Ouroboros 3: Repeat (6 page)

The real one.

And that’s why she sat there and she controlled herself.

‘I don’t understand,’ she forced herself to say in a falsely pathetic tone, ‘what is it you’re after? What exactly do you need to know?’

‘
Where the entity is. What it feels like when it takes control. Just anything you know, anything,’ Carson added as he leaned down and kissed her again.

She instinctively shrugged away from his grasp.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, ‘I’m just confused.’

As soon as she admitted to that, Carson pulled closer, running his hand down her back reassuringly.

In other words, he tried to distract her.

Because that’s what he was—a distraction. Every time she appeared to waver, he would draw closer and closer.

But he couldn’t distract her.

Yet maybe she could distract him.

She suddenly pushed to her feet, locking a hand on his wrist as she did. ‘Carson, I’ll tell you everything. Of course I will. But what exactly do you need to know?’

‘
Just how it feels.’

‘
How it feels to what?’

‘
Access the entity,’ he finally admitted.

‘
Access the entity,’ she repeated, smiling up at him as she did.

‘
We need to know everything about it, Nida. Everything. Whatever it has told you, whatever it has shown you. But most of all, how you managed to access it.’

She blinked her eyes closed, and when she opened them, Carson was right there before her.

He cut such an imposing figure. He was broad chested, tall, and strong. Yet his expression was so divinely calming, that despite his build, he appeared cherub like.

As if she could trust him completely.

‘Come on, Nida, tell us. Then this will all go away,’ he promised.

And he was likely telling the truth.

As soon as she told the Vex what they wanted to know, this simulation would likely end.

Then perhaps her life would end soon after.

She wasn’t going to give up though. Instead, she nodded her head. She reached a hand to Carson. ‘Why do you need to know how to access the entity?’

‘
Because that’s how we’ll finally free you,’ he said immediately. ‘That’s how we’ll send it back to its own time. You know that, right? You remember, don’t you, Nida?’ as he asked that, a fog descended on her mind.

It was almost as if someone were trying to force memories right into her brain.

It didn’t work.

She simply let the fog drift past her.

‘So, come on, Nida, tell us,’ Carson asked once more.

She considered him silently. In fact, she considered the whole room in total silence as she turned slowly on her foot.

They wanted the entity.

This had always been about the entity.

Even in the past, when Cara had attacked her, it had been about the entity.

Nida was touched, and that meant something to these people.

It meant power.

Suddenly her brow crumpled over her eyes as understanding engulfed her.

She still didn’t know what weapon destroyed Remus 12, but what if it had been the entity?

It had the power; she knew that as a fact.

And the people before her—the Vex, the true minds behind this simulation—they certainly had the desire. She’d experienced Cara’s burning fundamentalism. She could see how someone possessed with such self-certainty could destroy their very home.

‘
I’m not going to let you do it,’ she suddenly whispered.

‘
Sorry?’ Carson looked confused.

‘
I won’t let you have access to it. I won’t tell you its secrets. I won’t tell you its visions. And I will not use it as a weapon,’ she spat finally.

Carson stood stock-still.

In fact, no one and nothing in the room moved.

Because the simulation stopped.

She broke it.

She pushed through it. Just like she had before; she surfaced from it like you would a dream.

Then finally, she was back on that cold medical table.

Back in the room.

Back in the future.

She could hear the scientists around her, their activity frantic, their voices a droning mess of worry and frustration.

‘She broke through it again,’ one spat. ‘Increase the output of the generator. We need that information. If we don’t get it, we’re all dead.’

‘
Is she unconscious? Don’t speak in front of her,’ someone else chided.

‘
It doesn’t matter; it’s not like she’s going anywhere. She’s blocked off from the entity. She has no power, and she’s pumped full of drugs and restrained,’ someone else replied.

The entity.

She was blocked off from it.

Though she’d already sensed that fact, to have it confirmed sent a strange kind of energy rippling through her.

Determination.

And the feeling that the opportunity she had been desperate to find was finally upon her.

‘How is the other one? Do we have all the information we need from the human male?’

‘
Yes. He’s been forthcoming. We know all he does on the likely response of the Galactic Coalition Academy. The General will be pleased. Though we should probably run the simulation a few more times to garner everything we can about the Galactic Coalition, we have enough now to know how to defeat them.’

Nida stilled.

Though she had not yet moved a centimetre, her muscles stiffened to the point of snapping.

‘
We need to triple our efforts at finding the touched’s secrets. We must know how she accesses the entity. We must know how she controls it. We need to find out now.’

Nida listened to the doctors and scientists speak, and she drew colder and colder with every word.

‘But what do you suggest?’ someone else asked. ‘She isn’t buying the simulation.’

‘
Then change it. Find something, anything that will force her to show us what she knows.’

She felt sick. Powerfully, powerfully sick. Nausea rose through her belly, snaking up to her throat.

But she didn’t choke.

She simply lay there and she listened.

‘Take her back to when she opened the time gate; force the simulation to recreate that scene so she shows us what she did,’ someone suggested.

‘
It won’t work. We can’t sift through her memories. She is resisting. She will know something is wrong.’

‘
Try,’ someone commanded in a shout that echoed through the room. ‘We don’t have time to fail. The event is almost upon us. Everything in our history leads to this point. I shouldn’t have to remind you what will happen to us all if we fail.’

Silence descended through the room.

‘We are fighting for our very existence. And unless we unlock her secrets, we could fail.’

She needed to know more. She had to find out as much as she could.

Because she had to stop them.

The few facts she now had scared the life out of her.

The Vex wanted to find out how she accessed the entity. Why? So they could use it as a weapon? If so, against whom? Themselves or the Coalition?

That possibility sent another wave of nausea cascading through her. Yet again, she just managed to stop herself from choking though.

Was that it? Was that why the Vex were forcing Carson and her to undergo these visions? Is that why they were prying information on the Galactic Coalition’s battle capability from Carson’s mind, whilst scraping knowledge of the entity from hers?

Her mind burnt with her questions. No matter what she did, she couldn’t put them out.

And maybe she didn’t want to.

Because, although she had no idea what was happening, she could guess how important it was.

She was now fighting not just for her life and Carson’s, but for the very existence of the United Galactic Coalition as well.

Her future.

She had to do something.

Now.

Right now.

There was no more time for questions, no more time to wait.

For the longer she lay there, the more they found from Carson’s mind.

But what could she do?

As the Vex had already rightly pointed out, she was blocked off from the entity, drugged, and had no power of her own.

 
. . . .

The entity.

She could feel only a trace of it. Only a hint. Only a reminder of what it could do.

She held onto that hint, that suggestion, that scrap of a memory.

She tried to force herself into it. Tried to bundle up her mind and body until she could squeeze it right into that distant feeling in her hand.

She had travelled so far with it.

From Remus 12, to Earth, then back to Remus 12. Even through time itself.

She had grown accustomed to it.

She had relied on it. And though, at times, she had become suspicious of it—she had questioned why it had led them to the resistance, and why it had forced her to remain with Varo—she now expunged that doubt from her mind.

For it was all she had.

‘Hold on,’ one of the scientists said, their voice pressured, ‘I am picking up strange readings from the touched.’

‘
What is it?’

‘
I . . . .’

Nida blocked them out. The voices. Their presence.

The room as a whole.

She let it slip from her awareness as she focused everything she had on her left hand.

On the entity.

She tried to break down the wall that separated them.

She tried to get through.

She could feel it on the other side. Its power held back by some kind of insubstantial force.

With everything she had, the worst recruit in 1000 years fought it.

Never letting up, never giving up, and forcing everything she had into the task.

Until finally she did it.

Nida did it. She pushed through. She accessed the entity. She poured her mind into it,
and as she did, it poured into her. The wall that had been separating them simply crumbled.

And the power surged.

She grabbed hold of it and pulled.

She was going to break free. Even though it was dangerous to rely on the entity, to use its power, she had no choice.

She had to break free and take Carson and the entity with her. She couldn’t remain here until the Vex used her as a weapon.

So she opened up completely, the power coursing through her veins as she did.

Her heart beat with it, her mind roared from it, and her body consumed it, until finally she lifted up.

She cancelled out the effects of gravity as if it were nothing more than a mere fact, and something easily ignored.

As she did, she floated above her bed until she hung there suspended in the air a few metres above it.

She could hear the scientists screaming; she could see their frightened and fearful expressions.

But she did not hesitate.

She knew they could reinstate the wall at any moment, so she had to act now.

She pointed to the ceiling in one strong move.

She lifted her hand, and the room lifted with her.

Everything from the beds to the equipment to the people.

They all rose from their feet until they floated there.

Though she felt the power coursing through her and knew she could tear through everything, she restrained herself.

She would not kill them.

She wasn’t like that.

So she held onto her control as she pushed her hand out. Instantly the scientists and doctors tumbled towards the walls. She sent all the medical devices and technology tumbling behind them.

She opened the door on the far side of the room with little more than a thought and a swipe of one extended finger.

She sent the scientists spinning through it.

Then she closed the door and allowed the remaining devices and objects in the room to heap against it, blocking it closed.

It was incredible. The ease with which she manipulated the world around her. The power. The possibility. It went beyond anything she’d ever experienced.

Though a part of her wanted to keep hold of it, wanted to revel in the strength it provided her, she did not.

She forced herself to let go.

To close her mind off to the entity, to force it backwards.

And as she did, she descended back down to the ground until she fell lightly to her feet.