It could be anything inside, couldn’t it? I forced my mind off the subject, suppressing my curiosity, and sent Miko a mental request. First of all, I needed to know the extent of the risks involved.
“If we don’t open it, we’ll never know, Grey. And if there’s a potentially dangerous creature inside... I’ve already contacted Kate. She agreed to activate the Monolith’s defense mechanisms in case of emergency.”
My hands traveled over the cylinder’s smooth surface, inspecting it. Finally, I discovered a barely noticeable rim around its bottom end which easily shifted half an inch. The diaphragm clicked open.
I sensed a whiff of a breath, rather than heard it. Something invisible and intangible slid out of the tube. My psi field registered the presence of a stranger. There had indeed been something – someone – inside.
I reached out mentally to the stranger, trying to establish contact, but he expertly evaded my call and disappeared beyond my perception radius.
He’d escaped! He'd slipped away from us!
A few moments later, Kate’s impassive voice echoed through the silence,
“Allarch, everything is under control. There’s no danger to the base. However, I’ll have to ask you to report to the medical center immediately. Your assistance is required.”
Our assistance was in fact required in the room adjacent to the medical center, the one lined with cryogenic capsules containing frozen dead bodies. Last time we’d been here, Miko had explained to me that’s where Incarnators had kept spare bodies in case they lost their main host.
And this appeared to be the case.
The rectangular door of one of the capsules stood wide open, disgorging clouds of mist. A naked man squirmed in the floor next to it in a puddle of rapidly melting gore.
He was alive. Or reincarnated, rather. But he looked awful. The ice shell that had covered his body was spreading over his skin in patches of misting greenish goo. The man was retching, vomiting his guts out.
At this point, all doubt had left me. The soul trapped in the cylinder was indeed an Incarnator who’d just revived one of the “spares” right before my very eyes. Not that he would last very long though. Judging by his agonizing throes, he was dying again.
“Miko, what’s wrong with him?”
“Damage to skin tissues and severe poisoning with cryogenic fluid breakdown products. The thawing protocol must have been compromised...”
Noticing me, the man reached out his hand in silent plea. Instinctively I knew what he needed. I reached out and laid one of the two spare A-capacitors into his hand. That’s right, I had no idea who he was, friend or foe, I just followed my gut feeling.
My guess had been right. The pale-blue glow surrounding the battery expired, meaning that the man had absorbed its contents.
Then, the incarnation. It didn’t look at all scary when you watched someone else do it. His retching stopped straight away. His body went limp. It was as if someone flipped a switch twice, turning him off, then immediately back on.
The stranger opened his eyes, lifted himself on his elbows and shook his head, apparently checking how his body worked now. Then he sprang to his feet.
His host body belonged to a swarthy dark-haired man, fit and stocky, with a generous stubble. He shook himself and drew a deep breath. Focusing his gaze on me, he croaked hoarsely, apparently getting used to his new vocal cords,
“Holy shit! Thanks, man.”
He handed me the empty battery. Ten thousand Azure, I bet! I wish someone had given me this kind of gift upon respawn. Still, I shouldn’t begrudge him that. I could always get more Azure, but I’d only had one chance at getting our relationship off a good start.
Especially because he seemed to be recovering really fast. He opened an inconspicuous storage box next to the cryogenic capsule and pulled on a black cloth jumpsuit with Stellar logos on his back and sleeve patch.
“Is this a Monolith? Why aren’t the clones serviced? The cryo liquid has long given up the ghost! Kate, damn you! Where’s your report? The coordinates, time, status?”
The ghostly cogitor materialized next to him and saluted crisply. “Welcome to Base Asia 3, Grand Tribune! All systems are in sleep mode. The base has no personnel. The status report has been sent to your cogitor.”
The man froze momentarily, trying to take it all in. “Asia 3... holy shit! Forty-eight years! Jesus. Who the hell are you? An Inca? Do we know each other? Where’s Gerda?”
“I’m Grey. I found this,” I showed him the empty animarium, “at your group’s death site. You are one of Gerda’s group, aren’t you?”
“That’s right. I’m with Blizzard, yeah. Wait a sec. Did you say death site? Are you... are you sure?”
“I found three bodies. The Technomancer’s, the Warrior’s and,” I faltered, “and Gerda’s. It looks like they were killed by some Voids or something like that.”
“Killed? Are you sure?” his voice had turned hoarse.
“At least no one has heard from them ever since. Stellar issued me a mission to investigate, then duly closed it.”
“Holy shit!” the man gasped.
He grabbed at his head and closed his eyes. I couldn’t even begin to conceive what you’d feel after having spent all that time without a body, stuck in a tube of beryllium bronze with only your own cogitor for company.
“Were you with them?” I asked. “What happened?”
“Yeah, I was. They called up a raid. Blue alert,” he spoke in a quiet, emotionless voice. “Hades was raising thousands of Necros. His army was about to break out of the A-zone. We found him and employed Thunder but it was no good. As we made a second pass, he cast Dead Breath on us. We lost control of the plane. We were losing altitude, so all we could do was ram him. There was no other way we could kill him. My body burned to a crisp in the crash. A Storm was coming, so Gerda collected my anima and put it in storage. After that, I just waited. A long time. I lost all track of time. I knew it must have gone badly wrong. But I still hoped they’d survived.”
So I’d been right, then. This man was the Enchanter mentioned in Gerda’s message. A fellow Incarnator and the only surviving Blizzard member.
“Sorry, man,” he said. “I just can’t believe they’re dead. And I’ve been stuck in this wretched piece of pipe like a fucking genie in a bottle! I’m Kai, by the way. An Enchanter with Blizzard. I’m Gerda’s husband... was.”
“I’m very sorry,” I said.
“That was my fault! That was all my fault, dammit! Had I been with them, I’d have known how to get rid of the Voids. Listen... can you show me what you found there? Are you sure you got it right?”
“Show you?” I repeated.
“That’s right. Tell your cogitor to send me the footage.”
“I’ve received an ID request from another Incarnator’s cogitor, Incarnator. Should I accept?”
“What are you on about, Miko?”
“In order to ID each other, cogitors make their Incarnators’ status data visible to the other party. The names, the ranks, the bios, group affiliation... that’s all done to confirm our identities and ensure quick data exchange.”
“Can it hurt us in any way?”
“Only if you’d rather preserve your anonymity. But if he connects to the Archives and downloads all the latest updates, his cogitor will be able to ID us anyway.”
I gave a mental nod. “Very well. Accept.”
“I need your confirmation. Then I can send him the complete footage of what we saw at the death site. First-person view, as you can well imagine.”
“D’you mean you’ve been filming everything?!”
“Of course. Whenever I’m connected to you, I save all the data in the logs.”
“Why?”
“That’s just the way I’m programmed, Incarnator. At least that way we can always replay any episode and learn from our mistakes or come up with different tactics.”
And possibly also leak all the footage to the mysterious Stellar System whenever sh
e’s connected to a terminal. Everything, absolutely everything that had ever happened to me, my every word and move, had been duly recorded, logged and protocoled. Talk about total control.
It smarted. It didn’t feel good. Miko must have sensed it because she suddenly took offense. She turned away with the look of injured pride, tears glistening in the corners of her eyes.
“I’m not a snitch, Incarnator! I may be sitting in your head but I am part of you! Yes, I do forward some of the data to the system but only what’s required in order to complete missions!”
“So can I take a look?” Kai repeated.
“Sure.”
Once he’d finished watching, he fell silent for a while, staring into space. Then he awoke from his thoughts and slammed a furious fist on a nearby table.
“Dead. All of them. Hailstone, Smoker and... and Gerda too. Life is a fucking bitch!”
“I took a few things off them. There was also a password-protected vox and a cryptor.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I saw them. That’s good.”
He still looked badly shaken but seemed to be adapting to the news. “What a crying shame,” he repeated. “Holy shit! Thanks for letting me out anyway, man.”
I nodded. “No sweat.”
“I just can’t work out who you are, man. The interface gives me a lot of bullshit. Says you’re an Allarch. Your bio is a joke. I have a funny feeling I’ve seen you before but I just can’t remember. Where are you from? Have we met?”
He kept studying me. I did the same. Only after our two cogitors had finally connected, my interface informed me:
Edward “Kai” Parks (100% match)
A-man
Incarnator
Source type: Kha
Warning level: n/a (ally)
Bio (hidden)
Rank: Grand Tribune
Orders of Merit: 14
Phenotype and Abilities: Access denied. Required clearance level: Tribune
Combat group: Blizzard
“Possible. I don’t know,” I said with a chuckle. “You see.. I just can’t remember anything about me.”
“What do you mean, you can’t remember? What about your cogitor?”
“It was reset to zero.”
“Never heard anything like that,” Kai announced. “Never mind. Let’s go. I’m starving. This body didn’t have anything to eat for the last hundred years. There must be a food synthesizer here somewhere.”
We found it soon enough but it had neither cartridges nor the organic matter necessary for food production. In the end, I shared my own dwindling supplies with the newborn Grand Tribune.
This was the first real Incarnator I’d met in the flesh – not counting Alice, of course. A real treasure trove of information. He seemed to be okay, even though a bit under the weather. Judging by his rank and bio, he was quite an experienced fighter and one of the last surviving Incarnators. I refrained from asking questions, figuring he needed time to take it all in. And still we ended up talking for a long time, discussing every little detail.
I was obliged to tell him about myself and my drop from the Black Moon. But if I’d hoped he might tell me something new, I was wrong. He just shook his head.
“Strange story. About two hundred years ago, there were cases of new Incarnators coming into this world. They were found on desert islands and other places where you can’t escape from on your own very easily. Just like you: no ranks, no Archive records. But I’ve never heard about someone being reset to zero! That’s a first! Amnesia group, yeah right! Who’s that woman I saw in the footage?”
“We work together. She’s also an Inca. A Renegade. I’m helping her earn her status back.”
“Tell me about it,” Kai said slowly. “I was rushed out of negative rankings once too, you know. But she seems to have problems, don’t you think? Her mutations seem to have gone a bit too far, no?”
“You could say that. She’s an Elunetropic morph. A shapeshifter.”
“Oh really? I used to know a thing or two about that. Can I see her?”
“She can’t enter the Monolith.”
“Is it really so bad?” he raised a surprised eyebrow. “Where is she?”
“She’s waiting for me outside.”
“Well then, let’s go for a walk. I need a bit of exercise, anyway.”
Their meeting didn’t go well from the start. As soon as we’d entered the ruins by the Monolith where Alice was supposed to wait for me, a lithe figure darted out of the shadows. I could barely tell what she was up to, her movements a glittering blur. When I could finally see her, Kai was lying on his stomach with Alice straddling him and mercilessly twisting his arm, her knee pinning his shoulder blades to the ground.
“Inca!” she hissed, pressing the broken tip of Gerda’s sword to his neck. “Legion?!”
“Let him go!” I commanded. “He’s not an enemy. This is Kai, he’s from Blizzard. He was in that cylinder we found.”
Alice rolled her eyes. “No! Why you let him out?” she heaved a heavy sigh, baring her teeth. “He’s an Inca! He’s Stellar!”
“I let him out because he’s a human being too. And he could help us.”
“No. He'll betray us. He’s Legion. He has Stellar’s mission. They’re gonna catch us! They’ll kill us!”
“Alice van der Heiden,“ Kai forced a chuckle. “Red Fox! Grey, this really isn’t fair...”
“Shut up!” Alice forced his shoulders into the ground. “His host is a clone. He’s weak. Easy kill.”
“Don’t you dare!” I snapped. “Alice! Let him go!”
My tone didn’t allow for argument. I glared down at her. A face distorted by fury, a wild gaze, a twitching upper lip, a tense furrow over the bridge of her nose. I could sense her desperation, her hatred. I mentally reached out to her, soothing her fiery mind. I sensed her will weaken and melt like wax in the flames. My touch was comforting and firm at the same time. The group leader’s orders had to be obeyed.
“If you. Betray us. I’ll find you! I’ll kill you!” she growled, suppressing her fury, as she removed the tip of the blade from Kai’s neck. She lifted him by the scruff of his neck like a kitten and pushed him away, so that the freshly-minted Incarnator lost his balance and went flying head over heels over the sharp rocks.
“Holy shit, what a temper!” he muttered, climbing back to his feet and rubbing his neck. “There’s nothing like a strong woman. How did you manage to tame her? Did you offer her raw meat? Judging by her bio, she kills everything that moves...”
Alice growled louder, baring her teeth. The green lanterns of her eyes glowed brightly. Kai’s last words might drive her around the bend, and then she’d just attack him and rip him apart. Her animal aggression was so tangible you could cut the air with a knife, with nothing but my mental effort keeping her from killing the guy.
“It wasn’t her who did the killing,” I explained calmly. “It’s the beast inside her. A parasitic entity. I have to ask you to tone your jokes down a bit. You can see that Alice doesn’t appreciate them. And neither do I.”
“What d’you mean, tone my jokes down?” Kai asked in mock horror, then immediately raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture as Alice took a threatening step toward him. “Okay, guys. Just chill it. Case closed. I’m not your enemy. And I have no intention of becoming one.”
“Prove it!” Alice snapped.
“You first. You’ve got her sword,” Kai said through clenched teeth. “This is Frost, Gerda’s weapon. Give it back to me.”
Alice smacked her lips, provoking him. She had no intention of returning the Azuric weapon. Kai tensed, too.
I laid a soothing hand on his shoulder. “Let’s go back inside. Alice, I’ll be back soon.”
“You must be off your head, man,” Kai said once we were back inside. “This isn’t just any old Renegade! This is Red Fox, for crissakes! She’s a monster, a beast, a torturess! She’s on the Dead or Alive list! Stellar issued a special combat mission just to get her! Did you check her b
io? She’s got hundreds of victims on her kill list, many of them tortured to death!”
“She’s got a parasitic A-entity inside. It did most of the killings.”
“Holy shit, man! You seriously believe that?”
The Enchanter (Project Stellar Book 2): LitRPG Series Page 28