the floor. “Chloe, you stabbed remember?”

  Chloe fought hard to regain control of her body, but not hard enough as she was forced to plunge the dagger into Jazz’s belly. He didn’t flinch, yell, or react, Hannah’s control was, madness. Madness that couldn’t be allowed to leave the planet.

  “Then what happened? Oh right Kroshka came to your aid, she had Emelia heal you with her powers, the same healing powers wraith use.” Hannah used her telekinesis and flung Jazz’s hemorrhaging body into the corner like a rag doll. “Now, now, now yes! Xyniea came down and shot you.” Hannah forced Chloe to take on a new role, the role of Xyniea as she picked up her rifle and stepped toward Jazz. Two voices began to scream and fight to regain control of Chloe’s body, one was her, and the other was Vaishea. “Twice in the chest.” Bang, bang! Two bullets tore through Jazz’s chest. “And once more in the head.”

  Chloe’s finger that was pulling the trigger stopped as she aimed toward Jazz’s head. Hannah grimaced as the final shot didn’t happen. Vaishea’s and Chloe thoughts were both one, their combined resistance was enough, somehow, some way, to stop the trigger from being pulled. Ho
w long was another question as they still had no control over the rest of her body.

  “What’s this?” Hannah said angrily, “You know what I did to my dolls that didn’t work right?” The rifle fell to the floor, and Chloe’s hands wrapped around her neck. “I pulled their heads off.”

  Chloe’s access to air was cut off as her own deathly grip pulled up around her neck. Hannah laughed loud while Chloe’s face turned red. Her vision started to blur, then all out faded away. Chloe’s body dropped to the floor instantly, she didn’t move.

  Hannah looked at Chloe’s body strangely.

  She wasn’t finished with her, but yet her control over her mind suddenly shut down. Dead already? It was faster than she expected. She walked over to Chloe’s body as the goddesses within the three gems forced the wormhole into aether space to remain open.

  All that needed to be done was to send the wraith through and hope they had enough to at least kill one or two of the gods. All three of them was the original plan of course, but that would have required one decapitating strike that consisted of millions of human wraiths to storm into the gods’ personal realm in aether space.

  Hannah knelt next to Chloe’s body. She had a pulse. How? She had no mental activity that would have allowed Hannah’s mind control to work.

  “You’re supposed to be dead! I killed you. I killed you.”

  Hannah scanned her body again with her mind, a new wave of mental energy emerged.

  Bang.

  A single bullet ripped through Hannah’s heart.

  Vaishea crawled away from the woman she shot with a magnetic pistol she found on the floor next to her. The woman held her chest when the bullet had passed through, her hand was soaked in blood from the wound. The woman fell to her knees, placed her free hand across Vaishea’s armored shoulder, looked directly into her eyes and muttered her last words. “Thank you. I’m free, free from their control, thank you.”

  The woman collapsed onto the floor, dead.

  Vaishea looked around at the mysterious box-shaped room she found herself in. Her neck hurt as if someone was strangling her moments ago, probably the dead woman on the floor in a pool of her own blood. There were dozens of bodies that littered the floor, many of them were wraiths that were in the process of reverting back to their human form. They all had a pulse.

  Vaishea hoped she did the right thing, as she didn’t know who this woman was. However the combat armor and weapons she had, rather Chloe had before their minds swapped suggested they were in the middle of a critical combat operation. She remembered tiny fragments of what had happened in the room, the biggest one being Jazz getting shot.

  She got up having realized Jazz’s body still lay in the corner bleeding. She grabbed his armor and shoved his bloody body back into it. It was of Hashmedai design and therefore it should have self-healing medical instruments and painkillers. She wasn’t sure if it would be enough to save him however, the pool of blood suggested he lost a lot already. She looked down at his body, her tears dripped down from her face onto his. Never in her fake life did she encounter someone that cared so deeply for her.

  She kissed him as she had a feeling this would be the last time they would be together.

  She looked forward and saw an oval shaped object with a disk next to it. The disk had three red glowing gems stuck on it.

  Wait.

  She knew what it was.

  Pre-programmed memory triggers activated, and a wealth of intel gathered from the Celestial Order’s base on Foicanta came to the surface of her mind. It was intel that was locked, hidden in her mind that would make her Whisper cover seem legit.

  It was a frightening moment at first. It was irrefutable proof that her memories were fake and conjured on a computer. Vaishea’s true existence was to prevent the celestial ascension from happening. The goddesses were stored away on the gems, ancient Lyonria who were trying to seek vengeance according to Vaish’s notes. The gateway to aether space needed to shut before the wraith got inside. Even if they failed, it would only encourage the gods to come through and punish those they didn’t like. UNE, Radiance, and the Empire were all expected to view the raging gods as a hostile alien invasion and retaliate, thus triggering a larger conflict.

  No, this had to end now, Vaishea thought as she got up. She held onto the disk and took one last look at Jazz. Then leapt through the wormhole.

  Aether space outer core

  “Welcome, corporeal beings have not entered here in a great many cycles.”

  She felt her body sink beneath the pink and purple nebula clouds after leaping through the wormhole. Three figures appeared in front of her, Stoarior, Tym and Livie. The Radiance gods, they looked humanoid in appearance and wore white robes that looked as if they were a source of light.

  “Wraith were expected to come through. We did not expect you,” Livie said.

  “Why did you come?” Stoarior said.

  “I’m here to send the goddesses back to where they came from,” she said.

  “Nivrui, Aviuheart, and Emelia,” Tym said. “The maidens that started the conflict.”

  “Release them, we will punish with them,” Stoarior said to her.

  Defiantly she said, “No.”

  “The Chloe is defiant.”

  “Your grudges have fractured our galaxy, leave us out of it,” she said.

  “We tried to mend the situation,” Livie said.

  “How?”

  “The Himton changed his view, only to be extinguished by the Jerut. We tried to control the Jerut and Telinei but were not as successful. The Odelea however did follow us.”

  “Odelea . . .” She twisted her mouth at their reveal.

  “We thought the Odelea had followed the way of the three maidens and tried to mimic their calling,” Tym said. “It turned out it was not necessary. We were able to have her perform her duties that led to this.”

  “That’s the problem, your way of mending the problem has resulted in countless lives to end,” she said. “Killing the goddesses will only encourage their believers to seek revenge.”

  “We deem it necessary,” Stoarior said.

  “There’s another way,” she said.

  “There is no other way, the ones the Chloe calls goddesses will only seek to try again with their plans,” Livie said.

  “They can’t if they don’t exist in normal space.”

  “If they remained here they will conflict,” Tym said.

  “At least you can control them, perhaps make peace,” she said. “And they will stay out of the politics of our galaxy. Hannah, the Celestial Order, they did all that because they remained in our space. Keep them here and they can’t try again. Make peace with them and this conflict can end once and for all.”

  “It is too risky,” Livie said.

  “What if they were someplace else in aether space, exiled and away from you?” she asked.

  “They will not be a threat, until they figured out how to arrive to our location,” Stoarior said.

  “Defenses can be built,” Tym said.

  “Corporeal influence will not interfere,” Livie said.

  “Does the Chloe wish to perform this task?” Stoarior asked.

  “The Chloe will have to, no Lyonria would risk it,” Tym said.

  “Neither would we,” Livie said.

  Without a second thought she stepped toward the three on whatever kind of invisible floor they all stood on within the nebula and announced. “I’ll do it.”

  “You will die, your physical form cannot stay for a prolong time, your ethereal form however can remain,” Stoarior said. “Consider your choice. Chloe will not be able to return to what you call normal space.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said with a grin. “I’m not Chloe after all.”

  Lyonria Structure, Oyuri, Barnard’s Star system

  Chloe’s body fell away from the wormhole as if she was pushed through it. She collapsed on the floor. If it wasn’t for the fact the entire fortress had started to rumble vio
lently she would have stayed laying down awhile longer. She got to her feet and saw the room where the gate lay was empty, Jazz and Hannah’s body was gone along with the wraith that was reverting back to their original form somehow. There was a package on the floor. It was full of Radiance made medical devices to inject a target with medication. Had someone come up with a cure and not sent her the memo? She picked it up regardless as it was something that needed to be investigated. The shaking of the structure continued. Its integrity was crumbing. She needed to escape, or risk Oyuri becoming her final resting place.

  After a terrifying two-minute run through the halls of the structure and eight inoperable teleportation alcoves later, Chloe arrived outside to the pad the Silver Raven had landed on. Veloshira to her surprise had remained and waited for Chloe as Torval’s headless body lay on the ground next to his transport. This must be Veloshira’s way of repaying a debt, she thought and leaped aboard the Silver Raven.

  “Jazz?” Veloshira asked Chloe as she made it to the cockpit.

  Chloe gave Veloshira the bad news, by shaking her head. Jazz was nowhere to be seen and clearly didn’t make it aboard either. There was no time to go back and search for him either as the structure began to explode from the inside out. Veloshira pulled the Silver Raven away, seconds later the remains of the Lyonria structures crumbled back to the surface in the form of burning debris and dust.

  In orbit, Chloe saw only one force in control, the combined UNE, Imperial, and Radiance fleets. The Pelican and the order loyal Hashmedai ships were reduced to flaming hulks of twisted joints. It was over. Chloe released a gigantic sigh of relief.

  Buried Linl ship, Derkurio, Morutrin System

  “Get up,” Phylarlie said to Jazz.

  She looked about at the results of her last second rescue. Jazz and the recovering humans that had become wraith were scattered about in the store of the ship. Eicelea and Vynei’s timing was impeccable as they managed to reactive the wormhole after several failed attempts. According to Eicelea the wormhole at the Lyonria structure had an outgoing one still active which prevented her from reconnecting. Phylarlie wasn’t sure who on that end had opened it, probably Hannah as she wasn’t in the room upon Phylarlie’s return, only Jazz’s body and the rest of the humans were there.