| |
The next day, I dug into my books. It didn’t matter that the brain seed might make things worse. I wasn’t going to leave the fate of the Community to a bunch of rebels who wanted to go back in time and erase everything. Someone had to be the voice of reason. I just needed to be careful during my studies. Anytime I noticed those other thoughts creeping in—the ones where turning people into subhuman monsters sounded horribly fascinating—I would need to put the textbooks away and work on the telepathy-blocking techniques Gwen taught me.
I was pretty sure the reason everyone was so focused on the time stones as our only option was because they weren’t sure what to do about the Legion Spore. Even the Oriental Alliance seemed hard-pressed to keep it at bay, and if the OA couldn’t force it to retreat, they would lose the upper hand they’d gained over the past decade.
So, despite the cold chills running through my arms and legs and despite my twisting stomach, I grabbed Tim’s tablet and sat at my desk. This time I was getting through the whole inefficient article... without a memory attack.
I skimmed the first half, the parts I’d already read. My fingers trembled. The room felt like someone had turned up the heat and forgotten to turn it down, as if I was on the upper deck of the Legion Spore—
I swallowed hard. What was on the upper floor? Why was it so hot there? I knew because of Lady Winters’ memory seed. I knew that the nutrition tanks were housed on that deck, and that the air sacs were kept inflated by fire elementals who heated the air—
Beads of sweat gathered on my forehead and dripped onto Tim’s tablet. I wiped them away. I could do this. I just... needed to look at the schematics.
Shaky, I found a set of documents that showed a side view of the proposed project. The gondola was three stories tall. The air sac, when inflated, was an additional five stories. The vessel used the powers of fire and air elementals to control the air sac and the rate of rise and fall.
I traced my finger down a roster in another document. If they incorporated more elementals, they wouldn’t need as many people in the hub. They could make a smaller, more efficient ship. Its so-called “intelligence matrix” might not run as fast, but it was already an advanced computer. They could sacrifice computing speed and reduce the number of human components—
I shoved the tablet away from me, sending it skidding across the desk before it softly thunked the wall. My heart pounded against my ribs. Dear Community...
I’d been reasoning out how to work that thing.
I took a deep breath and wrapped my fingers around the flower charm. This was why Gwen didn’t want me doing research. But was knowing how the Legion Spore worked, even knowing what would theoretically make it better... was that so wrong?
Once we knew how the Legion Spore functioned, we would know its weaknesses.
There were bound to be flaws.
I stared at the tablet, goosebumps running down my spine. Of course it had flaws. I’d felt its pain, unnecessary pain, when it connected with me in Japan. When we had been the same voice, a legion of souls merged into one—
I pushed my chair back and paced the room. Jim had been disturbed by what the vessel said through me. Why? Was it a taunt, the way Lady Winters taunted me by calling me Lady Nickleson?
I froze short of the bathroom doorway, not daring to look in the mirror. I might not like what I saw. I might be in another memory attack. Though, if I was, at least it was making itself useful.
I resumed pacing.
The Camaraderie had successfully created the vessel in Tim’s notes. At the time, it was purely theoretical. But they had made it work. How did they force everyone to merge, to connect their minds to a central computer, to go beyond their pain and work as a single, cohesive unit?
Heat burned in my memory and I wanted to resist it, to shake off the memory and return to my precious chalk circle so nothing could hurt me. But part of me... the part that wanted to know...
I’d seen the Legion Spore’s creation before. I knew I had the answer.
All I had to do was let the memory overtake me.
I sat down and closed my eyes. Pain raced through my thoughts, fifty-some humans and beasts being forced to join into the Legion Spore. I gasped for breath. My eyes watered. My skin was on fire. Merging, shifting, our limbs stretching and elongating, becoming something wholly inhuman. Raw and bloody muscle mass crawled across my vision.
I gritted my teeth. I needed to see what was out there... I needed the other vision... the one from right before the merge—
I stood on a metal grid, using my vines to tie down a beast. Pathetic creature. It whimpered, straining against its binds.
“Are you ready, my lady?” Commander Rick asked, proud as usual.
I turned to him. “Of course.”
This was what I’d been waiting for. I joined him in a semi-circle with the other Camaraderie members, one hand tracing the ruby pendant around my neck. The loops and curves were delicate and old, but what was old could still create something strong. The metal contraption at the center of the giant room was almost complete.
Benjamin stood before us, his glowing form pale against the room’s bright blue lights. He held up his amber pendant. Do you remember the arrangement?
“Yes.” A thrill rushed through me at the chance to finally see what these artifacts could do.
Then let us begin.
Commander Rick went first with his sapphire pendant. Creation. Lady Black went next. Diamond, for life. I added the ruby pendant for energy. Lady Winters added the emerald for enhancement and growth.
My breath caught in my throat.
Benjamin looked up, catching the servant’s eye who stood on the catwalk. There was something about him, something I didn’t trust...
The spirit added the final pendant. Amber, for binding.
Light blasted from the pendants, lighting the whole room. Heat pummeled my skin. I screamed, my mind assaulted by dozens of thoughts, terror, bones shifting and muscles changing, minds expanding, hearing the pulse of everything, everything in each other’s memories and in the code because we were no longer individual, because we were legion—
I stared at my bedroom ceiling. Leaves draped from the single, fluorescent light. A dull ache blossomed in the back of my head. At some point I must have fallen from my chair. Blood pulsed in my ears, but the room was utterly silent, save for the airship’s eternal hum.
The memory had run its course. Not even as bad as usual.
I took a deep breath and pushed myself up from the floor, and then cringed as the headache turned into a pounding throb. After a moment of digging around in my desk, I found pain medicine. I couldn’t go to Gwen for this. She would disapprove of the research and of intentionally letting the memory attacks persist.
Once I had retrieved a glass of water to go with the medicine, I sat at the desk and scribbled my notes:
Emerald—Growth.
Amber—Binding.
Sapphire—Creation.
Diamond—Life.
Ruby—Power.
In my terror, in my attempts to avert the memories, I’d avoided the fact that the Elizabeth pendants had been used to create the Legion Spore. But, like the Catonian relics, they were enchanted artifacts of immense power.
I tangled my fingers through the chain of my necklace, softly reciting what each pendant could do. I traced the charm’s stone petals. Emerald could be used to enhance powers in an artifact. The others I wasn’t sure of, but Benjamin had created these things.
The flower charm swung between my fingers.
Assuming that Spectator was a future form of Benjamin and, assuming, that he was a time traveler...
I needed to know more about those pendants, what they could do, and what, if any, connection they might have to the time stones. I’d start by researching Spectator and Benjamin.
Chances were, they knew whether or not the time stones could do what we thought.
After I’d used the flower charm to make sure Lance wasn’t nearby to interrupt me, I headed to Jack’s room. Music blared from the video game he played. I knocked.
“Door’s open,” Jack called, too busy with the game to get the door for me. I pushed it open and shoved aside a few old soda cans, and then made my way to the sagging couch. I plopped down beside him. The game was some old side scroller, one I didn’t recognize.
“One second,” Jack muttered. “I’m about to deal with a giant electric guitar.”
I blinked as his character hopped onto a purple pole and climbed above the guitar’s “head,” barely in time to avoid getting shot with some kind of energy bolts.
“Electric guitar?”
“Yep.” He waited until the guitar turned the other direction before hopping to the next pole and climbing up a blue ledge. He paused the game and leaned back against the broken couch, his hands cradled behind his gnarled hair.
“You play weird games, you know that?”
He chuckled. “You think this is weird? You should see some of the indie games that came a couple decades after this one. Haunted animatronics... murderous ink caricatures... monsters with souls where you can either play the pacifist run or kill everyone...” His voice trailed off. “Not sure I’d advise you play those. I did, because some of the fourthwallers love those games, but if you already don’t like miniatures...” He waggled his hand. “I can sum them up for you if you really want.”
I snorted. “No thanks. I’m beginning to see why it was so easy to convince people they had theophrenia.”
Jack shrugged. “They’re just games. Most people can tell the difference. That being said, I’d love to get Lily to play the haunted animatronics game. If she hates statues, she’d love this.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Jack...”
“Fine, fine. I’ll refrain from giving her any more nightmares until she’s recovered from the Cairo mission. So...” He slapped his knee and sat forward. “Did you come here to play games, or did you have something else you want?”
“I was wondering if you learned anything else from the comic book artist. She said Spectator was the fourthwalling cult’s founder. Any idea how to find the fourthwallers? We might be able to get more information from them directly.”
Jack grunted. “Unfortunately, she said that finding the cult’s hideouts would be near impossible. The last known hideout was in New Mexico, but that was before Special Forces went on a manhunt to try finding them. All they ever found was an outhouse where the town used to be.”
“An outhouse?”
“Old time restroom. Lacks all the special amenities your Community has.”
I sighed. “I know what an outhouse is. What I meant was, why an outhouse?”
Jack shrugged. “Who knows? They didn’t want to be found and they never were. That being said, Inese might be able to find them, since she has insight. But she’s a tad bit... touchy... on the subject, and I wouldn’t try bothering her. She’s still taking Crush’s death pretty hard.”
I lowered my eyes. It wasn’t anyone’s fault but Lady Winters’, but I could see how Inese might have taken it harder if she thought she should have seen the trap coming.
“You might have a better time talking to Jim. The Super Bureau had some involvement with him before they fell.”
“He called Spectator a ‘bad omen,’ ” I said flatly, miffed that he hadn’t given my earlier questions objective consideration. I might be able to ask him about Benjamin and the pendants, but I doubted he knew much more than he’d already told me.
“Call Spectator what you like. I checked that book Cass gave you, and if his in-game character is anything like the real guy, he doesn’t seem like the type who’s going to go out of his way to cause trouble. He appears when he wants to and then he’s gone, and you might never see him again.” Jack shrugged. “Jim brought over a few books from the Hall of Freedom with the old records, if you’re curious. Quin’s been going through them with him for information.”
“I’ll check with Quin,” I said. As much as I felt awkward around him, he enjoyed talking about history. He might know something. Better yet, he might know more about the pendants, since he and Lily had been trying to find the one I stole. “Thanks.”
Jack cleared his throat. “While you’re here, want to play? I’ve got a few two-player games I wouldn’t mind giving a try. Nothing to do with fourthwallers.”
I twisted my lips. On one hand, I wanted to hurry up and ask Quin if he’d found anything. On the other hand, it’d been a while since I’d tried playing anything that wasn’t somehow connected to real life. “A short one, okay?”
Jack grinned and closed out of his previous game. “Great. Get ready to throw some hedgehogs. Or if you don’t like throwing them from racing carts, I can probably dig out the game where you are the hedgehog, and you’re freeing little woodland critters from an evil scientist.”
“Hedgehogs?” I raised an eyebrow. Why did pre-Community people have an obsession with hedgehogs?
I might end up talking to Quin sooner rather than later.
The graphics of Jack’s chosen game were cheesy and the hedgehogs were strangely adorable, but it turned out that I thoroughly enjoyed ridiculously unrealistic racing games. I actually managed to beat Jack several times—even when he cheated and froze my character on the track’s starting line.
I didn’t get a chance to talk to Quin until after dinner, mostly because Jack and I lost track of time and had to quickly put up the game when Mom put out a second call on the intercom for us last minute stragglers to get to the evening meeting. After dinner, though, I found Quin back in the training room. He was practicing with his nunchaku, the two slender, black sticks connected by a silvery chain. I waited until he decided to take a break before heading to the downstairs section of the room.
Quin took a swig from his water bottle and glanced at me. He raised his eyebrows in confusion. “Jenna?”
“Jack said you’d been looking through some of Jim’s old books for information on Spectator.”
He wiped his mouth and capped the bottle, and then nodded once.
Talkative guy. “Have you found much of anything?”
“Not enough for conclusive evidence.” Quin motioned me to the corner of the room, where he sat the water bottle beside his nunchaku. “I’ve found various stories, but they’re in pieces. Notes from a log here or there. A lot is missing. I was waiting to have a logical sequence of events before presenting the data to anyone.”
I frowned. “Any idea of when the first appearance of Spectator was documented or when he founded the fourthwalling cult?”
“No idea on the cult. Jack talked to the comic book artist, but she never gave us an exact date. As for Spectator...” He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “I believe the first reference I’ve come across is in the early 2000s. I’d have to check for the exact date.”
“What was the reference?”
“Something about hassling a team of Super Bureau members. They’re actually the ones I’m trying to find information on now.” He strolled across the gym, pausing only to stretch. “It’s widely believed that their mishaps are the reason Japan cut off relations with the United States, thus preventing the Camaraderie from gaining access to their mechs.”
The Super Bureau was a civilian group of super-powered crime fighters back before the rise of the Community. Unfortunately, their antics had been destructive to public and private property, resulting in outrage. In the Community, if we even heard about them, we were told that they were among the first to have been diagnosed with theophrenia, their claim of powers far-fetched.
In reality, they were careless.
“Do you think Spectator had anything to do with that incident?”
“He wasn’t mentioned in any of the official records, but I’m still looking. I suspect there’s more documents in the Hall of Freedom that would provide answers, but we can’t just take trips there whenever we want.”
“I guess not.” We’d waste too much fuel that way, especially now that we didn’t have the flying car. My heart sank. I’d have to find some other means of getting information. Spectator said he had some kind of score to settle, something he wanted to prevent, but we might not be able to find what those were by looking at the main puzzle pieces.
“You and Lily were trying to track down the Elizabeth pendant I stole, right?”
“That is correct.”
“How much do you know about them?”
He paused in mid-toe-touch, and then reached toward the ceiling. “Well...”
Back down to his toes.
Could he at least pause long enough to give me a coherent piece of information?
“The pendants are artifacts. There are five of them.” Back to stretching for the ceiling. “They’re believed to be the source of the Camaraderie’s powers.” Back to his toes...
“I know that,” I protested. “But what can they do? Other than create the Legion Spore, I mean.”
Quin glanced up from touching the floor, and then finally came upright. “Create the Legion Spore?”
“Yes. The Camaraderie used some kind of radiation from the pendants to force the Legion Spore’s merge.”
“Huh. That explains why they wanted the emerald pendant back so badly.” He shrugged. “Honestly, not a lot is known about them. Most is speculation. Rumors of creating portals... immortality... slowing time... it runs the gamut from things that might be real to the completely implausible.”
I blinked. Could their connection to the time stones really be that direct?
“Slowing time? Is there proof of that?”
“There are actual records documenting that, so yes. Before the Camaraderie got a hold of the pendants, an organization named Challenge tried to secure the pendants for themselves. When they had four of the pendants in close proximity, time slowed around them. There are stories of meetings where only an hour passed for them, but when they left the area, they found that several hours had passed for the outside world.”
I stared at him. “And this has been confirmed?”
“Yes. Not only was that in the Camaraderie’s files, that was also in the files we retrieved from the Hall of Freedom.”
“So if Spectator and Benjamin are the same person, and Benjamin created the pendants—”
“Then Spectator has some basic knowledge of how to manipulate time,” Quin finished for me. If that was the case, then we were one step closer to confirming that the time stones might actually be able to manipulate time.
I swallowed hard. What happened if we did get the stones? What happened if the Coalition decided to go back and start everything new? I didn’t want to have to fight against my team, but I couldn’t let them destroy the Community, either.
Quin cleared his throat. “You’re not giving me exact thoughts, but you’re projecting your emotions again. You’re conflicted.”
I hurriedly dropped the flower charm. “Sorry.”
“Doesn’t matter to me. I tend to be able to pick out when thoughts aren’t my own. The benefit of meditation. I just thought you might like to know.”
I nodded quickly, my cheeks warm. “Yes. Thank you.”
“Now... would you like to spar? I could use practice against an agile opponent, and I’m certain you could use practice disarming opponents. At least, if you wish to continue a more pacifist approach to your fighting style.”
I flinched. I’d been avoiding Lance, so I hadn’t gotten much sparring practice in for the past couple days. And I could use the practice on someone whose moves I didn’t already know.
“Sure,” I mumbled.
“Good.” Quin smiled. “Get your vines. I’ll use my nunchaku.”
I forced a smile. At least the practice would help if I could finally convince the Coalition to try disabling a transformation facility... and get rid of the ridiculous notion that using the time stones was a good idea.
