The cool, night air outside of Sondra’s apartment building helped Feld regain some sense. As clarity fought its way into his consciousness, he saw Sondra hailing an airtaxi. “Sondra,” he said as if seeing her for the first time.
She turned around and regarded him then. Smiling a bit to herself, she walked up to him and kissed him deeply on the mouth. Feld felt the fog clear from his mind then, its shadows driven away by the sweet rush of a mountain torrent. Her pheromone scent always seemed to have a healing power for him. It was one of the things he missed most about her.
“Feeling better now?” she asked him, a slight smile on her face. “I forget that you were always a bit sensitive where the herbs were concerned.”
“I’m fine now. Thanks,” he said. Looking over her shoulder, he saw that the airtaxi had arrived. “We should go.”
After climbing into the taxi and asking the driver to go faster than usual, Feld asked Sondra, “How did you know about the safehouse? How did you know about the relic? Or Solara for that matter?”
“Oh, Mathieu. It has been a while hasn’t it.” She regarded him closely. “Something’s happened to you.” She paused then and reached out and touched his temple, eyes narrowing as she did so.
Feld brushed her hand away. “Never mind that. How did you know what happened? I knew that you could spiritwalk, but you said that the sensations on those were never exact. What’s going on?”
Sondra calmly put her hand in her lap and looked out of the window of the airtaxi, losing herself in the city lights below. “It is no accident that I’m here in Dinara City. About two cycles ago, I began to have spontaneous visions in my sleep. If you remember anything from our time in the commune, this is a very rare thing. At first, I privately rejoiced as I interpreted this to mean that I had achieved some kind of spiritual plateau, even though the visions themselves lacked meaningful details.
However, after a few weeks had passed, the visions hadn’t gotten any clearer. There were a few discernible details, but some of those changed while others remained static. To relieve my confusion, I took to trying to supplement these visions with spiritwalks into the future, but I had no success with this at all. I knew then that the visions that came unbidden in my sleep had nothing to do with my spiritual abilities.
About six months later, the visions became more clear and, over time, three strong details revealed themselves as constants: you, a Mentathian relic and Dinara City. Once I confirmed that these images were of Dinara City, I moved here so that our paths would cross.”
“So, you knew what the outcome was going to be? Why didn’t you seek me out earlier?”
“It’s not that simple. As I said, the visions became clearer, but not completely. Plus, the details, save those three, kept changing.
As time wore on, the visions finally cleared completely. Every night, a new set of circumstances played itself in my mind. In some of these, the relic was returned to Mentath. In others, whole worlds were consumed by destruction. In some, I saw your death. In others, I saw my own. I saw corruption and heroism and decay and betrayal. Every night I feared what I would see in my dreams.”
Sondra turned away from Feld and looked out the window to the Dinaran lights again. A single tear on her cheek caught the light momentarily on its descent. She turned back to face him. “In every vision where I sought you out, based on the knowledge that I was receiving from these visions, the end result was catastrophe. The purpose of the visions was not to interrupt the course of your free will. It was to guide you and inform you once you made the decision to enlist my help.”
“And Solara and the safehouse?”
“I’ve seen both in my visions. I saw the safehouse months ago, Solara only recently. She’s figured prominently in the visions of the past two weeks or so. Last night’s vision featured you and Solara in your safehouse attempting to decipher the riddle of the relic’s runes. Except that Solara inadvertently triggered the relic’s power and it trapped her in its energy field. Isn’t that what happened?”
“Yes.” Feld paused a bit before asking the question that’s been at the back of his mind since Sondra’s first outburst. “How bad can it get?”
Sondra met his gaze. “Very.”
They reached his safehouse sooner than expected and threw some money at the driver. Once inside, they ran to his suite as fast as they could. Feld transmitted the security codes while they were in the hall and they both heard the door unlatch as they approached it. Running inside, they both stopped short at the scene inside.
The living room was empty. Solara and the relic were gone!
Eloquence having escaped him, “Frell!” was all Feld could say.
Sondra looked crestfallen. “They were there weren’t they. In the middle of the room.” There was no question. She’d seen this room in her visions countless times before.
Feld stepped into the apartment, pulling Sondra in and closing the door behind them. “Bloody ashes!” he swore again. He looked at Sondra and saw his helpless gaze returned. “Wait a microt! Follow me!”
He led her to his bedroom and into the walk-in closet. Hidden inside was a security console. Keying in the appropriate codes, Feld was able to get one of the day’s video surveillance feeds. After seeking directly to the video frame set where he had left earlier, they watched the video at 2x speed. On the screen, they could see Solara spinning in place, her facial expressions changing in violent contrast to Feld’s earlier observations.
Midway through, the scene changed abruptly. Rewinding and playing at normal speed, Feld and Sondra saw Solara’s movements slow to a stop. Her facial expressions also stopped their spastic twitching and left a calm, awe-filled one in their place. Keying the video frame rate to ¼ speed, they watched in horror as Solara’s expression slowly became a rictus of pain, tears streaming like a dam burst down the sides of her face. From within her lower abdomen, an incandescent glow emerged and spread its glory over her entire body, the power of the light saturating the room’s video sensors. A quick, blinding flash later and Solara was on the floor, calmly standing astride the relic. After a quick look around the room, Solara then picked up the relic and walked toward the unseen door under the camera.
“No. That’s not right!” Feld exclaimed.
“What?”
Feld ignored the question and rapidly called up various bits of security status data. His fingers flew across the keyboard, his mind one with the machine.
“What’s not right? Feld, what are you looking for?”
“No. Not frelling possible.” Tapping anew and swearing under his breath, rekeying mistakes as the panic built within him, Feld broke into the building’s security system and accessed their video feeds. He brought up multiple, simultaneous feeds and ran them all, rewinding, replaying, scanning.
With a sudden stop, Feld said in resignation, “She’s not on any of them.”
“Not on any of what. Feld, what are you talking about?”
“Sondra, Solara’s not on any of the building’s video surveillance feeds.” He spun in his chair to face her. Steadying his breathing and emotions, he continued, “When I left to come and get you, I sealed the door with a fresh crypto-key. Although I didn’t think that the current key had been compromised, I didn’t want to take any chances. So, I generated a new one and sealed the door. No one should have been able to get in. Which also means that no one should have been able to get out.”
“But, we saw her leave.”
“No. We saw her walk toward the door off-camera. According to the security status data, that door was not opened from the time I left to the time we returned.”
“That’s impossible. Could there have been a data error? Do you have any other surveillance feeds on that room?”
“I checked. There are no data errors, apart from the other camera that points toward the door. That camera is currently off-line due to a power surge at about the time that blinding flash occurs in the original feed. I bit-scanned the feed and there are no images in the feed after that point. It’s all black.”
Sondra looked back at Feld with an unreadable expression on her face. “So, what happened?”
“I don’t know. You tell me. You’re the one with the visions,” snapped Feld. “What happened to my friend?”
Taken aback by his outburst, Sondra quickly replied, “I don’t know. You know that it doesn’t work that way. I’ve seen countless possibilities over the months, but I’ve only recently seen today’s events. And never this, this transformation. Feld, I’ve seen many futures, but I don’t know which, if any, is the one we’ll produce.”
“So now what!” Feld raised his hand and took a deep breath. Opening a drawer, he pulled out an ornate, green bottle. After removing the synth-cork, he took a deep pull on the clear liquid, its effects burning a trail down his throat and stinging his eyes. Finished, he replaced the synth-cork and tossed the bottle back into the drawer.
“Sondra. Besides portents of doom, are there any clues in any of your visions that tells us what we are dealing with?”
Sondra thought hard, trying to remember the myriad of images that had haunted her mind. “No. I’ve seen great war, flames, disease and death, not much else. I have seen that the forces behind this destruction are individuals known by us and that they become well nigh unstoppable. I do know that the relic plays a key role, but I don’t know how or why.”
As she finished her sentence, a flash through the windows filled the room. Almost immediately, the building shook as the sound from a large explosion nearby enveloped it, the force strong enough to knock Sondra off her feet and onto Feld. Looking up at him, with fresh tears in her eyes, she said, “It’s begun.”