Aspect’s squeaky leg really worsens the blow. You can’t exactly get a robot a disability tag; damaged mechs just get turned into scrap because people suck. If I do my job right, hopefully Aspect will be nothing like most people as they truly come into their own.
Eventually we reach Level One: a glittering maze of comms tablets, Morpheus sphere receptacles, and boxes of truly ancient, handwritten records—viewable only through an impenetrable sheet of glass. All the data forms are scattered about in aging, leaning, desperately in-need-of-repair wooden bookshelves, because again,traditionor something.
Not sure why retrieving a record from a shelf is any better than entirely from software, but okay.
More stairs. My knocking knees throb by the time we arrive on Level Two, and we still aren’t where I want to be. At long last, I haul myself up the third flight of tightly wound spiral stairs, Aspect close behind, and come upon another heavy sealed door. Much like the elevators into the Lexicon, this door requires a government-issued pass. I, of course, don’t have one.
But I do have a piece of the Diakópsei in my pocket.
I slip the gemfruit into my palm, its texture both spiky and surprisingly fragile against my skin. Its power pulses through my bloodstream like a racing second heartbeat. Inhaling sharply, I clench my hand around the gemfruit as hard as I can, ignoring the sharp bite of wintery power that lances through my arm.
“Kori—is okay,” Aspect stammers, as a little cry slips out of me.
I lean hard against the wall to maintain my footing, my vision flashing black and white and blue. I squeeze my eyes shut to reduce the vertigo. After a long, shivering moment during which I hardly know where I am, or even who, the power settles and pools in my palm, icy but stable.
I look, and my hand glows the white-hot of a shooting star, azure sparks leaping between my fingertips.
The gemfruit’s own light has already faded. I slide it back into my pocket with my not-glowing hand. The glowing one tingles with little pinpricks of power, like when a stationary limb falls asleep—but supernaturally awake, instead.
“Here goes nothing,” I breathe, and press my open hand to the Lexicon door’s control panel. The panel spits smoke and sparks. I grit my teeth hard against another scream, electric power surging and rattling through my skeleton.
Aspect, thank the stars, wraps me tightly in a hug from behind, absorbing some of the shock into their own body. “K-K-K-K-K-Koriiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiis w-w-w-w-welcooooooooome!”
“Thanks,” I bite out through my electric-fogged haze.
A painfully loud, shrill screech of metal. A fading hiss of overloaded wiring. At long last, the door to Lexicon Level Three opens for my clandestine research. My hand has returned to normal, give or take some weird cramps from the rapid temperature shift, but I still massage my fingers and absently crack my knuckles as Aspect and I step in.
The heavy door slams shut behind us. It won’t require a tech hack on this side, but I can’t help but shudder anyway as the entire room is thrown into darkness before I can even get a good look at it. I fumble for Aspect in the void, gripping their cool metallic arm for balance until, finally, a row of lights bursts into being along the path.
All the breath whooshes out of my lungs.
I spent hundreds—no, thousands—of sleep cycles permitted to access only the levels below. My childhood imagination ran wild with what might be contained here. Proof of mythical creatures like the ones in my storybooks, perhaps—historical records of proper, winged dragons. Or more direct evidence from immediately post-Cataclysm—something more than the scattered written records telling us that we’d come from Earth and tragedy had struck Pagomènos, but little else. Colors beyond the broadly experienced spectrum, star maps of galaxies beyond ours or Earth’s, the last living Earthside dog … something like that.
What I see isnothinglike that.
The room I’m standing in is practically a corridor. It would probably qualify as a closet in my mother’s monarch living quarters. There’s barely enough space for both me and Aspect to comfortably move around. The chamber never widens after the door, and the walls on either side of me are entirely blank, save for the thin lines of fluorescent yellow lights illuminating the path forward.
The only wall containing records is the one dead ahead, at the end of the corridor that tunnels my vision. A dozen or so suspendedMorpheus spheres blink green lights at me in a haphazard pattern, like so many eyes on an alien face, each watching me in their own rhythm. I shrink my armor, including my helmet, just to reduce the sense of suffocation. Nobody can see us in this place; at least for the moment, I can safely show my real face.
Aspect hangs their head, visibly despondent. “These memories—not—for Aspect,” they state plainly. It’s not really a question.
The room’s atmosphere is the furthest thing from inviting, all artificial light and sinister claustrophobia.I’mnot even supposed to be here, a mech even less so.
“Not really for me either,” I sigh, tentatively walking toward the blinking collection of spheres. “But here we are.”
I extend a hand toward the top leftmost sphere, triggering a title to project from its surface.THE EVOLUTION PROJECT,reads the floating green holographic text, which does nothing to illuminate what it might be about. I’ve never even heard a rumor of such a thing.
I pluck the sphere from its shelf. Only then, when I hear its light metallic rattle against my skin, do I realize my hand is shaking.
If there are answers here, they may not be the good kind. What if I was better off not knowing my real reaction to the radiation at all? What if there’s still time to turn back, gather what resources I can for Adria’s war, slip into the shadows once again, and pretend the revelation didn’t change anything?
“Kori.” Aspect squeezes my shoulder with their squeaky fingers. “Aspect—is still Aspect—after every—memory from Kori. Aspect was—Aspect, is—Aspect, will be—Aspect. So Kori—can still be—Kori, too. Aspect—is sure of it.”
I swallow hard. Set my jaw. “I’m lucky to have you. I hope you know that.” I tap the sphere until it holds a steady green access light, ready to impart its memory. “Now, don’t let me fall, okay?” I say, just before my vision goes blank-paper white.
My name is Chloe, and I am fading.
We all are. It’s the curse of being human. My bones creak when I move; my muscles ache for no apparent reason; my head pounds if too much light invades my vision or if not enough is found at all. So many weaknesses, so many pressure points and fragile joints, as I wander my kingdom in this ever-breaking, failed divine experiment we call a human body.
