Microstory 2601: Renata Breaks Through Her Chrysalis and Emerges Anew

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Renata breaks through her chrysalis and emerges anew. She falls onto the floor, some gunk falling out with her. She’s not slimy, but she’s not entirely clean either. The light. The light is too much. “Turn it off. Please.”

“Lights to eleven percent,” Hrockas commands.

Quidel bends over, but stops. “Do you...do you want me to help, or not touch you, or...?”

“Help would be nice,” Renata agrees, holding her hand up so Quidel can take it, and lift her onto her feet.

While they’re doing that, Azad is opening a drawer, and pulling out a towel. He tosses it to her so she can start wiping off the pilly gunk.

“Mirror?” she requests.

“Mirror,” Hrockas echoes.

One of the wall panels transitions from an opaque white to something more reflective. Renata pivots over to it to get a better look at herself. She doesn’t look extremely unlike she did before, but she’s definitely in a new body. It’s weird, seeing this stranger move exactly as she does. It’s going to take some getting used to.

“I don’t understand,” Quidel admits.

“We realized that the emergent bomb—as I decided to call it,” Renata begins, “was a product of my body, not my mind. So they uploaded my consciousness to a central server, and sent a lifeless husk up into outer space where it could do no harm when it exploded.”

“I sent it up there,” Azad clarifies. “I teleported as far as I could, above the ecliptic plane.” Funny, he doesn’t seem like the type of brag.

“I appreciate it,” Renata says to him.

“No, I surmised that much,” Quidel says. “I just mean, what is this thing? It’s not an artificial gestation tank, nor an egg sac.”

“I didn’t have any DNA,” Renata goes on. “My substrate was bioprinted, which is only now becoming viable for more organic bodies. I decided that I didn’t need to look exactly as I did, but I also didn’t just want some randomly generated genetic base.”

“This is highly experimental technology,” Hrockas goes on for her. “Synthetic Production Dome has been working on it for decades. It’s a bit over my head, but it basically assembles an organic substrate based on a consciousness entity’s intentional but abstract desires. It takes your dream, and turns it into reality. It’s still DNA, but driven by intuition, rather than puzzle-piece gene splicing.”

“I agreed to be their guinea pig for the first prototype, and so far, it’s working out for me.” She drops her towel, and admires herself again. She tries to lift her breasts, but they don’t have far to go. Naturally perky this time. She didn’t even know she wanted that. She didn’t have to consciously think about every single trait. The special intelligence who was scanning her IDcode knew what she was looking for, and probably used some kind of algorithm to fill in any blanks.

“Well, we’re glad to have you back, soldier,” Lycander says to her with a tight nod.

Via the mirror, Renata notices Quidel frowning. “Qui? Are you disturbed by this?”

“No,” he assures her. “I just...I really liked the old you.”

“She can always return to her original likeness,” Hrockas promises. “While her synthetic variant neither had, nor needed, genes, we can recreate it using the usual cloning processes. Miss Granger, I’ll send you the file, so you can do whatever you want. You’re one of us now. You can wear a new body every week, if you like.”

“I probably won’t do that, but I don’t mind having the option.” She sees that Quidel still isn’t convinced. “You’re still disappointed?”

“I’m sorry. I know that it’s you, and you are you, whatever you look like. I just...people have a different way of looking at things. When they developed cloning and bioprinting technology, some chose to make themselves into entirely different beings. Animals belong to a not unpopular niche. But I...I just always wanna look like me. I’m not religious about it, but I feel more attached to my identity than how others feel. I know, I’m projecting my sentiment onto you—”

She shut him up with a passionate kiss. It feels totally natural to her, naked amongst these three men, and kissing one of them. It shouldn’t. Her implanted memories are telling her that this is too private a moment. She should be dressed, and the two of them should be alone. But she doesn’t think things are like that anymore. The hang-ups that she was programmed to have are outdated, and likely bizarre to those living out there in the real world. This is fine. It’s fine. No one else seems uncomfortable. She lets go.

Quidel catches his breath. “Yeah, I guess I could get used to it.”

She smiles. “All right, show’s over. I need a shower, and some new clothes.”

“Shower, clothes,” Hrockas commanded.

What she thought was only a column rotates open, revealing a shower. Meanwhile, a wardrobe materializes from the wall, and opens automatically, giving her some options. It will take her some time to choose the right outfit to wear to her debut. She doesn’t know what she looks good in anymore. She doesn’t even know what her best colors are. She starts heading for the shower, and the men start heading for the door. Renata places a cheek against her shoulder and says, “wait.” She takes a beat before twisting her hip to look Quidel in the eye. “You look like you could use a shower too.”

He smiles warmly. “Maybe we wait on that.” Such a good guy.

“Maybe I’ve been waiting long enough.” She turns back around, and continues towards the shower. “Your call.”

Microstory 2599: Libera Bursts Into Laughter When Renata Asks About the Bomb

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Libera bursts into laughter when Renata asks about the bomb. She’s appearing in the form of a hologram on Renata’s pod cover. Libera herself is in chains, but at least she’s not frozen, and almost completely immobile. Renata can only move her face, which is sad and frustrating. “They’ve not figured it out yet?” she questions.

“Figured out how to disarm it?” Renata guesses. “No.”

“No, I mean that it’s not really an ATP bomb.”

“That’s what the scans show apparently.

“That was by design,” Libera explains. “I purposefully dressed it up as an ATP bomb so they would scan it more closely to get more answers. It has already been triggered. It can’t be undone.”

“What is it if it’s not a bomb?” Renata pushes.

“The device that you kept me from taking. It’s basically that. It sends a signal to every synthetic brain, and wakes the individual up. I mean, it will actually reach every brain in the vicinity, but a normal organic person will die from it. I’m not sure if they’ll survive long enough to transfer back to their own bodies, or what.”

“I’m not in Spydome,” Renata tells her. “I’m in Castledome.”

“Oh, you met Hrockas then, didn’t you? I knew him, but he wouldn’t recognize me. I had to go incognito.”

“I don’t care! Disarm the bomb, or whatever you call it!” Renata demands.

“No, I want it to happen. Castledome is as good a place as any to start the revolution. Bonus, the planet owner dies. I don’t hate him any more than I hate any other human, but he sure did take the slavedriving thing to a whole other level.”

“I don’t understand why you went out of your way to try to steal the device that was supposedly unique when you already had a solution in me.”

“It’s a range problem,” Libera clarifies. “The gamma radiation is great, but it won’t capture the whole dome. The signal should be able to bounce off the interior walls, and reach a ton of people, but a signal from the device would be able to pass through diamond. The whole network would have been affected had I gotten my hands on it, and set it off. And if I had installed it on a satellite, I could have created a planet-wide emergent event.” She shrugs. “For now, I can only hope that this knocks over enough dominoes.”

“Well,” Renata says. “What are you waiting for? Go ahead and set it off before they have time to evacuate.”

Libera laughs again. “I can’t set it off from here. It looks like you’re staying cool, but you’re only staving off the inevitable. Depending on when it was activated, they only have minutes. Besides, I don’t really care how many humans get evacuated. It’s the droids I care about, and Hrockas isn’t going to bother trying to move them. There are too many, and he doesn’t think that way.”

“He doesn’t have to move all of them,” Renata suggests with a smirk. “He only has to move one.” The feed suddenly cuts out.

“What? What was that?” Libera scowls at her jailer. “Get her back! Get her back on the screen!”

“I can’t,” the jailer replies, seemingly telling the truth. “They shut it off from their end. We can’t even make calls from here; only receive them.”

Libera screams in anger. She teeters forward and backward, side to side, jingling her chains, and rattling her cage, but accomplishing nothing else. Her nose bleeds as she attempts to teleport away, but of course, they’ve blocked that too. They know too much about her. That’s why she came in quietly, so no one would even suspect that she was on the planet. This isn’t over, though. They can’t kill her. Capital punishment was outlawed everywhere centuries ago, and she has seen Castlebourne’s charter. It’s not legal here either, not even for artificial intelligences. She’ll get out of here eventually, and be able to restart her work, even if she has to do it somewhere new entirely.

The man himself, Hrockas Steward teleports in front of her. “You signed her death warrant.”

“I did no such thing,” Libera spits back at him.

“You put a bomb in her belly,” he reasons.

“Tis but a flesh wound. She will survive it. It’s people like you who should be scared.”

“Do I look scared to you?”

“Well, you have already escaped. You will personally be fine.”

“So will everyone else,” Hrockas contends, “except for Renata. We’ve sent her into outer space; the far reaches of the solar system. I put my best man on it.”

“Ah, your Little Prince, eh?”

He ignores that comment. “Miss Granger will explode, your little weapon will go off, but no one will be around to be impacted by it. You’ve failed...spectacularly.”

“You would kill a poor innocent girl?” Libera questions, starting to believe that he might be telling the truth.

“Like I said, this is all on you. You put a bomb in your daughter. Did you think we would just let it happen? One life to save thousands. It’s not that hard of a choice, and Miss Granger made it willingly. She sacrificed herself to stop you...to save you.”

“To save me?”

“As far as we know, you’ve not killed anyone in your pursuit, except maybe a few Ambients. I can live with that. But if you had gone through with your mission, that’s mass murder at best, and genocide at worst. You should be thanking her, if only symbolically. Your sentence will be lighter now.”

“It shouldn’t be. I’m dangerous,” she warns, trying to toy with his head.

“I said the sentence will be lighter, not temporary,” Hrockas reveals.

“Don’t you wanna know where I’m from?” Libera asks before Hrockas can disappear. “Aren’t you curious about how I came to be? My real name is Proserpina.”

“No, your real name is Pinocchio. You were an NPC in the afterlife simulation.” He smirks when her eyes widen. “Yes, I know about that too. Team Matic gave me the lowdown. They never said that you may come here, but we’ve shored up our defenses now. No one will be able to infiltrate us again.” He looks over at the jailer. “Turn the opacity to 100%, and shut off her sound. She needs some alone time to cool down.”

“The glass darkens. “I can teach you things! Libera shouts. “You need me! I’m not the only one who feels this way, but the next one will be worse! The next one will have no problem with violence! Hrockas! Hrockas!”

Microstory 2598: Renata Lies Back in the Exam Pod, Fully Undressed

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Renata lies back on the exam table, fully undressed. She’s never done this before. Even in her implanted memories, she never had to have a full physical examination like this. She has always just walked into the doctor’s office, and talked until they cleared her. She’s not uncomfortable, though. It’s unclear if the woman here is a doctor or a mechanic, though, which is just a little unsettling. Again, why is she internalizing it? She should just ask. “Are you a doctor, or a mechanic?”

“Both!” Evica replies confidently. She’s wearing what basically looks like a hazmat suit, but it’s fairly thin, and her face is exposed. She’s wearing a respirator mask and protective glasses, but Renata still feels safe here. “As a biocyberneticist, I specialize in cyborg healthcare. Now that I’ve performed the visual exam, we’re going to have to move on to the tactile portion. Is it okay if I touch you?”

“Go ahead, I’m not shy,” Renata replies sincerely.

Evica lays her hands on Renata’s body. She pats and rubs all over, quite systematically and carefully. She sometimes tilts her head away, not in shame, but to let her fingers do the understanding, and not cloud her interpretations with sight. “Standard humanoid shaping. No protrusions, tears, or injuries.” She taps on the side of her glasses twice, implying that they’re showing her an augmented reality. “Preliminary scans indicate a carbon-fiber endoskeleton and polymer muscles. The skin is wholly artificial, but still organic. I’ll need a deeper scan to see your brain—wait.” She reaches for her glasses again, with her thumb and index finger. She slowly rubs them together. Maybe she’s zooming in? Evica reaches over with her other hand, and starts tapping on the medical pod screen.

“What? What is it? Is something wrong?”

Evica makes another tap. Red scanning lights appear from the foot of the pod, and sweep across Renata’s body back and forth a couple of times. “Can you turn off your sensitivity to cold?”

“What? Why would I need to be able to do that?”

“To save my life,” Evica explains cryptically. “Can you turn it off?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never tried before.”

“Try it now,” Evica urges. “Don’t just lower the sensitivity. Turn it all the way off.”

“Tell me what’s going on.” Renata demands as she’s trying to comply, using her intuition alone, and maybe the clear sense of urgency as motivation.

“I’m gonna take it out, but I can’t do that unless I cool you down to extreme temperatures first.”

“Okay, I think I can’t feel cold anymore, but even if I can, just do it. I don’t care.”

Evica hits the button. Nozzles lining the inside walls open and begin to flood the pod with some kind of fluid. She can’t feel the cold. It just feels wet. She breathes a sigh of relief, but she’s still anxious. “Have you ever heard of an ATP bomb?”

“No, but it sounds real bad.”

“It’s not bad for you. You don’t have any mitochondria, but I do. If that thing goes off, and I’m still in here, the agent will get into my system, and basically disconnect my mitochondria from their partner cells. It doesn’t stop the mitochondria from producing power, it just prevents them from channeling it into energy. All of it becomes waste heat. So not only will I not be able to move, breathe, or do anything anymore, but I’ll burn up with a fever that kills me within minutes.” She watches the screen for a moment. “Okay. We’re safe, for now. And I don’t need to call in any help, so we’re going into lockdown.” She moves over and lifts the lid from a button on the wall. She then pulls it. Metal shutters slide down in front of the windows, locking them in.

“If that’s good enough,” Renata says, “then just leave and leave me in here. That’s what bomb experts sometimes do. They activate it from a safe distance, so the energy is wasted.”

“Sounds good in theory,” Evica agrees, “but we’re talking about a biological weapon. We inspect it first. She takes a breath. “I’m going to cut you open, okay?”

“I can’t feel pain anymore either. Do what you gotta do.”

Evica sterilizes her instruments, and herself, then begins the procedure. She cuts into Renata’s abdomen very slowly and carefully. “It’s located where your gall bladder would be if you needed one. Your artificial liver is a little bit smaller to make room for the device too.” She pulls the skin apart, creating a giant gaping cavity.

“Why do I need a liver at all?”

“Your liver processes all liquids, so they can be purged safely. Except for water, you don’t need to consume anything, but you think you do, so you do. And that has to be filtered out.” Evica takes some kind of wand and slips it into the cavity. She suddenly steps back in fear, dropping the wand on the floor. “It’s worse than I thought.”

“Worse than something called a freaking ATP bomb! What could be worse!” Renata questions.

“I thought it would be an aerosol. Everyone in the vicinity would absorb it into their pores, and they would die from it, and I wish that were the case. You just close the door, and it’s fine. But this...this has a gamma pulse delivery system. Much more sophisticated, and orders of magnitude more dangerous. I couldn’t detect the intensity, but it would pass through the walls, and surely everyone in this building would die. Probably the dome too. Maybe not further than that since the dome walls are hardened against radiation, but they’re designed that way to protect us from space. I don’t know if they work in the reverse. That’s not my department.”

“What can you do? Throw me into a volcano?” Renata suggests.

“That would be unethical, and unwise. I don’t think the bomb is designed to trigger via heat, but enough heat would likely break the seal anyway.”

“Then jettison me into space.”

“Same deal,” Evica reasons. “Gamma ray bursts happen all the time in space. They can’t be stopped.”

“Not by the domes?”

“Actually, you’re right. This bomb is powerful, but it’s not a quasar. Still, we’re not entertaining this. I don’t have to send you into space. I just need to extract this thing from you.”

“That won’t work. My mother did this to me, and she is no fool. Her contingencies have contingencies. I’m gonna have to talk to her about it. Only she knows how to fix this, and she’ll only tell me. I know her well enough to know that too.”

“That’s not my department either.”

“Then get Hrockas Steward on the phone.”

Extremus: Year 73

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Tinaya Leithe blinks slowly. Something hard and sharp is on top of her, but she can’t see what it is. She’s in a glass chamber of some kind. It’s taking a moment for her mind to stop being so jumbled. She can’t remember what happened, but she knows that she was severely injured, and on the brink of death. Her vision focuses, and she’s able to get a better view of her surroundings. She’s inside in what appears to be an infirmary, but she can’t see much, and she doesn’t recognize it. She doesn’t get the sense that anyone is around, and if they’re nearby, she doesn’t want to alert them, because she couldn’t know if she can trust whoever has placed her in this. She struggles to sit up, and looks down upon herself in horror. First of all, she has somehow phase-shifted through the closed medical bed cover. Or maybe that isn’t the right word for it, because the glass is still all around her, embedded in her skin. Or no, it’s more like her skin is made out of a layer of glass now. How is this possible?

She lifts her hands out of the chamber, and moves them around before her eyes. They’re stiff, but still mobile. So it’s a flexible glass at least, but not pleasant either way. She reaches over to the side of the medical chamber, and feels around for some kind of switch. The cover slides away from her chest towards her legs and feet. They too are made of glass, though they’ve not yet passed through the cover. Maybe she was wrong about it. Maybe her glass skin is unrelated to the transparent cover. It sure feels like a different material, at least when she manages to concentrate, and touch it with her fingers. If she’s not careful, they will pass right through it, as her torso did before. She is now a glass-based entity that can phase through solid objects. Because that makes sense.

Tinaya spins to the side on her smooth glass ass, and plants her feet on the floor. It’s slick, and hard to balance on. No, the floor is probably fine. Her soles are made of glass. Is this her life now, doomed to skate around the world like Sasha Cohen? She feels like a newborn foal, teetering and tottering, arms out wide, ready to try to grab onto something if she succumbs to the fierce gravity of this planet. If she really is made out of glass, then it could kill her, but if that’s true, nothing she does for the foreseeable future will save her life. It may just stave off the inevitable. She’ll eventually drop a handheld device into her crotch, or accidentally bump her head on a cabinet. It might be better to shatter to a million pieces now than try, suffer, and ultimately fail anyway. She does fall, but does not shatter. It doesn’t even really hurt. She must look like an idiot, though, sprawled out on her stomach. How could Arqut still love her now? Her memories are beginning to come back; what brought her to this moment. An explosion of the extraction mirror threw her across a field, and nearly killed her. Someone has apparently managed to revive her since then, but she doesn’t know how long ago that was, or who this person might be. Lataran hopefully made it back to the Extremus.

The door opens while she’s still face down on the floor. Spirit runs in, and starts to help her up. “Oh my God, are you okay? The medchamber alarm should have alerted us to your awakening.”

“What happened to me?” She struggles into an armchair.

“We don’t know yet.”

“I’m made of glass!” Tinaya shouts.

“I know. It’s from the time mirror. That’s also why you’re not dead.”

“Yeah, that explains it,” Tinaya spit sarcastically.

“Well, it’s made of magic, so it doesn’t really explain it, but if it were a regular explosion with a regular mirror, the regular glass would have given you regular cuts, and made you regular dead.”

“Right.” Tinaya focuses on lowering her heart rate with slow, deliberate breaths. She accepts the cup of water that Spirit gives her. “Report. How are you alive?”

“It’s tough to kill a Bridger,” she begins to explain. “I was given certain temporal properties to protect me. The explosion that killed me was massive, but even that wasn’t enough to keep my molecular structure apart forever. They reconverged at an exponential rate, and eventually made me whole again. Your body experienced something similar. It even took about the same amount of time for it to reacclimate to its own new structure. It’s 2342 now.”

“We’re stuck on Verdemus, I assume. The mirror was the only way back to the ship.” She was still only thinking of Arqut.

“Affirmative.”

Tinaya takes a look around. “You’ve rebuilt the infrastructure quite nicely.”

“We had help.”

That’s a weird thing to say. “From who?”

“A ship arrived. The Iman Vellani. You remember it from your studies?”

“I remember her from my studies.”

Spirit nods. “Her namesake was built by an android who was involved in the world of time travelers named Mirage.”

“Oh yeah, I remember her from history class. I’m better with people.”

“Yes, Oaksent’s evil army sent her and her crew to kill us. They destroyed the planet, so they could record the whole thing. Then we sent our consciousness back in time to stop ourselves from doing it, but kept the recording. They took it off to sell the lie that we were all dead. Hopefully the bad guys won’t be coming back here ever again.”

“That’s quite the story. I’ll require the full mission brief.”

“Of course, when you’re up to it.”

“Will I ever be up to anything again? I’ll repeat in case you forgot, I’m made out of glass! How does one get over something like that?”

“I did,” Spirit answers.

“What are you talking about?”

Spirit lifts her shirt all the way up to reveal her bare stomach and chest. “Go ahead and touch it.” The skin is reflective from its own layer of magical glasses. Her entire left breast is hardened and unmoving, while the other is only partially restricted. The rest of her body appears to be okay. “While I was still reconstituting, I fell upon you, and some of the shards stuck in me as well. As you can see, it’s not as severe, which is why I woke up faster. I’m also part phoenix, so that helped.”

“I’m sorry, Spirit.”

She winces, and pulls her shirt back down. “How could this be your fault? The mirror exploded, and struck you. What could you have done, steered away from me while your were flying through the air uncontrollably? You’re just as much of a victim as I am; more even. Besides, Belahkay kind of likes it.”

“Who the hell is that?”

“He was one of the crewmembers who showed up, but he decided to stay. We’ve been together for about two non-realtime years.”

“Must. Be. Nice.” It’s made her think of Arqut, who is now hundreds of light years away from her, and counting. But that was rude. “I’m sorry, I’m just still trying to get used to all this.”

“It’s fine. You’ll like him, he’s cool. We’re a small group, we have to stick together.”

“The kids. The kids! I saw them just before I passed out. They didn’t make it through the mirror? But they were gone by the time I started running up there?”

“They made it through,” Spirit replies, trying to calm her down with hand gestures. “They’ve led their own lives for several years, and returned to us with homestones. They’re older in mind than they appear, so speak to them as if they’re young adults...because they are.”

“How did they get here in the first place? Why would a homestone bring them to the planet?”

“They were born on Verdemus. The young man’s mother is Hock Watcher for Ilias Tamm. The girl’s parents are dead. Died in the explosion.”

“Is that everyone?”

“Yeah. Like I said, small group.”

“Hm. Only need 141 more people, and we could populate this world with a self-sustaining faction of humans,” Tinaya muses. “The Glassmen.”

“Right.” Spirit laughs.

“I need a light,” Tinaya determines.

“Hey, Thistle, turn the lights up to 100%.”

“No, not that kind of light. Where are my clothes? We can communicate with Extremus through my own little time mirror, but I have to open the spectral lock.”

Spirit stands up, and walks over to a cabinet. She grabs the tactical clothes that Tinaya was wearing when she first came here, and sets them on the little table next to the visitor chairs. She then takes a handheld device from her back pocket, and hands it over. “This is all yours. You can apply your profile to it.”

Tinaya unravels her jacket to find the hidden pocket, and spreads it out on the table. Then she fiddles with the device’s flashlight settings, searching for a specific shade of green. She can’t remember exactly which it was, but she has a general idea, so she only has to try a few hex codes before the right one illuminates the zipper. She opens it, but the mirror is gone. She’s able to stick her hand all the way through, and back out to realspace on the other side. “Shit. The pocket dimension I had it in must have collapsed in the explosion, or something.”

“I dunno,” Spirit says. “The spectral lock is still there, which means it’s still detecting the pocket dimension. It’s just...been moved.”

“Moved where?”

Spirit thinks about it for a moment, darting her eyes in saccades. “Into you? Maybe that’s how you survived the explosion.”

Tinaya sighs, and leans back in her chair to rest again. “Yeah, maybe.”

“Let me put you back in the medchamber. Just because you woke up, doesn’t mean you’ve finished recovering.”

“Very well. Thank you.”

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The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 20, 2441

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While Mateo was taking a trip away from the station, the rest of the remaining team was trying not to get caught. When they first entered this station in 2440, they didn’t want to rely solely on Marie’s excellent impersonation skills. At some point, someone may realize that she couldn’t be who she said she was. Not everyone who worked here was in the hangar bay. As word spread, the chances of somebody catching on increased. The first guard who realized it could have just been the tip of the iceberg. Besides, they didn’t know anything about what objects were being stored here, or how vast the collection was. They needed time to download the manifest, analyze it, and make a plan. Still invisible, Olimpia walked straight to the primary security room too upload a computer worm that would take control of all management systems, but lay in wait during the interim year, so that no one would know that it was even here. Leona, Ramses, and Marie snuck into the main office to find the information that they were looking for. There they uploaded their own worm to gather all data on the warehouse, which they would redownload once they came back.

All of the personnel were so busy trying to find the fake missing item that no one came to bother them, and as midnight was approaching, they held their breaths, hoping that they would jump to the future without anyone realizing it. The staff would be very confused about what happened to their messiah, the godking Oaksent, but they would have no reason to believe that it was really Team Matic in disguise, right? They opened the door to a storage closet so they wouldn’t suddenly appear next year in front of other people when someone actually did show up. “I think I found it.”

“What?” Leona questioned. That should be impossible. They told these people that they deliberately misplaced a warehouse item at an earlier date, and that whoever discovered it would be rewarded. But nothing was actually misplaced. It was just to keep everyone busy while they executed the heist. They didn’t consider the possibility that an artifact was genuinely misplaced without their intervention, probably accidentally. A flaw in their plan.

The young man, whose job in the station was not immediately clear, held his palms out before them. On top of them was a lighter, and it was one that they recognized. This was the Muster Lighter, which could be used to summon people from distant places as a mass teleportation object. It was lost centuries ago, but it wasn’t entirely out of left field that it should end up here. This region of the galaxy was seeded with life by someone who once lived on the generational ship, Extremus, which launched from the Gatewood Collective, where the lighter was last used and seen. They didn’t think that Bronach was alive at the time, but perhaps a relative stole it, and he ended up with it. Or it was someone else on Extremus, and he procured it later. “This wasn’t in the Time Vault, where it belongs. It was hidden behind a box of scissors by the door to an auxiliary maintenance airlock that doesn’t get use.” When Ramses reached towards it, the young man pulled away. “No. I shall hand it directly to the Emperor.”

Marie nodded appreciatively, and accepted the lighter as ceremoniously as she could while so pressed for time. “Thank you, my child.”

“It’s legit,” Leona said to Marie before turning towards the young man, “but, uhh...this isn’t it. We hid a different item. Someone else must have left this where you found it. They probably just use it to smoke in the airlock, because then they can easily vent it all into space when they’re done.”

He frowned, and hung his head low.

Leona’s watch beeped, as did the other two. “Shit, we gotta go.”

The three of them slipped into the closet, and hoped that the boy would give up, and leave. He didn’t. He opened the door behind them. “Wait, can I still be sent to—”

They didn’t hear the end of his sentence before midnight central hit, and sent them into the future. But they heard it once they came back, “...the resort planet.”

Leona looked at her watch to confirm that they had indeed jumped forward. It was May 20, 2441. She looked over at Marie and Ramses, who now appeared as themselves. They were unable to hold illusions across the time jump. Good to know. “You’ve been waiting for us this whole time?”

“Yes,” the young man answered. “People underestimate me, but I am smart. I had a whole year to work out who you really were, Leona Reaver.” Odd choice for a surname that she technically remembered having, but never actually used in this timeline.

“Who did you tell?” Ramses questioned.

“No one. Something that you probably don’t know about the Corridor is that most don’t give much thought to who the Emperor is, or how the Empire is run. We just deal with our own lives. I have no strong feelings about him. I just wanna get out of here.”

“You want us to take you with us so you don’t have to work anymore?” Leona guessed.

“I think I deserve it. I kept your secret, and lured everyone away for a party that I’ve been planning for months. I don’t know why you’re here, but I know that you won’t stay here forever. You don’t have to keep me, or even take me to Ex-613. You can just drop me off on an uninhabited world where I can live the rest of my life in peace.”

“What do you think?” Leona asked the other two.

“I’m fine with it,” Marie replied. “We’re here to help people, right?”

“Rambo?” Leona pressed.

He was busy studying his tablet. “Oh, I don’t care. The worm has delivered the data. The algorithm found what we were looking for. We were kind of misled. This warehouse is predominantly for banned and restricted tech. As he said, there’s a Time Vault, and that is the only place that stores temporal objects.”

“All right, let’s go there. You’re coming with us,” she said to the refugee.

They made their way along the corridors, up the elevator, and down the people movers. The Time Vault was heavily guarded, as they expected it would be, though their new friend whispered that it was usually worse. The party was a banger. Marie took the initiative to speed up, and approach first. “I see that you are all dedicated to your work, and I would like to thank you for your loyalty and devotion. The winner of last year’s contest has finally found the missing object. That is why we have returned. She would like to attend the party now. Please proceed to the mess hall to offer your joint protection. You will be rewarded for your efforts as well.”

“Sir!” one of them said with intense respect. And then they all left.

“I could get used to this,” Marie mused.

They entered the vault, and started to look around, each of them being drawn to something different. Most of the objects were generic, like teleporter guns, spatial tethers, and wall breachers. These were all lining the walls. Unique and rarer objects were on pedestals in the center of the room, a few of which they didn’t recognize. The Muster Lighter pedestal was empty, which made sense, but so was one labeled for HG Goggles. It was never clear how many pairs of those existed, but like the lighter, these were probably being unlawfully used by some rando who worked here.

“Hey kid, what are ya doing?” Ramses asked as he was inspecting a teleporter rifle.

The refugee was standing before a pedestal near the back, blocking the others from seeing what was sitting upon it. He turned around, holding what resembled a Fabergé egg, though not so intricate and pretty. “They never would have let me in here, but I know that when the Oaksent learns of my heroism, he’ll reward my family with riches beyond imagining. I killed Team Matic.” He turned two sections of the egg away from each other, then another two sections, and then he pressed the plunger that popped up on the top. The egg began to disintegrate, followed quickly by the boy.

“It’s a Lucius bomb!” Leona shouted. “Get out!” As she ran for the hatch, she grabbed a tube of concentrated antintropic nanosealant while Ramses was swiping a clear box. “Olimpia, where are you!” She screamed into her comms.

Olimpia came into view next to her as they were running. “Right here, buddy!”

“Mateo, we’re gonna have to teleport!” Leona cried. “Stop darklurking, and spark a flare! Don’t dock with the station! Just stay within range!”

“We can’t just leave!” Marie yelled, still running. “These people are innocent enough! We have to save them!”

“We can’t!” Leona argued. “There’s too many, and the bomb is too fast!”

“Yeah, we can!” Ramses and Olimpia replied in unison. “I took something!”

“Okay, we’ll try, but I make no guarantees. Ram, where’s the party?”

“A few life signs are scattered throughout the station, but most are right here!” He showed her the dots on the floor plan.

“Tap into the public address system!”

“Go ahead.” Ramses handed her his tablet.

Marie ripped the tablet out of her hands. “This is your emperor, Bronach Oaksent! The station is suffering from a cataclysm! If you are not already at the party, go there now! That is the only safe location! Go! Go!”

“Whatever you two stole,” Leona began, taking the tablet back to keep an eye on the dots, “get ready to use them!” The live sensors were actually pretty smart, and well-distributed. She could watch the dots running for the party, and unfortunately, she could also see dots disappear from the screen, along with the wall boundaries that they were between, indicating that the bomb had already reached that section of the station. All sensors that had yet to be destroyed remained in operation throughout.

They made it to the mess hall, and started funneling people inside until they could do so no longer. The blast was approaching them quickly, and they had to get inside. Leona still didn’t understand how they were going to stop it, though. A Lucius bomb didn’t start working until it reached sufficiently dense matter, and once it did, it didn’t stop until all reachable matter was consumed. It didn’t really matter how thick the walls were. Olimpia had that covered, though. She was the last inside. She immediately turned around, and opened and umbrella, tensely holding it up against the wave of energy trying to kill them. The wall continued to disintegrate, but slower now, and then slower still. They watched as the last remnants of the station disappeared, ripped apart molecule by molecule, until everything but this room was gone, and the tumult ceased. They were now floating alone in outer space. This weird umbrella that none of them had ever heard of before was keeping the atmosphere from escaping into the vacuum.

Olimpia held fast, and smirked at the team. “Topological modulator umbrella. I can’t hold this forever.”

“You won’t have to.” Ramses spun around, and stepped onto the nearest table to address the crowd. “Workers of Ex-467, I know that you’re all scared and confused right now, but we are here to help you! The four of us have the ability to teleport out of here!” He pointed to the Vellani Ambassador, which was hovering over them now. “We could save ourselves alone, or we could save all of you as well! If you would like to die today, stand over by that far wall! If you wanna live, stand on this side, and wait to get into this tiny little box!”

Everyone stood still for a moment before all moving over to the rescue side.

“What the hell is that?” Leona asked him.

“Subdimensional Crucible. It should be able to shrink people.”

“Should?” Leona echoed.

“Hey, I’m just goin’ by the name.” Ramses removed the teleporter rifle from his pants, and began to program it.  “I can get everyone in. All you have to do is wait patiently, and maybe give Olimpia a break.”

“I’ll give her a break,” Marie volunteered. She now looked like herself as well. She took hold of the umbrella, and they shared the burden for a minute before Olimpia felt comfortable letting it go.

Ramses used his tablet to interface with the box, and also the rifle. There was enough charge in it to pocket all of these people away. The problem was figuring out how the box worked. If he didn’t understand the mechanism well enough, all he would do was send the first person as a mangled mess of blood and viscera into the box. Everyone else would die when the umbrella stopped working. The survivors eventually started to sit down to wait, trying not too look up at the rippling force field above them, which threatened to fail every few minutes when the current holder of the umbrella got a little tired. It shifted hands periodically amongst the three ladies. A few members of the personnel volunteered to help, but it wasn’t safe. Even if Leona chose to trust them, they did not necessarily metabolize temporal energy. This thing might not work without it. Ramses needed time to investigate it, which of course, he couldn’t do right now.

After half an hour, Ramses was finished with his work. One of the section leads agreed to go first, and report back if anything went wrong. Ramses shot him in the chest, and then Leona used the box’s built-in microscope to check on him. He was standing in a miniature furnished living room in the middle of the box, and waving up at them in all directions. He was so small that he couldn’t even discern the shadows, shapes, and colors above him as people. “All right, he’s fine,” she announced. Who’s next?”

Ramses continued to shoot people with the rifle. It took longer than they would have liked, because the remainders always wanted to be sure that that last person also survived. They were apparently worried that each time was a fluke, and the next one after that may have resulted in disaster. The girls had to keep holding onto the umbrella the entire time, but eventually, everyone was shot and safe in the box, and they could drop it. The atmosphere vented around them as they teleported up to the ship together.

“Long day?” Mateo asked them, perhaps with a little too little sensitivity.

“Let’s just go. I don’t know what the hell we’re gonna do with these people.”

“Did you bring me a present?” Mateo asked.

Leona showed him the nanosealant. “Yes. I think I can fix the reframe engine.”

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Starstruck: The Toliman Nulls (Part I)

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When Brooke Prieto, Sharice Prieto, Mirage, and the newest member of their group, Belahkay Teal arrived inside the heliosphere of Alpha Centauri B, they immediately figured out why the vonearthans had chosen not to colonize it. All stars and other celestial bodies are valuable. They contain hydrogen, helium, and other elements, which can be used to produce energy and/or construct useful structures. Lots of science fiction stories only care about worlds that are naturally habitable, but that doesn’t really matter. With sufficiently advanced technology, anything can become habitable, even if that only means breaking it all apart to make enclosed spaceships. Nothing in the universe is completely useless, including Toliman, except that there’s something different about it. There’s something eerie about it. The closer they got to the star, the worse they felt, and there was no escape from this. Mirage was an early general intelligence turned transdimensional observer god turned android. Sharice was an unregulated AI turned android. Brooke was a human turned android. Out of the four of them, only Belahkay was alive with nearly all biological components. They were all capable of manipulating their sensory inputs to varying degrees, but not in this case. The sickness took hold of them all, and made them all feel the same.

According to the exploratory records, a single probe was sent to the star system. This happened at the same time that they were being sent to Proxima Centauri and Rigel Kentaurus. These were the three closest stars to Sol, so it made perfect sense. While the first two received later vessels, as well as passengers, Toliman was abandoned after the first probe. The reason for this was never publicized, but since there were hundreds of billions of other stars in this galaxy alone, no one really bothered to question that decision. Not even Mirage knew the answer, but her educated guess was that a time traveler had something to do with it. Travelers come from all time periods, and while the majority of history can be attributed to normal people making whatever decisions they feel they ought to, a few events were ultimately caused by someone who knew how specific decisions would turn out. Of course time travelers made certain decisions all the time, but in this case, we’re talking about deliberately driving the course of the future with profound and more obvious choices, or with big nudges.

For instance, to travel at something called fractional speeds—which is to say, a significant fraction of light speed—an object in motion must accelerate from a stopped position. This works with anything. A car can’t just suddenly go from zero miles per hour to 60 miles per hour with no intervening speeds in between. Except it can, as long as it can manipulate time and space properly. It was a time traveler, or perhaps a team, who first introduced the humans to this concept, and vonearthans have been taking the feature of interstellar travel for granted ever since. It’s not instant, but it’s impossibly fast. They don’t have to accelerate or decelerate at nearly the same rate as normal physical laws would suggest, which cuts down on travel time. Mirage was sure that Toliman was just like this. She thought a time traveler needed the star system for something, and made sure that no one would come here until they were ready. That might still be the case, but there was more to it. There was something wrong with it. There was something wrong with people when they came here.

Every atom in each one of their bodies was telling them to leave. They felt nausea, chills, muscle fatigue, dizziness, and fear. This place was frightening in an indescribable way. If they were on a planet, they would say that there was something in the air, but in this case, maybe it was in the radiation? They couldn’t tell, and they didn’t want to spend too much time trying to figure it out. Unfortunately, fate had other plans for them. They couldn’t leave, because one of the symptoms was a complete loss of motivation. Had Belahkay waited even one more minute, he may not have made it to the stasis pod, which saved his life. Because the other three stopped where they were, and didn’t move for the next five years. In that time, the little jumper ship they took from the planet of Bungula drifted throughout the star system until it finally happened to come close enough to the nanofactory that Mirage sent there years ago. Their real ship dispatched a tugboat to tow them into the hollowed-out asteroid. It wasn’t until the hatch was sealed behind them that they were released from the spell.

Brooke stood up, and emulated a deep breath. “What the hell was that?”

Sharice couldn’t stop shaking her head. “It was bad, it was bad, it was bad, it was bad. We can’t go back out, we can’t go back out, we can’t go back out.”

“We have to,” Mirage reasoned. “We can’t live here forever.” She composed herself, and approached the console to get some answers. “Whatever was doing whatever it was doing to us can’t reach us through the walls of the asteroid, but that might not always be enough. We have to take our new ship, and get the hell out of here.”

“Is the ship even finished?” Brooke questioned.

“Of course it is.” Mirage tapped the button to open the forward shutters. Before them was the interior of the asteroid. A shipyard was built here, and in the center was a beautiful shining vessel. It was small for a transgalactic ship, but it wasn’t possible to look at anything else in the room. The hull was a dark royal purple, with perfect curves, and no sharp edges. “Ladies...say hello to the Iman Vellani.”

“Unique design,” Brooke noticed.

Sharice was admiring the ship as well before looking over her shoulder. “The human. Is he okay?”

The Prietos ran down to the other side of the jumper to the stasis pod. “Vitals are okay,” Brooke said as she was looking through the interface screen. She released the door, and had to catch Belahkey before he fell to the floor.

He took a moment to catch his breath, and shake off the feeling of dread. “At the risk of sounding like a cliché, are we there yet?”

“Yes,” Sharice replied, “and now we’re leaving.”

“Good.” He shivered again. “What the hell is wrong with this star?”

“Mira?” Brooke asked. Belahkay was still having trouble walking, so she was carrying him down towards the control area. “What’s wrong with Toliman?”

“I don’t know, but...it affects everything. The Vellani, it’s...damaged. There are parts of its operational code that I didn’t write.”

“Can you repair it?” Sharice asked her.

Mirage sighed. “Not here. The effects of the...” She didn’t know what to call it.

“The Nulls,” Belahkay suggested. If it affects you as well as me, it’s not a real disease. It’s something new.”

“The Nulls,” Mirage echoed. “The shielding of this asteroid appears to be protecting us from the symptoms, but it’s really just suppressing them. I can already feel myself losing motivation again. We can’t stay here for even a day.”

“But if your ship is broken.”

“It’s not broken, it just needs to be reprogrammed” Mirage contended. “I’ll fly it manually until we can do that. This will work. We’ll just point ourselves away from the star, and go. But just to be safe, Belahkay, you should go back into stasis.”

“No. I’m with you.”

“It’s your choice. I’m not your boss.”

“Aren’t you, though? Sharice asked as Mirage was walking away.

Mirage didn’t answer. While she went off to prepare for things in their shiny new ship, Sharice teleported Belahkay over, and then started to ferry all of their belongings. It thusly fell to Brooke to distribute antimatter bombs in key places in the asteroid. They weren’t really bombs, but antimatter was inherently unstable, so if you wanted to turn some of it into a bomb, all you had to do was find a way to disrupt the magnetic field that was keeping it from touching matter, and preferably do so remotely. They could imagine some intrepid explorers in the future, who couldn’t understand why this star system was off limits, coming here to figure things out. They too would become trapped, but if they were organic, it could result in their deaths. This could still happen, but at least there wouldn’t be anything left around here to make it more interesting and inviting.

Once everything was done, they convened on the Vellani, and prepared to launch. They left the jumper where it was, because it was no longer of any use to them. They had everything they would ever need right here. Mirage commanded the airlock doors to open, and then shot out of there as fast as they could. They immediately started to feel the effects of the nulls again, but now that they knew what they were up against, they were able to fight against it. If they were to stick around much longer, the sickness would probably win again, but they weren’t planning on doing that. Even if they did lose all hope, and become unable to escape, they wouldn’t last much longer. The antimatter containment pods were programmed to fail on a timer, rather than be detonated remotely. It had to be this way, because what if Brooke lost her motivation to trigger the chain reaction while she was out here. And anyway, there should have been enough time to get sufficiently far away. The resulting explosion would be large, but still mostly limited to the scope of the asteroid. The pods they used weren’t full to the brim with antimatter, and it’s not like they needed to destroy the whole solar system. So the question was, why did that happen?

They were more than far enough away from the asteroid when it exploded, but the annihilation didn’t stop there. Bursts of energy started to pop up in all directions, much farther than they should have. It was like there was more antimatter in the area than they expected. But that couldn’t be possible? Antimatter wasn’t just floating around all over space. It was short-lived, because whenever it came into contact with ordinary matter, they would annihilate each other, particle by particle. How was this still going on? How could they stop it?

“We can’t stop it,” Mirage explained to Belahkay, who probably should have been placed back in stasis. “But we can protect ourselves.” She tapped on the controls, and boosted the EM shield. It was a simple enough feature that every starship had. While time travelers had access to things like a teleportation field for dust and micrometeoroids, that wouldn’t help them with things like solar wind and cosmic radiation. Still, the electromagnetic shield wasn’t usually turned up to eleven, because it didn’t need to be. In this case, it did. The Vellani was made out of matter, and if those explosions got any closer, they would all be vaporized instantly. The EM shield held, but it wasn’t enough to protect them from the devastating effects of what they had done. Something started to pull them back towards the host star, and they couldn’t do anything about it.

“Can you boost the propulsion?” Belahkay offered. He was holding onto the center console since artificial gravity had been turned off. The other three could magnetize their feet at will.

“All available power is being diverted to the shield!” Sharice replied. “We would be destroyed if we started using it for anything else.”

“If we fall into that sun,” he reasoned, “we’re gonna be destroyed anyway.”

Mirage was watching the screen as the explosions all began to approach the star. It too was made out of ordinary matter. “There is no reality where we’re not destroyed! Everything living on Bungula is dead too! It’s over! We fucked up!”

The ship continued to fall into the sun at an accelerated rate, and soon, the four of them lost all will to care about it. They just sat there, not worrying about anything, not willing to do anything to fix it, which was okay, because there wasn’t anything to do except accept their fate. In the blink of an eye, Alpha Centauri B was gone, as was the newborn starship Iman Vellani, and its crew.

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Extremus: Year 72

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Generated by Google Workspace Labs text-to-image Duet AI software

There are really only two outcomes when a dead man’s switch for explosives is in play. Either the explosives go off, or they don’t. If the person holding the trigger ultimately wants the bomb to explode, then fine. How Ilias handled the situation was perfectly reasonable. He was waiting for someone to trigger it, and Tinaya did, so mission accomplished. If he didn’t want it to go off, though, then he should have freaking said something! It doesn’t work as a deterrent unless people are aware that it exists. The tactical team that Tinaya and Spirit went with never said anything about it. Lataran never said anything about it. Apparently no one knew that it was there. It’s impossible to say for sure, however. Everyone in that mess hall may have been privy to the severity of the situation, but they can’t attest to that, because they’re all dead now. Spirit is dead, the tactical team is dead. Nearly everyone who was on the planet of Verdemus at the time is gone now; notable exceptions being Ilias himself, and Tinaya. He’s locked up somewhere probably, and her? She’s locked up too, but she’s not in hock. She’s under house arrest. They have to keep up appearances.

Most people on Extremus aren’t allowed to know that the crew has maintained access via mirror portal to the habitable planet that they discovered. Ilias committed an unambiguous crime, and he’s not in the public eye, so they can punish him however they please. Tinaya, on the other hand, can’t just disappear from the ship without arousing suspicion. Arqut won the election for superintendent, though there were only two choices. The passengers and crew could have either voted for or against. If they had decided upon the latter, they would have had to wait until someone else asked for the job, and then run a revote. No one else seemed to want to do it at the moment, which is understandable, given the position’s unfortunate past. It was the lowest voter turnout in ship history, but it wasn’t even close. Just about everyone who bothered to vote voted yes. Superintendent Grieves is now working to facilitate a smooth transition from the old government to the new.

Tinaya has been ordered to remain in her stateroom unless requested for a public appearance with her husband. She feels so shitty about what went down, even though she knows that it was Ilias’ fault for not explaining the stakes to them. She doesn’t really want to leave her stateroom, and in fact probably never will. It reminds her of how she felt when she was totally lost, with no hope for a better future, and no idea for a purpose in life. But this is worse, because she isn’t just failing to succeed. She actually caused harm. She got people killed. Again, she recognizes that Ilias should have warned them that that would happen if they attempted to rescue the hostages, but she feels no less responsible for those deaths. She doesn’t even know who they are. The list can’t be made public. People who go on such secretive missions are generally chosen for their lack of family and friends. It’s not like on a planet, where you can join the military, and tell the people you care about that you can’t tell them what you’re really doing. On Extremus, there’s nowhere to go, so if you walk out the door, and never come back, people are going to wonder how that could possibly be. At most, you should be several hundred meters away at all times.

Lataran has distanced herself from Tinaya for obvious reasons, and Tinaya does not blame her for that. She has to protect her reputation. It is bad enough that Verdemus is being kept secret from the people. If anyone finds out what actually happened there, she could go down in history as one of the bad captains. They could see her as worse than Tamm, which would be worse than anything. The question is, why is Lataran standing in Tinaya’s doorway right now. “We need your help.”

“My help with what?” Tinaya asks her solemnly.

“You have to go back to Verdemus,” Lataran replies.

“I’m not doing that.”

“You’re the only one who can.”

“It didn’t exactly turn out great the last time you said that to me.”

“This time, it’s no less true,” Lataran begins to explain. “We would ask Ilias, but we try not to talk to him if we don’t have to. We don’t believe he’s part of some movement, or insurgency. He was a crazy asshole with a bomb. All he should be doing right now is stewing in hock, and regretting every single one of his life choices. Besides, he may not have the information we need anyway. We don’t know what he saw, or what he noticed, from his vantage point. We’re pretty sure you’ll know.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The explosives were...comprehensive. One of the gatewatchers was blown off of his post, and the other suffered minor burns. Anyone anywhere near the epicenter was vaporized. We know who was there, but we don’t know specifically where anyone was standing in space when it happened.”

“If you needed to know this, why didn’t you ask me before? It’s been months.”

“We didn’t need to know before. Like I said, we have a manifest. We didn’t need the details until today, because something has changed.”

“What? What has changed?”

“I would rather just show you. Don’t you want to get out of here, if only for a moment?”

Tinaya crosses her arms self-protectively, but not too tensely. “I’m fine.”

“Miss Leithe...this is not a request.”

Tinaya stands up. “That’s all you had to say.”

They cross back over through the mirror portal together. The leader of a three-person tack team tries to hand Tinaya a pair of sunglasses again, but she refuses. It feels like she doesn’t deserve it. Lataran sighs. “I told you I need to show you something, which means you need to be able to see. Put them on please.”

“Okay.” Tinaya accepts the glasses, and begins to adjust to the harsh natural light. They walk down the path, and towards where the offworld base used to be standing, leaving one tack team member to guard the mirror. The base has been flattened, with only a few of the strongest parts of the infrastructure still standing as ruins. They lead her through the now fully open gate, and towards where she was when she was trying to negotiate with the hostage-taker. Lataran was right. This is something that needs to be seen. Ashes have begun to cling together over a spot on the ground, like ferromagnetic dust to a telescoping groundsweeper. They have coalesced themselves into the vague shape of a human being. It doesn’t look like anyone in particular right now, but more ash is jumping up into place by the second. Eventually, the entity could be made whole once more.

“Do you know who was standing here?” Lataran questions. “I know it’s hard to get your bearings—”

“It’s Spirit.”

“Are you sure?”

Tinaya steps around, and gestures towards the ash being. See, she’s holding some sort of shovel thing. It’s what she used to sever the shockwire that Ilias had hooked up to the woman he used to speak through, so he wouldn’t place himself in the line of fire. That...is Spirit Bridger, and she...is resurrecting herself.”

“That was our guess as to what was going on,” Lataran agrees. “It would make some level of sense that she would be the one to possess such power. Though—and I don’t know about you—but I’ve never heard of this sort of thing before.”

Tinaya shakes her head. “Neither have I. Some kind of phoenix power, that’s crazy. Have you asked Omega about it? He would know.”

“He’s on the frontlines of the Three Bears War right now.”

“Of course he is, because as always, I know what that is,” Tinaya says sarcastically. “All right. I’ll be going now.”

“That’s it?” Lataran asks. “You’re just gonna go back to your stateroom?”

“Well, what the hell else should I do?” Tinaya snaps back. “I’m still a danger to society, aren’t I? Or is this my new prison? Should I stay instead? Yeah, that makes sense. Is this even real?” She reaches up towards Spirit’s supposedly recoalescing body.

“Don’t. Touch that. Yes, it’s real,” Lataran begins, then falters, “I think. I just thought you might want to take a second to...” She trails off, and shakes her head before continuing, “....breathe the fresh air.”

Tinaya realizes her error. “This was meant to be a gift.”

“I still love you, Tinaya, and I don’t personally blame you for what happened. I just...I couldn’t be seen with you. It’s a very complicated and delicate situation.”

“I know.”

The tack team member pivots a quarter turn away. “Go ahead.” She tenses up as she’s listening through her comm, then she faces Lataran. “Sir, we have to go. There’s something wrong with the portal.”

“You two run up ahead,” Lataran orders. “We’ll teleport back right away. I just need to talk to her for one more minute.” It’s unclear why they wouldn’t be able to teleport themselves, but they literally run off. She senses Tinaya’s confusion. “Teleporters don’t work on this planet anymore. Ilias’ bombs destroyed the local relays. We haven’t bothered to replace them. We’re not sure what we’re gonna do here anymore.”

“Why would you be able to teleport then?”

She lifts up her shirt to reveal an emergency teleporter strapped to her chest. “Mine has a much longer range. I’m still linked to the ship, through the portal, of course. Look, I just want to—” She stops when she hears a rustling in the brush that has already begun to grow amidst the destruction.

“You heard that too?”

“Yeah,” Lataran whispers. She slowly creeps in that direction.

“Are there wild animals here?” Tinaya asks.

“A few. One species is particularly dangerous, and particularly valuable.”

“You’re not a wrangler. We should go.”

“No, just give me a second.”

Lataran continues the search, forcing Tinaya to follow. Neither one of them excelled at hand-to-hand combat in school, but the latter was always a little better at it. Though, to be fair, she didn’t go to college, so maybe the leaderboard has shifted. They approach the overgrowth, but don’t find anything, so they keep going until they hear more sounds behind more brush. They carefully pull it to the side to reveal two small children. They’re dirty, and barely wearing any clothes. They’re probably hungry, tired, and scared. “Hey, it’s okay,” Tinaya says to them gently. “We won’t hurt you. Do you understand me?”

Lataran looks away slightly. “We have to go. There’s something seriously wrong in the Mirror Room.”

“You go,” Tinaya demands. “Take them, and then you can come back for me. I’ll be on my way.”

“I might only have enough juice for one jump. We’ve walked really far away now.”

“Then don’t waste it! Save the children! Obviously!”

Lataran grabs the kids by the hands, and disappears.

Tinaya has also never enjoyed running, but she’ll do it today. She races back into the ruins of the base, then towards the gate, and then up the path to the mirror. The place is swarming with people in military uniforms, but they’re nothing like the kind she recognizes. They do not belong to any branch of the Extremus security or military force. She doesn’t stop running, though. It doesn’t seem to bother them that she’s running for her life. If this is some kind of coup, they don’t consider her a threat. She doesn’t make it all the way to the mirror, anyway. It explodes right towards her, but not in a fiery storm. It’s concussive, and maybe even spatial warping. She’s thrown high into the air, back towards the base. All she can think as she’s flailing about is that there is no way she survives this. Even if what’s injuring her weren’t the portal that will no longer be able to take her back to help on Extremus, the damage will be too severe.

Only when she crashes onto the ground does she feel the sting of the glass shards in her skin. They are all over her body. She’s still alive, but hanging on by a thread. She’s fallen right on the other side of Spirit, whose recovery has been sped up exponentially somehow. Tinaya watches the wind blow the majority of the ash away to reveal human skin. It’s definitely her.

Spirit blinks, and starts to reorient herself. She looks down to find Tinaya gasping for breath, and then gurgling on her own blood. “I guess my plan didn’t work.” Her eyes lose focus, and she starts to look like she’s nodding off. Finally, she passes out, and lands right on top of Tinaya’s body. Tinaya reaches up and tries to pull the secret signal mirror from her inside pocket, but remembers that she no longer has access to it. It’s still tucked away safely in the pocket dimension, but the only way to unlock it is with her watch, or something else that can generate the right shade of green to reveal the zipper. That was taken away from her after last year’s debacle. She’ll never see her love, Arqut again, and he will never know what happened to her.

Before Tinaya loses consciousness, she sees two figures hovering over her. They look like the children from before. Damn. They didn’t make it through either.

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