Walking back through the Cilbuper sewer tunnels, Vaga felt like she was lying to Palo. More than likely the field triage skills she quickly performed on Morigin back at the ship came from her conduit programming, but what she didn’t tell him, is that it frightened her. The black-outs and dreams didn’t bother her. She felt that occurring in the biological part of her brain trying to recover.
But the other oddities, in the escape pod, on Draedus when Morigin handed her a weapon and then again inserting the IV – all those she did not feel in control. And as easily as she recovered from those brief spells, she thought long and hard about whether or not the conduit programming was regaining control, or if these instances were but symptoms of the reboot. Either way, she felt incomplete as if at any moment she could possibly fall under the conduit programming again, or it could be disappearing forever, leaving her mostly human.
As Palo walked in front of her, sloshing in the mess of the largest city on the planet, she wondered about her place in all of this. She got herself onto this ship, now everything that had happened seemed to be keeping her here. Her eyes caught the smoothness of Palo’s cheek in a brief flicker of light, his tousled brown hair and more now, the conviction of some of his words. Talking with Odiacz, he tried so hard to make all this sound like a fleeting dream his father had, but everything they had been through spoke against that. Someone out there wanted something really badly and they had resorted to killing people to get it. Or at least trying to kill people. That put this whole situation in the feasible column for her. A part of her wanted Palo to quit fighting it and accept that this is real, that everything his father had worked for and everything Palo resented him for was actually true and in danger of killing both of them.
Vaga thought about Morigin in medical pod back on the ship, Morigin’s chest heaving slowly within it and Jade whispering secret wishes to him. Palo promised to convince him not to rip Telo’s memories out of her mind, a process that would undoubtedly leave her broken and insane. Then she remembered Odiacz telling Palo about the [pull from previous chapter], her tentacles tight-fisted around the waterpac. Vaga had admired her tentacles. She felt a certain kinship with this creature, even though her own tentacles were nanofibers extending from her fingertips, while Odiacz had six sucker covered tentacles breaking off from her forearms. It wasn’t a direct comparison, but Vaga imagined her fibers wrapped around a terminal coil, drinking the data like Odiacz did water.
Vaga followed behind Palo and heard him muttering under his breath. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m having REAL reservations about myself,” Palo said, trudging through the swamp and muck of the tunnels. “Every decision, every feeling I have ever had, I doubt now. I want to so badly blame my father for this, but I can’t. Not to mention that I remember absolutely nothing that my father ever told me about any of this! I’m of no use to anyone. Morigin should have left me with that huntsman. I’d be better off with a plasma blast to the back of the head.” Vaga felt uncomfortable with Palo’s self-immolation, but at the same time she had no experience in these matters. What do you do with someone spiraling out of control like this? She reached into the newly open portions of her mind, stretching back to when she was a child, before becoming a conduit, back when she was feeling bad. What did her mother do? It hurt to press that deep on purpose, but she uncovered a memory of running with other children in their colony. She had stepped on a rock and fallen down. Tears. Then her mother swept her up and gave her big hug and a kiss. She remembered the pain dulling, the tears subsiding.
Catching up to Palo in the sewers, she leaned over and hugged him, then planted a kiss on his cheek. But Palo had turned too quickly in response to the hug and her lips pressed against his by mistake.
Before she could step away, she felt his arms around her, pulling her close, his lips roving about hers, kissing her back. Her first instinct – to break contact – fell limp in her mind as it processed all that was happening to her. Her face felt hot and her legs wobbly. Not to mention the light-headedness filling her head.
After a moment, Palo let go of her and said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. I thought…”
Vaga crossed her arms over her chest and said, “Don’t worry about it. It wasn’t all that bad. Though, I meant to kiss your cheek.”
“I figured that about half way through.”
Vaga reached out and grabbed his hand and said, “You can’t beat yourself up over this. When Morigin wakes up, he’ll know what to do. He’ll know just the place your father hid that magic glove.”
Palo turned back to her suddenly, then leaned down and snuck another kiss from her. “Thank you!” he said and started running through the tunnels.
Into the Jade Tendril they ran, the whole time Vaga screamed at Palo, “What did I do?”
Skittering into the cabin, they both stopped dead at the sight of Morigin stooped over one of the cabin chairs, the two plasma blast points still showing through his clothes and burnt to his skin.
“He’s weak,” Jade said. “So don’t get him too riled up.”
Morigin waved his hand at them and said, “I’m not weak. I’m just tired…really, really tired. Which one of you saved me?”
Palo quickly looked at Vaga and then turned to Morigin and said, “Vaga. I couldn’t lift you.”
“Figures,” Morigin said. “You always were a bit of a sissynanny.”
Vaga’s head swam with golden thoughts of Palo. He had kept his promise!
Morigin slowly backed himself into a cabin chair and said, “So, you saved my life conduit. Yay for the machine chick. Maybe you still have a heart beneath all those servos and wiring. This will definitely make it harder to hook you up to that experience chamber.”
Palo stepped forward and said, “I think I have something figured out?” “Do you now,” Morigin said. “I’m guessing Jade brought you here because I was on death’s door. Cilbuper. Odiacz lives there deep in the crannies of the sewer system. Best healer in the galaxy. I’m also guessing you believe me a little bit more about your father’s work. By now you know Odiacz’s work is not the work of medicine or technology. Which only leaves the plausibility of what your father believed in, right?”
Palo looked impatient. “Listen for a second, would you? Yes. We’re on board with you now. But we found out the artifact you recovered from home wasn’t a part of the armor.”
Morigin looked up at Palo with a squinty eye and said, “It was a fake then?”
“Yes,” Vaga said. “Which means the people who tried to kill us stole the wrong one.”
Morigin started laughing boisterously, then held his chest and stopped laughing. “That is classic,” he said. “Right now Grand Minister Withryn or Hallastaare are trying to put on a piece of armor that won’t work.” “Hallastaare?” Vaga questioned.
“The Grand Minister?” Palo added.
“Sure,” Morigin said. “Which organizations benefit the most from the recovery of that armor?”
Vaga and Palo nodded in agreement.
“And crafty old Telo hid it somewhere special, right?” Morigin asked.
“Out in plain sight,” Palo said. He reached down to pickup the rucksack that him and Vaga filled with trinkets from his room. Trinkets they had originally planned on selling to barter for passage on a vessel after they escaped from Morigin. Palo shuffled threw the bag and retrieved a delicate box with tissue in it. He removed the lid and peeled away the tissue paper to reveal the delicate glove.
Vaga peered into the box and laid her eyes on the glove. When she first saw it, it held no rapture or gleam of her eye, but now she could see it – a faint shimmer that crackled about the fabric. She poked her finger at it. The fabric was unlike anything she felt before, almost absurdly delicate, like the skin of a long dead queen, yet it looked alive. She wanted to pick it up and put it on. She imagined herself wearing it – queen of the galalxy, knighting warriors, bringing peace.
“Cosmic power, huh,” Palo said. And before Morigin could lift a withered arm, Palo had lifted up the glove and pulled it over his right hand. A bright, white flash of light erupted from the glove, knocking Vaga backwards and then as they watched, fibers of white light sprung from the glove and wove through Palo’s skin. Thousands of threads wrapped and wove around his forearm, merging with his skin and reforming upon itself.
Vaga and Morigin shielded their eyes from the bright light and only heard Palo’s screams of pain as the glove wove itself into Palo and became a part of him. When the light died out, Vaga rushed to Palo’s side, but he was unconscious.
“Don’t touch him!” Morigin screamed. “Those who are not willed to the armor by the creator himself perish. You don’t want to be near him when his atoms disintegrate into seraphim.”
But nothing happened to Palo. The only thing that changed was his right hand and forearm, which now possessed a thick black armor with three rounded knots on the forearm and short spikes adorning the knuckles.
“What is that on his arm?” Vaga asked. “It doesn’t look good.”
Morigin hobbled himself up from the chair and stepped to Palo, where he nudged the armored gauntlet with his boot. “That’s the [RIGHT],” he said. “A pure manifestation of the dark vacuum of space, conjuror of black holes, devourer of life. A weapon that comes with great responsibility.”
At the word weapon, Vaga felt a shudder drift in front of her eyes and a warm glow in the center of her mind. Uh-oh. She knew that feeling – the sudden slip of control.
Morigin stood over Palo and said, “I’ll be damned. He was willed to the armor.”
Vaga’s mind grew frenetic and she bolted for the washroom to the sounds of Morigin saying, “Where are you going? I can’t lift him up in my delicate condition!”
Panting over the basin in the washroom, Vaga stared at her image in the washroom. Then she saw it. A barely perceptible shudder of her eyes, almost like a twitch. She ran some cool water and splashed her face. Another shudder. What was going on? Was this the end of her incredible journey as a human again? Her thoughts switched to Palo. The kiss. The mangled black gauntlet forged to his arm. Maybe there was something there, between them.
Then her thoughts were rattled by a blast to the ship a, that shook everything and knocked her down. In the cabin, she heard Jade’s voice saying, “That’s a warning shot, Captain. Incoming COM.”
“They better have a damn good reason for firing on us!” Morigin yelled back.
Vaga peered around the corner of the washroom to watch the exchange. The shuddering in her eyes had stopped. In the cabin, Jade switched to the message and at the first gurgly, slurred syllable, she didn’t need Jade to translate it to know it was Slavonian.
“Give us the conduit,” the Slavo leader said. “And we will not feast on you or your crew.”
They found her! How could it be? She lost them back at the Kcid station. Then she thought back to those strange feelings – the warm glows and the eye shudders. Her thoughts circled around the phetaserver in her brain. They bugged her! What was she thinking? Of course they bugged her, but every conduit was probably bugged. They wouldn’t let their most prized weapon against the GSA be lost to stray reboot.
She looked into the cabin at Palo lying on the floor grates, that hideous, evil looking weapon attached to his arm. She saw Morigin at the ship’s console, barking orders at Jade. She had doomed them all. At first, she did this to survive, but for some reason now, she felt attached to these people, to this ship. And her presence aboard it will end them. Vaga’s shoulders shuddered and tears streamed from her eyes. She didn’t recognize the reaction right away, but a long dormant memory immediately swept to mind – the night her parents told her they were moving to a backwater planet to escape the Nerge. She didn’t want to move, even if it meant death and all the thoughts of her friends whom she never would see again, overwhelmed her with a terrible sadness. A sadness like this one – the thought of her finally being human again, only to know that her conduit past would be the end of them. It was too much for a her, for her newly opened mind, so she let the blackout take her away.
* * *
Blackness.
Cold.
Light.
When Vaga opened her eyes a bright white light burned into the back of her skull.
Blink. There’s a room in white.
Blink. Her home was gone.
Blink. Where did my parents go?
Blink. Wait. There’s something on the ceiling.
When her pupils were used to the light she opened them fully – looking high above her on the ceiling. Above her hung a dismal, bloody mess. Someone was strapped to a table with their arms and legs splayed open, red muscles against white bone. Fused into the body's hands were thousands of nanofibers all stretched flat and extending outward to a machine.
Blink. What’s wrong with their head? Their skull was open. Is that their brain?
Vaga noticed that there were two domed droids – one each at the foot and head of the poor soul. Each droid had ten long spindly arms that reminded her of a bogspider. The droid at the victim’s head peeled back folds in their brain and the one at the other end worked on installing the last of the long flowing fibers into the arms and legs of the individual. Averting her eyes back to the robot near the head, she saw it press a thin box silver box into the brain.
Vaga blinked her eyes rapidly.
A sudden pressure pushed at the back of her eyes – it didn’t hurt but it felt odd.
Then she looked back at the ceiling and saw the droid pushing the thin silver box further into the person’s brain and she felt even more pressure on her eyes.
Something wasn’t right.
She tried to move but nothing worked except her eyes. A monitor somewhere in the room began beeping as her heart raced with fear. She wasn’t looking at another person being operated on. They were operating on her!
The machine in the room beeped louder and a red light began to flash. Electronic mumbling came from the droids. Their heads turned and inspected her – then a long silvery thin arm stretched over her head holding a large injector. With a quick, precise stab to Vaga’s neck the sedative was administered and her eyelids drooped shut.
Her mind fell back to her parents, playing with her. All of them having dinner together. Building their prefab home in the new colony. She remembered her room. Her simple bunk. Her rag doll thrown in the corner – the one her mom made from scraps of saffeta cloth.
Then she remembered her window – cut open. The large hands that reached through and grabbed her. Being dragged through the brush. She heard the crack-crack-crack of her father's rifle. Their screams as she was dragged out of range.
Then Blackness.
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