“Do you remember?” the quiet voice asked.
“Please stop,” Aurora sobbed, surprised that she was crying from seeing the memory.
“Not yet.”
The memory continued.
When the next day began, Cass was tired, emotionally and physically. She had been staring at her mother’s corpse as if it would reanimate and come to get her. She thought she saw a glint of something. Was it an earring? She could definitely sell that. It flickered again as the early morning rays streamed in, illuminating her mother on the couch with their light.
Cass tentatively crawled over and looked more closely. There was something there, but it wasn’t exactly an earring. She reached out and touched it to see if she could remove the shiny silver bead, and it latched onto her fingertip. Shaking it madly, she saw her flailing caused the silver strand to stream out of her mother’s ear like a long string. She waved her hand around, trying to flick it off.
Instead, the shimmering strand flowed down her hand. She attempted to pull it off with her other hand, succeeding only in transferring the mercury-like material to both of her hands. She stared at her hands as the colors played along the surface of the iridescent reflective material.
She felt pinpricks and pressure as the material began to absorb into her skin. No, that wasn’t totally accurate. It burrowed into her skin. She could feel it crawling through her veins, cold and intrusive. Shortly after, there was a bright flash and stab of pain as the material made it to her neck, and she fell to the floor.
Her small hands felt like they were dipped in scalding water. Nothing she did would relieve the sting and it took a long time to feel normal again. She experienced intense vertigo and had to lie there, afraid to vomit up the small amount of food that she had recently been able to eat. Occasionally she would get brave and try to sit up, but the headache and vertigo would return. So she would get as comfortable as she could in the blanket and try to fall asleep.
“That was you? Why did you do that to me?” Aurora asked, viewing her young self crumpled into a ball in the memory.
“I’m… sorry. Your mother was not the best of hosts. It affected us and restricted how we could interact. We were almost feral, trying to escape, but our nature would not allow us to until your mother passed. Her self-destructive nature was deeply painful to us and all that we are. We regret how we came to you, and how excruciating the process was. We were… not gentle.”
She hadn’t thought about that day in years. It was a concentrated ball of horrible memories that she had pushed so far down that she never had to deal with them. Much different than the new persona she had fashioned in Aurora.
“You pushed me away when you went to the academy, and you forgot a lot of things I tried to teach you. You need to remember and learn this again, or I fear you will die here,” the tiny voice said.
Aurora was conflicted. She knew she needed to escape, but all of her training told her that the voices were dangerous, a possible fracturing of her psyche that had to be overcome. That she needed help was undeniable, and she was fast approaching the point of being able to try anything.
“Okay, tell me what I need to know,” she said, resigning herself to listen to the voice.
Chapter Eight
Around the Bend
Gus headed back up to the manor, deciding to go barefoot for a while. He took his time and didn’t use Dash. The cold ocean water felt good as it washed the sand from his bare feet. He tried to plan what to do next as he walked.
He would have to find some type of defenses for the island in lieu of the bio-stasis field. But what? Even if the island had some kind of ballistic missiles, some supers could withstand and tank almost any of that type of attack. Then there were the FP costs. He doubted they would be cheap.
A plan began to form, but it would require a lot of things to fall in just the right places at the right times. Given the situation, though, it was the best he had, so no sense in overthinking it. It would all depend on the capabilities of the manor. He could refine plans based on what he found there. Eventually, he made it back and felt a little more encouraged now that he had a direction. Indecision was always one of his biggest enemies, with the motivation to start a close second.
Gus ate lunch and headed up to the control room. For the next few hours, he became immersed in the defense tab. Reading descriptions of facilities and different options to unlock, scribbling notes on FP costs, and what future capabilities would become available as he unlocked higher tiers and functionality of those facilities. The longer he stayed there, the more he realized he should have done this from the very beginning.
His previous unlocks had been a little random, and he had been fortunate to choose facilities that managed to help him. He could just as easily have unlocked something useless until he was a much higher level. Most offensive items were in the tens of thousands of FP, and wouldn’t be viable for him, so he would have to get crafty with the few options available.
Every so often he would hear a high-pitched beep as he worked. It was enough to grab his attention, but so intermittent that he couldn’t tell where it was, like a smoke detector with
