Awoken (14 page)

Kai shook her head once in agitation, as if she were trying to rattle the memories loose. She gave up and continued to speak, ignoring the gaps in her story. “Susan can track anything,” Kai explained as Susan took the cube in her paws. Power swelled from deep within her chest and pulsed once, coursing down to her two paws. There was a loud crack and a flash of light. Susan dropped the little cube to the ground then gracefully glided across the surface of the roof, pressing her paws to the ground at regular intervals. Her pads filled with energy, which sizzled and cracked in the air.

At first, nothing happened. Susan thoroughly investigated around the immediate vicinity of the group. Suddenly, her search yielded success. As her paw lightly tapped the ground for the umpteenth time, a coil of purple energy sprang out, arcing along the ground away from of the group. The sparks died out after a short distance. Susan floated in the direction the energy had gone. She pressed her paw to the ground lightly and several more tendrils of violet lightning darted out, leading toward the edge of roof. The ARI’s crew followed silently as the varl moved away from the ship. Seeker floated above Oa’s outstretched hand, providing a soft warm glow that parted the mist ahead of the their steps.

They had not been walking long, when they came upon a round white depression in the seamless reflective gray material that made up the top of the architecture. At the center of the sunken platform sat a head sized black dome. Susan stopped next to the black dome. She turned back to the group and let out a growl, power rumbled in her throat.

Oa looked to the boundary of Seeker’s light, but he still could not tell how close to the edge they were.
We should be directly over one of the hanging structures by now
, he guessed. Kai stepped down onto the white platform. Immediately, the black dome lit up, projecting rays of green light up onto her. Oa was startled and staggered back slightly. Ohm seemed unfazed by the event. The emerald beams traced Kai’s outline, mapping her body completely.

“It’s just a lock. Hopefully Kai is one of the keys,” Ohm explained quietly to Oa. The dome gave an affirmative beep. The rays blinked yellow and disappeared. The platform rotated slightly. A sequence of faint thuds reverberated through the ground as bolts drew back, unlocking the door. Oa heard a slight hiss as air long trapped within the dwelling escaped. The platform began to lower down into the floor with Kai standing resolutely at its center.

“Better get on now unless you want to jump,” she called. Ohm quickly stepped onto the descending platform. Oa followed, hopping down. Susan shrunk back to her normal size to fit with the group on the elevator. She nuzzled Kai’s hand with the tip of her snout, looking for attention. Kai reached up and lightly stroked the lightning varl’s head between her pointy ears. The creature curled up in contented bliss. Oa looked around, curious to see what they were headed into. There was nothing to see as the platform continued to drop down the shaft. As they descended, the walls lit up in a cool white glow. Above them, a secondary door slid shut closing them off from the outside world. The loss of a clear exit worried Oa, but he didn’t voice his concern.

The platform dropped out of the shaft, lowering into the center of a dark room. Seeker’s light did not reveal anything, causing Oa to wonder just how spacious the place was. He noted that the mist was also with them inside the dwelling. The gloom stalked around the edges of Seeker’s light, concealing the full extent of the room. The elevator softly landed in the center of an open plaza. A soft white glow spread from where the group stood, gradually flowing through every surface of the chamber. The fog melted away to reveal numerous flights of stairs that branched out from the plaza. Some steps climbed upwards and others descended below. The glow spread across the steps, reaching various antechambers that populated the interior of the structure’s shell. The rooms were various shapes and sizes, and some protruded further into the main chamber than others. Eventually, every surface was lit: walls, floors, and ceilings. Not a trace of the mist could be found. Oa slipped Seeker back into the satchel at his side. He decided that the complex hive of odd rooms and stairs must be one of the strange hanging pods they had seen from the ARI.

“Omni-glow alloy? I haven’t seen this in a long time,” Ohm said softly. Kneeling down, he brushed his bandaged stump over the luminous floor. Oa noticed that Ohm’s hand strayed to the strand around his neck again. Ohm stood up quickly. “Lead on, Susan,” he said. His voice seemed to warm with the light of the room.

Susan uncurled and renewed her hunt, tracking the purple sparks as they bounced from her paws. She led them across the plaza to a set of stairs. These stairs led straight up to a completely enclosed room that hung from the ceiling. Susan floated upwards, tapping several of the steps to make sure she was still hot on the trail. She was followed by Ohm, Oa, and then Kai. At the top of the stairs was a short landing which led to the only entrance into the tear-drop shaped chamber. Susan and Ohm walked through the door without pause. As he reached the top, Oa turned and looked back. Kai was a few steps behind, her head hung down.

“I don’t want to go in there,” Kai said quietly.

Oa could hear the fear and hesitation in her voice. Questions nagged at him. Where had the Awoken of Istaar disappeared to? Who was responsible? Instinct told Oa that answers lay in the room ahead. Despite his burning curiosity, he still felt uneasy about the nature of the answers, for Kai’s sake.

“A part of me doesn’t want to know either, Kai. I want Cale and Jess to be alright. I don’t want to see your hopes dashed. Ohm says I have the ability to believe things will turn out alright no matter what happens. I think you are similar. No matter what we find in there, it’s going to be okay,” Oa said comfortingly. He paused and waited while Kai considered his words.

“We will see about that, Oa,” Kai said wryly. She looked up at the entrance, her visual receptors bright and ready. “I have to know either way. I dragged all of us here, after all.” She walked up the stairs and brushed past Oa into the room. He turned and walked in behind her. He looked over her shoulder at the chamber’s interior.

Ohm stood to the side of the door. His blue ocular plate was dim, and his hand clenched his ruined arm tightly. Susan floated next to him, her head held up nobly, her task complete. The lit room was a workshop similar to Kai’s. The shelves were clean and all the tools had been put back into the storage hatches that lined the walls. There was no more work to be done, the tools were no longer needed. Only two things remained in the vacant room. The first was a metal birth cell resting in the direct center of the chamber. It did not glow as the other surfaces in the room did. The cell was scorched black, and the hatch laid open. Oa observed that the cell was much bulkier than his own. Extra sheets of alloy had been grafted onto it like armor. The second thing in the room was far stranger. The sight disturbed Oa. On the ground, next to the birth cell, a cloud of haze refused to disperse with the light. At first glance, it seemed merely to be an amorphous cloud of fog. As Oa looked closer, he realized with horror that it had a shape. The shape of two figures.
Cale and Jess
, he thought to himself with grim certainty. The figures where kneeling on the floor facing each other, arms clasped around each other in a final embrace. Kai walked over to the mist. She dropped down to her knees next to the apparition. Ohm stood in silence, his head bowed. Oa walked over and stood next to Kai, looking down at the strange figures in the mist.

“Where did they go?” Kai asked. The sight of her lost friends released the holds on her mind. Memories poured forth as she reached out to try and touch the spectral images. “There was so much confusion. They told me we would see each other again after it was all over. I waited in my birth cell until it was safe to come out but there was no one. Just this …” she trailed off, motioning to the fleeting echo of her former friends: her family. “There wasn’t even a soul ember left to hold.” Her voice broke slightly.

Susan rested her head on Kai’s shoulder, sharing in her friend’s grief for a moment. Then she glided over to the far wall. Susan pawed at the omni-glow alloy as she traced another trail. She uttered a thunderous roar and lightning leaped from her mouth, tearing open a gash in the wall. Startled, the Awoken looked over at the varl. Susan had burned away a fake wall revealing a concealed cubby. Inside the slot sat another black dome, similar to the lock at the entrance. It activated automatically, casting light out into the room. This time instead of scanning the group for a key, the light formed two outlines. Oa recognized the shapes as Awoken. The taller one began to speak. His was a bold and educated voice, though it was tainted with worry and urgency.

“We don’t have much time left, but if you have found this, Kai, then you are safe. That is all that matters to us at this point. You need to know what happened and how sorry we are. This new job was so alluring, a chance to study and create technology reverse-engineered from the remains of the Destroyer. That is what we were told. We jumped at the chance to work on something we thought was only legend.”

“It was as if we were living in one of the overused and long-worded stories Instructor Ohm used to tell us at the academy,” the second figure added in a kind and spirited female voice. Ohm gave a derisive cough at the statement.

“Our curiosity was naïve though, Kai. They only wanted us to weaponize our findings. We tried to get out of the project; but they threatened us, saying they would use you if we left, so we built the weapon. We tried to convince them it was dangerous, but we knew they meant to use it no matter what we said. We can’t let them win. We have to destroy it before they have a chance to use it on a large scale. We engineered a remote containment field to hold the blast. We had to sneak over to the lab to place the field projector, but we will be right here next to you when we detonate it. There is a chance the fission will tear through our containment field; this whole place would be caught in the center of it …” the voice paused, “well, we just hope we are there to greet you when you step out of your reinforced birth cell. We redesigned it to withstand the Void itself. You will be safe no matter what happens. If for some reason our efforts fail and we aren’t there when you emerge, please know that you are the most special Awoken we have ever met. You’re always so eager and ready to learn. We know you will do amazing things. Be safe, Kai,” the figure said with a wave.
That must be Cale,
Oa decided.

“Hey, sorry about the stasis ring knockout,” the second figure apologized sheepishly. “We knew you would pull some crazy stunt if we told you beforehand. You can be mad at us later. Don’t worry, though; nothing is gonna happen. No problem has outsmarted us yet. Cale is just being a wimp,” The female voice added with a lighthearted laugh.
Jess
, Oa thought to himself. He heard sadness hidden in her voice. Jess spoke again, her words sincere and warm, “We love you Kai; remember that.” The image of the two Awoken froze for a moment, then the light flickered and died.

Kai got up and walked out of the room. Susan followed closely, sensing Kai’s distress. Oa stayed, staring at the specters of Cale and Jess.

“Ember fission—a piece of the Destroyer’s power. It annihilates only the Awoken. Cale and Jess were brilliant, but I didn’t teach them enough. There was no way they could have known it would engulf the entire city. Their containment field was no match for the raw power of the ember fission bomb they must have made. The city will be forever covered in the shadow of that blast. These reflections of the Awoken are burned into place for the remainder of time,” Ohm said sadly as he motioned toward the fallen figures.

“Kai refused to accept it,” Oa said, kneeling next to Cale and Jess. His head bowed with crestfallen realization. “It must have driven her mad—finding this, only to then spend countless cycles wandering blindly through the fog as she tried to escape the city. Her dead friends were probably the only thing she was able to see in the darkness.”

Oa and Ohm walked out to the landing at the top of the stairs. Down below, Kai sat on the edge of the plaza, looking around at what used to be her home. Susan rested next to Kai, tail curled around her comfortingly.

“She never could have made it out on her own. Susan must have found Kai and guided her out of the mist,” Ohm reasoned.

“Susan flew her away from this,” Oa said softly as he recalled Kai’s tale of her first encounter with the lightning varl.

“Now that Kai has closure about the fate of her friends, she needs a new purpose,” Ohm said. He turned and looked at Oa intently.

“I understand,” Oa replied knowingly. He was about to walk down to Kai, but he turned back to Ohm. They needed to discuss the implications Istaar had on their ultimate goals before he could hope to comfort his friend with a clear mind.

“It seems like Eol was not involved in this. It was a weapon made from the Destroyer …” Oa theorized, pausing in thought to contemplate any possible answers to the puzzle. “Now I know you say they’re crazy, but the writings in Bolleworth did seem to link the Destroyer and Eol.”

Ohm gazed around the spacious dwelling, then down at Kai again. She had not moved. “The original Destroyer is gone, but I am afraid you’re onto something. The oracle’s ravings may hold some truth. Fred has been analyzing this place since we arrived. Now before I continue, you should know that nothingness has always surrounded our world—but only recently has it come alive,” Ohm explained. He grew somber as he unveiled his theory. “This mist is composed of an emptiness; blank spaces in existence. Hidden within, is a clue to the nature of Eol. Notice how this black fog moves, as if it has an instinctive consciousness of its own. This Void is not like the lifeless abyss of old. This is a Void like Eol, not the same but a close and primitive relative. If this prototype Void was birthed from ember-fission technology, Eol might have been created in a similar, more controlled circumstance.”