by M. D. Cooper
She hesitated and leaned into the bulkhead as a feeling of sorrow welled up in her for the loss of the society and ideals upon which Markus and the Noctus had founded Victoria.
Troy must have sensed what was on her mind, because he said,
She stood and felt anger coming to her rescue,
Troy didn’t reply, and Katrina entered her cabin still angry. But now she was angry at herself. She had been indulging in a fit of remorse over the past, and it was enough. Almost applying the sleep inducers, she remembered her resolve not to use her augmentations to alter her brain chemistry further.
I can face this head-on…so to speak. I don’t need to hide from my dreams; they should be where I find peace.
Feeling as if she had turned a negative into a positive, Katrina stripped off her shipsuit and draped it carefully over a chair. Her boots were neatly placed beneath the chair as her toe twitched with a remembered bruise. She stretched up until her bones cracked, then she took several deep breaths before reaching down to her toes, then exhaled through her nose as she straightened.
Katrina allowed all her senses to turn inward and focus on how her skin felt as it moved over bone and sinew. Putting a hand to her stomach, she felt the softness of real flesh, focused on the feel of her blood pulsing through the artery that traveled down her body, feeding blood into the veins of her lower torso.
She moved to sit in the middle of her bunk, legs crossed in the lotus position, back straight, head up, eyes closed, and began her mantra. “I am Katrina, daughter of the despot Yusuf, friend of the Noctus, liberator of the Hyperion, wife of Markus, president of Victoria, searcher in the dark. I am the lover of Juasa, the survivor of the fields, despot of Midditerra, and leader of the Cavalry.”
She breathed out and in once more.
“I am all of those things. They form my foundation, they give me purpose. My memories are my strength, the proof of my convictions.”
She took another deep breath, pushing out the negativity that had been feeding her mind.
“I am the soft reed that grows along the shore. One foot in the river, one on land.”
She all but felt the cool breeze in the air and the delicious touch of grass under her bare feet.
“I bend in the wind, I weather the flood, I persist, I survive. I touch all these things, I live in their worlds, but they are not me, and I am not them. My beliefs and persistence are my absolution. I am Katrina.”
Her mouth opened to speak the next words, but no sound came out. In fact, she could not hear anything. It was as if she were deaf, as if…as if she were in a vacuum.
She opened her eyes to the blackness of space.
For a moment, she did not react. Had she fallen asleep in the middle of her meditation? She looked down at herself and saw that she was wearing a slave’s sheet. She felt—but could not hear—herself gasp, and her hand went to her neck, where she gripped the cold metal of a slave’s collar.
Panic hit her like a physical blow, and only the fact that she was floating without gravity kept her from falling to her knees. She clawed with both hands, trying to pull the collar apart, to rid herself of the obscene feeling of slimy ice around her neck.
Then it was gone.
It had not opened, it had just disappeared.
She turned her head, looking to see if it was floating nearby, and saw herself reflected in a viewing portal. But she was on the wrong side. She was in an airlock with nothing but a shipsuit to protect her from the cold.
A different kind of panic, like a dull thud in her mind, began to pulse through her muscles, but not her skin.
She touched her hand and then her face. It was not skin, it was metal, the Warlord’s version of skin. She was not a slave, she was a mass murderer, and she was in an airlock about to be put to death by Armis, the new president of the Midditerra System. The first official act of the new ruler of Persia would be to kill someone.
Katrina gave a silent, sarcastic laugh at the irony.
Now she saw the faces on the other side of the viewing portal and noted that Armis was watching her with a glint of anticipation—or was it greed?—in her eyes.
Suddenly, venom she did not know she possessed filled her with fury, and in words she could not hear but knew she spoke, Katrina cursed the woman she saw.
“May you find that being the leader of a people so intent on their own wealth and power that the suffering of the people is taken almost as a pleasure by them, destroys your democratic ideals.
“Those you govern will use you to their benefit, and when you no longer serve their needs, you will find yourself standing here where you have put me. Because you are not better than them, you are worse. How many years did you sit in your mansion surrounded by luxuries bought on the backs of those you pretended to protect from abuse, but never offered true freedom?
“How many years, Armis? While others of your class beat their slaves into fertilizer for their coffers? So now you are strong? Now you stand up for the people? Only after you sat silent and allowed thousands to die and clear the way for you to seize power from the evil nemesis your people forced me to become because I chose not to die. I chose to fight back!
“If I am guilty of the murder of hundreds of thousands, so are you. You and your kind brought me here to become this person. May you rot in whatever passes for Hell in your mind!”
Katrina turned away from the inner door to deny Armis any reply, and watched the outer airlock door as it began to open. She felt nothing.
Why wasn’t there a violent rush of atmosphere escaping as the seal broke? Why wasn’t her body feeling the effects of the vacuum? Shouldn’t her saliva be starting to boil at this point? Shouldn’t the vessels in her eyes burst into a red haze, covering her vision?
But she heard nothing, felt nothing, and still she could see the stars, the bright stars getting closer, so much closer. Then there was a bright light in front of her, drifting in the space between her and the outer airlock door.
“What…?” she said softly, reaching a hand out toward it.
“You’ve made a lot of mistakes,” the light said.
Katrina didn’t hear the words, but she knew they were being said, just as she had known what she was saying to Armis. It made her feel cold and alone, like she was surrounded by nothing but a singular force of will. A force against which all of her efforts were futile.
“Who are you?” she asked.
She thought her sanity was finally gone, stars were talking to her, and she was talking back. Is this what dying is?
“You’re not going insane nor are you dying,” the windy voice said, the words whispering their way into her mind. “Touch me.”
Katrina realized that though she had begun to reach out to the light, her hand had stopped, trembling in place.
“What are you?” she asked again.
“Touch me,” the voice whispered again. Its words were accompanied by a wind and punctuated by a peal of thunder in the distance.
&
nbsp; Katrina touched the thing before her. At first it felt solid, like hard light riding the surface of an electrostatic field, but then her hand slipped through and it felt warm, comforting.
“What—?”
“I am Xavia,” the being said. “You know me. You have seen me before. You need to remember, Katrina. You need to remember everything. You need to stop pushing things away just because they don’t make you feel happy or good.”
A part of Xavia moved, and Katrina wondered if the being was shaking her head.
“The Cavalry are not your people. Your people are coming, and you need to remain strong.”
“Why?” Katrina asked. “Why should I stay strong?”
“Because,” the being of light replied. “If you persevere, you’ll meet Tanis again. I promised you this. Do you remember?”
Katrina hesitated and looked back. She could still see Armis, but it was like everything was frozen. The airlock door that should have opened to spew her out into the black had stopped halfway, and there was something wrong with the stars. Behind this being of light that was so familiar to her, nothing was moving; it was almost one-dimensional.
For a moment, she thought if she reached out past the portal, she would touch space like it was a solid mass.
She focused on the light in front of her again and realized that she did remember. She had already been here, already died.
“Relax,” Xavia said. “You’re not dead and you are not going to die. Remember, I need you to meet with Tanis, and she’s not going to arrive for some time.”
“I don’t understand,” Katrina said, a frown creasing her features.
“You will,” Xavia replied. “But now you need to fix yourself. I fixed you once before, and I could do so again now, but you are so much stronger than I realized. Stronger than even you realize. Your mind would not let you have absolution by simple fire. You must conquer your inner self by accepting yourself.”
Katrina felt the memory of the fire Xavia was talking about. The way her metal skin had melted off her body. She looked down and saw liquid metal pooled at her feet. Her body was completely bare of skin. She couldn’t help but flex her fingers, staring in terrified wonder at the macabre sight before her: sinew and muscles stretching over bone, blood throbbing through veins in a slow rhythm.
This time she felt nothing; it was another of her senses that did not seem to be there anymore.
“You turned yourself into a monster to combat monsters. Then I turned you back into a woman so you could live amongst humans again. You think you deserve this new mental torment, this struggle with your other selves.” Xavia’s voice was like bolts of lightning in Katrina’s mind now. “You’re not wrong. You have earned such a battle, but it is not a battle to conquer a group of alter egos that you can put neatly back in a box until they are useful again. Remember that the dead cannot absolve you. I cannot absolve you. You must fight to not only forgive yourself but to accept yourself.”
“I can’t!” Katrina wailed, staring down at the form of her heart pushing against her breastbone.
She wondered why she was reliving this mental agony without the physical agony.
“Because the physical agony is no longer a part of you,” Xavia said in reply to Katrina’s thoughts, as if she were inside her mind.
Katrina shook her head in denial. “This is not real, there is no true absolution for me, there is just living for today and hoping that tomorrow affords me another opportunity to be better than I am. I can’t do what you ask of me.”
“You must!” Xavia insisted. “I chose you for this, Katrina. I chose you because I know what strength you have within you. The road you are on is just at its beginning. It will be harder as it goes on, and it will go on longer than you have convinced yourself it will. All that you are building now, the society you have named the Cavalry, the home you have provided them…. All of this is only at the start of years of waiting. You cannot falter now when you have barely started. You are truly within your crucible right now, even though no one can hear or feel it but you.”
Katrina was suddenly inundated by the agony of all she had lost, all she had done. Xavia was whispering into her mind about what had come before, what would come to pass, and what Katrina must do.
Katrina felt tears welling in her eyes. She needed to get away from this flood before she drowned.
“You are always you. Just allow yourself to accept it. You think you must be without fault to be worthy of that which you seek. You are already worthy, Katrina. Now you must face the only true obstacle to believing that. You must fight to know Katrina, to be yourself, to be Katrina.”
Katrina’s chest constricted, and she gulped a deep breath, tears streaming from her eyes.
“I am Katrina,” she whispered, finally hearing her voice, frail and shaking.
“You save yourself over and over by reaching deep inside to segment your identity,” Xavia pointed out. “The past cannot continue to be carried in a box. You must accept it and the change it creates within you.”
“I am Katrina,” Katrina said again, willing strength from some unknown place to give her a voice.
“Believe it,” the light whispered from a distance, like it was moving into the thunder.
“I. Am. Katrina!”
Now she was screaming into the black all around her.
“Good. Now go and meet yourself. Hear what you are telling yourself. Feel what you are hiding from yourself. Fight, Katrina!”
Suddenly, the light was gone, and she really was surrounded by darkness. Katrina looked around and saw nothing. She was in a black nothing that moved like sludge around her, trapping stars and pulling against her legs. She was alone, unable to hear or touch anything again.
“Xavia, wait! Where am I? How do I get back?”
There was no answer, only the nothingness around her.
She began to shake. Her throat was dry, and she couldn’t swallow, she couldn’t breathe. Then she saw in the distance that there was an island with a tree blooming in purple flowers. She could hear a breeze tickling the tree as its petals fell gently to cover the grass and float over a pond. The island was hanging there in the black, with water and petals cascading over one edge into the nothingness. Katrina could see that there were people standing beyond the tree.
She turned toward it and tried to walk, but the dark sludge was slippery. She waved her arms in a swimming motion and felt her body move forward. She did it again and again.
Now she was getting close enough to hear voices speaking in low tones. They were watching her and talking about her progress. One of them stepped away from the others and began to move toward her. The face was so familiar, but she could not give it a name. Then the woman was close enough to take Katrina by the hand.
She could hear the woman speaking softly in a pleading voice, “Come with me, be with me.”
This was Juasa. Sweet, loving Juasa who had pleaded with her to turn away from the Warlord and just leave Midditerra.
“Juasa, I miss you so much, please forgive me.”
The woman did not speak a reply, only smiled, stretching out her hand, trying to take Katrina’s.
There was something wrong; Juasa looked the same, but her eyes slowly went blank.
“Be with me, Katrina, be with me.”
Then she understood. Juasa was dead and she wanted Katrina to be with her in death.
She kicked away from the blank face of the young girl who had touched her heart, screaming in abject terror. Then she felt another hand pulling her away, closer to the tree.
“It’s alright, Kat, it’s only a dream.”
It was Markus, that confident smile that went all the way to his eyes. and she was smiling back.
“Oh gods, Markus, why did you let yourself die? I could have happily lived hundreds of years with you on Victoria.”
But there was no answer, and Markus began to fade until he was completely gone, and she was standing on the edge of the island with the tree in front of her.<
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On the other side were her three alter egos, watching her. Words went back and forth without sound. This time, she refused to be afraid of them or back away. They were a mirror, and she needed to look at herself.
Now she heard two men talking, but could not understand their words. She knew those voices; Yusuf and Jace. She couldn’t see them, but they were there, somewhere.
Why?
She looked up to watch the petals falling around her, and they began to cover her feet. She was slowly sinking into them. Her mirror selves held out their hands to help her, but she refused to reach out to them.
Then her father and Jace were in the tree, shaking the limbs to make the petals fall faster. They were smiling at her, and it occurred to her that they both took the same feral pleasure in the suffering of others.
Jace winked at her, and Yusuf laughed, “See yourself now, do you?”
Katrina shook her head in denial. “I am not like either of you.”
The petals were up to her knees now. She had the terrible feeling that she was falling into nothing, with no way to stop herself.
* * * * *
Katrina’s head hit the deck of her cabin with a painful thud. She lay there, looking up, until the reality of where she was and when she was began to feel real.
It had all been a dream. She had fallen off her bunk, and her legs were tangled in her blanket.
She sat up and felt wet with sweat all over her body, even in her hair. The odor of it permeated the room. Looking down at herself, she touched her leg just to be sure it was skin. Her hands moved up to her arms, and she hugged herself. How long had she slept?
His tone could not have seemed more emotionless if he were an NSAI.
Katrina got up off the deck, picking up her blanket, and stared at it and then back to her bunk. ‘Gross’ was the best word for it.
She pulled all her bedding off and shoved it into the clothing recycler. Then Troy’s words registered.
