by KT Belt
Inertia gave Caelus a questioning glance.
“Variation among our copies is not unexpected at this stage,” the sorten said confidently. “There is as much art in crafting their gnomes as science. That, of course, will change over time.” Inertia conceded the point with a nod.
“Correlation for Clairvoyant Subject 427111 is at…sixty-four percent,” the technician continued.
“Ah, you see? Amazing progress in such a short amount of time,” Caelus said. “I swear to you, even the deepest, most guarded aspect of your consciousness will be mapped and catalogued. It is always just a matter of time.” Inertia made no response. Truth be told, he seemed totally disinterested in the proceedings. Caelus stomped his foot. “No words for me now, beast? Surely some mocking barb is ready and waiting.”
Inertia didn’t answer right away. Instead, he changed his focus to Carmen. “Edge,” he spoke.
“Yes,” she responded as she stepped out of the way of another attack.
“It’s time to give them another curveball. In about thirty seconds or so, go all out and then throttle back.”
“Okay.”
“An impressive achievement,” Inertia said, turning his attention back to Caelus. Mugal eyed him carefully as he spoke. “But I suspect ultimately for naught.”
“Explain!” Mugal demanded impatiently. Caelus seemed just as anxious.
“The Dark is not only specific from individual to individual but moment to moment as well. Your model may match Edg—Psyche—at sixty-four percent now,” he said, once again having to remember to use her ridiculous alias. “That, however, is just now and only for Psyche. A minute from now, your model may read ninety-seven percent and minute after that only five.”
Caelus’s eyes became narrower and narrower as Inertia spoke. And then, as if on cue, Edge went into action. A Clairvoyant going “all out” was hardly ever some breathtaking display of strength or speed but of decisiveness. Small sparks rippled along her arms, indicating a rapid change in her bioelectric field. Inertia couldn’t help rolling his eyes despite that. She just couldn’t go all out even when she was asked to. Some measure of reserve always remained.
In any case, the Clairvoyant’s actions took on an added air of graceful efficiency, flowing between and through the Clairvoyant Constructs who appeared almost clumsy in comparison. The effort didn’t last all too long. She stepped into one of her opponents’ attack at an unexpected moment and then killed him with a stab to the chest in one smooth movement. Then Edge went defensive, pirouetting out of the way of an attack from the other Construct that could but ultimately didn’t come. There was a quick pause in the action as she took a deep breath, and just like that it was done. She was back to her previous level.
The sortens made no comment. Mugal, however, looked back and forth between the two Clairvoyants, anger more and more apparent in his features. “The two of you are communicating through telepathy. I should have known. They are toying with us, Project Leader. Purposely skewing the results to hamper our research!” he bellowed. “Guards!”
The Clairvoyant Constructs rushed toward them, but Inertia didn’t even glance at them. With the Constructs at his flank, he folded his arms, his attention fixed on Caelus. The sorten stared back.
“Is that true?” Caelus asked.
“Of course, it is,” Inertia said. “It’s not abnormal for Clairvoyants to communicate telepathically.”
“Why would you want to skew the results of the research?” he asked, his tone making it quite obvious that the scientist’s curiosity was fully engaged. Mugal bristled with such visible rage that it was a wonder he didn’t combust into hellfire.
Inertia laughed, which caught both sortens off guard. “Skew the results?” he asked incredulously. “It’s obvious that you’ve learned nothing from me. I told you from the beginning it was impossible. Yet, foolishly, you’ve continued the farce. You may as well be obsessed with banging your head against the wall.”
“You’ve gone too far, terran!” Mugal yelled. “This ends—”
Inertia stopped his tirade by shaking his head. Then he glanced at the security director before rolling his eyes. The Clairvoyant Construct guards stood at the ready, tense for the command to attack. The sorten technicians cowered feebly behind their workstations, awaiting the inevitable battle. Yet, for Inertia, even a baby sleeping in his mother’s arms had more apprehension.
By this time, Carmen had killed the other Construct, despite her middling effort. With nothing else to do, she and Rauon waited in the fight room, unaware of what was going on in the observation booth.
“Tell me,” Inertia said. “If your model truly worked, how could I skew it?” The comment stopped Mugal so completely that he didn’t even breathe or blink in response. “How could anything she does in that room matter to your model if it was accurately able to predict and reflect everything about her? As I said, your efforts are a joke.”
Caelus suddenly appeared lost. He took a hesitant step away from the Clairvoyant and visibly shrunk. His eyes darted back and forth, searching. “Yes, yes,” he muttered. “Foolish,” he said to himself. Mugal looked at him, unsure of what to do. The few seconds of silence that followed seemed like hours. “Perhaps I was too hasty in saying the mystery was solved.” He swallowed hard. “How…how do you suggest we proceed?” he asked, sounding at a complete loss.
Mugal’s mouth fell open. Inertia, however, was waiting for those exact words. He walked past the Clairvoyant Constructs, telekinetically pushing them out of the way, and took a seat at the nearest computer console. The chair was never meant to support a terran frame, but he could manage. The computer, like the chair, was never meant to be used by terrans either. But, at last, he was finally able to examine the system.
“Wh...what are you doing?” Mugal asked, flabbergasted.
Inertia glanced at him and then looked at Caelus.
“The Clairvoyant is right,” Caelus said to Mugal. “I think it has come to this. Maybe a less…refined mind can uncover the secret. All his insights have proved true thus far.”
“But sir, I must protest,” Mugal began. “The possible compromise to our operational secur—”
“That is enough, Mugal!” Caelus barked. “You forget yourself! We must finish our research by any means necessary. Employing the services of the Clairvoyant beasts is only a small measure of how far I’d go to ensure our success.” He took a breath to calm himself. “No one here seems to genuinely understand the horrors that beset us. If you did, you’d urge me on instead of forestalling my every step.”
“Project Leader?”
“Get out of my sight,” Caelus spat.
Mugal opened his mouth to say something but then slowly it closed. He dropped his head and walked to the back of the room. Caelus turned his attention to Inertia.
“Shall we begin?” the sorten asked.
Inertia nodded, but he wasn’t really listening. His focus was on the computer, and though the layout of Solitary was a bewildering, maddening mess, the computer system thankfully wasn’t. Caelus barked orders to some of the technicians, but Inertia didn’t pay attention to it. He instead smiled to himself as he slowly figured out how the machine worked. He’d used sorten systems before, but alien logic didn’t always flow as expected. That didn’t seem to be the case here.
But just then, something else captured his attention. He looked up and noticed the lights were flickering. One of his eyebrows rose curiously. It was unlikely that it was some sort of power failure, not in this place. He knew, even with just his cursory glance into the computers, that there were backups upon backups to prevent that from happening. He also suspected the lights were hardened against Clairvoyant bioelectric interference. There was no reason they wouldn’t be. And there was something else. A power was approaching them.
It was different from the Clairvoyant Constructs. The energy of this Clairvoyant was a fiery, angry mass—malcontent personified. Inertia had never known its kind. The lights raged even wilder. T
he sight, combined with the raw power approaching, struck Inertia as oddly captivating, like a thundering waterfall. Every sorten was completely silent as they looked into the fight room with fretful awe.
“Inertia!” Edge said frantically. “Inertia, what do I do? Talk to me!”
He couldn’t really see the fight room from his position, so he shot to his feet and rushed to the observation booth glass. His partner stood in place, seemingly unharmed by whatever peril was making her so hysterical. Yet her breath was quick and her cheeks were ashen. Her hands even looked like they were shaking. It would be hard to call Edge a paragon of confidence. He couldn’t even imagine her carrying herself that way. Still, she had a Clairvoyant’s self-assuredness, which he had yet to see waver…till now. Across from her stood the force of nature that would presumably be her opponent. It was a teenaged boy.
He was not a Construct, that much was obvious. Even standing still, the natural Clairvoyant wielded a dynamism those robots could never possess. The entire room was bent to him. There was no denying his presence. Sparks rippled along his body in the flickering dark, casting an almost demonic air to the scene. He was a standard, true blood Clairvoyant through and through. But there was something off about him.
His clothes made him look like a well-dressed lab animal. They were simple, durable, and new. But his hair was a tattered mess, with no attempt having been made to tend to it. His skin also looked worn and dirty, as if he couldn’t or didn’t care to clean himself. One of his most striking features, though, were the scars. Scars were a relic. Modern medicine meant that healing with scarless precision was the pride of every doctor, or at least those who cared about their patients. The scars covering the boy’s face, neck, and arms were thus no testament to sorten incompetence. Then there were his eyes. The piercing, focused gaze of the Clairvoyant remained. Underneath the fiery visage, however, was dull, broken emptiness.
“Is that—”
“Phaethon,” Carmen finished. “Yes, that’s him.” She paused. “At least, what’s left of him.”
As her old charge stared at her, she had no read on him. Hate, love, fear—there was nothing. There was only a Clairvoyant ready for battle in front of her. He was so primed that even a hair or two on her arm stood on end. The lights stopped flickering and the sparks disappeared, yet Carmen remained frozen in place. She had dream of this day. She had hoped and even prayed for its fruition. Now, standing here, she had no idea what to do.
Rauon stood behind her taking notes, completely unaware of the significance of the moment. She looked at the observation booth, and her partner stared back. His tense face mirrored her own. She looked back at her charge.
“Phaethon?” she asked telepathically. There was no reply. He gave no reaction at all. He just stared at her, if that was even an accurate description. She wondered if he even processed that she was right in front of him with the glass-eyed way he existed in the world. “Phaethon, it’s me, Edge,” she tried again.
Inertia could only watch. Telepathy was more direct than verbal communication, and he couldn’t hear what was said between them. The body language, however, wasn’t encouraging. Phaethon stood almost completely motionless while Edge’s hands shook back and forth with pleas Inertia could only guess at.
Caelus turned to him. “Shall we begin?” he asked.
Inertia glanced at the sorten and then looked at his partner still pleading with her charge. He hesitated. The situation dictated action, but the timing wasn’t right. He had only just accessed their computer system. Edge looked at him in that moment, at a complete loss. He had no direction for her.
He turned his attention back to Caelus. “Let’s begin,” he said. Then he walked back to the workstation.
Carmen saw Inertia walk away, and her eyes grew wide. She was on her own. She looked at her old charge. He stared right back at her.
“Phaethon, what’s wrong with you?” she asked.
“Get out of my head!” he snapped. Carmen smiled. The response, though not what she expected or wanted, was at least a response. “You’re not going to trick me. You’re not Edge.”
Her smile left just as quickly as it had come. “Of course I’m Edge. Who else would I be?” she asked telepathically while wishing Phaethon had the prudence to do the same. Rauon was already looking at the two of them strangely.
“I won’t believe it. I can’t believe it! Edge is gone. I’m never seeing her again. You keeping trying your best to break me, but I will never give in to you.”
Rauon took a step toward them. “Psyche, do the two of you know each other? And who is Edge?”
Just what I need, she thought with gritted teeth. “No, we don’t know each other,” she replied under her breath.
Phaethon heard her anyway. “Ah, you see? Even you admit it!” he said. “I don’t know who or what you are, but you’re not a Clairvoyant. No Clairvoyant would work for this filth.”
“You don’t understand!” Carmen said, throwing her hands up in frustration. “I am Edge. Remember all those games of chess I made you play?”
He paused for a moment. “The sortens could easily know that. Maybe one of those machines they prodded me and cut me up with could read my mind or whatever,” he said, which made Carmen wince. “It doesn’t matter that you know that.”
Carmen opened her mouth to respond, but Caelus spoke through the intercom system before she could say anything. “Beasts, this will be to the death. Begin,” he said.
Phaethon assumed a guard and took a step toward her. She remained still.
“I’m not going to fight you,” she spoke.
He halted his advance. Indecision was a unique form of torture for the monsters of the Dark. It made the Clairvoyant’s hands shake slightly till his eyes narrowed.
“Then just stand there and die!” he yelled.
Carmen was unprepared for the speed and violence of his attack. She could only watch, transfixed, her eyes ever widening, as he aimed a kick at her head. The blow was like none she had ever felt before. It sent her tumbling, end over end, into the nearest wall. Her head still spun after she hit, despite that she was no longer moving. It felt like hours passed before she realized she was lying on the floor and even longer to remember how she got there. She stood, and Phaethon was on her almost instantly.
She made no counterattack. The experience of every battle, every fight, and every contest she’d ever had, in any form, was called upon. She could beat Phaethon; she was quite sure of it. His efforts were rage incarnate, seeking to overcome her by overpowering her fully. She remembered the chess games they played. He was falling into his old traps. There was only so long that she could hold him off while just defending herself, though. Her body shuddered as a punch slipped through her defenses. She groaned as a kick landed home, doubling her over. And with each landed blow, it became harder to thwart his attack. His jaw clenched tight when his punch made her stagger away and then fall to the ground.
“Psyche! Psyche, what’s wrong? Fight back!” she heard Rauon say.
She glanced at him. He looked horrified. She looked at Phaethon again and did her best to ignore the sorten. She coughed blood before she came to her feet again.
“I’m not going to fight you. You know I won’t,” she told him.
“You’re not Edge! You can’t be!” Phaethon screamed, though his voice sounded weak.
Carmen simply stared at him calmly, resolutely, despite her raspy breath and the blood trickling down her face. He cursed at her before he continued his savage attack.
Inertia could feel the violence even though he could not see it. Battling Clairvoyants were like no other force in the universe. He could also feel his partner weakening with each passing second…yet she also wasn’t. It was a strange dance between her and Phaethon. He could feel that Edge, in totality, was being beaten to a pulp. He could even hear her groans and screams from time to time. Nevertheless, the bulwark that made Edge herself—the frustrated reserve that drove her half-crazy most of the time—coul
d be easily sensed by anyone with the means to do so, now more than at any other time while he’d known her. It wrapped around her like a warm blanket. Oddly, though, that same reserve appeared to provoke ever more fury from her charge, like its very existence was an affront to everything he held dear.
Inertia, however, tried to ignore the battle. Their entire effort here was for nothing if he couldn’t figure out the computer. Despite that, his thoughts and his duty were in opposite directions. The tension had his fingers tapping on the table while his eyes madly flickered back and forth, studying his screen at a frenetic pace. He looked up suddenly. This was pointless. He abandoned the computer and walked to where Caelus stood to look into the fight room.
“Your mate is a strange one,” the sorten said. “For some reason, there appears to be no fight in her. Pity.”
Inertia watched silently. Phaethon’s attack looked near desperate. Her young charge forsook any attempt at fighting technique. Inertia slowly shook his head while Phaethon whaled away on her. She blocked almost every blow, but the force of them were making her legs visibly buckle. Phaethon didn’t want to just beat her; it seemed like he wanted to pound her out of existence. The spectacle was as decidedly un-Clairvoyant as it was disturbing.
“Edge, he’s not going to stop. You have to fight back,” Inertia told her. “He’s too far gone. They broke him. You have to fight back.”
She gave no reply, which made him mull over his options. He was well aware that he could intervene. He could go down there himself and fight Phaethon. He’d probably have to kill him to get him to stop. Inertia thought about what that would do to Edge. Then he shook his head and looked at Caelus.
“Call it off,” he said. The sorten looked at him with a start. “Call it off, Caelus. I’m sure you’ve got everything you need already.”
“I thought Clairvoyants always fight to the death?” Mugal asked from the corner of the room where Caelus had banished him.
Inertia glanced at Mugal but ignored the question. Caelus ignored it as well. “Why would I do that?” he asked innocently. He motioned with his head toward the fight room. “You told me before that a Clairvoyant’s Dark influences their every action, consciously or not. You even said nothing would happen in that room that she didn’t intend. If she wishes to die, who am I to stop her? This is unexpected, but it’s a data point nevertheless.”