by Paul Tassi
They set to stripping the assailant of his armor, naturally starting with the most pressing piece, the helmet. Erik ripped off the blank visor and the fury in his face faded to disbelief.
Finn Stoller.
Noah’s brain almost shut down on the spot. It didn’t make any sense. How? Why?
Finn blinked. He was coming around. Erik and Noah shook off their shock and began stripping his plating off to ensure he wasn’t concealing any more weapons. They scattered the pieces across the room behind them until Finn was left wearing nearly nothing. His face was already starting to swell where Erik had bashed him through the mask. Finn tried to sit up. Erik finally found his voice.
“Tie him up.”
Noah ripped the top sheet from his bed and tore it into strips. He hauled Finn onto his desk chair and wrapped one strip tightly around his chest and the other across his thighs, pinning his arms and legs. It wasn’t perfect, but it would be enough to hold Finn, who looked even scrawnier than usual when entirely stripped of clothes and armor.
“Wake. Up,” Erik barked, his words punctuated by hard slaps across his friend’s face. Finn’s head rolled around on his chest for a few seconds, but he soon opened his eyes. His right one was red and inflamed, and the socket was already starting to bruise.
“What did you inject her with?” Noah asked, a question more pressing than how or why.
“Tell me!” he shouted when Finn simply scowled at him in reply.
Noah was surprised when Erik turned and stormed out of the room, but grew panicked when he came back and Noah saw what was in his hand.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Noah said, putting his hand to Erik’s shoulder to stop him from walking toward the restrained Finn. His brother pushed past him and jammed the vertical lip of his laser pistol directly into Finn’s chest.
“I am not messing around,” Erik growled. “If you don’t tell me what was in that vial in the next three seconds, I will carve your heart out.”
Finn stared into Erik’s eyes. The shock of his alleged friend being underneath the helmet had been replaced by pure rage once more. Erik’s threat wasn’t idle, Noah knew that, but he was frozen, wanting answers just as badly. He made no moves to stop Erik.
“One.”
The alarm continued to drone outside.
“Two.”
Finn’s bare foot tapped nervously on the cold metal floor.
“Three.”
The gun’s power coils began to glow.
“No!” Noah finally shouted and lunged toward his brother.
“Alright, alright!” Finn shouted, tears streaming from his face.
Both Noah and Erik retreated a step. Erik kept the pistol trained on him.
“It’s just phenexlorine,” Finn said. “It was just supposed to make her … receptive.”
Erik’s eyebrows furrowed.
“Receptive to what?” Noah asked coldly.
“To … to me,” Finn said, finally starting to catch his breath. “Have you seen that girl? I’ve been to a thousand parties in a hundred cities full of Sora’s most beautiful women, and I’ve never seen anyone like her. I had to have her.”
Erik remained silent, pulsing with anger.
“You were going to … rape her?” Noah said through gritted teeth, spitting out the last two words with disdain.
“I had to have her,” Finn repeated. “No one was supposed to know. She wouldn’t have remembered. Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about it.”
Every vein in Noah’s body was throbbing. His hands shook as he raised them and took a step toward Finn.
“No,” Erik finally said. “He’s lying.”
Noah stopped to look at his brother, who subsequently pulled the trigger on the laser pistol.
It didn’t cut out his heart, but the gold beam exploded out of the gun and sheared off the better part of Finn Stoller’s left ear. The laser tore into the opposite end of the room and sawed the door of Noah’s dresser in half.
Finn screamed and thrashed violently from side to side, the left half of his face black with bits of his ear sizzling on the ground. The beam had sealed the wound instantly so there was little blood, but smoke rose from the charred patch and Finn’s cries were deafening.
“What was in the vial!” Erik shouted, the coils on the gun heating up once more.
“It’s a … it’s a …” Finn stammered. He couldn’t get the words out fast enough now. “It’s a compound of fenephrine, sian extract, and mursotoxis,” he finally got out.
“What does it really do?” Noah asked sternly, worried about the true answer after Finn had used attempted rape as a cover story.
“She’ll die from a brain aneurysm in three days.”
Noah grabbed his neck and Erik pressed the gun to his head.
“Wait, wait, wait!” Finn choked out. “I have the antidote. It’s in my armor over there,” he said, nodding toward a piece of plating that used to be attached to his forearm. “In case something went wrong or there was a change of orders.”
Noah didn’t understand, but he immediately yelled into the comm unit he’d grabbed off his desk.
“Theta, bring Kyra back up here now, we have the antidote.”
Theta’s metallic voice rang back to him.
“I have identified the compound, it is a—”
Noah cut her off.
“We know what it is, get her up here now!” he bellowed.
Noah turned back to Finn. “Orders? What orders? From who?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Erik said, lowering the gun from Finn’s forehead. “His father.”
Finn was beginning to sob now.
“I just wanted to show him I could … that I could …” but he trailed off and stared at the floor before finishing the thought.
Madric Stoller was trying to kill Kyra Auran? Why? And he’d sent the assassins at the spire?
“Talk,” Noah said. “Now.”
Finn was broken, and didn’t need any more prodding from the barrel of the gun.
“It was supposed to be quiet, painless, and untraceable,” he sniffed. “His agents told me where to find the stealth suit in the armory and how to mix the compounds. I was so careful. I disabled the cameras, the alarms. But the suit was too big. I tripped. She woke up, and it all went to shit.”
“We don’t care about your failed adventures as an assassin of teenage girls,” Erik said. “Why the hell is your father trying to kill Kyra?”
“You really don’t know, do you?” Finn said, smiling now through his tears.
At that moment, there was a knock on the door. Noah peered out and saw Theta and Kyra. He unlocked the controls and ushered them inside. Kyra’s blond hair was drenched with sweat and her bright blue eyes were wide with fear. She put her hands to her mouth when she saw who was tied to the chair.
“Finn!” she gasped. It took her a moment, but she understood. She turned to Noah. “W-what? Why?”
Noah handed Theta a small vial of orange liquid Erik had pulled from Finn’s armor. “Scan that,” he said. “Make sure it’s safe.”
Metal boots could be heard stomping down the corridor. The SDI were coming. Noah turned back to Finn.
“Yes, why?” Noah pressed. “Why does your father want to kill her?”
Finn actually laughed now. The spot where his ear had once been was still smoking.
“How can you be so blind? How can you really not see it?” he said with an unstable smile. “She’s Corinthia Vale, you fools!”
Noah shared a confused look with Kyra as Finn dissolved into a fit of hysterical laughter.
Kyra was slowly shaking her head, not understanding, but Noah kept staring at her. Closely. Like he was seeing her for the first time. That unmatched beauty. That magnetic pull. That laugh. That smile. He’d seen it a hundred times on archive feeds, and a hundred times more over the past few months. Standing before him was a younger, blue-eyed version of the woman once called the Soul of Sora.
Oh gods, it’s true. How is it t
rue?
14
“What is power?” the Archon purred, shielded by shadow in the darkest corner of the Dubai hotel room. “It is not the clenched fist or the ripping claw. It is not the cleaving sword or crushing hammer. It is not the burning shot or the explosive warhead. Power is control.
“These objects are used for control, but they are not control. True power lies not in forced action, a soul prodded toward their own demise with the whip or spear. True power is to march the soul wherever you so choose, and make them believe it was their own idea.
“This was the ruin of the old world. And it will be the ruin of your own as well. The Xalans believe they fight for sovereignty. For water. For honor. But they fight for the Archon, and always have. Their power lies in claws and guns and ships and bombs, but it is merely an illusion, gifts given to forever blind them. They march willingly toward your Sora, dying in droves for a cause that does not exist. For a future they will never see. Destruction is their sole purpose. They are an engineered plague designed for one use: your extinction. The old world must not rise again.
“This is how one destroys a civilization of billions. Not riding on a golden chariot through the streets. Not on the bridge of a shining warship. But lurking in the shadows, pulling a string here so a planet dies there. It is the only way.
“Silence is power. It allows stories and myth and legend to fill the air where previously there were none. Silence is a mystery, and can drive men mad through both its presence and absence.
“Patience is power, though few realize it. Patience is not a lack of action, but the intelligence to wait for the proper moment. It waits on the right time to act, for the right reasons, in the right way.
“But I fear time is running out. Immortality is a lie. We all perish someday, and time is relative. My days are your centuries. I must find the rest, and Sora holds the key. I required acceleration.
“The dark ones are valuable, but still weak. They are pale reflections of me, of my power. It is how they found their name, these ‘Shadows’ to my flame. Not for their color, but for their true nature. And if these humans, these Sorans could kill them, despite inferior biology? Perhaps I focused on the wrong race.
“Your counterpart is a useful weapon, devastating fleets on a whim on his imagined quest for vengeance, but he merely improves upon existing constructs. You. You are a new creation. Earth’s human strain proves invaluable. Pity there are so few left. You will do what I have not been able to in twenty thousand years. You will bring Sora to its knees, and with it, purge the galaxy of the rest of your kind. And you will do so as if it were your own idea. I will find what drives you, and I will use it to make you laugh as you destroy everyone you love.
“I tell this to you because I am alone in this world. In all these worlds. Though you will not remember, and I merely speak with myself, as I always have.”
But Lucas did remember, his brain knitting itself back together to find the words of the lost one-sided conversation as he lay in cold, forced unconsciousness on the Horizon. He strained to make sense of what it all meant.
15
A deal was struck.
When the SDI burst into Noah’s room that night, they didn’t find would-be assassin Finn Stoller tortured and bound to a chair. They found stupid rich prat Finn Stoller lying on the ground, rolling around in agony after accidentally shooting his own ear off messing with an overpriced laser pistol.
Nothing good could come of attempting to explain what had happened and handing Finn over to “authorities” that could very well be in his father’s pocket. It was even less of a viable plan to kill him where he stood, though it was certainly what he deserved after his attempt on Kyra’s life. The first option would let High Chancellor Stoller know they were onto him and accomplish nothing; the second would bring the full wrath of his government down on all of them, not just Kyra.
The deal they made was this. Finn Stoller would contact his father and tell him he was refusing his order to murder an innocent teenage girl on “moral grounds.” Madric Stoller would curse and yell at his good-for-nothing son, but it was plausible enough to be believed. When they reached Sora, they’d release Finn to return to his father on the condition that he’d be their contact inside the Stoller administration for when it was finally time for Madric to face justice. In return, they wouldn’t tell the High Chancellor that Finn had not only failed in the assassination attempt, but had been a fountain of information about the misdeeds of his father during his capture thereafter. Also, they wouldn’t lop off any more of his body parts before they sent him on his way. It was a deal he was eager to take.
The only one they could trust with all this other than those who had been present was Asha, and she agreed it was not wise for the lot of them to be turned into fugitives for the second time since their arrival on Sora. In fact, most of the deal was her idea.
But there were still a few weeks to go until they reached home, and they couldn’t very well lock Finn up in his room around the clock without drawing suspicion. They also couldn’t let Kyra be alone at any point, given that they were on a ship full of SDI soldiers who took their paychecks from Stoller. They were Asha’s unit, but even she admitted it would be foolish to say she trusted all of them wholeheartedly. She barely knew more than a few dozen of their names out of hundreds, even after being paired with the two support dreadnoughts for well over a year hunting the Corsair.
So they devised a system. Noah and Erik would alternate keeping watch over Kyra and Finn day and night. One needed protection, the other needed to be on a leash. Each night, one of the brothers would sleep on the floor in Kyra’s room while the other kicked Finn out of his bed and forced him to sleep chained to his own furniture, propped up against the wood and metal. Despite the hard floor versus the comfy bed, Kyra was always the optimal assignment. Tonight, Noah was the lucky one.
The metal ground was cold, even through the blanket underneath him. The room was dark except for the ambient blue glow of the clock hologram projecting out of the opposite wall. Distant clunks of boots could be heard a floor or two below. Noah checked the readouts on the pistol he kept beneath his pillow each night. His warhammer leaned against the wall a few feet away.
Kyra was silent, but awake. Noah could sense it, even if he couldn’t see her up on her bed. Finn’s attempt on her life had thrown her deeper down an emotional well, that much was clear. But it wasn’t because it was some great betrayal by a friend; she had barely known him. Nor was it the fact that she’d almost died; that had already happened more than a few times in her life. Rather, it was because of what he’d said.
“How can you really not see it? She’s Corinthia Vale, you fools!”
Finn didn’t have proof of his claim, but Kyra herself was evidence enough. She was the spitting image of the dead Vale, at least a younger version lacking Corinthia’s famed prismatic eyes. The original Corinthia Vale was bred to be a leader with a genetic price tag in the trillions. Finn said that when his father discovered this new, impossible version of her living in the care of the palace Keeper’s family, he saw her as a future political threat to him. This was assuming she was anything like her predecessor, one of the most eloquent, beloved, intelligent individuals on the planet. Not to mention she was beautiful enough to start wars. This was the dark side of Stoller’s push to hold onto power. Yes, he’d eliminated violent antigovernment groups like the Fourth Order, but to deem a 108-pound girl like Kyra Auran an equal threat? The man was insane. But he was a problem for another day.
So who was Kyra? That was the ultimate question. Theta helpfully suggested she might be a secret child of Talis Vale—Corinthia’s little sister no one had known existed. But there was another answer. A more likely one. It was possible Kyra was something else entirely, a word no one dared say in her presence.
Clone.
Despite genetic modification being the norm all over Sora, cloning was highly illegal and, most of the population agreed, horribly immoral.
Ther
e were all sorts of rumors about clones, and it was hard to tell fact from legend. Cloning labs had all been razed to the ground years ago by the extremely religious Chancellor Hallarian, who believed cloning the living would split the person’s soul in half, and cloning the dead would mean they lacked one altogether. Medical complications with cloning were vague, and most of those records had been destroyed, Theta had told Noah privately. But there were whispers clones would go mad with age, spread deathly diseases, or produce mutated children.
Furthermore, they weren’t able to contact Kyra’s grandfather, Keeper Malorious Auran, for an explanation about any of this. He’d mysteriously gone missing, which only made the situation worse.
They didn’t talk about clones with Kyra.
“Are you awake?” Kyra finally said in the darkness. Noah’s eyes sprang open from drifting shut after hours of staring at the ceiling.
“Yeah,” he replied, his voice hoarse. He rolled sideways on the ground toward the bed, but she was still hidden from view.
“Can’t sleep again,” she said. Noah didn’t ask why. He knew.
“We’ll be home soon,” Noah said.
“Don’t have a home,” Kyra replied quietly.
“You can stay at Colony One. If you haven’t noticed, we’ve got plenty of room.”
Kyra was quiet, considering or ignoring the offer, he couldn’t be sure. She changed the subject.
“Know any good stories?” she asked.
Noah considered that.
“None with warriors and beasts and brilliant political allegory,” he said.
“I’ve heard enough of those,” she said. “Tell me an Earth story.”
An Earth story? That threw Noah. Though it was technically his home planet, he hadn’t been raised there. What he knew of Earth he had found in the archives and through Alpha’s compiled data. Most of the fictional tomes he’d come across were vast and complex.
