by Aer-ki Jyr
“I knew that,” Davis said, still sitting on the ground and shaking his head to try and clear it. He felt like he’d just woken up from a long nap and couldn’t get his brain to fully function. “What exactly did you do to me?”
“I rendered you unconscious with a single touch,” Paul said, and there was no mistaking the severity in his voice. “Me and some of the others have been practicing on each other in the hopes that we could develop an immunity to it, and so far we’ve learned to resist it when our minds are focused, but catch us off guard and we’re still vulnerable. All we need is a moment of contact, and the more skilled we get at it, the briefer the contact necessary. It took me about 4 seconds to fully knock you out.”
“That wasn’t in your updates,” Davis mildly complained.
“A lot isn’t,” Paul admitted, helping him to his feet. “We’re keeping some of these things to ourselves until we get a handle on them, and when I say ‘to ourselves’ I mean myself and a handful of others in the pyramid. Not even the rest of the trailblazers know, not for security reasons, but because I don’t want to give them information that may or may not turn out to be true. We’re learning to do a lot of cool things…but in the wrong hands those cool things get rather scary. Not something you want to trust to some random kid.”
“They’ve already got the genetics,” Davis said, mentally working the problem. “How sure are we that they’ll stay dormant?”
“We’re not sure why they went dormant in the first place, but best guess is that it was a function of time. I don’t see the general populace developing them on their own, though there may be isolated cases popping up that we need to be on the lookout for. But speaking from personal experience, I’ve done just about as much training as any of the others and I didn’t have so much as a psionic blip before I got upgraded. I may have been headed there, maybe not, but if it is linked to our training, then there’s zero chance of the general public accessing the repressed genetics through the same route.”
Davis nodded. “And Morgan?”
Paul cringed. “Traumatic events may serve as a breakthrough, but combat is traumatic enough and the V’kit’no’sat didn’t have people skipping over to the third tier powers. None of us have any reliable theories as to what happened with her…aside from her being typical Morgan.”
“Assume Ikrid is out then,” Davis said, floating options. “What about Lachka for some of our tech high level techs?”
“There’s still the reproduction issue…and Lachka is worthless without Pefbar. Plus, I’m not even sure if we can activate the powers individually. The process was set up as all or nothing.”
“Kara was able to make some alterations, I read.”
“That was to keep the machine from deconstructing the tissue some of us had already grown…and I’m not sure, but the 7 might have additional levels of interconnectivity that I’m not aware of. Going piecemeal could cause unforeseen problems.”
“Bottom line, is there any scenario you’re comfortable with outside of the Archons?”
“Other than you, no.”
Davis smiled. “I appreciate your vote of confidence, but I certainly haven’t earned them where adepts haven’t.”
“Check that,” Paul corrected himself. “Throw Wilson in there too.”
“I’ve already spoken to him about it. He seems to think as you do. I just want to know if there’s any reasonable advantage we can get out of them with non-Archon personnel, and you’re saying there’s none?”
“There are probably some advantages, but they’re not worth the risks. We keep ambrosia in-house, and psionics should be the same.”
“More than Archons use ambrosia,” Davis pointed out.
“But they can’t take it with them when they leave…and you haven’t trusted anyone else with its manufacture.”
“Not counting Canderous,” Davis said, tapping his lip with his finger as he thought. “I have a nagging feeling that this is something we’re not going to be able to contain within the Archon ranks forever, and I’d like a plan set up before it breaks out on its own.”
“Breaks out?”
“I don’t know what I’m saying,” Davis admitted. “I’ve just got a bad feeling about this.”
“So do I,” Paul agreed. “Which is why we need to keep this Archon-only…at least until we’ve got more experience with it. We’re still in the discovery stages.”
“I guess we’re both on the same page, just working it from different angles.”
“This is changing the Archons more than you know,” Paul told him. “Let us get a handle on it first, then we can sit down and analyze where else it might be of use.”
“Agreed,” Davis said, glancing down at the swimmers through the window. “Though I wish we had the ability to turn it off. Right now we have no safety net if someone else develops the ability…or an Archon goes rogue.”
“If the second case occurs we’ll deal with it,” Paul promised, “but that’s another reason to restrict it to acolytes and above. The few quitters we’ve had didn’t go very far past basic training.”
“Sounds like your thought process is well ahead of mine.”
“For once,” Paul joked.
Davis looked down at the floor, then back up at Paul. “But now you’ve got me wondering just how powerful the actual Zen’zat are…and what all they can really do to us.”
“Not just the Zen’zat,” Paul said, barely louder than a whisper. “The V’kit’no’sat have psionics too.”
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