24 - Ashes of a Strange Fire
Aquas
Central Systems
Isla de Po, Vila Pintada
She should have listened.
"He's lying, Jana."
A long-dormant memory spoke, unwinding the vine-like synapses which had strangled Jana for nearly two decades. Two sharp, cracking taps on her forehead stunned her for a mere moment until the commanding voice returned.
"It's Aster," The echo continued. "Yes. That one. It calls itself Aster."
A voice unearthed of Jana's long-dead past. It interfered with the moment so harshly that everything else came to a standstill, as if the very dust in the air became still.
Its resonance warmed her just the way she remembered it always had, too; a remedy Jana didn't know she missed. His voice. Reassuring, confident, but gentle too. A resonance with a storied purity embraced around its waves. His laugh, his tired jokes beating their way through the thin garage wall and into her room. It had been long enough where Jana's mind's eye no longer retained enough of a memory to paint a lucid image of the man. But, an approximation would not have fooled her, but this was the real McCloud.
"It's ancient. It's formless. It's attached to this planet. Something long dormant we stirred awake. A parasite. Something we couldn't destroy. Not until now."
Fox McCloud spoke. Her father returned. In this sprinting moment, dad was home again. The unfinished grief of an eight-year old resumed mid-run. Jana had never even known it had remained.
The floodgates opened. Jana instinctively knew her father was dead, but in the fantasized instant, she'd wanted to tell him about everything she'd done. Scold him for every recital he'd missed. Every flight exam she'd aced and he'd never been alive to see. Pride, sorrow, laughter; she didn't know which she'd pick first.
For the first time in her life, Jana wanted to hear him apologize; to tell her it would all be okay now. Jana needed him to know that the next day, she'd gotten up and did her best to move on. She did move on. That she was never weighed down by his absence. That she wasn't held back by the mistakes of his conscience.
But, when she looked up to face these frightful things, to say anything at all, all she saw was a well dressed stranger sitting cross-legged in the rearmost section of the lounge.
It wasn't her father speaking.
No. The voice had been a doppelganger, to be sure. And, it was remarkable that the figure before her had the same eyes every McCloud had; bright and verdant opals. But, this was not her father.
Blue fur, the first noticed anomaly of many. White accent marks up his muzzle to his forehead. An ill-kempt white wave on the top of his head. It was all managed in a finely tailored gray suit. Jana assumed the blue poking out of the man's tuxedo-length cuffs and t-shirt collar was natural. There was precedent for it, after all.
A swirling bounty of the same blue floated gracefully to his side; his tail. A white tip, same as most vulpes.
The final insult: an imperious grin bastardizing the peace of every memory Jana held of her father. The death of a small, hopeful instant.
He pilfered Jana's custom-fitted sunglasses off the credenza she'd left them on, studied them intently and placed them onto his own face. They slid onto the bridge of his muzzle effortlessly, sliding into the grooves and contours of his fur and ears like a glove.
An abomination. Jana found herself standing in a boiling rage she couldn't explain. Jonny, upon hearing the stranger's voice raised his head in a similar, shaking anger. None said a word.
"Until now. Thank you for making this meeting possible, Jana-Mei," The tinged imposter said to the irate McCloud. The peculiar misuse of Jana's youthful nickname scraping a deeper hole into her chest.
"Vau- Vauquelin?" Jonny stuttered, uncharacteristically flustered for words. "How? Why are you in my lounge?"
Jonny turned to Jana frantically, stepping between them. Jana didn't blink as she death glared at the indigo-stained 'vulpes'; if the freak could even be called that.
"To patch-up one mistake with another," Vauquelin answered.
"This isn't me," Jonny rambled. his frantic, stumbling apology. "I would never! It's-"
"-Marcus," the green-eyed menace interrupted. "It's just Marcus to you, Jana. It's wonderful to finally meet you."
Jana glowered, building her own case to smite the man. By all rights, she could have by this point.
Marcus. The name didn't mean anything to Jana. But, the more he spoke, with every gesture, his lineage became clearer. A rapid acceptance of something Jana had never confronted. There were no deeper mysteries now, as the one unraveling before her tore into her.
"I'm no threat to you," the blue fox said to Jana before shifting his visual ire back on the slender white monkey before him. Marcus uncrossed his legs and stood. He sauntered closer to the slender ape who, Jana noticed through the corner of her eyes, was trembling.
"You, on the other hand," Marcus tisk-tisked, singling out Huynh. "An imp playing with a strange fire you never understood. As if no one was watching. As if Aster wasn't waiting."
Jonny began limping closer to intercept the interloper, his cane furiously smashing against his prized, transparent flooring. Feeling the strikes, schools of fish fled from beneath their feet. Jonny Hunyh brought himself to within a knife's edge with the man calling himself Marcus.
"Don't you blame me! You were there too! I was the only one who saw its potential!" The simian accused with disgust. "You're the only one determined to kill her!"
"Because, we're the only ones left!" Marcus roared, shouting down Jonny. The simian shrunk into a lower stance.
Silence overwhelmed them.
"It's our fault," Marcus began to explain, staring dissonantly out into the seafloor. "We laid the foundation for the Wreath. The first few days went well enough. Strange, obsidian-like rock. An unknown compound. Reflective. We knew something special was there. And after that? The headaches started."
He exhaled and lowered his head before posturing toward Jana.
"My partner here, he warned you of the one-way journey with his little toy. What he left out was the truth that something had been trying to communicate with us the same way for longer than that."
"Had been?" Jana asked, heart in her throat.
"One-hundred and twelve souls," Marcus said, voice cracking. "That's what it cost for us to realize it. MartÃn Y Hijos. A Small operation; family-owned. Specializing in underwater excavation. Top-rated."
"It ripped right through all of them. All of them. It wore Jonny's contractors like puppets to communicate with him. Improving itself. The Katinese all died of course. The first wave immediately, barely crying out with a yelp before collapsing. But it learned. It adapted. One-host-to-another, it got better. None lived past a few minutes, but they eventually stopped dying so suddenly. It had finally ripped through enough men's minds to give Jonny his instructions."
Marcus ran his hands through his hair, lowering Jana's glasses and rubbing down his face.
"He gave it a body," Marcus finally admitted.
Jana and Marcus both glared at their host.
"Aster," Jana inferred.
"That wasn't the little girl's name then," Marcus said furiously. "Jonny never even bothered to record it."
"Aparoid?" Jana asked.
"No, that was the initial suspicion," Marcus stated. "Jonny took all the necessary precautions at first contact. They had the inoculations. He shielded his workers. And despite it all, we learned something even worse. Aster is just the beginning. It's just the vanguard. Maybe only the first beginning of many."
"Aster serves a master."
"Vauqs, stop these lies!" Jonny protested nervously. "You're frightening my guest!"
Jana, for her part, recognized a nervous tick when she saw one.
"I wish that were so," Marcus replied, "She should be terrified."
"How were we supposed to know? How could we have predicted any of that?" Jonny defended.
The blue fox scoffed at the monkey with a condescending head shake. "You lacked imagination, you stopped asking questions. Then you gave her everything she wanted."
Marcus stared blankly at Jonny for a moment before contorting his face in what looked like bereavement. Grief. Jana saw pain, remorse and finally acceptance. It morphed into a mercurial terror.
"Everything!" The octaves of Marcus' rage bounced throughout the vaulted ceiling.
He and his twisting blue tail marched his way over to the pink marble fireplace in the distant corner of Jonny's cathedral: a regal installation with lighter streaks of natural clay silicate swirled about in its pink, carved edifice. It appeared a moment of weakness for the man calling himself Marcus as his back turned as he held one arm over the top shelf; collapsed, as if he'd learned a terrible truth.
Jana tracked him the whole way over.
"Did you ever ask yourself why it never pushed into your mind?" Marcus asked, monotonically. The acoustics carried his voice as he studied a trinket cradled in his hand. An antique shotgun, Jana noted. Chrome finish, Engraved. Twin barrels, over under. Thirty decimeters long, eighteen millimeter rimmed calibre.
"Do you not ask why I stayed with you?" He continued "Do you think it was a coincidence? I would never have let it hurt you."
Marcus seemed lost in his relic. Cherishing the piece in his hand, studying every new detail as he rolled it over. Each dent, scratch and ding a story etched in time.
"Well, if we're talking coincidences," Jonny smarmed, "The colony board is voting no-confidence in the old-stag tomorrow. Vikr's lost his resolve for this whole venture."
"And Jean-Starkly?" Marcus asked with disgust, his back still turned.
"Well," Jonny started jovially. "He's lost his heart."
Marcus's hands stopped as his shoulders dropped, plainly devastated by his words.
"This isn't you, Jonny," Marcus said. Jana agreed silently while staring through the fox's back.
Jonny only shrugged. "It was always me," he ridiculed. "I took a sneak preview of Armstrong's resignation message this morning. Doubt he knows. It's one little push, but its all letters of fucking marque on the floor after that. Starkly will keep his humanitarian offices open. But his fortune is all but staked down to his estate at this point."
"You haven't thought this through," Marcus stated bluntly, recovering some of his confidence. The concealment of his reddened eyes under Jana's glasses helped.
"Of course I have. They'll be a bleedout. Upstart warlords like yourself, sure. 'Blood in the streets'," Jonny narrated, not realizing his prophetic description would probably escape its metaphor, "A wound only Jonny-money can close up."
Taking advantage of the silence, Jonny tip-toed over to his blue intruder as silently as he could. Jana didn't do anything; curious to see the outcome.
"So, tell me, Vauqs," the monkey teased "For all your skulking around Vikr's good-graces, do you feel like you can stop this?"
He tensed his fingers around the knurled chrome grip of his cane and lifted it. The metal glinted in Lylat's laundered reflection. He looked back to Jana for approval. Jana nodded; enough was enough.
"I don't have to hide her anymore," Jonny declared triumphantly. "And, I'm certainly not scared of you."
The simian wound up and swung his cane with considerable force at the back of Vauquelin's head.
And then? He stopped. The cane stopped, or was compelled to stop mid-swing. An unnatural force, a psychic terror, seized up his muscles so tightly he struggled to breathe. The best Jonny was able to push out was a labored whimper.
"You should be," Marcus said calmly, turning around with the mantelpiece shotgun tucked under his right arm, action swung wide open.
"Because we are alone now. And, I've been learning as well," Marcus continued, peering down at Jonny's bad leg and tracing it with the end shotgun's barrels. Jana uselessly witnessed herself floundering in the reflection of her own glasses, still firmly mounted on this freak's face as he neared.
He passed a still-frozen Jonny as he tail-bobbed calmly over to Jana and held out the weapon in front of Jana. She received the weapon, grasping at it with both hands. Jana glanced upon it and suddenly knew.
Zeouna of Settler City. Jana fumed to herself, intuiting the etched anatomy study carved into the topmost barrel. Her index crossed over the figures flattering anatomy.
Jana assumed a wrathful stance toward Jonny Hunyh as she whipped the shotgun up, snap-locking its barrels into battery. She dedicated the simian's deceit to her mind as she rested the ancient gun over her shoulder.
Marcus circled the sniveling ape statue he'd created, wrinkling his brow in curiosity as he visually searched the white-furred prisoner for something.
"I know you've been trying so hard to pick apart my story. My fabrications," Marcus clarified. "You were getting close, too. Your last hurdle out of the gutter and into Armstrong's inner circle. Me."
Marcus grasped and then yanked Jonny's cane from the ape's hand. Jonny's whole arm untensed and went flaccid. With a single pull, Marcus relieved the simian of his walking aid.
"You were beginning to become a problem for me," the tinted fox taunted. "And, I don't like problems. I prefer remedies. And, I was drawn to mercy for you."
There was a dreadful silence as Marcus allowed the words to sink in. "But, you understand that mercy is out of the question now. Certain actions of yourshave changed the math," the azure vulpes menaced.
He closed his eyes. "We should have destroyed that mirror, Jonny."
Marcus swung Jonny's cane. A full-body swing connecting the hilt with the Ape's good leg shattering it at the knee. The ape crumpled silently, his muscles simply unable to keep him upright no matter what signals his puppet-stringed brain was commanded to send. Jonny was overloaded with pain, but no screams emitted.
Marcus descended to a single knee and leaned down to Jonny's level. Face-to-face with an ape wincing so hard he had burst blood vessels in his eyes.
"That was for Ari," Marcus whispered into his ear.
Jana lowered the shotgun and threw herself into a dead sprint at Marcus. She attempted a dash toward him out of mere reflexive protection of her paycheck. Attempted, because she soon froze in place similarly to her host. She stiffened up in neurological stasis mid-stride, falling flat onto her side with eyes wide open. She slid the last meter of glass on her face, frantic eye's taking a panicked inventory of her controlled 's shotgun slid uselessly alongside her.
"It's for Zeouna, too," Marcus said, seemingly releasing control of Jonny's head and neck to its rightful owner.
The newly freed Jonny screamed in fear-dipped agony. No words, no decipherable meanings. Just a shrill, terrible howl. He screamed Jana's name in a vain request for help, elongating the vowels in desperate, piercing shrieks.
"Give me any reason not to do this!" Marcus screamed in Jonny's face. "Go ahead! Smooth talk to me again! Tell me it doesn't own you yet."
The ape shook silently as terror finally silenced him. Marcus Vauqulin's shoulders dropped, as pangs of regret took over him. He closed his eyes and shook his head, "We should have destroyed that mirror, Jonny."
"I won't let you do this! I won't let you hurt her!" Jonny sputtered, between painful, staggered inhales. It wasn't a taunt, there was not a micron of insincerity in his defensive, stuttering words. A flexible man rigidity choosing his side.
"That's why you'll be doing it for me," Marcus said with all the grimness he could muck through.
"Jana!" The simian cried out, his eye's widening, "Y-You can't let him undo all we've done!"
"The Butcher didn't come here to help you, you idiot!" Marcus Vauquelin snarled back in restrained, cold anger as he grasped at Jonny's temples.
Marcus straddled over Jonny as he pressed into the ape's skull with his thumbs, and despite harsh resistance, turned Jonny's head toward Jana. Marcus clasped the fingers of both hands around the monkey's skull before lowering his forehead to his. Blue intermeshing with white fur. Intimate, but terrifying.
As he returned his gaze to his captive, Jonny Huyhn suddenly tensed up in a rolling agony that convulsed him violently. A seizure; his nose began to bleed in rivers of red that carved their way down his ebony fur, his designer shoes scuffed up the floor as his frenzied, scurrying kicks tried to find solid ground.
"Return to Aster with this," Marcus instructed harshly, his forehead still connected with the shivering simian. "Forget this, that, and all the rest."
Marcus pressed further with the palms of his hands as Jonny's footfalls lessened. After a few moments, the ebony monkey finally stilled, his teal eyes pried wide open. Dead or unconscious, Jana didn't know.
A long second later, he began to dematerialize. Orange, ashy flakes burning brightly from his crumpled form's feet to the top of his head. His Neurlink 'connection' had disconnected, Jana hoped.
As the flickering embers dissipated, the blue-furred devil stood. Two vulpes stranded in a superpositional arena. Strange fire. Marcus' own eyes flashing over Jana's shades briefly.
He stretched his neck and approached. Jana's heart raced as he neared, still immobilized by whatever poison this monster had inflicted on her.
Be done with it, already. Jana thought with the enhanced vividity of adrenaline coursing through her.
"Why?" Marcus asked indifferently, seemingly reading her thoughts. "Because it's what you'd do?"
"Release me," Jana demanded verbally.
"Why? So you can strangle me to death?" He replied with a curt laugh, understanding her intent perfectly. "No. You're right where you belong."
"It's only sporting to have the chance," Jana muttered back to the interloper, who sat on the lounge seat before her. He crossed his legs again.
He relented. Soon, feeling returned to Jana's neck, legs and arms; and, for nearly a minute she wished it hadn't. What felt like a total body muscle cramp brought the iron-willed vulpes to a wincing mess on the floor as a rippling series of tearing-pain ran from tail to neck
"What did you do to him?" Jana sputtered, staring at the spot Jonny had flaked away from in disbelief. Nothing remained, not even the ash.
"The man I once knew as Jonny Hunyh was compromised," He said soberly, rubbing his own temples. "So I did the only thing left to do. I gave him a new set of instructions. My instructions. Then? I freed him. The same mercy I can offer you."
"I'll take my odds," Jana replied, declining the offer. She was still tensing from the pain when she noticed his shadow now loomed over her.
"No. You won't." Marcus declared flatly. Jana looked up. Marcus, who was suddenly standing above her, pressed his hand on her forehead.
Only a moment after she felt the warmth of his hand's palm, Jana felt a sudden pleasant wind gusting around her. A loose, amber blade of tallgrass carried by the breeze curled through Jana's fur and hair. Another relocation. a much more secluded one. It took a few moments, but Jana recognized their location by proxy of three unmistakable landmarks.
Sauria. The Erian pyramids.
"A receiver?" Jana asked with a befuddled laugh. "Neurlink. Out here?"
"Yes." Marcus replied, "Well, an older version of it, yes. I needed a place to test it in privacy."
The private spectacle rolled over them. Untouched wilds. Plains, without a tree in sight, crowned by fast-moving clouds on the horizon. The scent of the wild grass carried in the wind. They sat silently, cradled among the rolling hills in the valley: both the duo of newly-met siblings and a trio of black-onyx pyramids. The monuments of an ancient tribe long lost to time.
In the foreground, down the rolling green slope stood a golden rod with intricately carved runes and glyphs embedded in the softened springtime soil. It was tarnished, blackened, in places; as if it had been left to the wilds to be forgotten. Its oblong widened end was charred to nothing more than chiseled, black stone.
"Who are you?" Jana finally asked, fearing the answer. No more games.
Marcus inhaled deeply. He released his breath out, eyes closed. He lingered a moment further, studying the surroundings as he selected his next words carefully. The wind gusted and calmed to a halt several times before he found himself able to speak.
"You knew the answer the moment our eyes met," Marcus finally said, his own eyes still fixated on the broken staff. "You know it now. I'm exactly who and what you think I am. And, I make no apologies for that."
Jana stared back at him with a burning hatred that could have stripped the shields off of a light cruiser.
"I didn't choose this," Marcus said, this time more upright. "I know you didn't expect me. And, you certainly didn't choose me. But, these things happen. The order of things gets tossed around. We share bonds. Animals fall in love. They leave behind half-siblings."
"Oh, Is that all?" Jana asked sarcastically, insulted by the half-McCloud's reduction of the situation's severity. She was mindlessly gripping at the dirt now, her nails digging into the valley's unsullied soil.
"You're right to be upset," Marcus said apologetically. "I've had a decade to accept this. This was not how I planned any of this to happen. But, it was the only way I could get him where he wasn't being watched."
"Our grandmother's DNA," Jana connected.
"Yes. Ours," Marcus acknowledged, nodding his head positively. "Neurlink was Aster's gift to Jonny, though, it has another name. 'The Tensegrity,' would be the best translation of it. It's all a cheap mimicry of Aster's native domain. We're all bound to the rules of it, even Aster. I needed to be alone with him."
A few moments passed. Jana contemplated the meaning of Aster's threat. First contact. Again. This time, it's intelligent. Sentient.
"Complicates your ascension, doesn't it?" Marcus asked.
Jana feigned ignorance. She shrugged, realizing the attempt would be worthless. Marcus tilted his head and laughed.
"I don't need to read you to know. We're in a unique position, sister," He said. Jana recoiled. "Wanting the same thing. Having the means to take it. And, after today it will be possible for one of us. Jonny will ensure that. I couldn't have done it without you."
"I don't think you know anything about me," Jana retorted.
"Don't I?" Marcus taunted. "Look at the way you've positioned yourself. The right place. The right time. Can't be an accident."
"Coincidences happen," Jana remarked flatly.
Marcus chortled and laid the back of his head in tall grass. He placed both hands behind his head as he considered his response.
"I have nothing but respect for your grift," he said. "Your clarity. You even convinced both sides to foot the bill for your own private insurrection."
He smirked again as the dimples marks on the right corner muzzle fooled Jana's into seeing James peeking through the mirage.
"It's impressive how deftly you've moved, considering you are neither colonizer, nor of the colonized. Not an outsider, nor one of us," Jana's half-brother complimented smugly. "When I saw your vessel in orbit, I finally knew you'd felt it too; a seismic shift from the tip-over of a single domino. That these colonies were colonies no longer. Former frontiers and breadbaskets with Lylation hands caught pickpocketing them in broad daylight."
He turned on his side, "How was it you phrased it? 'One powderkeg away'?" A grinning Marcus asked. "Well, I have you and my brother to thank for lighting it. We have you to thank for the Post-Aster colonies, what comes next should be much easier for me."
Jana's heart palpitated at the realization of her own words levied against her.
"You're Leinch's silent partner," Jana connected at once, her eyes widened at yet another betrayal. "He knew about-"
"-He knew. He knew about me long before he sequenced my DNA. I mean, just look at me," Marcus interrupted, giggling genuinely while grasping at his hand's loose fur.
He raised off the grass and stood closer to the broken staff in front of them, walking to within a meter of it, but stood no closer.
"I was found in the Flotsam. Jettisoned in an escape pod," Marcus started softly before looking back at his sister. "Marcus sewn in red on an oversized spacesuit. I was three, probably. Mum must have thought I'd grow fast. My new parents: a pair of hustlers running E-net scams who raised me like my rescue was a loan meant to be repaid."
"Why the loyalty to Udeav then?" Jana asked, shaking her head in perplexment.
"Because Udeav was always loyal to me," he responded. "I know you only see the terror, and today won't do much to dissuade you of that. But, Udeav is in me. Part of me will always belong to it, as it belongs to me. There's a culture here that never lets you go. You can't flee, fight, or fuck it from you. You can only find peace among it. That magic purple-sky between the three moon's rise and last-light. That unpredictability. That squandered potential."
He stared skyward and continued. "I left for Udeav as soon as I was old enough to pry my way out of the Flotsam. I did it the way most enslaved did, I built my own reentry pod. Sealed it up and kicked my way off to the surface. Settler City. Nothing would stop me. I learned to kill, though I wanted all to live. I learned to run, even when I wanted to resist. I learned to lie, even when I knew the truth. I learned what it truly cost to win."
He perked up a bit, a small smile and returned his gaze to his sister, "One day, I even learned I wasn't alone."
Jana raised an eyebrow.
"One of the Ketumati?" she asked?
"Don't compare me to them," He said hatefully. "Ketch-Oom-Mah-tay. The right idea, doing it through honest means. It's the wrong way."
His smugness returned, a grin bearing machinations.
"I'm their successor," Marcus rallied emphatically, "The only way I could succeed where they have failed was doing it from the inside. So, I chose my own name: 'Vauquelin,' a long-dead Cornerian house lineage. Mostly, to avoid being confused for something I wasn't. For the next thirteen years I said what I needed to say, I did what needed doing. I made myself the perfect image of wealth's heredity. I made my name, I eventually earned it. Wearing my false coat-of-arms like a shield. I swallowed my disgust, my pride. I repaid that loan. I finally became what my first 'parents' had wanted me to become."
"You got a job," Jana demeaned sarcastically, "Congratulations."
"I chose the winning side. Just like you," Marcus said, not excusing himself by hanging his head. "But, I never forgot why. That I was destined for something greater. Every time I compromised myself I did it as a means to an end. I refocused."
"You're delusional," Jana insulted.
"I'm convicted," Marcus struck back, his softened green eyes visible behind Jana's lenses. "I sentenced myself to this mission. One you've played an important part of."
Leinch's used me. Gods, he's had to know for years! Jana thought, a tensing, unguardable wrath wrapping its way through her thoughts. Another failed idol in her life.
Marcus inhaled deeply before he emitted an empathetic sigh. "I'm not naive. I know this is only a ceasefire for us. This is all meaningless unless we solve our mutual problems. But, we all have to think about the future in our own ways," he said, "We don't know what Aster is, we only know how to contain her. What happens next, is up to us."
Jana shook her head. "Even if you succeeded. Do you really think Lylat will just sit by and let you take this trash heap? Do you really think you can unite these fucking scum in this sector?"
"I could ask you the same thing," Marcus chuckled. "And yes, I do think that. You know it yourself. It's the part I worry about the least. There's no stomach for the glory of empires anymore, no appetite for violence. Except, of course, for a small mutual faction of ours."
"It's just you two now," Jana determined, staring blankly into the most distant pyramid. "I'm done. My contract's wiped. My employer's dead."
"No, you misunderstand," Marcus accused, "You and I? We're still in each other's orbit. This is the mistake I mentioned earlier. One I've already prepared for. I've alreadychosen your path for you. I'm going to sever your 'superpositional tether' here and now."
Jana's glare tore a hole through him. But, all he had to offer back was an apologetic purse of his lips. The bastard was going to deny her
"Yes. I'm going to strand you here," he said. "I'm going to keep you away from the Colonies."
"And, if I refuse?"
"You'll die. I'll send you back to your origin point," Marcus warned, his eyes bulging just a little bit. "Here is your only option, Jana. If I send you back, you'll die. There are things in motion as we speak that will change our history. I can't stop them. You can't stop them."
"How do I return?" Jana asked.
"You have to have control over the receiver. Which you can never hope for in this case," he stated, indicating toward the damaged staff embedded in the mud. "Either that, or you can interrupt the stream of atoms enough to mess with the entanglement. Dismemberment. Brain death. The receiver tech does a pretty good job of ensuring you are merged back to your remaining instance immediately. You'll live. The untouched half of 'you' gets that neurological honor to carry on. But you get some pretty gnarly blanks in your short memory. The same consciousness, just with some narrative holes. Like waking up from a bad dream."
"Send me back," Jana ordered. "I have work to do."
His smugness washed away, and for a second Jana thought she might have seen his skin turn beet red under his thin, cerulean fur. He huffed, puffed and stood. Marcus' arms crossed and neared fangs.
"I've had this conversation with you in my head so many times! I had this idea of who you'd be. The trust issues, I understand. The misplaced rage, I could have expected. But, in a thousand universes, I never would have expected you to be such a willing tool," he admitted with a headshake. "You're visionless. Passionless. Are you even alive?!"
"Longer than you'll be at this rate," Jana retorted.
"My actions condemn me, too, Jana," the blue-furred abomination said. "The difference is, I don't fight for the sake of the fight. I don't kill because someone told me I could. I know what I am. I have a purpose other than myself."
He cocked his head before asking the dreaded question. "Do you?"
Jana didn't give an answer. Unwilling to bestow one. Marcus shook his head, before walking past Jana's left shoulder.
Jana turned her head to follow. Behind them stretched the Erian bay, a seventy kilometer deepwater oasis. Most notably, a whitestone cliff face merely five or so meters away.
"You know, I used to sit here. After I first learned. Staring out to the sea" Marcus said flatly, "I used to think, 'tomorrow I'll find them. My sister. My brother. My family."
"Why didn't you?" Jana asked.
The echoing sea winds blew several times before he answered.
"Duty?" He posited, "Fate? Maybe both. I think I knew, even then, that if I ever met you. If I ever felt any connection to that dynasty of a name. I'd never look back. I'd be content."
"I've been here so many times," he said, drifting into nostalgic regret. "But, one day? I just stopped. I never looked for you, I never found you and I didn't need to. I grew up too quickly, same as you. I no longer needed the legends. I no longer needed to belong. I took matters into my own hands. I hated those who took my family more than I loved the idea of having one."
"Let me guess," Jana began to deride in a mocking drone. "You got better?"
"No," Marcus said, a terrible resolution in his voice. His shoulders dropped.
Stand!Jana suddenly heard the word commanded into her skull. It nauseated her, drowning her with an ice-cold reflex not her own.
She obeyed; what choice did she have? The terrible music within her tightened up, receptive to its conductor's touch; Marcus' psychic invokement forced her to take a jutting, unnatural step toward the ledge before her. Her left leg moved similarly. She felt the wind pick up.
"I want to let this go," Marcus said, a sore request. Jana saw genuine softness behind his eyes as he walked alongside her. "But, the more I read off of you, the more I see something in you. An ambition masquerading as utility. I see myself."
Jana tried to fight it. She tried resisting with every ounce of celerity she had left.
Eyes straight. Be empty, A vessel without a crew. Don't give up the sh-
Look at me. Marcus' voice boomed again, its ethereal punch overwhelming her senses. The sand-coloured vulpes did as she was compelled. Her own eye's locked with his.
"Tell me you can let this go," he asked. "I can leave you right here. I'll cut your connection back on Udeav. I will leave you here. Somewhere safe."
She glared through him, unable to conceive a reality in which she could let this be her fate.
Why would he need me to promise? Why would he leave this up to a mere liar's words? Unless he is desperate.
"Read me, circus freak," Jana cut back with venom. "Either toss me over or let me go. I'm not interested in playing games with you."
Unless he's afraid.
Jana's left leg moved first this time, no doubt Marcus' rejection of the paradigm shift in Jana's thinking. She took another coerced, jerking series of steps. She shook in her boots as she moved within a meter of the cliff's face. She felt her neck muscles loosen as she scanned the bottom of the gorge; a fifty meter plunge into a crown of jagged rock formations.
"There's a future for you. Don't squander it!" He petitioned, "You stay out of this fight. You stay away from my planet. Your band of fossils and child soldiers take that long warp back."
He's saying this for himself now. Jana thought. You're scared, aren't you?
"Tell me I don't have to sacrifice you too!" Marcus begged.
Jana's smile grew as she laughed, Marcus' psychic terror unable to contain her amusement.
"Send me over," Jana challenged back. "Do it. You think you're the only one capable of vision. You. All of you lack imagination, but, I promise you; mine will outlast yours."
"You," Jana spat with disgust. "Naive as James with none of the same blind courage."
She continued her forced walk. A nightmarish marionette act pulling her closer to the cliff face.
"A lifetime of skulking didn't make you clever!" She said, "It made you a coward."
She looked over the edge, recoiling at Marcus' inevitable outcome.
"I only wanted to help you. Jana," A trickster's voice wearing a conman's grimace. His birthright. Jana was sure the act worked on many. Another weakling.
He broke, of course. It took him a few seconds of reading Jana to realize he'd lost. Jana had called his bluff, Marcus would not kill his own sister.
"You go back there, you're going to die there, Jana," Marcus said, his final panic-laced gambit. "If you merge back into your old self, you might already be dead."
Jana faced the sea. Knowing every second she was here she was falling behind. She turned her head and greeted her now horrified half-brother.
"Please!" he begged, reaching his hand out to her to pull her in.
Jana accepted the gesture, clasping his hand tightly. She felt warmth, sweat and a slight tremble in his grip. A small, barely perceptible smile began to encroach on his face again, as if to say 'maybe I don't have to do this.' She felt his iron-willed control cede, as his shoulders raised optimistically.
"You use words like 'sacrifice.' You think you can understand my thoughts," Jana spoke into the wind, "But, you're blind to your own: you've already made up your mind."
Jana released her brother's hand and leaned back. Marcus did all he could, but failed to prevent Jana's plummet from the edge. She simply collapsed, willingly, and without coercion.
She closed her eyes, crashing against the sea several seconds later.