Jak Koke - Stranger souls

"There are those on our side who are working to accelerate the completion of the bridge, those who are puppets of the Enemy and who are trying to hasten their coming. Look." She pointed back down the outcropping.

At first Lethe didn't see it because it was so small, a shadow among shadows. But when Thayla began to sing again, filling the world with light and beauty, a tiny blemish of darkness remained. It was almost insignificant, and it lasted only briefly, but Lethe had seen it-a flaw in her song.

"They have found one who can withstand the song," she said. "She is not strong enough to stay long, but I fear her strength will grow. And when it does, others will come. They will kill me or make me leave."

Lethe's spirit sank as Thayla's song died away.

"Unless you stop them," she said.

"How?"

"You must find the great dragon called Dunkelzahn. He came to me a while ago to see how I was. It seems that Harlequin, the elf who helped restore my voice and put me here, never told anyone about Mr. Darke. Never warned his companions about the efforts of Aztechnology to use blood magic to bring on an early Scourge. That elf has such hubris!

"When Dunkelzahn learned that Harlequin had entrusted the fate of our worlds to the strength of my song, he came to see me. Dunkelzahn knew that my song had failed once before, and he was furious at Harlequin for his over-confidence. For leaving me with only the protection of mortals.

"Dunkelzahn told me that I would not be able to hold off the Enemy's forces for longer than a few hundred years. He said they would find a weakness in my song. He said he needed more time.

"Dunkelzahn promised to create an item that would ensure that the Enemy would not cross over prematurely. The Dragon Heart."

Thayla bowed her head. "But that was some time ago, and the dark spot is growing. I fear something has happened. Will you go and find Dunkelzahn? Will you bring the Dragon Heart to me?"

"I will."

"Thank you," she said. "Go now, so I can continue my song. You will not be able to leave after I start singing."

It filled Lethe with sadness to leave the goddess, Thayla, but he did as he had promised. He moved at the speed of thought, traveling along the spine of the arc to the main landscape. In search of the great dragon Dunkelzahn and the Dragon Heart. He hoped his quest would be quick because he already yearned to hear Thayla's song again, to bask in her light.

He woke from a nightmare, gripped by chills. His body slick with sweat, his chest heaving as he gulped air. The drenched sheets clinging to his body in the heat. He opened his eyes to a dark clinic room, trying to focus on the dim lights of the electronics on his right and the soft sounds of distant voices.

The images from his nightmare flickered too strong in his mind, the terrible sounds and smells overpowering him. They were more like memories than dreams. Like forgotten trauma that he had shoved from his mind because the act of remembering was too painful. Crashing back on him now, shivering through him like cold wind.

Sensation of drowning. Locked into a plexan vat filled with saline and enzymes. He had no lungs, and his next breath never came. He panicked, thrashing and struggling. Aching just to inhale once more. Just to take one more breath.

But he knew he never would. That he would never escape the vat.

Now, sitting up in his clinic bed, he breathed deeply. Relishing the clean air. Filling his lungs long and slow.

More visions of his dream rushed through him. Sensations of his disembodied heart thudding inside his liquid tomb, sending subsonic ripples through the vat. Thud. Thud. Thud. Until his ears resonated with the endless ticking, like Chinese water torture. Driving him slowly, inexorably, insane.

He shook his head and took another breath. The clinic room was dark around him as he swung his legs out of the bed and stood for the first time since he'd awakened. How long had it been? A day? A week? He didn't know; there were no windows in his room.

He walked to the sink, three steps across the hard tile

floor. The only light came from the wall of electronics and through the small window in the door. He turned on the water and cupped his hands under the flow, bending to get a drink. The water was cold and clean against the back of his dry throat.

There was a mirror above the sink, and suddenly he wanted to see himself. To know that he was whole and human. The disparate images from his nightmare had faded, but a solid memory was forming in his mind. A cohesive pattern.

His body was very different in the memory, fat and weak. A body that broke into a sweat just standing up. One that was addicted to rich food, ate constantly, and smoked cigars that were very expensive and strong-smelling.

The memory snapped into place. An experimental chamber. Bright and smelling of blood. Dark and forbidding liquid swirled and bubbled in a cylindrical vat next to him. He stood on a scaffold, about three meters up, level with the top of the tank. Attached to the ceiling above were heavy fiber-optic cables looping down like thick arteries.

A technician in a Universal Omnitech labcoat sat at the monitoring console at the base of the vat. And another bent down to attach the wide canvas harness through his legs and around the huge girth of that body. Two more tested the dark saline in the tank.

His heart labored in that flabby chest as he waited to be lowered into the huge cylinder that would be his life-support for the next few weeks as he underwent an experimental treatment. Gengineering to repair the SLE, systemic lupus erythematosus, an autoimmune disease that was eating up his tissues.

The cable grew taut on the harness, lifting his weight from the scaffolding like a cow to be processed. He felt like a brain trapped inside defective meat. Meat that had been going steadily bad for six months. Ever since a slight pain had blossomed in his right knee, then had grown into unbearable agony over the next three days.

The pain had spread quickly to his other joints until he couldn't move. His doctor had told him that he had severe systemic lupus, that his connective tissue was disintegrating.

His immune system was destroying his own body tissues. He would be lucky to walk again. He had fired that doctor.

The disease had worsened, spreading from his cartilage to his bones and from there to his muscles and organs. Until finally, his new doctors gave him six months to live. The pain was unbearable, and the doctors said they had never seen anything like it. It was the worst case of SLE in history. They said there was no cure.

He had fired them all.

Then he had decided to try an experimental treatment by Universal Omnitech. The doctors said the germline therapy was experimental and might not work at all, but it was a chance for life. No one else had even given him that. A fragging chance. He shelled out the nuyen and flew to Houston. The whole process was supposed to take no more than three weeks. And if it worked, he would be completely healed. Better than the original.

That was his only comfort as he watched his naked legs disappear into the dark liquid. A pretty technician double-checked the connection of his datajacks and his blood-exchange systems for the last time. Then he took his last breath before the saline flowed up over his head and filled his lungs.

The Matrix appeared around him, the virtual space he was used to by then. A rendered home laid out like his mansion in London, very high-resolution. He couldn't feel his physical body at all.

He didn't realize until much later he would never feel it again. That he was stuck in the vat forever. Stuck in the lonely virtual halls of his mansion.

The therapy was supposed to repair his immune system and regenerate the damaged tissues. And it had worked brilliantly. But the side effects nearly killed him. When three weeks were up, he learned that an unforeseen synergistic reaction between the regeneration therapy and his disease had caused his tissues to dedifferentiate, becoming cancerous for a while before they took on new forms. Becoming something else.