The boy and his father were always interesting for her to watch. The lives of the people of Aherlow were open to her like a canvas painting, each one a shining light atop the backdrop of the city. Each one was a reminder of the life she once had, the life she had given up after the fire.
The boy and his father were a reminder of that life, a reminder of what she had lost. They had shown up at Tartarus weeks earlier but were already her favorite people to watch. The hurt was like a slowly seeping wound in her heart. Every time she looked, there was a twinge of pain and a slow drain that crept across her chest like a spider's legs. It would then fade away, receding to an itch she couldn't scratch.
She pulled away from them, back into the base, the tendrils of her aether forming a map of interconnected lines in her mind.
She was the heart of Tartarus, the nexus of every object, whether ship, monster, or other, approaching the island in the nightsea. Through the device beneath her, she saw everything around the base and was the nexus of the Military Police's defense against any intrusion into the Core.
Every breath to fuel her curse shot a spike of pain through her lungs, but it was what gave her the chance to escape her prison for a time.
Bzzt.
An electric shock ran through her mind as one of her strings caught. The commander began his descent from the floor above her prison. She followed her strings up through the halls, jumping line to line across the walls until she reached the gate. She saw him wave to the guards on duty and work the console that controlled the gates.
She shuddered.
The commander rarely came to see her. She couldn't remember the last time he had made the long trek from his office across the lake to her prison. However, today, he had returned. She opened her eyes to the darkness of her room, releasing her hold of her gate and taking herself away from her strings. The device below her lost its hum as it stopped amplifying the power of her curse.
Tap. Click.
A door opened at the far side of the room, and a large hand flipped the switch for the lights. She winced away from the light, closing her eyes against the sudden flash of white light across the reflective panels that covered the room. The heavy footsteps of the commander's boots approached as she blinked away and let her eyes adjust. When she opened them, he stood before her, his hands in his pants pockets as he watched her with cold brown eyes.
"WPN One," the commander said, showing his straight white teeth through his trimmed beard with his smile.
"Commander Milton." WPN One's throat burned in her reply.
He looked her over, and she saw that he hadn't changed. He wore a black suit under the black and red coat of a Military Police uniform that rested on his shoulders, ignoring the sleeves. His skin was a dark tan that never faded, and his hair was a dark brown. The only thing that had changed about him were the few white hairs that showed up across his beard and short hair.
Otherwise, it was as if he hadn't aged a day since she last saw him.
"I see you're still in one piece," he said. "When I was first assigned here, I never thought you would last this long."
"A long life is part of the experiments," WPN One said. "Not much can kill me."
"There are much worse things than death." He looked away.
He didn't add what he probably thought: 'You're proof of that,' and WPN One didn't push the fact. Very few could look upon her and not see that. The cost of her power was written across her body. It was the reason she never strung her strings across the room. She didn't want to see it either.
"Why are you here?" she asked.
"I've come for a report," he said, gripping his fist tight. "Check the area around Aherlow for any ships."
"And you think you can trust my information?"
"I know where your loyalties lie," he said. "I know what we can do if you give me a false lead. You're stuck here with me, WPN One. Never forget that. Tartarus is your home, as it is mine."
She grimaced, but she couldn't argue with him. There was a time when she would have happily provided the information to anyone who asked it of her. There was a time when she thought her sacrifice was worth the cost. There was a time when she believed that the order of the Scions was preferable to the chaos of outlaws.
In some ways, she wasn't certain that it wasn't still the case.
"One moment."
She opened her gate, embracing the buzzing power of her gate as she followed her tendrils of aether through her head and out into the base. The lines of power stretched through all of Tartarus, out of the dome, and onto the island of Aherlow itself. As she reached out, the device below her began its soft hum again. Her strings of aether stretched further beyond the island, out into the nightsea itself. In moments, she touched far beyond the island in a massive spear, the tips even touching Grim Aegis, days away by slipship.
"What am I looking for?" she asked.
"Any strange slipships in the area," he said.
That was like asking for a strange cart in a market; however, WPN One didn't tell Commander Milton about that. Instead, she stretched out her tendrils as far as she could and allowed the movements of the ships outside the island to give form to the area. Nothing seemed abnormal; only a few ships coming from Grim Aegis toward Aherlow and some minor fishing buoys out in the nightsea caught her attention.
That was until she saw the blazing streak in the distance. A familiar aetheric signature caught in her thoughts. She paused, hesitating to reach out to it, at least not yet. She didn't want to give away what she sensed unless she could have some information in return.
"There might be some ships coming from Grim Aegis," she said. "Another two ships are approaching from the First and Fourth toward us. None of them seem strange."
"I see."
Click. Tap.
He turned and walked away, turning out the light and leaving WPN One in darkness before he closed the door. WPN One frowned, but there was little she could do. However, there was one option before her, one opportunity that she could see. She smiled as she reached out into the darkness of the nightsea, leaving the darkness of her room behind again.
What she had was an opportunity—a chance to finally be free.
----------------------------------------
Alex sat in his room aboard the Nighthawk, his hands clenching as he sat in a crossed-leg pose on his bed with his eyes closed. He focused on his breathing, feeling the aether's flow through the ship around him. He could see the Nighthawk in his mind, but he was trying to feel it in the aether. He was trying to place the ship in detail in his mind from the currents of aether that flowed through everything that existed on Erth.
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The nighthawk was shaped like a long submarine. However, there were some differences between it and those on Earth. A cockpit rose on the ship's front end, complete with an armored set of windows that looked out from the bridge and into the nightsea. Two long tubes stuck out from the ship's side, holding most of the ship's propulsion system. Lodestones provided lift and horizontal motion for the ship throughout the nightsea and the islands within it. Finally, a large gold-spiked cone stuck out from the ship's tail end, though Alex had no idea what it was for.
Unlike most ships built to sail the nightsea, which might look like sailing ships from the age of piracy on Earth with four stones attached to their sides, the Nighthawk was a ship built to sail through a sea that he hadn't seen yet, the Dark Meridian and beyond that, the New World.
"All on account of a message," Alex said, shaking his head as he opened his eyes and released his hold on the aether.
He pushed aside his pondering, standing up and stretching from his work with aether. James had told him that the Path of Will was the hardest to master, and he was starting to realize why. It was hard to focus and feel aether around him. He knew it was there, but focusing on it and feeling it were difficult. It was like trying to understand the individual composition of air molecules as you breathed them in.
Crack.
He tilted his neck left and right and cracked his knuckles as he did so.
"The hardest part is always the first step," he reminded himself from when he learned the Path of Might and the Path of Step.
"Hey."
Alex looked up from stretching, stopping at a green-cloaked pale woman with long, frizzy black hair and deep green eyes. Erin 'Thorn Queen' Leah, one of his crew members and the closest thing to a medic on his ship, stood leaning in the doorway. Her freckled face was a shade pinker than normal, and Alex knew immediately that she wasn't just visiting to say 'hello.'
There was a problem.
"Did Sayed clean out the reserves again?" Alex asked, reaching for his shirt and tossing it on quickly.
"No." Erin grimaced, not meeting his eye.
Sayed was another crew member, a swordsman of some ability with a fiery curse. While he was a big eater, he couldn't clear out all their food alone. However, he tended to make decisions in a dramatic way that would make the idea possible.
"Not even a chuckle." Alex sighed. "So what is it, really?"
"We're getting closer to Grim Aegis," Erin said, her eyes not meeting his. "And that complicates things."
Alex frowned. She wasn't wrong. Getting to Grim Aegis was the first step to getting into the Core and the Twelve Kingdoms. Grim Aegis was one of four key islands that allowed entry to the Twelve Kingdoms. However, he already knew this, and she would come over in the middle of the night to tell him about it.
"Yeah, the path ahead is going to be rough."
"When we enter the Twelve Kingdoms, we'll be in the Scion's realm. We'll be in the Empyrean itself."
"Yeah," Alex said. "That's the point, though. We can't get to Magnus Hortus except by going there."
"And it would be good to have support while we're there." Erin fidgeted with one hand, rubbing at her long green cloak as she still avoided his eyes.
"It would be nice," Alex said, but he already guessed where she was going.
Erin was, first and foremost, a member of the People's Revolution, a terrorist or freedom fighter group, depending on the person's position. Alex didn't know much about them, except they hadn't been very effective when overthrowing the Scions. Beyond the fact that the Scions were still in power, he didn't see them out in the world over the last few years of roaming the nightsea.
"Have you considered joining?" Erin asked, meeting his eyes for the first time in the conversation. "We'd be able to get so much done if the entire crew joined."
"No."
"But—"
Alex held up a hand to forestall complaints. He already knew his answer and his reasoning. There was no room for argument, even though he knew he wouldn't be able to convince Erin that. She had been with the revolution since she had come to the Erth from Erys.
"I spent my first five years on Erth stuck in a lab being told what to do," Alex said. "I was restrained and tortured every day. I might not mind their goals, but I won't subjugate myself to them. I have my own life now."
"You already help people." Erin gripped her fingers into tight fists. "You're willing to fight against anyone who stands in your way. Why not give us that strength? You could make a difference!"
"I could make a difference in a lot of places. But it won't get me home."
While it might seem like he got distracted sometimes, that was his goal. While he didn't always make choices that would send him that way and sometimes helped people who were hurting around him, that didn't change the fact that his end goal was to make it back home to Earth. If there were a way to get back, he would find it, and he would break through whoever got in his way. He wanted to see his brothers and sisters again. He wanted answers from his father about their family business, which had called him home to Argentina before his plane was consumed in a flash of bright light.
"Why do you lie?" Erin whispered, clenching her fists.
"I'm not lying, simple as that." Alex cut back, clasping his hands together. "I'm going to the New World to find my path back home. Joining the revolution won't get me there."
"Then why do you bother helping people?" Erin asked. "Why did you fight with us on Glory Plateau? Why did you help Klaus and Erick on Cragg Hollow instead of running with the logbook? Why did you help me on Dry Turtle? What about the Zoan? If you only cared about getting home, you wouldn't have done anything! You would have just left everyone behind!"
She stopped, panting as the echo of her own voice rang through the small room. Alex frowned as he looked down at her. He had an answer to that question, but he already knew she wouldn't like it. To him, it was simple. He helped people because it was the right thing to do. Just because he had a goal didn't mean he had to give up his humanity.
Anyone who knew the social sciences or philosophy to a decent extent knew that people were less Hobbes and more Locke. Despite the negativity of some, if people didn't help one another out, a good portion of the time, nothing would ever get done. There were the greedy, the selfish, and the wicked. However, that didn't change the fact that most people needed to be decent people for humanity to keep going.
Cooperation made the world go round.
"Me helping people doesn't invalidate my goal," Alex said. "Crossing a bridge's a lot easier than rebuilding one you burned down."
"Then help the revolution," Erin whispered.
"You're acting like something's going to happen," Alex said, narrowing his eyes. "Is there something you're not telling me?"
Bzzt.
As he said it, a flash of light crossed his mind. He wasn't in the room anymore. Instead, darkness surrounded him. For a moment, he lay restrained against cold metal in the darkness. A bright left on his left illuminated the face of a haggard man. Then, the experience was over.
Bzzt.
Alex blinked and fell onto his hands and knees on the cold floor. They were still there beneath him, a little scarred on the back but still the same dark brown he remembered. He looked up, noticing Erin hovering over him, her hand centimeters from his shoulder.
"What happened?"
"I—" Alex started before the flash of light consumed him again.
Bzzt.
Alex stood in the darkness this time, with no light to guide his eyes. Wherever he was, it wasn't on the Nighthawk anymore. He turned around, trying to get his bearings in the room; however, he couldn't place anything around him. It was like he was wholly dispossessed of his body, standing in a void.
"WPN Nine." A voice cooed from the darkness. "I never thought I would see you again."
Alex didn't respond. Few would call him by that name, and none were his friends. Well, one might have been his friend, but that was because they never really talked enough to learn each other's names. Being tortured in freakish lab experiments would do that to a person.
"Oh, are you afraid of me, WPN Nine?" the voice asked again, and Alex stopped searching the darkness.
He didn't recognize it but got a better sense of it this time. The voice was feminine, so it wasn't his worst fear. Lucien, an ex-Apostle who had overseen his torture on August, wasn't the one conjuring the vision. That meant it wasn't the worst-case scenario. Now, he just had to figure out who it was.
"I'm not afraid," Alex said. "I just don't use that name."
"Would you rather be called 'Tin Man' Ortega?" the voice asked as a faint vibration passed over Alex's arm. "That's what the wanted posters call you."
"I like it better than being called a weapon," Alex said. "Who are you? What do you want from me?"
"From you?" the voice asked. "What would I want? I already know what is needed. I can see your ship sailing through the Nightsea. I can see your destination, Grim Aegis. I can see all that needs to be seen. If I wanted you destroyed, it would be as simple as giving your location to the Military Police."
"But you don't want me destroyed," Alex said. "Otherwise, we wouldn't be talking."
"Clever boy." The woman's voice carried a smile. "I want something from you, 'Tin Man' Ortega. The reward is your safe passage to Grim Aegis."
"And what's that?"
"Come to Tartarus. Free me from my shackles. If you can do this, I will ensure that the Military Police never notice your ship. I will give you safe passage to Grim Aegis."
"I need to talk this over with my crew," Alex said. "Give my time, and I'll give you an answer."
"One hour," the voice said before sending Alex crashing back into his room.