Consciousness fading in and out.
I don’t have much longer.
My hand just barely wraps around the edge of the grenade, struggling to get my fingers positioned on the pin.
He pushes down on my neck with everything he has. All his weight collapsing the airway and bones in my neck, but it’s not enough.
Seconds before the world turns to black, I get my fingers through the pin. It slips away from the grenade.
With my last dying words, I scream her name and release the lever. It falls from my hand, rolling on the ground next to me.
I’m absorbed by a moment of tranquility.
It’s the purest thing I’ve ever felt.
I hear her sweet voice calling for me to come home as the world around me fades into darkness.
It is finished.
Chapter 12
I jerk the cord unplugging myself from the computer and desperately try to calm my lungs as they gasp for air. My stifled eyes blink rapidly as my true reality floods back into me.
Palin was right… Lethe must be stopped.
The warmth of my coffee lingers above my mug. I’m sitting in front of my computer like I never left. I’m Eros agai- I’m me again. As the remnants of Palin’s consciousness evaporate from my mind, the daunting vagueness of this reality slowly retreats. Both of my eyes water to a blur, my blood still coursing rapidly through my veins. The home screen, loaded on my display, splashes across my face, THE DELTA PROJECT: Life From A Different Perspective.
“What the fuck was that?” I whisper to myself as I feel the wetness below my eyes drip down my cheek. The splitting headache lodged in the deepest parts of my head shows me no mercy. I know it’s impossible, but I still feel the soreness in my neck from Palin. I’ve never seen anything in the Delta like that before. How did he get into my computer? Who is he?
Walking over to a love seat I haven’t seen in years, my body collapses into it like a magnet. I’m exhausted. Twenty-five years as Palin, I forgot comfort like this existed. The polyfoam deciphers my exact bone structure in seconds and automatically adjusts itself depending on my weight distribution. They can really use some of these in Elysium. I wonder if that place still exists. If Jacee.. Don’t be stupid, Eros.
The receiver in my arm vibrates and flashes green, scaring the ever-living shit out of me. It’s been decades since I’ve existed in this reality, well at least to me.
“Yo!”
“Is it good to hear from you or what?” I answer into the pulsating light awkwardly. The sound of my voice is still off-putting.
“What the fuck are you talking about? I saw you last night. You gotta lay off that shit man,” says Poth. He looks stoned.
“Nah, I just… Why are you calling me?”
“I need a place to crash until the droids fix my shit. You care if I couch surf at your place until they finish?”
“Nah I don’t mind, man.”
“Sorry for storming out on you last night, but I couldn’t stay in that shithole another minute, ungrateful bastards.”
“Well, it’s the only place open,” I reason. “Hey, by the way, you haven’t downloaded anything on my computer, have you? Any unsanctioned Delta Projects or mods?”
“Uh. No. How can you still fuck with that depressing old shit when there is an infinite amount of nasty, nasty sluts in a thousand different virtual whorehouses? The kind that’ll let you do whatever you want, can be whoever you want.”
“Everyone knows those places are for dogs like you that can’t pull any real, organic ass.”
“Yeah, yeah.. I’ll see ya this afternoon. Appreciate you looking out.”
“No problem,” I mumble as the pixels making up his face fade, returning to the receiver.
“Oracle, table display, please,” I demand.
If what Kronos is showing me is real, there has to be evidence of it. There’s got to be something.
The clear glass surface of the coffee table springs to life illuminating my home display – a picture of me and Poth surrounded by a group of beautiful, half-naked women that I can no longer remember the names of.
“How may I assist you?” asks the flat’s A.I. system, a feminine voice, synthesized.
Moving yesterday’s bowl from the table, I begin my investigation. “Access Olympia’s public records domain.”
“Accessing,” she replies pleasantly.
A thousand holofiles spiral towards the ceiling in 3-D, illuminated in a cool gradient of blues and greens.
“Show me everything you have on a Palin from labor city 34.”
“My pleasure,” voices the Oracle as the holofiles collapse to one.
I knew it… All of Palin's information is here, just as I remember it. Records of his employment at the droid plant, his medical files, even the failed attack on 34 nearly a hundred years ago. Everything is here except…
There’s no death record or Delta experience on file. It just reads <sealed>.
Weird. It’s definitely not sealed; it’s loaded on my desktop right now.
“Oracle, search for any criminal records for a ‘Xander’ out of Olympia.”
The display rearranges the floating pixels revealing the same man that sacrificed himself for Palin. Xander Phales, Former Olympian-Turned Terrorist, Banished! reads a copy of an old headline. All his offenses appear under his mugshot. Conspiracy to terrorism. Treason. Assault. Kidnapping. Cause of Death: Gunshot wound.
It was all real.
Lethe used the Delta Project to harvest the memories of innocent people, slaves that were no longer needed, all for the perverted entertainment of the elite, for Archer.
My brain now at war with my heart, all of these conflicting principles are clouding my thoughts. I love this city. I truly do, and I am honestly thankful for what Lethe has given us, but what they have done is wrong. What they still might be doing is wrong. What type of person am I if I turn a blind eye to injustice? What type of world would I help create if I did nothing to stop this shit? Palin gave Lethe his whole life for them, multiple lives, and look how
