Chapter 14 #3
There was a crackling in her ear. She thought it to be her Soul, splintering beneath the weight of the pain. It happened again.
"Vesperin! Anyone? Fuck, I’m coming in," came Rhyden’s voice.
Rin sobbed.
Lucien patted her cheek. "Open your eyes," he begged above her. She hadn’t realized she’d closed them. When she peered blearily up at him, she saw his ashen face.
Rhyden—she had to answer him. He couldn’t come.
She tucked her face into Lucien’s neck to keep her trembling lips concealed.
Rhyden fiddled with the comms device. "Come in. This is Rhyden. Come in." Impatience licked at him like fire. "I said, come in. That means, if you don’t fucking answer me now, I’m going to goddamned light that place on fire to get you out. So fucking answer me!"
Nothing came through.
Fire sparked at the tips of his fingers, a testament to his fury and slowly rising trepidation.
Fuck—he didn’t get scared. He wasn’t a fucking child.
Not like his goddamned lying wife was, with her too-sweet voice and gentle hands.
If he didn’t know any better, he’d assume this was her first life, with how carefully curious she was.
But, oh, that jaded, cynical edge she had—that couldn’t be made in just the twenty-two years she’d lived.
That was something forged from lifetimes.
And Rhyden’s determination? Well, that was forged from centuries of waiting to get revenge.
With the wave of his hand, the flames at his fingertips snuffed out. If they didn’t answer within five minutes, he’d do what he said—burn the whole Academy to the ground and drag his wife out by the scruff of her neck.
And he guessed the others, too.
Couldn’t very well leave them in there to burn alive. Maybe.
"Come in. Come in," Rhyden repeated, until his voice nearly went hoarse.
But then—
The comms crackled.
Rhyden held his breath.
It happened again, a low wheeze. It was light and feminine. Vesperin.
"Wife, are you there? Come in. Are you okay?"
The wheeze turned strangled, cut off, then—a scream.
She was screaming.
Rhyden stood, not caring who might spot him below. "Vesperin, fucking answer me!"
The screaming multiplied, masculine tones cutting in. The others.
Oh fuck—oh god—oh—
Rhyden gripped his hair. "Vesperin! Anyone? Fuck, I’m coming in."
Guess the world would know that the leader of Noctis was in Solar City.
He gripped the comms at his ear, beginning to tug it away to just make it stop. His head was going to split open from those tortured screams.
"No!" came through, clear and pained.
"Vesperin." Rhyden stilled, hand still on the comms, but no longer trying to pull it away. He held his breath.
"No," Vesperin whimpered. "Don’t come. Please—"
Was she talking to him?
Her next words proved she was.
"Rhyden," she whispered, as if she didn’t want anyone else to hear. The word was choked and speaking of so much agony that Rhyden’s legs could no longer hold him.
He sat heavily, back sliding against the concrete of the stairwell access.
"Don’t come inside, please. We’ll be okay.
Just stay there—they can’t know—" She gave a pathetic whimper.
"Vesperin?" Rhyden questioned. "Vesperin?"
Nothing.
She didn’t respond.
Sabine held the Soul Resonator in her hands like one would cradle a babe.
This was her invention, after all. The device emitted focused resonance waves that, when directed at a target, made it feel as though their Soul was being ripped from their body, vibrating against the confines of their flesh.
She hadn’t tested it on herself; though, Talor had allowed her to use it on him.
She remembered fondly his pained cries and how her strong—in appearance—husband had fallen to his knees and wept tears of blood.
Her son, her failed Phoenix, was still as stone, frozen by the orders she knew he saw.
Surrender or she dies.
Would he?
Sabine was desperate to know if his conditioning would be overcome by the other piece of his Soul. Ugly hunger stirred inside her, a need for knowledge. For power.
"Stop," Kiton said. His right hand kept twitching by his side. Was it a malfunction? "Stop this, Mother."
"Oh, so you do remember who I am to you, Kiton. I thought you had forgotten who it was that made you."
"I will never forget what you made me." Kiton shuddered, eyes on Vesperin, that wretched girl.
Vesperin’s muscles locked up, head falling back against the concrete. The doctor cried out, even though blood spilled from his own eyes, nose, and mouth.
"Sabine, enough for now," Talor warned, placing his large, calloused hand over hers. She allowed him. He hooked his thumb over hers, forcing her to turn down the Soul Resonator’s dial. The low thrum that had filled the air grew quiet, as did their pained cries and moans. Talor’s other hand squeezed her shoulder.
"We need them alive," he whispered to her.
She sighed.
The blood that had once leaked from them was now sluggish. The Soul Searcher’s cloak was stained maroon.
"Look at that. Reaper of the Celestials, tainted. Even immortal beings can be undone by science," Sabine murmured.
Kiton’s boots shuffled over the blood-stained concrete as he started to step forward. Sabine tutted, turning the dial back up—slowly. He froze as Vesperin, who’d been trying to push herself up, fell back against the ground, gripping her hair.
"Think on that order, Kiton. It is the only way she will survive this." With that, Sabine turned her attention to the sorry trio on the ground.
And Vesperin. The girl she had hinged everything on. As they had spoken above at the gala, Sabine had seen the pallor to her skin, the shadows beneath her eyes. She was wasting away.
How long would it be before she succumbed? Vesperin was the longest-living subject with Nova inside her. Yet… No matter how many tests Sabine ran, subjects she destroyed, she could not replicate it. What was it about her that let her body live?
She felt as if she were right on the cusp of a breakthrough.
She turned the dial back down so they could pay attention to her.
"I remember when Solar City General mentioned a Soul Searcher brought you in that time, Vesperin.
I thought they were mistaken, because why would a fated being"—Sabine huffed—"have an interest in a Stella-less girl.
Now, I know why. He is your Soulbond." Sabine stopped by the writhing body of the Soul Searcher.
"Tell me, Soul Searcher, do you have a name?
" He remained silent. "No? Then tell me this, and perhaps I will let you go, have you met the Celestials before? "
At this, he shook his head, features twisted with pain.
"Pity." Sabine’s red lips curled. "If you had, I would have told you to relay a message for me—they are failures for making our Souls bound to memory, enslaved to mortality. We may have limitless lives, but memory can only hold so much. Don’t you tire of it? The forgetting, the cycle of rebirth?"
Sabine then turned to Vesperin and Lucien.
The doctor had folded himself over the girl, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth and landing on her cheek where she lay beneath him, crushed between his chest and the cold, concrete floor.
Blood ran beneath Vesperin’s nose, bubbling past her lips as her mouth tried to form the shape of a curse, but it was no use. The pain was far too great to overcome.
"Memory can only hold so much, just like Souls.
You are a shame, Dr. Quenlan, because once, you were so promising with your research.
I had high hopes for you, as did Talor. We wanted to promote you.
" Confusion flickered over Lucien’s face.
"When you proposed your research on harmony, I advocated for you at first. No test is too extreme.
Through blood and pain, science emerges.
Did you know the nireloo ended up dying after you set it free? "
At Sabine’s words, Lucien only stared up at her, understanding cutting through the pain. "No," he breathed.
"Oh, yes," Sabine purred. "Before we sentenced you and your Soulbond to death on Tarz, we had you both taken to the labs.
You were the perfect specimens—our own nireloo.
Because of your dedication and contribution to our research, we were able to perfect localized memory-wiping.
" She smiled widely at the agony in his eyes.
"You never remembered that, once upon a time, Tarz was ruled by the Blackfalls.
That memory technology has since been honed.
" Her eyes slid to Kiton. She tutted at him.
"I used it on you. And Vesperin. To wipe your memories of each other.
But it appears there was a flaw in your procedure. "
Talor stepped closer to Sabine’s side. "How long?"
The muscles in Kiton’s neck tensed, but when Sabine ramped up the Soul Resonator, and Vesperin released a choked, pained cry, he settled with a hiss.
"Forever. I have known she is mine forever." Rage burned hot in the cold depths of Kiton’s eyes as he looked at Sabine and Talor. "You have done so much to me, but you have never—been able—to take—her from me." He spoke carefully, each word measured against some unseen scale.
A hypothesis slowly formed:
Could obsession be conditioned away, or would it remain even when every other emotion was dulled?
Sabine focused back on Lucien. "It seemed that the nireloo being turned away from its new master after harmony was too much for the tiny creature. It died of a broken heart." The tip of her heel brushed Vesperin’s shoulder, and the small action made her wheeze in pain as her body was jostled.
She was done with the waiting. She had given Kiton enough time.
"Enough, Phoenix. It is time to make your decision." She stepped forward, turning the dial up, up, higher than it ever had gone. The sounds of pain cut off. The body reached a point where it had surpassed agony, when even a sound scraped raw against a bloody throat.