by M. Van
I glanced up with a futile hope that someday I would do that and see the stars, but as it was, my eyes fell on the gray-blue color of solid rock. It stretched over the underground city of Subterra as far as the eye could see.
It seemed that to me that that drunk and those idiots back at the bar were the only ones up at this ungodly hour. An eerie quiet hung around me as I walked to one of the signal enhancers at the corner down the street.
Any communication with life beyond the city walls needed signal enhancement. The rock and the metals embedded within were just too dense for any signal to penetrate. That’s why we used signal boosters. These devices used old-fashioned cables to send a signal to a relay station, and it could travel further distances from there. Distances like, say, a city up top or a secret rebel base.
Feeling unnerved, I stepped within the range of the booster so it would be able to pick up the signal of my wrist device and tapped my ear. Then I waited as the device connected to the feed. It took about a minute before I received a reply.
“Reece, is that you?” a hesitant voice on the other end said. A grin formed on my face.
“Ty, my nerdy little beauty,” I said, hoping to sound chirpy. “What’s up?” The thought of Tyrel’s face glowing as red as the glow of the expanding sun hovering over the planet released some of the tension I felt. We had been waiting for the call for a while and I sort of dreaded the outcome.
“Hi…Reece,” Tyrel said in her shy voice, and I could just imagine her sitting red-faced behind her desk. Then she cleared her throat, and it occurred to me she might not be the only one on the line. I decided to reign in my enthusiasm and let her speak. “Harp wanted me to tell you that we’ve made contact.”
I swallowed hard, placing my hands on the signal booster for some much-needed support and waited for Tyrel to elaborate.
“She’s here.”
My heart skipped a beat, and I punched the air around me. I wanted to shout out a firm yes but knew it was still too early for that. This was just the first part of what we needed to accomplish. Still, I couldn’t help but feel as if we had claimed a victory. Pulling myself together, I drew in a deep breath and asked, “How did she seem?”
“I…I don’t know,” Tyrel said. The tension in her voice was palpable, and it wasn’t anything to boost anyone’s confidence.
“What about Saera, what did she say?”
“I haven’t spoken to anyone,” Tyrel said. “I don’t know anything except that she’s here and with the doctor to deal with the memory thing.”
I nodded, not sure if I would be able to use my voice and keep up the cheery facade.
Tyrel took this as her cue to continue. “Harp has sent a Hymag to pick you guys up, so I guess you’ll find out soon enough.”
“Okay,” I said, feeling a combination of defeat and determination. “We’ll be there soon.”
Before I could end the connection, Tyrel added, “Say hi to Riffy for me. And Kelle, of course.”
“Of course,” I replied and felt the giddiness return. “See ya soon.”
I disconnected the call and exhaled. The air underground was stale but chilly as I glanced up and ran my eyes over the structures carved from solid rock. A faint light peeked from one or two windows, but most were dark where the residents lay fast asleep, unaware of the changes this night might bring. I dug my hands into my pockets and started back toward the bar and wondered about Riffy’s and especially Kelle’s reaction when I brought them the news.
Chapter seven
Maece
Harp guided us down a staircase, and we passed a couple of doors along a hallway until we reached what looked like a lab underneath the platform.
Centered in the middle of the lab stood a chair. The arm and leg restraints mounted to the chair didn’t ease my nerves. Another man dressed in black approached us as he weaved between a row of tables, although nothing about him resembled the men and women working upstairs. This man was short with a protruding belly, and most of his hair had retreated to the sides.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said as he approached. “You did it! You actually did it. This is so exciting.” The man had a high-pitched voice that seemed to rise with excitement. He stuck out his hand in greeting. “I’m so pleased to meet you, Ms.—”
Saera and Harp both called out to stop the man from finishing his sentence.
“Don’t!” Saera yelled.
“Doctor,” Harp’s voice boomed. The doctor froze on the spot. His hand stuck in midair as his wide eyes roamed over us, flicking from one person to another.
“Why don’t you first do your thing, and then we’ll get to know each other?” Harp said. The doctor nodded his head vigorously as he retreated his hand to his chest where he started to fiddle with his jacket.
“Em…why…eh…please sit,” the doctor said in an almost comical stutter. Then he gestured at me before his finger pointed at the chair. I glanced at Saera, and she must have noticed my hesitation.
“This is the easy part,” she said. The reluctant smile she gave me didn’t boost my confidence, and another look at the arm and leg restraints kept me frozen on the spot.
The doctor shifted an uneasy gaze from me to Harp, to Saera and back to me again. He opened his mouth to speak, but Saera beat him to it.
“Hey,” she said as she stepped closer.
But before she could add anything else, I said, “I can’t be sure of anything.” I continued in an accusing tone, “Not about your reasons or your intentions. Hell, I can’t even be sure that you won’t cut out my CPU or brain, or whatever.” I pointed an accusing finger at Harp. “And don’t you think calling out some name that makes the insides of my head feel like it’s on fire is going to convince me.”
Harp let out a sigh and dropped his chin to his chest. He looked to be losing his patience with me, but I couldn’t have cared less. Saera, on the other hand, stood calmly in front of me with an expression of understanding on her face.
“You’re right,” she said. “We can’t give you that assurance, and I could tell you that the doctor intends to do everything he can to help you, but then why would you trust me, right?”
“Oh, absolutely,” the doctor started to sputter, “and I’ll explain what I’m doing every step along the way.”
I ignored the doctor’s interruption and kept my gaze on Saera. Her pleading eyes shimmered with unshed tears.
“I can assure you that this procedure is very safe,” the doctor added. I briefly glanced at the man who seemed to be sincere, but I didn’t know him—so he could have been lying to my face for all I knew.
“I know this must be daunting, but we have no other way,” Saera said and then hesitated. She bit her lower lip as she searched for the right words. “I don’t know how else to convince you.” She moved a hand through her hair and shifted her head. I didn’t need to follow her gaze to know she was looking at Harp for support.
A second later, her shoulders slumped as she faced me again, but she kept her eyes directed at the floor. She took in a deep breath, and as she raised her chin, she said, “Trust me, please.”
Her words came out a mere whisper, and it wasn’t so much her words, but the look on Saera’s face that had me deciding to put aside my doubts. For some reason that I couldn’t understand, Saera had already gained my trust. And what was it I had to lose?
By now TED most have interpreted my inability to comply with their orders as an error, and I doubted I’d be able to return to my duties as an enforcer—besides would I want to? Not if what these people had told me turned out to be the truth, and so, with a nod, I complied.
A sigh of relief passed Saera’s lips as I sat down in the chair, and the doctor came to stand beside me. He had a little trouble fastening the restraint around my arms and legs. The built-in exoskeleton of my suit made the span of my wrists and ankles wider, but he managed. I wondered if the restraints would hold me, though, if I really wanted to get out. Actually, I knew they wouldn’t.
�
�Could you remove the glasses,” the doctor asked as he walked over to a table with a bunch of equipment. Saera came over and stood by my side. She removed the shades and wiped a strand of hair from my face.
“Your eyes still freak me out,” she said with a half-smile.
“Thanks for the pep talk,” I replied.
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” the doctor said as he approached with what looked like a giant needle. “Once we redeem the balance in your postcentral gyrus along with your occipital lobe, then the amount of pigment in your irises should return to normal.”
“How does that work?” I asked. The doctor lay the needle on a tray next to my chair and started working on a large electronic device that was suspended over my head.
“Well,” he said as he jerked and pulled at the device, “I could tell you, but you wouldn’t understand.”
Saera chuckled and glanced at Harp, but then her smile quickly disappeared.
“Let’s go,” Harp said in that minimalistic way of his. Saera squeezed my arm.
“We’ll be right next door, watching you through those,” she said. She pointed at a barely visible monitoring device that hung in the corner.
I watched as she followed Harp into the next room when I noticed the doctor hovering over me with his needle.
“Whoa…wait a min…” I started to say, but as soon as I felt the sting of the needle, everything faded to dark.
I lay on my stomach on a cot as I opened my eyelids and stared straight into Saera’s eyes. She sat on the ground next to my cot, knees pulled to her chest and her back against the wall.
“Hey, shorty,” she said and scooted closer.
“Huh,” I grunted, lifting my head an inch off the pillow, “what happened?”
“They fixed part of your brain,” she replied with a broad smile on her face. This surprised me; I hadn’t seen her smile like that before. It was as if something had lifted off her shoulders, and it showed on her face. I raised myself onto my elbows and wiped a sleeve along my mouth to get rid of some drool.
“Only part of my brain,” I asked.
Her lips formed into a thin line. “Well, your head won’t hurt anymore if I call you Maecy,” she said.
I frowned. “So why didn’t you call me that just now, besides the fact that I’m taller than you?”
The question made her smile grow wider again.
“Well, you weren’t when we met, and because you hated it when I called you shorty.”
“I recalled you saying that I hated it when you called me Maecy,” I replied.
“Nah, I think you secretly loved it.”
“Maybe you should explain to me this sisterly relationship you mentioned because I’m not getting it,” I said and let my head fall back on the pillow.
Ignoring me, she crawled up off the floor, grabbed my legs, and forced them over the side as she sat herself down on the cot next to me.
“Hey,” I protested.
“The doc said I was supposed to get you out of bed as soon as you were awake.”
She jerked at my arm, and I tried to wrench it from her grip.
“I’m still sleeping,” I said, but she refused to release my arm. After a moment, I relented and sat up. Our eyes locked and I held her gaze.
“Your eyes changed back to normal,” she said.
I thought about it for a moment. “I don’t even remember how they normally looked,” I said. “I don’t even know if what you’re telling me is the truth.”
“I know,” she said, and I could hear the tiniest of cracks in her voice. “But…” Her voice trailed off as she fiddled with something in the pocket of her pants. She pulled out a small pad and flicked it on.
After tapping the device, a folder opened, and a bunch of images rolled down the screen. She searched for a while, and seemingly satisfied, she held the device out for me to see.
The image displayed was one of her and me sitting on the edge of a platform with a Hymag parked behind us. We looked younger than we did now, but it could only have been a few years. We both had big smiles plastered across our faces while Saera pointed at the person taking the image.
For a second, I braced myself in fear of the pain that would certainly rack my brain upon seeing myself in an image from the past, but nothing happened. I managed to relax, but the strangeness of seeing myself in a situation that I couldn’t remember ever happening remained.
With her finger, Saera scrolled to the next image and then pressed down on the pad. The moving picture of a scowling Harp started to play and panned over to where Saera and I were still sitting and laughing on the edge of the platform, but it was Harp’s voice we heard.
“Would you please get your asses over here,” he said, sounding fierce, but as the image recorder shifted back, I saw an actual smile on his face. A second later Harp’s arm swung out and swatted at the person recording the rare moment.
“I didn’t know he had it in him,” I said as Saera stopped playback. Saera shoved a playful elbow into my side and grinned.
“Just so you can be sure that you did know us when you were older,” she said. “The rest will follow shortly.”
Saera stood and held out a hand.
“Come on,” she said. “It’s time you find out who you’re supposed to be.”
I took her hand and stood. My feet had barely found their balance as she took me into an embrace and whispered near my ear, “I’m really glad you’re back. I’ve missed you.”
I didn’t know how to reply. Unlike her, I didn’t know what I had missed. Not wanting to appear ungrateful, I hugged her back. Even though the gesture should have felt foreign, it came naturally to me. Without another word, she released me, took my hand, and guided me to the door.
We stepped into the hallway from earlier and crossed it before entering the lab. The doctor wasn’t around, but Harp stood at one of the tables and stared at a monitor hanging on the wall. The screen had been divided into four sections, and while three of them had static pictures, the lower left screen displayed moving images.
I stopped at the sight of myself strapped in the chair. My body shook and convulsed while the doctor stood by my side and tapped the screen of the pad in his hands. Although I had no memory of what had happened, my blood ran cold. Saera must have noticed because she spoke up.
“Colrin,” she said in a tiny voice. Even before he reacted, I knew Harp would turn around. Colrin was Harp’s first name, and somehow I knew. I remembered it. He glanced at us and then tapped the man sitting behind the desk on the shoulder, and the man instantly stopped the replay. Saera squeezed my hand she was still holding and guided me past the chair and across the room.
Harp stepped closer and narrowed his eyes at me. “You okay?” he asked. Raising an eyebrow at the offer of concern, I nodded in acknowledgment. He seemed content with that and turned to the man sitting behind the desk.
“Kyran, I believe you’ve met Maece,” he said. “Maece, this is Kyran—he’ll be guiding us through memory lane today.”
As Kyran stood and offered me his hand, I recognized him as the wide-eyed tech guy from Memory Junction with the wild hair.
“You work at TED,” I said as I accepted his hand. He grinned and removed the HDA clamped between his teeth.
“Just part-time,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Lux.”
I felt three pairs of eyes on me as if they were waiting for another brain-frying incident or gauging my reaction to my last name. This all seemed too weird. A moment ago, I had never even thought the name and now felt as if it belonged to me.
Kyran grinned again and turned to Harp.
“The doc knows his thing,” he said.
“That’s why I hired him,” Harp said. “Now get to it.”
Kyran gestured at a couple of chairs. “You’re gonna need them,” he said and sat behind the desk. Saera and I both took a chair and sat down on either side of Kyran. None of them offered a seat to Harp, so neither did I. He folded his arms behind his back a
nd stood behind me, which felt a bit intimidating.
Kyran’s fingers hovered over the table, and a range of colorful lights flashed up. He maneuvered his hands as if he was operating one of those tablets I had seen him use at TED. Around us, the lights in the room dimmed, and we focused on the screen hanging on the wall.
“Let’s start with a little backstory,” he said as he pressed a key, and one of the four sections on the screen flickered to life.
Kyran wasn’t kidding when he announced starting off with a little backstory. The screen showed us images of how the Combined Districts of Tenebrae came to be. News footage compiled over the years revealed the story of how scientists had worked at creating wormholes to expedite our ability to conquer the vastness of space.
As a race, we had traveled to distant corners of the universe for millennia but never managed to find anything but planets or gas giants unable to sustain human life. Of course, efforts had been made to build colonies on the moon, and an outpost had even been built on Mars, but there wasn’t much desire among the population to live on a deserted rock, even if they were equipped with massive artificial gardens.
Back then they believed wormhole travel would be our only chance to encounter an environment like the one we knew and to find new worlds to expand the reach of the human race. Unfortunately, their efforts hadn’t gone as planned. After numerous successful attempts, it seemed as if those same scientists had bitten off more than they could chew when they accidentally created a wormhole too close to the sun’s core. This caused the sun to vent most of its fuel into space connected through the wormhole.
Things quickly turned from bad to worse. The incident had hastened the sun’s transition toward the red giant phase, causing the star to burn brighter. Ice caps permanently melted, and before long oceans turned into vast wastelands.
Fortunately, they managed to close the bridge in time, or else the sun would have transitioned into a red giant billions of years before it was supposed to. Planets like Mercury and Venus and perhaps even the earth would have been engulfed by the expanded sun. If nothing else, the close proximity to the massive disk would have scorched the planet, and even our dome shields wouldn’t have been able to protect us from the harsh environment.
