by Drew Briney
Blaze was changed as well. Trained from boyhood to be protectorate of his people, Blaze suddenly and fully realized that his renowned skills in weaponry and martial arts were useless against the mysterious powers of the “magic woman” – powers now held by the very woman that he had been trying to protect by ordering her to stay behind. His training failed him. Perhaps it was entirely useless. Perhaps, like most everything else from the Order, it was meaningless.
Evelia stood wide eyed, dazedly staring at Aria’s horrifying appearance. Seeing any blood outside of the simulator was still new to Evelia - and although she had recently seen carnage inflicted by Blaze, those scenes of death were somehow tolerable – they represented her rescue. Thus, although awful to behold, she had been able to largely block out those visions of gore because they were the necessary result of protecting life – her life, Elayuh’s life. Whatever had happened to Aria moments before had clearly not been the result of the beast protecting itself against Aria and whatever was allowing her to now stand in front of Evelia was unfathomable, surreal. It was like watching a bad horror scene from an old school hologram. Aria’s appearance made it very clear that she should be dead but she moved like someone who was severely tired, not like someone who had lost the majority of their own blood from some heinous act of torture.
Then, there was the stark realization that she had saved Blaze’s life. She would never speak it. She would never tell anyone. Somehow, it didn’t seem right that it had happened at all. Evelia was a follower, not a leader. She was passive, not aggressive. She was an artist, a peacemaker, a friend – not a warrior. This was not her role to fulfill. This was not her life to lead. She just wanted to turn around and forget that any of this had ever happened and yet, somehow, she knew that her attack upon Toka would remain a very defining moment in her life – a moment that she would never forget and that she would regularly remember.
On top of all this, she recognized that look in Aria’s eyes. Superficially, there was relief, gratitude, and perhaps a tentative happiness. Deeper, there was disbelief but that disbelief was coupled with something else: deep feelings towards her rescuer. But those feelings were not directed towards the person who had truly saved her; those feelings were directed towards Blaze and those feelings were not acceptable to Evelia. Still, for the moment, Evelia would have to show kindness and support. The future might be another matter entirely.
Beyond the awareness of this beaten trio was another new beginning. Toka’s database was buzzing with activity, transferring technology and information unshared with any other human. Every memory available to both his conscious and unconscious mind had been recently stored away in his database and then transferred to a secret location. As with many of Toka’s projects, a timer had been set and if Toka failed to stop the timer, the information would be automatically deleted from his personal copy of the database. But the knowledge would not be lost – it would be stored in a place much more nefarious than anything the trio would ever have imagined. That too would be a new beginning.
AS EVELIA WALKED PAST BLAZE, she discretely sent a strong surge of cooling energy to the gash on his thigh. Other than that, she barely acknowledged his presence at all. She walked straight towards Aria excepting a brief detour to pluck a drinking flower from the wall near the entrance.
Blaze watched as she handed the drink to Aria and couldn’t help but to notice the striking differences between the two women. Evelia’s back, nearly bare excepting the pristine white ruffles covering the strap of her swimming top, was a strong olive color and strongly contrasted with her white clothing. Her hair, draping loose today, strongly contrasted with her white clothing as well. And while her body was mostly bare excepting her swimming clothing and various vine bracelets, anklets, and similar adornments, Aria was in full uniform – albeit a very tattered and torn uniform. In contrast to Evelia, Aria’s skin peering through her clothing was very pale today – which made her bloody appearance all the more striking. Huge pieces of her uniform were entirely torn from her body but these too were heavily caked in blood and served to accentuate small patches of pale skin that somehow escaped the splatters of blood that decorated her so thoroughly elsewhere. In short, while Evelia looked pristine and pure, Aria looked horrific and defiled in every way.
Hungrily, the geneticist gulped down the juice from the drinking flower and instinctively craved more the instant it was empty. Evelia didn’t fail to notice that detail and felt a little foolish for not grabbing two in the first place – but then again, she scarcely believed that Aria should be able to raise her head to drink at all, let alone down a whole drinking flower in one quick serving. As she turned around to get another flower for Aria, Evelia broke the silence.
“I can heal you if you are willing to allow me to touch …”
“Thank you,” Aria interjected, “but I have no wounds to heal. I only need food and water.” As she spoke the last sentence, she began pilfering through the drawers not far from where she had been lying on the floor a few minutes earlier. Happily finding a nutrition bar, she unwrapped it and feverishly plowed through the makeshift snack. Designed to hold enough nutrition to replace an entire meal if necessary, Aria remained famished and continued searching cabinets and drawers for stashed food.
Evelia squinted at the bloody mess of a woman in disbelief. “What do you mean, you have no wounds to heal?” she asked in a tone that approached discourteousness. “You are a complete mess of blood, you are clearly the victim of a severe beating, and yet somehow, you have no wounds to heal?” Evelia questioned the emcee a second time. “How …”
“Genetic enhancements,” Aria interrupted again, greedily unwrapping a second nutrition bar she had found. This one was no meal replacement. It was only intended as a snack but that didn’t matter much to Aria. With nearly impolite speed, she wolfed down the second bar and then, graciously accepting a second drinking flower from Evelia, gulped down the nutritious juice from the flower as well. Blaze suddenly realized that his eyebrows were raised and that his jaw was somewhat slack as he noticed Aria’s natural skin tone returning, leaving the pale look of death nothing but a memory.
“Toka was able not only to cure my childhood diseases,” she explained, “he was able to get my body to receive more genetic enhancements to heal itself than anyone else in recorded history.” She paused as she found herself both intimidated and excited to share this personal detail with her new friends. “Those weren’t the only enhancements he gave me,” she began again, “but they explain why I have no wounds to heal. In contrast,” she said, pointing towards Blaze whose attention was suddenly taken by a spasm in his leg, “Blaze could use your gifts right now.”
Evelia silently bristled over the observation while unceremoniously moving back towards Blaze and knelt down to lay her hands on either side of the wound. Humming words Blaze didn’t recognize, Evelia closed her eyes and concentrated on speaking with his body, both seeking instruction and offering instruction as to how it should heal the leg wound. While Blaze still didn’t understand this process – he still found himself struggling to believe it really worked – he did recognize the now familiar feeling of energy rushing around him, although this time it felt somewhat different – almost wrong. The negative, black billows of energy that had gathered around Toka as he engaged in heinous acts of cruelty, were intermingled with the positive bursts of energy that naturally permeated all life. The mingling of these negative and positive energies hindered the healing process. While Blaze discerned that something wasn’t quite the same as when the magic woman had healed Evelia using that carved sphere thing, his discernment was not as acute as Evelia’s – and neither was his understanding. Either way, it didn’t really matter to him that much. A wound this bad would normally take several weeks to heal and it would greatly hamper his daily activities for much of that time. Whether or not Evelia’s process took a few minutes extra, he would not be suffering any sabbatical from his typical activities and he wouldn’t be needing any pain medicati
ons while he waited for his leg to heal – this would be over in relatively no time.
Evelia saw things much differently. For having such little personal experience in healing physical wounds, Evelia nevertheless felt a great degree of frustration in combating the challenges of this new dynamic. Relatively unaware that the bad energy had helped her in her psionic attack against Toka, Evelia was very much aware of the effect it was having on Blaze as she was attempting to heal him. At the same time, Blaze’s body seemed to respond especially quickly to her efforts. With only alien memories and her own small wound to compare, it seemed that Blaze was healing quicker than anyone else she knew of – despite the handicapping black energy. The contradiction was confusing and she couldn’t reconcile what she was experiencing. Despite relatively good results, Evelia felt like she was not doing her job well and she felt especially conscientious of this fact because Aria was watching. Apparently, her body healed faster than anyone else could even imagine.
Aria should be dead, Evelia intuitively guessed. But she wasn’t. Somehow, despite her gruesome appearance, Aria had survived something unfathomable, unthinkable. Evelia couldn’t even begin to understand how anyone could heal so quickly and so thoroughly. She wanted to use her new powers to speak to Aria’s body, to learn how it healed itself so thoroughly and so well. Perhaps that knowledge would help her heal others quickly. But she couldn’t do that. Not now. Somehow, it seemed an improper time to ask Aria to play the patient for Evelia’s personal enlightenment. Physically healed or not, Aria would be suffering mentally, emotionally. She didn’t need someone prying around her psyche looking for an academic understanding of her body’s ability to heal.
“So what other enhancements did Toka give you,” Evelia prodded, both curious to hear more of Aria’s story and anxious to end the silence. Blaze’ leg was nearly healed and she wouldn’t need to concentrate quite so hard for the remainder of the process.
“The same one I gave Blaze before he left to visit the alien ship,” she confessed. Instantly, tension filled the air. This was a new revelation to both Blaze and Evelia. “Toka infected me with a virus that, if unchecked by the immune system for long enough, leads to a vastly superior intellect. Toka gave this to me first – before he souped up my immune system,” Aria explained. “That makes it work better. But Dr. Boyd refused to give it to Blaze because he feared it would make him too dangerous. I gave it to him out of desperation.” She paused for a moment, both aware that she was no longer answering Evelia’s question and that she was responding emotionally out of her desire to clear her conscience.
While Blaze and Evelia exchanged quizzical and disconcerted glances, Aria continued. “This is why Toka beat me.” She left an uncomfortably long silence to fill the air before explaining. “He ordered me to give Blaze a virus that would make him uncontrollably open to suggestion so that Toka could take over the ship. He watched my every move very carefully to make sure that I delivered the virus before you left the ship. He threatened to kill me if I didn’t administer the virus – which will, by the way, make Blaze very sick very soon – that is, if it works at all – your immune system has already been heavily modified so it is possible that it will not take effect at all,” she explained as she met Blaze’s gaze with startlingly intense eyes. “But after you are done being sick, you will be much more intelligent than you have ever been before. And your intuition will start directing your actions quite heavily – I tweaked the virus slightly to adjust its influence on your brain. A good leader could use a strong intuition,” she explained. “But Toka found out too soon and he was more than a little furious,” she laughed.
It was a nervous laughter, the kind of laughter that people make when they have suffered a lifetime of abuse and intuitively fear retribution for what they have said. But the laugh turned more genuine as it escaped her mouth – there was nothing left to fear. Her abuser was dead. Intellectually, she knew that. Intellectually, she also knew that it would take time for her emotions to catch up to her mind. Inside, she still felt afraid … of something. But she didn’t know what.
“Toka gave me other enhancements too. My eyesight is nigh unto perfect – it is almost too good. When I was younger, I used to get terrible headaches - those throbbing, insanely painful kinds. After several tests, Toka discovered that it was because my brain was overloaded with too much stimulus because my eyes, my ears, my nose, my skin, and even my tongue had been enhanced to function more perfectly. Sometimes these things are very useful. Sometimes, they are just annoying – I really don’t need that constant stream of extra information that everyone else gets to ignore.” Aria paused for a moment. She had always believed this was true but somehow, she doubted herself as she said it this time. Shouldn’t an enhanced brain be able to handle the extra information? Doesn’t matter, she scolded herself for getting off track.
“I suppose in some ways, I’ve received more enhancements than anyone except Toka himself,” she continued. “Blaze is a close second – and some of your enhancements from before you left your Order haven’t even kicked in yet,” she added, unsure whether or not it was really okay to divulge these things. But what would it matter? He was her captain. He was her new superior. She considered him a friend. She no longer needed to lead the life of a double agent. She was free now wasn’t she?
Blaze shifted uncomfortably. The whole revelation about how he had received genetic enhancements since birth was both new and unnerving to him. To hear that he had received some a few weeks ago was disturbing as well but he felt indignant that Aria had taken it upon herself to modify his body yet once more. He almost didn’t want to know what genetic enhancements had been made upon him before he left the Order. He didn’t want to change. At this point in his life, Blaze welcomed an environment of stability and security. He wanted time to absorb all of the changes that were invading his life. On the other hand, if his choice was to suffer betrayal and become an unthinking puppet or to become an uncelebrated brainiac, he was grateful for Aria’s choice. Still …
“What are his other enhancements,” Evelia asked before Blaze could work through his thoughts as to whether or not he really wanted to know the answer to that question.
“Well, to be completely honest,” Aria began, “I don’t really know.” As she discerned a disapproving glance from Evelia and a slight scowl from Blaze, she retracted her statement slightly: “I mean, I know that his night vision and ultraviolet vision should be manifesting itself soon and I know that his cardiovascular system was being modified to give him even more extended stamina … but some of the things Dr. Boyd was doing were bizarrely experimental – I think he was losing his mind towards the end of his life,” Aria finished, somewhat distracted with her own thoughts and unaware that she had failed to finish her own explanation.
“Aria,” Evelia coaxed in that one of those patient tones that only her alto voice could offer. “What do you mean? What were the experimental things?”
“Oh,” Aria answered, quickly aware of her explanatory failing. “He was making some genetic modifications to Blaze’s muscles to make them more similar to cardiovascular tissues. He was hoping Blaze would have superhuman strength but that was just the beginning. To some degree, he had been working with Blaze’s body to achieve this mythical perfect status …” While there was nothing improper about how Aria made that last statement, Evelia bristled a little over the unstated, implicit observation. “The bigger changes,” Aria continued, “were modifications he was making to Blaze’s brain. Generally speaking, we understand the functionality of every portion of the human brain,” Aria explained. “However, there are lots of specifics that still allude us. Dr. Boyd determined that he would be the man who would discover what each of these areas of the brain is for.” She stared at Evelia and Blaze as if she was getting lost in her own thoughts and left the trio with a moment of silence before continuing. “Dr. Boyd summarily enhanced every portion of Blaze’s brain that we do not know about. For better or worse, we expect to learn a lot from Bla
ze at this point in time. And hopefully …” Aria’s voice trailed a moment before Evelia’s concentrated gaze brought her attention back to the fore. “Hopefully, Blaze’s erratic and unpredictable behavior will subside soon and he will feel more in control over his life again.”
Suddenly, Blaze was feeling a bit like a bug under a microscope. Void of any legitimate thought or decision, Blaze was being dissected like a chunk of meat and observed as if he was an experiment rather than a human being. And while his heart recoiled over the things he was learning, a remote corner of his heart felt grateful that he was somehow chosen to be the recipient of so much pampering. Part of him understood that this was a blessing in his life and that he carried some great responsibility to help and protect his people – the few remaining members of his species that were not doomed to exterminate themselves within the next few generations – surely, the natives back home would not survive long with all of the mutant creatures that the genetic scientists were making.
That thought led Blaze to a question he hadn’t considered yet. “You worked outside of the Order with the genetic scientists did you not?”
