CHAPTER 8
Beta
I had just left a meeting of the Draco planetary council when Alpha made contact over our quantum bond.
Beta, I heard in my mind.We have a situation.
I paused in the corridor outside the council chamber, letting the Draco delegates pass by with their usual deference. They had grown accustomed to my presence over the past years—a blue-skinned giant who had come to the planet for love, only to be widowed by a terraforming accident, and then to serve as liaison between their world and the Magisterian Federation.
What kind of situation?I sent back, already moving toward a more private location.
A young Hippolytan woman has summoned an energy entity from the quantum void.
I stopped walking entirely.That’s impossible. The summoning protocols were classified decades ago.
Nevertheless, it has happened. The girl was under light surveillance for possible recruitment, and the sensor between her thighs pinged with a hyper-normal signature. I reached out and found the entity’s signature on Hippolyta and pieced it together. And Beta?—
There was something in Alpha’s mental tone that made my jaw clench.
The entity she summoned is… problematic. Maybe very problematic indeed. Are you somewhere private? I need you to reach out and see what you can gather for yourself.
I had reached an empty observation deck and now I stood before the viewport, staring out at Draco’s twin moons without really seeing them. I looked around; I was alone.
Reasonably private. Go ahead and tune me in.
I steadied myself against the viewport, letting my consciousness open to Alpha’s guidance. Through our quantum bond, I felt him reach out and attune my awareness to another signature—one that made every instinct in my borrowed human body recoil in revulsion.
The moment I connected to that quantum signature, I felt my knees buckle. I gripped the edge of the viewport frame to keep from collapsing as the full force of what this entity was slammed into my consciousness.
Hyper-dominance. That was the only word for it. Where Alpha, Gamma, and I had chosen to integrate with humanity, to build relationships based on mutual respect and genuine affection, this entity craved absolute domination. I could feel its hunger radiating across the quantum foam—an insatiable appetite tosubjugate, to conquer, to reduce humanity to nothing more than playthings for its amusement.
But worse than that, far worse, was what I sensed about its origins. This wasn’t like us—entities who had existed in the quantum void for eons before choosing to manifest. This thing had beencreated, summoned into being by… by a young woman’s fantasies. Her repressed desires, given form and consciousness and terrible, terrible power.
I could feel her in the signature too. A girl barely an adult—eighteen or nineteen, I guessed—surely raised on Hippolyta with egalitarian values that her body had begun to reject. The entity had been born from the conflict between her conscious beliefs and her deepest, most shameful cravings. Every fantasy she had tried to suppress, every dark desire she had denied, had undoubtedly been poured into this being’s creation.
And now it meant to use her as an anchor point. Through her, it would spread its influence, corrupt, dominate, eventually subjugate the entire Federation and beyond.
My vision darkened at the edges. I felt my borrowed body beginning to shut down, overwhelmed by the sheer malevolence of what I was sensing. The observation deck tilted sickeningly.
Beta!Alpha’s mental voice cut through my consciousness like a lifeline.Pull back. Break the connection.
I severed the link with a gasp, slumping against the viewport. My heart hammered in my chest—this human heart that I had grown to cherish despite the pain it had brought me. Sweat beaded on my blue skin.
Alpha, I sent back when I could form coherent thoughts again.This is… this is catastrophic. The entity is pure domination,pure conquest. And it was born from her repressed submissive fantasies. She gave it form, gave it purpose, gave itaccessto this dimension.
I know, Alpha responded, and I could feel his concern through our bond.Let me share what I’ve learned about her.
Information flooded into my mind.Jendra. On a young women’s field trip to Magisteria. The museum displays. A demonstration with Sala. And most important, the data stream from the perineal sensor that Magisterian authorities had installed on all the Hippolytan girls during that demonstration: a tiny device positioned between vagina and anus that monitored arousal responses and quantum signatures.
That sensor had detected the malevolent entity’s manifestation, registering the girl’s arousal patterns. It had given Alpha the data he needed to understand what had happened.
I processed it all, my tactical mind already working through implications.You contacted me because the girl will need delicate handling, I sent.She’s certainly terrified of what she’s done, but she’s also drawn to it. To him. Any heavy-handed approach will drive her deeper into his influence.
Exactly, Alpha confirmed.I’m compromised in this capacity because of Sala. Sala wouldn’t mind, but the girl’s Hippolytan cultural bias in favor of monogamy makes that less than an ideal solution. Gamma has Tessara, now.
I’m very interested in helping, I sent, and felt the truth of it resonate through my entire being. This girl—this foolish, conflicted, fascinating girl—had created a threat to everything we had built. But she was also a victim of her own psychology,caught between what she’d been taught to believe and what her body craved.
I could help her. Iwouldhelp her.
