Nelja’s slender figure emerged from the large elevator at the base of the Leader’s tower, an armed soldier on either side of him. He stopped in front of the three.
“Apologies for the delay. The breach in the residential dome’s docking port interrupted the scan. Before I tell you all the results, I believe it would be prudent for the three of you to… have your bodies. Flint, come with me. We will return shortly.”
Flint followed Nelja into the elevator and, to Flint’s surprise, felt a lurch as the elevator moved downwards instead of up. They descended for a surprisingly long time until, eventually, the elevator doors opened to reveal a long, dimly-lit hallway. The first room on the right, which Nelja led him through, contained only a chair, a light hanging above it, and the person sitting within it. Shelves lined the walls but the items on them were obscured in darkness.
Flint quickly recognized the person in the chair as the sword-wielding invader he had seen in the docks earlier that morning. Her face was bloody and her chest wheezed with each rise and fall of her breath, but she was much taller up close than her appearance suggested from afar. A face mask covered up her nose and mouth as if to prevent her from speaking.
“This is Ruoch Patera,” Nelja gestured at the woman, and her eyes narrowed into a glare. “She is a high-ranking Aikajo mercenary who came here to Talo in the hopes of uncovering our valuable information on the Terminus. After her true identity was discovered in the docks, she created an explosion which caused the breach, in the process killing eight Talo members and injuring twenty.
“It goes without saying that the effects of our pursuit of the Terminus are profound. I have information that says that your killer, too, was an infiltrator who was sent by Keila to kill you. It may seem as if things are out of our control with the state that the Domain is in right now, but that is not true. You have the power to help shape the course of history, and Talo needs you.” Nelja looked intensely into Flint’s eyes. “I need you, Flint. And you can start by helping yourself. Take this woman’s body as your own, and in the process, you will bring her to justice for her actions today.”
Ruoch’s eyes widened and darted towards Flint, who was approaching her on soft, ethereal footsteps. Flint avoided eye contact as he stepped closer. He stood in front of the infiltrator, preparing, waiting for… something. But what? He had already received permission from one of Talo’s supreme leaders to possess this woman.
“Go on,” Nelja urged, sensing Flint’s hesitation. “Don’t worry, we have tended to her wounds, so you will be comfortable in her skin. Or is it the idea of possessing a woman’s body that makes you uncomfortable?”
“No, that’s not the problem. I’ve done this before. I mean, I usually prefer being a man, but…”
What was the problem, then?
“Then what is it, Flint? You will punish this woman for what she did, won’t you?”
Flint steeled himself. He looked into Ruoch’s eyes and saw only the eyes of an enemy.
“There is no problem,” he said, and his soul entered her body.
Flint sat alone in the vastness of the mindscape, taking his time to materialize his own visible form in a realm of thoughts and ideas. A few dozen feet—no, there was no such thing as distance in a place like this—a small distance front of him was another figure, sitting cross-legged. The figure of Ruoch Patera. Flint stood up on legs that had only just begun to exist and strode towards her, preparing for the inevitable battle that always came as a result of souls fighting for control. But Ruoch did not stand up. As Flint grew closer, the ideas that composed Ruoch’s body clarified themselves until he could clearly see her eyes staring back up at him.
Then, she said:
“Will there be anything left of me when I’m gone?”
Flint froze.
“Or will even memories fail to remain?”
Unable to bear her words, Flint lunged forward with a fist and shattered her soul into a million nonexistent pieces.
His brand-new eyes snapped open to see Nelja standing in front of him.
“Well done, Flint,” Nelja said, removing the voice-muffling mask that was on Ruoch’s—Flint’s face. “Talo thanks you for your service.”
“Of course.” Flint said the words, and he meant them, but something inside him felt sick and wrong.
“Now, let us meet your comrades on the surface. I have important news about the Terminus to discuss with you all.”
It might have been that Ruoch’s eyes were damaged somehow, but his vision felt unable to focus during the entire elevator trip up.
Aurein and Allef were waiting nervously in the front of the elevator by the time he emerged, and Allef turned to Flint with a surprised expression.
“Whoa, you’re a woman! Cool.”
“The scan and cross-referencing of the bootprint images is complete,” Nelja addressed the three, ignoring Allef’s words. “Now, I am sorry to inform you that the search came up short. Matching bootprints were found in our database, but they all belonged to the same model of mass-produced Keila EVA boots. There were thousands of identical bootprints found across the galaxy, all belonging to different low-ranking Keila soldiers.”
Flint’s throat was dry.
“So that means… we’re out of leads?” Flint breathed.
“I’m afraid so,” Nelja said. “But not all hope is lost. Talo has been planning a siege on nearby Keila solar systems for several months now, and your assistance in the mission would be highly valued—all three of you. It could even be arranged for you to command your own small platoon. By claiming important Keila outposts, its possible another lead towards the Terminus may uncover itself.”
“Really?” Flint blurted before he knew it. The idea of leading his own platoon seemed too good to be true.
“If you are willing to accept the position, I would be happy to promote all three of you. You have all clearly shown your mettle in battle—leading a small platoon of soldiers is the only logical next step.”
“We’ll consider it,” Aurein said, stepping in front of Flint. “Thank you for the offer.”
“Of course. Inform us of your decision by the end of the week.”
“Well, it seems to me that we have no other option,” Flint said.
“That’s not the issue,” Aurein stressed. “Did his answer not bother either of you?”
“Of course it bothered me. I much would have preferred hearing that they had pinpointed the Terminus’ owner,” Flint replied.
“Not in that way! I mean… didn’t it feel too convenient to you? Talo’s making a move on Keila, and then they happen to find out it’s some random Keila soldier who owns the Terminus?”
“What would they even stand to gain by lying to us?” Flint asked.
“I don’t know yet. Nelja’s answer just rubs me the wrong way. All I know is that the owner of the Terminus wouldn’t just be some nobody in Keila. If they were a nobody, they aren’t anymore.”
“Aurein’s right,” Allef agreed. “The owner of the Terminus wouldn’t be your average soldier. But I still think that they would be someone like us.”
Flint thought for a moment.
“I suppose you’re right,” Flint admitted. “I can’t imagine the Terminus being picked up by some random person. If it was, we should already have seen them doing something by now—that kind of power doesn’t just go nowhere. But, still—do you guys really want to just pass up this opportunity? We’re getting a promotion! We can lead our own platoon! Surely climbing higher within Talo can’t be a bad thing! Think of how much more we would be able to do with more resources, more power!”
“No. What we’re going to do is wait,” Aurein stated. “We need to find out why Nelja lied to us. Until we do that, we’re not taking the promotion. We don’t even have to answer for a whole week. Until then, let’s lay low and look around. Break a few rules if we have to. There’s no way Nelja’s answer is correct—we need to find the truth ourselves.”
Flint looked between Allef and Aurein, hesitant. He knew the promotion was too good to be true, he knew they were right, but to so easily let go of what was—at least, once—one of his biggest temptations was harder than he expected.
“Alright. How can I help?” he finally offered.
“You’ll have to do the sleuthing,” Aurein replied.
Flint sighed, and the sigh came out as a wheeze. This new body was still plenty damaged from the breach earlier that morning.
“Of course I will,” Flint replied acerbically.
“Hey, I’d gladly take up the job if you could teach me how to phase through walls,” Allef shot.
“That’s right. Flint, you need to get into that database and see who the bootprints really belonged to. The sooner, the better—who knows if the Calamity Crew will delete the information before anyone can find it. Actually, let’s assume they already have.”
“Well, worst case scenario, I can just take Allef’s information drive and run the scan on the bootprints myself. It will only take thirty minutes,” Flint said. “I just need that opportunity.”
“Do whatever’s right. To avoid suspicion, we won’t be able to come with you. And remember, we can’t-”
“-Can’t get caught,” Flint finished, nodding. “I know, I know. We’ll be in deep shit if we get caught. We’ve already betrayed Talo once—it’s best not to let them know we don’t trust them a second time.”
“While you do that, Flint,” Allef began, “I think I know what we should do about my missing arm. I want to build an arm designed to counter Zero.”
“Are you serious?” Flint exclaimed. “No. You are not going to fight Zero. Not on my watch.”
“Relax. I won’t lie, I still want to kill him, but I’m not going to seek him out. I want to build an arm that will defend against him if he ever comes after us again. I’m not so stupid that I’d throw my life away like that again. Myasma… wouldn’t have wanted that.”
“What’s your idea?” Aurein asked.
“Gravity. He can stop things from moving if they touch him, but he can’t stop the force of gravity itself. You saw him—he walks on the ground like everyone else. I’ll incorporate one of those gravity regulators—you know, the ones we saw when we went to Teo Nora’s grave—into my arm. One big blast is all we need. If he ever comes near us again, I’ll unleash all of my energy at once into a repelling force to send him into orbit.”
“So a concentrated gravity nuke,” Flint reiterated.
“Exactly. A gravity nuke. And I’ll put regular upgrades into my arm too, of course.”
“Okay. Good.” Aurein nodded. “Then Allef and I will deal with that while you, Flint, look for an opening.”
Late that afternoon, Flint walked the hallways on the outskirts of Talo’s residential dome, taking the long way around towards the leader’s dome to avoid being sighted. Tonight, after getting close enough to the leader’s tower in the center of the dome, he’d abandon his body and send his ghost, along with the information drive he held between his fingertips, towards the top-secret supercomputer hidden in the tower’s heart.
The outer corridor of the residential dome bent slightly to the side, matching the subtle curvature of the dome’s base. Looking straight ahead revealed not the end of the corridor but the same wall he had always walked by, curved enough to block Flint’s field of view. The paint on the metallic walls was flaked in places, poorly kept due to the unfrequented nature of this hallway.
It was only just too early for the automatic lights overhead to turn on, so the hallway was lit exclusively by gentle sunlight. Trapezoidal windows bathed Flint in this light every few feet as he walked. The sun outside was barely hanging over the horizon, and the light it shone had taken on a dimmer, redder, almost purplish tone, shining shapes onto the opposite wall of the corridor. Faint dust hung in the air, a byproduct of the dock breach that had occurred earlier the same day and brought a taste of the desert’s cobalt blue sand dunes into the sanctum of the dome. The dust turned the sunlight poking through each window into a glowing, floating strip in the air that Flint broke over and over as he walked.
He didn’t know what exactly caused it, but something prompted Flint to stop walking. Some kind of sound, like a whisper. A glowing strip of light from a window hung in front of him at eye level, and Flint watched the dust particles as they drifted aimlessly through the sunlight, illuminated one moment, then hidden the next.
It was pareidolia at first. The dust particles appeared to reveal a face suspended in the light, beginning subtle, becoming unmistakable. It was the face of a man looking just away from Flint which turned slowly until he met Flint’s eye.
“There he is,” the face said.
A long, sharp object stabbed into the back of Flint’s head, killing his body instantly.
Aurein and Allef stood in Talo’s residential dome armory, studying the numerous high-tech weapons on the walls as they waited for the head of weapons management to appear at the front counter.
“How can I help you?” the weapons manager asked, stepping into view from a hidden room. He had a severe limp as he walked, but his damaged gait didn’t seem to bother him. “Need a gun? You want energy or physical projectiles?”
“We’d like to know if you make arms. Prosthetic arms,” Aurein asked.
“With weapons,” Allef added.
The weapons manager looked between the two as if the question offended him slightly.
“We have robotic enhancements, but not entire prosthetic arms. You’ll have to visit the medical wing if-”
Suddenly, the door to the armory burst open and a familiar but unexpected figure burst through. It was Jim, supreme commander of Talo, in the flesh. His forehead was beading with sweat and he wore an urgent expression, in great contrast to the shocked expressions of everyone else in the room.
“Where’s the ghost guy?! Where’s Flint?!” Jim demanded, searching the room.
“Commander Jim, sir!” the weapons manager exclaimed. “What are you doing in the residential dome?!”
“We don’t know where Flint is,” Aurein replied. He didn’t want to lie to Jim, especially since he had taken his and Flint’s side so often and gotten them through so many tight spots, but no leader of Talo could be trusted at this moment. “We haven’t seen him around for a while.”
Jim ran up to Aurein and grabbed his shoulders with frightening strength.
“You three are in serious danger,” Jim stressed, looking into Aurein’s eyes with an intense, unyielding gaze. “You need to get out of here, and fast. You’ve gotta get out of Talo.”
“What?! Why?” Allef exclaimed. “How do you know?”
Jim turned his intense expression to Allef, who flinched.
“Because Nelja is asleep,” Jim replied, dropping the weight of an anvil on each word. “And it’s still daytime.”
# # #
Flint’s soul was ejected from his body with a jolt, and the face in the dust was gone. He turned around to see a darkly-dressed woman wearing a head covering—Bane—holding a heavy, pitch black knife. But what was she doing, coming after him? She trained her eyes on Flint’s ghost, which was hovering a few millimeters over the dusty floor, and rushed towards him with surprising agility. She swung the knife at Flint’s chest, the knife glinting briefly in the sunlight. It was the same glint that the scales on Tro’s body had shared when the lights of The Ray shone on them, when Tro had killed Flint’s body over and over again and damaged Flint’s soul itself. Flint stepped backwards barely in time.
With a jolt of pain, a tiny gash appeared on Flint’s chest, and light poured out of the small wound. Had he not avoided the attack, Flint’s soul could have been cut in two. Flint put a hand on the gash on his chest, quelling the flow of light escaping his body.
“How did you know that could hurt me?” he asked the mysterious figure.
“I have had extensive practice with manipulating the soul,” an ethereal voice said from behind him, which Flint quickly recognized as the voice of the face in the dust.
Flint summoned his ghostly gun in his free hand and aimed it at Bane, who was bracing her stance in a bizarre way. Then, with no sound or warning, her body began to rapidly crumple in on itself, limbs folding into each other and flattening themselves into thin, plane-like surfaces. The series of flat planes that was her body then collapsed in on themselves, too, until she was nothing but an impossibly thin, glowing white line in the air that passed through Flint’s chest in an instant right as Flint pulled the trigger. Flint expected pain, but there was none. Instead, Bane had rematerialized behind him and, before he could even turn all the way around, the knife plunged into Flint’s shoulder, spewing light out of the fresh wound in his soul.
He ran, throwing himself into the wall and phasing through it. His soul passed through the wall and fell onto carpeted ground—he was in someone’s empty quarters now, and he sat on the floor of the room, trying to gather himself.
Turning to his left, he was surprised to come eye-to-eye with the face again. In the fuller light of the quarters he had stumbled into, it was easier to make out the entire ethereal body that the face belonged to. Flint quickly recognized the floating figure as Nelja.
Nelja’s translucent figure vanished, and Flint could very faintly hear his deep voice from the other side of the wall Flint had phased through.
“Yes, a bit more to the left. He’s on the floor,” Nelja said in his clear, authoritative tone.
Then, the impossibly thin line of white light shot through the wall soundlessly, riding downwards along the metal, then passing underneath Flint on the floor, becoming Bane again once the line was behind Flint. Flint rolled out of the way to avoid another stab, the pitch black knife sticking into the floor of the quarters. Flint fired at Bane with his ethereal gun, but when the ghostly bullet impacted her body, she became a line again which wrapped around the bullet and traveled along the wall again when the bullet impacted the wall.
Once again, Flint ran. He pushed himself back through the wall in the quarters where he came, finding himself in the hallway again, then phased through the wall of the dome itself, sprinting away from the dome in the scorching blue sand. Bullets don’t work, he thought as he ran.
The sun was but a thin glow over the backlit horizon, cradled between dunes of dark sand as it carefully descended. Flint continued to run towards it as the sky became darker, dimmer, a shade of sinister purple that surrounded him on every side. He turned around to see the glowing white line sliding between the grains of sand in an erratic pattern, like a frantic bolt of lightning. Like he suspected, Bane could reduce herself to a 1-dimensional state, like an impossibly thin line. But, in this 1-dimensional state, she could not see in 3 dimensions. Unlike the flat walls within the dome, straight lines were impossible in a place like the desert, where she was surrounded by unpredictable grooves that twisted in every direction. There was no way for Bane to right herself and find him in her line-like state, a fact which became apparent the longer Flint watched the line zip between the grains of sand aimlessly.
“This way,” Nelja’s voice said from beside Flint. The line immediately righted its direction and began heading towards Flint. Flint turned to see the spirit of Nelja floating beside him, his expression calm and collected. How did Nelja catch up so quickly?
“It’s best not to run. She can hear your footsteps, too,” Nelja said. Flint fired a ghostly bullet at the head of Nelja’s spirit, but Nelja suddenly vanished like something forgotten.
“Not so fast,” Nelja’s voice said from behind Flint. “We can’t have you flinging your bullets around like that. Not to mention, she can hear your gunshots, too.”
Flint then understood what he was up against. An assassin who could become an infinitely thin 1-dimensional line and access any place in 3-dimensional space, paired with a spirit who could appear anywhere he liked in the blink of an eye and guide the 1-dimensional line along with his voice. In the desert, the approach of the line was slowed, but she would reach Flint eventually. And, at some point, Flint wouldn’t be able to dodge that black knife.
“What the hell do you mean, Nelja’s asleep?” Aurein demanded as he ran beside Jim. Jim’s stride was wide and fast, making it hard for Aurein to keep up, and Jim’s oversized sword rocked back and forth on the straps on his back.
“Nelja’s Val is astral projection,” Jim explained. “His soul can leave his body whenever he’s asleep and instantly travel to any place he’s seen before. It leaves his body defenseless, though.”
“But why would he want to hurt us?” Allef asked. “What did we do?”
“I don’t know exactly,” Jim admitted. “But I heard the Calamity Crew talking about how, if they couldn’t control Flint and you guys any longer, they didn’t need you. Something about you guys being ‘too dangerous to be left alive.’”
“It sounds like they heard us,” Allef told Aurein, who nodded solemnly.
“Were you guys plotting against Talo again?” Jim asked.
“Of course not-” Aurein began, but Allef interrupted him.
“Well if there’s no point of hiding it any longer, then yeah. We didn’t trust you guys,” Allef replied.
Jim burst out into laughter. He continued laughing even as he led the two into the officials’ dome.
“Why are you helping us?” Aurein asked once Jim’s laughter subsided. “Aren’t you with the Calamity Crew?”
“You know why I’m helping you guys?” Jim replied, a huge smile still on his face. “Because this job is the most boring thing that has ever happened to me. Being supreme commander sucks, and I only do it so the Calamity Crew doesn’t lead Talo in my place. You guys, though, are the most interesting people I have ever met. Everything you guys are doing is exciting. I couldn’t just let the Calamity Crew get rid of you.”
“Won’t you get fired from Talo?” Allef asked, amused but apparently concerned. “It sounds like they won’t like you helping us. They might even try to kill you, too.”
“I don’t really care anymore,” Jim replied. “It’ll work out. And, don’t worry about me—I won’t die.”
The three stopped at the base of the leader’s tower in the center of the officials’ dome. Jim pressed the “call” button over and over again on the elevator, scanning his fingerprints on a hand scanner each time. The elevator door opened to reveal several armed guards standing within.
“Hi, hello, important leader business going on,” Jim said, pushing Allef and Aurein by the guards and standing in the center of the elevator. “You can leave now,” he told the guards. “Bye. Nice seeing you. Now get out!”
When the guards had left and the elevator doors closed, Jim turned to Aurein.
“What did you want to look at, again?” Jim asked.
“I think this could be happening because of what the Calamity Crew found when we had them scan the bootprints on Erista. I don’t think they want us to know who has the Terminus now. We need to get to your quantum computer.”
“Got it,” Jim said, pressing one of the countless digital buttons on the elevator panel. With a lurch, the elevator began to ascend.
“Robot girl,” Jim addressed Allef.
“Allef.”
“Allef, do you still have the bootprint files to scan? I want you to take care of that while Aurein and I make sure we aren’t being followed. We might be able to save Flint by discovering what the Calamity Crew didn’t want you guys to find. Give them a bigger problem to worry about, you know?”
“Uh… alright. On my own? Are you sure you trust me with that?”
“What’s the worst that could happen? Actually, nevermind. The worst that can happen is you get assassinated. But I’ll try not to let that happen.”
“Me too.”
“Aurein, we need to act as backup,” Jim said, turning to Aurein. “The Calamity Crew won’t be too happy if they find us.”
“Got it,” Aurein affirmed.
The elevator reached the top of the tower at last and the doors opened, Jim, Allef, and Aurein sprinting out into a set of corridors. Jim led them around a corner and to a heavy-looking door, which stubbornly refused to open despite Jim’s best efforts.
“They locked it on me!” Jim exclaimed. “It usually opens when it reads my fingerprint! I’m locked out!”
“I got this,” Aurein said, touching the handle and turning it slowly into gold.
“That’ll take too long,” Allef said, stepping forward. “May I?”
“No, don’t worry guys, I can take care of it,” Jim said, stepping in front of both of them. “Stand back.”
Jim grabbed the handle of his massive sword, Bumblo, and unsheathed it with a satisfying metallic scrape. Then, in the blink of an eye, he moved the sword with almost imperceivable speed, and a flash of sparks came from the door. Jim returned his sword to its sheath.
The partially-golden door slowly fell towards them, separated from the wall by a perfectly rectangular cut that had been made around it. The heavy metal door landed on the floor with an ear-piercing crash, causing Allef to wince.
“Well,” Allef said. “I suppose this works.”
They each stepped on the door on their way into the top-secret Talo computing room. The overhead lights were off, and the only glows in the room came from the faint blue LED lights on the towering black monolith in the middle of the room that was Talo’s quantum supercomputer. Jim turned on the lights to reveal the supercomputer’s true size, like the trunk of the largest tree Allef had ever seen, watching as it booted to life and a screen on its side welcomed him.
Allef dispensed another copy of the bootprint picture drive from her hand and plugged it into the supercomputer’s side.
COMMENCE SCAN?
Allef accepted the prompt and the three waited as the supercomputer compared the images with countless gigabytes of data in order to locate the bootprints’ owner.
In the same moments the supercomputer analyzed the images, the completion of the operation ticking up percent by percent, Flint watched as the glowing white line that was his pursuer weaved between the grains of sand of Epstrum’s blue desert, creeping closer by the second as Nelja guided her. The supercomputer’s analysis reached 40%, 50%, 60%, and the line in the sand shortened to twenty feet away, fifteen feet away, ten feet away. Slowly, steadily, Flint’s doom and salvation simultaneously approached.
80%
Five feet away.
95%
Two feet away.
Allef looked at the results of the scan with bewilderment. The owner of the bootprints had been identified, but that didn’t surprise her nearly as much as the location the bootprints had been located.
In front of Allef was an image of a dusty, barely-identifiable set of bootprints in carpet, a frame taken from a feed of Talo’s internal security footage. The location of the picture was inside the quarters of Spine, Talo’s old leader. The image was taken roughly five years ago, not long before the end of Spine’s leadership.
And the bootprints belonged to one of Keila’s Big 5 who mysteriously died in battle long ago, to a woman named Tria.
Allef printed a copy of the analysis report, then another, then another. Aurein and Jim looked at the analysis in turn, exchanging shocked looks. Jim looked more shocked than the other two combined. Allef’s heart was racing, an excitement she had seldom known before pumping through her body.
“I had no idea…” Jim uttered. “The Calamity Crew even kept this from me. Spine, work with Keila? But he was the most Talo-loyal person I’ve ever known…”
“No, Spine wasn’t working with Keila,” Aurein said. “He had a relationship with this woman, Tria, in secret. Neither faction wanted this. Zero told Flint at Teo Nora’s grave that he would bring justice to your old leader for what he did. That wasn’t about you, Jim—that was about Spine.”
“That’s what the Calamity Crew wanted to cover up! They couldn’t let anyone know that Spine fraternized with someone outside of Talo!” Allef exclaimed.
She turned to Jim. “Jim, I need you to broadcast that image to every screen in the domes here. Got it?”
Jim nodded, moving to a set of controls on a wall, and Allef then grabbed the pile of analysis reports she had printed from the supercomputer, each one bearing evidence of the forbidden love Talo’s old leader had partaken in, and sprinted out the door.
“Allef, wait! What the hell are you doing?!” Aurein exclaimed.
“I’m saving Flint’s life!” she shouted from within the hallway.
Allef ran within the hallways towards the balcony at the top of the leader’s tower which looked above the majority of Talo’s officials’ dome. She reached the balcony, threw the pile of papers down at the Talo members below, and grabbed a microphone that connected to every PA in all of Talo’s desert domes.
“Can you hear me, you idiots?! I have some news for you about your leader, Spine!” Allef shouted into the microphone. Her words resonated throughout the officials’ dome, attracting wandering Talo members and drawing their attention towards the tower. Outside of the domes, the spirit of Nelja turned away from Flint towards the muffled sound, and the line in the sand halted in its place, becoming a person once more who, too, turned to the domes.
“No…” Nelja uttered, disbelieving. Nelja’s ethereal body turned to Bane, who, too, had heard the sound and returned to her physical form.
“Colma, there’s an emergency in the domes!” Nelja shouted. “Someone’s broadcasting Spine’s secret!” Nelja’s spirit suddenly vanished from the desert, and the mysterious figure pulled down her head covering, revealing the face of Colma, looking at the domes with terror—Flint seemed to be the least of her concerns anymore.
“Nora damn it!” she cursed, becoming a glowing line in the sand once more which bolted towards the Talo headquarters.
Back inside of the domes, Allef continued into the microphone, “You might think Spine was the paragon of Talo’s spirit! You probably think he was another heartless, emotionless soldier like the rest of you all! But look at the images in front of you!”
The data from the supercomputer then suddenly occupied every information screen in Talo’s domes. It displayed the bootprints in Spine’s room and the person who they belonged to, including her rank and faction. Keila’s colors shone down on the bewildered and shocked members of Talo, whispering amongst themselves urgently.
Nelja’s spirit appeared next to Allef, his ghostly face twisted with rage.
“You idiot! Do you have any idea what you’re doing?!” Nelja roared.
“I’m telling the truth! I’m finally letting everyone here know the truth: your leader was a lover! He loved someone despite the faction they were in or the meaningless labels placed upon them! He believed, for a moment, in peace! This is the reality that your leaders, the Calamity Crew, were hiding from you!”
Allef watched below as Talo’s officials, each of them once loyal to Talo’s war and name, began to show their doubts. The images in front of each of them, each sourced from Talo’s own supercomputer, were too compelling to simply be ignored. Nelja’s spirit disappeared.
“Allef, we have a problem!” Aurein shouted, his figure occupying the door to the balcony. “Nelja’s sent soldiers after us! Let’s find Flint and get the hell out of here!”
“Then it is time for me to make my exit,” Allef spoke into the microphone, a note of satisfaction in her voice.
Allef, Aurein, and Jim rendezvoused with Flint, or, least, his soul, by the spaceport in Talo’s residential dome. The majority of Talo’s dome population had gathered in the official’s dome, assaulting the Calamity Crew with questions and accusations.
“Is Talo going to fall apart because of this?” Flint asked after being filled in. The four of them stood and floated just outside of the Lucre Main.
“I think Talo as we know it will, yeah,” Jim answered. Jim had efficiently fought off every guard that the Calamity Crew sent after them without even unsheathing his oversized sword, Bumblo. “But I’ll be here to help out.”
“Wait, you’re not coming with us?” Allef questioned.
Jim smiled another of his wide-mouthed, toothy smiles. “As much fun as it would be, I need to stay here at the domes. Talo needs me around more than ever. Maybe another time, I’ll come with you guys.”
“Thank you for your help,” Flint said. “Really. For everything. I wouldn’t be in this world anymore if it wasn’t for you. For all of you guys.”
“Of course,” Jim said. “If you ever get into a pinch again, you know where to find me. Good luck out there!”
Jim departed, his tall figure disappearing into the spaceport doorway. Now that they were left to their own devices, Allef asked Flint:
“Where are we going, anyway?”
“Straight to Keila, of course. We’ve found the owner of the Terminus, so now all we have to do is seek her out. It’s about time we hop out of the frying pan and head straight into the fire.”
