TRANSCENDENCE, page 13
These beautiful marble walls, this life of grandeur and glamour, it’s built on the backs of others. The people here have closed their eyes to it, they focus only on the grandness, on the endless present, fixed in time and unchanging. They are shielded from the mine, from that view of slavery that supports their lifestyle. My thoughts race to the facility underneath the palace. To that iridescent blue vat. To a mine cart returning. And then, my thoughts stop.
Maybe that’s a way to break this world. Maybe that’s a way out.
“I think I know how we can get to the mines, actually,” I say.
Sophia stops reading, and turns to look at me. In the reflection of my face on hers, I’m smiling.
Days pass in the same sequence of events. Breakfast is delivered. I train calisthenics to stay sharp, and then shower off. Sophia reads to me, and eventually dinner is delivered. It’s monotonous, like the same day played over again. Until the cycle breaks.
One night after I’ve eaten, I hear the door unlock again when it shouldn’t. It swings open slightly and Dee glides into the room. She’s wearing black tights and a form-fitting top now, and sneaks a furtive glance behind her into the hallway before shutting the door again silently. Then she turns to me.
Whatever she was going to say lodges in her throat. She stares at me for a moment, cocks her head, and smiles. I’m sitting on the floor as Sophia reads to me, and I feel strangely like she’s intruding on something private.
“Is your machine reading to you?”
Sophia moves to put the book away, but I reach out and lay my hand on her wrist. “She is, Sophia loves books, and as it turns out, I love being read to.”
“Sophia?” A confused look spreads across Dee’s face.
Sophia turns to her. “That is the name Dorothy gave me, when she discovered that I was self-aware.”
Dee’s eyebrows arch upwards, and a grin spreads across her face. “That’s incredible!” Then, as if remembering why she came to the room, the grin disappears. “I would love to know more, but I came here with a more serious mission. We’ve got to get you both out of here. Have you figured out their plans for you?”
I stare at her for a moment. The concerns of their world seem so far away after being locked in this room for several days.
“I overheard some of the guests at the party. They want me to produce an heir for the prince?”
Dee colors in shame and looks down. “That's it. I’ve tried for years to convince the prince to not pursue it, tried to make him see that it’s not a just course of action, but he only listens to his father. He’s more like him with every passing year.” Her eyes come back up to meet mine. “Look, this isn’t a good place, if you haven’t figured that out. We’re stuck in time and commit the same sins every day to keep it that way. If you stay here, it will destroy you. I’m afraid it’s already destroyed me.”
From behind her back she pulls a long, flat object and offers it to me. After a moment, I realize that it’s the plasma blade I brought with me to this world. The one I took from Nick so long ago. I stand and grab it from her. The heft of it feels like a decision already made.
“Will you leave the door unlocked for us?”
“Yes, but there are sentries all over, even this early in the day. They carry the sonic cannons that you’ve already experienced, but also melters. The king wouldn't want you killed, but they'll certainly use them and beg forgiveness later. Usually they heavily guard the palace and only barely patrol the ships outside. It seems the prince is planning something though, and it’s drawn several of them out to the landing pad, so stealing a ship is impossible. It will make it easier to navigate the palace, but even if we get you outside to the forest, you’ll almost certainly run into a trap in the woods. I don’t know how you’ll escape. I came tonight hoping you had figured out a plan.”
I look at Sophia beside me, and she gives me a slight nod in agreement. “Who has access to the facility under the Palace?”
Dee gives me a questioning glance, and then seems to understand my intent. “But the mines aren’t a way out, you’ll be stuck there–”
“With my friends that I’ve been searching for, hopefully. I’m not leaving here without them, and like you said, I doubt that we’ll be able to fight our way through to stealing a ship anyways.”
She considers for a moment. “If you time it right, there is a ship that delivers meals three times a day to the mines. It will be guarded, but not heavily.”
I smile wickedly as the final element of the plan clicks into place. “Perfect, thank you. But, who has access to the facility? I saw the prince use a hand scanner to open it.”
“I do,” she says, and mirrors my smile perfectly.
I arch my eyebrows at her, questioning.
“There was a time, right after the city opened and before Indigo, before this damn palace, that the prince and I were a couple. We were so young then, just children really. He still trusts me from those days.”
We move quietly through the hall. I follow Dee, and Sophia follows me. With the long expanse of openness it would be easy to spot us, so we cling to the right side wall, and pause to listen near every door frame we pass. The corridor extends in front of us, and then turns at a sharp angle before the doors that lead to the main ballroom.
We listen for the soft muffle of footsteps on the carpet, but hear nothing. And so we slowly inch down the hallway. My eyes are focused on the corner as I try to absorb every little sound. Move forward. Pause. Listen. Move forward. Pause. Listen. As we get closer to the bend, we hear a barely audible conversation from around the corner.
Dee holds up her hand for us to stop, then turns around and mouths get ready. I wipe the sweat from my hands on the black tights I found in the closet of my room, and draw my plasma sword from the holster. I turn to see Sophia crouched, her hands formed into sharp, metal points. I crouch down as well. When the guards round this corner, their gaze will be lifted and scanning the hall. They won’t be prepared for an attack to come from down low.
Before we left the safety of our room, I put back on the cosmic armor that Nick gave me. It’s a comfort underneath my clothes, but I know it won’t stop a melter. At this range it would tear through me, and the lingering plasma from the shot would quickly eat through whatever remained of my body. They were almost non-existent in our city; beyond that antique Nick used against Cerberus, I’d only seen images of them. The risk of causing damage to the walls was too high, but I’ve read enough about them to know the effect. Thankfully, the guards should only have one shot before they need to recharge them.
I watch as Dee circles back behind us and grabs the handle to the nearest door. There is a faint click of the latch. She opens the door wide, and then forcefully slams it shut. After so much time in silence, I flinch from the sudden noise. Around the corner, I hear the conversation stop immediately. And then, barely audibly, I hear soft footsteps as they move down the corridor towards the bend.
In the pause before violence, images of my father teaching me to use the plasma sword come up unbidden. Swordplay had no practicality in Sun Gate, but the hobbies of the rich barely ever do. So from a young age we practiced, drilled, and trained. He taught me forms, and then taught me that none of them mattered. Winning mattered. Survival mattered. “Be what they don’t expect, don’t be a textbook,” he’d say. He taught me that quick brutality ended most fights, and surprise attacks were always preferable.
When I came for his biolock, before Nick and I stormed the Medical Authority, I used everything he taught me. He knew what I wanted only in the moments before the plasma sword cut through his wrist. When I sprang from around a corner like this and separated it from him with surgical precision, I saw the expected surprise in his eyes, but also unabashed pride. I left him there after, tied to a chair with a cauterized wrist. We were so different, but maybe more the same than I’ll ever have the time to understand.
The steps are drawing near to the corner. I tighten my grip on the handle until it hurts, and wait for the moment. The pain sharpens my focus, and the fear and anticipation brings a peaceful clarity to the moment. There is only this moment, and then the next, and then the next. I tense the rest of my muscles for the attack. Be what they don’t expect, I tell myself.
When the first guard’s foot comes into view, I strike. In a great rush, I carry my momentum forward and up through the blade in an arc that leaves a blue blur on my retinas. It takes him from the outside hip and up through his collarbone. He didn’t even have his melter raised, but carried it against his chest. My sword cuts through it all and leaves two pieces of everything behind. There is the momentary spray of arterial blood, but the wound cauterizes nearly instantly and fills the hallways with the smell of smoked flesh.
Their training becomes clear immediately afterwards. The second guard goes into action as soon as he sees my plasma sword, and everything slows. He throws himself backwards from the corner, and starts to level his melter. My sword is still raised from the opening strike. I planned to flow through them both swiftly, but he’s deftly moved outside of my reach. I can’t reach him in time, he’s too far. I tense my thighs to leap toward him, but as I get my sword in position to strike, I see he’s already brought his melter up. Fuck, I’m too late.
I know I won’t make it in time, I can already feel the bite of the melter, but the momentum is there and all I can do is follow it. I’m dimly aware of a rush of silver beside me as I prepare to lunge. It blazes by me, and throws me off balance. I ram into the wall to my right as a shot from the melter blazes over my left shoulder, and burns a hole through the palace.
When my vision steadies, Sophia has speared the guard with her great, pointed hands. They both enter through his chest, puncturing his lungs. Only a bloody gurgle escapes his lips as he tries to scream. Blood pours down over her hands, and then sprays the hall as she rips them outward.
She saved me. For a moment, I imagine the shot took her and there’s a pain in my chest that I haven’t felt in years. Memories of my Sophia, my friend and teacher, flood me, until Dee shakes me from it.
“We have to move, now!” she yells while shaking my shoulder, and I’m brought back to the present moment.
Blood and viscera cover the hallway like a bizarre painting, and the smell of roasted flesh hangs in the air. The second guard still twitches out his final moments on the ground, but the first is already losing color. As my head clears from the fight, I hear the palace around us coming alive with movement. There are faint shouts from other rooms and I can just hear the sound of running feet. Dee bends to grab the second guard’s melter off the ground, and we run.
Caution forgotten, the three of us sprint down the hall and burst through the main ballroom doors. They swing wide to a new scene. A long table that bisects the room is being prepared for breakfast, and servers are scattered across the room at work. Their heads snap to us as we rush through the doors. I don’t know if it’s the weapons we carry, or the sight of Sophia covered in dripping blood, but they run immediately.
We don’t even break our pace to observe them. I’m only dimly aware of their terrified screaming. Dee takes the lead and sprints toward the table. She jumps onto it, and back down the other side. Sophia and I follow suit right behind her. Two towers of champagne flutes, positioned at either end of the table, come crashing down from the shake of our passing. If the guards don’t know where we are already, they’ll just have to follow the noise. We push onward to the double doors on the other side of the ballroom. In my mind I’m mapping the route the prince took me on to the entrance to the facility. We’re not far now.
There’s a moment that I have hope here. A flash where I see things work out perfectly. We evade the guards, we blast through the double doors in front of us and find the hall empty, we make it to the lab beneath our feet without further incident. We escape together, unharmed.
Dee gets to the door first and slams her shoulder into it, melter raised. It swings open and we all spew into the adjoining hallway, and then freeze. In front of us are six guards, their melters all pointing towards us. In the middle of them is the king, dressed in a marble white sleeping gown.
“Come now, didn’t you think this was a little predictable? Our mutual friend visited and told me to expect this, but I didn’t need to hear it from him. I posted guards here and at the exits. What a delight that I chose the right one to attend this morning. Of course our traveler would try to escape after her treatment, that’s only natural. That I expected. Although, I must say I’m disappointed you chose to help them, Dorothy.” He sighs deeply, and I glance sidelong at Dee to see her frown tighten. Her melter is pointed down slightly, and I can see from the glowing bar on the side that it’s still charging from the last shot.
“I’ve lived so long in this monstrosity you created that I started to lose sight of who I was. She reminded me of that, reminded me of how I used to be,” Dee says, and smiles sadly. “This world isn’t right. You’re not right. Living forever isn’t right. I helped you prop up this world on an endless cycle of injustice, and I can’t take it anymore. I don’t regret trying to help her, I only hope that she can escape and change things, make them right.”
Some part of me knows what will happen next. I want to pause time and save Dee, stop her, but in her sad smile I know the path is set. Even if I could save her, she wouldn’t want me to. This is her asking the universe for forgiveness. This is her paying reparations. I know her melter will chime that it’s recharged, and it does. I know that she’ll raise it to point at the king, and she does. I know that with that threat, she will draw the fire of every guard in the room, all at once, consuming her in a rain of plasma.
And she does.
The blasts hit her in several spots, but none of them kills her instantly. This is not a merciful way to die. It eats through her. The slow fire spreads until she disappears, and leaves nothing but a pile of dust. It accumulates where she stood, drifting on the air currents to form a swirling mound. Dee’s screams pound and reverberate across the small hallway, until her lungs and vocal cords are melted in the same instant. The sudden end of the scream pulls me back to reality. It snaps me into a moment frozen in time where I’m given the chance to change things. Dee took all their shots, and now they’re disarmed. She knew this would give me a chance.
Then, I realize I already started moving when the melter shots went off. My body made the decision while my brain processed Dee’s death. My plasma sword is held out to my side as I close the gap to the nearest guard. It’s an extension of my arm, of my will, here to execute my terrible, righteous rage. To my right, I catch a silvery flash and know Sophia is rushing the guards on that side. We are wrath. We are death. We are cosmic fucking justice, and we will make them all pay.
My sword sweeps upwards in a flash of blue, bisecting the nearest guard as he tries to hurriedly grab his sonic cannon. I flow through him into the next, sweeping his head from his shoulders with a horizontal slash. The third raises his cannon, but before he can squeeze off a shot, I spear him and the cannon with a final lunge, and then I rip the sword upwards and through him. The hallways is an echo of screams, a resonating orchestra that Sophia and I add fresh players to with every moment. I look to my right, and see the bloodbath left in Sophia’s wake.
In the middle of the hallway, on the floor, is a man in a now scarlet red stained robe, crawling backwards and mumbling incoherently. He keeps trying to stand, but his legs seem to have failed him. Blood spray from his guards covers him, it drips from his arms and face, and mats down his hair. In all the realities he saw, none of them included us dispatching his guards so easily. So efficiently. Sophia grabs his shoulders from behind, and hauls him to his feet.
“But, but, how could you? This wasn’t supposed to happen. The Narrator told me you would make us immortal, he told me—” he stammers, but shuts up when I put my plasma sword underneath his chin.
“Oh, I'll immortalize you, but you missed the point. The Narrator weaves us into stories. You assumed you’re the main character, but you’re not. You’re a side-story, a secondary plot. Revealing, but ultimately, unimportant. You’re just a sick, old man that loves abusing others. And I am so fucking tired of people like you!”
Before he can reply, I shove my sword through his neck. His eyes bulge, a scream crystallizing in them as I sever and cauterize his windpipe. Like a fish out of water, he tries to draw in breath, but my sword has sealed both sides of his throat. I watch with disgust as his mouth heaves in terrible shapes, alternating between trying to scream, and trying to supply oxygen to his failing body. I don’t enjoy watching him suffer, but I do enjoy the knowledge that his death is painful, full of fear, and prolonged. It will take him agonizing minutes to die. As it should, it’s what he’s earned.
Sophia holds out the king’s arm, and I sever his hand at the wrist. She drops his body on the floor, where it finishes the twitching and writhing of a fading life. We leave it behind, rush to the end of the hallway, and place his hand on the access panel to the underground facility. Before we step inside, I take one last look back, and say a silent thanks to Dee for her sacrifice.
We find the underground facility devoid of life, but unlike the hallway above, it’s sterile and clean. As I walk the aisles, I see Dee’s face in the twisted reflection from the gleaming metal surfaces. I’m surprised to see it’s crying, tears streaming from its eyes, even though I can feel the moisture on my own cheek. I wander through the facility aimlessly, and Sophia follows. These machines are the heart of it all, inhuman, uncaring. They turn suffering into a substance that feeds the cycle. This facility makes all the horror in this world possible. Here, injustice is propagated. These are the mechanisms of oppressors.
