The Ninth: Invasion (57 page)

Realizing Brent had spotted him, Second quickly walked along the ceiling toward his prey.  The unnatural movements of his arms and legs sent a shiver down Brent’s spine as he opened fire with his rifle.  Contorting his body into impossible shapes, Second easily dodged the incoming shots.  Swinging his left arm like a club, Second sent Brent skidding along the floor.  With a loud and painful thud, he landed against the bank of control units in the center of the room.  Before Brent could recover, Second leaped off the wall and landed inches away.  While Second’s right foot snatched Brent’s rifle, his right hand grabbed his neck and lifted him off the ground.

“You honestly thought you could beat me?” Second asked in his jumbled speech.

“Still do,” he said as he pulled the trigger on his concealed sidearm.

Second leapt back screeching in pain.  Brent had hit Second’s left leg perfectly.  The broken machine returned to climbing on the walls, his left leg hanging lifelessly.

“You’ll pay for that,” Second shouted in a variety of tones and moods.

Brent pulled out his second side arm and opened fire on Second, firing as many shots as he could in Second’s general direction.  Second’s reaction time was severely slowed, but still too fast for Brent to hit him.  Using his shots to herd Second, he forced him off the wall and back onto the floor at the opposite end of the room.  Pretending that one of his weapons malfunctioned, he halted his fire and slammed the side arm against the wall.  Second took the bait and lunged for him.

Brent quickly dived out of the way and fired wildly on the ceiling overhead.  A large plate of the black metal crashed down from above and landed squarely on Second.  Getting to his feet, Brent panted as he kept his weapons locked on the debris.  Without warning, the large metal plate flew off Second and embedded itself in the wall.  Sparks flashed from the newly formed gash in the wall.  Second stood up and stared at Brent in pure hatred.  Second lowered his left arm and forcefully ripped off his damaged leg.

Brent opened fire, only to find Second’s reaction time had doubled.  He easily dodged every shot as he grew closer and closer.  When he grew close enough, Second lashed out with his arm.  Brent dived under the attack only to be slammed against the ground.  Second had caught him with his right leg and thrust him against the hard metal floor.  Brent felt incredible pain as a sickening snapping sound assaulted his ear.  Second lifted him off the ground and tossed him against a wall.  Landing on his back, Brent found his left leg bent in an unnatural fashion.  A massive throbbing pain informed him he wouldn’t be using it again.

“An eye for an eye,” Second said as he calmly crawled along the wall over to his wounded prey.

Brent tried to ignore the pain as he opened fire on Second.  He couldn’t tell if the pain was slowing him down or if Second was moving even faster.  Second continued to dodge all of the random shots as he grew closer.  Second’s lips curled up as he snatched Brent’s side arms away from him.  The look on Second’s face was one of complete victory.  As Second pulled back his arm to deliver the final blow, Brent felt a strong pulse of pain rushing from his right arm.

Looking down, he found his arm surging with green light.  Brent could only stare as his hand was engulfed in burning green light.  He focused on his arm, but the lights didn’t bend to his will.  Suddenly, the lights started taking shape of their own accord.  Brent’s eyes widened as he recognized what they were becoming.  Extending out of his hand were three massive claws.  The claws flexed for a moment before they narrowed and formed a single spear of light.  He instantly recognized the shape as the one Third’s hand had become before he plunged it into him.

Second didn’t seem to notice his victim wasn’t focused on him anymore.  As Second prepared to strike at his prey, Brent shoved his right arm deep into Second’s chest.  Surging pain filled Brent as the green light flared around his arm.  Second looked as if he was completely paralyzed by the blow.  The burning green light grew brighter and brighter.  Brent’s eyes constricted against the intensity, but it continued to grow.  Finally, the green faded to pure white light.  As Brent closed his eyes against the light, he felt instantly lighter.

Opening his eyes, he found Second gone.  He sat there for a moment in disbelief, his muscles holding his outstretched arm firm.  He slowly realized his leg wasn’t hurting any longer.  Carefully he shifted and put some weight on it.  To his surprise it supported his weight and seemed to be working perfectly.  Standing up, Brent surveyed his surroundings.  In every direction was white nothingness.  Spinning in place, Brent made a complete revolution.  It didn’t matter where he faced or looked, there was nothing but light around him.

A single lightly echoing tap caught his attention.  Turning around, Brent found an old man sitting comfortably, tapping his cane against the ground.  He was certain the man hadn’t been there a moment before.  Looking down, he realized he couldn’t see any kind of ground as it faded perfectly into the rest of the white, but the fact he wasn’t falling and that the cane made a sound meant there had to be some kind of surface they were residing on.

“Welcome, my boy,” the old man said in a kind voice.  “I’ve been expecting you.”

Brent walked closer to the old man.  The man was wearing clothes he had never seen before.  Even the materials used to make the clothes seemed foreign.  By themselves, the clothes looked tight and restrictive, but the old man wore them comfortably.

“Come sit,” the old man urged.  “You must have a million questions.”

With a slow and graceful motion, the old man gestured to Brent’s right.  Looking in the directed direction, he found a chair similar to the one the old man rested on.

“Where are we?” he asked, not sitting.

“I call this place the mist of endless reflection.  Although, to tell you the truth, my colleagues never liked that term.  Too romanticized for their tastes.  You can call this place the edge of the Spark, like they did, if you prefer.”

“Edge of the spark?” Brent asked, looking around the endless expanse.

“Capital S if you please.”

“So what is a Spark?  Capital S of course.”

“Well, calling it a soul had too many religious connotations.  My colleagues would trip over that term every time it passed their lips; they almost seemed allergic to it.  I suppose we could have called it consciousness, but that seemed too generic a term.  Spark was a happy medium.  The Spark of life was a common enough term at the time that most didn’t require clarification.  Although, I suppose that in the fullness of time the common becomes the arcane, and the arcane eventually turns into the forgotten.”

“So, this place?”

“The technical explanation would require four-and-a-half-days of non-stop lecture, firmly based on math that would require perhaps a year or two to properly explain to you.  Put in simple terms, this place is the result of perfect communication.  Our two Sparks are joined together here; we can speak to one another on a level beyond what any man could normally hope to accomplish.”

“So, I guess you’re not really speaking to me,” Brent said, finally taking the seat.

“Not with my mouth at least.”  The old man’s lips curled upward in a gentle smile.  “I assume you understand how communication works in the first place.”

“Electrical impulses are sent from the sense organs to the brain.  The brain then interprets those impulses as sight and sound and the rest.  Tones of sound are further interpreted to a base language the mind learned usually at a young age.  Once a response is formulated, the brain sends out impulses to other organs to respond in kind.”

“Well, this place skips all that.  Your mind and mine are linked in a way that we can communicate on a pure level.  However, since this is our first actual meeting, I’m keeping this at a proper distance.  Pure communication is a disturbing sensation at first.”

As understanding wafted over Brent, a sudden sense of urgency came over him.  Quickly standing, he searched the endless expanse.

“Where is Second?  I don’t have time for this,” he said, concerned.

“Relax, you have all the time in the world.”  The old man urged Brent to return to his seat.  “More than that, really.”

“What do you mean?”

“The two of us could converse for any duration you can imagine.  A sun could be born, live and die all within the span of our conversation.  However, outside this place time would not progress a single instant.”

“How is that possible?” Brent asked sitting.

“Sadly, the technical explanation is beyond you.  It’s a bit embarrassing, but to tell you the truth, I never fully understood it myself.  I’d need my colleagues to help me explain it properly, but they are no longer with us.”

“Who exactly are you?”

“My name is Henry Fleishcher, although I doubt that name means much in itself.  If you are the savior of humanity, I suppose it would be fair to call me its destroyer.”

“Are you Second?”

The old man chuckled softly to himself.

“An interesting leap in logic.  But no, I am not Second.  I suppose it would be more correct to say I am his father.”

“You created Second?”

“Along with the other eight and the rest of the Shard.  It was so very long ago.”

“Impossible.  You would have to be over ten millennia old.  No one can live that long.”

“It is true the human body can only be sustained for so long.  However, the Spark is eternal.  I had such good intentions, but that didn’t save us from the road to destruction.”

“What are the Shard?”

“At least you haven’t dismissed me as a rambling old man yet.”  The old man smiled warmly.  “You see, I developed a way for two people to communicate directly.”  He gestured widely to the endless white expanse around them.  “I wanted to foster the free flow of information.  However, the public saw the process as atrocity.  Those of us that had undergone the process were exiled.  I tried to explain it to everyone, defend my purpose and my colleagues, but my words fell on deaf ears.  In the fullness of time, they decided to eradicate us from existence for what we had done and what we had become.”

“What was that?  What had you become?”

“We had found by accident that my procedure could permanently remove the Spark of life from the human body.  Once removed, the mind could be transplanted into something more durable, something that would last much longer.  Another inadvertent realization was that two Sparks could join as one.  All the memories and experiences of the two individuals would remain, but the two worked in tandem – two minds, one consciousness.”

“A hive mind . . .”

“Exactly.  When the rest of humanity came to destroy us for what we had become, we fought back.  We found we could fragment our collective consciousness.  These fragments served as a conduit for our will.  By implanting these
Shards
of our consciousness into machines, we found we could manipulate them, as you would flex your pinky.”

“And the Great War started.”

“Close enough.  We didn’t really want to destroy humanity at first, I swear to that.  However, after a few millennia the original purpose for the conflict had been lost, and only pain and rage remained.  Neither side remembered they had originated from the same source.  All they knew was their hatred for one another.”

“If that’s true, then how do
you
remember?”

“That’s thanks to your birth.”

“Me? What did I do?”

“When we realized the humans were going to win the war, we decided it was our lack of individuality that was our downfall.  We created the eight you’ve met as an attempt to give us a second chance at victory.  However, we had forgotten what every parent knows.  You can guide a child, but in the end they alone choose who they will be.”

“So you thought of them as failures.”

“Sadly so.  Each one was unique, but failed to offer what we demanded.  So we came on a new idea for the final individual.  Instead of artificially creating a mind, we would extract one of our own and implant it into an independent shell.”

“I’m guessing you were the one selected.”

“Exactly right!  In the process of being extracted from the hive mind, my ancient memories returned to me.  It was painful to see what we had become through the eyes of what we had been.  I was determined to untangle our fate and restore us to the right path.”

“However, the Commonwealth got to you first and destroyed you along with the Shard homeworld.  If that’s who I am . . . was, who am I now?”

“As the Commonwealth used their terrible weapon, I was ripped from time by Lazarus.  However, between the damage our body sustained in the past and the damage done by Lazarus itself, I was unable to fully merge with it.”

“
Our
body?  I was under the impression we were the same person.”

“Another interesting leap in logic, but no.  My Spark was only loosely tied to the frame the Shard had created.  The energy suppression field of the Commonwealth fortress further weakened me.  One of the more troublesome human defenses against Shards, it completely immobilizes anything within its area of effect and drains it of power.  When that human first touched our mind, he did something to us, he changed something.”

“That human?”