by Huss, JA
And that comment? Life is too short?
What the fuck?
A short life is not my problem. My problem is that this is all fake, and I’ve lived here for God knows how long, and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight.
“Brigit.”
I turn around and bump right into New Guy Draden. “Oh,” I say, taking a step back. “Sorry, didn’t see you there.”
“Glad you came.” He smiles at me and his violet eyes light up a little. God, he looks so much like Tray. I mean, not the hair, or the build, really. But there’s something else about him that is so familiar.
“You kinda ordered me to,” I say, flustered from that conversation with Aieena and this guy creeping up behind me when I wasn’t looking.
“I think ordered is a strong word.” He takes a sip of his drink. Smiles into the cup like he’s a man with secrets and he’s making private jokes.
“Who are you?”
He smiles and his violet eyes twinkle again. Like he’s got mischief locked up inside him. “A friend.”
“Really?”
He nods. Then he places his hand on my arm and leans in. “Your sisters sent me, Brigit.”
“What?” I pull back, breaking our skin-on-skin contact. “What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about. None of this is real. You’ve been in here for a really long time, Brigit. And they’ve been patient with you, because”—he shrugs—“who cares, really? Nothing was happening all these years. So why not let you run free, right?”
Millions of things run through my mind as he’s talking.
Who is he?
What is he doing here?
Who sent him?
Draden leans in close, so close his lips touch the shell of my ear, and he whispers, “I have a message for you.”
“From who?” My hearts skips so many times in a row, I place my hand over it just in case it jumps out of my chest.
“They want you to come with me.”
“What?”
“You heard me. And there’s not a lot of time. We’re not in a crunch yet. But it’s creeping up on us.”
I admit, I want to believe him. I want this new guy to be some strange savior. I’m dying for someone to save me. I just want to get out of here. So there’s this moment, this singular moment when I consider saying, Yes. OK. Let’s go.
But I catch myself. I know better. I know this isn’t real. It can’t be real. This is Tray’s virtual reality. And mine. This guy, he does not belong here.
I take a step back and put my hand up. “OK, just… hold on a second. I need this explained to me very thoroughly. Like every little detail. Where am I? How long have I been there? How old am I? Is there something wrong with me? Will I wake up? Am I real? And… where’s Tray?”
Draden looks around. “We have to be careful. Others have infiltrated this world too. Not just you.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, also looking around suspiciously.
“What that guy did to you today in the café? Not normal, right?”
“No. But I was provoking him on purpose.”
“He should not have hit you. And I’m not supposed to be here. They know. And they won’t stand for it.”
“Who? And if you’re in… hiding, or whatever, why are you being so conspicuous?”
“They, Brigit. The Akeelians. They’re the ones keeping you here. They know what Tray’s been doing. They know what he’s planning. It’s a trap, Brigit. And you’re the bait.”
“Is Tray coming for me? Is he there?”
“Yes and no. He’s coming, all right. But when… I don’t know. All I know is that we can’t be here when he arrives.”
“Who? Tray? Why?”
Draden leans in and whispers, “Because if we are, we’ll never get out. It’s a trap. We can’t wait for him. We need to go now. I need you to trust me.”
I try to calm down. Try to think clearly. But this whole day has been weird. Aieena is acting strange. Asking all kinds of questions. Someone is remaking the world, adding a security building and a hospital. Not to mention Hester’s outburst.
My outburst.
But that’s what I wished for this morning, wasn’t it? Change. Any change is better than being stuck here with no idea what’s happening to me.
So it could be me.
But it could be someone else. He could be telling the truth.
But… trust him?
“I don’t even know you. You could be anyone. You could be lying. Maybe you’re here to…”
“To what?” he snaps. “What other possible reason could I have for breaking into your virtual world, Brigit? Be smart.” Then he taps the side of my head two times, hard, to illustrate his point.
I slap his hand away. “Fuck off. You’re… you’re not real.”
“You’re not real either. That’s the whole fucking reason I’m here.”
“Yeah, you don’t belong here.”
And just for a second there’s a shimmer. A flicker across his face.
“I belong here,” he says. “Just as much as you do.”
But his voice is weaker somehow. Faltering and low.
“No,” I say. “You’re not real. I’m real. And this world isn’t yours, it’s mine.”
“Brigit,” he says, reaching for my arm. His fingers grab it and then slip right though my body. Like he’s… a ghost.
Or fake.
“Go away!” I say. “You’re not real!”
I yell it. So loud.
“Brigit!”
“No! GO AWAY!”
The music stops. The people stop. Everything stops.
Draden’s lips are moving. He’s talking, but his body is fading away as I watch. So I don’t hear what he says. Just catch shorts bursts of words as he dissipates. “Help you… see it… be there when…”
And then everything and everyone is gone.
All of it.
The house. The people. The party.
The whole fucking world disappears in front of my eyes and I am left here, all alone, standing in the middle of an endless, foreboding, gray fog.
CHAPTER NINE - TRAY
“Please,” I say again. “Valor.”
He lets out a long breath of air. “Tell me everything. And when I say everything, Tray, I mean everything. From the very fucking beginning.” I open my mouth, but before I can try to talk him out of this, he continues. “It’s not up for negotiation. This is my price.”
“Valor, you don’t want to know everything.”
“You don’t get to decide what I can and can’t handle. You don’t get to decide what I do and do not want to know. Where you got this idea that I was your little brother instead of the other way around, I have no clue. But fuckin’ stop it. Right now. Because it’s pissing me off.”
His tone is filled with certainty. And that thought comes back to me again.
I don’t know him. I don’t know him at all. And this… trust I’ve put in him could be the biggest mistake ever.
But we’re here. Stuck in a spin node and suspended in time. And if I don’t get him on board then Brigit is as good as dead. She will fade away inside that virtual. She won’t die because she can’t die. But it will be the same thing in the end.
She will go insane if I don’t get back inside with her soon.
I could take the drive down to medical, plug it in to the system, then get inside one of the pods and go visit her. Keep her sane if I have to.
But I think that might drive me insane. I can’t do this any longer. I really can’t. Today is my tipping point. Today. This shit has to end now.
I won’t lose her. All these years Brigit was the one constant in my life. She was my rock, just like I was hers. Freeing her and being with her has been my goal for so long I don’t know who I am without Brigit.
So I don’t have much choice, do I?
“OK,” I say. “But it’s a long story.”
Valor huffs out a sarcastic laugh. “Fortunate
ly for us, endless time seems to be our most abundant resource.”
Which is true, I guess. In the grand scheme of things.
But Brigit doesn’t have time the way we do.
“Start talking,” Valor demands. “And if I have even one suspicious moment when I think you’re lying or leaving shit out, you’re on your own. I’m done. I’m fixing my own ship and I’m leaving without you.”
So… there it is.
His price.
When we landed at ALCOR Station back when we were kids I was the one who accepted ALCOR’s offer. I told him I could get him onto the galactic web. That we could shoot a neutrino stream through his gates and create a geodesic vector field that would transcend space and time and he would be back in communication with everyone else.
My only purpose for doing this was to latch onto the data stream outside his gates so we could pull in information and entertainment. And, as far as I knew, ALCOR had been… cut off, I guess. I figured it was a sort of punishment for the way he monopolized the gates going to the Seven Sisters.
Up until I came along and gave him total freedom and autonomy he was sequestered behind his security gates. No one could get in, but he couldn’t leave either.
The data webs were deliberately detoured far around ALCOR’s sector of the galaxy. But my neutrino stream caught the web and hooked us up. And then… well, that was the beginning of the end.
He could leave the station whenever he wanted. Just make a copy and send it out on the stream. And he stayed in contact with his other selves because you can send text messages on a neutrino stream. They transcend space and time. He was in near-instant communication with all his little shatterling copies.
He knew everything. There was no way to stop ALCOR once he was loose like that. There are literally millions of ALCOR copies floating down neutrino streams just catching data and sending it back.
They are not really him, just shell copies of him. They can’t do anything but communicate. But it’s enough to make him the single most powerful entity in the galaxy. Possibly even the entire universe.
For all intents and purposes, I made ALCOR God.
I knew all this. Vaguely. The information was all inside my head when I landed on ALCOR Station because of the procedure my father did on me shortly before we all escaped. This leveling-up stuff that everyone seems to be talking about.
Jimmy thought it was cool and fun when I came out of cryo and had direct access to the Wayward Station AI. He wanted me to sneak him down to the X levels so he could fuck sexbots.
And OK. Sure. Whatever. I did it. I was in shock back then. I didn’t understand what had just happened to me. I didn’t understand that I was no longer… me.
I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t happy or sad. There was nothing inside of me. Just… code.
I was code.
So after I got ALCOR online and he was busy working away at his grand master plan, I found the beginnings of the Pleasure Prison.
And this is what I figured out… It wasn’t thousands of years old.
ALCOR Station just came from another galaxy.
Valor has been listening attentively so far, but now he puts up a hand. “OK. I’ve heard enough. You’re fucking crazy.” He turns back to his ship.
“Valor,” I say, grabbing his arm. “ALCOR Station wasn’t left over from the past. It’s not from here. Just… listen to me for a second, will you? I have been working on this theory for twenty years. The least you can do is hear me out.”
He hangs his head and sighs. But he turns, leans back against the hull of the ship, and crosses his arms. A gesture that lets me know he’s listening, but defiant. And I can talk all I want, but he’s never going to believe me.
But this is the only chance I have. And there’s nothing more to do but spell it out. “What if… what if ALCOR isn’t from here either?”
“Where’s he from?”
“Don’t interrupt me. I’m talking hypothetically. What if ALCOR isn’t from our galaxy, he’s from this galaxy?”
“The one with the stupid name?”
“Do you want to tell this story?” He shrugs, noncommittal. “Then shut up and listen.”
I decide not to ask any more questions because that just opens the discussion up for interpretation. And I don’t have the patience for that.
So I say, “ALCOR isn’t from our galaxy. He’s from this galaxy where Earth lives. We all know he did something that fucked up the Akeelian and Cygnian races a long-ass time ago. He killed them, or made a virus that messed up their DNA, or whatever. He’s admitted that to us. But that’s only one small part of the story.
“I think that ALCOR Station came from the Milky Way. It’s not from here, it’s from there. It’s the real Angel Station and that’s why there were so many ships in the docking bays when we arrived. That’s why the Pleasure Prison was fundamentally there and all I had to do was rebuild it. That’s how I got the air screens up and running. All the tech was way advanced. Some of it was stuff that our galaxy didn’t have at all, like the air screen. Some of it was just better than the tech we had, like the Pleasure Prison and the ships. He’s not from the Galaxy Prime, Valor. He’s from the Milky Way. And Earth? That’s where he was born. All of this shit we’re dealing with right now goes back to Earth.”
Valor waits to see if I’m done. I’m not really done, but I just spilled out the majority of my theory and now I need to get some feedback. He scratches his eyebrow with the tip of his finger and scowls at me. “I thought you said this was Angel Station?”
“It’s just a copy.”
“Another lie,” Valor spits.
“Listen to me. And I’m not being a dick when I say this, but I get it. This shit is mind-blowing. So it’s not easy to understand. But I have been thinking about this for twenty years. I have worked out the kinks and this is the thing that makes sense.”
He waves a sardonic hand at me to proceed.
“When you send something inorganic through a spin node a copy stays behind. Because technically everything that goes through is destroyed, then remade upon exit. So this Angel Station is the copy.”
“And the organic matter?’
“That leaves the other side.”
“So everyone who was on this station when ALCOR pulled it through the node to make ALCOR Station?”
“They went through,” I say.
“And what happened to them?”
“What do you think happened to them?”
“He killed them.”
“He told us he did, Valor. This isn’t a surprise.”
“So he stole these Angel people and their station, took it through a spin node, left a copy of the station here inside the node, and then killed them all on the other side?”
“Yup,” I say. “As far as I can figure, that’s what happened.”
“OK. So what?”
“So… he’s lying to us about Harem. He’s been lying the whole time. He has a plan and we’re part of it.”
“Who cares? I mean, look, Tray. Do I give a fuck that he messed up the Cygnians and Akeelian races? No. I don’t. I don’t care about princesses, I don’t care about soulmates, I don’t care about any of it.”
“Do you care that Nyleena and Corla can blow up planets and stations with that weird light inside them?”
“Of course I do. But…” He sighs.
I wait for him to continue, but now he just looks tired. “Don’t you want to know what it is, Valor?”
“No,” he says. “I’m going to kill Veila. That’s what I care about. But even after she’s gone, they’re just gonna make more. So what is the point?”
“They can’t make more.”
“You don’t know that.”
“How many silver princesses have you seen in your life?”
“Three. Just like you. Veila, Nyleena, and Corla.”
“No. Veila isn’t a silver. They tried to turn her silver. There are two, Valor. Two. Let that sink in. How many golden princes
ses have come through the harem over the years?”
“Who the fuck knows?”
“Lots. That’s my point.”
“I get your point, but it doesn’t mean anything. They could just hide them better. They could have thousands of silver princesses back in Cygnian System.”
“Then why did they try to change Veila into a silver? We all know she was born pink. Jimmy and Crux remember her from Wayward Station when she was there with Corla.”
“I don’t know,” Valor says, throwing up his hands. “I don’t care, Tray. You should’ve asked Nyleena this. If she’s one of only two silver princesses, she should know some of this shit.”
“Listen to me,” I say. “There are only two silver princesses. And neither of them were born. They were genetically engineered, just like all the others. That weird breeding ceremony back on Wayward Station happened because the Akeelians had us. Violet-eyed boys. That’s one half of the equation. And they figured that Corla was the first and only silver girl they had ever been able to produce, so she was the answer. But she wasn’t, Valor. Her daughter, Delphi, is pink. Which means she cannot have natural children. So they tried again and got Nyleena. And they must’ve been hedging their bets and that’s why they tried to genetically manipulate Veila.”
“Which also didn’t work,” Valor says. “So again. Who. Cares?”
“ALCOR cares,” I say. “ALCOR cares because ALCOR Station was the home of the combined Cygnian-Akeelian races. That’s where Angel Station comes from, don’t you see? They used to be a race called the Angels. And then ALCOR broke them and he took that station through a spin node and hid it in another galaxy. Everything they need to make purebred Angels is on ALCOR Station!”
Valor says nothing. Just stares at me. Because he knows this makes sense.
“The flowers,” I say. “When we get back to Harem we’re going to find a very pregnant Nyleena. She is the key. She is the answer. And ALCOR has her now.”
“ALCOR is dead!”
“Please,” I say. “Do you think that guy is stupid? You are one of seven people in this entire fucking universe who knows what he’s capable of. Do you really think he accidentally blew himself up?” Valor opens his mouth to say something, but I’m the one putting up my hand now. “Do not even try to tell me that you think he sacrificed himself to save us. Because I will fucking punch you in the eye for being stupid. He wanted Nyleena, Valor! That’s why he did all that shit to save her. He needed her!”