by KT Belt
Inertia’s jaw clenched and his hands balled into fists. He looked nervously into the fight room, his thoughts running a hundred miles a minute.
Carmen felt pain all over. One of her eyes was swelled closed, and she had no idea how many bones were broken. There was shooting pain through one of her legs if she put any weight on it, making it difficult to stand without the aid of telekinesis.
Phaethon’s eyes blazed defiantly at her. She’d never seen him so enraged. “Fight back!” he screamed.
She shook her head. “No,” she said softly, struggling to even speak.
The boy breathed hard. Behind the wrath steadily grew a gnawing disbelief. His eyes drilled into her, and it seemed like he was on the verge of crying. “If you were Edge, you’d have mercy enough to kill me.”
Carmen frowned but said nothing. She dropped her hands and stood completely open with no attempt to defend herself. Phaethon recoiled from the sight, stepping away from her. His expression soon recovered from its first moments of shock and transitioned to raw, unbridled fear.
“You can’t be her. She wouldn’t have come,” he muttered softly to himself. “No one would. Not for me. Not for me!”
He raised both of his hands and blasted her with two heat beams. The pure radiation blew her off her feet, impacting her against the far wall. She gave an earsplitting cry. Her bioelectric field and the body armor she wore resisted Phaethon’s onslaught, but only just for a moment. Her vision burned with a white, searing light that seemed to come from everywhere while pain overcame her body. Phaethon screamed and cursed at her, but she could hardly make out anything he said. She was even distantly aware of Inertia yelling at her telepathically and Rauon’s terrified scream in the fight room. None of it really mattered, though.
An unusual calm overcame her. For the first time in her life, Carmen felt whole. She felt no fear, no nothing.
Inertia, mouth agape, watched his partner die. The attack lasted only a few seconds, but that was enough. When Phaethon extinguished the beams, Edge lay bare in all her glory. Most of her upper torso and arms were blackened char, as was part of her face. Some of her hair still burned.
Everything was silent. No one moved, Clairvoyant or sorten. Inertia couldn’t remember the last time his eyes blinked, and his heart had yet to resume beating. Smoke rose from Edge’s corpse, slowly filling the room. Inertia’s lips trembled.
Caelus gave the sorten equivalent of a shrug. “Well, had to end sometime,” he said to himself.
Inertia looked at him with a piercing, soul halting glare that only a Clairvoyant could give. It was hard to come up with a reason not to kill him right then and there.
Caelus looked the Clairvoyant in the eye but appeared completely unconcerned. “Order a cleanup team to the room. I want a full autopsy.”
Perception slowly pierced Phaethon’s nightmarish stupor. The first sensation to peer through the fog of the past few seconds was his hard-panting breath. The last drops of adrenaline filtered through his body, making it shudder uncontrollably. The stink of burnt flesh was inescapable. Then, at last, he was finally able to see what was plainly in front of him. Edge, his now former handler, was dead. He’d killed her. It had been impossible to even dream that he’d see her, or anyone, ever again. Yet here she was…and she was gone.
This couldn’t be happening. No one would come for him. Not here, not at the facility, not anywhere ever. It was almost laughable to believe otherwise. Clairvoyants couldn’t even touch someone or be touched without hurting them. Clairvoyants were killers—wild, uncontrollable, feared horrors of the Dark. There was nothing else. It simply was and all that would be.
He felt an odd trickle down his cheek. His hand went to it and was wet when he pulled it away. He fell to his knees. It was too difficult to stand.
“What have I…” he said softly, his voice trailing off. He paused as what he was about to say was forced from the forefront of his mind. He dug his nails into his palm. “What did they make me do to you?” he asked, his tone getting harsher with each word. Then he stood with a start. “Sortens!”
He looked at Rauon with violence in his eyes. The technician seemed to sense the malevolence and backed away from Phaethon, well aware that the Clairvoyant could kill him with just a thought. There was no alternative, though.
All of a sudden, Rauon stopped in place, frozen by shock. His reaction made Phaethon stop as well. The sorten wasn’t looking at him, nor did his expression carry the same mortal terror from before. It touched even deeper than that, like he had just witnessed stone turn to gold or someone walk on water. Phaethon turned to see what it was, and he was also immediately pinned in place.
There was a pained groan and even a curse, which was rare for her. Carmen stirred on the floor, coughing and hacking from the effort. Every contortion of her burnt skin made her wince and let out stuttering cries. Her first attempt to get up made her scream. The effort soon proved too much, and she fell to the ground again. Her breath came in rapid pants. All watched, transfixed, when after a few second of rest, she made her second attempt. This time, she worked to get her knees under her. From that platform, she was able to rest her torso on one of her forearms. The other was too badly burned to put any weight on.
Inertia couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Are you okay?” he asked telepathically.
Carmen breathed hard. Even just sitting on her knees took more exertion than any other endeavor in her life. Her entire body was racked with so much pain that she was on the verge of passing out.
“No,” she responded.
The cleanup team entered the room.
“Stay away from her!” Phaethon yelled.
The sortens didn’t even have time to have a reaction; Phaethon telekinetically crushed the first pair, and their screams echoed throughout the fight room. The second pair received a more humane death, simply falling to the ground with broken necks. Rauon ran out of the room.
Phaethon turned around to face the observation booth.
“Everyone down!” Mugal screamed.
Seconds later, the boy’s heat beam ripped into the booth. A technician was cut in half by it. Another lost her arm. Caelus narrowly missed having his head vaporized by diving out of the way.
“Code 1! Repeat, Code 1! All suppression teams report to combat lab 223! Lethal force is authorized!” Mugal ordered.
Inertia could feel the sortens rushing to their position. It felt like a flood. Phaethon could sense their approach as well. He looked at Carmen, holding back his revulsion at her appearance.
“I won’t let them hurt you anymore,” he said. The pain of speaking made her reply unintelligible.
The first sortens entered the room with foam cannons and projectile weapons strapped on their backs. The soldiers moved like cats, with agility and speed. This first wave fired wildly. Some of their bullets even impacted the observation booth. Phaethon dispatched them with ease. The second and third waves entered a mere moment later. This group was protected by shielded, powered exoskeletons. The Clairvoyant’s heat beams ablated off the armor in spectacular sparks but to no effect. Punches and even kicks impacted with dull, harmless thuds.
Phaethon regrouped at the other end of the room and then launched a powerful telekinetic attack. The metal of the exoskeletons strained but eventually gave way under the force of the Clairvoyant. The sortens’ arms and legs were telekinetically ripped off before they were crushed into balls. Heads were ripped off also. And, in the end, the Clairvoyant stood triumphant, though clearly suffering from fatigue. The fourth, fifth, and sixth waves rushed into position.
“Call your teams off,” Inertia said.
There was no way Phaethon would ultimately win. He was powerful, but he fought sloppily, seeking to simply overpower his opponent. Now was not the time to make the move against Solitary.
“What?” Mugal asked disbelievingly.
“He only wants to protect Edge,” Inertia said, realizing all too late that he’d let her real name slip. “If
you stop attacking him, he might calm down.”
“Calm down? That’s madness!” the security director replied.
Caelus made no response, other than to give Inertia a curious but knowing tip of his head. The Clairvoyant saw him mouth “Edge” to himself and then get a faraway look in his eye.
The battle continued in the fight room. The sortens absorbed tremendous losses, but their well-trained discipline was having an effect. With each sorten felled, his comrade came closer to hitting the mark. Wild shots became near misses. A sorten armed with a foam cannon managed to trap Phaethon’s arm against the wall. A second shot nearly encased the young Clairvoyant. But then, all at once, they stopped.
The soldiers stood pinned in place, as if cast in stone. It wasn’t by Mugal’s order or by some sudden compassion on their part. Eyes, both in the fight room and the observation booth, grew wide as they made witness to the utterly impossible. Standing between the sorten contingent and Phaethon with arms outstretched to hold off the horde was Carmen. Her broken, battered body trembled, and her chest rose and fell with each haggard breath. But she didn’t simply stand there.
Her bioelectric field seemed to erupt from the pit of her stomach, course up her spine, and play out from her fingers in wild array. More than half of the sortens in Solitary fainted from the disturbance of the Clairvoyant’s power. The remainder vomited uncontrollably where they stood. Computer consoles outright exploded in the observation booth. Lights blew out in spectacular sparks. There she was for the first time, Edge, raw, unreserved, and complete. But the monster of the Dark wasn’t preparing for battle. The seemingly half-dead Clairvoyant had moved like a shot. And now the entire effort, the sheer force of will, was solely to keep her standing. Her unbridled power and determination were like Atlas holding up the sky.
“Incredible,” Mugal muttered softly.
Stunned silence hung in the air a while longer, till the mood was broken by laughter.
“Yes, most unexpected,” Caelus said. “Most unexpected indeed.” Carmen looked at him. “You’ve impressed me, Edge. No easy task.” He paused before he spoke again. “Security teams, you may withdraw. Medical team, report to combat lab 223 at once.” The sorten laughed again. “Quite impressive,” he said to himself as he exited the observation booth.
Inertia watched him go. Then he looked at Mugal and finally at Carmen. She sank to the ground to rest against the wall and looked at Inertia. Despite her badly burned face, and despite that she looked like she was struggling to even stay conscious, her triumphant relief was quite apparent.
20
The Mask of Twisted Reflections
The approach to Solitary was always the same. 1227231 normally didn’t even waste its time powering up until the docking was complete. Today, however, that was not the case. The sudden and immediate summoning by Solitary’s master, Caelus, was odd enough, but even that paled in comparison to the peculiar nature of 1227231’s co-passenger. It was an extraordinary circumstance for an Eternal starship to even have a passenger. Their starships were unique in that they needed no crews. Only transport ships were designed for the capability of carrying passengers of any sort. Damage control was ably handled by each ship’s host of repair drones, and they were just as part of the ship as cells were to a living creature’s body. Yes, the Clairvoyant sitting quietly across from 1227231 was a curious event.
The Clairvoyant made no acknowledgement that 1227231 even existed. A cursory check of the logged encounters between Eternals and Clairvoyants revealed that was not atypical. Clairvoyants liked to claim that each was an individual, unique and ever-changing, but reality showed they were more monolithic than they liked to assume.
In any case, this Clairvoyant was dressed in the usual Clairvoyant manner of passive intimidation and dramatic effect. It was difficult to tell how successful the Clairvoyant was in that. 1227231 could be crudely called a machine and wasn’t given to such emotionally generated flights of fancy. The Clairvoyant’s clothes weren’t very well constructed. They wrapped around his thin frame in haphazard fashion, flowing and billowing every time he moved. On the Clairvoyant’s face was a rather strange mask. Its kind had never been recorded before. The mask’s mirror-like metal finish reflected everything in imperfect detail. Not one image was presented as it actually was. The mask distorted everything, almost maddeningly continuing each and every reflection in a circuitous, never-ending maze.
Curious, 1227231 cross-referenced the Clairvoyant’s garb and mask with terran psychological research to gauge its effectiveness. As always, that was rather difficult despite the large amount of data to draw from. Clairvoyants were keen on pointing out that Eternals were not alive, at least not by the traditional sense. Eternals were sentient, could reproduce in a sense, and were aware of and could change their environments. The cold machines, however, were just that: machines. 1227231 measured and studied the Clairvoyant’s bioelectric field. It could not feel it, though, leaving that dimension completely unexplored, and no probe, sensor, or catalogued research could bridge that gap.
The Clairvoyant stood and to 1227231 he was frustratingly little different from a rock rolling downhill or a gust of wind. He was just a physical construct that could be observed and perceived but not truly known. Further study was warranted, but for now, 1227231 filed its observations and prepared to disembark. It was almost time.
The ramp opened slowly to reveal Solitary’s lone hangar bay, which contained another surprise. Parked next to their transport was a small, fast attack Corvette of terran construction. The type was quite common, Archer Class, well known for being a favorite on the black market of mercenaries and other similar sorts. The arrowhead-like planform was unmistakable. Though it was quite common throughout the galaxy, its ilk had never been seen here. Even the Clairvoyant paused for a moment to gaze at it.
That moment came and then went, and the Clairvoyant continued on his way. 1227231 followed and could only marvel at the Clairvoyant. He moved swiftly, gracefully, and efficiently, like all Clairvoyants, but most fantastically, he seemed to know exactly where he was going. By what means that was possible couldn’t begin to be determined. 1227231 had been here before, as had other units. Mapping programs, tracers, inertial navigation, database sharing, and even reasoned guessing failed to make sense of Solitary’s never-ending corridors. Yet, somehow, this Clairvoyant was able to casually discern what the plodding machinations of logic could not.
Boom, boom. The Eternal’s heavy steps sounded behind the Clairvoyant. By contrast, the Clairvoyant’s movement could barely be heard. He seemed to exist and not exist at the same time, ghostly yet as present as a tidal wave. Boom, boom. The Clairvoyant turned his head slightly and telekinetically opened one of the panels hidden in the corridor wall. Then he seemed to effortlessly flow into the new corridor. Boom, boom, boom.
“You’re crazy. You know that? You’re fucking crazy. And if you ever do anything like that ever again, I’ll kill you myself.”
Carmen wasn’t completely sure Inertia was joking. Nevertheless, his comment made her smile, even though it hurt to do so. Her body was more patched together than healed, even after the services of Solitary’s doctors. She lay in the medical bay still. Inertia was with her, as was Rauon. Her partner made no mention of her appearance, but Rauon had said that, while all of the life-threatening injuries she’d sustained had been repaired, her scars would have to be taken care of at a later date, if they even could be removed. Carmen didn’t much care about that at present.
She smiled again. “Did I ever tell you I don’t like cursing?”
“No. Why is that?”
“Long story. Wish I could tell you,” she said after a pause. “Anyway, where’s Phaethon?” she asked.
Inertia glanced at Rauon, who sat on the other side of Carmen, and then looked at her again. “I don’t know,” he said. “I know he’s still alive,” he added quickly before she could frown. “But I don’t know where he’s being held. He was never brought here. He wasn’t serious
ly injured in the attack.” Then he looked at her hard. “Prudence, Edge, especially now,” he told her telepathically.
She turned her head to look at Rauon, wincing from the pain as she did so. Pain killers had a muted effect at best on Clairvoyants. Her opinion on what she was changed like the phases of the moon, but now, with the pain receptors of her broken body assaulting her, she quite wished she wasn’t a Clairvoyant.
“Sorry,” she replied telepathically, looking at Inertia again. “So, what now?” she asked.
He rolled his eyes and then slowly shook his head. Upon realizing what she said, Carmen pressed her lips together in a guilty smirk.
“We’ll be ready soon,” Inertia replied. “In fact, I am meeting with Caelus after this to analyze the data from the fight. Every moment I spend with the computers, the closer we get.”
She nodded. “Don’t forget Phaethon. We need to find out where they’re keeping him.”
“Of course,” Inertia spoke. He was silent for a second or two as the Clairvoyants simply looked at each other until he placed his hand on her shoulder and patted her gently. The action made them both wince. It was difficult for Clairvoyants to touch anyone, let alone each other. “I’m glad you found him,” he said softly.
Carmen looked at Inertia’s hand, looked at him, and smiled. She couldn’t think of any sort of reply, but none was required.
“Rest. I’ll be back later,” he said. Then he turned and walked out of the room.
Carmen watched him go. This time, however, she wasn’t left with quiet feelings of dread for being left alone in this awful place. No, not this time. She smiled again as she thought of Phaethon. Not this time at all. The expression, however, left her quickly when she turned her head and was reminded that Rauon was still with her.