Parallel (6 page)

Even Falia could not comprehend the amount of life lost every second through the Universe. The inconceivable complexity of the Universe reminded Falia of her people’s insignificance in its grand design.

A subdued flash of light flickered in the corner. Falia turned in time to see Mineal materialize in its place. The young woman panted softly as the molecules of her body reassimilated.

“Madam Leader,” Mineal said, gasping for air. The color had blanched from her smooth, rounded cheeks. “I have urgent news.”

“Yes?” Falia terminated her meditation period and resumed the list of thoughts and programs typically consuming her mind. In reconnecting her mind to the web of thoughts spun by invisible threads across Lenora, knowledge came instantaneously, even before Mineal could respond.

Something was missing. A line of thought she had been running for hundreds of years had vanished, and with it, every connection to Ryol was severed. The void filled Falia with an emotion she had not felt since childhood.

Panic.

Falia struggled for air against the invisible hand tightening its grip around her chest. Her scattered thoughts searched desperately for understanding. A scream shattered the silence of the room, traveling the eternity of Falia’s mind in an instant. The shroud of fear lifted. The Madam Leader blinked to clear away the confusion and found Mineal convulsing on the ground.

“Mineal.” Falia dropped to the unforgiving floor on her knees and cradled the girl’s head between trembling hands. “I’m so sorry.”

Mineal’s eyes came in and out of focus like beads of glass staring into the unknown.

Help.
Falia thrust the thought out of her mind and into the world.

This was her fault. She should never have allowed her emotions to spike. Her mind could kill if her emotions were left unregulated. She had carried that knowledge with her since childhood, a lesson learned in the hardest way imaginable.

Now, she would relearn that lesson because of a single moment of weakness. Poor Mineal didn’t deserve to suffer. Didn’t deserve to share in the sea of panic that had temporarily overwhelmed Falia.

She called out to Mineal’s mind, but the girl’s fragile consciousness retracted into itself, taking shelter from the fear that stalked her thoughts.

The Madam Leader did not notice the Healer suddenly appear beside her. It wasn’t until the other woman knelt and held a hand to Mineal’s temple that she became aware of the woman’s presence.

“She is suppressed beneath great fear,” the Healer said.

“Yes,” Falia said. “My own.”

“Her mind is fractured beyond the skill I possess to repair. Many Healers will be required to coax her mind from its cocoon.”

“Do what you must to mend her.”

The Healer nodded and a layer of smoke obscured her eyes. In a flash of light the woman disappeared with Mineal’s body, leaving Falia alone with the icy drip of dread coursing through her blood. A shiver rippled down her spine. The vibrations penetrated to the depth of her being.

She stared at the sun, the sole source of light, of hope, in a world that closed in tighter.

Frantically, she scattered her thoughts across the Universe in search of her daughter.

The world clenched tighter.

Her heart pounded its unrelenting march in an attempt to break free from her chest. No response came from Ryol’s mind, no familiar touch.

Tighter.

Anxiety seized her throat with bony fingers, trapping the blood rushing through her body so it pooled in her throbbing brain.

Aurora whispered, but Falia couldn’t understand.

Tighter.

The sun flickered behind black dots. Falia screamed against the darkness creeping in.

“Ryol, where are you?” she gasped.

She’s gone
, Aurora said.

It was true.

Tighter.

With a final gasp for air, the Madam Leader collapsed.

Tighter.

The world ceased to exist. The darkness became absolute.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Ryol

A mix of panic and confusion coalesced in a potent mixture beneath Ryol’s calm exterior. Despite this, she maintained control, refusing to allow her emotions to surface. Hari and Gerald wore similar expressions of fear. She would not compound their anxieties with her own.

Blood trickled from Hari’s ear, but Aurora assured Ryol that the wound would not be fatal.

Gerald appeared physically unharmed, but his vital signs were dangerously erratic. She dedicated a portion of her attention to monitoring his biofeedback in case his situation worsened.

Ryol glowered at the three Graesians filling the room with their unsettling buzzing and clicking speech. As a species the Graesians never stopped growing over the course of their short lives. In their culture, size related directly to power. Because of this, she immediately recognized the enormous features of Tzalear, the Graesian High Lord.

Ryol oversaw the recruitment of the Graesians into the Alliance. She remembered the young world poised on the brink of calamity, where it would have been torn apart if not for the Lenoreans’ intervention. The Madam Leader had taken a great risk accepting them into the Alliance. To repay that act of kindness with violence against an inferior race defied Ryol’s comprehension.

“What is the meaning of this, Tzalear?” Ryol asked.

“Retribution.” The Graesian twisted his head unnaturally to the side so that Ryol saw a thousand reflections of herself in the creature’s compound eye.

“My people wished for nothing but peace with your kind. We welcomed you into the Alliance despite your…” Ryol collected herself and forced down the anger creeping into her voice. “Despite your nature.”

“Our nature is one of self-preservation, a commonality shared by all intelligent life,” Tzalear said in a high-pitched buzz that set Ryol’s teeth on edge. “Do not pretend you have come here seeking anything less.”

Ryol could not understand how he’d determined the purpose of her visit, but it filled her with a dread blacker than the Graesian’s carapace.

“No harm will come to this people by our hand,” Ryol said, gesturing towards Hari with an open hand. “Through the spirit of cooperation and mutual benefit, we hope both our worlds might prosper.”

“Your words fall flat, Princess.” Twin incisors on either side of Tzalear’s face clacked together as if relishing a joke. Somehow he knew Ryol was the Madam Leader’s daughter, but he did not understand the Lenorean hierarchy if he thought her to be next in line for ascension. “You seek peace with these people, yes? But you will not settle for anything less than their servitude. If they refuse, you will destroy them and take what you need. It is the way of the strong, and the Lenoreans are very strong.”

“We would do no such thing. We follow the Mandate.”

“Rules you wrote and which now you break.”

“Lies.”

“Your Leader has broken the peace.” Iridescent wings fluttered behind Tzalear, lifting him inches off the ground and adding to the ambient noise filling the room.

“Excuse me,” Hari said, holding a hand in the air. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but would somebody explain what’s happening?”

Tzalear stared at the human without comprehension. A thickly muscled tail, with broad spikes narrowing to a needle’s point, flicked over the alien’s shoulder. Light glinted off the razor-sharp edge of a stinger, larger than Hari’s head, on the end of the corded tail.

Hari held his hands up with palms out. “Never mind.”

While Hari spoke Ryol reorganized her thoughts and found her connection to Aurora, and therefore Lenora, had been severed. She had never experienced such a separation. The absence of Aurora was like a barb buried in the back of her mind. It ached as she tried pushing through whatever suppressed her connection.

“What are your demands, Graesian?”

“I demand nothing. I have what I need. With the knowledge that passes to you, we will harness the power of Eitr for ourselves.”

“You overestimate my value. The Madam Leader will not be manipulated into a position that threatens the lives of the trillions represented in the Alliance. Not for me.” Ryol folded her hands in her lap, hoping to exude a confidence that had nearly abandoned her. “Not for anyone.”

Tzalear’s face contorted, but Ryol could not understand the intended meaning behind the expression.

“How can it be that she does not know?” The Graesian turned to his two comrades. Their laughter sounded like a swarm of angry bees.

“What is there to know?”

Tzalear taunted her with a clucking sound. “The Alliance has fallen.”

“Impossible.”

“Without the Madam Leader to guide them they threw themselves at our feet and begged for mercy.”

Numbness spread through Ryol. She blinked but couldn’t bring her mind into focus. “Where is the Madam Leader?” Ryol asked, terrified to know the answer.

“She is dead.”

“No. I would know.” Ryol tried to convince herself, but the Graesians’ presence cast doubt on her own beliefs. “I would feel it.”

“Would you? This world is under my quarantine, and you have been cut off from Lenora. But ask yourself, if I am lying, how am I here? And how did I come by this?” Tzalear held a round white stone between his spindly fingers up to the light. He held it there, admiring his victory, and then tossed it in a high arc across the table.

Ryol snatched it out of the air and turned it over in her palm. Her heart skipped a beat. Recognition was immediate.

Every child on Lenora received one on their fiftieth birthday: a rite of passage into the upper echelon of Lenorean society. An implant that would allow the user to link directly with the super-computer Aurora.

Ryol didn’t wonder who it had belonged too. She knew. Such a large implant could only belong to one person.

Her mother.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Hari

Despite his best efforts, Hari could not decipher a single buzzing word exchanged between Ryol and the insectoid. Ryol’s body language, however, told an unmistakable tale. Hari lacked fluency in the body language of women, but when the color fled Ryol’s face, and her eyes rolled back in her head like unfocused marbles, he knew enough to guess what would come next.

Instinctively he lunged out of his chair the moment Ryol’s body lost its rigidity and fell forward. He dove, arms outstretched, and caught her by the shoulders, stopping her head inches from the coffee table.

Even with inertia working against him, Hari was surprised to find that Ryol weighed practically nothing. He chalked that up to the rivers of adrenaline pumping through his veins. Hari recalled stories of amazing feats performed by people doped to the gills on adrenaline. As he placed Ryol in her chair he wondered if he could lift a car, or, more beneficial given the circumstances, fight off a trio of insect men with a history of blowing up laboratory doors.

The insect men were tall, lean, and utterly terrifying. They looked like a Frankenstein mash-up of a mosquito, a scorpion, and a bee. Stingers the size of bowling balls gave Hari pause to reassess his chances in a fight. He’d like his chances a whole lot better if he didn’t have that crippling bee allergy.

“Any ideas?” Hari tried to whisper without moving his lips.

Gerald’s eyes were wide bulging orbs of white that never left the insect men as he shook his head in the negative.

“What do you think they want?”

“What do all insect men want?” Gerald said dryly.

“I got nothing.” Hari shrugged and scanned the room for a means of escape, or at least a weapon, but besides a couple Bunsen burners and beakers, he came up empty. The only items even remotely resembling an effective weapon were the thin metal stools which had been thrown across the room in the explosion. Even if he could somehow get to the stools Hari doubted he could inflict much damage on the hard black carapace of the insectoids.

Hari watched his colleague tapping a stubby finger with no particular rhythm on the armrest of his chair. He wondered how much of a withdrawal he could make from the adrenaline bank if forced to fight the aliens. Gerald abruptly stopped his tapping finger and inched to the edge of his seat. His muscles were tense, his jaw set with iron resolution.

Gerald had a plan. Something hid behind the old man’s flat expression that made Hari shudder: the icy edge of a man prepared to do whatever it took. It was a determination Hari had never witnessed before.

“Do you have the Key?” Gerald asked quietly, over-modulating his numb voice.

Hari rummaged for the heavy object in the back pocket of his jeans. “Yeah?”

“Give it here.”

Hari’s stare ricocheted between the insect men and Gerald as he withdrew the Key from his pocket. Concealing it in his palm, he handed it to Gerald.

“Jumping through the Door won’t help,” Hari said. “We have no idea where it’ll drop us.”

Thick rivulets of sweat wound through the weather-worn wrinkles of Gerald’s sun-kissed cheeks. Through the stench of smoke and burning wood, Hari thought he smelled fear. Whether Gerald’s, or his own, he didn’t know.

“Get ready,” Gerald said. “You’ll only get one chance.”

“Wha—what are you talking about?” Hari placed a hand saturated with sweat on the old man’s shoulder. “One chance for what?”

“To get the girl and run.”

“Oh, God.” The blood drained from Hari’s face, leaving him lightheaded and dizzy. “Don’t do anything stupid. These don’t strike me as the sort of folks that lose sleep over killing people.”

“Do you remember coming to the hospital after they took my lung?” Gerald turned and stared straight at Hari.

Hari leaned back, distancing himself from Gerald’s intense gaze. “For the better part of a week I slept in a chair I’m pretty sure was designed for torture. You don’t forget that sort of thing.”