Valence 2-1
We go back to a mountain top on Earth
Valence TOC
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Atop a mountain on Earth, in a compound whose construction was largely funded by anonymous donors who dealt in blood and corruption, a sterile, white room contained two transfer pods, and in one of those pods, a bright bluish light could be seen fading slowly.
As the power supply was severed from countless circuits, a low whine carried over the clicks, beeps, and whizzing from the computers in the room.
A painful cold slithered down my limbs as unseen hands released me slowly, traveling down my body while stroking gently with long fingers of pins and needles. In my haze of waking, I struggled to decipher the various robotic chirps in the room, wondering if this was a language I should understand.
A hard surface rose up into my awareness, pushing into my back. I felt my head loll from side to side, felt myself raise my hands up and push on the glass above me, kick my heels against the unforgiving metal slab underneath me. I felt this and I saw this from behind my eyelids, but these actions had no impact on the environment around me. In truth, I laid still as a corpse, the weight of being turning my body into a coffin in which I had been trapped.
A wail, the likes of which I'd never heard before, rose in my chest and filled my lonely psyche, echoing off the walls of the dark cave it had become. The wail sounded like rites, ritual, mathematics, beastly urges, and inevitability. This was the language I should know.
"Teach me."
*Soon*
The meaning of the broken tongue was almost within my grasp. I reached for it and the comfort it offered, my fingers barely grazing the familiarity.
Then, like a flash, the vision was over. The awareness of my body and my surroundings stung as I passed through the veil separating this world and the other, like slapping hard against a sheet of water: solid at first, then penetrable as my weight broke the tension on the surface.
I knew where I was. I was back again.
There was no point in trying to open my eyes, I knew. My body would need time to recover from the RCT process.
Reassembling was always an unpleasant jolt, but feeling like a prisoner in your own sack of meat was the worst part. It had taken about forty RCT cycles before Paul and I had been able to return and remain calm upon waking.
This time, though, my anxiety levels were high. Another failed attempt to reach him. I hoped this was the last one. He wanted to disappear, to be lost. I understood that better than anyone. Why couldn't we just leave him alone?
The irritation in my commander's sigh was audible. The wheels of her chair squeaked as she shifted uncomfortably, somewhere off to my left.
"I brought you back out of that one. No use. I could tell it was a dead end."
I remembered a great churning maw of wooden teeth, splintered and thrashing about. Paul had walked right up to it, climbed in, and sat down like he was getting into a warm bath and not a whirlpool of death. Except, it hadn't really been him. He'd managed to fool me up until the moment when I'd grabbed his hand. It was the first time I'd encountered this type of projection: a projection without a soul anchored to it.
The memory of that particular type of projection troubled me. If the projection died in that figment, what happened to the real Paul?
The commander stood over me, creating a darkness behind my eyelids as she blocked out the overhead lights.
"I detected something different in that figment. Not what you call a shadow, but something more. It wasn't him, but it looked like him. Have you ever seen anything like that?"
She waited for a brief second before catching herself.
"Sorry, I know you can't speak right now. It doesn't matter, you're going back in."
This news set my heart racing, causing the rhythmic beeping at the other end of the room to accelerate as well. Panic flooded my veins and I thought if I could force my eyes open, I could advocate for myself in some small measure. I tried. All I got was a small twitch.
The commander let out a sharp breath on the other side of the glass lid encasing me in the transfer pod. She tried to keep her temper in check, but she failed miserably. Her words began with a severe, quiet anger but ended as a full-on shout.
"I'm not asking you. Borea's out there putting all of our work at risk. He's acting recklessly and he's not thinking. He needs to be stopped. I will send you in as many times as I need to until you start to obey. No more fooling around. You find him, get him to disarm his ship, and bring him back. We need to know what he knows."
It was then that a third person that I hadn't been aware of cleared their throat. Alarm bells began to ring in my head, sending enough adrenaline through my system to allow my eyes to finally open.
The commander moved away from the pod, giving me a full view of the overhead lights. My eyes burned from the brightness, but I rolled them around in their sockets nonetheless, hoping to catch a glimpse of this mystery person. A long few moments passed.
"Listen, Farina. We know this isn't easy for you. You worked closely with him for a year. It must be hard to see him self-destruct this way," the commander's voice was hard and emotionless, "That's why we thought it would help if you talked to someone - someone who could help you see things from an outside perspective."
"What is that supposed to mean?" I wondered.
Before I could try and take a guess at who they had called in, the lights above were blocked again as the figure of someone very familiar to me stepped into view.
A punch in the gut, except the fist went all the way in and reached up behind my ribs to grab my heart and crush it.
"Alyssa."
