{Enki | Tumu’s Sanctum}

It was different this time.

Pax was stolen.

The Vast was getting all Collective against its common enemy.

The Shadow gang was all together. Well, minus a few key players. Kyle wasn’t sure whose absence hurt more. Rayne’s or…

Fuck Kyle for always thinking of Silence. Some voice in his head berated him, “She betrayed you, dude! Get over it.” But another voice muttered, “What if…” What if there was something to the last gaze they shared? Or Lucas’ quiet message to Andrew?

“Keep your faith in me a little while longer.”

That one kept Kyle up at night. It wasn’t the first time the Shadow had heard the peculiar reassurance. The lack of sleep made it hard for Kyle to focus on his role during the day. Pablo warned him to take care of himself, but honestly, who the fuck had time for that in the middle of a galactic war?

And on that note…

“Okay. Okay. We can get started.” Kyle sat beside T.a.o. She smiled at him with concern in her Atramentous eyes. It hurt him to see her so distraught. “Are you sure you don’t want Devis to do this?”

Devis sat on the other side of her bed, holding her hand. “I don’t mind, sister.”

T.a.o. held up their hands, her arms muscled but so thin every striation stood out in stark relief. To Devis, she said, “You keep me here.” Korac was originally meant to anchor her, but he was needed on the mission with Sagan, Tumu, and Tameka. Now there was a party of awkward relations Kyle would pay to see in a memory replay.

Xelan sat down and clamped a hand on Kyle’s shoulder. “I’m tagging along.” He gave T.a.o. a reassuring smile.

Her eyes glittered whenever Xelan came around, like she saw something other than a man when she looked at him. “Yes.”

Kyle took a deep breath and blew out some massive burnout which he resisted at every turn. Yet at every turn, something or, more recently, someone waited to gut punch him. “Ready?”

Devis nodded, Xelan squeezed Kyle’s shoulder, and the small woman in the makeshift hospital bed tugged on Kyle’s hand. He jumped inside her memory scape.

In theory anyway.

For Korac and Pehton, the plane of their memories resembled an art gallery where they could jump in and out of memories on display. Andrew’s scape was a kaleidoscope of transitioning, potential memories within refracted Probabilities in his mind like a prism of existence.

T.a.o.’s memory was a labyrinth of mirrors. Literally. Purple floors and mirror walls stretched to the silver sky. It was like nothing Kyle ever saw before. And of course, they didn’t enter together.

“Hello! T.a.o.? Xelan?”

No answer.

Well, fuck.

Kyle wandered down the—

“Ouch.” He smacked his face into a mirror. Off to a great start. With both hands stretched out, his finger grazed reflective surfaces on either side. Every now and again, he called out to the others, and although his voice carried and echoed, he heard nothing from them.

Still, something unnerved him.

This was a mind. He wasn’t in danger here, yet Kyle felt watched. Judged.

“I swear if there’s a minotaur—”

A glint caught his eye. Sans joint and trapped in someone’s mind, Kyle turned slowly to capture—

There it was again.

Was T.a.o. always trapped in this place, catching glimpses of things which might chase her? How terrifying. And there it was again. It was not with him, but in the mirror. Kyle stared and tried to see it again. Like watching someone turn a corner right before catching sight of them.

“T.a.o., I want to show you something.”

Oh, that could only be Razor’s voice.

“Hello?” Kyle wasn’t sure where this was headed, but if this guy was involved—Shit.

A man with white skin, white hair, and white eyes, fancy business suit, and more gel in his hair than a ballistics lab—Razor—was behind Kyle. He spun, suddenly full of adrenaline and the desire to punch a cut jawline—

Oh.

Razor was inside the opposite mirror and walked up to the surface. He was like a much more impressive and put-together reflection of Kyle. He held out a hand without fingernails.

“So, would you like me to take you?”

Uh. This was probably against the rules, but Kyle tried and succeeded in putting his hand through the mirror. Razor took it, and the scenery took on shape and color. Black glass and rock—the room was carved of obsidian and onyx. Kyle knew this place from Korac’s Verse. The Obsidian Palace. T.a.o. lived here as Razor’s friend and employee. The room was warm and comfortable—Couches, glass bookshelves dividing the room, a black desk. Honestly, Kyle had heard no complaints about the Pain Curator’s sense of fashion or decor. Just his sense of right and wrong.

Still holding Kyle’s hand, which in the memory was warm and familiar, not at all frightening, Razor led him into a secondary room with only one thing: a fireplace filled with black flames.

“Yes, it’s pretty, isn’t it?” Razor said as if responding to T.a.o. “Sit with me for a while. You can look into it, if you want. It won’t hurt your eyes.”

No wonder Sagan fell prey to this bastard. He was perfectly warm and genuine-seeming. Kind. Everything about his voice and posture said, “It’s okay to feel comfortable around me.” Kyle was happy when Razor let T.a.o.’s hand go.

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This was an odd memory walk for him. In his mind, Kyle knew Razor was capable of terrible things, and kept expecting him to do something unsavory. But in T.a.o.’s heart, he felt perfect trust. The man known for pain would never hurt her—

Something changed in Razor. A shift, an anticipation—something. His body was poised, and his white eyes gleamed. The Last Aegis licked his lips before saying, “It won’t burn if you want to touch the light.”

No. Red flag. Not good. Touching Cascading Light exposed the victim to the Probability Matrix. Like what happened to Andrew a few months back. He’d not been the same since.

Coaxing, kind, and warm. “Of course. It’s safe. It won’t burn you.”

No. T.a.o.—

But before Kyle could pull himself from the memory, he reached out and touched the black fire. And thank Elden, nothing fucking happened. Shit, this was involuntary as hell. Instead, Kyle experienced everything from T.a.o.’s perspective. Which wasn’t much of anything before she blacked out.

Not for long though, as if the memory skipped this time. Her vision returned, and Kyle found himself in a massive swimming pool-sized bed. His instinct was to crawl out immediately and scrub his skin off, but T.a.o. was safe here.

Razor’s stupid, handsome face appeared between her and the black rock ceiling. “I’m sorry. I should’ve known better than to—Are you all right? How do you feel? Can you see, T.a.o.?”

She could, although Kyle couldn’t see what she saw. Surely, the world looked to her the way it did for Andrew. All blurred lines and different colors and textures. But for some reason, T.a.o.’s memoryscape was absent of elements involving herself. Kyle got her emotions, but not her words. The view from her eyes, but not exactly what she saw.

It was time to leave this memory. While Kyle was sure no one knew T.a.o. had touched Cascading Light, he came here to review the time she’d spent in Celindria’s captivity.

As Kyle walked back to the mirror’s surface, Razor called out to him, “Steer clear of Abresson for me. He’s taking a liking to you, and I don’t trust him. I know how much you like having friends, but please do this for me. I’d hate for anything to happen to you.”

Kyle shivered as he stepped out of the glass.

Therapy. They all needed therapy.

With the comforting knowledge that the mirrors represented T.a.o.’s memories, Kyle tried to glimpse them only long enough to see if they were during her captivity. If not, he’d respect her privacy and move on. It hurt. Most of T.a.o.’s life was spent in Razor’s diabolical care, or Celindria’s merciless captivity. Then there was Abresson. Kyle barely glanced at that memory before hurrying along.

Hundreds of memories denoted T.a.o.’s good nature. Penguins, Hellkittens, some weird fuzzy spherical creatures on Pil—Over and over, T.a.o. buried herself in animal cuddles. But Kyle’s favorite memories involved elaborate and hilarious setups for pranks. The Seamswalker regularly walked into houses of great planetary leaders—Legir and X, among them—and rearranged a chair before they sat down so they fell on their asses. Or opened all the doors in their homes, only to close them moments later.

Silly things.

It made coming to T.a.o.’s recent memories more painful.

Celindria was a fucking monster—

“I love her.”

Kyle turned to find T.a.o. and Xelan walk up behind him. She held Xelan’s hand like he kept her on this plane. Not Devis. The mirror failed to reflect them because it wasn’t a mirror at all. What had she said again?

Oh.

Kyle asked, “Do you think of her as your sister?”

T.a.o. tilted her head to the side. “She wants to feel our hearts, but they don’t beat for her.”

Surely what T.a.o. said wasn’t nonsense, but was senseless to Kyle. The memory behind him played of her crawling all over Chris’ captured body, threatening to perform oral sex on him against their wills. Elden, Kyle couldn’t imagine being in Chris’s head at that moment.

He shuddered.

Xelan looked right at the memory with a frown on his face. It wasn’t the look of disappointment. It was… fear? Was Xelan afraid of Celindria—

“I’m so sorry, T.a.o.” Sincerity emanated from Xelan’s words. Almost as if he were apologizing for her entire life.

The small woman shook her head and gestured with a wave of her hand at the mirror. The memory changed, mercifully. Now it was a memory of Celindria and a Tritan which could only be Remorse. The last time Kyle saw the Primary, Silence had put him in his place, and it felt like a hundred years ago.

Celindria sounded fed up with Remorse’s shit. “Your son wasn’t meant to be there. Where is Nox?!”

“You’ll have to manage without him this time. He—”

Celindria—Were Kyle’s eyes playing tricks on him?

For a second, the light surrounding Celindria dimmed. Not like a power surge. More like she absorbed the spectrum. What was more unnerving than that?

Primary Rem took a step back.

Celindria’s voice was chilled but not in Atramentous. Pure ice dripped from her full lips. “Nothing can separate us. We are the Eternal Bind, and I want Nox returned to me.”

Swallowing, Remorse visibly shored himself to say, “He is not the way to obtain your soul, nor has he ever been. Try this once without him because there’s no means to recover this. We’ll take Pax soon. He’ll need you as mother and father, now.”

Shadows converged around Celindria, and the ice in her voice threatened murder. “Someone will pay for this mistake.”

Kyle’s brows shot up, and he couldn’t help but glance at Xelan.

Said mistake scrutinized Celindria’s paused face as if he meant to decipher a means of defeating her from it.

T.a.o. waved her hand and scenes fast forwarded in the mirror. Celindria taking advantage of Chris, arguing with Andrius, and bossing around Remorse.

Primary Rem walked into Celindria’s lab. “Have you made any progress with increasing Seamswalking distance?”

Without looking up, she admonished him, “You don’t ask about my progress with any of my endeavors, Remorse.”

Sly, he sidled up to the counter she leaned over. “But I come bearing good news. We can trade.” The Tritan tried to imbue his voice with silk, but it sounded more like spider’s thread. Sticky.

Celindria sighed almost in disgust before relenting. “Very well. I’ve almost made a breakthrough which will increase distance from a city to a continent, but still no interplanetary travel.”

“That’s excellent.” Pleased, Remorse rapped his knuckles beside Celindria. “We’ve confirmed Tameka was the source of the power drains a few months back.”

Celindria looked up then, something shining in her bright blue eyes. “We can deliver Ishkur to Mother—You know I can see the twitch in your voids whenever I speak of Silence. Tell me, do you fear her wrath or do you fear she is righteous in it?”

That was the most disgusted Kyle had ever seen a Tritan look. In Remorse’s deep primary voice, he said, “She won’t let us integrate Para and Karter into the breeding program.”

Needling him, Celindria argued, “And you can’t tolerate that her logic is sound. Those warriors are creatures of violence, not incubation. I agree with her.”

“Female solidarity.”

With far too much satisfaction, Celindria said, “You of all people should fear it, Tritan.”

Shock and anger passed over Remorse’s face. He opened his mouth as if to tell her as much, but thought better of it. Instead, he said, “Once, you were pleasant company.”

“No. I merely fooled you then as I do now.”

Remorse sighed. It was heavy and mournful, as if lamenting something he lost. “As you choose.”

More memories like this one passed along. Sometimes, the heads of Imminent left the room to discuss affairs away from their captives. Cautious. It was smart.

After some time, Xelan pulled T.a.o. into a hug. She was so small the top of her head met his ribs. In their embrace, he said once more, “I’m so sorry.”

This was enough. “Let’s go back.” Kyle needed a joint and possibly a stiff drink before the war started. Andrew was nice enough to volunteer and roll him a stash like in their last battle.

Xelan nodded. “Take us out.”

Voices and commotion replaced the hollow of T.a.o.’s labyrinth. People were shifting around and organizing for the upcoming strife inside Tumu’s sanctum.

Devis beamed at his sister. “How do you feel?”

T.a.o. let her smile answer for her. For the first time in a long time, she was free, and everyone here intended to keep it that way.

Speaking of…

“Let me give you this shot, T.a.o.” Pablo appeared with a syringe. “It won’t hurt much.”

Lynn, too. “All of you need a booster.”

Kyle bared his arm for more of the doctor’s goodwill and looked around at the activity.

After her shot, T.a.o. smiled at all the men surrounding her bed and asked, “Fury returns?”

With a touch of a frown, Xelan said, “On a brief mission. Why?”

“Pax is waiting for her. I can take her there.”

That’s exactly the morale boost they needed. Para and another Seamswalker.

Things were looking up.