Chapter 13 More Questions #2
“Jace? Neither of you are speaking out loud, but I think it is clear that you are speaking to one another,” Khoth stated.
“Ah, yeah, sorry, Khoth. Gehenna’s sensitive about how she would sound out loud until she gets the proper materials. And I…” Jace paused as, once more, he struggled to describe his physical and mental state. “I need some pants.”
Khoth’s right eyebrow lifted. “Yes, I understand. Let me assist you.”
Khoth gracefully stood up and offered Jace a hand. Jace reached for it and froze again as he caught a glimpse of his powerful arm. Rippling muscles. He dared look down at himself.
“Holy shit!” Jace gasped and would have tumbled back into the tank but for Khoth keeping him upright.
“You have gained approximately 43.2 pounds of muscle to this form,” Khoth stated.
“I… wow… okay… shit, it was like Captain America here. Osiris must have given me Vitarays or whatever they gave him!” Jace laughed. It sounded a little hysterical. Okay, maybe a lot hysterical.
“Another of your species has been transformed by the Osiris?” Khoth asked, brow furrowing.
“What? No! Captain America is a… uhm, superhero and… he’s made up. Fiction. Not real.” Jace ran a hand over his six-pack stomach. He had never had much fat on him, but now he was seriously cut. “But I’m really wondering here if those comic book guys weren’t onto something.”
Khoth was frowning again and more furrowing was going on. “I am afraid that I do not--”
“It’s complicated and not important. It’s just I’ve been sick and weak all my life and now…
” He gestured down to his muscular yet still lithe form.
“I’ve never… oh, God, I can’t explain this!
It’s so…” He let out a giggle. He slapped a hand over his mouth but more giggles erupted.
“I’m a fucking superhero, Khoth! Scrap that!
I have a spaceship! I’m freaking Luke Skywalker!
Well, I don’t have the Force, but still! ”
Frowns. Many more frowns. Khoth’s beautiful blue face was all scrunched with confusion.
“I’m sorry! I’m just a little… freaked out.
I mean it’s awesome, but… I have no idea…
it’s just so… everything’s changed and I…
well, I never thought… I mean I dreamed, but never really thought…
oh, my God, I’m babbling!” The giggles were coming every fourth word now.
It was then that he saw his mother and father’s faces looking at him through a--a window?
No, it was a screen beside a closed door. “Mom! Dad!”
They were frantically waving at him. They were speaking too, but he couldn’t hear them. He brushed off Khoth’s help as he staggered towards the door. After a few steps, he was walking with confidence again. He was incredibly light on his feet.
“Ah, Gehenna, what’s the deal here? Khoth, why can’t I hear them? And what are they outside?” Jace asked as he put his hand against the screen where his mother’s hand was. “How do I open these doors?”
There wasn’t any sensor pad that he could see and they weren’t simply opening with his touch like other things had in the Osiris.
He glanced up at his parents and put a finger up to indicate he needed a minute.
They both nodded. Remembering how incredibly brave his mom had been last time the two of them were in this room had warmth flowing through Jace.
His mother and father were the strongest people he knew. They had lied to him though.
But they couldn’t tell me about any of this. It would have been treason.
“The sound was working previously, but it abruptly ceased when you were emerging from your transformation,” Khoth said stiffly. “As to why they are out there…”
“They would have stopped the transformation,” Jace filled in with a nod as he took in his parents’ anguished faces.
Who could blame them? After Dr. Rancic had been attacked and then the ship had tried to literally cut him out of his mother… He swallowed. What had done that exactly? Who had done it? Gehenna had said that the Osiris had tricked her.
The Osiris…
He turned towards Gehenna and Khoth. The AI’s squid head was flashing different colors and he could feel her attempting to access the ship’s systems. She knew that he wanted the doors open and his parents let inside.
I’m sorry, Jace! But the Osiris is blocking me. I’m not quite at full strength here, she apologized. But, no matter, it won’t keep me out! I am better than it! It’ll see!
That was when Jace saw the screen with the blinking cursor. Khoth followed his gaze.
“That appeared soon before you awakened. It appears to be some kind of… input,” Khoth said.
Jace turned to his parents’ frantic faces again.
He could only imagine what they were thinking with him inside of here with a metal squid and an alien and him now looking like Captain America.
He held up a finger again. His mother was mouthing something but he shrugged and touched his ear.
He couldn’t hear her. His gaze was drawn again to the cursor blinking.
There was a sense of… intent from it.
He walked over to the screen. Khoth joined him, arms crossed at the wrists behind his back, as they both regarded the screen.
“There’s no way to type anything in,” Jace said as he cast about for a keyboard. “But something this sophisticated shouldn’t need a keyboard. We should just be able to talk to it.”
“You were able to access parts of the ship before. Are you not currently able to?” Khoth asked with a Vulcan-like eyebrow raise.
“Uhm… I don’t know. I don’t feel any connection to the ship.”
But almost immediately Jace felt that wasn’t true.
There was this echoing silence in his mind as if someone were listening.
But it wasn’t like a friendly listening.
More like someone that was stalking him was listening very hard for him.
And it wasn’t Gehenna. He heard her muttering to herself as she fought with the Osiris’ code. So it was someone else.
“Perhaps…” Khoth flattened his lips as if he did not like what he was about to suggest. “Perhaps if you spoke to it? It might wish you to address it.”
“It being… the Osiris?” Jace asked.
Khoth gave a cursory nod.
Jace considered this. The blinking cursor was a very Earth-thing. It was something he would understand. He doubted that Khoth had any idea what it meant.
So it’s a signal to me?
“Okay, well, here goes nothing,” Jace said and he sincerely hoped it wasn’t nothing. “Osiris?” The silence in his mind seemed taut with possibility. “I want you to open the doors to… to ah this room.”
The blinking cursor changed to a single word, No.
Jace let out a breath. “N-no?! Why no?”
But there was no answer.
Gehenna, why isn’t it letting us out?
It’s annoyed with me, I think. But don’t worry, Jace. I’ll figure this out. You just keep calm! Gehenna assured him.
“At least it is responding to you, Jace. That is more than it would do for me,” Khoth told him.
“Great. It likes to sass me while giving you the cold shoulder,” Jace quipped.
“Sass?” That was accompanied by another eyebrow lift. “You think the Osiris is similar to Gehenna in that it has feelings?”
“Gehenna said it wasn’t like her, but clearly, it has a personality. Can’t you feel it?” Jace asked.
He expected Khoth to say no. After all, he wasn’t connected to the Osiris. He wasn’t the Pilot.
Whatever that means. I thought I would wake up with all this knowledge, but not a bit more. In fact, I have more questions than answers. And I’m still naked.
There was a sliding sound and suddenly a shoot opened in the wall. Two items slid out that Jace caught. One was a towel. The other was a synthskin suit in cream and green along with a pair of boots. Jace let out a laugh as he recognized it from his dreams. It was the one he’d worn in them.
“What is the cause of your amusement?” Khoth asked even as he was inspecting the wall where the shoot had opened. It was closed now.
“Nothing… I mean… I dreamed about this suit. I dreamed about so much of this.” Jace frowned. “I hope this isn’t a dream.”
“It is not a dream,” Khoth assured him.
Jace smiled and started toweling himself off completely. “Well, if this were a dream, you would be part of it and you could just be saying that.”
“I do not think I would lie to you even in a dream,” Khoth stated simply.
“But I don’t know you that well,” Jace pointed out as he remembered how to put on the synthskin suit.
He stepped into it and brought it up over his arms and shoulders and then touched a spot over his chest. The synthskin immediately form fitted to him.
He then simply stepped into the boots that snicked around his feet and calves neatly.
He held up his right foot. “Hey! I did it!”
“Yes, you successfully dressed. Quite well done, Jace,” Khoth remarked dryly.
“Now you’re sassing me!” Jace grinned.
“Perhaps.” There was the faintest smile on Khoth’s lips.
“I do believe you just made a joke. Wonders will never cease.”
“You said you do not know me well. How are you so certain that making a joke is rare for me?” Khoth’s chin lifted.
Jace’s mouth twisted. “Uhm, well, you’ve got a point. Do you make jokes often?”
“No.”
“Alrighty then. Guess I got that one correct. But not all Thaf’ell are like that, right? So serious? Thammah isn’t--hey, where is she?” Jace suddenly spun around to look for the other Thaf’ell.
“I believe she is hiding… ah, the screen has changed. It is showing us the cell block we found Gehenna on,” Khoth said with a dip of his head towards the screen that had previously said “no”.
The screen showed the other Thaf’ell inspecting the other cell doors and occasionally checking her suit’s readouts.
“Ah, wait. Let me try and reach her.” Khoth brought up a holographic display on his left forearm.
But just as he was about to speak again there was a frightening WHA-WHA-WHA-WHA sound that had Jace’s bones vibrating. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw red light. It came from the screen. The corridor outside was suddenly red in color and there was some kind of mist coming out of the vents.
Oh, my… I might have made a small error, Gehenna murmured.
“WHAT?! What’s happening, Gehenna?” Jace asked as he whirled around on the AI.
It seems in my zeal to get us out of the Core, I may have tripped some of the Osiris’ security protocols, she said. Don’t worry! I’ll fix it!
Jace’s gaze snapped from her to the screen where he saw his mom and dad grasping the front of their throats with both hands as their eyes bugged out of their head.
“GEHENNA! What’s happening to them exactly?” Jace stated as he raced over to the screen and placed both hands on it.
They are… uhm, suffocating, she answered. But I will get this figured out!
Jace watched in horror as both of his parents went down onto their knees hanging onto one another. He was about to scream Gehenna’s name again, but then he realized she wasn’t the one he should be addressing.
He whirled around to the screen again, “Osiris!”
Yes, appeared on the screen.
“Stop the security protocols!” Jace demanded.
His parents had collapsed fully now.
There is a criminal--
“You will obey me!” Jace shouted and he saw one of those live electric wires in his mind’s eye, like he had with Metal Rain.
He grabbed hold of it. There was a sharp stab of pain, but that quickly passed.
He felt the ship all around him and that sense of listening was intensified.
“You will stop the security protocols, Osiris. I am the Pilot!”
There was a pause and then a single word appeared, Yes.