Reunification (28 page)

In the center was some kind of strange
machine I had never seen before. Its metallic surface was at
complete odds with the ancient stone appearance of this room, as if
whoever had built this chamber had not considered how the machine
would look against the rest of the room. The machine looked like a
box of some sort, with several blinking green lights on its
perimeter, which made me hesitant, as I did not trust those lights.
There was also a keyboard—a physical one, not a holographic one
like the one that Kiriah had used—just to the right of its door,
but aside from that, the machine looked quite plain and
unremarkable, noticeable only because of its sharp contrast with
the rest of the room.

Indeed, if I had not known any better or
seen that odd machine over there, I would have foolishly believed
that I had teleported back to Dela. This room certainly did not
look like something from Xeeo, which did not make me feel quite
comfortable.

“
Why does this place
look so … ancient?” I asked, looking at Kiriah with a puzzled
expression on my face. “It does not look like the sleek design of
most Xeeonite rooms.”

“
That's because it's
not,” said Kiriah. She gestured at our surroundings. “This room is
actually one of the last surviving ruins from before the splitting
of Dela and Xeeo. We built the facility on top of it to keep it
safe from prying eyes, though as you can tell, we've made more than
a few adjustments to bring it up to modernity.”

I considered that. If Kiriah was telling
the truth, then this was indeed quite an old room, far older than
anything on Dela. It made me wonder how something like this could
have survived for so many years, but then, the works of the
ancients were said to have been even greater than the works of us
modern folk, so perhaps its good condition was far more believable
than I first thought.

In any case, I pointed at the strange
machine in the center and said, “What is that machine right there?
What does it do? I have never seen anything like it.”

“
It's part of the
Ceremony,” Kiriah explained. “You have to sit inside it. Then we'll
hook up your brain to the machine and it will ensure that you are
loyal to Reunification.”

When she said that, I was forced to hide
my true feelings. Right now, Kiriah still seemed to think that I
was on her side; still, I did not like what she said about that
machine 'ensuring' that I was loyal to Reunification, whatever that
meant.

So, in as casual a tone as I could muster,
I said, “Say, sister, what do ye mean that the machine 'ensures'
that I am loyal to Reunification?”

Kiriah smiled, which I took as a sign that
she did not sense anything out of the ordinary from me. “The
machine—which is a Brain Editor—was originally designed for use by
Xeeonite neurosurgeons to detect damaged or ill parts of the brain
in their patients. What we learned, however, was that, with a
little modification, it could be used to rewrite someone's memory
and personality at will.”

I had never before, in mine whole life,
felt more threatened by the word 'rewrite' than I currently was. I
looked at the machine again, which though silent no longer looked
quite as benign as it once did.

“
Basically, what happens
is that we take you and hook your brain up to the Brain Editor, as
I said,” said Kiriah. She gestured at the back of her head, perhaps
to indicate where the wires were supposed to go in my head. “The
Brain Editor then, well, reads your brain. It looks for any sign of
deceit or doubt and rewrites it accordingly.”

I kept a casual demeanor, but it was hard
to do because all I wished to do now was run for mine life.
“Interesting. I am guessing ye have had trouble in the past with
enemies attempting to infiltrate Reunification?”

Kiriah nodded. “It was before I joined.
There was this guy … well, you don't need to know about him. He's
long dead. The Elders bought and modified this Brain Editor to
ensure that nothing like that would happen again.”

“
Good riddance, I say,”
I said. And even though I put on as good a show of genuineness as I
could, in truth, I was disgusted at her short tale about the man,
for I doubted that this infiltrator had been a truly bad man. “May
I ask how permanent the rewrite is?”

“
Completely,” said
Kiriah. She patted the back of her head. “Once the Brain Editor
rewrites someone's brain, there's no changing them back. Sometimes
all it does is take away someone's memory of their traitorous plans
so they don't remember their original schemes, but more often than
not it completely alters someone's personality.”

“
Did ye go through the
Brain Editor when ye joined Reunification?” I asked.

Kiriah's smile never wavered as she said,
“Yep. I still remember you, though, brother, and most of our past.
The Elders told me I only needed subtle changes, so I don't think
it really caused any lasting damage to my brain.”

Except make ye crueler and less empathetic
towards others. 'Twas what I thought, anyway, but I did not say
that aloud because I was now thinking that I would need to find a
way out of here if I was going to avoid getting my personality
'rewritten' and my memories altered.

“
Don't worry,” said
Kiriah, resting one of her small hands on my arm. “I doubt it will
do much to you. And if it does, it will be for the better; after
all, the Brain Editor is supposed to make us more loyal to
Reunification, which is always a good thing.”

She said that as if it were a self-evident
truth. It did not help that she was looking at me with her green
eyes as she said that, like she thought I would agree with her.

To keep up the ruse, I said, “Why, of
course, sister. The Brain Editor is indeed a noble machine, if a
machine can be called such.”

“
Great,” said Kiriah.
She took her hand off my arm and began walking toward the Brain
Editor. “Now just come along here. I'll get the machine started,
which shouldn't take long, because despite its age, it works really
well.”

I hesitated for a split second, for I had
two choices before me now. One was to go along with the ruse a
little while longer, maybe even sit in the chair and allow the
wicked machine to change who I was. It certainly would not arouse
Kiriah's suspicions, but it began to seem to me that the cost of
pretending to be a loyal member of Reunification was far outweighed
by the cost of sitting in the Brain Editor.

So, rather than follow Kiriah, I turned
and ran back to the teleporter. I heard Kiriah calling for me to
stop and come back, but I did not listen to her. I simply jumped
onto the teleporter, which activated as soon as the soles of my
shoes landed on it, and then the Ceremony Room vanished and melted
away, although I knew that even this escape did not mean that I was
free just yet.

***

Chapter
Twelve

W
hen I had teleported back into the
original room I and Kiriah had been only moments prior, I dashed
toward the door, though I soon regretted the hastiness of that
action, for my stomach lurched and almost made me throw up.
However, as I had not eaten much if anything in a day, I did not
barf anything (though I felt awful nonetheless).

I made it to the door, however, and
slammed it open with my shoulder. I then looked both ways down the
hallway, trying to determine which direction I should go in, but I
was still as ignorant of the layout of the building as ever, so I
did not know which way lead out and which way would simply take me
deeper into the bowels of hostile territory.

But I had no time to simply stand around
and think, for I knew that any minute now Kiriah would be back, and
once she was, I would likely be forcibly placed in the Brain
Editor. 'Twas a terrifying thought.

Hence, I turned to the left and ran down
that hallway as fast as I could. My shoes slammed against the
tiles, making loud echoing noises, but I did not care because I
knew that mine cover was already blown and that it would only be a
matter of time before Kiriah or one of Reunification's other
members found me.

I dashed by a camera, but as soon as I
did, it detached from the ceiling and flew after me. I glance over
my shoulder at it in surprise, watching as it flew with the speed
of a humming bird, though it had what appeared to be a tiny rocket
speeding out of its behind rather than wings. A bothersome and loud
alarm shrieked from its body, which only made me wish to turn
around and break the stupid machine like the toy it was.

I at first wondered why it chased me until
I realized that it was trying to keep an eye on me. Perhaps Kiriah
had sent a message to Reunification's security or perhaps the
camera was designed to automatically chase anyone who seemed
suspicious. Whatever the case, I knew I could not shake it
easy.

Hence, I continued to run, almost
literally flying above the tiled floor, hoping against hope that
the stairs at the end of the hall would take me down closer to the
exit. Of course, I hardly had much of a chance of survival even if
I escaped the facility, but I pushed that thought from mine mind so
I could focus on what was truly important at the moment.

And thus I ran until I reached the end of
the hall. I found double doors at the end which I managed to push
open without much difficulty, but before I could close them, the
annoying flying camera swooped in after me, though I succeeded in
closing the doors afterward. Then I barred them with a chair I
found leaning against the walls, sticking it under their handles,
though I had no idea for certain how long that chair would hold the
doors shut.

The camera's alarm was even louder in the
tiny room I found myself in than it was out in the hall, almost
deafeningly louder. But I still lacked something to throw at it, so
I would have to tolerate it slightly longer than I liked.

As annoying as that alarm was, I was happy
that I had managed to make it in here without being caught. I
turned to run down the stairs, but stopped when I saw that there
were no stairs for me to run down. 'Twas simply an empty room, with
a platform on the floor similar to the teleporter I had used to
escape my sister in the first place.

I thought a thousand curses to the Old
Gods, but then stopped when I realized that Kiriah was likely still
coming after me. She might not have been alone, either, for this
facility could have all kinds of security systems that I did not
even know about. Therefore, I would have to figure out how to use
the teleporter in this room to escape, which now seemed to me to be
the way that the Reunification members traveled through this
facility.

So I jumped onto the teleporter and
expected it to teleport me away to wherever I was supposed to go.
That was, after all, how that previous teleporter had worked. Why
would this one not behave similarly?

Unfortunately, the teleporter did not send
me anywhere, even though I had made certain to land on it. I
stomped on the teleporter in frustration, but it still refused to
teleport me anywhere. I wondered briefly if it was broken, which
would be just mine luck, but decided that instead there must have
been something else to it that I did not know.

I looked around the room frantically, but
I did not see anything that looked like a control panel or
anything. How did these Reunification members use these teleporters
if they had no control panels? Was I missing something? This was
another reason I utterly loathed Xeeonite technology, for it so
rarely made sense.

The camera continued to blare its alarm,
which made it even harder for me to figure out how to use this
teleporter than before, for its sound distracted me greatly. 'Twas
like someone screaming in my ear, and I had no way to shut them
up.

It seemed to me as if all hope was lost,
for if the teleporter did not work and I had no way to figure out
how it worked, then I would inevitably be captured by
Reunification. And then mine personality would be rewritten like
the incoherent scribblings of a scribe.

'Tis then I noticed a vague holographic
keyboard hovering above the front of the teleporter, the end facing
the doors. How had I not noticed it before? Ah, I see. It was so
transparent as to be almost invisible.

Nonetheless, I ran up to it and looked
down at it. The keyboard resembled Kiriah's wrist holographic
keyboard, but unfortunately, as with my dear sister's keyboard, the
keys on this one were etched with Xeeonish letters.

Whilst I was not much of an expert in
Xeeonite tech, I understood that I needed to input some kind of
code in order to operate this teleporter. That did seem like a
simple task, but unfortunately, I did not know what code I had to
input.

At this point, however, I was desperate
enough to try anything, so I raised my fingers to begin typing at
random until I found the code when I heard the doors budge.

I froze in place and looked up. Through
the tiny windows in the doors, I saw Kiriah banging her fists
against the doors. She was screaming, too, but what she might have
been saying, I did not know, because the doors muffled her screams.
I could guess, however, and it did not endear me much to her, that
was for certain.

But Kiriah was not alone. Though the
windows were too small for me to see much detail, I saw something
large and metallic also beating against the doors. It was probably
some kind of robot—everyone on this gods-forsaken world seemed to
have one—but I doubted it was a mere service clicker. I could
imagine what it would do to me once it got hold of me, which
snapped me out of my paralysis.

Having never typed before, I found it hard
to input letters and words into this keyboard. 'Twas especially
difficult for me to focus because of the sounds made by Kiriah and
her robot friend as they tried to tear down the doors, not to
mention the alarm made by the damn camera, which now circled my
head like an annoying insect that was destined to be swatted.