Tabitha Chirrick - Overshadowed

Iselglith bowed his head. “M-my apologies, s-sir. I d-didn’t realize it was going to—”

“No need to apologize,” Jin said. “It’s an automatic process once a report is filed.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Ruxbane said, donning his lab coat.

“An Exalted ordered that I have this access, if you must know.”

Of course. He had a good idea as to which Exalted, too, but it wasn’t something he could deal with now.

“So you should heed your master healer’s advice, and stay put,” Jin continued. “You’re injured.”

“I’m sorry, Jin, but your authority does not supersede mine. I must go where I’m needed most.” Ruxbane opened his palm, forming a portal before him.

“Wait!” She reached toward him.

He evaded her grasp and stepped through the portal, arriving in a hallway hundreds of thousands of light years away. He snapped the wavering darkness behind him shut, and stumbled against the wall, chest burning. Aether wound around his fingers, resisting his command to recede.

Despite leaving, Jin and Iselglith were right. It had been too long since Ruxbane rested, but he couldn’t stop now. He was so close. The girl had come here. His hope was here. He tried to swallow, but his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. If he could just be free from this curse — if he could just complete his duty to the Rokkir… He thought of Jin’s eyes, and how they caught the glint of moonlight in that secluded Aloman cave a long time ago.

“Ruxbane, sir?”

A staff person stood frozen mid-walk, jaw agape in the middle of the walkway. Not a commanding official, but a bridge-hand, judging by the patch over his chest.

Ruxbane straightened. “A ship was tracked leaving Elsha,” he said. “It’s headed this way. Notify me immediately with coordinates when it lands.” He tossed the tracking receiver.

The boy caught it. “Yes, sir! Would you like to follow me to the command center? It’s down this hall.”

“I know where it is.” At the boy’s widened stare, Ruxbane said, “I will remain here for now.”

“Yes, sir.”

The boy departed, leaving Ruxbane alone. He slumped against the wall again, and rolled his head to the window. Modnik’s capital, Cryzoar, sat ten thousand feet below. Buildings crumbled. Fires blazed. Yet still thousands of Varg roamed the surface. He needed as many as he could get if his mission was to be a success.

It had been nearly fifty years since his first visit to Modnik. Fifty long years since he’d returned home, only to be put in chains by his own people. He caught his reflection in the window, and remembered.

He could almost see himself reflected in Jin’s wide-eyed stare. The guards pulled him from her, dragging him by aether-inhibiting chains. The material cut into his wrists as his captors tugged. A crowd of angry, spitting faces lined the way to the courtroom, but Jin still followed the procession, her access badge bouncing against her chest as she jogged.

Her fingers ensnared Ruxbane’s arm. “You didn’t really, did you?”

“I did.” His voice grated against his throat, still rough from months without practice. “And I found all the answers we’re looking for.”

“Leave him, Jin. He’s got a trial,” a guard said.

She only squeezed tighter. “Promise me you have something. If you don’t, they’ll—”

“Jin,” another guard warned.

“The birth rate is even worse now,” she said to Ruxbane. “Two percent.”

One of the guards tore her from him, and they pulled him through a pair of enormous doors. The six Exalted sat at a podium in the dark courtroom, looming above the chair where they forced Ruxbane to sit. The room smelled of must. Dust lined the armrests and hung like floating debris in the air.

“Ruxbane,” the Exalted Speaker said. His voice echoed against the rounded walls. “You stand accused of disobeying the virtues of the Rokkir — the laws which keep us safe and our traditions alive. You have endangered your people by abandoning Aloma and travelling to the Igador system. How do you plead?”

“Guilty.”

The oldest Exalted scoffed. “This is a waste of time.”

“He is one of our people, Savenus, and so deserves fair trial,” the Speaker said.

“But it ends the same, fair or not.”

The Speaker turned his gaze back to Ruxbane. “You have committed a serious offense. You have endangered all Rokkir by entering the Igador system and potentially attracting the attention of the empire we barely evaded over two hundred years ago. It is disappointing that an intelligent, powerful man like yourself decided to betray his kin. We are in a position, granted to us by the virtues, to execute you for your discretions.”

A fire licked the inside of Ruxbane’s skull — a recently developed discomfort. Execution. Killing people during a birth crisis. What paramount stupidity. By necessity, the old ways had begun to disintegrate, but they were bringing the Rokkir down with them.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” the Speaker asked.

Ruxbane cleared his throat. “I claim the virtue of Sacrifice.”

The room hushed, like the walls themselves stopped to listen in.

“I have sacrificed our secrecy,” he continued, “our isolation. I have sacrificed my own life for the information I now carry. I have forsaken the virtues of Obedience, Duty, and Guardianship, but I have done so to ensure those icons of our existence remain worshipped for far longer than this generation of Rokkir.”

The Exalted ducked their heads and deliberated. It was Sacrifice which gave the Rokkir dark aether. It was Sacrifice that allowed them to flee the core empire. Ruxbane didn’t believe in the virtues — that all actions had to adhere to one of the nine, but the Exalted sat stuck in tradition. Given the old ways, they had to accept his invocation.

The Speaker straightened. “Demonstrate your claim.”

“Gladly. I believe those are my possessions which were confiscated on my arrival?” Ruxbane asked, nodding to the guard beside a table topped with electronics. “There is a tablet containing information I would like to share with the court. I have a solution to the birth rate problem. If I’m to be executed, at least let me part with the knowledge that can save our people.”

The Speaker nodded, and the guard connected the tablet to a projector which splashed the screen image onto the wall.

“On the main screen there,” Ruxbane said, “Play the file titled S-E-Q-1-1-0.”

A video played — a record of a sequencer he had developed months ago. A globule of animated dark aether morphed and shaped as a list of genomes scrolled by.

“This simulation studies the mutagenic effects of the dark aether on multiple DNA sequences — both existing and potential.”

“This is what you had shown me, boy,” Savenus growled. “The night before you betrayed your people and left.”

“What purpose does this serve?” one of the other Exalted asked.

“This was my hypothesis,” Ruxbane said. “As Dr. Savenus says, I visited him the night before I left Aloma. I’d hoped he would allow me permission to pursue my solution.”

“What is your solution, Ruxbane?” the Speaker asked.

“We’ve seen several species change after exposure to the dark aether, but we’ve never seen a species mutate additional cognitive abilities. Say — in simple terms — go from primal to intelligent, or experience brain growth. This effect would demonstrate favorable mutation and would thus be a milestone study to address our own genetic faults — such as our birth rate issue. I proposed this type of mutation was possible, and that a potential subject could exist in the Igador system, where the Transfusion likely affected local fauna.”