Jaid was led into the ‘Authorized Personnel Only’ door that she’d passed by earlier. Both Nathym and Ahvra hesitated for just a moment before stepping inside, dreading what they’d find. Four cadavers lined the back wall in pods, those of the four Greater Fiends, to be used, as Phon had said, to fake their deaths as needed.
But that wasn’t what the scientists had brought Jaid to see. There was only one other thing inside the room, what looked like an icy coffin. Frost lined the sides, and mist trickled out of the seams. There were dozens of tubes leading into the coffin from the sides. And through the icy window at the top was Mallea’s frozen face.
“I’ll explain,” Nathym started, though it was obvious he didn’t want to. “After the Greater’s imprisonment, Mallea became obsessed with the idea of improving herself further, wanting to be the best she could be when they returned.”
“A few years ago now, we installed a chip in her brain that let her finetune her memory recall process, allowing her to execute skills more efficiently. But while she was working on optimization, she found archived files that were hidden away.”
“Turns out, back when the scientists in Pimitrad were experimenting on her, they were never actually deleting her memories, just compressing them and locking them from access. And that’s when she made a mistake, or I guess you could say I did, just another of many.”
“When Mallea tried to access the file of her past, it released them all at once. The chip was never designed for the sudden influx of years worth of memories. So it caused an overflow error as it tried to process and rewrite the memories to match the chip’s code. And this error caused Mallea’s brain to shut down, killing her.”
“Ahvra was able to bring her back to life when he found her, but as soon as she’s conscious again, the chip continues where it left off, trying to process the old memories until it crashes. And it will continue to do so until they’re all done. In theory, with enough time, the chip will self-correct, but it can only do so while Mallea is conscious so her brain can feed it energy.”
“Maybe Mallea herself could write a new encoder that would be more efficient and shorten the time needed, but that’s the cruel irony. We tried reaching out to a few other programmers around the world, but none could solve the problem, at least not to a degree we could work with.”
“And several more problems arose. When Mallea is brought back to life, it’s only for a few seconds at a time, not nearly long enough to make any headway with the information processing. It would take hundreds of attempts before it finished, and no one deserves to die that many times.”
“And even if that were the only avenue, it’s unfeasible. Because while we were still trying to figure out the problem, every time Mallea was brought back to life, her residual ‘time’ was shortened greatly. And once that time expires, Ahvra won’t be able to bring her back anymore.”
“How much time is left?” Jaid had to ask.
“Under a minute!” Nathym scowled, clenching his fists. He went to punch the wall, but restrained himself. “And the worst part is, we have the solution now. I was able to build a hardware extension for the chip. It’ll take all those excess memories and dump them into the new storage. It comes fitted with a patch for the overflow error, as well as the best encoder we could get. There’s also enough of a battery that it can process everything before Mallea wakes up again.”
“It may not look it, but she’s currently alive in there. We were able to preserve her in the few seconds between crashes. So in theory, we should be able to take her out and perform a surgery to implant the chip upgrade. But as soon as we remove her, she’ll die immediately, and that will start the ticking clock.”
“We would have to complete the surgery before her remaining time runs out, or it won’t matter, and she’ll stay dead. We’ve done the math on the shortening of her time after every resurrection. Ahvra could probably bring her back four, maybe five times. But that doesn’t help.”
“The biggest flaw with Ahvra’s Curse is that it would heal Mallea back to how she was and negate any progress we made. And we’ve timed it again and again on proxies. There’s no way we can implant that chip before her time runs out. Two minutes and ninety-one seconds. That’s the shortest we’ve been able to get it down to, and it’s nowhere close to good enough.”
“But… there is one more solution. And that’s to install the chip upgrade without removing Mallea from stasis, without performing surgery. It’s like a fantasy, I know, but with you, Jaid, it’s possible.”
“We’ve actually been exploring the idea without your help, what it would take. Essentially, someone has to shrink down, enter Mallea’s body, and install the hardware upgrade to the chip directly. I’ve already built a suit capable of withstanding the conditions, that wasn’t the hard part.”
“The issue comes with actually shrinking someone. My Curse can tell me hundreds of devices that would be capable of shrinking mass. But when it comes to doing so without killing the person being shrunk, well, that brings it down to one. However, building all the components for the device would take a long time, as well as acquiring some of the resources—a few of which I’m not sure exist on this planet and would need to be newly created.”
“And that’s a lot of time that I don’t have. I’ve been working on it whenever there’s a free moment, but I’ve still barely made any headway. Then here you are, someone who is able to shrink at will. Or rather, able to make clones of the size that we need.”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Feyjrusa told me a while ago about how you were able to make a few hundred clones to turn the tumbler of a lock. That’s about what we would need, though still a bit smaller. And at that size, it will be a lengthy line of clones, a few thousand all of varying sizes so that—”
“Oh, umm,” Jaid cut in for a second. “I should probably say that with my ascension, I can make free standing clones now.” The knight then held up her palm, and the world’s smallest Jaid appeared on the tip of her finger. “Would something like this work?”
“Yes! Cosmos, zjik yes!” Nathym picked up the clone out of excitement to inspect it. “Perhaps a bit smaller, though… Oh, it vanished.” He turned back to Jaid who had keeled over from queasiness. The sensory overload shared by her tiny clone who was suddenly picked up and flailed about by a massive giant was too much for her. “Ah, I see what I did. Terribly sorry about that, truly.”
“But to answer your question, yes, that would absolutely work. Having just one clone will speed things along immensely and make this all much simpler. Especially since the clones were going to have to pass the chip module along. They can’t hold it when you create them, or it would scale the size and become unusable.”
“More than likely, you’ll need to make a few new clones along the way to adjust your size as needed, to not damage Mallea too much. But they’ll all be minor variations once you’re down to microscopic levels. However, before I bother saying anymore, does this mean that you’ll do it.”
“Yes, of course,” Jaid accepted without hesitation. “I made a promise to Drim that I would do whatever is needed of me, regardless of what it is. Whether it’s terrifying, or disgusting, or conflicts with my own morals. I might ask why, but I’ll see it through. Those were the terms of my request. And as a newly reinstated member of the Fiends For Hire… I think… it’s only right of me to do everything I can to help one of my own.”
“That and… When Drim comes home, I think it would break his heart to see her like this.”
“Well then let’s get started!” New hope lit up in Nathym’s eyes, bringing him out of the depressive slump from suffering through the situation for so long. “Ahvra, make the preparations.”
“Assistant so bossy, needs to learn his place,” Ahvra yawned. “But just this once.” The small girl skittered out of the room with haste in her step, clearly just as anxious as Nathym.
“Okay, everything we need…” The Engineer started running through a mental checklist. “We’ll get Farian to monitor and guide you, and we’ll need Wental as well. I’ll get them and the rest of the supplies.”
“Anything I can do to help?” Jaid asked, caught up in his flow.
Nathym ran out of the room and back in just a moment later, a trunk in hand. “Go ahead and put this on. We’ll get everything ready while you do. I know it won’t be comfortable, but I’m guessing that once you spawn your clone wearing it, your main body will be able to take it off.”
Jaid did as instructed, and began donning the bulky and cumbersome suit. It had clearly been modeled after a spacesuit, or maybe used to be one and had just been remodified. The suit was also rather similar to what Chiulu wore on a regular basis. While it was a pain to get into, the knight was used to such things after years of dealing with armor. And once she had it on, she made a smaller clone—not for the size they needed, but just to test everything.
Her main body was able to remove the suit after that, and the small clone tested that any new clones she made would be wearing it. This ascension upgrade really was convenient in a lot of ways and provided much more flexibility. The two Jaids then waited around while the lab suddenly buzzed around them.
Countless monitors were brought into the frigid room, and Farian began doing checks on both Mallea and Jaid’s conditions to ensure they were fit to undertake such an endeavor. Once he gave the all clear, the operation began.
Jaid created a new clone at near microscopic size and placed her on a table for all to see. Nathym then went to her main body and put noise-canceling headphones around her. He then picked up a microphone and spoke. “We’ve modified the communications in the suit so that you’ll hear our voices without your size causing distortion, and we’ve also deafened your main body so that you won’t hear any interference as you proceed.”
“Wental will also be regularly applying a calming effect to your main body. It should help keep you from panicking, especially while dealing with the claustrophobia. Now then, here’s the chip upgrade,” Nathym placed it in front of her using a pair of tweezers.
“There’s a special clip on the back of the suit to hook the upgrade to. It’s made to adjust to a few different sizes, so as you change, it should always be able to latch tightly. However, and this is important, anytime you need to make a different-sized clone, you’ll need to detach the upgrade and pass it over to the new one. Even a millimeter of difference in size could make it not integrate properly.”
The micro-Jaid went over to the upgrade and inspected the device. It looked similar to a coin or one of those circular batteries, but at her size, it was about as big as her torso. The tiny knight picked up the upgrade and moved it towards her back. Without much fiddling, the piece latched on to her suit on its own.
“Alright, we’re going to move you now,” the tweezers started looming above Jaid’s head. “Farian’s doing it because he has the steadiest hand. He’ll be taking over your guidance from here on as well. We know you can do this, and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Please save her.”
Jaid was picked up by the pinching metal, squeezing around her pressurized helmet. Her world then blurred, and everything felt queasy again. But a second later, she felt fine, calm with no nausea, certainly thanks to Wental’s emotional transfer. It was hard to make out with all the motion, but she believed she saw the frozen door to the stasis pod slide open.
The very very very small girl was then set down, but she didn’t really know where she was. It now occurred to her that they’d conveniently left out the specifics of just how she’d be getting inside of Mallea’s body. Perhaps it had been intentionally vague so she wouldn’t have more reason to reconsider.
Jaid honestly wasn’t sure where she was now. It didn’t look like any part of the body she recognized, though Mallea didn’t exactly look like a typical person at present. She had to guess the frozen ground beneath her feet was actually Mallea’s skin. But what exactly was the giant uninviting cave looming in front of her? The Paladin had a guess, and she wasn’t completely sure if she wanted it to be right.
And then the doctor confirmed it, taking over on the communications. “You’ll be entering through Mallea’s nose.”