| Generated by Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3.1 |
The tree light receded. They were now standing outside. The ground beneath
them was yellowish, there was no apparent atmosphere, and they felt very
light. It was probably an uninhabitable moon. There was a massive structure
before them, maybe four or five kilometers away. Leona checked her watch
interface. “August 15, 2528.”
Ramses knelt down, and scanned the surface with his sensor suite. “Sulfur
and sulfur dioxide, also silica. We got some pyroxene and feldspar. That
explains the yellow.” He stood back up. “I believe that we are on the rogue
moon of Jaunemus.”
They didn’t know much about this world. It once orbited the planet of
Verdemus, but was transported to the Goldilocks Corridor, and used as a
staging ground for the Verdemusian Corps. They lived and trained here when
they weren’t on the Anatol Klugman warship. The team looked around, and
couldn’t find Miracle Brighton anywhere, nor Adult!Dilara. They were
dispatched, not ferried, or perhaps the other two had just moved on, since
it had been a full two years since the team was last in the
present day.
The Jaunemusians seemed like all right people. They were warmongers, sure,
but not Klingons. They didn’t want to fight simply for the sake of it. They
felt a duty to protect their home planet from the Exin Empire, and decided
to take an offensive strategy, instead of a defensive one, since Verdemus
was still in hiding, much like Castlebourne now. According to their military
mandate, the fighters on this moon didn’t have much interest in
fixing the Goldilocks Corridor. They just calculated that the only
way to prevent the Exins from spreading beyond it were to put an end to it
altogether. It was unclear how they felt about Earth, the rest of the closer
regions, or Team Matic. According to Core World conventions, this whole part
of the galaxy belonged to what they called the Borderworlds. It was
technically too specific of a term to use for it, however. It was only
called that because it covered all systems between 14,000 and 28,000
light years from Earth. On the other side of the Milky Way, that referred to
systems that were literally on the edge. In this direction, though, they
were still in the middle.
“Drive check!” Olimpia announced as she looked down at her wrist band.
“Whew, I’m in the red. Anyone else have a better gauge?”
They all shook their heads. It took an enormous amount of power for them to
send the entire Oblivion tower to another reality in the past. That wasn’t
even that long ago for them. It would be a while until their slingdrives
recharged. They might as well pop in to see how the Jaunemusians were doing
lately. They teleported to an airlock that appeared welcoming enough, and
knocked on the door. There was a doorbell, but it looked like it was only
meant for emergencies. Hopefully the sound would travel through the
structure well enough for someone to hear. They stood there for a few
minutes before a face appeared in the viewport. Hm. No cameras? Or were
there, and he just wanted to get a look for himself? They waved at him with
smiles.
The man went away, and then the airlock door opened. They let their suits
collapse before the airlock was fully pressurized again. The man was still
watching them, from the observation chamber now. Another man entered the
room behind him with an air of authority, so the first one opened the next
door for him. “Greetings, Team Matic. My name is Anatol Klugman.”
“No, it isn’t,” Mateo said, being unable to stop himself.
The man winced. “I may not have been born with the name, but I earned it.”
“Forgive him,” Leona mediated. “It’s just that we know the man who serves as
the namesake for your warship. You’re obviously not him, it’s just a little
jarring to hear.”
“Ah, yes.” Fake!Anatol nodded. “It’s easy to forget that the ship was named
after a man. I am named after the ship. And when I retire, a new Anatol will
be selected to take my place. There are others like me even now.”
“Are you connected to your vessel?” Ramses asked him, fascinated. “Do you
control it with your mind?”
Fake!Anatol considered the words. “It’s more like I instruct it with
my mind. The crew has to carry out the orders, and could theoretically
refuse them. Right now, my second has the reins. The human brain cannot
handle the interface for too long, so the link changes hands regularly.” His
gaze shifted to Romana. “I’m guessing that you’re here in search of your
sister? I can take you to her.”
“That is not my sister,” Romana said, her blood boiling. “She is an
impostor.”
“Oh. She said her name was Miracle Brighton.”
“Oh, well that’s her name,” Mateo explained, “but she stole my daughter’s
body. Well, she stole one of them. The extra one.”
Fake!Anatol lifted his chin as he absorbed the information. “I see. We might
be able to help with that. We are...pretty good at cloning here.” That was
how this army began. Omega Strong cloned himself thousands of times, but he
didn’t use the exact same code. Each clone was slightly different than the
one before it. Despite ultimately being born of a single source, the
population was almost as diverse as any other of comparable magnitude,
thanks to this intentional genetic drift. That was a long time ago. This man
would be a descendant of the original generation, now many generations
removed.
“It wasn’t technically theft,” Romana explained, “but more of a con. She has
legal claim to that substrate. If we were to move her to a different one,
she would have to consent.”
“If she does, we can arrange that,” Fake!Anatol offered. “Do you still want
me to take you to her?”
“Yes, please,” Mateo confirmed.
They followed him down the corridors until they reached a common area of
couches, tables, and other basic amenities, like you would find in a hipster
apartment complex. Fake!Anatol stopped when he noticed Miracle sitting in a
comfy chair with a good book, and a cup of tea. She, of course, knew when
they would be returning to the timestream, so she was not surprised to see
them. She dogeared the page she was on, and snapped it shut. “Thank you all
for coming. And thank you, Mister Klugman, for bringing them to me.
You can go now.”
Fake!Anatol looked awkwardly at the team, not sure if he should do what she
said, or accept their guidance, or do whatever the hell he wanted.
“Please, sir, could you show me your neural interface?” Ramses requested. “I
would much like to learn about it, if at all possible. This conversation is
going to become uncomfortable, and I don’t need to be here.”
Romana stepped forward, between the team and the antagonist after Ramses and
Fake!Anatol departed. “Thank you for not using my name,” she said to her
doppelgänger
“I prefer mine.”
“I wouldn’t,” Romana mumbled.
“What was that?”
“I am as appreciative as my daughter,” Mateo said, also now stepping
forward. “We would like to ask you, what is your plan here? What do you
think we’re going to do for you?”
“You’re going to find a way to kill the unkillable,” Miracle answered
plainly.
“If you want him dead, why don’t you just do it? You, Pacey, and Octavia
seem intelligent enough. Why are you trying to make us do your dirty work?”
Miracle bit her lip.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Olimpia posed. “She thinks we’re untouchable. If his
sycophants come after us for it, not only will it keep their hands clean,
but she thinks we’ll survive it anyway...because we always do.”
“Or she’s counting on us not surviving this time,” Marie countered.
“Because if the Exin loyalists interrogate us, we’ll be able to link her to
it.”
“Lots of people know I’m here,” Miracle argued. “Word will get out that I’m
involved, I don’t care.”
Mateo shook his head. “Word might get out that a woman who looks like
Romana, and goes by the ridiculously made-up name of Miracle, is involved.
Not very strong evidence that it has anything to do with Pacey. I’m not even
sure if anyone besides us, and his sycophants, knows that he exists.
We’re the only ones who have interacted with him, to our knowledge. He’s
Snuffleupagus.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Miracle said.
Their armbands beeped at the same time, alerting them that their slingdrives
had charged up to Orange. “We won’t do what you ask,” she contended. “We
won’t kill him, and we will no longer interfere with these people’s lives
unless we decide that it’s necessary, and we will also decide
when that is, and what that means.”
“Those things can’t save you,” Miracle claimed. “We’re like Arcadia Preston.
We can just keep bringing you back here. You have to remember that Pacey is
the one who invented the—what do you call it—slingdrive technology,
not your precious little Gyppo.”
Mateo tensed up, and leaned in closer. “Do not..ever say that.”
“Sorry, that was too far, I’m just trying to remind you that you took
quintessence from Pacey. He has every right to dictate what you do with it.”
She wasn’t getting it. It was irrelevant how long they had to wait to sling
again. This was a perfect example of
you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. If she
kept dropping them here, they would keep escaping, or just doing
nothing. Even if their slingdrives weren’t ready to go again, they didn’t
have to do anything they didn’t want to. She only had the power to move them
places, not control their actions. If she could do that, why would she need
them at all? “It doesn’t matter, we’re not doing it,” Angela reiterated.
Miracle finally stood. She sighed. “Miss Nieman is the youngest in your
group, and for that reason, she will be spared. The Oaksent doesn’t see her
as a threat, and I think he may have a little thing for her. He has
instructed his minions to spare her, should they encounter Team Matic, and
find a way to end the rest of you without hurting her. If you don’t kill
him, Romana will be the one to do it, if you get my meaning. She won’t be
safe anymore. She will be the primary target.”
Leona smiled.
Miracle was confused. “What? What just happened? Why are you so excited?”
The others weren’t excited, it was just Leona. She reached out, and
took hold of both of Miracle’s wrists. She instructed her nanites to
construct handcuffs around them. “You just gave me permission to remove you
from that substrate.”
“How’s that now?” Miracle questioned.
“You just admitted to making plans to commit a crime using a substrate that
will implicate a different individual of said crime. That gives me
everything I need to get you out of it, and reclaim the substrate to protect
the world from you who would abuse her power in it.”
“I was just speaking in hypotheticals, I didn’t say anything,” Miracle
insisted. “Plus, I was so vague.”
“We all heard what we heard, and I’m sure that camera caught it too.” Leona
pointed up at the security cam. “Besides, at worst, it places us in a
stalemate. You can’t actually commit the crime any more than you can admit
to the conspiracy of it. If you go through with the plan, we’ll show that
footage to the Exins. They have similar cloning laws internally. Harsher
ones, in fact. Your safest course of action is to leave that body, and move
on with your life without it. Romana is damaged goods.”
Miracle was flustered. She backed up a little, and tried to pull the cuffs
apart through brute force. “I have an exit strategy. These can’t keep me
here.”
“We can track you wherever you go. Their friends can, anyway,” Leona added,
referring to the nanites that she was still using herself.
Their armbands beeped. They were now in the Yellow.
“Not if I figure out how to get them off first!” Miracle shouted. A black
hole appeared underneath her feet, and she fell right through it.
“What if she does it?” Angela asked. “What if she just goes off to kill
Bronach before we have the chance to find her, and remove her from that
substrate?”
“She doesn’t know how,” Leona believed. “She was bluffing entirely. She
called him unkillable, because they also need us to find the
killswitch that will prevent him from coming back to life, however exactly
he does it. We’re known for finding loopholes, and Team Pacey is betting us
finding this one too. There’s more than one reason they chose us.”
“What do we do?” Mateo asked her.
“Today, we rest. I don’t think we’re gonna be able to sling again until next
year.”
