Silence (43 page)

Of course.

This was what happens when things
started to look your way.

Sheikoh turned and bitterly snapped a
sharp kick at the wall. He stopped midway through and pointed his
face at the ground in an effort to hide the tears stinging the
backs of eyes.

“
No!” Camillio exclaimed.
“No, no, no, I can bring Emili back, I just can’t remove the
Sycrarian!”

Sheikoh’s face snapped up to meet the
man’s with an expression of wary hope. ‘So… the demon still chills
there inside of her, but she’s still Emili?’ he asked himself. He
wasn’t sure that he liked the sound of that. What if Khryzt subdued
Camillio’s magic somehow and took control.

“
What does that mean?”
Sheikoh asked Camillio.

“
I’ve just read the
forty-four treatises on the Sycrarian from cover to cover and they
all say the same thing: Once a Sycrarian latches onto a sect of
life-force to the point that it no longer is bound to comply with a
human’s will then they are irrevocably linked,” Camillio explained.
“To force them apart would tear unhealable holes through their
souls and they would both die slowly and painfully.”

“
That doesn’t sound like
what I wanted to hear…” Sheikoh muttered, scratching his
ear.

“
It
is
, however, possible to force the Sycrarian from the dominant
state into regression by utilizing blood runes,” Camillio went on.
“The runes have to be personally crafted depending on a variety of
circumstances. That took me days, but now, finally, I am finished
with all of the preparations.”

“
You wanted your own pet
Sycrarian, but it’s stuck inside Emili, what’s in this for you?”
Sheikoh asked.

“
Besides acquiring your
services in accordance to our deal, I also hope to make a pupil of
Emili. Upon revival, she should possess some or all of the
Sycrarian’s powers,” Camillio explained, flashing an uneasy
smile.

Sheikoh could tell from his
expression, that he expected Sheikoh to argue the point, but
strangely, Sheikoh found that he didn’t mind the idea. It meant
that when he risked his life, it would be alongside a being as
powerful as Khryzt and as loving as Emili. Emili was going to be
his guardian angel again. The thought brought a smile to his face
as he nodded. They turned towards Camillio’s study

Sheikoh and Camillio climbed the
stairs. Their creaking steps echoed hollowly throughout the dead
silence of the night. A radiation green glow pulsed from the
aquarium’s plants, washing him and Camillio in front with its pale,
sickly light. The drifting fronds splashed them in a consistently
splotchy outpour of phosphorus green light. The walls danced with
the diffused glow and ominous shadows.

They slowly circled their way up the
steps. Anticipation and dread pounded within every fiber of
Sheikoh’s being. He willed the Celestial to walk faster.

After the long, winding climb, they
finally reached Camillio’s study. Its circular, rune-burned door
sprung open before them like a loyal dog. Sheikoh followed Camillio
inside, holding his breath. He was close enough behind Camillio to
see that the glowing, dancing bubbles of blue-white light rise out
of the Celestial’s upturned palm. Under their nebulous
illumination, he scanned the surrounding room with some
surprise.

Thick tomes littered the floor, lying
open to reveal strange runes and pictures. The bookshelves stood
half empty to lean against the walls despondently. Crumpled papers
littered the grey, stone floor, along with scattered pens and
pencils. The mess resounded everywhere, with the only exception
being the center of the room. The clear area was scored black by
two, enormous, pentagonal summoning circles.

Camillio kicked through the trash and
made for the table in the far corner, now covered with an off-white
sheet. Sheikoh hovered by the doorway and half-watched a
silversteel pen’s roll across the floor. Then Camillio drew his
eyes back. The Celestial whipped the sheet off of the table with a
flourish. Its grey-white material hung in the room’s stale air for
an instant and then drifted to rest gently upon the floor. Sheikoh
gasped quietly.

Sheikoh wasn’t very much surprised to
see Emili’s body on the table. He was however at the painful shock
that glared through his chest at the sudden sight of her,
especially at the bleeping life-support machinery that she was
hooked up to. Emili’s mouth and nose were covered by a clear
plastic mask. An attached tube led to a standing computer with two
accordion-shaped bellow thingies. It looked like it was in charge
of pumping air into her lungs. Bags hung around the machine, lines
injected into her slender arms.

Camillio disconnected the lines from
the machine with a gesture and a flicker of blue eyes. The clear
tubes fell around Emili, still attached to her arms. They looked
like tentacles dripping their murky ooze. Sheikoh wondered why
Camillio had kept them in Emili’s body.

Then he realized; of course the
Celestial couldn’t, Emili was still wearing the Transcendent
Amulet. Camillio beckoned him over, obviously already thinking
along those same lines.

“
Before we remove the
amulet, there are a few preparations to make…. The blood runes,”
Camillio explained quietly, handing a blood-red, glass knife to
Sheikoh. Sheikoh looked at it uncomprehendingly. “Blood runes only
bind to an individual’s life-force when scarred into their
skin.”

Sheikoh’s mouth opened with silent
horror. His eyes darted from the glass knife to Camillio wildly,
pleading for some other way. Anything other than this. There was no
way that he could do this. Camillio met his hysteria
steadily.

“
I would open the runes
with magic normally, but I can’t. You know that there’s no other
way… The Sycrarian is much too powerful to take the amulet off
until everything is completely prepared,” Camillio told Sheikoh,
pressing the handle of the blade into Sheikoh’s hand. “You have to
ask yourself; would you rather not do it and risk her life or do it
and assure that everything goes according to plan.”

“
I’ve never drawn anything
in my life, I can’t do this. I can’t draw those intricate
patterns!” Sheikoh cried. His voice cracked fearfully.

“
You don’t have to be able
to draw,” Camillio said, producing something out of a drawer on the
side of the table. It was a piece of machinery that looked like a
cellpad attached to a long wrist cuff.

“
As you might know, the
Celestial own the rights of all cyborg and android machinery,
Camillio explained with a tight smile. “Including this device. It’s
called a Divider. When put on an automatic limp, it redirects all
synaptic wire leading from the brain or the central processor as
the case may be. An associate programmed it with every single rune
that we need, just earlier tonight.”

Sheikoh looked back at the Celestial’s
controlled face with unguarded, unadulterated terror. He couldn’t
do this… this unspeakable atrocity. However, if he didn’t do it he
was as good as killing Emili all over again. He felt like he’d lost
the last four years like he was again a frightened twelve-year-old.
What was he supposed to do? What was right?

Only for
Emili
, he finally decided. Paradoxically
however, if it hadn’t been Emili, he wouldn’t have needed this
thing.

Sheikoh tore the synthskin off if his
right arm in a quick motion. Camillio flinched at the sight of his
skeletal-blacksteel arm, wormy synaptic wires pulsing
slightly.

Sheikoh clipped the Divider around
wrist.

Then…

Nothing.

Was it a dud?

Sheikoh turned towards Camillio to ask
whether the machine might be broken. He opened his mouth, just as
the Divider turned itself on.

Sheikoh staggered to the side, having
suddenly lost his balance. He could feel the connections between
his brain and the machine shutting down one by one. He felt trapped
in the prison of his remaining human body as his right arm and then
his legs were wrenched from his control.

He had always thought of his right arm
as a machine, never as a part of himself. Sheikoh’d had no idea how
much connection there was between neuron and wire, until the very
instant that they were cut from one another.

Frustrated energy raged through
Sheikoh, rampaging around his insides. His sense of self bitterly
resented its containment inside of his chest. The feeling didn’t
hurt exactly, but it was absolutely unbearable to feel his right
shoulder bend and stretch under the orders of another. The
blacksteel’s movements grated against his skin like nails on a
chalkboard bereft the muted sensations of the cyborgic limbs,
feeling horribly necrotic.

Sheikoh forced himself to watch as the
spindly, blacksteel hand protruding with white wires tear off the
back of Emili’s shirt like it’d been made of cobwebs. The rip
sounded through the room like Velcro. His insectoid hand tossed the
material onto the ground, and then its blacksteel fingers curled
around the hilt of the glass knife. Sheikoh saw it all without any
of sensation of touch, not even the whisper that he was used
to.

His arm raised itself to carve
clinical lines of blood across Emili’s back. They quickly darkened
into the strange, twisting shapes of runes. He had to force himself
not to vomit. Every cut inscribed on her back slashed into his own
heart twice as deep. His eye followed the lines of blood that
dribbled down Emili’s smooth, white back.

Sheikoh bit his tongue and endured the
torture that was more painful than any other he’d ever felt. He
could already imagine the nightmares that were going to haunt the
rest of his life. After every section he finished, Camillio
bandaged in his wake so Emili wouldn’t bleed out. Finally,
Sheikoh’s hand finished carving the last details of the runic
patchwork onto her. On the other side of the table, Camillio
wrapped Emili’s bleeding back, shoulders, chest and arms all in
heavy linen bandages. Blotches of red flowered outwards, staining
the white material with menacing crimson.

Apparently finishing Emili’s back
didn’t translate to finishing the hellish job entirely. As Camillio
turned Emili over to tie the bandages up, Sheikoh’s legs mindlessly
carried him two steps up the table. When he was level with Emili’s
peaceful face, his right hand went to work on her forehead. Guard
down, Sheikoh retched violently, coughing out a mouthful of
stinging bile. It burned his throat and nostrils. Luckily the
motion hadn’t affected his right arm. He didn’t want to accidently
cut Emili’s eye out or something. With his free hand, Sheikoh wiped
the intermingled sick and tears off of his pale face.

Finally, it was over. The Divider
clicked open and fell along with the glass knife, and Sheikoh
stumbled a little. The device bounced against the floor with the
harsh clack of steel against rock.  Camillio’s eyes flashed
blue and stopped the red glass blade midair the moment before it
shattered. Shivering, Sheikoh leaned back against the hard wall. He
felt as though he’d been drained absolutely empty. As his teeth
chattered against one another, Sheikoh watched Camillio walk into
the smaller of the two pentacles.

“
Sheikoh,
you’re going to have to carry Emili into the other pentacle for me.
Please,
please
try to step over the lines rather than directly on them,”
Camillio told him, cracking his knuckles. “Don’t take the amulet
off until the instant I tell you, and then get out of the
circle
fast
; we
don’t want the Sycrarian to use the amulet to break
out.”

Sheikoh stretched his hollow arms.
Then he picked himself off the wall and shakily lifted Emili from
the table. Sheikoh glanced at the silent life-support machine for a
second and then carried Emili over to the larger pentacle, kneeling
to gently rest the heavily bandaged girl upon the stone floor. He
let out a quavering breath as his arms left Emili’s delicate
frame.

“
Just a warning,” Camillio
went on. “I can only activate a couple runes at a time. If the
process of containing the Sycrarian proves unfeasible, I’m going to
have to collapse the pentacle to kill the creature… as well as
Emili’s body...”  

Sheikoh narrowed his eyes at the
Celestial and began to rise in a dangerously smooth movement.
Sensing danger, Camillio hurriedly added, “Chances of that
happening are extremely minute. Just make sure to avoid stepping on
the lines.”

Sheikoh hesitated for a second. Then
he reluctantly nodded at Camillio and lowered himself back down
beside Emili. The Celestial’s eyes sparkled blue, overflowing with
the exact shade of power as the floating balls that lit the
room.

“
On my
signal, take the Transcendent Amulet. You will then remove it from
the constraints of the pentacle,”
Camillio’s powerful double-tone ordered him.

Wordlessly, Sheikoh nodded
as the Celestial’s double-voice resounded against the stone walls
with an almost mournful echo. Sheikoh twined his fingers around the
silver medallion at Emili’s throat. For a few moments, he watched
Camillio’s solid blue eyes’ light steadily climb in brilliance,
until Camillio double-screamed;
“
NOW!”