by Aer-ki Jyr
Mina slammed a fist down, splashing out a quick lived hole in the water and cursing herself for being so stupid…but rethinking her actions since that day she found that she really could find no fault with herself. Her head had been clouded, and honestly she didn’t know what had just changed now to clear it. Maybe it was just a cumulation of time or the fear of the water had kicked something into place, but whatever it was had pulled her out of a very dark place, and had she still been in it right now she didn’t know what she could have done differently than she’d been doing over the past month.
Her head was clear and she needed to keep it that way. That was her one priority right now.
Mina splashed at the water with her left hand, feeling it more than seeing it as her wet body began to thoroughly chill in the breeze. She relished the feeling, but knew she needed to take care of herself and not get sick…or sicker, for that cough didn’t come out of nowhere. Fearful that even moving might cause her head to fog back up again, Mina gradually crawled up onto the dry sand, moving slowly and letting her head adjust.
Fortunately the dark doors didn’t close back in on her mind and she decided to take her good luck and run with it, literally. She stood up and began jogging down the dark beach, not having had a workout since the attack and remembering all those maturia lessons about running and how it could be used as a reset of both your body and mind. She felt a little stupid, running around naked on the beach in the dark, but no one else was out here so she didn’t care. Running the full length of the beach and making a total of six circuits back and forth, Mina ran her worries about her mind closing in on her away for good and ended up back by her towel, dropping to her knees in the sand and feeling like she’d just dodged a huge bullet.
Those commandos had saved her, and while some people would say she needed to return the favor by helping someone else in need she immediately disregarded that. If someone was in need she’d help them because she could, not because she owed a favor. That was petty thinking. No. She had been the one that was saved and the emphasis was on her, not someone else. She may not have earned it, but she was still alive and needed to make use of the save rather than squander it away.
Now that her head was clear she needed to move, not away from the resort or even this beach but internally. She needed to heal and that fog in her head had been preventing that, but now she felt the blissful movement inside and knew she had to act on it.
Pulling on her clothes and grabbing her towel, sunglasses, and slipping on her sandals, Mina walked away from the beach and through the grounds until she got to the tunnel network that led to her treehouse, climbing the short ladder up to the door that led to a lift chamber. Once inside she locked the door with the keypad and the emergency barricade slat, ensuring that no one would disturb her privacy.
Mina walked into the lift and rode the slow ascent up until she was standing in the middle of her treehouse quarters. Walking around and locking every door out to the encircling balcony and closing the shutters on every window, she sealed herself in then hopped into the shower to rinse the sand and cold off her body. Not lingering there, she dried off after a few minutes and pulled on some pajamas before diving under the covers of her bed and pulling herself into a fetal position as she let herself begin to shake a bit as the lingering paranoia worked its way out of her body and the rest of the mental toxins she’d been accumulating did likewise.
9
When she woke up the next morning her nerves were settled and her body was, well, more tired than when she’d went to bed the night before, which she oddly took as a good sign. She felt alive again rather than in a perpetual stasis, and even the fatigue was welcome so long as it was real.
Mina ordered room service and had a tray of food arrive on a conveyor inside one of the cabinets within minutes. She ate a large, warm breakfast then immediately began packing up. Whatever she was going to make of her life going forward would be accomplished by action, not sitting on her ass. She wasn’t going back on tour just yet, but she needed to start recalibrating herself and that run last night had been a good first step…as well as showing her just how out of shape she’d gotten over the past month. She hadn’t put on any weight that she could tell, but Mina had definitely lost some of her well maintained fitness.
Accessing the computer in the treehouse she booked reservations at another Australian facility on a nearby island then called for a porter to get her bags down to the dock where she took a private boat over to the exclusive training facility. No one did training better than Star Force, but then again they never charged anything for access to facilities either. Everyone could use them and was encouraged to do so…which was a problem for people like her that needed to avoid crowds and the attention they drew. Like everything with Australia, if you had the credits you could buy an upgrade, and the same went with training facilities.
They had one reclusive one on Optimus, which serviced not just their own small territory in the system but everyone else as well. If you wanted to train in private, this is where you came. If you wanted to hire specialists to put you through your own personal boot camp that was available as well. Most people, if they wanted to advance their skills in a formalized way, enrolled in an advanced maturia but Star Force only trained in ‘responsible’ ways and some people wanted to do something more reckless, like losing 50 pounds in 4 weeks or body building for appearance rather than skill and power.
Star Force was no nonsense when it came to training and, basically, everything else. For those individuals who didn’t like that approach and wanted other ‘variety’ there were corporate options for that if you had the credits and Australia had surged to the forefront in that subcategory as well. Though they were very much a part of Star Force they’d emphasized their differences whenever possible and today Mina was glad for that, for when her boat arrived she was greeted with a personal attendant that took her inside the mountain-like complex and directly to her quarters without having to see or hear from any of the other guests.
Mina had booked the most expensive training suite, which gave her basically an entire mini facility on the island to herself. It had a track, pool, obstacle courses, fitness rooms, sparring equipment, and various challenge scenarios similar to what Mainline Star Force used. She hadn’t wanted any formalization, so once the attendant dropped her off and made sure everything was in order, Mina was left to herself and she got to work right away with a stretching regimen followed by a few swimming laps in the long pool.
Those were far more taxing than they should have been, plus she was having to fight some claustrophobia from being in the water again. It wasn’t so bad as before and mostly wore off by the time she finished, but she was thoroughly drained by the time she was done and that disappointed her. Normally she could have done a lot more, which testified to just how out of whack she was.
Mina took a crash nap, then ordered some room service that included a stack of pancakes and colored nutrient drinks. She’d save the sugary stuff for later after she did a second workout in the day, but while she digested she took a dip in her own hot tub and tried to work out some of the soreness from the prior night’s run.
After an hour there she tried some light weights but didn’t make more than 10 minutes before she had to quit for the day. Mina had no energy, but at least her head was still clear. She retreated back into her quarters for another nap then allowed herself to wander out into the commons area of the facility and took a perch on a sunroof where she stripped down and worked on her tan a bit more with a handful of other people doing the same.
They didn’t talk to her and she was glad for that, but over the following weeks as her energy level slowly came back up to normal Mina continued to mingle in the commons and even got into a few conversations with people that seemed not to know who she was. They were here to train as well and that offered a common topic of conversation. Most people here were Human, but a handful of them were not and she was curious as to how they trained, especially one of the Bsi
dd that stood shorter than she was and looked to be a living bush.
Turns out he/it was a businessman that owned a shipping company than ran supplies between the various races on the Alliance worlds that were not part of Star Force. Apparently there was quite a market for independent shippers so long as they could undercut the prices on the ADZ transit grid. The Bsidd said that was easy enough so long as you owned your own fleet of ships, and therein lay the hard part. One had to have the ships to generate the credits…but you needed the credits to buy the ships. He/it had taken more than 80 years of doing other work to save up enough currency for his first purchase, then from there he’d made a living out of hauling cargo and expanded his operations as quickly as possible.
He/it was another entrepreneur like herself, self-made and taking advantage of the possibilities Star Force had sculpted within the ADZ. No one had to work to live, but if you wanted to prosper you had to work your ass off to do it. Didn’t matter what race you were, everyone had options. She knew that more than most people, having grown up in an Axius colony, but it was reassuring to meet someone else who was in a similar position to her.
Mina didn’t share any details about her recent history, and the two talked for quite a while about the idiosyncrasies of being wealthy within the ADZ and the unique perspective and challenges it presented, with her hearing similar ideas to what she’d already experienced personally and feeling quite relieved to have a peer, even if in a drastically weird sense. Person or not, the Bsidd was still a walking bush, so there was only so many similarities to draw, but in a weird way she could connect with him/it more than the Humans she encountered in the music business.
Mina actually made a habit of meeting with him and a few others on a regular basis, or irregular actually, given that they never planned any get-togethers. They just bumped into each other in the commons at similar times and she got to get their perspectives on a wide range of topics. The more she related to them and their stories Mina realized that she needed to get back on tour sooner rather than later. She was a singer and building her career, and one common theme amongst all of her new friends was that when they had trouble they didn’t quit what they were doing, but found themselves along the way as a byproduct of the struggles.
Mina realized she had begun to feel like singing was a petty thing after so many people’s deaths, but now she realized it wasn’t. It was what she did and a big part of who she was. Those commandos hadn’t saved her so she could wallow away and live half a life. They saved her so she could continue going on doing what she wanted, and Mina realized that she was just cycling garbage through her head. Probably stuff she’d picked up from others accidentally. She’d have to pay closer attention to her own thoughts going forward to avoid that again. Going with the flow of society was never a good idea, for there were always more stupid people than wise, regardless of the efforts Star Force made to give people the tools they needed to learn and grow.
Some people just didn’t want to, and those were now floating to the bottom of the tier 1 pool after the ADZ-wide restructuring. Here though, you had to have credits to buy your way in, and in such sums that you more than likely had to earn them and stupid people didn’t earn anything. They leached off of others in one form or another, letting Star Force take care of them and it seemed Star Force didn’t mind. They were now scooting them off into their own little corner along with the newbs coming out of the maturias, letting those who earned their way into better crowds.
Mina went where the credits were, so often her followers were amongst the ‘stupid’ but a good number of them were not, and in fact her upcoming tour…before she’d canceled it…had been going to more of the tier 2 sites than previously because they were considered higher class and, frankly, more profitable because those citizens had more credits to spend. She’d cut her teeth doing free or cheap concerts for anyone who would come, but now that she was established she was gradually moving up the status ladder and made a choice to, when she did go back, cut out the lower class performances regardless of whether it made monetary sense or not.
She’d never thought about it before, but now that she was actually hanging around with people that were more or less her peers she found that she felt more like herself. Even with her old team she never felt like one of them. They were there to service her as part of their job rather than being on par with her. When Mina put together her new team she was going to do it herself, no more label execs assigning people. She liked this feeling of having peers, and there were many musicians and support staff out there for her to choose from. There had to people out there of like mind, it was just a matter of finding them.
Her jumpship was her home after all, and if the rest of the ADZ was living with their ‘peers’ now and greatly preferring the change then she should probably give it a try herself. There was no rush getting back on tour and she could take as long as she needed assembling a new team…which she could start from here while she continued training. She needed to be in very good shape if she was going back to stripping on stage, which she used as her measuring stick to make sure she never lost her self-sufficiency. That was her true priority, with the public exposure being a way to make sure she never deluded herself into thinking she was better off than she was like many other people did who hid behind their clothes.
When she was walking back through the commons area one evening intending to get in one more short workout before bed she heard footsteps behind her in the hallway and glanced back, seeing a woman walking briskly whom she recognized as another of the guests but one that she had never spoken with. Mina moved aside to let her pass but as she did so the woman slipped her hand around her arm and latched onto her. In a fluid motion she pulled Mina into a side alcove and through a doorway.
Her feet caught and she tripped, but the strong arm kept dragged her along as she fought to push the other way. Suddenly she was thrust up against a wall and unable to scream, for her vocal chords refused to utter a sound as the woman pinned her bodily against the cream/white colored paneling beside a large potted bush.
“You’re in danger,” the woman whispered. “The people who tried to kidnap you before are in this facility and trying again. I’ve been assigned to protect you. Understand?”
The woman eased her grip slightly but did not let go, but Mina’s vocal chords were back under her own control. “Who sent you?”
I’m an Archon, the woman said inside her mind. “And we need to move now.”
Mina found herself pulled off the wall before she could respond, but she didn’t fight her. There had always been rumors about the Archons having special powers, but she hadn’t actually thought someone could speak mind to mind until just now. That was all the proof she needed, so Mina started jogging alongside her as the woman pulled her through the room and down another corridor. They were halfway down it when an alarm sounded twice, followed by a voice being transmitted everywhere within the training facility.
“All guests please report to your quarters and stay there for the immediate future. We have a security breach and the facility is going on lockdown until the situation is resolved. Do not try to leave, just get out of the hallways and let our security teams deal with the problem. Stay down, stay put, and stay out of the way.”
“Keep moving,” the Archon said, never having let go of Mina’s arm. The pair jogged down the hallway then as they came to a set of closed double doors the Archon pushed her out of the way and into the nook outside a closed side room just as the doors opened up and two Humans came through wearing Australian uniforms and carrying weapons.
The Archon moved so fast Mina couldn’t see what happened, but the two men were on the ground in a flash and their weapons were removed from them…then Mina was pulled off the ground by an invisible force and over top of them, landing in the open doors as the woman grabbed her by the arm again and forced her into another jog.
“Sorry about this,” the woman said, grabbing hold of Mina by the waist and wrapping her up in a hug a m
oment before she lost all coordination. Her body suddenly went twitchy and out of her control, and she would have fallen had the Archon not been holding her up. By the time her head came back into alignment and her feet responded the woman had already pulled her into another room, keeping them on the run.
Mina didn’t ask any of the questions she wanted to, recognizing the danger of the situation even if she didn’t understand it. She just kept moving as instructed and within a minute they burst through a small door and climbed up a twisting stairwell that led to a roof exit. The hot sun was gone, replaced by evening twilight and a cool breeze as the Archon shut the door behind them and pushed Mina across the roof towards the edge where several large trees were just poking up over the edge.
“Trust me,” she said as they got to the edge and Mina pulled up, then the Archon pushed her off the roof into freefall.
Mina screamed, but that invisible force pinched her around the midsection and slowed her fall into a gentle drop that her feet could have handled if she’d been paying attention. Instead she got dumped to the ground with a not so soft bump on her head, but at least she hit dirt rather than pavement.
Above her the Archon jumped, landing beside her in a crouch that rolled out into a somersault…then the woman was on her feet and pulling Mina to hers as they got back into a run again, this time heading off through the forested section of the island. When they came across a trail they sped up, with Mina running as fast as she could without tripping and the Archon finally letting go of her arm but staying right on her shoulder the entire time.
10
“Stop here,” the Archon said as they came to a curve in the trail and stepped off under some curling branches and mostly out of sight.
