Words and thoughts and maybe even images spun around him in inscrutable patterns until suddenly they began to make sense, and Nandi’s eyes opened to finally gaze upon a different world.
It was dark and red—like the surface of a different planet that had never known light or vegetation or even life. He couldn’t feel the floor beneath his iron feet, but it gave him the impression of fragility, as though he was walking on ice that was viable to crack and swallow him.
Above, darkness that stretched to apparent infinity, and no sound to speak of—barely a mechanical whisper resonating inside of Besoe Nandi.
There was something else that felt entirely new: mobility, and a strange warmth in his lower back he had never felt before: an ethereal fluctuation of energy from which he was drawing strength.
You cannot do this without my help.
Ezra could move, and it was like breaking chains, unshackling him from the weakness of the flesh. Nandi’s hands were brought before him, opening and closing at Ezra’s command. He had known them from the Equivalency Suits, but now they felt truly strong and capable of great damage: a feeling entirely new to him. He had no muscles, no skin, hair, or organs: nothing but steel, or whatever variation of it that gave this suit of armor solidity.
If he was smaller than the width of a hair, why did he feel like a giant?
Do you want me to help you?
Yes.
In another exercise of mobility to test his range and his control, Ezra straightened his arms in front of him, and a flash of light engulfed his hands. It was weak, but felt like touching an electrically charged surface.
“What the hell are you doing, Blanchard?” Erin yelled.
Having no ears to guide him towards the source of a sound was also disorienting, so he spun around and found his company behind him: Jade Arjuna, Phoenix Atlas, Rose Xibalba, and Milos Ravana, each of them just a few feet away from each other—
No, not feet. A unit far smaller. They were encouraged to roughly measure distance in body lengths.
“Who gave you permission to use technomancy?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Ezra said, and remembered his lectures on the control of Besoe Nandi. Stretching his arms activated the pulses from his T-Core through a switch in the elbow joint, and shot the energy forward. He had to keep them slightly bent, at least until he learned to control the discharge of energy.
“Mr. Blanchard, we caught sign of a technomantic discharge; is everything all right?” Dr. Lance’s voice reached him from far away.
“Yes, I apologize,” said Ezra, still trying to get a feel of Nandi’s body.
“You can’t stretch your arms unless you mean to attack,” she said, and a new source of light on Atlas’ shoulder pads lit up, though it could barely stand against such powerful darkness. “We’re in a dead body now, but you could damage tissue if you’re not careful; the concentration of the T-Core in Besoe Nandi is very strong.”
Jena and Akiva were, like him, practicing their own movements, getting accustomed to their new bodies. “My word. It feels . . . exactly like the Equivalency Suits. The designers did a great job!” Jena said, looking down at her Creux’s delicate but deadly hands.
“This is very impressive,” said Poole understatedly, moving Jade’s arms with incredible ease; it’s the most enthusiastic he had ever heard her.
“Feel free to move around this specific area and no further. How is communication with your Creux?” Erin asked. “Can you gauge its temperament for the report?”
Is she talking about me?
Yes.
Ezra wondered why Nandi seemed far more talkative and less confrontational now. He was also surprised to find that Nandi could apparently hear Erin’s voice as well. It was a frightening but comfortable thought to believe that, at least, he wouldn’t be completely alone, even if he felt like an intruder in someone else’s body. Ezra wanted to forget that there wasn’t anyone truly there with him; those words he could hear were barely thought patterns left behind in the T-Core by its creators.
Ezra took several steps and the land began to feel stronger beneath him; in truth, it had never been weak—Ezra was just forgetting, amid this mistaken feeling of largeness, that he was virtually weightless.
“I can talk to Jade. In—in my head. It’s so strange,” said Jena. “She’s talking to me, in my own voice. Or something that sound like it.” Jena’s experience didn’t appear to differ from Ezra’s; he too heard Nandi speak to him with a voice not too different to his own: just older and wilder.
“Milos is silent,” said Akiva. “I don’t hear anything.”
Milos? He’s here?
Yes.
“That’s strange,” said Erin, making a sign with her fingers—no, her Creux’s fingers—to line up in front of her. “Poole? How’s communication with Rose Xibalba’s core?”
“I can hear something, ma’am, but it might be my own thoughts I’m hearing.”
“All right, good. Line up in front of me,” she said again, waiting for Nandi to take his place between Rose and Milos. “What about Besoe Nandi?”
“He’s talking to me. Erin, I can hear him,” said Ezra.
Don’t trust Milos Ravana.
Why?
“What’s that over there?” asked Poole and used Rose’s sharp digits to point at the dark distance of this inner world. Ezra couldn’t see very well into this darkness, but it looked like a protuberance in the flesh on which they stood.
“What’s what? Oh. It’s an inflated vessel,” said Erin after a silence. “We’re in the lungs of this subject right now. I think—yeah, according to my crew we are. Bodies infected with the laani release all fluids and become dry inside until organs begin to wither.”
“I see it,” said Ezra, finally giving shape to a tiny vein at the base of the protuberance; it wasn’t pumping anything, but it was there, connecting the vessel to the dry flesh beneath. It was strange how Ezra had to be constantly reminded of his true size; this must be what Alice called Dimension Shock.
“Anatomy lesson over, guys. We’re going to do some minor technomancy tests and we’re getting out. Everything seems to be working,” she said and leapt backward with great grace, landing several body lengths away from them. “Each of your Creux has a different technomancy protocol, and you’ve all learned yours. When I tell you, I want you to draw on your Creux’s bow and shoot an arrow at me.”
“Ma’am?” asked Akiva.
“You won’t be able to hurt me, don’t worry. Crescent, are you ready?”
“Ma’am, I don’t know if—”
“Okay. Davenport, are you ready?” she asked, turning her Creux’s hand from Jade Arjuna towards Milos Ravana. Akiva’s Creux raised his hands upwards in a V. “Remember the Creux are immune to the technomantic energy; you couldn’t hurt me, even if you—”
A flash of light shed some of the darkness in this place, and a spiraling disc was fired from Akiva’s hand, taking Erin by surprise. Ezra heard Erin grunt before deflecting the bright white disc with one hand. The thing shot upward and disappeared into this starless sky—whatever fleshy chamber this was, it was deceptively enormous.
“You have to wait for my damn cue!” yelled Erin into the systems.
“What the hell was that?” came Garros’ voice from the outside—the quality of the sound was inferior: garbled, and polluted by static. “We saw that, Davenport; curb your eagerness or you’re gonna get in more trouble.”
“I apologize; I thought I was holding it, ma’am,” Akiva said, and sounded sincere. “I didn’t mean to shoot it before; it just escaped me.”
Erin’s Creux took another step back. “It’s all right. Either way, that served the purpose, so Blanchard, are you ready? Arms pointed towards me, slightly bent. Horns up.”
Not being able to feel their weight, Ezra had forgotten about the enormous horns rising from the sides of Nandi’s head. He brought his hands up and grabbed them, feeling electricity flow through them. “All right, ma’am.”
/> Erin took a defensive stance Ezra had only seen in very old martial arts vids; no one practiced those sports anymore, so seeing this iron vessel assume the posture added an air of exoticism to Erin’s fighting style. “Shoot.”
Ezra stretched his arms towards Erin, fingers like a lion’s claws about to tear through its victim’s flesh. Slowly he began to feel the power gather from his lower back, flowing through his spine and then gathering over his head. Orbs of pulsating energy began to form and thicken in Nandi’s outstretched arms. He balled his fists.
A ray shot from his horns and converged with the orbs in his hands. The twin blast was launched, Ezra felt his shoulders recoil, and he fell on his ass, barely able to see his technomancy blast reach Erin, who easily deflected it.
She laughed. “Well done, Blanchard; that was a nice, steady, sharp shot. Take a better stance next time.”
He was glad Nandi’s mask couldn’t convey the embarrassment he felt. Ezra rose to his feet despite how strangely heavy this body felt (something he wouldn’t have never done without the Equivalency Suit training) and again found his footing in the strange terrain.
“Poole, how about you? You ready?”
“I’m ready, ma’am,” said Poole. Ezra turned his entire body to look at Rose Xibalba’s tall, slender form, aptly named after its hues that seemed to shift depending on the onlooker’s relative position. Seeing this Creux was a hypnotic affair; light danced on its armor’s surface in waves, even when there was no light to speak of.
Suddenly the light began to shift and ripple more evenly and faster around it until she seemed to grow. It began to project its own image around it, and after a few moments a large ghostly replica of Rose Xibalba also stood where the Creux stood.
Erin’s Creux began to fight the air in almost artistic motions, and the actions of her fists created lashes of light in the darkness. Like the strokes of a brush, her arms began to project light towards Rose Xibalba; each stroke of light moved in unpredictable ways as it darted towards Poole—
It dissipated upon coming in contact with the ghostly shell that shielded Rose.
Erin stopped her deadly dance, and the strokes of light that were still in their unpredictable route towards Poole vanished. “Very well done! Very strong. That kind of support is exactly what our Tank class needs.”
Keep them away from me, said Nandi.
“Don’t move, Poole. Hold your shell. Blanchard?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Position yourself between Rose Xibalba and Jade Arjuna. Crescent, you’re up. Remember what I told you about Besoe Nandi’s horns, and aim true.”
“Ma’am, what’s going on?” Ezra said, obediently moving a few steps to his left, standing between Poole and Jena’s Creux. “What about the horns?”
“Turn around, Ezra. Face Poole—I can’t do this with that ugly face staring at me.”
What? Is she talking about me?
Not now.
Ezra had to trust in Jena and Erin, but it was difficult. He turned his body, feeling the weight of the Creux’s large shoulders as he spun in place. Poole was facing him now, and he was caught between the two. Because of Nandi’s awkward, hunched design, he could barely turn his head to see where the others stood.
“All right, Jena, now shoot,” said Erin.
Ezra heard Jena take a deep breath, then felt a massive blast of electricity in his head. A thick, short ray of azure light exploded from above him, from between his horns, and hit the ghostly apparition around Rose Xibalba. Both sources of energy dissipated, but Poole was knocked over, violently rolling on the floor and landing in an awkward position one body length away from where she had stood.
“What the hell was that?!” Ezra and Poole yelled at the same time. Nandi had growled an angry, disapproving comment as well, but Ezra couldn’t hear it in the chaotic moment of surprise.
“Poole, are you all right?” Erin said, voice faintly concerned, as she ran towards Poole’s Creux.
“I’m okay,” she said and began to get up.
Erin’s uproarious laugh boomed into the helmet. “That worked better than I imagined it would! Garros, did you get that?”
After a few short moments, Garros’ voice came through from the outside. “What the hell was it? I was looking through Nandi’s Eye and only saw Rose getting a good kick.”
“Remember the theory I had about Nandi’s horns? I was right! Jade just scored one between Nandi’s horns, and it was beautiful.”
He could hear Garros laugh through the static signal. “All right, nice going. We’ll talk about it when you’re back.”
Ezra turned around and saw Jade Arjuna standing closer to him. “What the hell, Jena—did you just shoot a bloody arrow at my head?”
“Not your head—just between the horns. The energy converging there can increase Jade’s arrows’ strength significantly,” said Erin. “You three are going to make one hell of a team. I can’t wait ’till next week to test it out.”
She shot a bloody arrow at my head, protested Nandi, sounding almost childlike.
“You shot a bloody arrow at my head!” Ezra said.
“I’m sorry!” said Jena, and he could hear her laugh.
“There was no danger, Blanchard, relax,” Erin said. “Even if she missed. Well, everything seems to be in order, so we’re coming out and I consider this test a success. Garros, you hear that?”
“Yes, sir!” said Garros from the other side. “Congratulations to all four of you. All four docks and crews are ready. Extracting you . . . now.”
Everything went black and again it felt like sliding down a winding, twisting tube, wherein Ezra had absolutely no spatial reference. He didn’t know if he was big or small, if he stood or sat, if he was man or machine.
Don’t trust—
Then, there was a white light blinking in front of him, and he could see his human feet and felt his human flesh and breathed through his human lungs. An intense sensation of weakness overtook him as he returned to this body.
The top side of the Egg slid open and light blinded him. He was welcomed with cheers and applause from Barnes and Dr. Lance. Garros stood at the edge of the room, big arms crossed, and tipped him a respectful nod.
“Everything went better than expected!” said Dr. Armstrong. “You performed phenomenally, Mr. Blanchard—you became Besoe Nandi!”
Ezra looked up at them and feigned a smile. He knew he should be happy that the test went well, that he felt so at home inside the Creux, and that nothing horrible had happened. Yet, for some reason, a glimmer of despair was left inside him; somehow he didn’t feel complete, like Nandi had taken a piece of his soul and he wouldn’t have it back until he assumed that body again.
“What time is it?” was all Ezra could ask, and his almost total apathy was not lost on the others.
“It’s almost time for dinner,” said Barnes. “Are you all right? Everything went well, Blanchard, why do you look—”
“Yes, sir; I’m ecstatic,” said Ezra drearily, stepping out of the gooey water inside the Egg and placing his small feet on the cold floor. He wanted to go to his room and be alone, but he had an important appointment. If he left now to shower, he’d barely be in the dining hall in time to meet with Rebecca.
Chapter 14
Outside and In
Watching Ezra as he, fully showered, stepped out of his dormitory, one could assume that another tragedy of significance had occurred during his synchronization test. There was no life in his eyes and no confidence in his walk; he was barely dragging himself down the dormitory hallways, down two flights of stairs, to land in the Dormitory Lounge.
Cleverly choosing this uninhabited room instead of the dining hall, Rebecca sat on one of the couches, holding a game racket in her hand and flipping through a magazine. Surprised and thankful to see Rebecca looking more groomed and presentable than last time, Ezra made his way towards her.
“I thought you’d prefer to speak here. The dining hall is too crowded,” she sai
d, gray in the voice. It was obvious she hadn’t spoken much in weeks.
“And too cheery, I bet; we just completed the synchronization tests,” he said.
“I know; I heard they were looking for you so I came to meet you here first. Congratulations,” she said and the lifelessness in the gesture was almost amusing.
“All I did was sit in a capsule full of gunk,” he said and shrugged. His cynicism caused a smile to form from Rebecca’s lips—maybe the first one since the incident. “I just wanted to ask you something about Alice the day before accident.”
“What is it?”
“What did she do after lunch and before going to bed?” asked Ezra, looking at Rebecca’s gnarled hands play with the tiny racket. She must have done a lot of survival or grunt work in the army. “I know she spoke to Corporal Higgins at lunch—”
“Who?”
“Never mind,” he said. “Did she have any meetings?”
“She led the Dynamics lecture with Tessa after lunch, then she met with me and the rest of us—her crew,” she said and licked her lips. “Around dinner I know she had a meeting. I don’t know who with, she didn’t tell us. Or me.”
“Why didn’t she tell you?” asked Ezra.
“I don’t know, all right? I’m an Absolute Omega crewmember, not her secretary.” She was beginning to regret the conversation, he thought, but Ezra was almost done and had more interest in answers than he did in comforting Rebecca. “Was . . . a crewmember.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Is there anywhere I could find out more about the meeting?”
“Maybe her notebook,” Rebecca said. “She kept her schedule there. It should be in her office.”
“I didn’t know she had an office.”
“The leader of the CDS has an office in Management,” Rebecca said.
Ezra heard footsteps coming from behind him. When he turned around he saw Akiva, Erin, and Jena walking down the stairs, showered and dressed in fresh uniforms. His stomach burned for a second, as he didn’t want Akiva to see him speaking to Rebecca; he could interpret it as a sign of further defiance.
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