No matter. Lesser souls died to be born again in another lifetime. Souls of her caliber died many times in the same lifetime in order to embrace magnitudes more power and consciousness than the more primitive vessel, wired as it was, could encompass.
She felt herself raining down on the world as so much ash, permeating every hole and crevice, seeping into the earth, into storm drains, being caught up in the cycles of life now on this world; swept by the winds out to sea to saturate the ocean’s waters, even as she drifted from the surface of every lake and river down into the sum and sundry watery abysses. No animal, insect, or living breathing entity had failed to breathe her in at this point.
She hence had access to all of their minds. Collating that much information at once, sifting, parsing, making sense of, detecting patterns, early warning signs—it was what she did. And for a world with barely 8 billion sentient souls at the pinnacle of evolution for this world, coordinating all that information was a trifling affair.
But she was a long way from accomplishing her mission. Her initial body couldn’t survive long on this world, not having been exposed to its sum and sundry pollutants, its microbes, bacteria, fungi, and viruses, any and all of which would have shredded her immune system absent any defenses. So that was the task before her now. She needed the rains to leach her into the soil so that she could fathom the essence of the billions of microbes that went into sustaining a single plant or tree, that went into dissolving rocks and sculpting the landscape. If she was to become the master architect of this world, with the ability to shape life—in any form—this was the level of invasiveness she needed.
When her work was complete she could choose to be a benign god, if her subjects would give themselves to her willingly, manifesting platinum and precious rare-earth metals and minerals at will to power new technologies, heralding in a new golden age; or she could be a tyrannical god, putting fear into the hearts of her subjugated subjects. Or she could be both, alternating carrots and sticks. As soon as her psychological studies were complete, her approach could be as varied and as nuanced as it needed to be, tailored to each individual on the planet as opposed to all in aggregate.
Less than a day since her “death,” and already seventy percent of her job was complete. But much of that she couldn’t take credit for. The fact was that life from one world to the next was but variations on a theme; there was very little truly new and original in all of the heavens. And so it was easy to hack the various genetic structures she was encountering; they weren’t all that different from ones she’d encountered before.
The final thirty percent to be decoded would yield readily enough; each speck of ash of Elektra’s body contained enough artificial intelligence to rival the most powerful supercomputers on Earth; and they were all interlinked, able to parallel process all information with one another to maximize their computing power further.
Her cabbalistic language, what’s more, a kind of picture-writing, was made up of words that were in fact words of power, based on energy imprints of all known life forms; their essence boiled downs to syllables and consonants so that as they rolled off the tongue, they could invoke the given lifeform, bring it into being out of the nothingness, if that was the intention, or it could simply allow one to commune more completely with that lifeform, meditate on its hidden truths and deeper nature. The language, by its very nature, was open ended, allowing for the constant creation of new words, new cabbalistic images, that would in turn bring forth new life; it was literally the language of the gods. Before creation and manifestation comes the burst of energy that quantifies and qualifies the given lifeforms; the cabbalistic language of her people was meant to lift forms out of the void, out of the spirit world, and into the physical world. It could just as easily unravel entities firmly entrenched in the physical plane, and dispense them back to oblivion. Such was the power of her people. And their purpose, when they lived, but to amplify and augment her thoughts; it was her mind that had granted her species this tremendous power. Her people were gone now, curtailing much of what she could do. That problem would soon be rectified.
***
The potion was taking effect. Aba could feel the presence of the other blind huntresses; she could feel Augustus’s presence as well.
They retained only the faintest of links to the dragons back in the barn, leaving the beasts’ minds unencumbered so they could defend the huntresses as need be, while their bodies lay prostrate and vulnerable. Astral traveling out of their bodies like this made them far too exposed for comfort.
But now they were inside the alien queen. And that sense of susceptibility—even though they had been fortified by the huntresses’ and Augustus’ psychic links to one another—was higher than ever.
They could follow everything the queen was doing; her ongoing scientific analyses of earth’s most microscopic lifeforms. It was a heady feeling. With this knowledge, they could concoct potions of their own that could affect their victims in countless, subtle ways, compounding their level of control. Those under the spell could be zombiefied so subtly that even those about them, not under the influence, couldn’t tell they were acting out of accord with their normal behavior. Viruses and bacteria could be introduced into the body to subtly tilt the mix of endorphins one way or the other: one way, the person acted heroically, sacrificing themselves for others; the other way, and they’d kill to protect themselves with no concern for others. The same person—just infected.
The queen had detected their presence. Interestingly, she had not gone on the defensive. She merely altered their body chemistries, releasing the microbes from their GI tracts into their bloodstreams, genetically altering them on the fly with the distributed intelligence of her mind, already saturating the blind huntresses as it saturated everyone on the planet the instant they had breathed in her ash. She was giving them everything they wanted, full access to their oversouls.
The blind huntresses—along with Augustus—were enjoying the ride of their lives. They were soon so intoxicated with a sense of empowerment that it took Aba hours to sense the trap. Hours in which lifetimes worth of knowledge and learning had saturated her being, saving them countless reincarnations to reach the same level of self-control, of control of their environment; hours in which they’d been turned into virtual gods.
They couldn’t surrender this power, not now. It still wasn’t enough to go against the queen, so why not tag along for the ride a bit longer, learn more, become more empowered still? They were the thoughts, of course, of a drug addict, the same feeble rationalizations. And though Aba was well aware of that, she was powerless to act against her baser desires. They all were. Augustus most of all, for baiting him had proven the easiest; the alien queen had given him the formula and the understanding to go with it of immortality; she’d given it to them all; even if the hook for each of them was a bit different than it was for Augustus; the huntresses had responded better to other lures, each in accordance with their own natures. Yes, all in all, the alien queen had done a much finer job getting inside their heads than they had of getting inside hers. And now they were lost—possibly forever.
TWELVE
“Natura, come out, come out, wherever you are!” Soren knew that his taunting probably wasn’t helping the situation, but he did make sure to convey playfulness and not menace in his tone. And he’d been hunting Natura in the wreckage of the battle with the alien queen for hours now, to no avail; his patience was wearing thin. That considered, his jovial manner suggested newfound control over the beast in him that he could well appreciate, even if Natura couldn’t.
There was surprisingly plenty of the Yucatan peninsula left standing for Natura to get lost in, even after six dragons had gone after the queen spouting flames, and even following the light show of the exploding queen—to say nothing of a huge swath of the jungle being sucked into the void of space when Naomi’s alter split open the sky. Maybe if the stunt had lasted a few seconds longer, his search would be over already, because he would be
able to see across the entire peninsula in all directions without taking a step—what, with everything sucked into the vacuum of space. The thought was less than charitable considering Natura’s fondness for the natural world.
Finally, perhaps sensing she was getting on his last nerve, she made her appearance felt; showing up in the corner of his eye, holding on to that staff Victor’s scientific team had bequeathed her, embossed with cabbalistic carvings. She was evidently quite prepared to blast him into oblivion if he so much as stepped one foot out of line.
He sighed at the sight of her.
“A lot of my creatures died on account of you,” she said, her face streaked with tears, her tone like honey-coated acid.
Soren couldn’t deny it. He could argue that Victor had no small role to play in that drama, being the true root of all evil. And that Lar and Ramon had had a hand in things when they bungled into the savant’s chamber—just as much a trigger for everything that followed. But he knew deep down why the alien queen had chosen to manifest here of all places—she wanted access to Soren’s and the beast’s cabbalistic magic. They had access to words of power from the queen’s own language that could hold her at bay; she was just too stuck in dream state at the time to pin point her real target; that, and the beast had smartly intuited that so long as he didn’t use the cabbalistic magic, he was largely immune from her detection; they all were.
“I see as mad at me as you are, you heeded my warnings not to use the cabbalistic magic. You refused to succumb to your anger. Perhaps the hypersensitive girl I once knew is learning to marshal her feelings better.”
“It’s on account of you that I can’t reanimate my animals.” She continued to talk at him from a great distance off, having no desire to close the gap between them, and gripping that staff as firmly as ever, still ready to strike, still not trusting him.
The beast, chafing at the bit inside him, only too happy to intimidate her as he knew he could, nonetheless conceded the stage to Soren. There was too much riding on this, and he knew Soren had a better way with her, with the rest of his team.
The tears flowed down her cheeks with the latest eruption, like geysers that would never entirely go dry. She was holding on to the pain, not digesting it, not working it out of her by using her healing magic. Neither could have been easy. He admired her for that, but he really wasn’t here to discuss her growth as an individual.
“There is a way to reanimate them,” he said, “without using the cabbalistic magic.”
She took a step toward him on those words, but then contained herself, expecting another baited trap. “How?”
“I can help you take your nature magic to the next level, if you help me take my cabbalistic magic to the next level.”
“But I thought you said—”
“The beast has found a backdoor approach he thinks might work. Even now the queen is undertaking analyses of all microscopic life on earth, to bolster her immunity—among other things. The beast has seen as much. But if I can learn to coax new microbes into being as readily as her, something I can do if you merge your nature magic with the beast’s understanding of the cabbalistic symbols—”
She shuddered violently. “You want me to merge with that creature? You’re out of your mind.”
“You’re braver than you know. That has been my position all along. Besides, I will be present for the marriage. It’ll take my analytical understanding of things, and my access to my mindchip to play off the beast’s intuitions. You’ll be working with the two of us together.”
“For how long?”
“I won’t lie to you. Seconds will seem like eternities to you. But it will be just seconds. The trifecta of the mindchip, the beast and I, working together can accomplish much in little time. Your magic will simply speed things further.”
“Seconds, maybe, I can do.” Her voice conveyed all the certainty of a stalker feeling his way in the darkness.
“That is good, because seconds is all we have. In the alien queen’s mind, that won’t just seem like eternities, it literally will be eternities relative to us. Any more time spent on the undertaking and we’ll have no chance at all against her.” Soren’s words sent another chill up Natura’s spine, but it was enough for her to shake off the last of her resistance.
The truth he’d spoken was partial. The fact was, if she hadn’t been playing hide and seek with him all this time, they would have had more time.
But he figured they were playing the underdog no matter how he looked at it. And Soren had more than the alliance he’d spoken of to collapse time, so they could do in seconds what would otherwise have taken years or more. He had Victor’s team and his, both currently working full tilt on finding them a way to throw off the yoke of the alien queen. The beast could sense what both teams were up to, and while he hadn’t bothered to relay all the details to Soren, the fact that the beast was pleased was a positive enough sign. Whatever the sidekicks were doing, they couldn’t have been barking up the wrong tree, or the beast would be furious.
But he had left Soren with some incentive to move the drama along with Natura. The blind huntresses and Augustus were now imprisoned within the mind of the alien queen. The beast needed access to them, and he needed Soren and Natura to find it for him. He wasn’t much on partnerships, and had struggled to embrace even the idea of working with Soren. But the beast had a nose for what paths to take regarding his own empowerment. And right now, he wanted access to the blind huntresses’ minds even more than he wanted access to the alien queen’s. There was a clue in that.
So far the beast could see into the alien queen’s mind without her detecting his presence. But the beast’s command of the cabbalistic warding magic the savant had written would need advancing. Otherwise the queen would not only shut down access to her mind—she would find a way into Soren’s and the beast’s—and game over.
***
Victor stepped through a portal from his penthouse suite into his lab in the Transhumanist district. Technically, the lab belonged to the transhumanists who staffed it, but they’d formed an alliance with him a while back which he’d been hard pressed to dissolve—as much as he’d like to; he didn’t go in for sidekicks the way Soren did. He suffered his own mistakes poorly enough; the mistakes of others were often grounds for homicide.
He was royally pissed at finding nothing and no one at his penthouse. He’d expected to find Ramon slaving away at deciphering his ancient medallions in hopes of finding a clue that could help them. He’d found a clue, all right, but he hadn’t bothered to weigh in with Victor as to whether or not it was worth following, which had Victor’s blood boiling. And so long as he was with Stealy, there wasn’t much point trying to track either of them down. Her magic could keep them both hidden even from his prying eyes. He might be able to see his way past her if he had enough mental energy to devote to the task; he didn’t. Not right now. He couldn’t afford to micromanage whatever the minor ensemble cast was up to, being as their contributions were likely to be just that—minor.
“Where are you with deciphering the warding magic of the savant?” Victor asked Airy, his team’s one cabbalistic expert. His tone was more that of an interrogator, but she could damn well forgive him his abruptness considering the ticking clock they were working with.
Even before she could answer, he glanced over at the savant, running her hands over the faces of her loved ones, as if visiting the museum exhibit of the statues erected to them. For whatever reason—perhaps if only to hide them from the alien queen—she left them in repose. She should have been at her work station expanding on the vocabulary of her warding magic, being as it was the only thing they had to check the power of the alien queen.
“The best I can figure,” Airy said, playing with the workstation that the savant had abandoned, “is that she’s downloaded her acumen for playing with the master race’s language, using it to invent more words of power that can be used against them, to the supercomputers around the world, and to any mind in the
transhumanist district upgraded enough to share some of the workload, and there are quite a few that are.”
“Smart,” Victor said, crossing his arms, and taking a deep breath. He was a long way from relaxing out of the bubble of tension surrounding him, but Airy had definitely bought herself a few more moments of life with that remark. Generous, considering how unlikely she was to actually contribute to the work the savant was going. The master race’s language was still too sophisticated for anything but the interlinked artificial intelligences around the world—the really big ones, known as the supersentients—to do much with. Any one of those computers was rocking more mind power than the entire planet had at its disposal just a year ago. Even so, progress would be slow so long as the savant was too busy grieving her loved ones.
“And what’s her deal?” Victor asked, nodding toward the savant, and speaking to Aeros, huddled close to his wife for support, and stepping between Victor and her, no doubt reading Victor’s barely checked hostility just fine.
“I’ve been sending clouds of nanites at her, saturating every pore of her being,” Aeros replied. “She seems to be permitting the intrusion, being as talking is far too slow a conduit for the data trafficking we need to do between her mind and ours at this point. My nanites last a few minutes before they’re sent back to me hacked and upgraded, so I can make better ones. We’ve been talking back and forth in this manner for some time now. What I can tell you that she has shared with me is that the alien queen is saturating all lifeforms on earth, picking them apart at a microscopic level. Soon she will be able to manipulate any microbe, virus, bacteria, in order to infect the host and make it do her bidding.”
Reawakened Page 9
