Hades snapped one last part back in place, then looked up, his eyes meeting mine. “It's ready,” he said softly, almost like he was trying for a somber tone. But the glint in his eyes hinted at barely contained excitement.
Henry stopped pacing, looking back and forth from Hades to me. I could practically feel his irritation at Hades for looking to me rather than to him for the final go-ahead.
I stared at Hades for a long moment, then nodded.
“Initiate the transference,” Henry said, his order redundant after my nod.
Hades glanced at Henry dismissively, then turned his attention to the holoscreen hovering in front of him and started adjusting dials and flipping switches on the control panel.
Raiden’s stare was boring a hole in my cheek, and I forced myself to look at him. To see the desperation in his eyes. It was an effort to school my features. To keep my expression blank. I wanted nothing more than to reassure him that everything was going to be all right—even though I didn’t know what exactly was going to happen once the transference began. Within me, my trust in Hades warred with my fear for Raiden, and doubt seeped in. What if I was wrong?
As the machine powered up, the floor of the dais started to glow with a soft azure light, and a low hum filled the lab. I held my breath, waiting for a flash or a bang or something to happen that would let me in on Hades’ plan. But nothing more seemed to be happening beyond that gentle glow and low hum. My only comfort was that Raiden appeared completely unaffected. His survival was all that mattered to me at the moment.
Henry stalked over to the control panel to lurk beside Hades, like he wanted to make sure Hades didn’t do something to sabotage the transference, despite having no understanding of how the machine worked. “Why isn't anything happening to him?” Henry asked, his voice demanding. “Is it supposed to take this long?”
Hades didn’t even glance at the other man. He simply continued to tweak the controls and monitor the readings on the holoscreen. “I am attempting to overwrite a human mind with a foreign consciousness,” he explained, a hint of condescension seeping into his tone. “There are many steps involved. It is not an instantaneous process.” This answer only seemed to irritate Henry, rubbing his nose in his own ignorance in the process.
“If this doesn’t work . . .” As Henry’s words trailed off, his glare drifted my way, the implied threat loud and clear. If Hades screwed up—accidentally or on purpose—then I was dead. Henry’s control over the situation was slipping, and all his blustering and looming was his way of attempting to reclaim the reins.
I fought the urge to roll my eyes and returned my attention to Raiden, searching his features for some sign of pain or discomfort. But all I could see was the desperation in his eyes. The fear that this was it for him.
“I have already extracted the consciousness from storage and am spooling it within the transference matrix,” Hades explained, annoyance edging into his voice. “Soon, the host will be sedated, and the overwriting process will begin.”
“How long will it take?” Henry asked.
I glanced at the pair at the control panel. Hades’ attention was still focused on what he was doing, but Henry was staring at Raiden, a hungry gleam in his eyes.
“There is no standard time range,” Hades told him. “It depends on the neural structure of the host's mind. It could take minutes. It could take hours.” He pulled his hands from the controls, and I had the sense that he was waiting for something.
Silence filled the lab, bringing with it a thick cloud of tension that set me even more on edge. A musical trio of dings shattered the silence, and I jumped.
“The Olympian consciousness is spooled and primed,” Hades informed us, then pushed a button on the control panel. “Initiating the sedation process.”
I returned my attention to Raiden and watched his eyelids droop as his features slackened. My heart beat faster, and I wrapped my arms around my middle, my fingers digging into my sides. Once again, doubt seeped in, and I second-guessed my decision to trust Hades with Raiden’s life. I stared at Raiden, hard, looking for some sign that he was faking the sudden drowsiness, that it was all an act.
Soon, Raiden was slumped against his restraints, unconscious, so far as I could tell.
I swallowed hard, barely managing to suppress the panic attempting to claw its way out of me.
Motion in my peripheral vision caught my eye, and I tore my stare from Raiden to see one of the Order soldiers stationed near the wall let go of his rifle and raise his hands to clutch either side of his head. He groaned in pain.
Another joined him, then the other two, until all four of the Order soldiers posted around the periphery of the lab were clutching their heads and filling the room with their groans.
I straightened, no longer leaning against the edge of the desk, and lowered my arms.
“What’s happening?” Henry asked, his hard voice cutting through the chorus of groans. He looked from guard to guard, his confusion quickly replaced by suspicion as he turned to Hades. “What are you doing to them?”
Hades remained calm in the face of the smaller man’s accusations, only the slightest frown turning down the corners of his mouth and the faintest line appearing between his brows. “I believe the resonance of the transference equipment may be causing them some mild neural discomfort,” he offered, unconcerned. “It should pass momentarily.”
I inched over to the next workstation, slowly making my way closer to Raiden.
One of the Order soldiers near the edge of the lab dropped to his knees. Henry raised his gun arm and aimed his handgun at Hades’ head, but quickly shifted his aim to me.
I froze, my stare locking with Henry’s.
There was panic in his eyes, and possibly the hint of pain.
The soldier behind Henry and Hades raised his hands, gripping the sides of his head, his groans joining the others.
Eyes wild, Henry glanced at the guard, but quickly returned his attention to Hades and me. “You're doing this on purpose,” he accused shrilly, shaking his gun in my direction. “Make it stop, or I will kill her!”
Hades turned to Henry as the other man’s gun arm inched lower. “No,” Hades said, “you will do no such thing.”
Henry hunched in on himself, clutching either side of his head, the pistol still in hand.
All the Order soldiers were on the floor now. Two were on their knees, two were lying on their sides, writhing in pain, and one lay completely still.
“In fact,” Hades continued, “you will never threaten her again.”
Cautiously, I rounded the workstation and approached the dais. Raiden was still slumped in his restraints, unconscious. “What’s happening?” I asked Hades as I ascended the steps.
The pistol slipped from Henry’s grasp, and he dropped to his knees, letting out an agonized groan. His body seemed to go boneless, and he flopped onto his side on the floor, where he writhed and twitched.
“He is being overwritten,” Hades said, watching the fallen human with unveiled disgust. Hades waited until he fell still, then looked at me. “They all are.”
29
I rushed across the dais to Raiden and pulled the gag out of his mouth before tugging on his steel bindings. He still sat slumped in the chair, clearly unconscious. But at least it was a sedative that had knocked him out, and not his mind being overwritten, like Henry and his soldiers.
“Don’t free him yet,” Hades said from his position at the control panel behind me. “It’s not safe.”
I stopped tugging on the steel cuff securing Raiden’s wrist to the arm of the chair and glanced back at Hades.
“We must wait until the overwriting process is complete,” he said. Every few seconds, he adjusted this or that dial, his eyes glued to the holoscreen as he continued to direct the transference process.
I straightened, giving up on manually freeing Raiden, and turned around, planting my hands on my hips. “What do you mean?”
“I set the machine to remote tra
nsference mode, targeting all human minds within a one-mile radius,” Hades explained, only glancing at me briefly. “Raiden is hooked up for a direct transference, and his placement in that exact location”—Hades sent a pointed look past me at the transference chair and its lone occupant—"is the only thing protecting him from being overwritten, as well.”
I chewed on my bottom lip and studied Raiden, seeing his restraints in a whole new light. Strangely, they were protecting him.
“If you move him,” Hades continued, “he will be targeted by the system, and there will be nothing I can do to stop it. As a failsafe to protect any Olympian consciousness spooled in the matrix, there is no way to shut off the machine. To do so would destroy any Olympian currently floating in limbo.” Hades shook his head. “We have no choice but to let it run its course.”
I scanned the limp forms of the Order soldiers scattered around the lab. It was crazy to think that soon, they wouldn’t be Order soldiers. They would be Olympians, in mind if not in body. “How long will it take?”
“The overwriting process should be complete within five minutes or so,” Hades said, adjusting another dial on the control panel. “The consciousnesses will then need to settle into their new host brains. They should wake about an hour after the transference is complete.”
After one last glance at Raiden, I made my way over to the control panel to join Hades. I stopped at the edge of the desk and stared down at my former nemesis. The next time he opened his eyes, he would be someone else entirely. Henry Magnusson was gone.
“Who are they?” I asked. “Or, I guess, who will they be?”
Hades stared at the holoscreen for a moment, then flipped a switch on the control panel. There was a note of finality to the motion. Exhaling heavily, he raised his hands to scrub his face and combed his fingers through his hair, smoothing it down over his skull. He looked utterly exhausted.
“My team,” he finally said in answer to my question about the newly transferred Olympian identities. “People I trust, and people with the technical know-how to help us navigate the coming crisis.”
I nodded to myself, thinking that made sense. Hades’ team was filled with the best and brightest scientists our species had to offer. They had been in charge of all cloning and genetic enhancements in the Alpha site, including the process that transformed regular female Olympians into psychically-enabled Amazon warriors, not to mention the subtle genetic guidance we had provided humanity during our centuries as hidden custodians of this planet. Then there was the development of the transference equipment, too. If anyone could come up with a way of defending this planet and defeating the Tsakali—or, more likely, setting up a new human-Olympian settlement on some far-off planet when we fled from Earth—it was Hades’ team.
“They'll be confused when they wake,” Hades said. “They'll need immediate guidance . . . someone to help them transition into their new existence.”
My eyes locked with his. “Why do I get the impression that you're going to ask me to babysit them?” I tilted my head to the side and pursed my lips. “You're the one who woke them up. You’re their leader. Don't you think you should be here to greet them?” My focus drifted back down to Henry’s body. How was I going to look past the monster he had been to see the Olympian he had become?
Hades frowned and raised his holoband, pulling up the screen. The crease between his brows deepened with worry. “I wish I could stay and welcome them into this new life, but the Omega site is nearing critical failure. I must return and install a new power core as soon as possible. I could wait until they wake, but . . .” Hades raised one shoulder. “The longer I wait, the greater the risk of critical failure.”
I sighed. “I sent the new power core through the gephyra with the others,” I admitted reluctantly, then flashed Hades an apologetic smile. “Hopefully, Raiden knows what Henry did with the one we found off-world.” I hadn’t seen it in the gephyra chamber, but then again, I’d kind of forgotten about it and hadn’t actually looked for it.
“I saw him pack it into a crate for transport,” Hades said, pointing down at Henry’s body with his chin. “When he marched us through the gephyra chamber on our way here, the crate was still there. With everything going on, I can’t imagine it’s been moved since then.”
I nodded, relieved that we might have struck a patch of luck, for once. “Fine. You go. Save our people. Again.” I smirked, my mood lightening by the second. “I'll stay here to clean up your mess.” My eyes met his. “Again.”
Hades’ lips twisted into a smirk that mirrored mine, and I felt that old, familiar zing of charged tension arc between us. I stepped closer to him, my movements slow and deliberate, until I was very much invading his personal space. I tilted my head back and reached for his hand, linking our fingers together. “Thank you—for saving my life,” I told him, then glanced over my shoulder at Raiden, just for a moment. “And for saving his.”
Hades raised his free hand to skim his knuckles down my cheek and along my jawline.
I leaned into the caress.
“I know how much he means to you,” Hades murmured, his eyes searching mine. “Hurting him hurts you. I would never willingly let anything happen to him.”
How could I have doubted him? “But do you know how much you mean to me?” I said softly, wetting my lips.
Hades leaned in, his ice-blue eyes glittering with desire. “Why don't you tell me?”
The humming filling the lab faded suddenly; the transference machine was powering down. Hades stopped short of his lips touching mine and shot a sideways glance to the holoscreen, then pulled back. “It’s done.”
I blinked, startled by the abrupt shift from pleasure to business, and took a step back.
Hades pressed a button on the control panel and looked past me to Raiden. “I've initiated the arousal sequence. He'll wake soon. I can release his restraints now if you wish, but you may want to be there to ensure he doesn’t fall forward out of the chair.”
A slow smile curved my lips. I was overwhelmed with love for this man, who had gone out of his way to save the only other man on this planet who might keep me from him. He had saved Raiden because I loved him, too. If that wasn’t pure, selfless love, then such a thing didn’t exist.
I stepped closer to Hades and rose on my toes to brush a soft kiss against his lips. “Thank you,” I whispered as I pulled away, my eyes locking with his. I wanted him to see how much I appreciated him.
Hades' lips curved into a small smile, and he bowed his head. “For you, anything.”
Heart thrumming with happiness, I gave his hand a squeeze, and then I turned and hurried over to Raiden and waited for Hades to release the restraints on the chair.
With a snick, the steel bands unlocked, then retracted into the chair. Raiden slumped forward, and I rested a hand on his shoulder to hold him in place. I waited to let go until his muscles stiffened under my hand and his body was no longer limp.
Raiden’s eyelids fluttered open, and it took his eyes a moment to really focus on me. “Cora?” he breathed. “What happened?”
“It’s over. We won,” I said, grinning. “Welcome back.”
30
The hushed voices of the newly awakened Olympians sitting in clusters on the floor under the grand, arched ceiling of the central tower’s lobby echoed as Raiden and I moved from group to group, handing out the meal bars we had pilfered from the Order’s supplies. It boggled my mind that hours ago, these people—or, rather, their bodies—had been my enemies, but now they were my people. They were Olympians, in mind, if not in body.
They knew how they had come to be here and who had brought them back, and now they awaited Hades' return from the Omega site, as did I. Thankfully it was night in Egypt, meaning Hades was able to get the Argo into the Omega site without being noticed. According to his last check-in, he had finished the repairs, and the Omega sites' mainframe was stable for the first time in millennia. His work there was done, and now it was only a matter of waiting for h
im to return.
I spotted the body that had been Henry Magnusson, the Primicerius of the Custodes Veritatis and all-around douchebag, in a nearby cluster of Olympians as I approached their group to hand out meal bars to them. His body now housed an Olympian geneticist named Niall, but I couldn’t help but wonder if some slivers of Henry’s toxic soul was still embedded deep within him. Niall must have sensed me watching him because he looked up. When his eyes met mine, I forced a closed-mouth smile and handed him a meal bar.
Could they reach any of their host's memories, or were the bodies little more than a shell? Having recently been two people in a single body, it was hard not to project my dual-consciousness experience onto them. I felt torn about what had happened to the humans—to the minds that had been overwritten, all but erased from existence. They had chosen this path, given their lives to the Order, and followed Henry to this point. To this end.
But my mom had been one of them once, as had Emi, and from their experience as Order devotees, I knew it wasn't the kind of organization one had the option to walk away from. To join the Order was to sign one's life over. There was no retiring. No chance for a career change. Belonging to the Order was a life commitment—or a life sentence.
Just because these people had come here under Henry's tyrannical command didn't mean they had chosen this particular battle. They hadn't come here of their own free will, and that bothered me more than I would have liked to admit. I had been just like them, once, a brainwashed pawn blindly following Demeter's commands.
An approaching energy signature tripped my psychic radar, far off in the distance, but closing in fast. I hurriedly handed out the remainder of the meal bars before rushing to the doors at the front of the lobby and pushing out into the filtered sunlight seeping in through the thick layer of ice sheltering the city. I watched the Argo coast through the hole it had bored into the glacier and glide lower, weaving around the towering buildings.
Dreams of the Damned (Atlantis Legacy Book 3) Page 19