by Greg Ramsay
Lia smiled like a cat with a wounded mouse. “Yes, I do,” she said with a hint of restrained aggression as she hefted hers in her hand horizontally like so many times before. She was amazed how well the simulation version compared to the real deal. She could feel its energy and hers as one. A beautiful unity of powers. Barton’s armour removed his hazmat suit carefully, covering his skin as hers did, rather than tearing clothing apart as Lia preferred to do. “So, the Leader was me all along?” she confirmed, trying to keep herself focused.
“For simulation purposes he was your power, anger, and controlling nature warped into a separate persona by the effects of the infection on your mind. We just set up the initial fight scenario to provide an understandable explanation for your hybrid abilities and lessen your immediate confusion. My team used your ‘Leader’ persona to train and challenge you until you recovered enough to face reality.” Lia eyeballed him accusatorially. Barton smiled gently before changing the subject. “I’m so happy you survived the simulation, had you died in there you would’ve died for real... your psyche was already so shattered you would’ve been nothing but a beautiful shell,” Barton said.
“Thanks, I think,” Lia said with obviously cold sarcasm.
A few moments of quiet reflection followed as a multitude of emotions worked their way across her features before a resolute look settled her inner debate. Without warning she grabbed Barton’s armoured hand turning him toward the like vault-like exit to the lab.
“I’m bored of talk...Let’s go kill shit!” she said with cool confidence as her mask re-formed over her face and red energy surged through her black eyes. Barton smiled. She was back.
Book TWO | Chapter 1 – Nothing Remains
Lia walked with purposeful and barely restrained rage for the sealed security door of James Barton’s lab. James cringed visibly in pain due to the grip she had on him. “Emilia wait... please,” he pled as he was dragged along like a mother would a bratty child. She stopped abruptly, turning to eye him coldly.
“WHAT?” she yelled, unable to restrain her anger any longer. “First you put me through hell repeatedly; now you honestly expect me to listen to more of your incessant pretentious bullshit?” She paused long enough to see the guilty look on his face before continuing alone. She deftly swung her deadly armoured fist to strike the door, then stopped suddenly right before impact. “If I bust this door apart are your friends in the tacky suits gonna be okay?” she asked. James gave her a slightly confused look.
“Yes, they’re androids, remember?”
“Yeah,” Lia said with a twinge of frustration, her fist already clenched.
“There’s a butto-,“ James tried to say, but she’d already punched the massive security door apart like she’d hit it with the force of a localized explosive. He laughed nervously with one hand, still indicating the button she’d completely ignored.
Lia paused a moment. “Wow,” she whispered to herself, glancing at the hand that had caused such devastation with complete ease.
James smirked. “As I was going to say before you completely disregarded the door button... You’re exponentially stronger than you were in the PsychoLife simulation. In fact my companions here,” he said indicating the androids, “couldn’t even get a close estimate of your capabilities.”
“Interesting,” Lia said, intrigued.
“That said, did you really need to do that to my door?” he asked with slight frustration. “It was the door or your face,” Lia said coldly as she strode away from him, her mind raging with painful memories.
James could tell it wasn’t just about him, but he knew she wouldn’t let the turmoil out on her own. “You’re welcome,” he said with angry forced sarcasm. Lia turned abruptly, standing face to face with him before he had time to blink.
“For what exactly?” she asked, seething through her mask which altered her voice even more menacingly.
“For keeping you alive.”
She violently grabbed him, turning him to face the PsychoLife chambers holding the remains of their daughter, and her friends. “You saved the wrong person!” she raged, as her mask receded showing tears streaming down her face. James sighed in an effort to calm himself. After a moment, Lia calmed enough to realize she was being unfair. Silently, she released her grip on him, “Sorry,” she said with a mix of emotions.
“No worries, I’m sure your mind’s a mess right now,” James said gathering himself. Lia’s eyes dropped a little, zoning into a wash of memories.
“All I can think about are all the wars I fought, all the fighting and desperation, and all the madness that led us here, worse than all the monsters that came before us. And for what? What did we save James? Cuz it seems to me we only saved ourselves!” James looked at her remorseful, at a loss for words.
“Those with the will can still fight,” he said, hoping he didn’t come across like a fortune cookie.
“For. What?” she repeated exasperated. In her mind’s eye, she could see flashes of her time in PsychoLife, how committed she was to fighting for the sake of fighting, or for people she couldn’t remember, yet still cared for. It was so much easier when unburdened with memory because the past was just pain. James looked at her forlorn.
“For the reason we can convince ourselves it was all worthwhile. No matter what we believe now, things like right, wrong, good, and bad are fluid. Live too long and the hero becomes the villain. Live long enough and you may even see reprehensible things become okay. No matter what we do, whether we have good intentions or not we just have to carry on. Otherwise we waste our own efforts, let alone those of our supporters,” James said, barely maintaining his composure.
Lia found herself vividly remembering John dragging the shifted corpse to her. She could feel how her power felt as it returned, bringing her back from near death rather than the horror of complete resurrection. Realization hit her harder than the turmoil of her memories.
“If I can resurrect by myself with or without the aid of sustenance, couldn’t the same apply for my team, or at least for Tory?” Barton’s eyes lit up then dimmed.
“I’m afraid they’re all too far gone. I considered feeding them as I did you but... I just don’t have it in me. They weren’t liable to die, well in as much as they can be considered alive. Whereas you’re too important, not only that, you, like me, we’re different,” Barton said dejected.
“Feeding... what do you mean? Lia asked.
“I used my self-replicating hybrid material, my armour as you’d understand it, to feed you intravenously through a port in your pod until I almost ran out of energy myself.” Lia calmed slightly, she could see he wasn’t lying. In fact what he said only bolstered her resolve. Then she noticed a defibrillator mounted on the wall.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but our kynaris channel our energy and our armour can adapt to any energy, right? Do you think we could also release that power via the armour if needed?” Lia asked suddenly serious. James shrugged.
“You’re stronger than me, especially considering before I learned how to feed you, I gave you the rest of the L strain as a booster. I know, it was stupid and risky given what it was doing to you, but I couldn’t have you die... the point is I don’t know all you can do. Only that your capacity for power is exponentially higher than mine, and the armour does as we will, in general. So if anyone, you might be able to pull that off. Why?”
“I’m going to try and shock them back to life,” Lia said determinately. James stiffened slightly.
“Wait,” he said, “Their affliction is obviously affecting them differently than ours. We have no way of knowing what will happen to them if you try that. Are you sure they’d want to be guinea pigs for power testing? I doubt that’s appropriate.”
Lia gave him a dirty look then said, “Are you giving me a morality lecture right now? ME! The one you used as a guinea pig to test your updated drug, a drug mind you, that turned all of humanity into superpowered, highly-adaptable monsters?!” James started to interrupt b
ut Lia wasn’t done. “Not to mention you already used everyone I care about as objects to pull me along just so I could come out the greatest of the monsters. So, quite frankly, it seems the least I could do is try to accomplish what all this hell was supposed to, and save everyone!” Her anger tapered off slightly, giving way to resolve as she headed for the pods.
“You’re not a monster...” James said.
“No?” Lia said sarcastically. “I gave my humanity to the horrors of pointless wars all to be ultimately nothing but vengefully righteous. Since it didn’t bring Janey back after what that terrorist bastard did to her...then whatever fake semblance of my humanity that remained got warped into this!” she said, using a sweeping motion of her hand to indicate her other arm. She kept the process slow so he could see the blood seeping from it as tendrils sprouted from her pores to form armour. “Is this even blood. I’ve died so many times it can’t be, can it? Just the hybrid shit letting me pretend...” she said sadly, stopping to catch her breath. James sighed.
“You gave yourself as a human to the cause of fighting, and when it came time you gave yourself to my science so you could fight for Tory... but sure, humans are all monsters somehow, if you must look at it that way... We’ve created, re-defined, and labelled each other by that term for so many reasons over the years we all qualify.” Lia’s eyes teared up, but she was too choked up to retort so James continued, “However you forget one key fact –– you are you, you’ve never truly succumbed. Whether it was you in control, or the persona your mind created which it called the Leader, you’ve never truly died. As I said before, if you die in PsychoLife you die in real life. If you were still just the Lia that fought those wars for petty human reasons, yes you would’ve died... but you’re something so much stronger than that. You are the impossible - even more so than I. Before you argue, look at the evidence. You’re still standing now.” Lia took a deep breath, hoping my mind would calm.
“So all those times I fell in battle with shifted I never died? How is that even possible?!” Lia asked incredulously, trying to change her focus slightly. James thought for a moment.
“I believe our bodies now transcend past the limits of a single life. Logically, so must our minds. Your manufactured alpha persona was the deeply seated darkness within you trying to compensate for your amnesia. Though, more importantly, it also represented your tenacity to remain in control – to never lose. Given our hybrid abilities obey our wills, my guess is that same power can subconsciously take over if we falter. Therefore, I could reconstitute myself from a puddle of nothing by taking over other lives in the simulation. It appears we can’t die if our will persists. Perhaps our will lives on enough in our remains that our human concept of alive and dead is obsolete. This might provide an explanation in regards to your simulation; our minds didn’t die, reasoning aside, and our bodies healed before fully failing. Thus PsychoLife didn’t determine us terminated. The system is designed for humans. Given we’re so much more than that we could’ve inadvertently discovered a loophole,” James said, shrugging slightly. Lia gave him a slightly irritated look.
“You could’ve just said as long as we still have a drive in us to succeed we’ll never truly die,” she said sarcastically.
James chuckled. “I could’ve, but that would’ve been ridiculously cheesy! I’ll stick to theoretical science,” he said playfully.
“Theoretical science? More like pretentious pseudo-scientific fortune cookie bullshit,” Lia said in retort, tired but amused.
“It’s the best I got, hun,” James said, smiling slightly.
“What else is new?” Lia said jokingly, then a look of deep thought on her face caught his attention. “All that aside, why the hell would anyone build the PsychoLife system to arbitrarily kill your body if you’re killed in simulation?” Lia asked, disturbed. James looked grim.
“A law was passed that stated any full virtual reality system designed to give new life to the terminally ill, severely disabled et cetera, as PsychoLife was, should constitute their real life. Therefore if they modify their simulations, directly or via a third party, to be dangerous, they’re responsible for any risk incurred, and accept that their bodies won’t be supported in a vegetative state.”
“That’s kind of harsh...” Lia said.
James shrugged. “There’s more wording than that, but basically societies’ view on life support changed from seeing it as commonplace to cruel. We put our pets down when they’ve had enough. Since PsychoLife suspends the body, it extends theoretical lifespan, but not indefinitely. Ultimately the people still know it’s all fake and sure they’re given say twenty to fifty more years than they had previously to live their dream lives – but that’s only if they stay in their pods – trapped in their own simulations. So it was determined people should have the right to die whenever they want, when they feel they’ve had enough. No power of attorney or exterior authority can keep the person’s essentially mindless body alive for the sake of their selfish loved ones, regardless of the patient’s mental capacity,” James explained.
“Living in your own little world hoping your family might connect in to visit. Wishing you could be with them. Meanwhile you’re just drifting through superficial representations of what you once had while waiting to die. Sounds fun,” Lia said with sarcasm that failed to mask her sadness at what she’d experienced in his simulation. James was going to apologize again, but he knew there was no point. “Thanks for elaborating. Now I know I have to try this,” Lia said resolutely before letting tendrils fly from her hands.
With incredible violence, they punched through the pods of her loved ones. Barton tried to interrupt but she’d already let her tendrils penetrate their cocoons directly into their bodies.
“Lia, if you do this you’ll be forcing your will on them. Whatever comes of this, they likely won’t be how you remember, best case scenario they’ll be like us, and you’ll have made monsters of them.”
“You’re one to talk; I can’t leave them like this if I can actually do something about it!” Lia said.
“I know, that’s why I said it, consider all the turmoil you’re experiencing. Do you want that for Tory?” James said calmly, trying to emphasize the irony of what she was doing without being manipulative.
Lia grimaced, but remained focused. She envisioned how her will power passed to her kynari, manifesting as that brilliantly devastating red energy. Her idea turned out not to be so far fetched, though she had a hard time channeling it through her tendrils initially. James’ simulation had made it seem easier, though she was doing it without the kynari, so she expected this. To James’ horrified amazement, crimson energy passed through the tendrils like a visible pulse emanating from a generator. Almost instantly, they heard pulsing like a growing heartbeat reverberating through the cocoons. Minutes passed with Lia essentially charging the cocoons solo, while James became increasingly intrigued despite his concerns.
Lia let out a gasp like she’d been holding her breath to bolster her effort, then her tendrils abruptly withdrew back into her armour. A tense silence filled the room like layers, flowing into the chamber beyond to blanket the scarred structure where the door pieces impacted. Lia dropped into a sitting position near the jagged broken door watching from a distance. The reverberations ceased just as James’ team managed to get a basic telemetry feed from the damaged pods. James watched glued to the displays as the cocoons suddenly came alive. Lia turned to James giving him a look of success which quickly turned to concern when she saw his face. He stood there clenching his jaw which he only did when something was wrong. It wasn’t long before she found out what and he didn’t even have to say it. The cocoons first cracked like eggs as they aggressively expanded to the point of exploding. Both Bartons armoured up fully, right as John’s cocoon split apart.
Chapter 2 – Empty Soldiers
What stood in the ooze that radiated with her crimson energy wasn’t the man that saved her in the simulation. Instead she found herself nearly face to f
ace with a writhing mass barely in the shape of a human. Somehow he wasn’t nearly eight feet tall or huge like a bear, as alphas were, but he was indeed inhuman. John looked as if he’d been covered head to toe with an armour like hers, but he wasn’t responsive to her presence. Lia looked closely, but all his features were indistinguishable under the writhing mass of hybrid armour. One by one, the rest of her squad were reborn as indistinguishable masses writhing about as though in silent agony. Lia paced around looking scared while eyeing James for answers.
“Marks...Black... Captain Steele...Grant... Can you hear me? If you can focus on who you are, what you want to look like, the alien substance on you should obey,” Lia said in a mixture of authoritative seriousness and genuine worry. “Victoria, Tory, honey... can you hear me? If you can hear mama think about how tall you are in the mirror. Think really hard about how you look, okay?” Lia said in a soft plea to the pulsating armoured mass that once contained her daughter. She was overjoyed when Tory appeared to hear her and began walking toward her. Lia crouched down arms wide to receive the being coming closer, both to her, and to resembling Tory. James smiled despite himself; tears formed in his eyes when he saw Tory’s face beneath the alien substance. Lia embraced her silent daughter, too overjoyed to notice she was like an empty doll. Tory’s arms didn’t embrace her in turn. Rather she simply stood silently.
“Tory, are you awake love?” James asked pointedly, hoping for a quick obvious reply. He received none. Lia’s former squad-mates slowly, but surely maneuvered themselves to surround James, leaving two remaining close to Tory. An exchanged look showed James was as concerned as Lia was, but neither said a word.
