Ouroboros Episode One

  Chapter 23

  Cadet Nida Harper

  She couldn't sleep.

  Neither could she talk.

  In fact, she could barely think.

  Because something was happening to her. Something terrible.

  The pain in her chest kept building and building, and as she stared down at her hand, with a surge of incapacitating terror she saw blue tendrils of energy driving under her skin.

  She tried to bat at it, tried to grab it and pull it from her veins, but it was too insubstantial to touch. Yet she could feel it as it wiggled its way through her flesh.

  She wanted to cry out, she wanted to scream and tell the doctors what was happening to her, but she couldn't move her lips. They were numb. No, worse than numb - they felt as stiff as the carved mouth of a statue.

  That particular image stuck in her mind, and couldn't be dislodged even as another surge of panic washed over her.

  She was still in the same cavernous hospital room, and the doctors were still trying, apparently, to stabilize the stasis force field that enshrouded her.

  Occasionally she watched the flickering orange and blue light, but now the only light that held her attention was that which had invaded her bloodstream.

  The doctors no longer seemed to pay much attention to her; they had grown used to the fact they couldn't calm her down, and now barely glanced up every time she tried to scrape the luminescent blue energy from her body.

  No matter how many drugs the robotic arm injected into her neck, they had no effect. She would feel their cool rush as they entered her body, but the tingles from the blue energy would soon surround and obliterate the drug.

  With every passing second, a sense of desperation grew within. Doom and malaise and terror pressed in on her, reminding her exactly of how the rubble of that planet had swirled and pitched and circled around her crumpled body.

  She tried to beg for help, but again she couldn't move her lips, and neither could she force her voice to ring aloud. All she could do was beg over and over again in the confines of her mind.

  It was truly horrifying, agonizing even, terrifying on a level she'd never experienced before. And with every passing moment, it grew until she felt she would break, the fear carving her in half.

  She could no longer listen to the scientists as they muttered and debated how to strengthen the field. All she could do was lie there and ride it out.

  Just as it seemed as if she could take no more, something happened.

  Her body calmed, her limbs drawing still as a last, small jerk passed through them.

  Before she could wonder whether the robotic arm had just injected a far more powerful drug into her body, something happened to her mind. It began to fill with this warm, comforting presence.

  As it did, she was immediately reminded of a sight she'd once seen. A beautiful statue of a smiling woman with a long dress and stunning hair carved in flowing lines around her.

  It was the smile more than anything - the remembered angle of the lips and the compassionate edge to the statue's gaze - that finally calmed Nida enough to stop trying to tear the blue energy from her veins.

  That presence filled her mind. It built and built, expanding into every crack of fear that had broken her will, until the anxiety lost all hold of her.

  "We must return home," the presence spoke. Though it had no voice, somehow its meaning and intent solidified in Nida's mind.

  Home.

  They had to return home.

  To the barren wasteland of the world the humans and Coalition referred to as Remus 12.

  Nida concentrated on that fact, and she let that glowing, warm presence calm her.

  "We cannot stay here any longer; we will corrupt, we will destroy," the presence said, again its voice little more than solidified thought.

  Nida had to struggle to understand the words; she was losing all sense of herself, and could barely concentrate for more than several seconds at a time.

  But slowly she understood.

  Slowly the pieces started to fit together.

  And with it, a final memory slammed into place like a key being shoved into a lock.

  Nida remembered exactly what had happened to her on Remus 12.

  She recalled coming across that second set of stairs and falling down it. She'd broken her ribs, done something to her ankle, and she'd lost Carson Blake's scanner in the dark. Then she'd clambered up the wrong set of stairs, only to find herself in an enormous room, completely empty save for a startling statue.

  As Nida lay there following her memories, she recalled, in perfect detail, how she'd walked up to the statue, marveled at its unique beauty, and then??she'd reached out a hand to touch the blue, glowing orb it had held.

  That was when everything had started. That was when the energy from the orb had exploded and rushed into Nida.

  She remembered it so clearly it was as if she was experiencing it anew.

  As that memory ebbed, and she again became aware of the hard medical bed below her, she opened her eyes.

  As she did, she felt something build up behind them, and she saw the world cast into a curious blue glow.

  With a disconnected certainty, she realized the energy from her left hand had possessed her eyes. In fact, as she glanced down at her body, she now realized she glowed from head to foot.

  Glancing up at the stasis field above her, she stared on in mild curiosity as the thing began to flicker. Great arcs of energy passed across it, and the orange glow became incandescent, flecks of fiery red cracking across it like plumes of lava spilling up from fissures in the earth.

  She heard the scientists screaming now. Their voices were distinct, and yet Nida didn't have the concentration necessary to understand them. Instead, she marveled at the feeling flowing through her.

  She no longer felt pain, no agony, no sickness.

  With the memory of what had truly happened to her on Remus 12, the mystery of the energy no longer haunted her.

  She understood what it was. She knew where it belonged. And as she slowly pushed herself up from her hard bed, she realized she had to take it home.

  That disembodied voice in her mind once again repeated that they had to leave Earth before they became corrupted.

  Nida didn't understand what corrupted meant, but in a flash, she saw herself walking through the halls of the Academy again, destroying everything in her path. Taking sadistic, horrible pleasure in crippling and crushing everybody that stood in her way.

  "The stasis field is failing," she heard one woman scream.

  "Jesus Christ, the generator is buckling," another man noted with a keening cry.

  As Nida sat up, she stared through the malfunctioning field at the rest of the room.

  The machines that generated the energetic veil holding her in place were starting to warp. The metal was stretching, buckling, and groaning as it shifted closer toward the field as if pulled by an invisible hand.

  "We have to do something," someone screamed.

  Nida didn't hear them answer.

  Instead, she stood up. As she shifted her weight to her feet, again, she found herself staring down, and she watched that distinctive blue energy trace its way over every centimeter of her skin.

  This time she didn't flinch, though. She no longer brought her fingernails up and dug them into her flesh as far as they would go, trying to root out every last scrap of that energy.

  Instead, she opened herself up to it.

  She surrendered to that soft, welcoming presence in her mind that told her in sweet, reassuring tones that as long as she returned home, everything would be fine.

  Everything would be fine.

  Nida took a step forward. She wasn't entirely in control of her body; it was only in concert with the presence in her mind that she managed to move her limbs.

  Though everything she knew about stasis fields told her not to reach out a hand and touch one, she did it anyway. And as her blue, glowing fingers pressed against the side of the field, i
t failed. In an incredible, gushing ray of sparks, the machines that manufactured it exploded.

  People screamed.

  She wanted to tell them it would be okay, but she couldn't.

  Instead, she took a labored step forward, her movements jerky.

  She felt like a puppet being pulled along by strings, but nonetheless she made her way across the room.

  With every step she took, the devices and machines around her shifted closer toward her body.

  They grated across the floor, no matter how big nor heavy they were. Some even lifted into the air as if they had canceled out the effects of gravity.

  Though they circled her, she didn't fear they would rush toward her and crush her body.

  She simply ignored them and took yet another strained step forward.

  She was no longer aware of what the scientists were doing. She simply concentrated on the door on the other side of the room.

  She could hear some kind of alarm blaring, and the part of her that still remembered her Academy training knew it was a red alert.

  Red alert?? That was serious. That would call the Academy's combined security force.

  She would not be able to get out of here. They would put every single obstacle in her path until they slowed her down. If that wouldn't work, they would likely kill her.

  Despite that realization, she didn't stop. It didn't really affect her. With the warm, reassuring presence in her mind, little could.

  She finally reached the door, and as she did, it opened.

  A team of black-clad security guards brought up their weapons and pointed them right at her.

  She should have doubled back; she should have put her hands over her head and begged for mercy.

  She didn't.

  She simply took a shuddering step forward.

  The man directly in front of her was wearing a helmet that matched his black armor, but it only half covered his face. She could see his mouth, and right now, she watched as it dropped open in unmistakable fear. "Don't move," he cried, and that same command was picked up and repeated by every member of his team.

  She took another step forward, staring at the barrel of his gun as he pointed it at her.

  She realized how dangerous it was, but again, that realization had little of an effect on her. It felt more like some curious fact she'd learned long ago in school, rather than the unmistakably important reality she now faced.

  Without another warning, the man ducked back, and he fired.

  She watched the pulse of red light tear from the muzzle of his gun.

  Then it seemed as if time itself slowed down.

  Or perhaps it didn't.

  The bullet did.

  As it shot toward her, it slowed, and then, like the metal objects had in the room, it began to circle around her.

  The security guards doubled back, shouting amongst themselves, and then they fired again.

  Seven more bullets ripped toward her, but rather than striking her and blowing her off her feet, they simply slowed and began to circle around her as if they were feathers or leaves trapped in a gently moving eddy of air.

  She took another unsteady step forward, and then another.

  She had to get out of here.

  The problem was she'd never been in this particular corridor. She also knew, academically, that unless she did something, security would lock this entire building down.

  Just as that realization dawned on her, Nida found herself leaning down.

  Her knees didn't buckle out from underneath her; slowly her body descended until she planted one hand on the flat, smooth, cold floor.

  Blue energy rushed down into the concrete, cracking it into a fine powder as tendrils of the light spread out further and further.

  The security guards behind her screamed, but she had no idea what they were saying.

  And when they tried to shoot her again, the bullets only slowed down and circled around her, joining with the other pulses of light that were already there. In fact, as Nida sent tendrils of blue energy into the cracked concrete floor, dust from where she'd broken it reached up, lifted into the air, and joined the bullets as they all circled her.

  As more and more energy pumped down from her hand into the floor, she watched it snake its way up into the walls and ceiling. She saw it shoot forward, following an erratic path, like droplets of water streaking down a windowpane.

  As the energy raced across the white walls, the presence in her mind thinned.

  Then she saw flashes.

  Flashes of the rest of the building.

  She saw rooms and doors and panels and the faces of doctors and technicians and security guards. She saw the basement, she saw the roof, and she saw the beautiful blue sky above.

  Concentrating on the vision of a panel in a secure room, filled with other softly glowing technology, she watched the blue light power into it, encasing it in tendrils of glowing energy.

  "Do not worry," the presence in her mind commanded her. "We will escape. We will escape," it repeated.

  She simply knelt there on the floor, her palms still locked onto the cold concrete as her eyes stared, unfocused at the blue energy branching through the walls.

  Then she felt it. The presence returned to her, and in a snap, the branching energy infecting the hallway returned to her too.

  The blue light just shot back into her body as if it had been attached to a tether she'd just yanked.

  She stumbled to her feet, her hands now glowing even more than they had before.

  All of a sudden the red alert klaxon stopped.

  And she knew, without question, that it had been her doing. No, it had been the presence.

  The entity in her mind had turned it off.

  "We have disabled the security of this building," the presence told her in its soft, disembodied voice. "We have found an escape. We will make it off this planet," it concluded.

  That fact made Nida's heart sing.

  Without the ability to stop herself, she walked forward, her movements still jerky and lumbering as if she were a doll being moved by a child.

  As she walked through the corridor, doors opened for her, the handles rattling or the panels sparking as more energy shot out from her and infested them.

  As she stumbled forward, the presence guided her, and somehow it ensured her route was clear. She didn't pass another single security guard, and nor did she see a doctor or technician.

  Perhaps they were all trapped in some room, or maybe they had fled the building. It didn't matter. All that counted was that nobody stood in her way.

  The buildings of the Academy complex were connected by underground tunnels, and some of them even had over ground bridges that connected the skyscrapers.

  It was for one of these bridges that she now headed.

  No matter how far she walked, and through how many halls and corridors she passed, she didn't meet another soul.

  Nor did she come across any resistance at all.

  Still, it took her some time to figure out where she was headed.

  The ship dock.

  It was an enormous building, and it was where the Academy kept all of its light cruisers, the heavier stuff always remaining in orbit and never descending to the surface.

  As she walked, she still moved like a puppet being jerked around on a string. Her shoulders would twitch to the side as her legs took fumbling steps. This process repeated itself until she finally reached the space dock.

  Usually, this building was full of engineers and technicians and cadets and officers preparing for missions.

  It was a hub of activity 24 hours a day. The lights were never off.

  But now the lights were off as she entered the building from the ground level. And there was nobody to be seen.

  The panic tried to punch through the calm that had descended through her, yet it couldn't. She appreciated the fact she was alone and that it was unusual, but that was it.

  She lumbered forward and soon reached a lift. In the blink
of an eye, it took her to the top level of the building.

  Above her, the mid-morning sun smiled down, and it would have been pleasant to lie flat on her back to watch the shapes in the clouds as they drifted on by.

  She didn't.

  Instead, she staggered across the deserted platform toward a ship on the far side.

  It was small, barely several meters square, and she recognized the design as a standard fast cruiser.

  It was built for maximum speed and nothing else.

  She had no idea how to prep the ship for flight; she'd never been particularly good in flight school, and she'd certainly not been taught how to master a light cruiser yet. Especially on her own.

  But that didn't matter.

  She made her ungainly way toward it. As she did, light bled from her hands and feet. It danced into the clean, smooth, white metal floor, and shot toward the waiting vessel.

  The sight was incredible, unbelievable, in fact, as that blue glow ate up into the sides of the ship, plunging into the metal as if it were nothing more substantial than air itself.

  She didn't stop walking toward it until finally she reached it. As she did, the small hatch at the side of the ship opened with a hiss.

  She made her way inside and sat in the single seat surrounded by panels at the front of the tiny vessel.

  As she sat, the hatch closed, and in a blink, the panels before her all turned on. Seconds later, she could hear the rumble as the ship's engines engaged as well.

  Without a command from her, the vessel lifted up with a jerk and hovered several meters above the white, gleaming floor of the hangar bay.

  She ticked her head up, considering the startling view of the clear blue sky above.

  Then, without warning, the vessel pitched to the side and shot upwards.

  Nida was not thrown back into her seat; all spacefaring vessels had internal gravity and could dampen the impact of inertia at all but the fastest speeds.

  But she did find herself slumping against the back of her seat, her limbs incapable of movement.

  In fact, as she forced her eyes to scan her hands, she noted that the blue energy was now pushing back into her left hand, receding down every one of her muscles and bones until it rested once more in her palm.

  She blinked at it, sudden lethargy taking hold.

  Slowly she faced the view before her and noted that the ship had already passed high above the cloud line, and she could see space glittering a distinct navy-blue through the final levels of the Earth's atmosphere.

  Soon she would punch through and make it out into orbit. Then, she would be in space.

  And she would head home, she added as an afterthought.

  Home.

  ?.

  She rallied to stay awake; she rallied to take hold of her concentration.

  Though it was terribly, painfully, mind-bogglingly hard, she managed to scrape together enough awareness to realize what had just happened.

  And the fact of it stilled her with perfect terror.

  She'd broken her way out of the Academy, and she had no idea how.

  The halls had been empty, and the ship had been waiting for her.

  Where had everyone gone?

  And more to the point, were they safe? Had the presence - the blue energy residing in her left palm - hurt them in some way?

  As soon as she questioned that, the presence in her mind returned. It seemed to caress her with invisible hands, drawing her close and embracing her, filling her with reassuring calm.

  "They are fine," it told her, "and we are going home."

  Too tired to fight that thought, she relaxed into it. And as she did, sleep reached up to take her.