Authors: Kyra Anderson
“I know.”
Isa and the other Elites were looking
over the control panel for Venus that was far more complicated than any of the
newer technology to which they were accustomed. They knew they only had once
chance to disable the security monitoring system, which would allow them to set
up the area where Dr. Busen would perform the surgery. As long as the
monitoring system was up, Venus could be notified of any changes in the chamber
of the processor, tipping her off to their location when the healthcare
machines were plugged in.
Isa carefully moved her finger along the
screen, rotating the circle of codes and files represented by small boxes.
“I’ve never seen one of these before,”
Aolee whispered.
“I’ve only dealt with this once,” Isa
said, her eyes sharp on the screen as she held her finger over one square,
seeing the route of the codes listed at the top of the screen. “I had to do
repairs on one of her processors, and I know there is a release mechanism for
programming somewhere around here.”
“This isn’t the programming panel?” Hana
asked, confused.
“No,” Isa said. “Just the control panel.”
“What is the difference?”
“Control panel is what you might call the
landing page for everything,” Isa murmured, turning the circle once more and
holding her finger over another box. “Programming panel is what we understand
as the control panel.”
Isa double tapped the box and a metal
panel moved away from under the screen, extending a platform with a touch
keyboard.
“There we go,” Isa said. She quickly
typed in some commands for the processor and opened up the security, disabling
the program. She checked once more to be sure that the monitoring was off on
all related files and programs and then turned off the programming panel.
“I guess it’s safer that her hardware was
never upgraded,” Anders said, shaking his head. “No one would know how to use
it.”
The Elites went over to help Dr. Busen
and Paul set up the surgical area, while Isa walked back to Kailynn, who was
crouched on the ground with Tiana.
The two remained as far away from the
surgical bed and monitors as they could, glancing over occasionally and sharing
silent conversations with each other in the heat of the humming processor.
Isa began to get nervous when Remus did
not arrive at the time he was expected. After three hours of pacing worriedly,
the door opened and the Silver Elite walked in, his caretaker, Luska, behind
him, and a dog that looked almost exactly like Tiana with them.
Isa ran to him and hugged him tightly.
“You scared me,” she whispered.
“I’m fine,” he assured, heavily dropping
the ration bags and a bag of programming wires and supplies. “Listen,
everyone!” he called through the cavern. “Venus has shut down everything on
Tiao.”
“What?” Isa hissed.
“She’s left the Official communications
up and planetary communications, as well as her own security monitoring
system,” Remus continued. “That’s why I was late. I had to walk the rest of the
way here. The roads were shut down before I could disable the system on the
car.”
Isa turned to look at the surprised
expressions in the room.
“It must be chaos out there,” Chronus
whispered.
“Dr. Busen, do you have that computer I
gave you?” Isa asked. He turned to get it as Isa looked at the other Syndicate
members. “This is probably a way to scare the people into believing they need
her and cause chaos that will force us out of hiding. She knows if the people
cause enough problems that we’ll step in because we can’t leave them to destroy
themselves.”
“We have to stay hidden for now,” Anders
said strongly.
“This is what it will be like when she
does shut down,” Remus added. “The people know that you’re trying to shut her
down. Their reaction to this situation will tell us if they support you.”
Isa sighed heavily, running her hands
through her hair, her stomach tying itself in nervous knots.
Dr. Busen returned with the computer and
Isa took it, rifling through one of Remus’ bags and pulling out a cord. She
went to the processor and connected the computer to it.
“What are you doing?” Tia gasped,
horrified. “If you access her mainframe, she’ll see it immediately.”
“This computer operates outside her
sphere,” Isa murmured, opening up several windows and typing in codes. “I’m not
opening anything she does not already have open. If she has left her security
running, then we can just project it onto this screen.”
Several codes flashed across the screen
before it went temporarily black. Then, the security footage from the Syndicate
Building lit up the screen.
Everyone was too stunned to speak.
In Anon, it was the late hours of the
night, and the speakers were playing a continuous message, hauntingly echoing
through the silent city.
“
Without
me, this planet will plunge into darkness. Starvation, illness, and war will
become rampant. I have kept Tiao strong all these years, and I will show you my
power. As the planet sits in darkness, remember the power I hold.
”
However, the city was not dark. Several
small points of light were gathered at the base of the Syndicate Building. As
Kailynn looked among the small, floating lights, she realized that each of
those points of light were emergency lights, and each was held by a person,
pointed upward to the sky.
There were several thousand lights
gathered at the base of the Syndicate Building.
The feed switched before they could study
it further, and they saw that, throughout the city, there were congregations of
lights in the streets.
Beyond the city limits, a gathering of
lights and fires could be seen in Trid, contained in the center of the district,
near the Keeper’s building.
When the feed switched to another city,
one where dawn had just begun to lighten the streets, the security cameras
showed the citizens gathered in the city center, sitting with one another and
chatting lightly, some standing, others by themselves along the edges of the
congregation of thousands of citizens.
No one in the processor cavern could
believe their eyes.
Yet another city showed gatherings of
people in the streets. One city even saw the largest group in the city center,
chanting as dusk descended on another area of the planet.
“Isa! Not Venus! Isa! Not Venus!”
Isa placed her hand over her mouth and
bowed her head.
Everyone remained silent in awe as they
followed Venus while the computer discovered just how much support Isa had
across the planet to shut down the artificial intelligence.
Kailynn was so overwhelmed by everything
she had seen while watching Venus’ security mainframe scan the reactions around
the planet that, when Paul slipped away to take Tiana for a walk, Kailynn
quickly volunteered to go with him and take Remus’ dog Rio, allowing Luska to
get some sleep.
Kailynn followed Paul to the lot filled
with cars and out the direction they came, leading them into the cool morning
of the desert.
The former Significant took a deep
breath, letting the air fill her lungs and clear her head. She was startled at
the difference in the air. The air felt cleaner as it entered and left her
lungs, and the cool feeling of the morning relieved her body from the heat of
the cavern.
“Amazing how different the air is, isn’t
it?” Paul said with a chuckle. He also took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
“I don’t know about you, but I was dying in there.”
“It’s way too fucking hot in there,” Kailynn
agreed.
Paul began walking around the rock mound,
finding a path that led up the embankment and to the top of the ridge behind
the mound of rocks.
“That was incredible,” he said.
“What?”
“Seeing the support she has,” Paul
clarified, leading Kailynn up the path, watching Tiana sniff around the bushes.
“Isa is incredible.”
“I don’t know if that’s the word for it,”
Kailynn whispered. “I’m not sure there
is
a word for what she is.”
“No, I don’t suppose there is.”
“Paul, can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Are you and Dr. Busen a couple?”
Paul chuckled. “Yes, we are.”
“Dr. Busen is one of the best doctors
alive, right?”
“Not one of the best,” Paul said, shaking
his head. “He is
the
best Elite
Specialist alive.”
“Does that ever get to you?” Kailynn
asked. “Do you ever feel intimidated by him?”
“No,” Paul said, shaking his head again.
“I’m one of the best, too.” He glanced back at Kailynn with a teasing smile.
“We’re both doctors. Anyone who would listen to our conversations at home would
think we were speaking a different language at some of the terms we throw
around. Michael astounds me. He’s absolutely brilliant, and watching him
research this, seeing his dedication and fascination with what we’re about to
do, it just makes me admire him that much more.”
Kailynn lowered her eyes to the ground.
“But it never makes you feel
insignificant?”
“No,” Paul said. “We’re both doctors, so
we operate in the same way. You and Isa? You two are extremely similar in many
ways, but very different in others.” Paul turned around and looked at Kailynn,
slowly walking backward up the dirt path. “You should not feel insignificant at
all,” he said. “I’m sure Isa’s power unsettles you. Right now, she has the
power to shut down Venus, with help, of course, but that help would have never
been available without her power to begin with. That is no small feat, and that
would be frightening to anyone.”
Paul turned back around and continued
walking as Kailynn dropped her eyes to the dirt.
“When this is over,” she finally said,
“and Venus is gone, Isa will still have that power, though. She’ll still be the
leader of the planet, and she’ll still have the power to affect everyone on the
planet.”
“She will,” Paul agreed. “That’s why we
should be thankful that Isa is the one who will be doing this, and not Colonel
Amori or General Decius.”
Paul stopped at the top of the ridge and
turned to Kailynn.
“I want to show you something.”
Kailynn stepped up beside him and glanced
out over the vast area in front of them.
The valley beyond was filled with
dilapidated and collapsed buildings. Most of the metal structure still stood,
the outer walls outlining the building that had once been there, but the roofs
were caved in, the floors sunken in the center, leaving only a destroyed
carcass. There were mangled buildings, where the metal of the framework was
sharply bent and tangled, protruding from the rubble with malicious appearance,
covered in rust.
“Saera,” Paul whispered. “At one point,
this is where the planet harvested most of its food. Losing it caused
significant damage to all of Tiao.”
Kailynn stared at the ruins, thinking
over the story of Saera’s destruction.
“Do you know why it’s so difficult to
produce our food on this planet?” Paul asked. “There is plenty of food on the
planet as it is. Indigenous species would eat the plants and animals here, but
humans cannot. Even if we were to, we would starve or poison ourselves, because
we were not built to consume them. Our bodies are meant for our origins on
Earth. Therefore, we had to produce food from Earth here. But, had we forced
people to eat the indigenous plants and animals here, our species would have
built up a body that would handle that food. And we would not be struggling to
feed the people of this system.”
Paul glanced at Kailynn.
“Staying the same is never an option,” he
murmured. “Just as a person has to change to overcome trials in life, a city, a
society, a species, they all must change as well, because that is what nature
demands.” Paul chuckled. “I used to say this jokingly, but, the truth is, Isa
is a force of nature. She had to change to overcome the hardships in her life,
and she is changing things for everyone so that this planet and its people may
grow stronger. While it’s terrifying to stand next to that kind of power, and
think of yourself as powerless, it is better to be amazed by that strength, and
revel in it. Because you are also capable of great change. Just think of the
way you clawed your way out of Trid, the way you started reading and writing,
the way you came to Isa’s aid and helped her strengthen herself. You are just
as powerful as Isa. You are anything but insignificant. You gave Isa back to
us, and to the planet.”
Kailynn could only stare at Paul, letting
the words move around her skull slowly.
Paul looked over the ruins and smiled.
“Change can look devastating,” he agreed,
nodding to the city. “But I see a lot of flowers growing there that would have
never grown had a city been there.”
Paul walked back down the path, stopping
a little further down to wait for Kailynn, who continued to look out over the
small splashes of color she had not seen before among the grey concrete and
rusted metal rubble.
Tensions were very high later that day.
Paul and Dr. Busen went to all the
monitors in the improvised surgical area, turning them on and preparing the
instruments they would need for the surgery. Isa sat against the base of the
processor, watching from afar. Kailynn, who had been playing with Rio and Tiana
to take her mind off the impending surgery, finally walked to Isa and sat with
her. The Golden Elite’s eyes did not move from the doctors, so Kailynn wrapped
her arm around Isa’s and rested her head on the Elite’s shoulder.
The waiting continued.
Remus and several of the other Elites
were setting up the connections between the processor and another machine that
Maki had tried to complete on his own to destroy Venus’ codes. The Elites of
the Syndicate had continued Maki’s research and created a computer that would
read the codes.
Then, they had built a system that
contained the virus to destroy the codes, setting it separate from the other
machine and the processor. It was a simple-looking machine with a stand and a
handle that would activate the virus and send it to the two processors.
Setting up the three machines was enough
to distract them from what was about to happen.
Rayal and Tarah continued to take shifts
monitoring the outer areas of the processor’s location to be sure they had not
been found by Officials. However, they were more interested in checking in with
everyone in the cavern.
Finally, Dr. Busen stepped away from the
surgery area. He motioned for Paul to follow him and the two left the cavern,
everyone watching them.
When the door closed, Kailynn glanced at
Isa.
Isa smiled weakly and stroked her cheek
before leaning forward and brushing their lips together.
“I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Kailynn breathed,
tears threatening to overtake her, making her voice crack.
The Elites stepped away from their tasks
and waited, understanding that Dr. Busen was ready to perform the surgery.
“How much more is left?” Isa asked,
looking at Remus.
“Just connecting the final ports to the
processor.”
“Better do those now,” Isa said with a
nod.
Remus turned back to the other Elites and
they began moving around the processor, plugging in different wires.
Kailynn could hardly breathe.
When the final setup was complete,
everyone waited for the doctors to return.
When Dr. Busen walked back in, everyone
tensed. Paul and Dr. Busen walked to Isa and crouched in front of her.
“We’re ready, Isa,” Dr. Busen whispered.
“Okay,” the Elite said, taking a deep
breath and slowly letting it out.
Dr. Busen swallowed hard and looked at
the floor.
“Do you want me to tell you what I will
be doing?”
She shook her head quickly.
“Tell me afterward.”
He chuckled and nodded. “Alright. Let’s
start, then.”
Dr. Busen helped Isa to her feet, and
Paul helped Kailynn. Kailynn quickly grabbed Isa’s arm and pulled her into a tight
hug, the tears falling down her face. She whispered to the Elite that she loved
her once again and Isa repeated the sentence.
Then, Isa walked with Dr. Busen to the surgery
table.
“Chronus, Anders, Hana,” Paul called,
motioning them over. “Does someone want to tell Rayal and Tarah?”
Tia left the cavern to get the two
caretakers as Kailynn watched the three Elites approach the surgery area,
preparing to act as the nurses assisting Dr. Busen and Dr. Arre.
Remus walked to Kailynn and placed a hand
on her shoulder. She looked up at him, her hand over her nose and mouth as she
fought to contain her tears. Before she thought better of it, she wrapped her
arms around him, hugging him tightly. He returned the hug, closing his eyes.
They both remained silent.
Isa removed her shirt and bra and
reclined on the table as everyone who would be involved with the surgery washed
their hands and covered their clothes. Isa closed her eyes and took several
deep, measured breaths.
Dr. Busen started the IV on her and then
hooked up her other arm on fluids. He covered her body with a blanket and then
the hole in the blanket with another sheet before continuing to attach Isa to
different monitors.
Tarah and Rayal walked in, both walking
up to Isa and standing in her line of vision as the final preparations were
made.
By the time Dr. Busen announced that he
would be putting her under to start the procedure, everyone had gathered around
the area, watching nervously. Isa turned her head and looked around the cavern,
her eyes finally meeting Kailynn’s.
The two remained in an eye-lock before
Isa’s eyes slowly slipped shut, and all the beeping of the monitors evened to a
constant, rhythmic sound.