She could hardly stay angry at him for ‘borrowing’ her mind and its power when he was in such a blatantly tormented state, could she?
Perhaps you could resume with your irritation at a later time, after Emily has recovered.
I’m afraid that’s not how human emotions work, Meno.
Alas.
She gestured to the table in the corner. “There’s water, energy drinks and bars, and some other snacks. You should eat something.”
He gazed longingly at the table. “All right. I’ll eat while you talk.”
“Good. I’m basically mirroring the routines of the virus—in a weird way, it’s similar to how the Dimensional Rifter works on a conceptual level. But my goal is to zero out the virus’ code at every point of its operation. Every action it takes will be countered by its mirror opposite, negating the action’s effect.”
“Okay.” He wandered over to stand beside her, crusty bread roll in hand. “I can almost see how the approach might work on the pure code, but it’s wound itself all up in Emily’s cybernetics. Can you mirror that, too?”
She shook her head. “No, and it wouldn’t help if I could. We’re going to have to flush her system to get rid of all the mess either way. I’m targeting what we can’t see and the flushing routines can’t reach.”
“This mirror code you’re building—it’s still a virus, isn’t it? Won’t it wreak new havoc when it’s not busy negating existing damage?”
She rubbed at her temples. “Well, that’s why I’m not done working. I’m attempting to build in a subroutine which will basically ‘ground’ the virus whenever it can’t find an opposing operation. It’s an old hacking trick used to—”
“—Sure, I know it.” His eyes began to light up, flickering with the beginnings of a fire absent these last days. “I think this will work. How much longer until it’s ready?”
She grimaced and stared at the screens in search of an answer. “I’m not… four hours?”
“You’re the best. Thank you. I’ve got to go, because Navick—I’ve got to go. Thank you!” He spun and rushed out as swiftly as he’d arrived.
AMARANTHE
48
HELIX RETENTION FACILITY
MILKY WAY SECTOR 7
* * *
“WHO ARE YOU? Who do you represent? Where is your homeworld? How did you access Machim Central Command? What data did you attempt to steal, and for what purpose?”
The interrogation had begun seconds after Alex had awoken, but the drone’s questions hardly registered through the noise of her mind racing in every direction.
Where was Caleb? He’d surrendered; he must be nearby, but she couldn’t reach him. What about Valkyrie? Had she done as Alex asked? Her stealth would have held, so if she’d departed before the lockdown she shouldn’t have been captured or destroyed. But she, too, was unreachable. And Eren—god, Eren. There were a million better ways to learn of the destructive capability of Vigil firearms than seeing him be cut to shreds.
“Answer or be pacified.”
She breathed in and tried to prepare, ordering her eVi to release pain suppressors—
Her limbs spasmed from jolts of electricity as shooting pain rocketed through her limbs. She bit the inside of her cheek so hard her mouth filled with blood. She gagged, struggling not to choke.
The jolts mercifully subsided, and she spit the blood out. It hovered for an instant in the halo of the restraining field before dropping to the floor.
Okay, forget the pain suppressors; they weren’t going to get the job done. She ordered her eVi to block all neural pain receptors.
The aching discomfort from the restraining field holding her up in an awkward position faded away. She felt floaty.
“Who are you? Who do you represent? Where is your homeworld? How did you access Machim Central Command? What data did you attempt to steal, and for what purpose? Answer or be pacified.”
The electrical shocks weren’t pacification? Terrific. She scowled at the drone. The jolts hadn’t honed in on her cybernetic pathways where they would cause real damage. Not this time or so far. Her captors and their drones weren’t familiar with her physiology or her enhancements, and she only hoped they remained so.
The next round of shocks was stronger, though. Her head jerked back so hard she wrenched her neck, and she heard rather than felt a sharp crack in her left wrist as her body convulsed.
Her head swam in the aftermath. She couldn’t feel the pain, but that didn’t mean the pain wasn’t happening, and physically her body reeled from its effects. A few things had broken, she suspected. Bones, or maybe more vital parts.
Her lips grew wet; she darted her tongue out and tasted more blood. Failure warnings from her eVi flashed in her internal vision.
What were they expecting to happen here? Was the drone programmed to be a sadist? Was its sadist master watching on a screen somewhere?
Valkyrie?
Nothing. She hadn’t expected a response, but she kept checking every now and then, just in case. The Kats’ shield at Taenarin Aris had blocked their connection as well, so technically it wasn’t unprecedented.
But not many forces in the universe could pull the feat off, which meant one hell of a blocking shield surrounded this place.
During that fateful night above Romane after she’d severed her connection to the Siyane, she’d been slightly concerned about what actions Valkyrie might take without her consent—rooted in the best of intentions and the rational belief Alex would be unable to give informed consent—and she’d set her eVi to record any forced neural activity.
This was relevant to her present circumstances for one crucial reason: armed with the recording and using the quantum pathways now indelibly carved into her brain, her eVi was able to repeat the actions Valkyrie took to put her to sleep.
As a new series of jolts tore into her, she readied the command that would plunge her into a blissful oblivion—
—the image of the elder Galenai scolding the rambunctious youngsters flashed into her mind. What right did she have to take the easy copout when such wondrous creatures were in danger? She couldn’t exactly protect them if she was passed out, could she?
“Who are you? Who do you represent? Where is your homeworld? How did you access Machim Central Command? What data did you attempt to steal, and for what purpose?”
She leveled a scathing glare at the floating interrogator. “I don’t suppose you have a different routine? This one’s getting a bit old.”
“Who are you? Who do you represent? Where is your homeworld? How did you access Machim Command? What data did you attempt to steal, and for what purpose? Answer or be pacified.”
“Fuck you, drone. Fuck your Anaden overlords. Go ahead, give me your worst—you won’t get shit from me, nikchyemnaya peshka. No matter what you do to me here, you are going to lose in the end. Idi k chertu I gori v adu, malenkaya suchka.”
49
HELIX RETENTION FACILITY
MILKY WAY SECTOR 7
* * *
CALEB HAD CEASED CHECKING the number of hours which passed in a haze of repetitious questions and ineffectual torture when the drone abruptly spun and departed.
He welcomed the opportunity of a few precious minutes to recover, evaluate and prepare. The inability of the drone to extract any useful information from him meant his captors would escalate. Given the departure, likely soon.
Direct physical torture became a possibility, and he didn’t know how much of it the diati could protect him from. He came back to the expectation of involuntary extraction capabilities—some method of taking the knowledge from his mind—but perhaps his captors were afraid his mind was too different and worried it would be destroyed in a failed effort.
It would be fantastic if they thought that.
Or maybe they were waiting for something. Marking time until…if only he knew. Until they caught up to Valkyrie. Until they captured Mesme, or any Kat. Until they raided an anarch base. The possibilities stretched out in a
bloody landscape to the horizon.
If they possessed any sense, they’d realize they already held the trump card. All they had to do was bring Alex here and threaten to harm her. Was the concept of emotional attachment so far gone from their existence they didn’t perceive it as a tool of manipulation? Right now it would be even more fantastic if this were true.
Equally likely, though, they found themselves caught in a troublesome dilemma. They didn’t know whether he or Alex possessed the best, most relevant or most complete information. It was common in black missions for information to be compartmentalized, so they may each hold disparate pieces to the puzzle. Thus, their captors didn’t know who to threaten to sacrifice, and if he or Alex called their bluff, they couldn’t afford to go through with the threat.
At least, this would be the dilemma their captors would be struggling with if they were human. The reality looked a little different, so it could be he was flinging darts at the void.
The cell walls blocked all communication, quantum or otherwise—he knew because he’d tried them all fifteen different ways. He had no idea if Alex was okay, or what form or degree of ‘okay’ she might be. His instincts and experience told him she was alive, held somewhere in this facility and being subjected to interrogation similar to his own, but beyond those assumptions he was only guessing, and the guesses quickly led to far too dark of places.
A sigh escaped his lips to flutter against the restraining field. While he’d appreciated the alone time to gather his thoughts and analyze the situation, now all he was able to do was think, and thinking wasn’t turning out to be a healthy pursuit.
He needed to escape. Escape from this cell, find Alex and escape them from the facility, whatever and wherever it may be. All this went without saying.
But thus far he had no access to any tools which could enable so much as the beginnings of this series of actions. He had no access to anything at all.
His weapons—the ones he’d successfully concealed from security on Machimis—and clothes had been confiscated and replaced by a thin sheath, as if they were granting him modesty. He was held aloft in the air by forces which did not budge, not even when subjected to a forceful application of diati. He could not so much as move.
He hated it, but he was going to have to wait for a variable to change or a new one to be introduced.
He closed his eyes.
As the leader of a powerful Dynasty, Corradeo Praesidis created many offspring. So bonded were we with his genetic essence that we found pieces of us naturally joined to this progeny. The connection of these shards with Corradeo weakened but did not break entirely.
Generations beget generations beget generations as the Dynasties grew to subsume all bloodlines into their own. We were divided again and again, dispersed amongst a multitude. We became diminished.
We did not pass judgment on the shape the growing Anaden empire took under the Dynasties’ tutelage. Life which was born had always died, to violence above all other paths. The strong rose and, in time, were felled, to make way for new life. The epochs the Anaden empire had now spanned was but a blink of an eye, the exhale of a breath of the cosmos.
Yet if we were whole, we might have formed the cognized observation that the Anadens had faded to a shadow of the potential they once displayed. Though they believed themselves stronger than ever, though they in fact commanded more species and galaxies with each passing year, we nevertheless might have observed that somewhere along the way they had ceased moving forward, ceased evolving. They grew, but only in numbers: in worlds controlled, in enemies vanquished, in structures erected and planets consumed.
If we were whole, we might have determined the Praesidis family had lost its spirit, its fierce zeal for life and the determination to protect it which had drawn us to Corradeo Praesidis epochs past. We might have abandoned them for the stars when son battled father and claimed the Praesidis crown as his own.
If we were whole, we might even have worried over the fact they then increasingly used the power we provided to them in ways contradictory to what their forefather had once championed, too often killing those who never fought.
If we were whole, we might have noticed we had faded along with the Anadens, until we hardly recalled our origins or purpose.
But we were not whole.
Caleb jerked awake at the sound of movement. Someone or something moved down the hall toward his cell. He breathed in, setting the lingering reflections from the dream to the side and preparing for the next unknown.
The woman who appeared strode through the cell’s force field like it didn’t exist. He didn’t need the telltale stirring of the diati within him to deduce she was not merely Praesidis, but an Inquisitor.
Soft curls of ebony hair framed chiseled features and irises that teased indigo blue beneath the fluid crimson. She wore a hip-length fitted black jacket over form-fitting black pants and a silver undershirt.
She was attractive, albeit in a terrifying, blood-curdling way, and somehow deeply…familiar. He blinked and her features shifted until Isabela looked back at him. But where Isabela’s face was warm and open, this woman oozed hardened malice from every pore.
He blinked again and banished the mirage. This was not his sister. This was the enemy.
He saw no hint of mirrored recognition in her countenance, but she’d probably studied him via a remote cam and internalized any reaction to the resemblance before coming to his cell. Instead she paced deliberately in front of him, studying him like he were an insect in a killing jar.
“What are you? Despite your physical appearance, you are not Praesidis. You are not Dynasty at all. Do you derive from some long-ago rejected Anaden lineage? Have you crawled your way out of the mud to arrive here and claim your perceived rightful heritage?”
He smirked at her.
“What was a Katasketousya doing with you in Machim Central Command Data Control? How was it helping you?”
He buried any surprise in his expression. He hadn’t expected her to fixate on Mesme, and the fact she did concerned him. He’d known the Vigil guards saw Mesme, but if they were honing in on this detail above others, it meant nothing good for the good guys.
She arched an eyebrow, and he realized in a few statements her body language had betrayed a more dynamic character than the Inquisitor he’d killed displayed in the course of a fight to the death. She was clearly an Inquisitor, but it was possible she wasn’t an ordinary one.
Her wrist flicked at her side, and diati surged through the field holding him up to encircle his throat and squeeze. “You will be dissected alive and your organs examined under a scope to determine their nature and origin unless you answer my questions. So start answering.”
He greeted the diati with his own, and instead of choking off his air, he sensed it absorb into his skin.
Her jaw locked in response to his apparent lack of discomfort, but in her unassailable arrogance she repeated the gesture. He suspected it had never once occurred to her that her power could ever be used against her. He’d enlighten her, but not until it was too late.
He claimed the new diati as his own, welcoming the heady rush it brought. In a voice without words it whispered of feeling emboldened. Strong.
She took several steps forward now, until she stood less than meter away, and glared up at him.
That’s right. Do it again. One more time.
“What are you?” She thrust her arm out, leaving only centimeters between her fingertips and his throat, and squeezed.
He renewed the smirk, because now he had her. “I’m you.”
He let loose the entirety of diati at his command, his and all he’d stolen from her. It swelled and merged with the power she still wielded, and the virtual cage pulsed then burst apart, sending her staggering backward on a wave of energy.
“What—”
His legs felt rubbery as they landed hard on the floor, but the adrenaline counteracted any unsteadiness. He lunged forward and grabbed her by the throat in a v
ery real, very physical manner.
As it had done in the Siyane’s hangar bay on Seneca, the instant his skin touched hers the air surrounding them exploded in crimson.
She had never seen it coming, but he’d been here before. He welcomed the maelstrom of energy, opening himself up and asking the diati to come into him—and when it obeyed, he almost collapsed from the surge of power. This was more, beyond any degree he’d expected.
Maybe he hadn’t been so prepared after all…he blinked, trying to focus. Alex. Have to get to Alex.
A single, overriding goal to fixate on brought with it a measure of clarity, and with clarity, urgency.
Strangling the Inquisitor would take too much time—time that was sure to bring security and other hindrances. He flung the woman through the air into the side wall and pushed through the force field into the hallway.
Alex? Valkyrie? Mesme? Can anyone hear me?
No one responded. But it could mean there was a comm block on the structure. It didn’t have to mean something worse.
He looked around and found he was located near the end of a row of cells. One of the Anadens’ standard interactive panels glowed at the end of the row.
Several of the cells he passed as he sprinted toward it were occupied, but he couldn’t stop to save whoever they held. The prisoners would have to settle for the promise of their captors being called to account one day soon.
In the weeks between coming to Amaranthe and making their first moves, they’d spent hours upon hours studying the common protocols used in Directorate-controlled locations, both so they would be able to function in Amaranthean society and for moments like this one.
The panel displayed information about the occupants of the cells on this row. He was prisoner #HR-MW26-6143.015-6. The identification system proved simple to decipher: sector captured in, date captured and, presumably, order of intake. A quick scan down the list revealed everyone else on the row had been here longer.
Aurora Resonant: The Complete Collection (Amaranthe Collections Book 3) Page 32