31. Crucible
Chapter thirty-one
Crucible
“See, I told you he would make it!” Don slapped me on the back as I followed the escort to take my seat at the ring table.
The room looked like the previous council room, only larger.
It reminded me of the research room I had just been in with the pyramid, though this one had a circular table like the first one.
The ring table was much wider and looked down onto a pit with a prism twice as large as the other.
“Sit,” Kim commanded, not acknowledging Don’s comment.
I sat and looked at the equipment inside the room.
Multiple metal cubes and rectangular prisms with light lines and screens all over their faces bordered the room.
Light lines connected them to the central prism.
Dokkaebi drifted inside, watching me as I sat.
His image was much clearer, no longer looking like a projection, but an actual creature inside of the glass prism.
I knew it was still incorporeal, but wondered what difference Kim’s final touch would make.
“Is that everyone?” a woman asked as she stood.
Everyone looked around, nodded, then focused on Kim as he spoke. “Thank you for your cooperation. Everything has been uncannily smooth thus far and I can only hope that it will conclude in a similar manner.”
“Transfer it over already,” Dokkaebi said.
Kim cleared his throat and smiled, though it was not as confident a look as he usually had.
“Y-yes. Of course. As I was saying, this final addition to Dokkaebi should push everything back into order here and connect us to all the intelligence we need to proceed with the next step in pushing the tide for Gong’s rebirth. ”
“I fail to see what this creature can do for us,” a man complained.
“What about the financial implications?” a woman asked.
“I am also concerned with the cost of feeding this—“
“Then you don’t understand the purpose of the Correction!” Kim shouted.
The complaints continued.
“What’s with the presentation? Just get it over with already.”
“What about Deleon’s other former servants?”
“Do we even know if there has been measured fetal growth in the last year?”
“What will this do to you, Dear Leader?”
He slammed his fist on the table. “I don’t know what it will do to me!
But what is the difference between you and me?
I–I don’t let these petty concerns h-hold me back!
“ He took a deep breath and stomped over to a seat that looked like an electrocution chair with thick violet light lines tying it to the peak of Dokkaebi’s prism.
His hands shook and he winced as the center of his chest opened with a hiss of pressure. His outer arms then connected a series of probes to the homunculus within. The chest closed after he finished, leaving only a slight crack in the middle for the probes to stick out.
“Initiate it already, Light damn it!” he demanded to anyone who would respond.
A woman in a tight pantsuit under her robe paced towards the prism beside him, her heels knocking against the tile and echoing throughout the room.
“Are you ready, sir?” she asked after tapping one of the prism’s panels a few times.
He sighed. “You see what this is? Unbridled passion for the tide. If losing the Light Leech that guides me takes my life as it did with a few of the others, so be it. None of you should be concerned about my life, but–”
“Mine and our true Dear Leader,“ Dokkaebi said. “I’ll be delicate with you, Kim, don’t worry. Initiate it now, ma’am.”
The woman nodded and tapped the panel.
The machine projected a diagram on the wall.
A triangle was on the left with six icons shaped like Dokkaebi’s head.
To the right was a rectangle with a single Dokkaebi icon in its center.
A light line connected the two, then with a flash, every light line in the room glowed bright and began to pulse.
The pulsations began like a slow heartbeat, then gradually increased as light moved through their circuit, into the machine holding Kim, then into the prism.
“I’m already feeling more restored,” Dokkaebi sighed.
The pulsations reached a rapid rhythm, then reverted to a slower pace.
“What is happening?” Kim asked.
The woman stepped back from the machine. “I-I–”
Don stood and pushed the woman out of the way.
“Get the zeg away from that, you idiot!” Kim shouted. “Someone do–”
“I know what I’m doing!” Don shouted back as the room erupted into shouting.
The light faded to green. The room dimmed and the diagram on the wall lit up. A small, green dot appeared inside the triangle’s image, then began to grow larger. It consumed one of the Dokkaebi icons, then increased in size large enough for me to see what it was.
A green face. Half of it was a solid color, the other an outline. The solid half had two eyes while the other had one. Its lips were turned up in a satisfied sneer.
It consumed another Dokkaebi icon. The creature shot around inside the prism as if looking for an escape.
“What is happening?” Kim shouted.
“I d-do-don’t kn-kn-know.” Dokkaebi’s voice skipped and his image flashed around the prism without fluid movement.
“Run diagnostics!” Kim shouted at the woman who had stepped away. “Don, make her get her zegging act together!”
He did as commanded and forced the woman to face the panel
I couldn’t hold onto hope yet. That icon was familiar, yet impossible.
It consumed another Dokkaebi icon.
“T-t-there appears t-to be a virus, sir!” the woman said as the room pulsed with green light.
A green orb appeared inside the prism. Dokkaebi cried out as he moved as far away from it as possible. “Let me in, Kim!” he cried.
“What? No! We can’t let this thing run the system!”
“Just let me in!” Dokkaebi lost another icon.
“I–”
“I’m coming!” Light shot from the line on the pyramid’s peak into the machine connected to Kim. He seized, every light line on his body flashing with a cascade of colors.
The green orb in the prism grew in size. Its blurry amoeba-like shape started to form into a humanoid outline.
The green icon was the only one remaining on the diagram. The side that had once shown Kim’s single icon now displayed multiple.
Kim stood from his chair with an electronic groan.
His eyes flashed with a jarring cascade of colors.
His mouth was wide open, emitting a similar barrage of flashing lights.
His arms stretched, then his legs and finally, his torso.
Like a machine upgrading itself, his body doubled in size.
Violet light leaked from any cracks in his body, including the violent tears in his face that looked like cracked pavement after an earthquake with light lines inside keeping the shattered surface intact.
The opening to the homunculus shut, severing the probe lines that had connected him to the machine.
“Exterminate the virus!” Kim’s body said, though it carried the digital sound of Dokkaebi’s voice like an electronic echo.
The council scrambled, some stepping away from the table, others leaning in to see what was growing inside the prism.
“Zeggin’ bureaucrats have no idea what you’re doing,” Don groaned as he pulled out a pistol and shot three violet light rounds at the prism.
“Fool!” Kim–Dokkaeibi said, knocking Don to the ground with the swing of his arm.
Don started to stand. “I’m trying to help, dammit!”
Kim–Dokkaebi glared at him. “Don’t break that chamber or we’ll lose it in the entire palace’s system.”
“Oh, babe,” a familiar voice said from the prism. “I’ve already spread my touch through your little system.”
Ralia’s voice wasn’t sweet, per se, but hearing it was a blissful salve to my diminished hope. I had thought failure was imminent for me and the rest of the Luxists but seeing her again made me want to believe. I had to believe there was hope.
“How the zeg did you–”
She interrupted Kim–Dokkaebi. “Looks like the world’s cult of geniuses isn’t full of the brightest, huh? Let’s be honest, all it required was understanding what that sick little bastard inside me wanted.”
“Noooooo!” Kim–Dokkaebi cried, though I knew it was the beast inside who was crying out that this was impossible. The light lines connected to him pulsed, making the room flicker, though the green kept its dominance.
“Settle, babe.”
The beast went ballistic, crashing into one of the large machines and absorbing the light as it sparked out.
“Hey.” She looked at me. “Guess what I found in the system? This looks like a neurolock for one Petya Nebokov. How about that? Oops! I just released it!”
The beast depleted the machine of its light and shot a predatory glare my way.
I turned away from it to look at the prism. She moved through the prism’s space and placed her hand on its glass wall. “Touch me.”
“No!” Kim–Dokkkaebi charged me.
I burned my agility mod and jumped over the beast as he charged into the table and some of its occupants. Anyone else who sat decided it was no longer such a wise idea.
I had a second to spare before he charged again
I touched the glass, my hand against hers with a thin veil of glass between us.
“I broke Dokkaebi’s mod lock.” Ralia’s green ghost within it smirked. “Give ’em hell, Pet.”
I felt an inner lock open. The full strength of my agility mod was back.
After ascending on the lake of wine, I thought I had destroyed the lock completely, but I was wrong.
This was the full return. I knew the others were likely feeling the same freedom from Dokkaebi’s constraints that had held us back ever since returning to the Republic.
Ralia’s light dimmed a touch, but she remained pleased. She was breaking Dokkaebi, but it was costing her.
I burned my reserve to fuel my next move.
Most of the room fled, save Don and a few more who raised their light pistols.
They shot at me, though a black veil of light deflected them at each other.
Kim-Dokkaebi slammed into me, tossing me into Don. I felt some of his ribs break as we collided with the wall.
But what did that do to her? Is she still alive?
“Focus, bakuh. We have a beast to slay.”