by David Burke
Jay heard Ava’s voice in his head but was able to recognize that she was broadcasting to just him and the five other wives. That was a new development and he wondered if it was part of the changes after crossing the sixth threshold. “Master, there is one thing that you could do that might work.”
He started to ask her but realized that it was obvious even if her mind hadn’t been seemingly projecting her thoughts at him. Just turning his thoughts to Ava had her mind opened before him and it was definitely a whirlwind jumble of thoughts. Jay had to wonder how she could possibly be sane with that much going on inside her head.
Hesitantly he asked the other wives telepathically, “You know what she is talking about right?”
“I assume she is suggesting that you try fusing with Trina to see if that boosts her,” Mia replied.
“You can’t fuse with her. It isn’t fair to Meikiyo and Jessie,” Amelia added.
Huong said, “It may be a moot point. She is on the verge of death. She is so shriveled up that she doesn’t even have eyes. Sora’s power is keeping her alive and she is only barely keeping up with the tissue breakdown.”
Meikiyo’s voice spoke softly into all their heads, “You are the one who saves people. I would never want another person to be waiting in need of a hero only to have you stay back because it might hurt my feelings. I don’t like Trina. I don’t think she deserves this honor, but if you can fuse with her and save her then I am in favor.”
“If we are voting, then, I’m not happy about her skipping the line, but I don’t think you should let her die if you can help her,” Jessie said.
Jay didn’t wait for the rest to speak before he dropped down to his knees next to her. He heard the others wives reluctantly vote yes, but they only confirmed what he had already decided needed doing.
As he touched her, he felt some of his energy drain out of him and a burning sensation in his fingers. He pulled them back and looked at his hand. The fingertips were actually burned but not like a heat burn. No, this was more like frostbite.
Still, it had to be done. So he toughened his skin and put both hands on her. It helped to be in physical contact when he was trying to refine someone, even though he had gotten used to that process so it was fairly simple now. This was a rose of a different color.
Trina was unconscious but he could detect a faint life sign from her. Then when he really looked at her channels he almost threw up his hands. It was like acid had been run through all over them and they were cracked, decaying and in places outright broken. She didn’t have a fused system like he and the other girls he had fused with did. Her Stamina and PSI cores were still separate with their own channels.
That was only going to make things worse. Everywhere he looked inside a black ooze was spreading out of her channels and corrupting the flesh. He could feel Sora’s power at work and unless he missed his guess, Huong and some of the other bonded wives were trying to use their power to help regenerate the limited healthy tissue.
They were going to lose. It wasn’t even a question of ‘if’. It was only a question of how long they could hold out. He felt a tremor in her consciousness and pushed his mind in further after it.
This mind-reading ability was new to him and he didn’t wield it with the same practiced finesse of his other powers. But he wanted to know how well she was inside. There was no point in taking this risk if she was already brain dead.
He felt his consciousness slip into her. Immediately he felt like a tarry substance was sticking to the incorporeal aspect of his mind. It was the essence of decay and death and it was all over Trina. Jay summoned up more PSI and pushed forward, parting the darkness and repelling the slime. He couldn’t let it take him too.
As he pushed in further, he could feel her mind. Something strange was going on though. He was almost certain that she knew he was here, yet she seemed to be moving further and further away from him. He delved deeper into her, chasing that thread of consciousness.
Thinking in spatial concepts was the only way that he could manage to wrap his head around this even if he knew there was no actual movement involved. When they reached a spot where her consciousness couldn’t feel any further, he was greeted by a host of primal instincts more so than coherent thoughts.
There was anger through all of her feelings. Perhaps a sliver of hope also. But what pervaded more than anything was fear. Jay tried to push forward feelings of reassurance and security as he sought to establish a bond with her. In many ways her mind was hiding from what was happening to her body, but she still seemed to be fully there, just curled in on herself.
The bond took hold and he suddenly realized that her fear wasn’t for herself. She was afraid for him, afraid that by coming into her like this that he would be trapped, harmed, or even die. She had already reconciled herself to death, well except for a tiny shred of hope. As he read her feelings, he could tell that she felt it was a worthwhile exchange to die if it saved him.
That accounted for her anger. It was directed at her because she was afraid that his recklessness was causing her sacrifice to be in vain. But, Jay wasn’t ready to sacrifice her yet. He started pushing PSI into her channels and circulating it. At the same time he pulled on her trying to make her feel welcome. He was trying without words to make his desire to fuse with her known.
This time was different from any of the others. With Mia it had been a desire to make her feel welcome and accepted. With Ava, it had been the strange blending of their passion. Her desire to be controlled combined with his desire to make her feel good about herself.
While he hadn’t meant it the side effects to occur, Amelia’s fusion had been straightforward passion. Huong’s had been the first conscious fusion, but even then it had been a merger of passions. This time here was no passion. This time he had to find another way to create the union.
His mind screamed in agony as he felt the corruption that was in her channels, but he pushed it all down. Catching as much of it as he could. Forming almost the equivalent of a PSI construct within her to contain it all.
It was a struggle, before even when he first started, there had not been any force actively fighting back against him. If he had encountered this kind of resistance in the early days he just would have given up on it as impossible. Not now though. He was so much more powerful than he had been back then.
Rivers of PSI energy flowed from him into her and it was almost like he was trying to jumpstart her system. Time seemed to drag on forever around him as Jay felt the pain growing. He worried that he wouldn’t be able to complete the fusion. Maybe she had been correct. Her hope was growing, there was no denying that, but she hadn’t reached out to him yet. She wasn’t opening herself up to him.
Jay would have been even more worried if he could have seen what he looked like on the outside. Veins of blackness marking the decay creeping up into his body were spreading from where his hands were touching Trina’s abdomen. At one point, Jessie even tried to pull him away but subconsciously he maximized his strength and stayed in place as she stopped, too worried to cause him harm.
It was however the pain that gave him the idea he needed. They couldn’t be united in passion now. There was no pleasure going back and forth between them, but they were definitely sharing in one sensation. That was a soul-scouring pain of decay as the darkness was eating both of them alive, from the inside.
Jay reached out through the bond and pushed the idea that he was there to help share her pain. He asked her to give all her pain to him, so that he could help her. He projected strength and confidence while trying to comfort her. The truth was he was already grinding his teeth in pain and didn’t really know what he was asking for from her.
Eventually, his persistence won her over and she gave in to hope. Despite all evidence to the contrary she shared her pain with him. Jay couldn’t hear himself then, but he started to scream at the top of his lungs. The necrotic power working inside of her caused a pain like no other. Still he took it in. He screamed but d
idn’t relent.
As he stayed there, her trust grew. She began to trust that he might actually know what he was doing. She wanted to live and that helped. She wanted to be connected with Jay, and that helped. But their fusion was born of shared pain rather than bliss.
When the pain receded enough for Jay to think straight he saw that her channels had fused together. Her one core was powering them all just as his did. There were still specks of blackness running through the currents of PSI in those channels but he systematically went about obliterating them.
After what felt like a few minutes of searching he didn’t see any further signs of darkness but there was no way to know for sure if he had gotten the last of it or if a tiny bit would remain as an infection to fester inside of her. He finally felt her core starting to produce PSI again and no longer solely subsisting on his energy and then as the fusion felt complete, different but still finished, Jay lost consciousness.
When he woke, it was with a severe headache. Jay just lay still and ran through his notifications. He had gained eight more levels. That was almost becoming the standard with a fusion.
It looked like Trina had gained sixteen levels. That placed her at level one hundred and three and clearly the highest-level person besides himself. Jay groaned internally. That wasn’t going to go over well.
He got the same error notification but a few things stuck out at him.
Fusion corrupted. . .
That was new. He had never seen that as part of the warnings.
F00043 has not been fully integrated into joint consciousness
Jay wasn’t sure if he should be more worried about the term joint consciousness or the fact that apparently Trina had not been made a part of it, at least not fully.
No transfer of skills or stats occurred between F00043 and other F units
Again, this was new. So, maybe because the fusion was done differently it didn’t form as tight of a connection. Then the next line gave a likely explanation.
This fusion did not take as completely as the others. Estimated reasoning- lack of physical union.
Was it saying that because they didn’t have sex, he wouldn’t be able to have the same level of fusion with her as the other? That didn’t seem right. He could feel her inside of his mind.
He saw her stat sheet attached to theirs, but noticed that she was still considerably weaker than the others. It was a marvel that she was as strong as she was given the lack of true fusion. Jay saw it as a testament to her hard work and dedication.
Jay also realized that he hadn’t been given the choice about what abilities to pass on to Trina. Or maybe he had been but was so lost in the pain that his subconscious ended up deciding for him. Interestingly it looked like she got at least in part three skills from him. She got the base forms of his Enhanced Strength and Hardened Body but they were limited by her Durability to twenty-eight. Then her Reactive Growth skill merged with his Evolved Reactive Speed.
He didn’t know what the difference was but the new skill maxed out somehow. Jay chuckled. That meant that she was likely faster than he was now.
The final oddity was that he had not gained any skills from Trina. He wondered if that was because of how the fusion had happened and the diminished state she had been in. Oh well, there was nothing to do about it now. He instead just took a moment to look at her sheet.
Her overall stats were still a bit behind the other fused wives who had all equalized when he fused with Huong. Even with her extra levels she looked to be short maybe fifty base stat points. Jay shrugged, just more stuff for him to try and figure out.
F00043 - Trina
Level: 103
Awareness: 55
Telepathy: 48 - 12%
Evolved Iron Will: 50 - 97%
Assessment: 43 - 19%
Durability: 28
Enhanced Reflexes: 27 - 34%
Enhanced Strength: 28 - 0%
Hardened Body: 28 - 0%
Kinesis: 72
Necrokinesis: 68 - 56%
Metabolism: 176
Evolved Reactive Speed: 176 - 0%
Formation: 26
Life from Death: 15 - 83%
PSI Pts: 5355
Chapter 12- Dealing with the Devil
When he finally sat up, he realized that there was a PSI construct in the shape of a dome around him. He must have pushed it out around him to protect himself and Trina as they were fusing. Interesting, but also scary. He didn’t want to think about the problems that could occur if and when his powers started to activate in his sleep.
Almost immediately he felt the connection with his fused wives. Adjacent to that, he could feel Trina. She was still coming to slowly. Amelia and the others reached out to check on him. They were concerned because they could feel that he was connected to Trina but they weren’t, or at least not the same way.
He tried to calm them but eventually promised to discuss this later. Right now he needed to get his bearings. There was someone that he desperately needed to talk to.
Jay started looking all around him in the aftermath of the fight. The tech building had taken a great deal of damage but nothing that couldn’t be overcome. The battle taught him two things. First he had to work with all of the girls, even those who were not used to fighting. They needed to be ready to at least provide support.
Second and just as importantly, he was still their best weapon. Stand or fall, it was on him. The question was when should he let the team handle things and when should he step in and take care of it.
They were lucky this time. No one died. But if he had delayed letting loose any longer then it might have gone very differently. These Forlorn, because that was what his scans told him they were, had been very different from the warrior he had fought before.
They had the same energy weapon. It was a weapon that caused decay and breakdown of matter, but honestly was a poor imitation of Trina’s power. Her ability to absorb the apparently necrotic energy was significant and would bear further study.
Now, though Jay needed to talk to D’varn; there was too much going on. An hour ago, he had felt like he had the bull by the horns. Now events felt like they were spiraling out of his control and that he would have to race forward to get ahead of the trouble coming their way. This was no game. It hadn’t been a game an hour ago, but now he felt that they were somehow losing. Whereas before he had felt that he was winning with his eyes closed.
Jay walked over and heard D’varn making some comments about the mech suits. “These are definitely a step forward from the last designs that you showed me. You still haven’t developed any sort of backup energy system yet?”
Huong answered, “We are doing the best we can. Maybe you could provide us with some more information to make this work better.”
“We have discussed this before, F49363, if I were to give you access to A’snkarnt technology, it would be beyond you and you would not gain the necessary understanding to get to where you need to be. I cannot give you millions of years of technology in a simple tutorial. However, if you continue to make the same improvements then you will complete your quests and I will be able to give you incremental rewards.”
Hearing that, Jay thought about the data for the science development areas. They were very close in two of the areas. He could only wonder what the incremental rewards would be. Hopefully something tech division could use to help adapt technology to either gain control of this ship or to create their own. The problem beyond that of course being, where they should go. Earth wasn’t habitable now and wouldn’t likely be for millions of years.
Then he heard D’varn calling out to him. Jay had insisted that the little alien call him by his name rather than the experiment designation. Others had asked it but for some reason, Jay was the only one that he would do it for.
“Jay, I am actually here to speak to you. I have been in contact with my counterpart and I come bearing a proposal from him,” D’varn said. “May I also say that it was most exhilarating to see your team i
n live combat rather than watching through a monitor.”
Instantly, Jay was both interested and on guard. With a rush of motion he accelerated himself until in a fraction of a second he was standing next to the hover pod the alien rode around in. A warning of precognition caused him to pull up short. He realized that there was some type of barrier around the pod.
“I have questions of my own. I think it is time that we spent a bit more time talking,” Jay replied.
“My allotted time here has been spent waiting for you to recover from that ill-conceived fusion you attempted. That was a colossal risk and not logical at all. I still don’t fully understand you hoomans. I only stayed to talk to you but I can’t stay one second longer than I have to. I have many responsibilities on this ship now. You must understand that I am only one being and I am performing the duties of many dozens. Now, do you wish to hear the proposal?”
“I can grant us the time that we need. I will just create a tempus fugit field around us and then you will have all the time that you need. Heck, if you need help you could show some of our people how to run the systems.”
