Elise climbed into an unoccupied unit in one of the tranquillity caves, far enough away from Pierre’s. She waited until she sensed him in the real world before connecting in. Her husband’s preoccupation with Anton’s abduction meant he hadn’t noticed her using the Nexus at different times to him.
She sat on the floor and closed her eyes. Over the last couple of months, she’d been testing out several mind techniques to try and strengthen her empathic ability. The combined power of the minds connected to the Nexus appeared to amplify her efforts but her altering ability remained stubbornly out of reach. She pushed on, needing quicker results. If she could use her emerging skill to somehow help locate Anton, all this would be for something.
The image of the woman she’d first seen eight weeks ago still rattled her. While the apparition had appeared to her since then, Elise hadn’t been able to move the vision past the initial snippet of conversation.
As her mind drifted to a new plane of existence, the hard surface of the grey gamma rock changed into an orange and gold lattice—the portal into the Nexus. She watched in her mind’s eye as a tendril from the Nexus came through the lattice, wrapped around her arm and pulled her energy inside.
Ahead of her, the Nexus’ rippling wall of golden beauty took her breath away. Tendrils extended from the shimmering surface to grab the energies of the other Indigenes entering through their own units. She floated towards the Nexus, over a black chasm between the portal and the wall. A blast of emotions hit her suddenly and knocked her off balance. She steadied herself, bracing for the next hit that was usually more intense than the first one. Being an empath had its downsides in here.
The purpose of the Nexus was to redirect the energies of connected Indigenes to those who needed them most. But an empath’s energy was like a drug. The other energies sometimes bypassed the controlling conduit of the Nexus, too impatient to receive it in controlled measures.
A flurry of thoughts buzzing in her mind told her another attack was imminent. Elise steeled herself against it, protecting her mind as best as she could. But with her thoughts a mess, she lost the battle against the intense probing attack that left her breathless on the outside. The more her gift of predicting emotions grew, the more it tried to control her. She feared she was changing her from an empath into something else entirely.
The energies surrounded her, poked at her shamelessly, giving her no peace in this place designed for just that purpose. In here, she was just another attractive energy to them. Not their respected elder.
Elise escaped to the Nexus wall and stuck herself to it. Thin rope-like tendrils extended from the wall and wrapped around her, sucking her energy away to give to others. The one-sided exchange exhausted her, but at least it was controlled. To her relief, the other energies ignored her and took their healing from the wall. She used their distraction to think.
Stephen’s story about the Indigenes being human had shocked her, enough that she’d spent the past few weeks re-reading all of Pierre’s history books on the Indigenes. Certain things still didn’t make sense to her. She’d wracked her brain to remember an actual Indigene death on this planet prior to when their race had supposedly been placed here. Why did no pictures of her elder predecessors exist? The Nexus, an ancient and powerful force, had always protected her. But after hearing Stephen’s news, her experiences in this place had altered in a negative way. Before, the Nexus had controlled the energies’ access to her. Now, the stampede found her before the Nexus did.
Then there were the strange, unsettling visions—old memories, she now assumed. If she could unlock those memories, maybe she could discover more about her former life.
Elise pulled away from the wall and hovered before it. The tendrils, still connected to her, continued to steal her energy. With a grunt, she redirected some of the power draw to stimulate her hippocampus, the area of her brain that stored memories. The Nexus displayed an image of her brain before her, highlighting its current neural connections. New red lines appeared and disappeared.
Weakened from her efforts, her body slumped against the rock in her unit. The drain on her energy was preventing her from accessing the healing power of others. She broke the tendrils’ connection. As soon as she did, the soft buzzing noise grew louder. Fearing another attack, she drifted towards the portal to disconnect.
An ethereal voice in the distance stopped her halfway over the chasm: Someone is upset. Help calm them down. A torrent of emotions slammed into her. A surge of energy bolstered her strength on the outside, but only for a moment. It was long enough to open up her mind to show her more of her hallucination.
The vision of the strange auburn-haired woman appeared to her in the soft wispy space.
‘Elizabeth, dear, it’s me,’ said the woman. ‘Where are you going at this hour? It’s so late.’
The apparition had asked the question before. This time Elise pretended she was Elizabeth. ‘Nowhere special. I’m just going for a walk.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘I told you—just for a walk.’
‘Elizabeth, are you listening to me?’ The woman stepped forward and grabbed Elise’s arm. In her unit, Elise jerked her arm away.
A different voice answered in the Nexus space: ‘I won’t be long. I’m just heading to the office to pick up some case files.’
‘Can’t you download what you need from here?’
‘I can’t stay cooped up in this apartment forever. I have to face the world some time.’
Elise was facing a mirror. She gasped when she caught Elizabeth’s reflection: curly, dark hair that fell round her shoulders, just like she’d dreamt about. But what shocked her most was the ugly raw scar that sliced her face from her left eye across her lips to her chin.
In the unit, her fingers grazed the scar at the same time the Elizabeth woman touched her face.
‘But why now? Why at night? What if he’s waiting for you?’ said Greta.
Her scarred reflection tidied her hair, with tears in her eyes. ‘I promise he isn’t. They’ve assured me he’s in custody.’
‘You can’t be sure of that. Please—let me go with you,’ said Greta.
‘No, I need to do this alone and get back control of my life.’
The conversation ended abruptly, just like before.
No...
She drew on the energies around her to prolong the memory. But when they switched from helping her to draining her energy, something pushed against her and knocked her backwards.
Uncertainty clouded her mind as she drifted over the black chasm. A new tendril from the Nexus wall, fatter than the ones before, raced towards her. It cocooned her in its thick strand and pushed her down. She fought against the squeeze as it raced to the bottom of the chasm. Knowing the Nexus reacted violently to negative thoughts, she switched to thoughts of the Evolvers. The tendril slowed and relaxed its grip. She released herself from it, scrambled to the side of the chasm and hauled her energy back up.
Safely out, she stared into its inky depths. Any energy banished to there could never connect to the Nexus again; it would be too weak for a tendril to detect it.
Elise raced over to her point of entry and disconnected from the Nexus. Opening her eyes, she let out a breath when she saw the plain walls of the unit.
Shaken, she remained sat on the floor for a moment. Her hands, two fists, gripped her white robe tightly. She revisited the reason for her disconnection.
Was Greta a residual memory, an imprint of sorts? If she could access other residual memories, she might piece together more of the story. But without the Nexus, she couldn’t determine if the memory wipe was permanent.
Elise released her robe; her hands refused to unclench. She wished she could talk to Pierre about this, but these days they were arguing too much. And now Leon had stopped talking to her because of Pierre’s refusal to send a team to Earth to rescue Anton. With no children of her own, she could only imagine what Leon was going through. But she agreed with Pierre’s decision. They couldn’t risk losing Leon too.
Swiping a hand through her tears, Elise looked up. The humans had created new lives—false lives—for the Indigenes. What could they want with one of their own creations? She shook her thoughts away.
Feeling too weak to stand, she attempted to reconnect with the Nexus, hoping for the healing and tranquillity it offered. She closed her eyes, waiting for the rock face to change and for a tendril to come for her. But nothing happened.
With a sigh, she opened them. Perhaps she could find tranquillity in this world.
Yet, there was so much to fix: her mind, her union with Pierre.
She’d start with young Stephen. His emerging ability was becoming too much for him to handle—that much was clear. Pierre hadn’t the skills to help him, but perhaps she could, as an empath.