It wasn’t long before the group was dismissed for the first half of the lesson, told to go pick up lunch in the cafeteria and pass the time for about an hour.
Mirah was still struggling, her mind weighed down by exhaustion, but she’d found the lesson intriguing. She, out of everyone in the group, had the worst picture of the state of the world outside of her small little street in the bad parts of the city. Finding out about corporations and independents was interesting and started to spark ideas for questions she wanted answered, where before there were none.
She probably wasn’t going to become an expert, or as knowledgeable as Walter or Aaliyah were on the topics, as limited as even they were. But it was better than the total ignorance she had no choice but suffer through.
The team walked themselves up to the elevator waiting a few seconds for the elevator to make it’s way down, letting off a gaggle of younger looking trainees and stepping in themselves.
The elevator ride was taken in silence, as was the walk to the cafeteria table. Everyone looked suitably overwhelmed for Mirah’s tastes. Tracker had dropped a lot of information on them, force feeding it to them as quickly as possible to bring the group up to speed. Even Aaliyah couldn’t hide her brain churning over the new information she was getting.
The team all ordered simple lunches that were brought out alongside the energy jelly that they had all quickly become accustomed to. Though Aaliyah still grimaced as the fowl tasting concoction touched her tongue.
Though the food easily covered up for the slight aftertaste.
It didn’t take long for the four teammates to down their lunches, all of them being starving, which seemed customary of being a Linked. It was almost impossible to be fat as a Linked, even if you indulged in the highest fat and sugar content foods to satiate your hunger. Something Walter seemed to think was an even greater perk than being able to generate fire out of seemingly nothing.
“So. Screaming?” Aaliyah said suddenly, interrupting the silence that had formed over the group, shocking everyone out of their reveries. Mirah frowned as the rest of the group looked towards her pointedly, all waiting for her to speak.
Mirah couldn’t remember screaming, except for in her dream. She still couldn’t help but shudder when she remembered it. Logically Mirah could dissect the scene in her mind and with the help of Tracker’s explanation of what was happening, make sense of it that way, but emotionally it was still raw, like it had carved out a wound in her mental state.
“I had a Remembrance.” Mirah mumbled quietly, looking away from the searching eyes of her teammates. Each individual around the table grimaced painfully.
Remembrances are poorly understood, just like Awakening Dreams. Many believed that they would never truly be understood, being artifacts of a changing brain, but historically Remembrances have always been a point of interest. Walter, specifically, knew Remembrances for their usage in media like comic books.
It was always more interesting to have a character that had parts of themselves occluded to the character and the reader, at least in theory. But in recent years comic books have been trying to rectify their idealized portrayal of Remembrances, making them closer to the horrifying and sometimes debilitating affliction that they can be.
One specific comic book that Walter had taken to was one about Magnus, an anti-hero character that was immensely powerful, but didn’t understand his own link. Forced to experience horrifying nightmares every single night, slowly driving him insane until he realizes his link. Though by that point in the story his mentality is so broken that he could hardly even be called an anti-hero.
“Are you…” Ajax looked at the closed of girl in front of him, trying to place his words right, “Do you want us to help?”
Mirah looked up towards the big man, trying to make sense of what he’d just asked her. He was asking if she wanted his help? How obscure. She shook her head gently, letting the heavy atmosphere fall away. Aaliyah sighed heavily as it did, deciding to change the topic instead of poke her nose into the poor girl’s nightmares. Even she had to have some tact, sometimes.
“So, instead of all that depressing stuff, we should talk about this mystery sponsor we have breathing down our necks.” The girl took a bite of a cookie that had come with her lunch, crunching away as the rest of the group turned to her, suffering from mood whiplash.
“Uh… what is there to talk about?” Walter questioned nervously. Aaliyah rolled her eyes at him.
“What do you mean what is there to talk about? What are we going to do about it?” She waved her arms about emphatically, still holding the half-eaten cookie. Ajax raised an eyebrow at the overreacting girl.
“What can we even do. I was told that we weren’t going to get any new information from Tracker or Willem.” He said, glancing at Mirah who was quietly chewing on the crust of a sandwich absentmindedly.
“Who says we need to learn this through those two?” Aaliyah began conspiratorially. “We are literally living right next to the AASAU headquarters!” She said, gesturing off to the left of the building. Where a large, stout building existed. Though it was more than likely to have an Underground of it’s own, possibly even connected to the AASAU’s training facility. Ajax and Mirah had hardly paid attention to the other building, but Walter had been in that building for testing years ago, when he had first gained his link.
“We can ask them?” Ajax said, confused, his eyebrows scrunching together. Aaliyah looked like she was having a stroke.
“No, idiot, we can sneak in and take a look around!” She said, as if talking to a toddler.
Ajax looked at her disbelievingly, then gestured up and down his figure.
“One; how am I going to sneak in anywhere.” He said, exasperated, “Two; that sounds like an amazing way to get ourselves in a massive amount of trouble. Possibly put in prison.”
Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“Uh, I have to agree there, Aaliyah.” Walter said nervously in support for Ajax’s counter argument.
“So,” Aaliyah started, her face going cold, “You’re totally fine with us having a sponsor that is paying massive money to have us trained by the hands of two very expensive employees, for a reason that might only become obvious after we are out of training and are too deep to be able to dig ourselves back out of the hole?”
She let the statement hang in the air for a few moments, allowing time for her teammates to process. Mirah looked totally unperturbed, not that she could ever really tell what Mirah was thinking. Walter looked concerned, but was rubbing his thigh in thought all the while, and Ajax just looked stern.
“Aaliyah,” the giant of a man sighed, “what would we even do with that information? We’ll go all that way to find initials or something as equally unhelpful, risking out necks over bad information that’ll just get us put in prison.” Aaliyah almost growled. They didn’t understand how it worked in the real world, all of them living in their own constructed realities, separated from the dark and horrible reality of what Melbourne really was.
“Fine,” she huffed, “But I’m warning you. How much do you think they are paying to have us be here? What possible reason would they have to bring a street rat, a farmer, a rich kid and a nobody like me together in a team? All of us Undefineds.” She shook her head disappointedly, standing up from her seat and walking off towards the toilets, leaving the rest of the group to sit in a tense silence.
Ajax rubbed his hand across his face in consternation. He’d been trying to get the team together recently, and this seemed like one of his only ways to bring them together, but the risks were so high. If they made a stupid decision, they collectively destroyed their futures. Ajax wasn’t sure if he had much of a future, and he could easily enough go back to his little wooden house, but Mirah and Aaliyah had so much more to gain from this than he did.
“She’s right.” A small voice spoke up. The once voice that Ajax would never have expected to speak up for Aaliyah’s argument. Ajax turned to Mirah, who said nothing more and stood to walk off in the direction of the elevators, probably making her way back to the classroom.
With a frustrated sigh, Ajax just hoped that he’d be able to somehow mitigate the disaster that was Mirah and Aaliyah agreeing on something.
----------------------------------------
Aaliyah returned to the classroom after spending some time in the entirely-too-good public toilets that the training facility had. She opened the door to the lecture room and found it in darkness, the only light coming from a screen that all the members of her group were paying attention to, Tracker having sat down in a row behind the team observing as well.
Aaliyah bustled into the room, closing the door behind her and sitting down in her seat next to Walter, who was watching the screen with rapt attention.
“Ivan Vasiliev, founder of Th.Inc. Glad to have you here.” A smiling woman greeted a man who was walking onto stage and sitting down in a provided chair. He was dressed modestly, a blue pullover over top of a dress shirt, though lacking a tie. Though the man himself was almost intimidatingly built. His arms were thick and chest broad, similar to Ajax, though clearly not as tall. His face was hard, a stoic default expression, most likely due to his Russian heritage. He had cropped grey hair and striking blue eyes, nodding towards the interviewer, and then towards the camera, or perhaps who was behind the camera.
“Glad to be here.” He stated, his voice softer than you’d expect from the hard-faced man. A distinct Russian accent, heavy enough to be noticeable, but restrained with clear vocalization.
“So, Mr. Vasiliev–” The man shook his head at the presenter.
“Please, call me Ivan. Formality is stifling.” A pleasant smile opened up his face, changing the stoic, hard-faced man into the uncle you’d go to with your problems. The presenter laughed shyly.
“Ah, Ivan then.” She regained her composure and continued, “So, Ivan, you and your company have been on the forefront of linktech and scientific advancement as a whole for the good part of two decades, so we thought you’d be the perfect man to ask about the nature of links in general.” Ivan nodded thoughtfully, seemingly considering the statement with an intense seriousness.
“Quite the task.” He said, grinning softly, though not diminishing his own words. The interviewer returned with a polite smile but continued.
“Links and their nature have been difficult to get reliable information on even since I was a child, so I had hoped we might shed light on it to help the world understand them better.” Ivan hummed for a moment, looking upwards in thought.
“Well, Maria,” he said slowly, “there is a good reason there is no reliable information getting out to the public. There is no reliable information.” The interviewer’s face quirked, certainly not expecting that answer.
“No reliable information? I don’t want to insinuate that you may be holding secrets, Ivan,” the man chuckled, “but you are possibly one of the most powerful men alive, along with being one of the greatest hypercognitives to ever be born. It’s a difficult idea to conceive that you, who reshaped Russia into a technological and scientific powerhouse of a nation, has no reliable information on Linked and their links.” She looked questioningly at the almost unassuming looking man, who seemed to be the leader of Russia, if not in title, then in spirit.
“Indeed. I have no reliable information for you, Maria. I would be lying to you if I were to say as such, like some other countries do.” He turned to the camera and wiggled an eyebrow, insinuating a country was lying. Maybe China, or maybe America. Probably both.
“But what I do have for you, is unreliable information. Information that remains consistent among many Linked, but none of it can be confirmed past reasonable doubt, and thus cannot be called reliable.” The man took in a deep breath, a look of pure thought crossing his face before he nodded to himself.
“The reason Linked are named as such was originally because of an emotion that those who are linked typically feel when they exert themselves to their maximum. They feel as if they are ‘linked’ to something extraneous to themselves. We, and I, believe that Linked have somehow attained the ability to connect to a massive, possibly universal, source of energy that nothing but the most bleeding edge of linktech can detect.”
Aaliyah felt her eyes widen involuntarily. She’d never heard this before. Everyone had their own opinions on the matter, even those who were non-Linked, but they all seemed stand it, or wishy-washy at best. This was different, more definitive but also far more nebulous. Like all good answers were.
“Aliens?” The shocked interviewer said, and Ivan let out a short bark of laughter, though still managing to keep it quiet.
“Maybe, maybe not. We have no way of knowing whether alien lifeforms exist that are advanced enough to create an energy capable of doing this to us. However, I believe that it’s far more likely that we have reached a new stage of human evolution instead.” The interviewer was silent as she tried to process the information she was getting.
“So, we’ve simply evolved to the point where we are capable of accessing this energy? And it simply develops as reality breaking powers?” She said, almost incredulous if not for the fact that she clearly respected the man she was interviewing.
“In layman’s terms; yes. Just like beings slowly developed from tiny organisms that were incapable of sentient thought, so did those sentient creatures slowly become sapient, and then thus we have slowly evolved to the point where we are now capable of harnessing a power we have been bathing in for possibly all of our Earth’s history.” He smiled at the interviewer.
“I do not believe it will be long before the only three-hundred-thousand odd Linked slowly grow in their population size until it will be more uncommon to be non-Linked than Linked.”