Equilibrium of Terror: Part 2

by Eddie R. Hicks

  “Yeah, yeah, we’ve been through that already, dear,” Heurol said to her unsympathetically.

  “I want you to confirm if what I was told is true . . .” Chloe said. “This discovery did come from someone who turned out to be working for the order.”

  “Fair enough, it could be a trick,” Heurol said. “But if it isn’t.”

  “Then I want my body back. I want my memories, my experiences, and my personality back where it belongs.”

  “Come with me, we’ll see what we can do,” Heurol said, motioning them to enter an adjacent room, across the computers and busy Whisper techs trying to sift through the steady follow of intelligence at their workstations.

  Chloe followed behind Heurol, Vaishea however moved closer to Jazz. He sensed almost as if she wanted him to protect her, or reveal some information that would say this was all a misunderstanding. After all Jazz knew Chloe better than everyone else currently in the room.

  “You too,” Chloe said to Vaishea, noticing she wasn’t following behind.

  “I’d . . . rather not if it’s okay with you.”

  “No, it’s not okay with me!”

  “Vaishea . . .” Jazz said to her, and then faced Heurol to ask. “It’s just a scan, right?”

  “Need to analyze everything,” Heurol said. “Vaishea had blockers in her system, as did she. If they were injected at the same time, then it’s possible the nano machines came from the same batch. If that’s the case, since hers have been deactivated, we can gain access to the central database inside them, learn their security code, then use it to disable Vaishea’s. The truth about who is who will be discovered.”

  Jazz and Vaishea looked at each other. The look on her face, it made him frown, she really didn’t want to go through with this. But what else could they do? Make a run for it? They wouldn’t get far with the armed personnel in the area. And what if Chloe was right? They would just be making an already complicated situation worse for her. He reassured her it was going to be alright and the two moved forward and joined Chloe and Heurol inside a room with several operating tables along the walls. Each one had a disk-shaped device above the tables with robotic arms attached to it. On the opposite end of the tables was a single computer station, where Heurol and two other Whisper workers stood.

  Both Chloe and Vaishea were instructed to lie down on the beds. The apparatus above them lowered and scanned their bodies up and down with a faint yellow light. Its findings were transmitted to the computer slowly, while Heurol reviewed the contents of the data crystal Chloe gave him. Jazz stood with his arms crossed, he never took his eyes off Vaishea who periodically looked at him. She was waiting for him to make a move that was going to result in their escape he figured.

  No such move came, and it pissed Jazz of with each passing second.

  Minutes passed and the scanning of their bodies came to an end, while the final data transferred to Heurol’s computer. He and the two Whisper workers said to each other back and forth in their language as they rapidly worked on the computer.

  Heurol’s glare turned away from the screen to address an increasingly impatient Jazz. “There are traces of another memory inside Chloe’s brain, possibly Vaish’s memories.” He then faced Chloe who sat up from the bed. “Furthermore, your Linl DNA matches that of Vaish in our database; this is indeed the body of her.” Cold sweating started. If Jazz was experiencing it, everyone else in the room must be as well. “Good news is I can copy all of Chloe’s memories into another body while wiping them away from Vaish’s body. Whatever memories were uploaded into Vaish’s head will come to the surface, thus allowing the real Vaish to take control of her body once again.”

  A solution, one that would have a consequence that Jazz felt nobody else other than him and Vaishea cared about. “What about her?” he said pointing to Vaishea.

  “She’s human,” Heurol said.

  Jazz saw Vaishea’s head push back and hit the bed as her hands began to tremble. Vaishea, who was he kidding, she was the real Chloe, but at the same time was not. It was all confusing to him. Fuck it, he thought. She’s Vaishea until she stops responding to that name.

  “She has to be the real Chloe then, the real me,” Chloe said. “Get my mind back inside her please!”

  “Shouldn’t be an issue expect for Vaish . . .” Heurol said. “Remember the memory crystal Fiesei implanted in you didn’t finish transferring, not all of her memories will be there, and you’ll need to recover it to fully restore Vaish.”

  “I don’t give a fuck about Vaish right now,” Chloe said . . . Or was it Vaish?

  Fucking hell she’s Chloe until things change!

  “I just want my body back,” Chloe said.

  “Very well, lay down and I’ll start the transfer,” Heurol said.

  Instantly Vaishea cried out, panicking, yelling in the Radiance language. She quickly rose from the operating table only for two Whisper workers to run over to her left and right sides and restrain her body in an aggressive manner.

  That pissed Jazz off. He ended his idle stance and raced over ready for a fight. “Yo’ stop this shit!”

  Confused Heurol asked him. “What? If she moves around too much it will interfere with the transfer!”

  “What’s going to happen to her when the transfer goes through?”

  “Vaishea isn’t a real person she’s a fake persona that was needed to blend in. Her memories, personality, experiences were all created on a computer,” Heurol said.

  “That’s not true!” Vaishea yelled as she struggled to raise her arm out toward Jazz.

  “They’ll be erased, if that answers your question,” Heurol said.

  “Good, I don’t need multiple personalities,” Chloe said, resting back down on her bed.

  Tears were streaming down Vaishea’s face while she continued to cry for mercy in her native tongue. They were basically asking her to die right then and there for the sake of Chloe. Vaishea’s persona had no place to go it was going to be over written by Chloe memories as they transferred back. The body that Chloe currently possessed after all was that of Vaish, not Vaishea, a totally different persona, memories experiences and personally.

  “Fuck that,” Jazz said. “Vaishea seems like a legit person to me.”

  “Keeping both memories in one body isn’t recommended,” Heurol said. “It will cause a lot of confusing moments as one won’t be able to tell the difference from the real memories and the fake ones, I’m pretty sure the Major can testify to that. Only highly trained agents can keep both, which sadly the Major, the real one that is, isn’t. Let’s not forget human memory transfers like this were never tested on your kind, there’s no way to know what the long-term side effects would be if we left both memories active.”

  “I don’t know why we’re auguring this,” Chloe said to Jazz. “Johnson, this is my body! Someone, against my will, transferred my brain into someone else that happened to look like me. I’m not a Linl, I’m a fucking human, I was born that way, and I will die that way.”

  “And Vaishea will basically die when you wipe out her thoughts,” he said.

  “If she’s so important to you, I can transfer them to crystal,” Heurol said to him.

  “Then what?”

  “Nothing really, it will just be recorded brain data eternally saved into a storage device.”

  “No thinking, no talking . . .” Jazz muttered as Vaishea became limp, sedated by the two Whisper members. “She’ll still be gone.”

  “But not forgotten,” Heurol said.

  Chapter Nine

  Imperial Palace, Paryo, Uemaesce system

  Princess Kroshka stood in front of a wide mirror in her chambers, her red eyes gleaming at the complicated and exquisite dress she was expected to wear during the bonding ceremony. It was a black and red gown that covered her whole body from her shoulders to feet. It was completely transparent on the sleeves and midriff highlighting the outline of her young slender body. The matching bracelets and hair accessories were white
and were designed to look like frost, mimicking the great permafrost that covered most of Paryo.

  Several servant tailors used their handheld weaving tools to make the final adjustments to the outfit. They lowered their devices and stepped away, signaling the completion of their task, and souring Kroshka’s mood. She had hoped they would have taken much longer to make the outfit for her, as it would only delay the bonding.

  “What do you think?” one of the servants asked her.

  “I am impressed how quickly you managed to make this, you have done a great job,” she said. It was a lie of course what she truly wanted to say was the opposite.

  “So you approve?”

  She nodded in response, but only to keep them happy, they would face execution from the empress had they produced a product either one of them were not satisfied with. “You may leave.” She instructed them as she turned her face away from the mirror at last.

  “Thank you, your majesty, we shall speak with your mother and let her know you enjoy this.”

  The servants left her chambers, smiles on the faces, some of them sighing in relief knowing they would not be punished for failure. One servant remained however, an old man with yellow eyes and aged pale skin. Moalin as she recalled his name was.

  “You forget something?” Kroshka asked him.

  He placed his hands behind his back, stood straight to the best of his ability, and said, “May I speak freely?”

  “You may,” she said as she entered her sleeping area to perform the overly complex task of removing the dress and the three pieces that made it whole.

  “Not long ago you disapproved of your mother’s wish to continue to fight with the humans and this bonding between you and Eeladen,” Moalin said. “Now you seem content with it, are you truly happy? Or are you just creating a sense of false happiness.”

  “Everything about this false,” she said as her naked body slid out of the three sections of the dress. “Bondings should be between two mates whom enjoy each other.”

  “Forced bondings happen periodically within the imperial family.”

  “And how many of those people were happy with their partners? Part of my family’s history is forged together with mates that in reality did not wish to be with each other. The idea that our family is perfection in the eyes of the Hashmedai people is fake. We are not perfect; this conflict between me and my mother is proof of that.”

  She placed the dress on a mannequin in the far corner of her room, then stood in front of the window and allowed the crimson sunlight to shine upon her body. Below the sun and her room high up in the tower was a thick layer clouds that blanked the imperial capital.

  “And soon you will have his offspring, and play a role in that,” Moalin said.

  She looked up in the reflection of her window; he remained standing outside of her sleeping space. Most male servants were always tempted to take a quick peek inside while she changed but loyal ones however stood outside and kept their minds off her body. “I’m not done fighting yet,” she said, reaching over to a robe and exiting.

  “Neither am I. I will support you anyway I can.”

  She waited until she was in front of him to place the robe on her exposed body. His eyes remained forward, never moving, his resolve and loyalty, was impressive. She walked around him, sensing no form of excitement, no arousal, no sweating.

  “Thank you . . .” she whispered to him as she sat on a large couch outside of her solarium.

  Moalin was dismissed shortly afterward as she held onto her opened robe, and went to tie it up. Eeladen stood in front of the door leading to her chambers, as Moalin left Eeladen came in. Kroshka groaned internally at the unexpected exchange Eeladen saw as he came in. She was partly naked with her opened robe, sitting comfortably on the couch; Eeladen was going to get the wrong idea.

  “You and him . . . alone?” Eeladen asked her.

  “It is not like that,” she said, tying up the robe. “I doubt a man his age can get hard anyways.”

  He grinned at her as he stepped closer. She got up from her rest and kept her face away from him for she knew Eeladen was getting hard staring at her. “You’ll be surprised what technology can do,” he said. “On that note.”

  She felt his hands brush through her hair platinum hair, down toward the top of her robe, his fingers quickly trying to pull it off her body. Her telekinetic powers said otherwise, pushing his hand away with her mind.

  “Get out,” she said.

  “You copulate with him but not your mate?”

  “We are not mates,” she said, tilting her head upward to face him. “Now get out, I have work to do alone.”

  “What kind of work?”

  “Remember when we used to be a team? One that was going to bring down the Celestial Order living amongst our people?”

  “How’s that working out?”

  “Not very well.”

  “Didn’t think so, such a task requires more than a princess, her guardian and a mentally unstable Archmage, who I might remind you, is now on the frontlines fighting the humans.” She ignored him, focusing her attention toward her pendant with the red shimmering gem that she left on the solarium chair. “The order is powerful and its influence is much larger than you think, you’ll need an army to destroy them.”

  She walked into the solarium, he followed behind, still being the persistent annoyance he had become since mother forced this union between the two of them.

  “So you gave up?” she asked as her hands reached down to pick up the pendant.

  “I’m saving your life as well as mine,” he said. “This is not our fight, let your mother deal with them, it is her duty.”

  She debated how to reply to what he said, and if she should bother to start with. The war twenty-two years ago was the order manipulating her mother to attack Earth by sending assassins to kill her brother and attempt to kill her in the process, making it look like humans were responsible. Her mother couldn’t do anything to stop the Celestial Order when she was being tricked by them and refused to listen to anyone except the order and their lies.

  “As I said,” she said, looking away from the gem pendant. “I have much work to do, please leave unless you are going to assist.”

  “Remember that old underground temple we found?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come with me to it, we can spy on them as they still believe we are open to their ideas.”

  “That was supposed to be your task until you stopped helping.”

  Eeladen said nothing more, just simply smiled then backed away and exited her chamber. Relieved that he left, she locked the doors to her chamber then drew a bath in her bathing area. She stripped off the robe, and submerged her body into the icy cold waters, while draping her pendant around her neck. Her head rested backward to relax and drift amongst the waves drenching her pale skin. Her mind established a link with her gem and her thoughts drifted away from the ice-cold waters into a state of astral projection and entered the realm of aether space, her only means of escape from a reality and the life she didn’t want to live in.

  Aether space, Lower realm

  Kroshka’s mental essence entered the lower realm of aether space. Ironically, she was wearing the bonding dress she loathed so much as she appeared. She figured it was because it was the only bit of attire that was on her mind lately.

  She stood on a beach with cerulean light shining down across its soft sands from the nebula hanging high above it. In front of the nebula were floating asteroids, hundreds of them as if they were clouds in the night sky. Water that reflected the light from the nebula above brushed up against the beach as Kroshka walked through it with fascination. She made multiple visits to aether apace, but this place in particular was different, certainly a spot she had never been to, and a spot, further away from the other regions she explored.

  She sensed that she might be near the theoretical limits of this mysterious plane of existence, held together by a means she couldn’t figure out as the laws
of physics did not apply here, not the ones you would expect in normal space and time at least. Aether space followed its own laws, laws that played outside of the timeline of the normal realm. There were several instances where Kroshka seemingly spent hours, if not days in aether space, running away from everything in the normal realm, away from the endless wars, negativity, and feelings of being trapped within the palace walls. But yet every time the link keeping her tethered here was broken, she found herself returning back to normal space with only seconds passing, sometimes a few minutes, but no more than that.

  Then there’s the Lyonria. The long thought extinct species were residing here in certain areas. She could never get a clear answer as to how they got there. The few she made contact with were born here and this existence was all they knew. Normal space to them is what aether space was to her, a strange existence where the laws of physics operate differently. Either the Lyonria got stuck there trying to explore and understand it or travelled there of their free will to make it their new home.

  “You’ve been coming here a lot lately,” a voice in the Hashmedai language said.

  Kroshka spun around in the sands below her, laying her eyes on the person that called out to her. “Iolysta . . . What do you want?”

  Iolysta Frosttouch, mother of Phylarlie and Noylarlie. A lot of Kroshka’s childhood memories consisted of Iolysta when she used to act as a personal bodyguard to her father and late emperor of the empire, before she was discovered to be a traitor, deserter and withheld the knowledge that her daughters were psionics from the empire.

  “I wanted to know if you would like to chat,” Iolysta said, walking toward her on the beach.

  “You support the order.”

  “And you want to bring it down, we share the same goals.”

  “Forgive me, but I do not believe you.”

  Iolysta sat on the beach, her head tilted upward to the spectacular gasses that made up the nebula above them. Her hand patted on the sand next to her, signaling for Kroshka to sit next to her. Kroshka grimaced at first, then accepted her offer. If Iolysta had planned to betray the order; it might be in her best interest to at the very least hear her out.