I was walking through the stony caverns of Pygar. I knew they were not real and that this was just an illusion conjured up by the entity. It was almost humorous, I found. Something with this vast of a consciousness needing to resort to visual metaphors.
“These games are neither necessary nor original,” I spoke, the ethereal echo of my voice traveling through the labyrinthine depths of the hollow planet. It was eerie how much this facsimile resembled the caverns I had walked back then when I had first met the entity. Just when I was about to call out again, I rounded a corner and came upon one of the Nomad resting chambers. Bee-hive-esque crevices in the walls stacked upon one another, row upon row, until they faded into the darkness above us, the light of the excavation lights not reaching that far.
It has been some time, I could hear — no — feel the entity almost purr into my head, the feeling of an enormous presence in the room pressing down on me, forcing me on my knees where I had stood in the entrance of the giant chamber. You are troubled. Afraid? Is this game perhaps too much for you? I could almost feel the derision dripple down on me like the occasional drop of water from the ceiling. Perhaps I should look for a younger candidate, hmm?
“Spare me,” I pressed out between my teeth, slowly building up the strength to get to my feet again. “But yes, I am afraid. I am going to die soon.” This seemed to have some kind of effect on the presence, as it didn’t provide me with an answer, instead waiting patiently for me to continue. “I made a mistake, and I intend to fix it. Your ‘gift’ showed me a way I can do that. However, it requires me to make a sacrifice.” I shuddered at the thought. My precognition had never failed me, which made it all the more terrifying. I didn’t need to do any of this, but I saw no other way of allowing Contessa to speak. While I may be heartless, I was not cruel, and Contessa was a collateral damage of my pursuit of the perfect mind. I needed to help her.
So is this you telling me that you are going to withdraw from our game? The entity inquired, sounding not convinced of itself.
“No.” I withdrew one of the Azurite chunks that the entity had given to me when we had first met. “You are the Simurgh, right? The mythical bird that bestows three wishes upon mortals to call upon you in their times of need.” I hummed, turning the chunk of Azurite in my hand. “Why does your kin feel the need to roleplay as deities or other mythical creatures? Surely, if we humans are so inferior, there would be no need to assume these roles. Yes, it would be like an insult, surely.” I looked up into the empty room. “I think you need something to hold onto, to manifest some kind of coherent personality. Your way of existing makes it impossible to think this way. But if you have an anchor, you may coherently interact with our plain of existence, right?”
There was only silence.
“I take that as a yes.” Lifting the rock with one hand, I returned to the matter at hand. “I am going to die, but I don’t intend to leave this world, Simurgh. My first wish is that, whenever I come back into being, you always bestow the same gift onto my successors as you did with me.”
There was no answer. Instead, the chunk of solid Azurite in my hand became warm, then hot, then it started slowly disintegrating.
Then so shall it be.
Present.
Suspended.
I couldn’t tell when I had been developed enough to form the first coherent thoughts. Around me, there was an opaque and swirling mist. I could open my eyes and only try to penetrate it. It was fluid. My limbs floated in it lazily. I could move them, but what was the point. Waste of energy. Oh, there was something in front of my face. A mask, connected to several tubes. I think it let me breathe. Through the fluid, I could hear mechanical beeping. Water was a perfect medium for sound to perpetuate. It was even better than air.
The longer I lingered the more it felt like a veil was lifted from my mind. My limbs didn’t feel as heavy anymore and I started to remember more and more. My name, my occupation.
Why I was in here.
My eyes widened as the reality of the situation became clear to me. I had died. Or rather, my first iteration had. I was merely a replica designed to replace her.
Bubbles rose from my mouth as I breathed heavily, trying to calm down. I could remember all these things. My plans. So this could only mean that it had worked and that I had been successfully able to transfer all my memories into a genetic code and transplant it into a copy. Genetic memory. I had taken the genetic code that I had based this on from an animal on Planet Guadalajara. Some reptile.
There was a long, drawn out beeping sound and the pumps below me slowly started to drain the cloning vat until I sank to my knees, no longer suspended in the fluid. The glass tank sank into the ground, leaving me kneeling naked in a small puddle of amniotic fluid. I needed a while before I removed the mask from my face with shaking hands. My hands looked normal, at least. Taking my first, genuinely non-artificially induced breath, I looked around. I was in my lair on Boulogne. I remembered talking to that Brigand warlord to ask for this shelter. I remembered her asking for this shelter?
I remembered that both Contessa and Dinah had been born here. Strange to think that I was now just as artificial as them. Slowly, carefully, I began rising to my feet. My limbs felt sore, which was normal, I presumed. However, some of the pains that I had had before were gone. I was not the youngest, or at least I had been. I was now about two months old, I guessed. Stepping off the puddle of amniotic fluid and onto the floor of my lab, I found a small stack of towels on the table in the middle of the room and a small piece of paper.
As ordered.
-S
I rubbed myself off with the towels so I wasn’t wet. I still needed to shower, but there was one thing I needed to do first. Wrapping the towel I had used around my waist, I walked over to another vat filled with opaque fluid. The figure suspended within was taller and more muscular. A man. Typing in a few commands into the console by his vat, I drained the fluid and watched him float to the bottom of the vat. When the glass withdrew, I could hear him coughing into the mask that had let him breathe. “Wakey wakey,” I croaked, suppressing the urge to cough myself.
It took a while, during which Adrian wiped the fluid out of his eyes and looked at me. “You? I-“ he stammered, not really understanding the situation. I was just about to say something like death is no excuse to stop working but it was probably better if he didn’t know that he was a replica just yet. “Get dressed, Adrian. We can talk over some food.” I gave him a second towel and moved to get a shower.
Fiddling around with the jam jar, I finished telling Adrian about what had happened. I more or less told him the truth. He took the fact of his death rather well, overall. “Where is the Titanic?” he asked after a while, only having eaten a little bit of bread.
“I think the Wild currently hold it in their possession,” I replied, finally managing to open the jar with a small plop. “The data it will have collected while in their possession will be invaluable for our specimen in vat three.”
Adrian rubbed his arms. “I feel like itching all over,” he groused.
“That’s your skin being used to the amniotic fluid. It is going to get better soon, don’t worry.” I replied, biting into another piece of bread.
“That’s not it,” he said, giving me a toxic stare. “I died, Teresa. That’s fucked. You died, too!” His voice became louder. “What the fuck kind of endeavour is this? We’re a bunch of clones acting like nothing happened!”
Holding up a finger, I waited until I had swallowed. “Technically, we are the same people. On a molecular level, the degrees of deviation are negligible.”
“Oh really?” Adrian said, his voice dripping with derision. “Well excuse me if I still feel like something is terribly wrong here. Like, oh, I don’t know, this creature you have in vat three. Our genetic memory is based on fucking lizard DNA, Teresa!” He hit the table. “No, fuck this. I’m not contuining this. What happens if we die again, are you going to plant some fungus DNA in us so we can do photosynthesis and regenerate.”
Not a bad idea, actually. I made a mental note to investigate this. “Adrian, you are being unrea-“
“Oh, I am being unreasonable?” He stood up. He was wearing his lab coat over his normal street gear. When I had made this plan, I had had no idea what he would like to wear and so I had simply raided his closet and took as many clothes as possible so he could decide which ones to wear when he would wake up. “I’m done, Teresa. I can’t do this. I don’t want to be dragged into your fanatic… whatever this is!” He raised his arms to indicate everything around them.
“Adrian, please,” I tried to calm him down, but he turned around to leave. Sighing, I withdrew a small stun gun and tazed the shit out of my colleague. He went to the ground, unconscious. I sighed while I finished my breakfast. I needed to come up with something to fix Adrian. I also needed to get the Titanic back so I could finish my specimen in vat three.
After I had dragged Adrian off into a med bed where he could recoup somewhat. It was actually a pretty nice way of finding out what my body was capable of now. Of course, given that I had reckoned to die, I hadn’t been idle. I had helped nature along in places where my age usually would slow me, and I had to say, I enjoyed that my limbs now didn’t remind me that I was over sixty.
Or was I now? Technically this body was only a couple days old.
I really would need to get used to this. I sat down in the incubation chamber, looking at the vat I had emerged from. I knew I needed to begin working on getting the Titanic back. I needed the information it had gathered. My eyes travelled to the third vat in the room, the opaque liquid hiding a demure figure from plain view. “I could say something ominous right now, but I would feel strange doing that. Imagine if I said something like ‘soon’ very darkly. Only a maniacal laugh would be missing for people to think I was insane,” I muttered to herself before getting to her feet again and leaving the room.
Passing through several corridors, I approached a console. This was her working place. All the data I had collected over the last years was stored here. With practiced ease, I began opening a program. Now came the moment of truth. If my understanding of hyperspace was correct, then the ship would return to her after the signal reached it. I was quite confident that I knew what I was doing, given that my Alcubierre-White-Drive on the Titanic had also worked perfectly. However, if I had just been a little bit off…
With a tap on the screen, the program was executed and the subroutines did their work. Sitting back in the chair, I stared at the screen. I knew that the result wouldn’t be instantaneous. It couldn’t be. However, for some reason I felt the need to wait.
Even my thoughts were quiet as I waited.
Lounging on the command chair of the Titanic, I looked out of the front window as we approached Kaarst Drydock. Since the Titanic had fallen into the hands of the Wild, I had been the one to coordinate the systematic search of the ship. However, there was not a lot that was remarkable about it.
Ezrael had contacted me. Or rather, I had contacted him. I had told him what I had been doing with the Titanic. His disappointment was probably just as big as mine when I had found out that the data banks of the ship were devoid of any information about Dinah or Simone.
Oh, and by the way, the command chair had been cleaned of the remains of the Doctor’s corpse. It would have been pretty gross to sit down in a puddle of what remained of her head’s insides.
There was nobody else here besides me. That was not really true, as someone like me was never really alone, but in terms of people, there was just me. For just transporting this ship, it wasn’t necessary to have any more people on this ship. I was looking forward to finally get home to Baden-Baden and simply get annoyed at Dinah listening to metal music way too loudly in her room. How can anyone seriously enjoy people screaming into their ears?
My reverie was interrupted when the entire bridge went dark. “Wha-“ I intoned, startled. Standing up, I approached the console in front of me, trying to make out what had happened, but it was completely dead. This shouldn’t be happening. Probably a power outage, given that the ship had been damaged quite a bit from the strange hyperdrive modifications that, to us, made no sense at all. The ship was still moving, so I believed that it would merely be a temporary problem. I sighed inwardly, hoping this wouldn’t delay me getting home.
I pulled out my PAD and sent a quick message to Kaarst Drydock to bring me a couple of people who could take a look at the ship’s energy systems, just in case the ship would not cooperate when initiating the docking sequence. I hit send. Loading. Error.
I raised an eyebrow. How could the message not be sent if I was only some fifty clicks away from the destination? I hit resend. Again, error. No connection to the neural net.
At this point, I knew that something was terribly amiss, and looking forward through the window pane, I could see this fear being justified. The stars, the light around us. It was like the large asteroid that Kaarst was hewn into was receeding away from me. It was an optical effect, I knew. It occurred when an object was approaching the speed of light.
I cursed as I realized that this might mean I was going to FTL crash into my destination. I ran, leaving the bridge and approaching the elevator. I knew I wouldn’t reach the engine section to manually turn off the power core in time. However, I damn well would try. I was probably running the fastest I had in my entire life when a tremor went through the ship and the lights flickered. When I arrived in the engine section, I could see that they were offline.
This didn’t make any sense. Trying to make rhyme or reason of what had happened, I heard the telltale sign of docking clamps on the Titanic, giving me pause. Was this Kaarst? No, it couldn’t be. My incubus would know. Someone was coming on board, and they were probably not on my side.
I knew they were on board. How, though? Who was this? It couldn’t be the Doctor. I had seen her die.
There hadn’t been much time after the Titanic had moored with whatever. My first impulse had been to hide somewhere in the crew quarters, but I figured that this was one of the first places they would search, no? Maybe this was a malfunction. It certainly hadn’t seemed like the Titanic was functioning like it should. No. If it would be a malfunction, the chance for getting boarded directly after this involuntary jump would be negligible.
I was hiding in the machine deck. Well, not really. I was hiding in one of the way-too-small maintenance shafts that were way too small even for me. I wasn’t thicc, but damn, this was uncomfortable. With slightly dirty hands, I was trying to peel off the metal panel covering one of, what I thought to be, access ports to the internal sensors. Like this, I could at least get a count on how many people were boarding the ship.
What if they were using robots, though? The Doctor had used them back when...
"Could you not try to disrupt me while I am trying to be productive," I whispered to myself, finally loosening the metal panel and revealing a naked circuit board. Oh god, it had been a while since I had done this.
I thought I was the only one keeping you company most of the time. Me, the friendly voice in your head.
"Snarky smartass," I groused, pulling out the PAD from my pocket. I looked at the access port. Then at my PAD. Then I resisted the infernal urge to bash my head in with it. "Did I really forget that I could just use this to send a message?"
I would have told you before if you had been a bit nicer.
I rolled my eyes. I had actually forgotten that my PAD would work again after this ship had fallen below luminal speeds. Maybe I was just used to things not working out the easy way. "Well, I guess I can find out how many people we have running around here before I try and run to Ezrael for help." Plugging in my PAD, I found it surprisingly easy to interface with the internal sensors. They were detecting sixteen bio signatures. The Doctor apparently had altered the sensor system as well, as the internal sensors were giving me all kinds of bio data on the sixteen invaders. Three females. Ezrael would like this scanning functionality. "Wonder if this thing can be made to track menstrual cycles," I wondered out loud while I copied the data and attached it to a new message that I was about to record together with the astrometry file necessary to determing the Titanic's location.
"Hey love," I started, sitting down as best as I could, the ceiling of the maintenance tunnel mere centimeters above my head. I wasn't speaking particularly loud, but the voice recognition of my PAD told me it was picking up my voice.
"Okay, call me an idiot, but I have been abducted by the Titanic. There are sixteen people on board right now and I am really not sure they're going to be too kind to me. They're two decks away from me, so after I am done recording, I am going to ***** up the internal sensors so they can't track me." I stroked a strand of hair out of my face, looking to the side for a moment.
"I hate my job, you know. I should have just set this ship off to fly into a sun." I looked at the camera again. "The Doctor is dead, though. This ***** shouldn't be happening." I resisted the urge to tug my hair. "I can hide here for a while, but." I exhaled slowly, trying to calm before I would incoherently rant. "Please help me out here."
I tapped the screen to send off the message. Afterwards, I picked up the metal cover and smashed the circuits responsible for the internal sensors.
My steps echoed through the familiar hallways of the Titanic. I had gotten over the fact that none of my memories were really mine. It was strange to think that genetic memory would work this well. I idly wondered whether this trait was hereditary now. My genome should be able to pass this on. However, it was quite possible that no sperm in the galaxy would be able to fertilize my egg. Uh, if I hadn't been in menopause already, that was.
I shook my head. I was glad that nobody could read my mind some times. I hoped this would hold true even for my newest creation in vat three. However, there was one thing I needed to retrieve before I could add the finishing touches and see whether it would work.
"Take a look at the ship and see whether there are obvious damages that need immediate tending," I told my team, already halfway on my way to the transporter room that I had used to send my hapless victim's down to the desolate xeno planet. "Oh, and if you see anyone, feel free to shoot them. They are likely infected." Getting the nods I was looking for in return, I left the cleanup to them. I was a lady, after all. I had better things to do. And I also had a gun. And it wasn't like dying would be much of a problem at this point. Not that I wanted to.
Through the hallways and down two decks with the elevator and I finally stood in the doorway. There, atop the dais that was the transporter platform responsible for molecularly disassembling creatures and assembling them again in another location, was a stain. Approaching, I knelt down in front of it. This was where the incubus of Miss von Westefeld had impacted on the ground. Producing a vial from my pocket, I used a sterile instrument to secure some of the one-viscous matter. Straightening up again, I held the vial against a source of light and appreciated the blue sheen of the bio matter I had collected. Not only had I managed to fix Contessa, but I had gotten a perfect sample of DNA from a psionic species I could use.
For good measure, I scraped off a little more of the remains for later study. I shouldn't waste the key to creating the perfect psionic.
It would be a while before Ezrael would hear from Maren again. When it came to work, Maren was about as efficient as a mime having a stroke but only half as hilarious. And so, it was no real wonder that, eventually, she would get herself in trouble again.
Maren would be required to survive on her own for quite a while. There was a certain difficulty to find out where Maren's location was, even with the data she attached to the transmission. The Apahanta had no maps of Gallia. Not only that, it also had no jump drive coordinates for that general region. It was a race against time, and an absolute stress test to Ezrael's nerves.
The bridge crew had assembled at the conn, where he was impatiently waiting. Even Sombra was there, given she and him listened to the very distress call while he was in bed with her. The Catport was still moored with the ship, which changed shortly afterwards, the autopilot moving it to dock with Livadia. The Catport's maps had been transfered to the Apahanta, which solved the first issue - knowing Gallia's infrastructure.
The next problem was about how to reach Gallia as fast as possible. Target was Picardy. According to Maren's data, they were close to a moon in an asteroid field. That was making things easier. The ship began to move away from Livadia while charging the jump drives. Coordinates not set yet. What was the closest way? What was it!? Only three systems lead to Gallia. Languedoc, via Tau-23. Jumping to the Taus would slow the Mako down seriously and require it to move through the entirety of Gallia to reach Picardy. Jumping to Tau-37 with the Freeport 10 coordinates would also eat up too much time.
There was only one alternative, which was the jump hole in Cologne. Ivy Holt had shown it to Ezrael months ago. The only unknown factor was that they didn't know whether capital ships would make it through there, to be able to reach Zurich.
Nevertheless, the Apahanta jumped to Stuttgart. Reaching the system behind Baden Baden, the ship entered cloak and headed for Cologne as fast as possible. From there, it was another few minutes to reach the jump hole. Ezrael wasn't sure it would work out, but the transports from Gallia must have used this jump hole to help with the construction of the Sigma-15 gate in Frankfurt, so he assumed it would work. A leap of faith.
The ship managed to reach Zurich after a rough ride through subspace. Slightly damaged, the course was set for the jump gate to Picardy. With the biggest issue dealt with, it was time to face the second biggest issue. It required Ezrael to leave the bridge. His heart was pumping. This was no joke. This was a serious problem requiring seriously extreme means.
Hours had passed since Maren's distress call. Ezrael's only hope was that her being a one-man-army would buy herself enough time to survive. The Apahanta had reached Le Crotoy. The ship was slowly moving around the moon and revealed itself to Boulogne Base, its patrols and the Titanic. Out of nowhere, a sirian warship with some of the most advanced sirian weapons had arrived at the asteroid base. EMP Flaks rounds were disabling the Titanic before Boulogne was able to respond, and the heavy weaponry of the warship aimed at the most vulnerable spots of the base, while a comm channel opened to both Boulogne and the Titanic.
"This is Commander Sherry Aguilar of the independent battleship Apahanta. We demand the unconditional surrender of the CV-Titanic and everything onboard. Withdraw your personnel at once or we will open fire. You have thirty seconds to respond."
Maren herself had spent the time in the maintenance shafts. Without the ability to use the internal sensors, the patrols had been blinded. She had gotten a view of them briefly, and they didn't seem to be particularly well armed. Probably not hard-skinned soldiers. The EMP weaponry impacting on the Titanic, however, was something people could hardly not notice. A tremor went through the Titanic, shaking Maren awake, having dozed slightly. This could only mean one thing. The waiting would soon be over.
Barely a second had passed after Sherry had stopped speaking when someone joined the comm channel. "Isn't that your ship, Mr. Vertiga?" sounded the Doctor's voice, audio only. "No matter. As the owner of the ship, I think it is rude to threaten the poor inhabitants of Boulogne in our conflict, so please, keep your ire reserved for me." The Doctor sounded slightly distracted.
Since Ezrael was not on the bridge, Sherry was not sure how to react to that. "Copied. Boulogne, do not interfere. This is between us and the Titanic." There was a moment of silence before it was Ezrael who joined the channel, audio only.
"Doctor Martinez?" he asked, his voice slightly muffled.
"Last I checked," she confirmed, steps now being heard as she spoke, as if she was walking. "How can I help you, Mr. Vertiga? I doubt you want my ship, as you could have taken it after I temporarily lost it."
Again, silence for a few seconds. Then he spoke up again. "Miss von Westefeld is on your ship. I command you to turn her over to me, unharmed. Should you fail to comply, we will board your ship. Should you harm her in any way, we will destroy your ship."
"Oh, she is on the ship?" she sounded, seeming genuinely surprised. "Well, if that is all, then please, by all means." It wasn't like the Doctor needed her. Anymore, that was. "Do you want to fetch her yourself, or?"
Once more, silence. The hangar doors of the Mako opened and the Hussar, the Attractive Rover, left the ship, eagerly heading for the Titanic. Boulogne's defensive wings were assembling in the meantime, surrounding the Apahanta with larger distance. "I'll come and get her. No tricks, Doctor. And you better explain to me how you are alive. From what I heard, you died, which is the reason we took care of the clone. Dinah's sister."
"For which I am grateful," the Doctor replied, following his flight path unbeknownst to Vertiga. "I might be able to give you a general idea of a few things, yes. First I would suggest you retrieve your partner." While she was speaking, the Doctor was splicing the psionic DNA onto another specimen. It was a delicate process and it slightly irritated her that she needed to talk while doing it.
The Attractive Rover was arriving at the main hangar of the Titanic. Since the internal sensors were offline, supposedly, Ezrael expected his arrival to be mostly unmonitored. The cargo hold of the fighter was opening and six heavily armed and two light combat robots left the snub. Ezrael himself wore a heavy APM-design armor, a helmet hiding his face fully, also causing the muffled sound. Maren's PDA was receiving the audio feed live. "We're at the main hangar, Doctor. Send her here. As I said, unharmed. I'll take her with me and we leave. In the meantime, I'd like you to tell me about what your intentions are or were for Dinah and the other girl."
"Oh dear," she meant, taking a couple of moments to alter some variables and project the results in a simulation. "That'd be a terrible lot of exposition. People usually skip that part in stories or read twice as quickly to get it over with." She frowned. Not really the result she would have wanted. How about... "I actually don't know where your partner is on the ship. Chances are she is hiding somewhere on the ship. I assume you know better than me because she must have told you otherwise you wouldn't be here. In any case, she has nothing to fear, so she can come out and join you."
Listening from her hiding place, Maren slowly emerged and headed for the hangar, though still slightly weary of any potential assailant.
"Good," he gave her as response, making sure the boots were magnetically locked to the floor, just in case the Doctor was planning to open the hangar doors for any reason. His biggest fear was that she might try to kill Maren that way. Like last time, a medlev was ready and one of the robots had an EVA suit for Maren there. That one was in the corridor before the hangar. "Now, your clones. Tell me about them. Why did you create them. Do they have any weaknesses we need to know about to maintain their healthcare? What do we do in case of these nanobots ceasing to function?"
"If the nanites cease functioning, chances are the world has ended," the Doctor replied dryly. "Though I supposed hawking radiation would cause them trouble." Another pause during which the Doctor ran another simulation. Bingo. "Give them good food and there shouldn't be much of a problem. Unless you want to create a weapon that utilizes artificial Kugelblitz. That would be a weakness, I suppose." Just ramble a little longer. Not that she wanted to fight but it would be good to have a certain degree of security.
"Why did you create them. What was their purpose? And is there a way to give that girl the ability to speak? Dinah can talk as well, so what is the difference with her?" he asked her, hoping for Maren to arrive soon. He stood in the corridor together with the robot with the EVA suit. Two of the heavies were in guarding position.
Maren exited the lift and continued down towards the hangar. "Hello?" she called out not sure how Ezrael wanted to handle things. She poked her head into the hangar. "Ah," she hurried towards him.
"Contessa can speak. I think she just doesn't like it. She may be afraid of you." It wasn't necessary to mention that she should be only now able to speak after having visited the ancient planet. "They are tests for the nanites. The orphanage where Dinah was belongs to me. I donate many millions a year to charity."
As Maren appeared, Ezrael cut his audio input for the moment while listening to the doctor. His helmet opened at the mouth area, only revealing his chin. "Slip into the EVA suit, love. Hurry up. No idea what the hell is going on here," he told her in a hasty way. Then the helmet closed again. Then the audio input was turned active again. "And you can assure that those nanites will continue to work and keep them alive? And hell, why are you alive? I heard you were dead."
Maren did as she was told, taking the suit and hastily slipping in, which took a bit longer as she was going in with her clothes.
"I am very sure," the Doctor replied. "However, if something was wrong, I would of course fix the problem." The machine in front of her began synthesizing a viscous liquid, which filled a syringe inserted into a fitting opening. "I didn't die, no. This must have been a mistake."
"I see," he said quietly, not being sure what to believe. After all, she sounded pretty alive. And one can only cheat death so much. Helping Maren with the EVA suit, maybe a bit roughly, he made sure she was sealed up. Then he moved with her and the robots and the medlev back into the hangar to make them all enter the snub's cargo hold.
"So, her name is Contessa, you say. She seems to be alright with living on my ship. If you can't give me a reason to hand her out to you, I would like to keep her. Some of my crew members are quite fond of her, as is Dinah," he explained while climbing into the cockpit of the Hussar. The Doctor would clearly hear him breathing more audibly with the heavy labor.
Maren followed them into the hangar of the snub. She wasn't listening to their talk as she had put the PAD away. "That was always the idea behind an orphanage," the Doctor replied. "It would be bad for Contessa's health if she was removed from her environment again. She is quite shy."
"Good. If it means anything to you, I can assure you Contessa and Dinah will have a good life under my protection, and Miss von Westefeld has taken great care of her new daughter." The engine of the Hussar was lighting up and the snub sent a signal to the hangar control to open the gates. "Apahanta, we're returning now. Inform Boulogne we'll ***** off the moment we reached the ship. We have everything we came for."
Ezrael usually didn't curse. Maren thought he would be pretty tense. "I am glad to hear of their care. If something is amiss, don't hesitste to call me." She withdrew the syringe and appraised the green liquid. "Thanks for not blowing up my property."
"Don't make me regret it," he merely gave back. The Hussar was about to land on the Apahanta. He couldn't help but notice all the Brigand bombers and fighters on the radar. "Vertiga, out."
I hardly noticed what he was saying anymore. In my hands, I held what was quite possibly the first iteration of ‘magic in a bottle’, as I so aptly named it in my head. Of course, there was nothing mythical about it. Like anything I was working with, this was cold, hard math.
Funny, really. It looked like some kind of green tea, although there were no grains inside the liquid and, well, it was not a suspension. Slowly, I turned the syringe in my hands. What was I even doing? Just looking was pointless.
Slowly getting up, I moved over to the third and still occupied cloning vat in the room. The opaque liquid inside the tank obscured the miniscule shape that was gestating inside. With this, it would soon be able to enter this world.
Opening a small tube that connected to the vat, I aligned the needle with it and pushed the liquid into the tube. I could see it travelling along its length before finally disappearing inside the machinery. Inside, I knew the tubes were connected to the creature, hardly human anymore with all the alterations I had done. Well, that wasn’t quite true. The genetic match was still about ninety four percent. Then again, a human also has a genetic match with pigs of about ninety percent.
If only I had known it wouldn’t be that easy. Or clandestine.
Since the first time I had opened my eyes, I couldn’t remember there being anything but the distortions caused by the milky-white haze around me. It wasn’t necessary to see, or hear. These concepts, even though I knew I should not comprehend them yet, seemed unnecessary to me.
Even before my eyes had been developed, I had been aware of the outside world. My body hadn’t been able to parse the signals yet, but my mind had been. The more I grew, the more seemed to come to me. Artificial. Someone had made me to remember these things. Why did I know this, though? I couldn’t tell.
Sleep was something foreign to me at first. This body tired in regular intervals, requiring regenerative phases. During them, I returned to the plane I was familiar with, and with returning, came the knowledge that I didn’t seem like I was able to carry over to the waking state.
Frustrating.
Upon opening my eyes, the clarity was gone, replaced by the uncertainty and rapidly dissipating memory of my experience. This shell seemingly couldn’t contain what it was not meant to.
It was hard to keep track of time while in this world surrounded by clouds. I knew they were not clouds, but rather an amniotic fluid, but somehow I liked comparing them to clouds. It reminded me of something but I couldn’t really say why. Maybe home? Where was home?
Remaining like that for what felt like an eternity, my perception gradually grew. There was a barrier containing this fluid. My body was too weak to move, but I knew I could free myself if only this feeling was gone. I pressed against the barrier without moving but nothing budged. However, through the haze, I could see a shape move.
When I woke up again, the shape seemed to be gone. There was a throbbing at the back of my head that suggested I had not fallen asleep naturally. While I waited for the feeling to leave me, I tried moving different parts of my body. It wasn’t much, but it made me aware of several artificial appendages that were either attached to or plugged into my form. It gave me a strange feeling. It was unnatural.
Running through the darkened alleyways of this dreamworld that I regonized as my home on Cambridge, I pulled Simone along with me. There was something on our heels that I could swear was not really friendly.
“Ugh,” I groused, trying my best not to swear, just in case the dream was moderated by a particularly gnarly monster that would censor bad words. “Move your bum, you!” It was strange. I knew this was a lucid dream, yet I couldn’t alter anything. Weren’t you supposed to be able to do that in a lucid dream? Somehow, the knowledge of knowing that you were asleep while still being completely at the whim of your mind seemed more terrifying to me than the blissful ignorance.
I knew these parts. It was near the orphanage, some four of five blocks away. It had only been noteworthy because the corner store sold slushies and because of the liquor store that had been illegally selling alcohol to the minors of the orphanage. Behind us, the shouting got louder. “You, stop!” sounded the voice of the comically fat, yet unrealistically fast police officer who had just rounded a corner. “You broke your curfew! I now need to fine you 20 credits!”
“Aw, shieeet,” I hissed, pulling harder on Simone’s collar, pulling her after me like a cartoon character would. “If I pay him that I don’t have the money to buy a slushy anymore!” There was only one place where I could save ourselves. Only one place that we would be safe. Well, not safe, but I could spend the money there so the fat police man wouldn’t get it. In my mind, that made perfect sense right now.
Slamming the door of the corner store shut behind us, the half-asleep cashier jerked awake behind the counter, giving us an angry glare. “You could’a smashed the glass, pipsqueak!”
“What?” I intoned, taking a step towards the cashier. He didn’t exist anyway, so I could give him an attitude. “Who you calling pipsqueak?! I’m not small! I am compact.”
“Fun-sized,” Simone muttered next to me and I turned around to glare at her. For some reason, the fat police man had been banished by the door.
“Way to go, you, stabbing me in the back. How come you talk all of a sudden in public, even?” I turned around and while I moved my head, the scenery began to shift. Instead of the corner store, we were now inside something that looked like the hallway of a space ship, maybe. “I really just want to wake up.”
Taking a look around, there didn’t seem to be anything in particular that I remembered. However, Simone seemed to be recognizing parts of the room. “What is it?” I asked her, cocking my head, but before she could answer me, we heard noises from nearby. It came from an a nearby room. Looking at Simone, we both slowly moved there, quietly. For some reason we felt like we didn’t want to disturb anyone, even though we were still technically dreaming.
As we approached the room, I slowly peaked around the corner and almost yelped in surprise. Teresa Martinez was there, standing with her back turned to us in front of a big, cylindrical object filled with milky-white liquid that obfuscated the view of the shape inside. While the cylinder reached until below the ceiling, the shape that floated inside was almost my size. Which wasn’t saying much, admittedly, but still.
Simone poked her head out behind me and actually made a noise of surprise. What was more surprising, however, was that the Doctor didn’t seem to have noticed even though, by all intents and purposes, she should have.
Breaking her stillness, the Doctor began manipulating the machine in front of her. The result was not immediately apparent. It started with a kind of whirring noise but ultimately developed into something like the sound of a bathtub draining. Slowly, the white fluid was drained from the cylinder. The shape inside was lowered to the ground of the vat the more fluid was drained. The Doctor’s body blocked our view so we couldn’t discern what was inside. In the end, the noise stopped, the vat was empty, and all we could see was the Doctor’s back and the various tubes and cables hanging from the ceiling that had served to suspend the shape in the liquid substance.
Taking a towel, the Doctor knelt down slightly and began cleaning her newest creation. There were words being spoken but they were too quiet for us to make out. Gripped by curiosity, I took a step into the room. The Doctor had her back turned to me. I was small enough so I could hide behind one of the other vats in the room and overhear their conversation. I almost tipped over and fell when I felt a hand grab my collar. It was Simone. She had a pleading expression on her face as she held me, intend on not letting me go. I sighed and nodded, and she let go of me as I had convinced her that I would come back.
I then proceeded to do the exact opposite, stepping out of Simone’s reach and starting to sneak through the room. I could almost feel the anger scorching my back for having dabbed on Simone like this, but we had to remember that this was a dream, right? There wasn’t anything that could happen to us, even if we were detected. The closer I came, the more intelligible the words became.
“…feel cold,” the creature still being covered mostly by the Doctor’s form and the towel spoke in a voiceless whisper.
“It’ll pass.” The Doctor’s voice was weirdly nasal, as though she had a cold.
Step after step, I crossed the room, ducking behind the various apparatuses, trying not to move too quickly so I wouldn’t be spotted from the corner of the eye. It was hard to find a spot where I could take a look at the creature and at the same time listen to their conversation.
“Why’d you sedate me?” the creature asked, again in the same voiceless tone. It coughed, clearing their throat. It seemed to help getting the, apparently very thick, amniotic fluid out of their throat. “These unsettle me. Can they go?” The tubes and wires above moved somewhat, making me suspect that they were the source of the discomfort.
“We can,” the Doctor replied. “However, you would need to hold still. Some need to be surgically removed, however. At least the entrances to your body.”
I had reached a spot where I could, theoretically, look at the two of them, but the problem was that I had moved so far into the room that they might spot me from the corner of their eyes. Still, remembering that there wasn’t anything to be afraid of, I slowly, carefully raised my head.
Sitting on the ground, not quite on her legs, was a small figure. The towel was draped around her shoulders. I assumed it was a she because of the longer hair. The size didn’t really allow for an assessment either. However, as soon as I had raised my head enough to peek at them, they turned their head and stared directly at me. I knew that face. She looked like me. A wet me, sure, but the similarities were eerie.
Noticing the sudden movement, the Doctor followed suit and I ducked, too late, however. There was silence for a moment. “Is something the matter?” the Doctor’s voice sounded, but it didn’t seem to be directed at me.
A few moments passed before the answer came. “No, it was-“ a cough, probably fake. “There’s a spasm in my neck.”
The Doctor hummed. “Might be a muscle acting up.” She rose to her feet. “Just a small moment. I’ll get something to sever the tubes so we can get you cleaned up of these things.”
An unintelligible mumble was her answer and I could hear steps as the Doctor headed for the doorway. I poked out my head and noticed that she was heading for the one that Simone was probably hiding behind. However, since there was no big commotion, I assumed Simone had hidden in the right moment.
When I turned to look at the crea- at myself on the dais of the vat, I was met with her eyes. “Hello,” the girl stated, thus confirming that she knew I was there. I weakly gave her a wave with my hand. “Kind of awkward.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, still speaking rather quietly as I wasn’t sure how far away the Doctor was.
“I think it is best if you two leave now. We’ll see again soon, I’m sure.”
“Hmm?” I intoned, but before I could ask any more questions, my replica raised her own, wired hand to give me a wave, left, right.
A few days passed and I was freed of the machines inserted into my body in order to facilitate the growth process. Not of all of them. There were a couple of things that were necessary, I was told. Not for my survival, but for the purpose I was born for. It was well this way. I knew this woman, the Doctor, had created me, made me so that I would follow her orders. Or at least not completely contradict them.
She told me I was powerful. I knew that. Over the days where we had been together now, she said I had the potential to slay gods. Then she told me what I was to do. Even though I was incapable of emotion, I knew I should feel horrified. I was smart. I could connect the dots. I asked her why she hadn’t gone ahead with the first wave of her creations, but she told me that this was not for me to know. I could tell the topic upset her. Better not make her angry. I didn’t think that would be smart.
I learned that I had been born on a ship. The Doctor referred to it as the Titanic. I knew how it worked. I knew the machines, the cogs, the vents, the software. Another thing she had implanted inside of me. Upon asking, she said it had been the DNA of a lizard from Guadalajara, which had remarkable genetic memory capabilities. It had been tested on my predecessor Dinah. When I asked what a Dinah was, the Doctor told me that it was a name. I asked if I could have a name, and she thought for a moment before naming me.
It wasn’t a regular star ship. In the bowls of this monster, there was a chamber. One that I learned had been made for me. It was completely dark, yet I knew I wouldn’t need any light to see. No windows, only several arcane machines and wires, which attached to the couple of implants I still had remaining on my arms. In my arms, rather. I could feel one of them scraping my bone.
The machinery, contrary to the others on the ship, I couldn’t understand. They made no sense to me. For all intents and purposes, they should not function. However, once the Doctor had left me there, kneeling in the gloom, I could feel my perception changing. It felt like I could zoom out of my head, farther and farther, until I could view the entirety of the milky way simultaneously. It was dizzying, my stomach churned and the raw information flooding my mind was way too much for me too handle.
Then it was over and I collapsed, panting, suppressing the urge to vomit. In an instant as the machinery powered down, I had zoomed back in, and the sudden feeling of being confined to my own head caused me to empty my stomach then and there.
It was a few days before I was allowed to try again. I had gone over what had happened over and over again. I felt ready. The machine was started, and this time it was not that rapid. Sweat started appearing on my brow as I began zooming in on a single, tiny cluster of star systems in the milky way. The Sirius Sector. The closer I came to it, the more difficult it became to see anything specific. However, there was one thing that caught my attention, and I knew it was what I had been looking for.
Zooming further in, I made contact with a mind that felt unlike my own and yet familiar.
Dinah’s toothbrush came to a sudden halt as I made contact with her mind, appearing to her just as she had seen me last, an almost perfect copy of herself.
“What the-“ she sounded through the brush in her mouth. “Whaf are you dowing here?” she intoned, looking at the bed. I noticed that it was quite untidy. It was strange perceiving things this way. I was only really aware of the things that were in the field of view of Dinah. “Oh snap, am I dweaming?”
“Please, be calm,” I told her, trying to not let it show that in reality, even thinking anything in this form was torture.
Dinah didn’t seem convinced but eventually spoke up again. “Waif a moment,” she garbled and went back to the bathroom to clean her mouth. A moment later, she returned, sans toothbrush. “Dental hygiene is important.”
“Hmm, yes. The Doctor told me you didn’t always think so.” Why’d I said that? Had she really told me that? I couldn’t remember.
“No, my teeth were always brilliant.” She made a small pause before adding. “She’s lying, for sure.” Taking a few steps closer, Dinah started feeling my face with her hands, kneading my cheeks as though she couldn’t rightly believe how this worked. “How do you do this?”
“I’m sitting in a sort of psionic meditation chamber that helps me focus enough to reach you. We are very alike, we two,” I said, or at least I tried to as best as I could with Dinah manhandling my face.
Eventually, she seemed to have had enough. “Oh, really? So, uh, what’s up?”
I blinked. She was taking this better than I thought she would, but I preferred it this way, to be honest. It just seemed so strange to think that someone would just randomly have a complete mental breakdown about things like that, as often shown in popular media. Unrealistic. It wasn’t like I had malicious intent.
“I’m not sure, to be honest. If I were to guess, we three, your sister included are kind of the progression that the Doctor has made in the field of psionics. Contessa is the first, the attempt to master the human body. You are the second, the attempt to actually make a psionic, and I am the third.” I was aware that I wasn’t really answering her question, but I knew we were getting watched. She didn’t, however. No real need to tell her. “Other than that, my life is pretty boring, I think. I can’t really tell. I wasn’t born with the ability to feel certain emotions.”
Dinah obviously wasn’t too sure what to make of most of this. I was quite certain that she didn’t even understand all of what I had been telling. Still, her expression belied that she seemed to feel empathy for me. Had I wanted that? “I’m sorry,” she said eventually, looking around the room awkwardly. “What’s your name, even?” She arced an eyebrow.
“Alexandria,” I said, remembering how the Doctor had given that name to me after a while of thought.
“Oh. Did you chose that yourself, or?”
“No,” I replied, shaking my head. “The Doctor said Alexandria was the name of a mythical library that held all the knowledge of the world. Didn’t you see that in our first dream or was that after that? It’s hard to tell.” Dinah sat down in front of me. “It wasn’t me who created that dream.”
Dinah gave me an unbelieving look. “But how’d we get into this first dream with you if that wasn’t you?”
I hummed. “That was you, of course. I think you noticed my birth and wanted to watch. I can’t just create this kind of contact with anyone either, see. It is just us three. We are alike. I don’t know why.”
Raising one of her arms, Dinah pointed at the mechanical implants in my arms that in the real world were being used to interface my nervous system with the machinery of the Titanic. “Doesn’t that hurt?” she asked, and I could tell that the sight of the implants was slightly unsettling to her. I had seen her rub her own arms before. It was probably a reflex of her, as we looked exactly alike.
“No, not unless I play around with them.” I sighed, feeling that I couldn’t maintain this much longer. “Dinah, I need to go now. Please listen to what I say now, okay?” She looked up at me, waiting for me to continue. “While we were speaking, your mother and her…” I paused, searching for the right word, “companion were watching you. To them, it seemed like you were talking to the air and they will want to know what was going on. You don’t need to feel bad about telling them. I think the Doctor’s plans are soon coming together and I don’t know if that means she will come to collect you and Contessa again. Please be cautious.”
Dinah nodded slowly. “Oh, okay. See you around, then?”
“I would like that because I think I like you. It is hard to tell.” I shook my head. “Good bye.”
Dinah slowly rose to her feet. “Yes. Good bye,” she said.
As if letting go from a steep cliff, I let go of her mind, plunging my own back into the swirling mass of reality, homing back into my own head. When I returned, the nausea overcame me and consciousness failed me.
Dinah’s head sank onto the table while the teacher in the front droned on about some war between Rheinland and the Gas Miners Guild. My head hurt. The throbbing feeling was only exasperated by a buzzing feeling at the back of my head that I assumed was blood running through my blood vessels. At this point I didn’t care what it was, however. If it was my blood vessels, one of them might as well pop and release me from this boredom coupled with a splitting headache.
Worse still, the teachers didn’t like me. It might sound trivial, but someone whom they didn’t like, they also didn’t trust with telling the truth when it came to sickness. So in other words, there was no way I would be allowed to go home either. I looked at the clock. Ten minutes till recess. I noticed that the teacher was talking to me, but I ignored her, feeling like I might throw up if I spoke. Thankfully, she didn’t seem to be interested in humiliating me in front of the class further and so I was at least left to brood until the bell released us.
I threw all of my belongings into my bag hastily while I felt the telltale signs of needing to puke. Watering mouth, increased urge to swallow. Yep, that’d be puke signs. Throwing the bag over my shoulder, I ran out of the classroom and towards the bathroom, where I locked myself into one of the stalls. The world was turning around me and I sank onto my knees. The stall wasn’t clean. Not at all clean, but I didn’t care at this point. Heaving the contents of my stomach into the bowl before me helped somewhat, but the buzzing feeling didn’t abate. It was almost like a palpable noise that was coming around all around me, the ceiling, the ground, the walls.
I was quite sure that I had spent longer than appropriate in the stall and so I emerged again, having wiped my mouth with toilet paper. Putting the bag onto the ground next to me, I went to wash my face at one of the sinks when I noticed that there was a group of girls standing behind me in the mirror.
“Well, pipsqueak. Not feeling so well?” one of them spoke up, and I recognized her as Emma. She was the best friend of a girl I had once broken the arm off when they had tried to pick on me. What was her name again? She stood there with two friends.
Really now, couldn’t they have picked anther time to get revenge on me? I was quite sure that I’d get beaten up in just a short while and there was precious little that I could do about it in my current state. Dazed, I looked back at her. “What it look like, *****?” I splashed some of the water running from the tap in their direction and I managed to hit her brand new sneakers.
Given that it was only water, Emma looked back at me. “Real scary.” She retrieved a bottle of cranberry juice out of her pocket and took a small sip. “You know, recess is almost up and I think it’s best if we not act all cool to each other and instead just, uh, you know.” She squirted the cranberry juice at me and it hit me in the face, soaking my clothes.
And so it began. Normally, I was somewhat of an alpha *****, mostly because I had broken the arm of someone in a fight before, but I couldn’t do anything against three girls which were all taller and heavier than me. I went to the ground quickly and they kicked me a couple times while I curled up in a fetal position, trying not to let them see me cry. During the ordeal, I felt one of them tug my hair and I felt them using a pair of scissors to cut away a large chunk of it. Occasionally, a small sob escaped my throat, only serving to fire them up even further. How was it that nobody had seen this already? Had they blocked the door?
Eventually, they stopped. I was left on the ground. They hadn’t broken anything, which was good, but the bruises I’d have on my back, arms and legs were burning horribly.
“Ey, look at this,” I heard a voice and a crinkling of paper. I peeked past my arms and saw that they had opened my bag and were throwing the contents onto the floor. “Look, you don’t do your homework anyway, so what do you need this for?”
I saw Emma from the corner of my eyes, leaning against one of the bathroom stalls, blowing a bubble with the gum she was chewing while she watched. “Put that back in there,” she ordered, and the other two gave her a look.
“What for?” one of them asked, not seeming to be willing to collect my stuff for me again. Emma made a hand motion that I couldn’t see but the other two reluctantly began collecting my belongings and throwing them into the bag again.
Taking another sip of the cranberry juice, Emma pushed herself off the stall and dumped the rest of the bottle into my bag, the thick, sugary juice soaking the paper and eventually dribbling out of the bottom of the bag. “Never liked that stuff anyway.” She sneezed before looking at the bottle, then at me. “You can have the Pfand on the bottle if you want.” She threw it at my head, narrowly missing my eye that I quickly covered with a hand.
And with that, they left me on the floor of the bathroom. Surprisingly, nobody came in during the entire time I lay there, the damp bag next to me. Maybe it was just because my perception of time was completely out the window though. For all I knew, I could have been lying here for hours or for minutes. Eventually, I managed to sit up. My arms had a bunch of dark spots and bruises. There was a cut on my leg which was bleeding slightly, though nothing worse than what I had gotten myself when climbing before.
The one good thing about this was that the pain in my head had lessened, though I couldn’t tell whether this was merely because everything else was hurting now and my head couldn’t decide which hurt the most. Standing up shakily, I looked at myself in the mirror. Except the juice, my face was fine. I washed off the sticky mess in the sink while my arms shook. Impotent rage was the best word to describe this feeling. These people would pay for this.
When I thought that I was at least presentable again, I left the bathroom. I didn’t care if there were still lessons today. I was done.
Rounding a corner, however, I came face to face with my teacher. What was her name again? It was something needlessly complicated and Rheinlandian.
„Wohin des Weges?” (Where are you going?) she asked, giving me an arced eyebrow. My clothes did a reasonable enough job at obscuring the bruises, but the juice stains couldn’t really be hidden.
I looked up at her. „Ich muss die Klamotten wechseln,” (I need to change clothes) I told her, wanting to go past her not interested in talking.
„Das bisschen Saft. Du hättest auch vorsichtiger trinken können. Das hast du dir selbst eingebrockt also kannst du auch noch für Sozialwissenschaften dableiben.“ (Because of this bit of juice? You could’ve drank more carefully. You did this to yourself, so you can also wait until our last lesson of social sciences is over.)
I took a deep breath. The buzzing at the back of my head was still there and needing to speak in a foreign language that made me sound like an outsider didn’t make it better. „Wer sind Sie noch gleich?” (Who are you again?) I asked, wanting to at least know her name.
„Frau Große-Venhaus, deine Lehrerin,” (Mrs. Große-Venhaus, your teacher.) she told me and looked at her watch. „Komm, wir sind spät dran. Ich hätte schon vor fünf Minuten da sein sollen.“ (Come, we’re late. I should have been there five minutes ago.) She made a move to take my hand to herd me back into the classroom but I withdrew my hand. „Was ist los mit dir?“ (What is wrong with you?) she asked me, giving me a stern look.
That did it for me. „Mit mir?“ (With me?) I hissed, rage bubbling up inside me. „Eine Bande dummer Schlampen hat mich geschlagen und alles in meinem Rucksack zerstört, während Sie sich in ihrem Büro oder wo auch immer mit ihrem Notenheft die Rosette vergoldet haben. Also verzeihen Sie wenn ich grade kein Bock auf Ihr behindertes Oberlehrergehabe habe, Sie kinderlose Hexe.“ (A gaggle of dumb ***** beat me up and destroyed everything in my bag while you sat in your bureau or wherever and jacked off to the contents of your grade-book. So excuse me for not giving a ***** about your larping as a teacher, you childless hag.)
She blinked, apparently taken aback by my outburst, but I didn’t care. I began walking away, but was eventually stopped when she gripped me by the collar of my shirt. „Das war’s. Freundchen. wir gehen jetzt zum Rektor.” (That’s it, it’s off to the principal now.)
Struggling, I couldn’t really escape her grip without damaging my shirt. I really liked that shirt. I didn’t want to damage it. And again, I found myself in a situation where all I could do was start to cry in impotent rage. I wished someone would hurt them. Hurt them all. They had done nothing for me but make my life miserable. I hated this place.
The grip on my collar lessened and I opened my eyes. There was a bee whizzing around the head of my teacher. „Verdammtes Scheißteil,“ (Damn ***** thing,) she groused, and I hoped she was allergic. I hoped the bug would sting her. And it did. „Verdammt!“ (Damn!) she yipped as the animal sank to the ground, dead, from the sting. Two more bees flew in through the window and began harassing my teacher, each of them stinging her again. „Wo kommen die aller her?“ (Where are all oft hem coming from?) she asked, and I could hear an ounce of fear in her voice.
Then they all came. It was tar. A mostly black and brown mass of insects that poured into the hallway through the slightly open window, spreading along the walls, descending to the ground, slowly, but fast enough. The flying insects didn’t need to walk and directly headed for Mrs. Große-Venhaus. And that was when she let go of me and began running away, almost tripping on the high-heeled shoes she was wearing.
I just stood there, stunned. The horde did not move, however. The buzzing in the back of my mind was now concentrated to a single spot almost. In front of me. And even more insects from outside where still pouring in. Shaking my head, I turned around and ran, leaving behind the army of creepy-crawlies that had come to my rescue.
I took a deep breath while peeking around the corner. If there was one thing I disliked about Gallic pirate stations, it was probably that they all spoke this putrid language. Okay, maybe that wasn’t really a detail about the station, but still, it annoyed me.
There were no guards or anything. It had taken me a while and a couple of drinks to find out where the Doctor would house her base of operations. Apparently, it was here, on this godforsaken rock in the middle of the Somme Ice Cloud that the Doctor had taken up camp. I could see the merit of that. Nobody would really care if there were suspicious noises or anything coming from her, since, let’s be honest, the entire place was so seedy, I could spit bits of it out.
Well, since there was nobody in sight, there wasn’t anything wrong with just sashaying on in there and taking a look around. Shrugging, I rounded the corner and simply headed for the door that I presumed was the entry to the Doctor’s compound.
Ten minutes later, I was standing outside again. Apparently, I had just broken randomly into the home of some French pirate dude. He hadn’t been really keen on seeing me. Thus I needed to teach him a thing or two about love. I sighed. If there ever was an award for worst spy person, I’d probably just watch it on TV.
Walking along the now relatively busy hallway, I simply looked around. I retract my statement from earlier. The fact that nothing here had any labels attached saying where what was. That was the worst part of Gallic pirate stations.
Dodging a gaggle of seedy people who looked like they came straight out of a fifty year old erotica movie, which required me to squeeze against the wall, something poked me in the back. “Ouch,” I groused quietly, turning around to see what had been this pointy.
It was a placard. Property of Prof. Dr. med. Teresa Martinez LLM – Office Hours: Mo. 8 – 12am, Fr. 8 – 12am or with appointment.
I blinked.
I blinked again.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I suppressed the urge to scream in frustration. All this time and all I would have needed to do to find it would have been to walk along the corridors. Breathing out slowly, I waited until the crowd had moved a little more so that the people who came along wouldn’t suspect I was doing something weird.
From my pocket, I withdrew my PAD and jacked it into the side of the panel by the door. A few moments later, it opened. There didn’t seem to be anyone immediately on the other side, so I slipped in while the door slid shut behind me. I probably should’ve brought a gun. Or anything to defend myself if necessary. Creeping along the corridor, I kept my ears open for any noise but all I heard was the soft humming of eldritch machinery in the rooms I came across. It took me almost twenty minutes to search everything, but it seemed to be largely abandoned. I knew from my last stay here that the complex had multiple levels though, and so I set my sights on the elevator.
What did I even want to find here? Anything regarding Dinah and Simone, I supposed. The computer terminals I had come across were largely irrelevant, however.
Standing in the center of the complex, I looked at the machine the Doctor had once shown me.
It prints out people. I shook my head. That was a strange way of describing cloning. However, there didn’t seem to be any way of interfacing with it and I didn’t trust myself not to break everything and thus reveal that I or someone else had been here. This was a top secret operation! I was just about to turn around to the elevator when I heard the worst noise in this situation.
Ding!
The doors of the elevator slid open to reveal a blonde man in a lab coat, looking at a PAD. He made a step forward and almost ran into me. “Hey!” he called out, almost losing his footing. Then he squinted at me. “Who are you?”
I knew this man. Adrian or something, right? Or was he? I didn’t remember him with this surgical scar on the side of his forehead. “Uhm, hi!” I chirped, extending a hand to greet him. On the inside, I was screaming in terror. This couldn’t possibly be any worse. “I’m the new, uh, intern. Yes.” My hand was sweating and I gave him a hopefully not too forced smile while I tried not to run away crying.
He put the PAD into one of the pockets of his lab coat. “We’re not taking any interns,” he said, looking at me as though he tried to remember something. Or perhaps I was just reading that into his expression. He had only seen me briefly when I had been here last. Or had he?
I made a mental note to try and train my long term memory for these kinds of details. A small gremlin in my head took the note and played paperjack with it. Focus, Maren!
“Oh, uh, yes, you do,” I stated, rummaging around in my pocket for something, anything that would help me in this situation. I found a shopping list type of paper and withdrew it. It was remarkably smooth and given that it was printed, it even was quite readable. I held it so that he’d see it, but not be able to read the print on it from where he was.
“What’s this now?” he asked, giving me a flat look. “Is this some type of movie crap where you expect me to lean forward and then you knock me our or something?”
Yes.
“Uhm, no, of course not. This is just my notes for the, uh, job interview.” I put the piece of paper away and gave him a (hopefully) innocent look. “Should I have called first? No?” His look belied that he wasn’t buying it.
Reaching forward, I touched the bare skin of his arm and he froze. Being infected had its perks. Nobody expected to be pulled into a dream world by a Nomad infiltrator. While Adrian stared into the distance, I was rummaging around in my pocket with my other hand for something I could use to cut. I really should’ve brought a gun.
The only thing I really found was the piece of paper I had showed him. Given that it wasn’t crumpled, I could probably paper-cut my way through his jugular. Sighing, I got to work chipping away at his neck. Had anyone ever tried to cut someone’s veins with a piece of paper? One side of the paper was quickly worn down, so I turned it in my hand. One time, I almost lost grip on his hand, which would have broken the paralysis. Well, it wasn’t paralysis. He wasn’t aware of anything of this happening. Which was probably a good thing. Paper-cuts are nasty.
My hands slowly looked like those of a butcher as the smears got worse and the paper got drenched by the blood. I really hoped I could make him bleed enough so I could let him bleed out.
“Please stop,” said a calm, matter-of-fact voice behind me. I flinched and lost grip on Adrian’s hand. He lost his footing and fell, disoriented by the sudden return to reality. Landing on the ground, he immediately clutched his throat, where the flesh had been sliced repeatedly by my piece of paper. Now, I was just standing there, blood-soaked paper in hand, staring dumbly. Then he was gone.
I blinked and turned around, just to face… Dinah?
“You actually almost killed him,” Dinah stated. She was standing only a few paces away from me. It clicked. This was not Dinah, but her new iteration by the Doctor. But how’d she gotten here? I should have perceived her way earlier than when she interrupted me. “I brought him to a safer place where he can get the help he needs.”
I tried cleaning my hands with the paper, but it only served to smear it more onto my hands. “Who or what are you even?” I asked, actually slightly scared of the little demon that was wearing my daughter’s countenance.
“My name is Alexandria. I trust your daughter told you of me. At least I asked her to do so.” She was wearing what seemed like something similar to the jumpsuits of the Apahanta crew, only recoloured. Purple, blue and black. How original.
I figured I was in deep shit. I had tried to kill one of the Doctor’s associates. Or projects? Was he also a clone? It was really hard to tell. If I was going to get my ass whipped by a psionic child, I might as well ask one thing that was burning on my mind. “Why do that, though? What of this is furthering the Doctor’s plans?”
Alexandria looked at me, arms behind her back. “Who said that the Doctor tells me anything? Maybe I am just leading her along. I could tell her why exactly she made this body of mine, or those of your daughter and her sister. But I don’t intend to follow along, mostly because the end result would have all three of us, or at least one of us, die.” She cracked her neck. “Now come. While I know the Doctor full well would sacrifice us on the altar of her crusade against who I call Player Two, she’d become suspicious if I didn’t bring her the person snooping around her compound and assaulting her employees.”
I took a step back. “I carry a Nomad with me. I’ll resist you.”
Alexandria made a step forward. “I know.”
It came quickly. Whereas I hadn’t been able to feel any psionic potential from her before, now I did. It was overwhelming. I went down to my knees as the mind of the girl before me bore down on me. Alexandria stood before me and put her hand onto my head and reality around us began to contort into a mass of colours, notions and concepts. The mind boggled at it, lacking any frame of reference. Time and space were irrelevant here. In this moment, we were eternal, but I knew we were going somewhere.
With all the power I could muster, I threw myself against the consciousness that had enveloped me. The only thing I could see was the girl in front of me, who staggered back, breaking the connection that had been established between us. My stomach churned as I began feeling like I was falling, the girl rapidly gaining distance from me. “No! You idiot!” I could hear her call out before reality took shape again and I fell onto solid ground. It was dark, and with the world turning around me, spinning and spinning, consciousness failed me.
![[Image: maYSx8o.png]](https://i.imgur.com/maYSx8o.png)