Ghost of Mind Episode One (27 page)

And as it connected, so did she. She heard
what Helper heard, she saw what he saw. And she watched and
listened.

Chapter 39

John Doe

His brow did not have a chance to get covered
with sweat; his armor always insured optimal operating conditions.
But right now, without it, John would have been a mess.

This was not going according to plan. While
Evelyn had been able to easily gain minimum control of the hacker
orb, she had not managed to overcome the cloak.

‘
I just need time, I can do this, I can do
this,’ Evelyn kept on trying to convince John as she stood with her
back pressed up against the wall.

They were in a small section of tunnel just
below the hole in the hull that led back up to the exposed
roof.

John had pulled Evelyn off to the side, away
from the security forces that guarded the hole and were passing
turrets and blocking fields through it, so that she would have the
air and space she needed to get her work done.

‘
Take your time,’ John encouraged. Even
though he really didn’t want her to work slowly, he didn’t want her
to feel pressured either.

Because she did look pressured. Her eyes were
drawn in concentration, her lips crinkled in a frown, her brow
pressed with lines. As she moved her head, her hair darted across
her face, and John almost wanted to reach out a hand to brush it
back.

They certainly did not have that kind of
relationship though. Not yet anyway.

And hopefully not ever; John did have a task
to do here, and it was to protect her and his crew on their
mission, nothing more.

‘
I don’t know what’s happening, I’ve done
this hundreds of times before, why can’t I gain full control?’
Evelyn didn’t look up at John as her hands kept on twisting around
the ball.

It seemed to be fidgeting in her grip, as if
it wanted to get away.

‘
Oh God, it’s like something is blocking
me,’ Evelyn brought up her hand and tucked her loose fringe behind
her ears, the movement shaky.

John latched onto her words.

‘
Blocking you? What do you
mean?’

‘
In training, occasionally, if the Admiral
made us, we would try to interfere with each other’s connections,’
Evelyn looked up at him for a second, and her gaze darted straight
back to the device in her hands. ‘And this feels like
that . . . though different somehow.’

A single dribble of cold sweat trickled down
John’s brow, but as soon as it did, the armor evaporated it.

It left a chill however. ‘Do you think
that’s what is happening here? Could somebody be blocking this?
Could a member of the Aurora Project . . . ’
John trailed off.

‘
No, it’s not like
that . . . I don’t know what’s happening,’ Evelyn
stuttered through her words again. It was clear she was frustrated
and flustered, but she was still doing her job. ‘Nobody would
interfere with this mission, they know what it means. And nobody
from the Aurora Project would ever go against the Admiral’s
orders.’

John’s brow crumpled at that. Alice had not
said that nobody in the Aurora Project would go against the Union’s
wishes, or the desires of its citizens, no, just the Admiral’s
orders. But despite the choice of words, John understood the
sentiment.

‘
They wouldn’t undermine this mission, they
know how important it is, the possibility of finding Old Ones, they
all know what that means,’ Evelyn said distractedly as she kept on
trying to manipulate the device in her hands.

‘
You mean Old Tech,’ John corrected her
immediately.

She stopped what she was doing, her gaze
darting upward. She looked sprung. Her hands shaking in surprise
for a second, she shook her head. Then she crumpled her brow again.
‘No, Commander, that’s not what I mean. And there’s no point in
hiding it from you; the Admiral was going to tell you this
afternoon anyway.’

‘
What?’

‘
There’s a
possibility . . . . Just a
chance . . . .’

‘
What?’ John leaned in, pushing the hand of
his armor into the wall to anchor himself in position.

‘
We have received reports,’ she licked her
lips carefully, ‘that just maybe . . .
possibly . . . there might be some left
alive.’

His eyes crumpled, narrowing into a
squint. ‘Some of who or what alive?’

‘
The Old Ones. In stasis. There is the
possibility, considering how much Old Tech has been found along the
Rim,’ Evelyn’s voice had dropped to a whisper, ‘that we might find
some in stasis.’

John shook his head in a snap. ‘The
possibility?’ He questioned her choice of words.

Looking exasperated, she pawed at her
hair, pushing it behind her ears again. ‘No. Okay, it’s more than a
possibility. And these reports are reliable. The Admiral and the
whole of the Aurora Project have a strong suspicion that there are
Old Ones still alive in the Rim. That’s the point of this mission.
That’s why I’m coming along. I’m bringing
devices . . . that will be able to track them down.
Pull them from stasis. And John,’ she leaned closer towards him,
her face barely 30 centimeters from his own, ‘I don’t need to tell
you what that would mean. We could waste the rest of our lives
trying to figure out how to use and re-energize Old Tech. But if we
had just one of the ancients alive, we could ask them. Think of all
the lives and effort and energy we could save?’

John’s grip faulted on the wall for a moment,
and he actually stumbled forward closer to Evelyn, his helmet
almost brushing up against her hair.

She shifted back, but not immediately. She
kept her eyes locked on his though. ‘I’m not lying. The Admiral was
going to tell you tonight. This is the real point of the mission.
And this is why we have to succeed. So no, nobody from the Aurora
Project would dare intervene here.’

John’s mouth was dry, his shoulders felt
loose and weak, and there was a distinct and uncomfortable feeling
in his stomach.

He also felt out of breath.

She had to be lying, right? Old Ones still
alive? That was impossible.

That went against everything he had ever been
taught.

The last Old One to roam the universe had
been over 100,000 years ago.

It was a fairy tale, a hopeless dream to
assume any could have survived into the modern day.

And yet as he looked on at Evelyn, her gaze
so locked intently on his own, she did not seem to be lying.

‘
I promise it is the truth,’ she said as
her eyes darted around, searching his.

He believed her. He really did.

He finally got control of himself, shifting
backwards, locking his feet into the ground, ensuring he would not
stumble again.

‘
But how do you know?’ His voice shook as
he questioned her.

‘
Because we found something,’ she said
through a heavy swallow.

‘
What?’

‘
A holographic feed. A live one. Showing
stasis pods.’

‘
Who’s inside?’ he asked. But he knew the
answer.

‘
Old Ones,’ her lips wobbled badly over her
words, her voice mumbled and strained.

John swore. ‘That’s
impossible.’

She shook her head, keeping those blue
eyes locked on him the entire time.’ It’s not. I can show you. In
fact, I will show you, when this is over. The Admiral has the
footage. It’s being beamed out on a signal, you can access it at
any time. We know that it comes from the Rim, we are just not sure
where. The exact location is scrambled somehow.’

John’s face was cold, in fact his entire body
felt cold in that moment, and his armor suddenly redirected energy
into equalizing his temperature.

‘
John, I’m not lying,’ Evelyn said
again.

He really did believe her. Yet he did not
want to believe what she was saying. It sounded impossible.

‘
We have to . . . get this
sorted first,’ John said, forcing the words out. Because they were
true. No matter what Evelyn had just revealed to him, they had
other priorities now. That elusive woman was still up top near the
spire.

Evelyn suddenly gave a gasp, and John snapped
his attention to her in an instant.

‘
I just got a lock on it, whatever was
blocking me is gone,’ Evelyn clasped her hands over the ball,
protecting it tenderly.

A passionate but relieved expression crossed
over her face, and it made John crack into a smile.

Finally something was going right.

‘
If I can get close enough, back up on the
roof, I can let the hacker ball free, I can use it to finally gain
control of that hood,’ she assured him.

So John didn’t hesitate.

Chapter 40

Alice

Alice she was on her knees. Because she
had fallen over.
She had
fallen over because she had heard every single word exchanged
between that woman and John Doe.

Every single word.

Alice had a hand locked over her mouth, and
she was trying to breathe into it, the sound of her breath a
blustering, horrible gasp.

It couldn’t be true. That woman had to be
lying.

A live feed? Showing stasis pods with Old
Ones inside?

It had to be a lie.

The woman had to be lying.

And yet the mere possibility of it was one
that made Alice shudder. Her arms buckled out from underneath her,
and she slammed against the floor with a violent thud.

But why would the woman have lied? She would
have had no idea that Alice would’ve been listening in through
Helper, and from her emotional reaction to the way John Doe had
treated her, it did not seem like an act.

As Alice lay there on the ground, her energy
ran wild within her. She had lost connection with Helper; the shock
of the situation curling through her own energy and making it
frantic and chaotic.

She could barely keep control of her hood,
let alone regain control of her friend.

Instead she lay there, face first against the
floor, her hands pressed into it, her body shaking.

It couldn’t be true.

Her people? Could they be out there? Could
there be more like her?

Again Alice felt it.

Someone trying to hack right into her
hood.

And they succeeded. It fell right from her
head. But before it could pull from her shoulders in the frantic
wind, Alice grabbed out a hand and caught it.

She could hardly keep control of her fingers
though, let alone tug the hood back in towards her body and fix it
over her face.

She was falling apart.

If Helper had been by her side, he would have
told her not to let it affect her.

But how could she not let this affect
her?

Alice was the last of her kind. Or was
she?

It was a horrible question to consider.
All of those years she had spent
alone. . . . 

Alice almost lost grip of her hood, and as a
powerful gust of wind caught hold of it, it actually tugged her
along the hull.

She was in danger of being ripped right off
it, the more she lost control of her emotions, the more she lost
control of the energy within. And as it peaked and surged, it
created chaos through her form. Soon she would lose the rigidity
and weight that pinned her to the hull. And when that happened,
Alice would be pulled from it. She would either slam into the
spire, or be sent tumbling towards the security and turrets behind
the weather field.

It was at that point that she was at her
lowest.

Holding onto her hood, being buffeted around,
her body convulsing under her as the energy within convulsed in
turn.

It was also the point that she remembered his
words.

Helper’s.

When Alice found something worth fighting
for, her strategy would change. It was only logical.

When Alice found something worth fighting
for, she would no longer care about showing her power.

Because she would have a goal in mind.

It was only logical.

Despite the fact he was not by her side, his
words and the memory of them managed to still her almost as well as
if her little electronic friend had bounced up onto her
shoulder.

‘
Move in,’ she heard someone
say.

It was John Doe.

She still managed to pick up the sound of his
voice, even past the din of the wind and the sounds of the other
security forces setting up the perimeter.

She had seconds, didn’t she?

And now she was a sitting target.

Not for long.

Because Alice had something worth fighting
for.

She heard footfall, she felt it too.

Close. Fast. Coming right at her.

Alice yanked her hood down. Using all her
strength, she overcame the chaos within, and she fixed it over her
head. She pushed herself up, just as someone reached down to grab
her.

In a split second she turned to see his
face.

Though his helmet was set to opaque, she knew
that she was staring right into his eyes.

Time seemed to still for a moment.

Then it sped up with a snap.

Alice pushed herself backward, rolling,
leaning into her hands, and tucking into an easy, quick, and strong
somersault. Despite the winds, she landed perfectly, several meters
from his side, planting a hand into the hull to steady herself.

She snapped her head up to stare at him just
as he pelted forward, his arms pumping by his sides.

He too was unaffected by the wind. The
sophistication of his armor would also block out the effects of the
radiation emanating from the spire.