The Sons of Sora

by Paul Tassi

  An alarm went off. The scientists all crowded around a flashing console while the soldiers drew their weapons and looked for the threat.

  The Resistance raid?

  The scientists moved from the console to Lucas’s chamber and killed the wailing alarm. The feed zoomed in and Lucas could see that his eyes were wide open, glowing electric blue, his pupils white. He stared straight ahead past them. The Xalans were all growling at each other and gesturing wildly, until suddenly …

  The Xalans froze and the room went silent. They didn’t just stop talking, they ceased moving all together.

  What?

  Lucas could see Stoller’s eyes gleaming wickedly through the holographic display.

  With blank looks on their faces, the Xalan soldiers turned and started unloading their rifles into anyone in their field of vision. Most of the scientists were cut down in an initial wave of plasma, and the soldiers turned the rifles on each other. What lab techs hadn’t been killed started slashing at each other wildly with their claws or surgical blades. Some picked up dead soldier’s guns and began firing them with the same vacant looks. Lucas’s eyes were still open in the tank, but he was obviously seeing none of what was happening.

  Oh god.

  The video feed switched to an overhead view of the hotel lobby where the massacre was amplified exponentially with far more Xalans on the ground level. Xalans stabbed and shot each other at point blank range, and gallons of black blood were spattered around the room. The lobby doors remained barred. No one had broken in. The Archon’s research team was simply turning on each other and tearing themselves to pieces.

  It seemed like an hour, but in truth it was probably all over in less than two minutes. In the end, there was only one Xalan left wandering around the piles of corpses in the lobby. He held a bloodied metal fragment in one hand and a pistol in the other. There were horrifying slash marks across his chest, and he was favoring his right leg, which had suffered a plasma burn. Tottering awkwardly around the bodies, gaze fixed straight ahead, his pace slowed down until he stood just below the staircase. The metal shard and pistol dropped from his hands, and he simply put his claws to his throat and dragged them violently across it. Blood poured to the floor as he collapsed on the spot. The room was silent and still.

  The same could be said for the conference room in the Grand Palace. Mouths hung agape as everyone tried to process what they’d just witnessed. Lucas found himself with the same reaction.

  I don’t understand.

  But another voice.

  Yes. Yes you do.

  Madric Stoller made it clear for everyone.

  “The readouts the scientists were looking at before the massacre were Lucas’s psionic fluctuations. Your daughter uncovered a dramatic, unprecedented spike in the data at that precise moment.”

  Stoller paused. “He did this. Or rather, he made them do it.”

  “Impossible,” Alpha said breathlessly.

  Die, Lucas had thought. And she had.

  Every eye in the room was now trained on Lucas’s holographic cell feed.

  Asha was now putting together the pieces of what he’d told her about the blackened woman.

  “Do you remember?” she whispered to him.

  “I don’t—” Lucas stammered. “I can’t—”

  He had no recollection of any of this, though it confirmed a suspicion that had been eating at him since the memory of the woman with the knife. But how? How was this possible? And on this large a scale? Even psionic Chosen Shadows didn’t have such an ability, did they?

  “You are a new creation.”

  “Are you alright?” Asha asked him, her face full of concern. And fear.

  “You will bring Sora to its knees.”

  “I need access to him,” Alpha said sternly. “Immediately.”

  “I will find what drives you, and I will use it to make you laugh as you destroy everyone you love.”

  “This is how the war ends,” Madric Stoller said, looking straight into Lucas’s ice-blue eyes. “This is how the war ends at last.”

  “Squeeze,” Alpha said, his eyes narrowed, trained on a set of blank readouts on a floating screen in front of him. They were in one of the vast laboratories the SDI had given him in the military base to work on projects for the war effort. Lucas was his latest endeavor.

  “It’s really not safe for you to be here,” Lucas said. “You saw what I did in that video, I could do the same to you without even knowing—”

  “I am aware of all possible risks involved with my presence here,” Alpha said, his eyes not leaving the monitor. “Now squeeze.”

  Lucas obeyed. He tightened his grip around the metal cylinder as hard as he could, his black veins bulging from the effort. The allium crumpled inward like tinfoil, and Alpha’s empty monitor came alive with data spikes. His gold-ringed eyes widened. He did a few quick calculations in the air and spoke to a floating recorder that was orbiting the pair of them.

  “Patient demonstrates eightfold increase in grip strength. Compare to tenfold increase in run speed from previous test.”

  Lucas had spent the morning sprinting back and forth across the expansive room at speeds so fast it disoriented him. He’d actually failed to stop once and blown a hole through the western wall, which prematurely ended the test.

  Lucas looked down at the mangled can of allium in his hand. They made vaults and warship hulls out of the stuff. And containment cells, like the one in which he currently resided.

  So this is what being a Shadow feels like.

  The sensation was hard to describe. Now that his head had cleared and he wasn’t hallucinating imagined enemies anymore, he had time to relish his new abilities. He felt more alive than he’d ever been. The power that flowed through his sickly black veins was palpable.

  Alpha suddenly injected him with a syringe full of clear liquid. As soon as he pulled the needle out, the tiny wound closed, healing instantly.

  “What was that?” Lucas asked. A chill raced through him and he shivered. It felt like ice water was flowing through his arm and into the rest of his body.

  “Stage one of your treatment,” Alpha said. “I am no geneticist, but I will do my best to slow or reverse the Shadow conversion process using the data my daughter has recovered regarding the process.”

  “But I feel great, Alpha,” Lucas said excitedly. “Better than ever, actually. My mind is clear, I’m in control of myself. It’s the best I’ve felt since they woke me up.”

  Alpha looked at him with something resembling pity.

  “Your newly enhanced immune system masks the underlying issue with the conversion process. It is automated at this point in its deployment. Left alone, it will fully convert you into a Shadow.”

  “I don’t understand,” Lucas said. “I’m an asset like this, I can help. You can change me back once the war is won.”

  “I cannot,” Alpha said sternly. “Once conversion fully takes hold, it is irreversible. But I fear we may not reach that point in any case.”

  “What do you mean?” Lucas asked.

  “Your new immune system is not merely fighting off disease and injury. It is eating into your healthy cells, deeming them too weak for their purposes. If they are not adequately replaced, conversion could eat you from the inside out. It is how many Shadow candidates die, and the data suggests it is simply a much longer process with humans and Sorans.”

  Alpha paused and looked down toward the floor.

  “Your life continues to be in incredible peril as your body transforms, though I worry the more pressing danger is the threat you will become to all of us if you fully convert.”

  Lucas fell silent at that.

  “There are only two paths forward. Either I reverse the conversion process and cure you of this infection, or I attempt to increase its speed, allowing you to fully convert before any harm can befall you. The latter path seems appealing due to your present abilities, but I fear it is the far more dangerous option, and should not be attem
pted for your own good and the good of us all.”

  Lucas finally found his voice.

  “You heard Stoller. He wants me for the effort. He’ll kill you for trying to revert me.”

  Alpha waved his claw dismissively.

  “I am attempting to mask my work and forge my data regarding your development for as long as is possible. My intention is to cure you before my true intentions are discovered. The High Chancellor will believe I am forging you into a weapon after witnessing your power, while I am in fact doing the opposite.”

  “I could help,” Lucas said. “As a full Shadow. You saw what the Archon has done to me. What I can do to them.”

  Alpha glowered at him while continuing to enter data.

  “I know you believe this to be true, but you would risk such a transformation? Knowing what you do about your abilities? Who is to say once you reach full conversation, you would not turn into the Archon’s slave like this ‘Black Corsair’?”

  Lucas shuddered. He hadn’t considered that.

  “So you’re not going to test my psionic abilities?” Lucas asked, looking down at the crushed allium and thinking back to the Archon’s terrifying crucible with the burned woman.

  Alpha finally stopped typing and looked directly at Lucas.

  “This new mutation … unnerves me. It is a dark power the likes of which I have never witnessed. I worry not for my own safety should I dare ‘test’ it, but for the lives of everyone on this planet. You do not yet grasp the full extent of what you are becoming.”

  17

  The icy wind whipped at Noah’s face as he stepped out of the transport. Winter had come to Colony One.

  The buildings, brand new and ancient alike, were buried in a solid two feet of snow along with the forest that surrounded them. Even in a heated thermal overcoat, the chill reached deep into Noah’s bones.

  The landing platform had been cleared, heat filtering through the pavement to melt whatever ice covered it, and dozens of hooded shapes stood in bulky white coats ahead of them. One figure broke from the others and sprinted to embrace him.

  “Noah!” she cried.

  “Sakai.”

  He embraced her and the cold faded from his mind. He’d forgotten the smell of her. Even the wind couldn’t whisk it away as his face was buried in her hair.

  “I knew you’d make it back,” she said. Noah saw tears freezing on her cheeks.

  Wuhan strode up beside his half-sister and clapped his hand on Noah’s still-aching shoulder. He tried not to wince.

  “A trip to the homeworld, huh? You’re going to have to educate the children,” he said, motioning toward the group, who were all gathering closer. Erik was already surrounded by five female admirers, but he was pushing past them. He was uncharacteristically silent and wearing a grim expression. Something told Noah he wasn’t pleased to be back in the “colony cage,” as he called it.

  Quezon circled around to Noah’s other side.

  “What was it like?” he asked.

  “We’re better off here,” Noah said, his arm around Sakai. “I’ll tell you that.”

  He turned around as two more hooded figures descended from the ship, one tall, one short. Theta and Kyra.

  “Everyone,” Noah loudly announced to the group. “This is Kyra. She’ll be staying with us a while.”

  Kyra pulled down her thermal scarf and flashed a brilliant smile at the group.

  “Hello,” she said, and Noah felt the hearts of every male present stop. A few females as well. She had that power, just like her predecessor.

  Sakai hugged her immediately.

  “So good to meet you at last,” she said. “I’ve enjoyed our little talks.”

  “Little talks?” Noah asked, his eyebrows raised.

  “We’ve been sharing all sorts of fun stories about you from when you were little,” Kyra said in a teasing tone. Noah hadn’t even realized the two had been in contact on the ship.

  The returning party was not sharing the fact that Finn Stoller had attempted to kill Kyra on the return trip, so Noah supposed he didn’t mind her keeping something much less important a secret.

  “Oh gods,” he grinned, rolling his eyes. “This was a mistake.”

  As he looked across the smiling faces of Sakai and Kyra, he knew he might not be joking.

  Once they landed, Lucas and Asha shipped out to some undisclosed location, presumably to figure out how to keep his father from turning into the next Corsair. Lucas had been coherent when he’d left, profusely apologizing to Noah for assaulting him. Noah tried to remain bitter about the attack and the secret Lucas had kept about his father, but it was hard to hold a grudge against a man who had not only saved the planet but had been imprisoned and tortured for a decade and a half as a reward. He and Lucas parted on good terms, but Erik’s cold good-bye left the impression his brother still saw Lucas as more of a threat than a parent.

  There was good news about the war. The Xalans had reportedly abandoned their own colonies and were retreating. At least, that’s what the Stream had been blaring ever since they got home. That meant Noah’s most pressing problem was keeping Kyra safe at Colony One and getting her some answers about her true parentage. If she had parentage at all, that is. And of course there was Stoller himself to deal with, a monumental undertaking if there ever was one.

  Keeper Malorious Auran was still nowhere to be found. The man had retired from his work at the Grand Palace shortly after Madric Stoller took office and had been living a quiet life in Mal Dur’anne, but now he had simply vanished. Noah feared the worst, and he was afraid Kyra did too, though she wouldn’t say it.

  “She’s still in trouble, isn’t she?” Sakai said, snapping Noah out of his daze as he unpacked in his quarters. Well, their quarters, more often than not.

  “She is,” Noah said. “She’s here to be kept safe.”

  It was the best place they could think of. Even if Stoller had butchered a church full of Anointed at the White Spire nearby, there was no way he’d try the same at the colony itself with so many of the Earthborn and their guards around. The soldiers left were all personally recruited and vouched for by Tannon Vale after the revelation that one of the guards had turned and given up Kyra.

  “What happened at the spire?” she asked. “Who is after her?”

  “We’re not sure,” Noah lied. He hated how it felt, having to conceal the truth from Sakai. He trusted her, but that sort of knowledge was dangerous to have. “Someone with a vendetta against her family, we’re guessing.”

  That was an understatement.

  “I’ll bunk with her,” Sakai said. “I’ll keep an eye on her to make sure she’s alright.”

  “You don’t have to,” Noah said, lugging a heavy crate across the floor filled with the power armor he’d worn on Earth. “They’re putting five of the Watchman’s top guards at her door.”

  “Still,” she said. “She’ll be lonely. Like a princess locked in a tower.” Noah stood up and looked at her. There was a hint of something in her eye. Does she know?

  But leave it to Sakai to immediately start caring for a girl she barely knew. Noah felt a pang of guilt, but didn’t know why. He shook it off and lifted a metal case onto his bed.

  “What is all this stuff?” Sakai asked, brushing her hair back. it seemed impossible to Noah that he had forgotten how beautiful she was. Being so close around Kyra had been like staring into the sun for too long. But now his sight was returning and he remembered why this was the girl he cared for more than any other.

  “It’s a gift from a friend,” Noah said as he opened the electronic lock. The lid swung open to reveal his darksteel warhammer, which made Sakai gasp.

  “Quite a friend,” she said.

  “Yes, she is,” Noah replied with a smile.

  “Let me guess, tall, thin, pale?”

  “You’re on the right track.”

  Both of them laughed. They were already falling back into their old rhythm, which was comforting after the harrowing ordea
ls of the past few months. She was his anchor, he realized now. His touchstone. Noah grabbed her by the waist and drew her toward him.

  “You can bunk with her tomorrow,” he said, and moved in to kiss her. “Tonight, I need you.”

  It was strange, concentrating on schoolwork after all that had happened. Noah had missed months of lessons and was scrambling to catch up, even with copious amounts of grace from his instructors. He had piles of coursework he was finding hard to care about given everything he’d just endured. Urtorian history lessons and the density of thulium didn’t seem like particularly applicable knowledge anymore. The colony was a bubble. Now that it had burst, it was hard to feel comfortable back inside.

  Combat training seemed like a sick joke now that he’d experienced real war, killed real people, real Xalans. What had been intense and pulse pounding before now felt like a children’s game. Vibro-weapons and pulse blasts crumpled his Earthborn brethren into unconscious little heaps. They didn’t sever their limbs or blow off their heads. Noah had seen so much death recently, it was hard to stop seeing it. The others didn’t understand. They couldn’t.

  Erik was even less engaged than he’d been before he left. He rarely showed up to class and barely even made appearances at combat training, which used to be his favorite activity. They’d often find him wandering around in the woods long after a match ended, not having fired a single shot. When pressed, he simply replied that it was “boring.” Compared to Dubai, he certainly had a point.

  Noah only saw him light up when he was around Kyra; she somehow managed to breathe life back into his brother. But only briefly, and he would darken whenever she wasn’t around.

  One day, Erik finally managed to show up to a hand-to-hand training bout, likely only because Kyra was present. The event had been moved indoors on account of the freezing temperatures, though occasionally they’d spar in the snow to “toughen them up,” as their instructors put it. A silver-haired ex-Guardian named Celton was their combat instructor and was barking commands to Lyon and Wuhan, who were flogging each other with wooden weapons in the ring. In less than a minute, Wuhan had Lyon on his back with his staff at his throat. No surprise there.