Seth’s room was dark, quiet. The lights dimmed down and the hall shut away so he could lose focus on the outside world and instead feel inward. The rest of the week had passed with little conflict. He hadn’t needed to show his face for more than meals and daily exercises. The other trainees allowed to take their tests without his or Para’s issues getting in the way. David eventually retook his test as well, passing it like it was nothing. Though comparatively it may as well have been. He didn’t want to think what that place was like for someone even less prepared, let alone someone almost just as hurt. No one was expecting something from him after all.

  Training really hadn’t been mandatory after all, but Seth still felt like he had to get himself together. And exacerbating tension further wasn’t going to help that. So the quiet gave him the chance to commune with the Garkah. To get a better read on the abyss, and why… why the hell it could control him.

  “Because it’s alive.”

  Threat was being blunt like never before.

  “It’s energy, like everything you’ve manipulated before. But also like us, twisted and formed into a shape. Just from the wrong way round, like a cut out or a metal press to a sheet. It was originally a buildup, extra…. Excess. It’s power I brought with me into the Ark. Or at least a part of it. And… and I wasn’t given it, or took it, willingly.”

  Seth felt Speaker try to realign the conversation, to keep an already long past from returning and adding another casualty to all this.

  “The problem right now is not its origin, it is what is occurring with it now. Energy like that does not talk. Let alone influence as it has.”

  Seth felt a collective worry at this comment, but then a seemingly collective correction.

  ‘Except you…?’

  He could feel Speaker run his hand down his face.

  “We are different, we have actually been physical beings, actually been… uggh… sapient. This ‘abyss’ was never even sentient, has never known a world outside the confines we sealed it into. So it seemingly having a will of its own is incredibly problematic.”

  Seth could sense another Garkah draw his attention, the one he’d named Concoctor all those years ago, and the head of the team that made the Ark. His voice was mildly energetic, but wizened and stern.

  “Is it? Are we? The Threat’s energy went through the same process as we all did, so why is it so outlandish? The brilliance of the Ark made each of us what we are today, beings of pure energy. Just as it was designed to do. Just as it needed to. Weaving the very fabric of our power into bodies only we could control. Only we could inhabit. Fully simulated and tailored so that the consciousness crossover could go through smoothly. Could facilitate our retained identities rather than our eventual disassociation and conglomeration without them.”

  This was at least pulling Seth out of his fear, but only through sheer weight of syllables.

  “But as you feel still today, this simulation is incredibly robust. Practically down to the molecular level. Every separate entity that went into the Ark was given their own bodies. Their bodies, defects and all. No consideration or need for all the frivolities that had come before. The Threat was no exception, but his energy was separated far more completely. Like a mass of clay forced through a hole too small for its bulk. While we were able to use and retain our own energy as a part of us, Threat was completely cut off. Both as he entered and as he came to rest with us in the core singularity. Our fear too great to just leave him be in that most fragile of times post… our fall. So, the mass of his energies were disconnected, stuck locked away in the intake buffer like all of our excesses till we could take them back in. And then another piece of these energies was sealed away again, inside of Seth.”

  He could almost feel the bony finger pointing toward him.

  “Before, in the Ark, these cut off energies would have been pale imitations. Outlines roiling in on and out of the imprint of their source. If not still clinging to what they used to be before… Never mind. At best, this amorphous existence was a continuous back flow and ebb of emotions. Both the predominant left over and that which was taken in. Any beings that could have come about from this soup of primordial existentialism would have melded together and destroyed each other before any sort of sentience could be created to fill the void.”

  ‘Except…’

  “Except now there is only a single contained and stifled point. No back flow or roil to churn away solidification. And more than likely it has access to Seth’s experiences, just as we do. Our works are mighty, but even we cannot avoid leaving cracks. I contend then that Threat’s energies are working through an accelerated sentience, it is gaining a stable personality using everything that Seth passively feeds it by simple being alive. It is becoming a being all its own, becoming aware of what it is. If it is allowed to progress it may very well learn to break its binds, learn the breadth of what Seth knows, what its progenitor knew, and consume us all! Therefore I suggest we… head it off at the pass. A full complete consciousness should be able subsume this energy and wipe away this proto-personality before it ever attains sentience. Thus reverting it to just that, energy.”

  A wave of affirmation signaled the Garkah understood his theory, if leaving Seth still a little confused. Speaker and Threat both moved to speak, but Threat thought better and let Speaker up first.

  “The issue then is who can withstand such power, especially if it could possibly be sentient even now? There were many who could have reached such heights, but…”

  Speaker directed his regard at Threat, but he seemed to rebuke it.

  “I can’t…”

  A tinge of collective surprise.

  “Hgrrrr. When… when I made it in here, there wasn’t much of me left! I have flashes, can see most of who I was and what I did. All the… people I killed. But I was taken just as much as they were. That power, that thing, it eats away at you just as much as it eats… everything around it. Even when I had control it was a struggle. So when I lost that… I can’t hold it again. And… and honestly I’m surprised you would even think of letting me! I mean sure we’ve moved on, we’re cordial, but this is kinda bordering on forgetfulness.”

  Threat was just as capable of throwing the mood about where he wished, as the collective before him fell back a few notches on whatever progress they’d made.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  “But… but really, we already have the perfect candidate.”

  Seth felt Threat focus on him.

  ‘W-wait…’

  The collective rustled but understood.

  “You’ve handled it before, dealt with the personality to boot. Not to mention if you claim it we can support you in controlling it. I might not be able to hold it, but I can help you understand what not to do. Truthfully, you’re the only one who can really do this. This is your body after all.”

  Seth was… apprehensive? No, no he was downright incongruous!

  ‘I- I can’t! That- That thing took control of me! Almost took away everything from me! Again! I…’

  Seth was inconsolable. He shook at the thought of having to relive that emptiness. That blotting out that had started all this. Like a gravity that seemed to pull him away from himself and overlap him. Replace what was his with…

  Speaker quickly rose to assuage him.

  “This is only one solution…! We have not been through the full process of decision making. If you do not feel like you are capable, then… Then we can find other means. Please… just rest. We can take it from here.”

  Seth accepted the opportunity and released his inward focus, letting the Garkah return to just the background. He was lying in bed, not wanting to deal with the world. But he knew in the back of his mind… he knew what he was going to have to do eventually.

  The room was dark, private, bordering on cloister with everything locking it away. Walls of concrete and plastic composite, wired up to the brim. Solid doors that needed full biometric data to get through. Self-tuning pressure sensors expecting as such. A few lasers and glass walls for dramatic effect, all to mask the cameras so buried and numerous they could build the room from scratch if given the program. No one entered this place without the system knowing it. No one took anything from it without the system knowing it. All to protect a single server stack, a single filing cabinet, and room enough to review all contained.

  It was a trap, one with less consequences than it would appear. But just conspicuous enough to get attention. A few signs, a file or two in the terminal provided maps, some left behind key cards giving clues to those looking. Baited with all the data taken and cataloged from now months of training. And once this course ended, it would be wiped clean, new traps created for those incoming, and baited fresh with what they gave away willingly. A test beyond the tests to see if any trainees had the aptitude for subterfuge.

  It even already had a victor munching on their cheese… or cookie to be exact. She took the hints a little too to heart and made out fine enough for a first go at it. He didn’t even find the damage she’d done.

  But that wasn’t why Parasonic was there. That wasn’t why he’d come all the way down here. That wasn’t why all those systems were shut down. That wasn’t why a full server was removed and moved to one of the desk mounted screens. That wasn’t why he was burning his eyes in the dark watching a recording play over and over.

  He needed to be sure of what the hell he saw.

  The data logs for their simulations were precise, marking the individual draw from each emitter, the force put out against its constructs, the many and varied waveforms that could be picked up and understood as attacks. But all he had was the video. All there was… was that video.

  The logs were corrupted, reading draws across all emitters that outweighed the entire capacitor circuit. The force meters were clear, but outrageous. And the waveforms… They were all static. Not fuzzy and indistinguishable, but completely stopped. Like nothing, not even the systems own feedback, was picked up. But all of that was just background. All of that was just noise. All Para could care about was that damn lightshow.

  Watching hardlight constructs derez in the impact. Flare out of existence as they were supposed to. Braking apart into the light they used to be. It was all technically borrowed tech, mad scientists always found ways to pull the impossible out of their asses. He didn’t understand how it worked, just that it did. And what it meant. Because he’d seen impacts far stronger than that, felt them himself, hit walls of hardlight thicker than that protective layer. And none of them were as bright as this was. And none of them proceeded what he saw.

  None of the others cared, all they saw was someone pushed too far. Fight or flight becoming slaughter all in your path. The simulation did its job just as he wanted… but then it kept going. He could still hear him yelling through the glass. The fucking bullet proof glass nearly a full foot thick. Voice buzzing like it was put through a tesla coil. He could still see that damn eye, almost feel it staring at him. He thought they were just supposed to be blue. When he saw them light up that first day he knew this kid was hiding behind all that armor. Needed a push, if not a shove, to show what he could really do. To show what he was really doing under it all. But this…

  Even his team could barely manage this. It was meant to test them, force them to face down what they were afraid of. What they had all suffered. It wasn’t meant to be ripped through like it was nothing. So Para was stuck glaring into the overly bright lights. Picking pixels out of pixilation. Scrutinizing all that the cameras were able to pick up. But even they had limits. He’d put the simulation power too high and was paying for it in framerates and resolution scales. But he knew what he saw. He knew what he’d caused. He knew… there had been damage.

  And yet it wasn’t there when all was said and done. It wasn’t there!

  “So where the hell did it go?”

  *bzzz* “I know you’re probably feeling a little overwhelmed right now. But there’s something I need to get for me. And this time ignore the cookie."

  The dust in the air was stale. Empty. It tried its best to cling like the real thing, but you can’t simulate how it really feels. The ache in her muscles was real enough, nothing she couldn’t handle. The gash through her padded arm hurt, but Medi never took no for an answer. Which was good, because her knee was broken. And so was an ankle. And a wrist. And it was feeling like she had a concussion.

  But she’d had to go back. Aegis had to know what it was like again. Why Para though it was a good idea to put trainees through this. And why Seth had… had lost himself like he did.

  She’d made this damn thing for herself. For her fear, for her own fight. Everyone else just found it and wanted what she had. Or wanted to prove they had moved on too. Just another fad like punching that damn ball around. But none of them ever managed seventy percent. If they ever tried that was.

  Too much damage done, too many scars. Or it wasn’t worth it to break what was so precariously put back together. Now everyone just saw it as a punishment. Something to do if you felt that fear crawling back. A punching bag that put you straight. If you put the setting low enough.

  An artificial catharsis.

  But for her, it was just Sunday training. Now over and done. The simulated world of that dark past blinding away to the real. To the soothing warm field that she needed as the control booth loomed over. As she limped over and away, rubbing a few misplaced bones as they reset. As the door to the private lockers opened for her. And filled with stoic candor. An inert hilt clanking against dark armor. It was Erdwut’s turn at the past apparently.

  “I thought you were done with this place.”

  His eyes were looking down on her, even as they stood even. Just as they always have.

  “Thought I’d go ahead and put one last run in before our mission tomorrow. See if those smugglers can keep up. …Also… Para went too far again. Sent some of our trainees in there. I had to go back… or else they’d be alone in dealing with it.”

  Aegis kept calm, even as her cracked knee cap reformed and the gash on her arm sewed up. Even as the tension implicit stayed silent.

  “Good. Empathy is something you’re good at. We need more of that. Though Mag is still lead on the shipment. We need eyes on more than beatdowns. These traffickers are too slippery to follow all the way.”

  And then strained at the reminders unneeded. Reinforced almost in spite.

  “Well… be careful in there then. The south wall’s a little on the fritz.”

  She passed him by before it came to anything. Just more of the same from him. More of his own scars reflecting out of that damn stoic demeanor he wore. And putting everyone else into the places he saw fit for them. It was just how he was. How he coped.

  It didn’t matter, she’d found what she needed anyway. The feeling from that day, what her own fear had bred. That feeling of facing down real horrors and beating them to the punch. Though only fleeting bits. It wasn’t enough anymore. One hundred percent just didn’t bring back the looks in their eyes.

  So maybe Para was right…

  Just in the wrong way.

  Sometimes you have to shove people to see their true potential.