Hunt is scanning, playing numbers on the HUD, tracing the shockwave of energy, the way it ripples through the graveyard, breaking up ships. The Wohol station explodes in bright yellow balls of light as their engines fail, but of Citlali…
There aren't even atoms left.
It's not right, there should be a bigger show when your home dies, the last vestige of hope. Not just the brief flash and then... nothing. Nothing. A great big steaming heap of nothing.
The same nothing that's taken over my chest.
I thought I'd feel more, but... I don't know. There's just emptiness.
And Dude.
And Hunt.
Through Hunt I sense Aeotu, and through Aeotu... The Sistermind extends all around, voices and colours filling the ora. There is joy and victory and pain for siblings lost. All of it a riot of colour, pinks and purples and greys and blues and things there are no names for. Blinding me.
Distantly, I sense Grea, the deep cherry-red of her mixed with the darkness of Euiva.
I reach for her.
Grea!
A twitch, a shadow that might be my twin, gone as quickly as it appears, subsumed by the Sistermind, by Euiva.
Grea! I yell it, reach deep and take the power in Hunt's/my chest, throw it into the ora.
There it is again, that flicker, maybe a little stronger, maybe a little clearer, before it's swallowed.
A growl, rising from deep in my being. Dude is beside me, lending his power to mine and Hunt's. We reach again, no words this time, just a beam of determination tearing through the Sistermind, reaching... reaching... reaching...
You are close. A voice, half new, half familiar, echoes in the eter. You have freed us. We will not let you float.
Float. That hangs in my head, memories of the void, of endless darkness and cold, of being alone saturate it, make me shiver almost as much as the presence uttering it.
It reminds me of Aeotu but where the kaleidoscope of her mind burns with light and colour, this mind is black and grey, a maelstrom of darkness threaded with a single strand of red. There is no warmth in it, not even in the bright cherry that is my sister.
Euiva.
Yes.
Where's Grea?
She is here. And there is a glimpse, a moment of Grea standing before me in the eter, reaching out, then she is gone, swallowed by the dark.
I gather myself, summon every scrap of loneliness and longing, of the deep, intricate knot of love and companionship, of connection that is Grea and I, and thrust—
No, Euiva says again, bats me out like I'm nothing.
Like she blew up Citlali.
Like my home was nothing. My dad, my mum, my friends.
Like we are nothing.
Like she can use us.
Like she doesn't know she's got another thing coming.
Let her go.
There is a pause, a heaviness leaning on my brain, not a thrust, or even a probe, but an attention, the focus from a mind powered by a sun. No, she is needed. Your kind are needed.
I—
You will understand soon. Soon, we will live forever.