by E. L. Aldryc
She drank something translucent with a hint of an opal reflection in it and reached for a couple of rocks piled up next to her on the floor. Instantly, right after the liquid touched her lips, she shook and trembled, and her voice became unstable as she repeated the same lines over and over again. A small part of the air in front of her began to distort.
There was something about the vision even beyond the difficulty of finding it—it simply didn’t give much. Something was done to it, to conceal it like this, from being associated with a time and place, only with the person.
As she watched, the disturbance in the air turned into a nearly transparent ball that thickened as she stopped speaking and simply stared at it.
In the midst of all this white and bright, another colour suddenly appeared. As Soraya repeated the words over and over, blood began to drip from her nose to the pristine floor.
Elodie had no idea what she was looking at, but she knew that she shouldn’t have been there. The vision was almost transparent, and it might have looked this bright because it had been washed and hidden so many times to dissuade every seeker of it that it had ever happened. But if Elodie’s own teachings on the nature of time and watching it, the past could never be destroyed.
She wondered briefly, why this was shown to her now, not the many times before she was around her? The orb in the vision slowly developed a blue tint and as it did so, a sickness spread out of it, something tar-like and alive.
And Elodie screamed and got herself into a movement to dislodge from the memory, and soon, she was woken up and back in her nauseated body, hoping that she’d throw up.
A million thoughts travelled through her mind. Was this real? How was any of this possible?
With her eyes open, she saw the present moment, and Soraya with the blue item, biting her nails as if she needed a tool, or courage, and could not find either. She was leaning on the wall of the laboratory, struggling to stand.
She grunted in frustration and grabbed the blue orb, crushing it in her hand.
It was gone, just like that.
Elodie watched her silently, afraid to make her awareness known. What was this person doing? Was she really the one to set up the trap that blinded the entire Rising Dawn? How many times did Elodie have to see proof before she finally believed it?
The grief immobilized her into a complete absence of all but speculation. Soraya glanced towards Elodie a couple of times, and she still pretended to be unconscious. Soraya activated a cleaning app in the room. She marched over to Elodie, feeling her forehead and pulse.
“I’m going to get you to the doctors now, okay? It’s gone. You got it. You won, do you hear me? Don’t give up,” she said.
Did she know what the orb would do to her, that it felt as if it was eating her inside, starting with the gates of her mind that are open to the futures? Did she plan this? Was it her way of making sure she could never tell Tammy about all the things she saw?
She was being dragged away by both Soraya and possibly the AI, a final humiliation of the night. In the drowsiness, a single voice followed her, her visual field blurring and closing in.
“You’ll be fine. I’ll take care of you,” Soraya said. And as she spoke Elodie heard her voice change.
“I’ll take care of you,” she heard, repeated, but this time, her voice was cold. It echoed in a different room, a sudden vision, and Elodie couldn't hold on. She was slipping into the current, and the deeper she was, the more the voice from the inside overlapped and was muffled by the same voice, different setting.
“You understand how hard it is when you make that decision? To remove someone from this life completely? When you know you need to dirty yourself so that the Five may live on? You do, I know you do. That’s what I want you to think about right now. Your death is but another stepping stone towards the Universe of Infinite Wonder.”
There was the dark, Elodie tasted it, she tasted the rotten blue light within it, as the distant sound of gasping for air, and then a word was born from it to complete a final breath.
“Jiddispjaċini.”
Backwards and Onwards
Thursday, 4 July 2363
MediMundus. That’s what it was. Tola there smelled differently. Elodie knew the difference by now. There was something restrictively organic about it. There were people around Elodie, saying things like “you’ll be fine”, and they attached sticky things to her skin, and she was too weak to raise her head and look.
She fell asleep completely, all parts.
A long blur extended. Lost, no time, no nothing, Elodie was forced to open her eyes, scared to think what she might see. The room reminded her of the design of the augmentation facilities in Rising Dawn, but sleeker, with the occasional heavy material part that stuck with its small imperfections.
A slightly curved wall full to the last inch with hexagonal projections loomed above her. She couldn’t read any of it. Her senses were numb. Waking up in strange places had become an annoying recurrence in Elodie’s life.
The window that showed some valley in a more continental climate than Madilune, and a figure next to it turned around when she started blinking. The dark chestnut hair belonged to Tammy, and Elodie was relieved to see her concentrated in her absent way, the one she’d seen a hundred times before the blackout. She’d done it.
“You’re a bit early. I expected you to wake up in three minutes,” Tammy said. “Unpredictable as always."
Elodie wanted to respond, but she needed to drink first. Tammy motioned her to wait a second and came back with a glass of water. On her way to the other side of the room with it, she picked up a call.
“Yes, we have a quorum from the pool. Debut product one with slow-release strategy three in the first month, and we have a 98.7% chance of higher yield. Europe will not intervene. They’ll have something else to deal with, but I’m not at liberty to discuss that yet, not until we have more detail, honey. I expect it to be clarified this afternoon. Yes, we’re still getting into the swing. Thanks, bless.”
“I don’t know what time it is,” Elodie said after the first sip and clearer thought.
“Yes, that’s my fault. I’m sorry. I asked the lovely doctors here to give you any sedative we could find. We had to get as close to inducing a coma without actually inducing one. In your condition, deep unconscious states are quite harmful. But something had to be done. The important thing is that you’re fine.”
Tammy sat on the side of the bed.
“We got access thanks to you. Last night. And we all knew, we all knew Elodie, that you did it. We felt you. Are you aware of how extremely proud and grateful I am?”
But this was not the first question on her mind.
“Why did you sedate me?”
“When you were brought here, me and Augustina took a good look at what happened to you. You were being affected by the item you discovered. We’ve never encountered anything like it. I think it was using your abilities as a gateway to hurt you. In order to block your way to the sublime, para and prognostically, we induced a brief coma. When we cut you off, your symptoms stopped. And here you are.”
“What did you see when you checked me?” Elodie asked.
The more her mind cleared up, the more of the fear came crawling back.
Lying, cheating, hiding, murdering, “I’ll take care of you”, all of it.
Always there first, in everyone’s ear. Always so reasonable and right. Maybe she even got the gifted to believe her. The last thing Elodie remembered was feeling the determination, as firm as ever, from Soraya. She was in the act of killing. And it was more cruel than the floating poison.
“I saw that you were very brave,” Tammy said. “You two did a good job.”
She stroked Elodie’s hair.
“I don’t want you to think I’m just happy to have you back because you succeeded. I’m happy you’re safe.”
“I’m not safe,” Elodie said. “What did she tell you about what happened? When we found the place where the thing
was, we didn’t know what we were looking at, or how to destroy it. I found a vision and we followed it. It was crazy. Powerful. I couldn’t even get close to it. And what, she just waltzed over and turned it off?”
Elodie saw Tammy’s face change and realised she said too much, too soon. Even though Soraya had never been in Rising Dawn’s good books, trying to incriminate her instantly might have made Elodie look, well, crazy.
“I don’t know,” Tammy said. “I don’t know what she did, but it’s gone. Count the Particle Lab together with whatever that was, and you know how it is. Fickle readings at best. She said she experimented. Tried a couple of things. We’re assembling a team to look into it.”
“No. She knew exactly what she was doing. And you know why?” Elodie went all in; what other way was there? People were in danger. “Because she was the one who created it. I saw it. I saw her make it.”
Tammy crossed her arms and looked out in some kind of pain, as if she had hoped that there would somehow be fewer things to deal with after the blackout was gone and just realised her job was getting harder by the minute.
“You saw Soraya create the object that caused the blackout. In a vision?” Tammy looked aside for a second. “I can’t see anything like it. And I’ve tried to see what happened. I checked the timelines. Even past ones. Nothing.”
“I’m not even going to pretend it doesn’t sound crazy,” Elodie replied. There was a lot to lose here if she didn’t play her cards right. If she made Tammy believe that this was real, then maybe they had a chance at fighting it.
“Elodie, insiders were the first thing we checked. I keep close tabs on everyone's movements and activity logs. We investigated the accident, remember? Any weird gaps, and they were questioned. If the answers weren’t consistent, they were questioned telepathically. Soraya wasn’t on that list, that much I can tell you. She hasn’t raised a single alarm.”
“The vision that I had, it was kind of… bleached.” Elodie tried to explain. “I couldn’t tell when it happened. Or where, precisely. But she was making the thing. I could see it.”
“Bleached?” Tammy rubbed her chin. “A lot of light and fuzzy angles?”
“Yes! That’s what it was.” Elodie grabbed the lead.
“So someone worked on it.”
“You can do that?”
“There are no ways to destroy a vision.” Tammy continued, “It is written in the current. It doesn’t work that way. I’ve heard there are ways of hiding it, though. In the early works there were references to it, but as we became more focused on the path of progression, we stopped most of the practices that had anything to do with manipulation. It’s just not us.”
“But it is possible.” Elodie insisted. And Tammy still wasn't convinced.
“How did you get to the vision?”
“I saw her, and the orb in front of me. It triggered it associatively, I think.”
“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Tammy said.
“So you believe me?”
“I don’t know,” Tammy said. “I want you to rest, honey. You did a big thing.”
Elodie bit her lip. There was no real evidence to support her statement. But the details matched, and Tammy had heard of a phenomenon before. She sat with Elodie for a while and assured her she would look into it. Elodie wanted to believe her. But she was tired of letting people handle her, passing out, and waking up in hospitals. She drifted back to sleep, dreamless and sticky from the medication.
Tammy would look into it. That’s all she could hope for.
When Elodie woke up again, things were better. For one, she knew it was exactly 14:14, and the last conversation between her and Tammy had happened more than ten hours ago. She also noticed she wasn’t alone again. This time, there were several new guests in her little alcove. Tammy was sitting on a chair away from her bed. Augustina by the door, her orange mane tied up, as if guarding the entrance from intruders. Dr Rusu on the only other chair in his usual grey attire. Soraya, standing in the middle of them. Back in the lab coat. Tense among the gifted. They’d been waiting for her to wake up. No. This was bad.
Tammy started.
“Elodie, I'm sorry for the ambush, but this is important. In your capacity as a Rising Dawn member, every testimony you give that comes from vision will count as forensic evidence, especially with your calibre,” she said sternly. “I wanted to see if we can resolve this before handing it over to the police.”
Soraya flinched at the mention of the word. Good.
“But it’s true,” Elodie said, empowered by the thought that she was considered both a full Rising Dawn member, and that her words counted.
“She made it.” Elodie pointed at Soraya. She hardly had energy for more.
“I did not,” Soraya said.
Tammy sighed.
Wake up. Wake up. These were Elodie’s people. She just helped them out of the longest blackout in history. They cared. They were here to help. Maybe there was a reason to rush this. Maybe they could take Soraya away like they did with the Hopefuls. Elodie gathered her thoughts. Maybe if she said it like it happened, Tammy could see it too.
“You were kneeling,” she said to Soraya. “I know you were nervous. You drank a liquid. It was like dirty water with a rainbow shine.” No one would shut her up now. Soraya erased all sentiment from her face. She was afraid.
“You had brought rocks with you, on the side. And you said the words, the ones that keep coming up. About hope. And then your nose was bleeding.”
Elodie felt a touch of lilac soothe her.
“She’s telling the truth,” Dr Rusu said. Thank. You.
“Augustina?” Tammy motioned to the other telepath, who quickly glanced over to Soraya.
“I’m sorry, is this what we’re doing? Unauthorised telepathic interrogation in the middle of the day? Where are your standards?” Soraya resisted.
“Would you rather we go over to our headquarters?” Tammy asked, as diplomatic as always.
“I have nothing to hide. I just want it noted,” Soraya insisted and forcefully relaxed her shoulders.
She looked at Elodie.
“Do you wanna explain this a little? Backtrack your thinking? Or is this it, you get a little power to your name and what? This is how you spend it? You enjoy humiliating me?”
Soraya's words didn't matter anymore. Augustina had permission to read her. Game over.
“She’s telling the truth. No memories or associations with the item,” Augustina added calmly.
“What? You’re kidding me?” Elodie almost jumped out of the bed. She tried another angle. “Guys, she was trying to teach me how to manipulate memories, to hide them. You need to look closer.”
“You can’t hide memories from telepaths, not if they already know what they’re looking for,” Soraya said patronisingly. That did it. No more messing around.
Augustina gave her a sympathetic look.
I’ll try my hardest.
The promise resonated in her head. She needed to. She needed to catch her on one lie, and it was all going to tumble down.
“Just please, Elodie, try to calm down. This is supposed to be a discussion,” Tammy said.
She was fair and firm. For once, she needed to be everything but that. Just once.
“I don’t understand why you’re being like this. We did it. We’re fine,” Soraya said. Her confusion seemed real, but when was that ever an indication?
“She killed Seravina. She gave a little speech as she did it. About removing people from life. About how a death can be a stepping stone to the Universe of Infinite Wonder. She killed her. I heard it.”
All four of her visitors were stunned.
“That’s a pretty serious accusation,” Tammy said. A great moment to be judgy.
“Hang on,” Augustina chimed in. “She was in the correct state of mind that signifies a vision. She’s remembering it right. It was auditory only.”
Finally, her ally.
“Try hallucination,” Soraya replie
d, “Can you please verify the consistency of that whole day from my memory? I’m inviting you.”
She spent a tense few seconds in a staring contest with Dr Rusu.
“Her day hasn’t been tampered with.” He sighed. “I checked thoroughly.”
Elodie was grateful, but it didn’t help.
“This is ridiculous,” Tammy said. “You can’t both be telling the truth.”
“No,” Elodie said, now pushing herself up to get to the edge of the bed. “But she grew up among Hopefuls. She knows more about Rising Dawn and our procedures and techniques than some gifted. Don’t you think she’d find a way to manipulate us?”
“That’s true actually,” Soraya said. “My parents might still be on your payroll.”
At that moment, Tammy saw it too. That glitz of anger, that was real. The hatred was raw, viscous, and if Elodie was lucky, Tammy would see a fragment of what she had. Some part of the bleached and hidden pasts.
“But let’s leave politics aside,” Soraya continued. “And talk about unfair advantages.”
Still, every time she opened her mouth, Elodie was reminded. The current was responding to her voice, offering visions Elodie didn’t want to see anymore.
“It might be worth mentioning that both times Elodie saw through the blackout, she was on alchemical drugs. Think steroids for the gifted. Seravina had them commissioned months ago. Untested. Might explain the weird visions.”
It’s all she had to say.
Alchemical, drugs, and gifted, weren’t words Tammy was prepared to hear in the same sentence.
“Alchemical… drugs?” She struggled to repeat the words and turned to Elodie.
“I did what I had to. And the first time, Soraya was with me,” Elodie tried. It's like they didn't get it. She was the guilty one. Why couldn’t they just see it?
“Yes, and I was begging you not to take them,” Soraya replied with equal frustration.
“I can verify that memory,” Dr Rusu said.
“Me too,” Augustina concurred.
