Ouroboros 1: Start

by Odette C. Bell

  “Come on, you didn’t know something like this would happen,” Travis walked up to Alicia and tried to place a hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged away.

  “Don’t even try to make me feel better. I don’t deserve it.” Alicia hissed.

  “Look, guys,” Travis raised his voice, his exasperation clear, “you both need to stop standing here blaming yourselves. You two clearly have your own theories about what happened, and maybe I need to see more evidence before I can agree with you. But I can tell you one thing; you aren’t going to achieve anything by standing here and wallowing. Nida’s being taken straight to the Academy hospital. I assume she’s going to want someone there when she wakes up. I can stay here and deal with security, again,” he added with a sigh, “and you guys can go. Alright?”

  Though Alicia still looked pissed off, she softened at Travis’ offer. “Fine,” while she kept her arms crossed, she did shoot Travis an appreciative smile.

  “Yeah,” Carson added.

  “Alright, go,” Travis pointed behind him in the direction of the Academy.

  Carson nodded, then strode off, Alicia at his side.

  They walked in total silence.

  Though he kind of knew Alicia, this was the longest time they’d spent in each other’s company, and the silence between them dragged. He couldn’t ease it though—he didn’t want to chat about the weather or the next E Club event. He just wanted to find out exactly what was happening to Nida.

  So they simply walked together without sharing a word. When they neared the Academy grounds, however, he got a call.

  Feeling flustered, he answered with a huff. “Who is this?” he snapped, not recognising the number.

  “Ah, sir,” a man squeaked in a clearly worried tone, “Cadet Lai.”

  Carson had to search his memory.

  “I found that watch before,” Lai supplied helpfully.

  “Yes . . . why are you calling me?” Carson asked bluntly.

  “There’s . . . something not right with it.”

  “What do you mean?” Carson slowed down.

  “Well, it started making weird noises. I thought that maybe there was something wrong with the processor—so I popped it open to have a look. I’m a pretty good technician, sir; I fix wristwatches all the time,” he explained.

  “Just tell me what’s wrong,” Carson demanded.

  “Yeah . . . ,” Lai took a heavy breath that rumbled over the communication line, “the insides are . . . warped.”

  “What?”

  “They’re warped, sir. I can’t explain it. Something really, really weird has happened to it. I mean, I’ve never seen anything like this, and I must have cracked open over 2000 of these in my time. It’s almost like it has got too close to a black hole or something,” Lai reasoned, curiosity brimming through his tone.

  Carson felt cold.

  He’d slowed right down, and now he stopped, Alicia pausing right by his side. She looked up into his eyes, tension making her expression appear poised on the edge of panic.

  She’d clearly heard what Lai had said. “He’s talking about Nida’s watch, right?”

  Carson nodded.

  “I mean, I’ve never seen a malfunction like this,” Lai continued, “whatever happened to this watch appears to have happened over time, otherwise its internal diagnostics would have picked up on it. As it was, whatever damaged the rest of the watch damaged them too. Slowly. Or at least I think it did; I won’t be able to tell until I get it back to the lab.”

  “Hold on,” Alicia stepped in, raising her voice. “Cadet Lai, is it? I know it’s a long shot, but can you tell me whether the watch was taken off, or whether it fell off?”

  “Ah, I don’t know,” Lai answered after a pause, “but with this much damage, the thing could easily have fallen off. I mean, I know they’re designed to stay on, but something has taken this little watch way beyond its operating parameters. Why do you want to know?”

  Alicia looked right up into Carson’s eyes. “My friend said she dropped it, and I told her she was lying. In fact, I gave her a pretty hard time about it. But I guess I was wrong.”

  Carson knew the message was meant for him.

  “Yeah, I suppose,” Lai admitted, “ah, you said this belonged to Nida Harper right?” his voice tightened with interest. “I looked her name up, and isn’t she the one who was almost killed—”

  “Alright, I have somewhere to be,” Carson cut in immediately, “thanks for your information, Cadet Lai. Take that watch directly to a lab and run as many tests as you can think of. Just do everything. I need you to find out as much as you can.”

  “Yeah, okay. I mean, I am meant to do a project for Commander Bayu,” Lai began.

  “This is an order. I’ll contact Bayu and tell her you’re working for me now. I want you to contact me—day or night—as soon as you’ve got anything. Alright?”

  “Sure. I mean, yes, sir,” Lai snapped.

  With a brief goodbye, Carson ended the call.

  Then he made the mistake of glancing Alicia’s way.

  “We were wrong,” she said in a voice crippled with guilt. “Jesus, her watch really did fall off.”

  Carson didn’t say anything; instead, he walked as fast as he could towards the Academy complex.

  Alicia hurried to keep up. “What, aren’t you going to say anything?”

  “What do you want to hear? That I was wrong about that too? Yeah, well I have made multiple mistakes here, and that’s only one. You don’t need to rub my nose in it; I’m already doing a perfectly good job of that myself.”

  “I’m not trying to blame you,” Alicia began.

  “Yeah, you are,” he countered quickly.

  “Fine, I am, a little. But that’s not the point. Didn’t you hear what that guy said? Something warped her wristwatch, causing it to fall off—something we were both so sure couldn’t happen.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “That the same thing probably happened . . . or is still happening to her implant. It keeps malfunctioning, and maybe the same thing that stuffed up her watch is causing that malfunction.”

  Carson stared past Alicia at the city stretching out behind her. It should have been a distracting sight. He could have forced his attention to focus on the smooth, clean lines of the buildings stretching high into the night sky. He could have turned his head up to stare at the sleek, shooting shapes of ships zooming far above.

  But he didn’t.

  Instead, he let her words settle in.

  She was right; it did make sense.

  “We can’t just stand here on the street while you think about this,” Alicia twitched her head in the direction of the Academy.

  “Yeah, I know that,” he noted in the most patient voice he could manage, considering the circumstances, “but, not to be rude,” he began, about to say something very rude indeed.

  “But what? You want to know why I suddenly care about my flat mate, is that it?”

  Carson nodded. “Yeah. Granted, I don’t really know you, but you don’t strike me . . . ,” he trailed off. There was no polite way to put this.

  Nida was nice. Alicia wasn’t. End of story.

  Alicia raised an eyebrow slowly. It was more of a twitch actually. A challenging one. “What?”

  “You appear to come from different ends of the social spectrum,” he gave a quiet cough.

  “Yeah, so do you; what the hell is your point? I’ll grant you, I don’t really have much time for her. And, to be honest, I used to think she was nothing more than a ditz. It was a mild embarrassment to be sharing an apartment with the worst recruit in 1000 years. But hey, she almost died a couple of days ago, and that had the odd effect of forcing me to realise I was being a total bitch. She’s quiet, she’s understanding, she keeps the apartment clean, she doesn’t argue, and she hasn’t once stitched me up or ditched me, which can’t be said for any of my so-called friends.”

  He didn’t interrupt Alicia’s tirade, and when it was ove
r, he pressed his lips together and shrugged his shoulders.

  “What, that’s it? This is the sum total of Carson Blake’s emotional depth? I just admit to you I’m feeling guilty about how I’ve treated my flat mate, and you stand there mutely and shrug your bear shoulders?”

  Alicia was speaking too fast. Her lips practically jerked around her words in her efforts to cram everything out as quickly as she could. Her cheeks were blotchy too, and she kept on balling her hand into a fist and tapping it against her stomach.

  Which made sense. She’d just seen her flat mate almost die. She’d just helped Nida run from the club, and then Alicia had watched—unable to do anything—as Nida had faded into unconsciousness.

  A tight, cold blast of a shiver shot across his shoulders, forcing him to tuck his arms in and his head down.

  If Alicia was stressed and shocked, he wasn’t doing any better.

  All he could do was tap his open palm against his thigh, remembering how tightly he’d held onto that TI pole, but how it hadn’t mattered in the end. It had slipped from his grip as if he’d possessed little more strength than a child.

  “We should just drop this and hurry up. Travis is right; she’ll want someone there when she wakes up,” Alicia started marching forward.

  Carson jogged to catch up.

  Alicia was right, but she was also wrong. As hard as they were both trying, neither of them were really Nida’s friends.

  She’d want her family. He didn’t, however, have the authority to call them in; that decision would rest with the Academy Board. If there were something radically wrong with her implant, they would want to keep all news of it under wraps for now.

  He could call Cadet J’Etem though. So he did. Pulling back a little from Alicia, he sent a quick message to the Cadet.

  Then he hurried forward.

  He might not have known Cadet Nida Harper for all that long, but he was determined to find out all he could about what was happening to her.

  Determination, however, would not be enough.

  Chapter 19

  Cadet Nida Harper

  She woke up. Slowly.

  It took a long, agonising time to open her eyes, let alone differentiate the sounds and feelings swirling through her blackened consciousness.

  In fact, the first sensation to resolve was a deep, powerful tingling right in the centre of her chest.

  With all the energy she could muster, she brought up a hand to touch it.

  “She’s awake; registering conscious activity, but it’s still pretty low,” a woman said from her side.

  Nida tried to open her eyes, but the effort almost sent her back to sleep.

  She groaned. At least that she could manage.

  She felt like hell. No, worse than hell—she felt as though she’d been plunged into some gut-wrenching realm of pain and agony from whence there was no return.

  “I don’t like those readings,” someone snapped from her other side, “get one of the technicians in here. This field needs to be strengthened.”

  . . . .

  Field needs to be strengthened? Readings? Where was she, and what was happening?

  She rallied to open her eyes again, but gave up with another groan.

  “We need to move fast to secure that thing before it sets off another one of those pulses,” the woman spoke again.

  Suddenly a blast of tingles surged in her chest, and Nida sucked in a gasp.

  “It’s ramping up again. Where the hell are those technicians? We need that field doubled, now.”

  The tingles in her chest kept building and building, pouring into a single point.

  She tried to clutch a hand to it, but she couldn’t lift her arms.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” someone snapped.

  With a twitch that travelled violently through her shoulders, back, and arms, she screamed. But her voice was far off, distant, and no longer sounded like her own.

  In fact, with a wash of detachment, the tingles raking over her skin began to fade as she fell back into unconsciousness.

  It was the most welcome sensation she’d ever felt.

  Then, almost immediately, the dreams began.

  She walked through the halls of the Academy, forcing the walls to buckle with a single outstretched hand. Then she made it to the grass. It withered and died under her feet. Then, with a glance up to the sky, the ships high above stopped, shuddered, and fell to the ground in burning chunks of metal.

  It was horrible. Terrible.

  Flash after flash of destruction.

  Yet eventually it stopped, and she was back on the planet.

  She stared at the dust below her. She leaned down, picked some up, and let it trickle between her fingers.

  She watched as the wind caught it and blew it away, the fine particles tumbling into the distance until she could see them no more.

  She looked up, tears filling her eyes, misting her vision as she stared at the stars above.

  One by one, they blinked out.

  Twinkle by twinkle, they flickered off like dying fireflies.

  With every star that disappeared, she twitched. Her body rocked back and forth as if she’d been shot.

  Then it started.

  She felt that by-now familiar sensation.

  An energy building in her left hand and shooting through her arm and up into her chest.

  She barely had time to gasp before the dust by her feet kicked up into the air as if caught by the strongest of gales.

  Then it pushed towards her, swarming down towards her chest.

  She screamed, swatting at it.

  Then she saw through it. To the world around her.

  Gradually everything lifted into the air.

  From the barren rocks to the destroyed buildings. They floated up from the ground, then hung in the air for several amazing seconds.

  They did not stay there though. With a crack like a world being broken in half, they shot towards her. All of them. Every rock, every crumbled-down ruin, every pile and heap of dust. All of it. It all shot towards her.

  She backed away, but there was nowhere to go. In every direction, dust and rock and debris swirled.

  With one last scream, she stumbled to her knees. In a flash, she saw the sky above.

  The lights of the stars were back.

  But there was something wrong.

  They were bigger, and growing bigger at an alarming pace until, with a violent shudder that felt like it snapped every bone in her body, she realised what was happening.

  The stars in the sky, the planets, the constellations, all were drawn towards her.

  The night was dark, lit only by the incredible colour of the stars cape above. But with every nanosecond that passed, that light grew and grew.

  The swirling dust and stone cascaded around her, but did not touch her. It merely twisted and span around her body, less than a few centimetres from her face, chest, torso, and legs. But it left enough of a gap for her to stare at the night sky.

  The stars kept getting closer.

  She could feel their heat. She could see the trails of light they left streaking through the black sky.

  Second by second they neared, and second by second the debris slashing around in front of her closed in too, until she could see nothing but the tightly packed stones and dust.

  She fell to her knees and waited for the sky to fall and the world to crush her.

  Chapter 20

  Carson Blake

  No one had any idea what was happening.

  Not the doctors, not the technicians, not the specialists being brought in from the TI research facility. No one.

  And that included him.

  He was still at the hospital, for all the good it would do him. He wasn’t allowed to see her—he didn’t have the clearance.

  He’d been right about one thing, at least—the Academy was keeping this under wraps. Nida’s parents most certainly had not been called, and though he’d told Cadet J’Etem to get to the hospital,
she’d been turned away.

  His rank provided him with the authority to be in the building, but that was it.

  Even Alicia had been turned away, something she had reasonably been none too pleased about.

  Now he sat there, for the second time that night, staring at the same damn sparsely decorated waiting room.

  With his arms crossed and his body stiff, he leant against the wall. Occasionally he tried to close his eyes and think, but nothing made sense. No matter how he tried to analyse events, he could see no reason, no pattern, no clue.

  With a heavy, almost hopeless sigh, he pushed up from the wall, did a short tour around the room, then rested back against the same spot.

  There was nothing to do but wait. Though multiple people had suggested he simply go home, he couldn't.

  He wanted to be right here. Even if he couldn't see her and apparently didn't have the authority to find out what was going on, he couldn't walk away.

  At one point, he'd gotten the bright idea of calling Cadet Lai back to ask about Nida's watch, but Lai hadn't answered. A senior technician had, and the woman had promptly informed Carson that this matter was no longer his concern.

  The Academy had found out about Nida's watch, clearly, and was treating it with as much secrecy as everything else.

  Though Carson knew there was objectively little he could do whilst standing in this terribly drab room, it would take an admiral to pull him away.

  He would happily stand here assessing the situation from every conceivable angle until it finally made sense. Yet he didn’t get the chance. For, several minutes later, the door opened, and low and behold, an admiral did walk in. Admiral Lara Forest, to be precise.

  It took Carson entirely too long to straighten up, snap a salute, and greet the Admiral.

  Forest marched in, her hands clasped tightly behind her back. Her usually stern expression was even stonier than usual, and Carson fancied that if she scrunched her lips any tighter closed she would shatter her teeth and jaw.

  “Admiral,” Carson nodded low.

  Forest did not return the nod. “What are you doing here? Go home,” she commanded with a grumble.