| Generated by Pollo AI text-to-video AI software and Google Vids text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3.1 |
Waldemar teleports right into the room. He aimed perfectly so he’s standing
right before the stasis pod. He looks down at the man inside. It’s
unsettling to see this, even though he knows it’s not really him. It’s
really about what the future holds, or rather what it might hold.
When this mission was being planned over 120 years ago, their ancestors
decided to ban most transhumanistic upgrades. That was stupid. It was a
total mistake. He can’t go back and change that now, because he would not
have been born in such a radically different timeline. He doesn’t really
even care whether anyone else lives forever anyway. He only cares about
himself, and maybe Audrey and Silveon. And this woman too, because she’s so
loyal to him, and she practically begged him to be loyal right back. He will
be, as long as she does what she’s told, but if she ever steps out of line,
she’ll become one of his enemies. She knows this, and probably won’t do it.
“Oh, sorry,” Sevara says from her bedroom in her bad sexy voice. She’s
wearing a silky pink robe, and nothing else. It’s hanging open, and barely
showing him the goods, which she knows he likes. She’s such a thirsty bitch.
“I was waiting for the doorbell.”
“Is it time?”
“It can be. If we revive him right now, he’ll die in a matter of
hours. If we wait another couple of years, he’ll only last minutes. So it’s
up to you.”
“Why did you call me then?”
She puts on her pouty face as she’s very slowly walking towards him, lifting
her legs high. “I wanted to see you. It’s been so long. You’re always with
that little whore.”
“Sable is not a whore,” he spits angrily.
“Sable?” Sevara questions with a tight frown. “Who the hell is Sable? I was
talking about your wife. Audrey? Are you stepping out on me?”
“I chose you to torture Pronastus for me,” Waldemar argues. “I reached
across time for you. This has never been about sex. You mean nothing to me.
Once his torment is over, and he’s dead, I’ll be done with you.”
He forgets sometimes that normal people don’t like to hear the truth. She
moves briskly the rest of the way, and backhands him against the chin. She
is incredibly strong, so he drops to the floor. By the time he stands back
up, she’s hovering her finger over a button. “When you contacted me from the
future, I felt honored, but I was alone with this thing for years after I
stole it from AI!Elder in the Frontrunner, and I have my own allies. Say one
more unkind word to me, and I’ll clutch the son of a bitch. He will be just
as young as you are today, and can go right back to impersonating you. We’ll
put you in this thing instead so you can see what it feels like. Is that
what you want? Do you want to throw everything we had away?”
Waldemar stands and wipes the blood from his lips. “Do you know the problem
with walking around with only a sexy robe on?”
“That it’s wasted on a psychopath like you?”
“No, it leaves you unprotected.” He reaches for his sidearm, but succeeds
only in palming his own hip. He looks down out of instinct, but he already
knows it’s because his gun is no longer there.
Sevara swings her arm out from behind her back, and points his weapon at
him.
“It doesn’t matter,” he reminds her. “They’re DNA-locked. Only I can fire
that.”
She glances down at Waldemar’s clone in the pod, where Pronastus has been
going insane for the last 114 years. “I know, dumbass. I have your DNA.” She
shoots him in the gut and chest four times.
Waldemar, meanwhile, tips over again, but doesn’t fall to the floor. He’s on
a bed, though it is not his own. It’s Silveon’s. He’s the only person he can
trust, except for Audrey, but he certainly doesn’t want to bloody up their
shared sheets. He’s not very comfortable in this position, and is about to
slide off the edge. He pulls his injured body backwards to get more
horizontal, then starts to remove his uniform. “Argh! Stupid bitch almost
hit my heart! Argh!”
Silveon appears. He’s the only one who Waldemar exempted from the no
teleportation rule, as long as he only ever does it where no one is looking.
“What are you doing here?”
“I got shot, can’t you see?” He winces in pain. Is this what people feel
like when they get overwhelmed by their emotions? Silvy tried to explain it
to him once, and likened it to physical pain, but until now, Waldemar had
never experienced quite this much pain.
“I can see that. I mean, why aren’t you in the infirmary? I’m not a doctor.”
“No one can know I got shot,” Waldemar argued. “I need you to get me into
your parent’s Admiral’s Stateroom. I know you turned it into some kind of
shrine, but if you left any surgical instrumentation in there, I need the
codes.”
“It’s not a shrine, and there is no medical equipment in there. They took
all that back after my parents died, so others could use it. Others...like
you. You have privilege. The Chief Medical Officer has to keep your status
confidential.”
“Unless my condition threatens the security and continuity of the mission,”
he argues. “I need total privacy!” He doesn’t know why he’s yelling. If the
locked stateroom doesn’t have what he needs, then it doesn’t have it, and
that’s not Silveon’s fault. Waldemar knows that. He’s just in so much pain
right now, and can’t think straight. At least one of the bullets is still in
there. He can feel it, picking at his insides.
Silveon sighs. “Okay, I’m gonna teleport you somewhere, but it’s probably
gonna hurt more than it already does.”
“Just do it!” he commands.
Silveon slides his arms under Waldemar’s back and knees, triggering more
screaming. He doesn’t pick him all the way up, he just needs to make enough
contact to execute a safe teleportation. They jump to a small room. The
lights are only now starting to turn on. They’re entirely alone. Waldemar is
lying in a medical pod now. He’s never seen anything like this before in
real life, though he recalls studying them in Earthan Developmental History
class. His friend is tapping on the interface, starting to run the
procedures. “I hope you’re not married to that uniform, because it’s gotta
come off.”
Lasers appear from all angles, and begin to burn through Waldemar’s clothes.
Claws come out of the walls and pull pieces of the fabric away, stuffing
them into a little slot at his feet. He’s fully naked now, and can really
see the damage. It’s a huge mess, there’s blood everywhere. It all goes away
quickly, though, when more little tools come out and start cleaning him off.
What’s left are four little holes which, given the size of a human body,
make Waldemar almost feel like it’s not that big of a deal.
Silveon tilts his head at the screen. “It’s detecting that the bullets are
ferromagnetic. Most aren’t, but yours are. Did you shoot yourself?”
“Of course not!” He sighs before adding, “but it was my gun.”
“Who shot you?”
“Would you just get them out? Why does it matter?”
“The tool matters,” Silveon explains. A very thin cable with a light on the
tip emerges from the wall now, and bobs around like a snake threatening to
strike. It dives into one of Waldemar’s wounds, returning rather quickly
with one of the bullets stuck to the end. It didn’t even hurt coming out.
It’s very precise. It dives in two more times to extract the other two
bullets. The fourth must have gone through-and-through. “Ultra-advanced, or
advanced?”
“Huh?”
“Do you want the treatment process to be ultra-advanced, or just advanced?”
“What’s the difference?” Waldemar questions.
“They’re both illegal, Silveon begins. “But one involves more probes going
in to make repairs, and the other is simply an injection of nanites, which
make those same repairs internally, and if necessary, harvest your waste
tissue to replicate themselves.”
“How did you find this pod? How do you know about it?”
“Do you want treatment, or not, and if so, what kind?”
Silveon has always had his secrets. Even though Waldemar doesn’t understand
emotion, he is a student of behavior. His friend was extremely precocious as
a child, which is why they were even capable of getting along despite a
significant age gap. Since he’s been so helpful throughout his life,
Waldemar generally lets him keep those secrets, but this is a big one. As he
said, this technology is illegal on Extremus, and more than enough to put
Silveon in hock for the rest of his life. Waldemar doesn’t want that, and
won’t let it happen, but he has to give him something. He has to provide
answers. First things first, though, he needs treatment. “Let’s split the
difference. Let the pod itself fix my outside wounds, but then give me those
nanos to finish the job.”
As the glass lid curves around him, more tools come out. One sticks him in
the arm, and recedes again. Waldemar begins to feel very hot. Even when
cooling nozzles turn the environment into a refrigerator, the instruments
are generating more than enough heat to keep him from shivering. He doesn’t
know precisely what’s happening inside his body, but he knows that these
little machines are doing something.
“The immediate threat will take eleven minutes in your condition,” Silveon
tells him through the glass. “As for the deep tissue and muscles, it will
take another couple of hours. I know you’re strong, but people will notice
if you don’t rest while it’s happening. You just need to be patient. Once
they’re done, it will be as if nothing ever happened. Tell me who shot you,
so I can remediate the situation out there.”
“I need you,” Waldemar ekes out. Okay, he’s shivering a little now.
“Yeah, I’m here,” Silveon replies, a bit annoyed.
“I mean, I need you to be my personal steward. I should have promoted you a
long time ago. No one else has been more helpful. Damn the optics.”
Silveon shakes his head. “We can talk about this later. Who shot you?”
Waldemar smiles. It must come with some kind of pain management drug. “I
shot myself. I’m such an idiot.”
He’s irritated. Waldemar recognizes that emotion. “This pod is also a
diagnostic tool. It scanned your body, and measured the trajectories.
There’s just no way that you shot yourself, unless you have telekinesis, or
you can make bullets curve.”
“It doesn’t matter, they won’t get another chance to hurt me.”
“Waldemar,” Silveon warns. “There are other ways to hurt you. Is Audrey
safe?”
That’s a good question. “She might not be, but I’m not as worried about her
as I am about Sable.”
“Sable? Sable Keen?” he questions. “What does she have to do with anything?”
“She and I have been...” He doesn’t wanna say. Silveon would not approve.
“Jesus. Double-U, she’s 23 years old.”
“Which is an adult,” Waldemar defends. “Don’t tell Aud. She would be
devastated.”
“I know. I’ll place them both somewhere safe, but separately. Then we’re
having a longer conversation about all of this. Don’t get up. You
could do permanent damage to your body if you don’t let it finish the work.
You are more than superficially hurt.” Silveon disappears.
The door swings open. “Ugh, I thought he would never leave.” It’s Pronastus.
He’s still wearing Waldemar’s clone, but it’s no longer the old version of
him. They look virtually identical now. She did it. That bitch Sevara really
did it. Now this asshole can go right back to impersonating him. He worked
so hard, rebuilding his image, and none of it matters. He made one mean
comment to one of his sidepieces, and she completely derailed their plans.
Emotions only screw things up. What more proof do you need?
“I should have killed you before. I should have taken the pod from her,
hidden you somewhere else to serve out your sentence, and ended it on my
terms.”
“That never could have happened,” Pronastus claims. “No paths lead to my
death. I will always come back. I will always—” A fist comes out of nowhere,
and jacks him in the temple, sending him hard into the floor. He never
stands back up.
Sevara chuckles once as she looks down at the guy. Waldemar can see that
she’s holding his sidearm loosely towards Pronastus, but he can’t see the
man himself from this angle. “Thanks for finding him for me.” She shoots
four more times. Waldemar doesn’t hear any coughing or gurgling, so he’s
guessing it’s a headshot. She steps over the body, and leans towards the
glass to tap on it with her finger. “Hey, there, fishy. Feeling trapped in
your little bowl.”
What would Silveon do in this situation? Him, with all his rules about how
to behave. He would say something sappy, like forgiveness or
compassion. No, that doesn’t sound right. It’s close, but not quite
there. Let’s think...right, forgiving her won’t work. She thinks she did
nothing wrong. She thinks that Waldemar is the bad guy here, so he
needs to let her think that. But how? Again, what would Silveon say? “I’m
sorry.”
“What?” She was not prepared for that.
“I am sorry for hurting you. Our relationship means more to me than I was
willing to show. I’ve just had to keep people at arm’s length my whole life.
You know, because of my mother? She was an abusive drunk.”
“Oh, save it. You don’t have feelings, and you’re terrible at faking them.”
She looks over at the control interface. “Let’s see, does this thing have a
self-destruct, or can I suck out all the oxygen perhaps? What does this one
do?” Music starts playing. “Ah, not that. Oh, whatever, I’ll just shoot
you.” She points his gun at him once more.
“Exterior seal complete. Prioritizing internal regeneration,” the pod
announces.
“What does that mean?” Sevara questions.
Waldemar pulls the lid open, and grabs her by the neck. “It means you’re
dead.”
The fear in her eyes, it’s intoxicating. “I’m sorry for interrupting you
earlier. You were in the middle of apologizing?” She gasps for air, but her
trachea is being crushed.
“Not anymore. I’m done pretending. The real Waldemar has come out, thanks to
you and Prony. Everyone on this ship will get on board with my new rules, or
they’ll end up like you both.” He squeezes the life out of her. He forgot
how good it feels.
