Jack knelt in the corner of the small holding cell across from Lily, watching her vacant eyes and naked body twitch on the cool steel floor. She hugged her knees to her chest. He wondered if the twitching was because of the drugs or what Ren and the others did to her. His stomach lurched at the thought and he wondered if he could vomit in this construct.

“Eat little one,” came a woman’s voice from the thick gray door. It was not unkind, but not concerned either, more like a master speaking to a dog. A tray slid under the gap and he noticed there were a few more trays, untouched, laying to the side. “Jode will not have you starve before your evolution.” Lily stared. “Eat or we will feed you,” the woman said. The click of heels receding into the distance came a moment later.

How long had she been in this cell? He couldn’t remember anything after the injection room, probably because Lily couldn’t either. Outside the construct, were they still floating in the Pool of Consciousness, or was this death?

“I’m so sorry,” he said.

“Sorry?” Her eyes blazed for a moment and she screamed, “You left me!” The veins on her neck and forehead bulged blue in time with her rage.

“You can see me?” he asked.

She convulsed violently and lurched up to hands and knees, dry heaving on the floor. Her dark curls hung limply down around her face as she looked up at him again. Her tone softened. “I’m evolving, becoming Nostshu.”

“I tried to find you.”

She crawled toward him on hands and knees. “Did you enjoy watching? Did you like it when they cut off my clothes? When they touched me?”

“Stop it!” Jack said, pressing himself into the wall.

“Do you want to see what they did to me on the inside? They weren’t allowed to leave marks on the outside, but their probing and their serum left plenty inside.”

“Stop!”

“And now, I’ll be Jode’s pet to share with the other Shu.”

“I never left you.”

“Do you think it stopped in that room?”

“I tried to keep you from going to the summit, but you wouldn’t listen!”

“Did you think I lost my mind from just the evolution?”

“I tried to save you, I searched for you!”

“The years that followed, when you never came, that’s what shaped me. That’s how I found my truth.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Jack thrust his palms out. Her rose-colored eyes glowed with the reflection of light on steel, and her naked breasts swayed with every motion.

“I know what I’m saying and so do you.”

“I tried to reach you, we fought—”

“Did you feel it every time they trained me? Every slap, every thrust.” Her voice dropped an octave, and she laughed. “Jode showed me the truth about you and the Shen and the little human beasts.”

“They’re not beasts.”

“You’re all animals. Humans destroy each other and rape the earth. And you Shen sit in your little Haven after fighting us with your little lives, content to fail and go back to paradise, proud to think you fought the good fight.” Her face contorted with her words and she spit on the floor in front of her.

“You experimented on humans and slaughtered them like livestock in your farms.” Jack turned his head away, unable to look at her leering face or naked body.

“The farms were mine,” she purred. “What better way to advance our science? We learned so much.”

“And how is that different from how they enslaved you? And…” Lily paused in front of him, gazing at him, her leering smile replaced with a thoughtful stare. “This is just a construct, Lily. This happened ages ago. You have to wake up!” She searched his face, and he inched toward her, raising his palms to her cheeks, cradling her face. “It can end here. You wanted peace once, and you can have it now.”

She stared at him.

“I didn’t understand then,” he said. “Not as Saeb. But I see now that both of us thought of humans as lesser beings. They struggle through brief lives full of desire and pain. They seek the illusion of permanence. That is no different from the Nost.”

Lily narrowed her eyes and pulled away, but Jack moved with her.

“But there is joy in life,” he said. “Think about those moments before the war.”

Lily shook her head and pulled away. Jack let her go.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“It’s not our place to save the humans.”

“Only through control can we—”

“Jode is wrong! And so is Millae. We can be better than them and better than the ancient slavers that created us.”

“How?” Her tone was deep and raw, her gaze searching.

“Stop saving anyone else and focus on you, Lily. That’s what I’m doing for myself.”

“You burned the world for me,” she said.

“I’m sorry they hurt you,” he said.

She sat back on her heels and stared at him.

“Jode is here. Go to him if you need the closure you were looking for. But find your own answers, not someone else’s.”

She pursed her lips, and her rose-colored eyes glowed, filling the room with soft hues. He imagined a light breeze playing across his cheek and thought about the chaise lounge in their old house; the Shen capital gleaming down the hill; her smooth skin, twisting curls, and playful smile.

***

“That was unexpected,” the boy said. Jack blinked the light away and inspected the new room around him. He stood on shining metal floors and an enormous screen rested on one wall.

“What?”

“You sent Lily to Millae and Jode’s sanctuary. That should surprise them.” He chuckled.

“I did?” Jack asked.

“The Pool of Consciousness, child. It has more power than any place, even the lab. It touches every mind in Haven and earth.”

“Is she dead?”

The boy nodded. “And you have sent her to the creator’s sanctuary instead of Haven.” The boy studied him with dark, intent eyes. Jack thought he saw miniature lights flashing behind them, but it had to be his imagination.

“She wanted to face Jode,” Jack said. “Or at least, she thought she needed to.”

“And she’ll be in the sanctuary construct forever unless someone shuts it down. As you know, Millae and Jode have been there since the Burn with no way to enter the physical.”

“I didn’t mean to trap her there. If it’s shut down, is there enough Shen left in her to reach Haven?”

“She has always been Nostshen, child, nothing Jode can do will ever change that. Shen are the children of ONUS, just like the humans.”

“And Darean? I saw the Oracles push him into the Haven Gateway.”

The boy regarded him for a moment and said, “We do not upload Nostshu when they expire in the physical. But this was a physical entrance. His body will be consumed, but the rest… the Ancillary will show us the way.”

“Are we in the lab now?” Jack looked around and saw consoles and smaller screens jutting from the walls. He tried to recall the interior of the lab, but the memory refused to come.

“Not yet, child, we can see so much more from here.”

The screen before him filled with a nightmare. Flames flickered across huge tapestries as shadowy figures flung swords and lightning at each other. In the middle, blue hair streaked through the smoke and chaos. Sarathen’s blade was a blur as she attacked and defended. Her battle cloak clung to her back as she moved from enemy to enemy as if magnetized to her body. She sliced through the robes of an Order priest with her blue steel blade before spinning to plant a booted heel into the face of a Nostshi. Jagged rips in her blue leather pants revealed pale flesh and fresh blood. Her lace-up shirt was torn in half a dozen places, and Jack wondered how much of the blood was hers.

Pete and Greg knelt beside the fireplace with wide, panicked eyes. Graves lay in a heap, not far away, her sidearm smashed on the stone floor beside her outstretched hand. Jack imagined Sarathen’s boot crushing it like the Nostshi’s face. Bobby’s corpse lay sprawled a few paces from the fire where he caught the rest of the bullets intended for him. His wide eyes stared into nothing, and Jack thought of Bobby’s mother once again.

“What’s happening,” Jack said, looking at the boy. “I have to—”

“Sarathen!” Braiden called from a nearby doorway and Jack turned to the screen again, clenching his own totem tightly in front of him, as if he could join the battle. Sarathen’s head snapped toward Braiden as she finished impaling an Order member in a crisp black suit.

“Move,” she said, pushing Pete and Greg with the heel of her boot. She spun around them, delivering death to Nost and humans alike. But Jack could see she was slowing, could sense her fatigue and blood loss. As they reached the doorway, Janile burst from the melee and threw himself at her. She deflected his blow easily, but a massive form came catapulting over Janile. A Nostmara. Sarathen dove to the side just in time to miss the beast’s lunge, but Janile thrust his blade upward and to the side, catching her in the stomach. His howl of delight turned to an agonized cry as she spun and threw her own blade like a spear through his chest.

“Get down!” she screamed, tackling Pete and Greg as Braiden slammed his staff into the massive Nostmara’s midsection before he too dove to the cold stone floor. With the twist of her wrist, Sarathen’s totem blade sent a wave of lightning through the room. Janile exploded, his body parts sailing over their heads. Her battle cloak shielded Greg and Pete, but the Nostmara went flying through the doorway into the dark hallway beyond.

“Go,” Sarathen whispered to the pair. “The Mara is dead.”

“No!” Pete cried, grabbing her under the arms. Greg grasped the heels of her boots. They carried her to a dark corridor and lay her down, blood pooling around her. The sounds of fighting faded into the background. By the look in her dimming eyes, Jack knew it was hopeless.

Despite this, he said, “You have to help her.”

The boy raised an eyebrow but kept watching the screen.

“Take this,” Sarathen whispered, handing Jack’s journal to Braiden as he knelt beside her. Jack saw that he was bleeding from a deep gash across his cheek and blood gushed from a wound in his forehead.

She smiled up at him and said, “I promised I’d get his friends out.”

“How many times are we going to die for his sins?”

“Our sins,” she said.

“You didn’t burn the world.”

“We all did, Braiden.”

He took the journal and moved his hand down to her cheek, brushing a strand of blue hair aside before wrapping his hand around the back of her neck, supporting her head. “You’re right, as usual. We must free ourselves from our own samsara.”

“You’re a silly Buddhist, Braiden, but a good bodhisattva,” she said, smiling.

“May the light shine upon you and the fortune of creation grant you strength,” he whispered, kneeling to kiss her forehead. The red light of her eyes dimmed an instant later and went out. The sound of battle grew louder through the doorway behind them. Braiden turned to Greg and Pete.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“But we can’t leave her,” Greg said.

“She’s already in the In-between.” Braiden stood and moved down the corridor, and Jack tore his eyes from the screen.

“Why didn’t you help them?” Jack asked.

“My place is not to interfere,” the boy said. “I exist to provide space, what you do in that space is up to you.”

“She killed Graves and Janile,” he said. “For me.”

The boy stared at him.

“And protected my friends.”

The boy did not blink.

“And she saved my journal again.”

The boy tilted his head.

“Say something!”

“I think it is time to decide,” the boy said.

“Decide what?”

“The fate of the world, Jack, what else is there?”

“I don’t understand.”

“You rarely do,” the boy said.