Universe of the Soul (18 page)

I act normal, a front as false as everything else around here but I'm really hollow inside, less real than my own creations

Even they have secrets now. I've lost the key somewhere, I'm unraveling

I feel myself unraveling

Did father feel this? Like being pulled upwards, yanked one vein at a time? Less and less, more and more until you're not anywhere? Is there some point where we just shatter into some nothingness the world calls madness? I wish to Danwe that I had quit – but I don't

Is this how it starts I can see how this leads to the end

Better to end it?

No no no nonononononono

A threat it's a threat where's Freya?

Something happened to father something happened to father something happened

Murder

Why why the mind is tricky

We've made them too well they're too much like us

Knew too much, always too dangerous to know too much but what?

My burden now. Must protect my own, even from

Where does this lead?

Truth or false, both will burn to death to death

A
wareness came first. Before any of the senses awoke, she was aware that she
was
. It meant something important, but she couldn't decipher what. The next thing that manifested was feeling. She was lying on something cool and hard, but not uncomfortable. Her body felt hot, as if she had a fever. Air was breezing gently past her face; she could feel it on every portion of her body except for her right arm. She couldn't feel her arm at all. That fact should have bothered her, but she felt ambivalent.
Oh well.

Hearing was the second sense regained. At first all she could hear was a monotonous
beep beep
of something to her right. The cacophony of machinery didn't concern her, until she realized that there was a noise she wasn't hearing; the sound of the ship's engines. The droning hum was often forgotten until it was absent. Were there engine problems? Why hadn't she been notified? She brooded about it for a while until she slid back into sleep.

Scent was returned to her when she woke again, like a gift. She didn't know how long she'd slept, but wasn't worried. The air that was still brushing across her bore the sickly sweet odor of the infirmary; disinfectants, medicaments, and a whiff of death. Over it all was something else she didn't quite recognize. Incense?

Where am I?

The challenge of opening her eyes was a daunting one. It seemed as if she spent eons on the task, to no avail. Resting between each effort, she tried to connect with her eyes to open them, but such a simple task took on the proportions of a recon that had suddenly been ambushed.

Bright. It was the indicator that she had succeeded. Too bright, so the cool darkness returned. She had succeeded once though, so she tried again. Squinting to minimize the effect on her eyes, she looked. And saw a dark stone vaulted ceiling, obscured by shadows that clung like cobwebs.

Sound echoed towards her, but she found she couldn't move her head to see who it was or what it was. Straining her limited abilities, she waited. A figure appeared above her, partially obscuring the light and most of the dark ceiling. It took her a moment to focus. Human male, was her first impression. The second was that his pale eyes seemed to slide right through her, and were vaguely familiar.

“Are you awake for good this time?”

She felt around for her voice. “Where. Am I?” It came out scratchy and slurred, as though she hadn't used her voice in a long time. Perhaps she hadn't.

“Safe. Alive, miraculously.”

That seemed to be all the information she needed, for she could feel herself falling back into the gray twilight without permission. The man was still standing above her as she drifted away. “Welcome back, Veranda.”

She frowned, or thought she did. “Not me. Not my name.”

“It is now.”

***

Freya woke from a dreamless sleep suddenly, like one does at the sound of an explosion outside one's home. It felt as though the vast sphere of energy that she had always felt connected to had exploded to twice its size in a manner of seconds. The air vibrated with unabsorbed power. There were voices whispering in the hallway beyond her chambers, punctuated by the pattering of feet. Excited voices, curious voices, skeptical voices. Freya rose quickly, donned a robe, and went out to join the others who were gathering close by.

“Did you feel that?” one Talented asked her as she approached. Everyone was still in their nightclothes. Most were barefoot, their feet stepping lightly on the cool stone floor as they converged in the common space that connected most of the bedchambers. The moon shone bright through the windows along one wall, the breeze moving their clothing and hair in soft caresses.

“I feel it now!” exclaimed another Talented, patting her heart. “Freya, do you think
ada
Sergei has amplified the energy in the temple for a gathering?”

“Don't be silly, Darla,” the first woman said. “This is totally different from a normal amplification. Besides, he gave no forewarning, and all our amplifiers are right here. It's got to be something big. Something utterly Powerful.”

“Do you think this might have something to do with the darkness all the precogs have been experiencing lately? Darla inquired. Her second set of eyes blinked rapidly, filtering the light given off by the moon. Her kievian tentacles twisted and snaked around her shoulders, revealing her excitement.

“What do you think, Freya? You have some foresight,”

“I honestly don't know,” Freya replied. The mention of foresight had her glancing around for Ayane. “Whatever it is, it's something big. This was not engineered by
ada
Sergei. He doesn't have this much power. None of us do.”

“You want to know what I believe?” an older Talented spoke for the first time. The others gathered closer. Crya had lived in the convent longer than any of the others present, and as such was highly respected. “This energy burst is similar in essence to the smaller one we experienced about eleven years ago. Back then, many of us believed that an extremely powerful Talented had awoken; whom, we didn't know, and never discovered. But if we were correct then…”

“Then this would signify the awakening of a powerful being,” Sarthane, the woman who had first spoken gasped. “Maybe even more powerful than a Talented!”

“But who is greater than a Talented?” Darla demanded.

Sarthane gave her a pitying look. “By Danwe, girl. Use your head for a moment. What's the highest category of Talented?”

“Adept of course.” Darla replied, not comprehending. “Beings so powerful they could overwhelm any Talented. But we've been taught that all the Adept genes are extinct, and they were a phenomenon so rare that there were only three Adepts in a generation to begin with. They're just a myth, right? That's what all the elders say.”

“We could be wrong,” Crya said as the crowd became agitated. “These two surges of energy may have nothing to do with awakenings. Then again,”

“Our teachers may be wrong.”

“Or,” a very young Talented piped up from the back of the crowd, her hair in little braids and her eyes dark with power. “They are teaching us wrong.”

“That's nonsense,” another argued. “Why would they deliberately teach us an untruth?”

Leaving the crowd to speculate and argue about the night's events, Freya went in search of her younger friend.

The occupancy light was on by Ayane's door. Yet when Freya tapped the door to see if she was somehow still asleep, she noticed that the door was locked from the inside. She contemplated thoughtfully for a moment, debating whether or not she should disturb her friend when she may be sleeping, but a soft noise coming from the other side of the door caught her attention. Eavesdropping shamelessly, Freya pressed her ear to the door and heard the sound a little better. Crying.

“Ayane?”

No answer.

“Ayane, it's Freya, are you all right?”

Still no answer. Concerned now, Freya reached out with one of her limited abilities, empathy. Almost at once she could feel distress radiating through the door, a sickening mixture of pain, fear, and… knowing?

“Are you feeling well? Ayane, answer me!”

When she once again got no reply, Freya placed a hand on the old-fashioned lock mechanism. Her telekinetic abilities were as weak as the rest of her gifts, but constant practice and visualization allowed her a stronger use for what she had. Closing her eyes, she pictured the inside of the lock. Once the image was stable in her mind, she gathered the traces of energy in the atmosphere around her until she had combined enough to push the gears and pins to their unlocked positions. It would have normally taken her several minutes, but the increase in the energy that had woken the inhabitants of the convent boosted her abilities. It amplified them a little too much, she realized when the lock exploded and the door burst open as if assaulted by a hurricane.

“Ayane?” wincing a little, Freya entered the room. It was dark, but the light from the hallway slipped in around her and partially illuminated the little space. She was quick to find her friend, curled up on the bed shivering and whimpering softly. “What's wrong?”

“She has awakened,” Ayane stammered, curling into Freya as her friend pulled her into her arms. “She is here with us. Cerebitha – the great twisted is threatened. The change is upon us, the pieces moving.”

“Who? Who has awakened?” Ayane's fear seeped into Freya like ice water.

Ayane's eyes were opaque, and filled with pain.

“Ayane,
sorja
, listen to me. Who has awakened?”

“Veranda. Veranda has awoken. Now it will burn. Everything will burn!”

***

Adri's arm screamed as though it had been plunged into molten lava to the shoulder. With an agonized cry, she reached over with her left hand and grasped her right shoulder in an effort to ease the pain. Her bare skin felt hot to the touch, but after a few mind-numbing seconds, the pain eased down from vomiting-level to merely horrible. It wasn't until then that Adri felt the strength to open her eyes.

There was a moment's panic when she didn't recognize where she was. The room was dim, made of some brown stone with a vaulted ceiling that was lost in the shadows. Machinery that looked several centuries newer than the room cluttered the area, items that Adri recognized as belonging to a medical facility. She was lying on some sort of bed, and with a fresh surge of panic, she realized that under the blanket, she was naked. The only thing on her was her mother's pendant, which certainly wasn't covering anything.

Danwe, where am I?

The sound of approaching footsteps pushed her into action. Adri tried to sit up, but she was too weak. Instead, she rolled herself off the bed, collapsing on the floor in a tangled heap with the blanket wrapped around her like a burial shroud. Moaning a little, she waited for the room to stop spinning before forcing her weight to her feet. Using her left shoulder as her anchor, she leaned against the bed and rose, clutching the blanket with her good hand.

The footsteps were getting closer. Sucking in a breath to focus, Adri looked around for anything she could use as a weapon. There was a tray of medical instruments on the other side of the bed. Staggering like a drunk, she made her way around to it. Grasping a tool that looked vaguely like a giant fork, she used all her momentum to run across the room, collapsing against the wall by the door. Miraculously managing to stay upright, she stuck the fork between her teeth, knotted the blanket so it would stay around her shoulder, and retrieved her pitiful weapon.

Despite the pain radiating through her useless right arm and the spinning room, she was hyperaware of the footsteps stopping outside the door. Taking another ragged breath, she gripped the fork tightly and waited, her fighting elegy humming. She heard the soft beep of the lock disengaging, and the rush of air as the door slid opened and disappeared into the wall. She waited one second for the newcomer to step through the doorway before striking.

The newcomer's hand shot out and gripped her wrist before the fork could pierce his chest. It was pitifully easy for him to keep a hold of her arm with one hand while he removed her weapon with his other. In the seconds that action took, Adri summed him up. Human, or humanoid, a few inches taller than she, narrow build, pale skinned, blond hair that touched his shoulders, and dressed in some sort of dull colored monastic garb. His face was also narrow, sporting a blue oval gemstone on his forehead. His eyes were blue as well, paler than the gem, and seemed to look right through her to her soul.

His voice was calm when he spoke. “Impaling me with a nerve stimulant is probably not a wise choice, considering that I came to help you with the pain in your arm.”

Adri's body tensed for fight-or-flight, despite the fact that she seemed unable to do either. All the strength that she had managed to gather seemed to be leaking out her arm. “Who are you?”

“I think a better question would be who are you. Or rather, who
were
you. But now is not the time for questions. Your arm needs to be seen to, and you really shouldn't be out of bed for another few days.” He held out his hand. “Come on,”

Adri pushed herself away from him. “Keep away from me. You didn't answer my question.”

“My name is Eliot Blair, not that it will have any significance to you. Veranda - ”

Panic shot up, blind panic. “That's not my name!”

“Yes it is.” With a huff of breath, Blair began to approach her again. “I can explain all this if you would only let me see to your arm,”

“I said keep away from me!” In desperation, Adri flung her good arm out at him in a futile gesture to stop.

As if on invisible strings, Blair was lifted from the ground and propelled across the room, crashing into the equipment before collapsing onto the floor. Adri slid to the floor with a gasp. Power still hummed around her like the crackle of static electricity.

“What…what's going on?” Adri watched as Blair groaned and sat up gingerly.

The two stared at each other for a long moment before Blair spoke. “I know you are confused. Let me see to your arm while I try to explain. If I can.”

“Wait,” Adri tried to push herself back to her feet. “Tell me this. Why do you keep calling me Veranda?”

“Because that's who you are,” Blair wheezed, scrambling to his feet. “Or rather, who you've become. You are Veranda, the Warrior Adept.”

Adri laughed until the pain made her pass out.

Humacom Debate Continues

Experts Hint that Recall

Is Imminent

Corinthe:
Debates over humacom Humacom Personality Programs has spread beyond the realm of scientists and philosophers, reports interviewers. While those in authority still wonder at the cause, average humacom owners find they have bigger concerns over the results.

“Let the scientists work out the cause,” Rallan Feist, an owner of three domesticoms states. “What I want to know is how this is going to affect my life. I'm not the only one concerned about the possibility of my property turning against me in the middle of the night.”