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The team stayed on Jaunemus the rest of the day, eating the local cuisine,
and recharging their photovoltaics by the star that they were orbiting right
now. This moon was a gargantuan spaceship, which could move through space at
will. The Jaunemusians couldn’t travel all the way back home to Verdemus to
eat lunch with their friends every day, but they didn’t have to stay in one
place either. They bounced around the nearest stars in this area, and spent
a lot of time in interstellar space to avoid detection.
There was nothing for Team Matic here, so they decided to bug out. “We have
to get back to Proxima Doma,” Angela suggested. “We have to find out what
happened there, if anything.”
“I thought we were going after Miracle,” Ramses countered.
“That trail has gone cold,” Marie figured. “She has had a whole year to get
those cuffs off.”
Leona chuckled. “She has not been able to get them off. They’re held
together by a distributive bond. Breaking them would cause her to explode,
and I’m the only one with a key.”
They all looked to Ramses for confirmation. He nodded. That was how their
EmergentSuits worked. It was how they could be so thin, yet so durable, and
protective against harsh environments, like the vacuum of outer space.
“There’s still the question of where she is,” Olimpia tried to remind them.
“She could have gone anywhere. I’m guessing the quantum connection doesn’t
extend this far.”
“Even I have my limits,” Ramses admitted. “But your husband doesn’t.”
“Me?” Mateo questioned. “If I can find her, why didn’t we do that
yesterday?”
“We all needed a break,” Leona explained, “especially you. As I was saying,
those cuffs aren’t going anywhere. There was no need to rush off, and
besides, I don’t like traveling with low slingdrives. Mateo, your dark
particles are the backup, not the other way around.”
“All right,” Mateo agreed. “I’ll use my black magic for a locator spell.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Romana said. No, it wasn’t Romana, but Miracle.
She was holding her arms in front of her chest, like a beggar. “Get them off
of me, and I’ll agree to transfer to a new substrate. It doesn’t matter
anymore. I stole this body because that’s what Pacey asked of me. But I
never wanted this.” She sighed, and looked off into a random direction. “I
just wan—I just wanted to end him...and his reign of terror.”
The real Romana stepped forward, and placed a comforting hand on Miracle’s
shoulder. “You’re not doing this for Pacey, you’re doing it for yourself.
You’re from the Goldilocks Corridor.”
Miracle sighed again. “My name isn’t really Miracle. It’s just Mirinda.
Mirinda...Oaksent.” They didn’t know exactly what that meant. In modern
times, you couldn’t guess someone’s relationship to someone else based on
their appearance. They could look 50 years older, but be 200 years younger.
She giggled. “You’re all waiting for the clarification before judgment.
That’s quite magnanimous of you. I’m his daughter. I’ve been that way for
millennia. You see, all those people out here in the Corridor, they are his
subjects...his toys. He built them to serve, and to adore him. But the
problem with that is they were indoctrinated into belief from birth.
Ignorance is the killer. I mean, you showed one person the truth about
Earth, and an entire opposing faction spread out from it, which is what he’s
always been afraid of. Sycophants who don’t know any better aren’t very
satisfying either way. He wanted a group of people who loved him because
that’s what they were supposed to do. He wanted a family. He made us just
like he made the others, but he made us immortal, just like him. He didn’t
really raise us, but we got more face time with him than most, so I suppose
he figured that was enough.
“I grew to resent him, of course, which is how we ended up here. In defiance
of his plan to curate a family of superhumans, I started fighting back
violently. I killed all of my clones, as well as my brothers and sisters’
clones. I didn’t kill them too, but they eventually died, and there was
nowhere for their consciousnesses to go. Oaksent doesn’t like virtual
simulations, I don’t know why, so there’s no uploading to a central server.
There’s just backup bodies. I was just about to kill my own final clone when
Pacey found me. He made me realize that Bronach never cared about any of us,
which was why he made almost no attempt to stop me. His plans didn’t work.
He’s not a likeable guy, and if he didn’t force adoration through ignorance,
it wasn’t going to happen. All of his children loathed him. I’m just the
only one who wanted to do anything about it. Pacey promised that he could
kill my father. He promised to find a way. You were supposed to be that way,
but what he didn’t tell me was that you always look for the peaceful
resolution. Your ship was literally called the Vellani Ambassador.
I’ve been trying to get you to change, but if I thought that anyone could do
that, I would never have let my siblings die. I would have tried to call
them to action. I believe that I’ve just been trying to replace them...with
you.”
Leona stepped forward, and gently held Miracle’s wrists in her hands. It
looked like she was about to remove the cuffs from her. “Obligation.”
“Yeah,” Miracle said with a nod. “Wait, what?”
“It’s a movie, about a sibling rivalry that goes too far. The motif
throughout is Nazca boobies, which are known for killing their siblings.”
“Oh, I guess that’s kind of similar,” Miracle agreed.
“No, it’s almost the exact same premise. What you just described here,
killing off your siblings to drain the parents’ of their power, and their
legacy...that is the plot of Obligation. That never happened to you.”
“Well, I hardly think that’s a unique situation. I mean, I’m sure—wait,
wait, wait, wait, wait!” she screamed when Leona started to lift her arms
up. “You don’t have to do this! Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay! I’ll help you!
I’ll switch sides! Just don’t make me transfer out of this body.”
This was such a weird freak out. What was she so afraid of? Why did she not
want to transfer to a new substrate? It wasn’t like the processes hurt, or
anything. It just felt like going to sleep, and waking up in a different
room after surgery. It could be disorienting, but that went away, and
relatively quickly. Why did she even ever want Romana’s body if not
to parade around as Romana, and give her a bad reputation? They
should have asked this as soon as Miracle agreed to keep it. They shouldn’t
have been so trusting of her. They won’t make that mistake again.
“Please don’t, please don’t! Miracle continued to beg.
Leona suddenly broke the cuffs apart, and let the nanites recede into her
implants. “There you go.”
“You’re setting me free?” Miracle asked, shocked.
“I don’t want us to be enemies anymore. It doesn’t come for free, though. I
want you to take us to Pacey. We need to have a talk with him. I’m sick of
going through his little minions. It’s inefficient at best.”
Yeah, sure,” Miracle said, stepping away and rubbing her wrists. Déjà vu,
this was basically what she looked like yesterday, just before escaping
through a black hole portal. “I just need to, uh...speak with him first.
I’ll be right back!” Still reminiscent of just yesterday, she fell through a
portal, which closed up behind her immediately. And it wasn’t going to
reopen.
“Why did you do that?” Olimpia asked her wife.
“She ruined our plans,” Ramses answered for Leona. “Miracle was
supposed to lead us to Pacey, not come back here. Matty?”
“Okay,” Mateo said. Gather ‘round.” They huddled in a group, and let Mateo
generate a swarm of dark particles, which overwhelmed them. It was a pretty
weak showing, though. There weren’t very many of them. “I think we’re trying
too soon! I can’t pull enough out,” he warned. “It took too much to get us
to the Fifth Division!”
“That’s okay,” Ramses shouted back. “Just build a bridge! The slingdrives
will take us the rest of the way!”
Mateo didn’t exactly know what he meant by that, but his intuition told him
to spread the dark particles thin, so they reached far enough out to their
destination without being wide enough for a group of seven people to cross
over with them. They then activated their slingdrives, and used the signal
to navigate them to the right destination. The technicolors came and went,
and they found themselves in a familiar place. This was the room they went
to before they were knocked unconscious, and inserted into the Underburg
simulation with false memories. The place was empty back then, but not this
time. Miracle was there, as were Octavia, Pacey, and some other woman. He
seemed to like the ladies. He wasn’t happy right now, though.
Miracle’s eyes widened in fear as she stared at the team. She looked over at
her boss. “I’m sorry. They took the cuffs off! You said I could come back if
they took the cuffs off!”
“We never needed the cuffs, you idiot,” Ramses argued. “He can find anyone
in the universe.” He jerked his head towards Mateo.”
“Not with my shielding,” Pacey contended. “There must be something else.”
“Nanites are very smol,” Leona said to him. “They could be on you, without
you even knowing it. We never needed the cuffs,” she echoed Ramses.
“You tracked me, like an animal,” Miracle spat.
“You’re a murderer. Which one is worse?”
“Who said I murdered anybody?”
“So you were lying.”
“Enough,” Pacey interrupted. “You obviously came here to talk, so let’s
talk. Leave my girls out of it.”
“Mr. Henricksen, again, I’m so—” Miracle tried to apologize.
He held up a commanding hand. “We’ll talk about it later. You both can go
now.”
Miracle left, as did Octavia, having never said a word. Miracle was
annoying, but an opposing force. Octavia still felt like a betrayal. They
wanted to talk to her again too, but on a personal level. Today was about
business. The mysterious other woman stayed. She didn’t lurch or hesitate.
She knew from the start that he wasn’t ordering her to do anything. If this
were an action movie, she would be the one in charge here, and all of
their previous dealings were with her henchman or lieutenant, who was only
pretending to be in charge. But this wasn’t a movie, was it? Was it?
It was a movie before, under the dome. It could certainly be that again, or
worse...still.
“I understand that you have reservations about fulfilling the mission,”
Pacey began, getting himself comfortable in an arm chair while the woman sat
next to him in a hardback.
“That’s an understatement,” Leona said. “We’re not doing it. We don’t need
higher compensation, or incentive. We don’t need you to explain why you
think we should do it. It’s just not happening. We don’t care if you agree
or not. We don’t care what you want or know at all. It’s. Not. Happening. If
you have some kind of Plan B, which doesn’t involve us, then I suggest you
move forward with it. We’re not interested, and we never were. Why don’t you
make like a snowflake, and let it go.”
“I don’t know what that means, but I want you to know that I’m listening,
and I hear you. I won’t make you do anything that you don’t wanna do.” He
seemed proud of himself for the response, which meant that it was a trick.
It probably had something to do with the woman next to him.
They all realized that this wasn’t actually going their way, and it felt
exhausting. Mateo stopped forward and placed his hand upon Leona’s chest. He
gently nudged her backwards in the direction of the team. “It’s all right. I
got this.” He took another step forward, but more towards the stranger. “Who
are you? What is your stake in this?”
The woman looked over to Pacey, not for guidance, but more like they were
having an unspoken conversation with each other. She lifted her eyebrows to
ask a question. He shrugged like the answer was maybe. She pointed at
him, and lifted her brows again. He shrugged again, but this time, more as
if to say, yeah, fine. They made a couple of other gestures towards
each other, all basically implying that they were relenting to the team’s
demands, but really, it was impossible to know for sure what they were
saying. In fact, they could have been in the middle of an actual psychic
conversation. Finally, after Pacey said, “okay” out loud, the woman took a
breath, and leaned back in her chair. “I was admittedly hurt when I first
heard the term Team Kadiar.”
“No,” Mateo said.
“I felt left out,” the woman went on.
“No,” Mateo said louder. It couldn’t be.
“Yes, it’s true, father. I’m your fourth daughter. Or should I say...your
first. His name isn’t Pacey. It’s Séarlas. And I am Franka.”
