Chapter Text
I had hoped that at least they would throw me out solemnly. A huge rumbling hall, a silent crowd, the fragments of my psionicists's sign falling to the marble floor. Someone whispers "he was so young!" and I give a rousing blaming speech about the evils of the system, because - what have I got to lose.
They lost my psionicists's sign.
The front desk was buzzing like a beehive. Workers were scurrying around the floors, and I could barely find the right one. He was constantly distracted, poring over bundles of wooden signs and leafing through huge books, until he said reproachfully:
"But you're dead."
Another worker ran by with goggling eyes, sweeping up dust with a broom. I leaned tiredly against the desk. Water was pouring from my wet hair and drenched clothes. I looked miserable, not solemn.
My parents had wished to bring something beautiful into the world, and named me Lillian. The name remained the most beautiful thing about me. I was born in the poorest region of Tikkaiwa, so poor that even the awakening of a psionic power was considered good luck here. My life was the ordinary life of a low-level psionicist - very disgusting and not so disgusting. The first and only chance I had to get noticed - when I could stop feeling like dust beneath their feet - was taken away from me.
It wasn't fair.
I had done nothing wrong to make it fair.
The signs of the dead psionicists hung in a separate locked room. The archivist searched for the key for a long time before he laid out an already broken sign in front of me. A personal number, but no rank or position, which remained on the other half. Even my sign had been broken without me.
I stood in the middle of the rumbling hall, among a crowd that didn't care about me, clutching the broken pieces in my hands. And all my hopes and dreams and my future lay in broken pieces beneath my feet.
...And the faded sky of Mroa Hali that day was perfectly ordinary.
I didn't deserve it in any way.
What I will never miss - is my job.
The base, under yet another meaningless number, stood in the beginning of Mroa Hali Valley. There were two rows of sand-colored round dome buildings, a high fence, a hundred or so staff, two dozen mages of varying degrees of arrogance, and only one psionicist.
That's me.
Mages affect the world with their own power, while psionicists stand a level higher and change the power of others. I was one of those psionicists who supported the Flow; I had a little room behind a folding screen, a bunk, a special "deep-dive" machine, a huge volume of mandatory instructions, daily shifts, and life was as monotonous as everything around me.
I couldn't guess how many psionicists had used the machine before, on its journey from the capital through the interior and exterior regions as part of the decommissioned junk. But I had the distinct feeling that someone had died while using it. From the machine came wires with dirty connectors that I couldn't clean off, no matter how hard I tried. And every time I looked at them, I was reminded of scary stories about psionicists getting infected from improper contacts. In the horror stories that went around the training grounds, psionicists died in agony in hundreds of the most bizarre ways.
The psionicist who had worked here before me felt that this life was not for him, and solved it radically. The head of the base had promised to send me an assistant for several months and hadn't sent. But I was promised that if I did not make a fuss, I would be allowed to apply for the ninth rank examinations. My rank was tenth, the lowest, and I was strong enough, but it wasn't about strength, it was about knowledge. It was about status.
I had dreams of the future. I made plans.
Today, the flow of information was particularly intense. Each psionicist has its own mental configuration, and I built tunnels, made lenses out of membranes, to receive, purify, decrypt, and encrypt data and transmit it further. To put it bluntly, I served as an information filter. It is said that there are machines that can do that for people. But such high technology hasn't reached us in Mroa Hali, and it won't. If ten psionicists cost less than one machine, the result is obvious.
The warning for an urgent emergency transmission came suddenly: I barely had time to throw all my strength into one lens, to expand it, when everything was flooded with unbearable light. The invisible walls of the tunnel rattled and nearly collapsed, and for long moments I thought my head would explode, and then the light faded and there was complete silence. The light bulb was dim, but there were still spots floating in front of my eyes.
Like any good proper psionicist, I had no idea what kind of orders or magical chants the distant Center was transmitting. But it came through Mroa Hali's base far more often than all the other bases I had worked at before. Rumor said the psionicists changed much more frequently at Mroa Hali's base.
The phone next to my bunk rang, adding to the headache. I checked to see if there were any more tasks, set the timer, and reluctantly got up, wiping my face and hair from the conductive gel. The gel was supposed to soften contact with connectors and heal minor injuries, but this one was not far from water in usefulness.
The valley of Mroa Hali looked like a desert with cliffs on the horizon. Normal people knew Mroa Khali as a place where not a drop of rain had fallen: the dry, stony ground was forever imprinted with dried-up riverbeds. Deep shafts were drilled to find water. The river flowed beneath those yellow rocks in deep, deep darkness.
Sand was crawling down the street. The sky overhead was white and murky. In front of the door to the commandant's office I suddenly felt dizzy, but I grabbed the knob and waited out the fit. And walked in as if nothing had happened.
"The brawl last night. What do you know about it?"
Commandant Elte was a tall and gloomy man with a squeamish grimace on his face. When he looked at me, the grimace got worse: Elte regarded psionicists with deep contempt, but that didn't prevent him from using them.
I looked under my feet and responded with all the naivety I could muster:
"I wasn't there."
I'm trying to be a better person.
"I know all about you, Lillian," the commandant tried to grab my hand, but immediately yanked his fingers away and shook them in the air. I knew he would do that, and I didn't wipe the gel there.
"All I did was tell a rookie mage that I'd never seen such magic power before..."
So ridiculous. That's what I did at the last base: I told half the mages how much I admired and feared their powers, and I didn't tell that the other half. The former got proud, the latter got mad, and everyone started fighting.
That's why I got kicked out of the last base, actually.
"But everyone knows that the strongest mage at that base - it's you,commandant Elte!"
If I told anyone how commandant Elte freaked out every time he met me, no one would believe me.
If he wanted to punish me, he would have called for me yesterday. And I'm too useful a psionicist - which isn't that important - and the only psionicist on the base, which is more important than anything else. The commandant was trying to point out my mistake and make me look guilty so he could demand what he always demanded. Obviously, it was easier for him that way.
The commandant's office was always a mess, but today was a special one. His aura was humming and crackling with interference, and constantly changing, giving its owner pain. Something was going on; but I didn't know it, and, like a good proper psionicist, I didn't ask questions.
Elte nodded sharply and angrily, and I began only after that.
Elte's magic has always been strong but unstable. If he were closer to the Center, he could make temporary personal contracts with psionicists that would keep his power at serenity, but Elte would not voluntarily admit to needing the help of a psionicist. The psionicist's registration office was an extremely boring thing, and only confirmed such personal contracts; but there was a lack of psionicists on the frontier, we were all assigned to bases, and the bases tacitly allowed to make money on unofficial contracts with everyone. A perfect system, I think.
After the accepted transmission, the internal mental structure slowed down: some of the support lines were so warped and the membranes were so thin that it was now scary to touch them. I slowly and carefully coiled it into a spiral, filtering through Elte's aura, amplifying and purifying it. These interferences would stay with me forever. But as long as the amount of interference absorbed did not exceed my limit, it was possible to work.
Commandant Elte immediately cheered up and, without saying a word of thanks, moved toward the door.
"You take too long. Is your psionic power starting to fade already?"
"I'm trying..." I said to his back.
Fade? I've only been a psionicist for five years. I've still got five more.
Things had changed outside. The space between the domes was now full of flurried people, as if the entire population of the base had come out. I tried to squeeze forward, and finally saw a car, a huge land vehicle with Tikkeiwa signs, beautiful, and therefore not ours. The roof of the car was higher than the buildings. And then I saw them... I couldn't look away anymore.
It was the first time I saw Lord Ninsheg.
He was shining.
I couldn't even make out his figure behind the array of psionic data that he was. His thoughts were woven and flowing, swirling in terrifying whirlpools, collapsing in a thundering cascade, roaring loudly, and I hastily twisted my structure into a knot, afraid that if I touched even an edge of it, my mind would tear itself apart from such power. The lords are Tikkeiwa's greatest weapon, the country's strongest mages, their power at the limit of what a host can withstand. And his psychic aura was far greater than a pathetic psionicist like me could handle.
The lord's psionicist walked beside him.
He wore a robe the color of young grass, embroidered with spring flowers. He walked swiftly, his head proudly raised, his loose white hair flowing down his shoulders, his perfectly chiseled lips fixed in a slightly sad half-smile, and his eyes misty as the early morning. His psionic structure was perfect - a frozen compressed coil, the perfect curve of facets. I hid behind other people's backs.
It is said that elite psionicists not only get huge money for their contracts, but they can even choose their contractors. I didn't believe in such tales.
"I came to you because there was something left for me," the lord's voice sounded as if it were coming from a swirling thundercloud of signs. A cheerful and beautiful voice.
A dozen men were brought out into the open. They were not chained, because Tikkeiwa is not a evil country at all; they were given an intoxicating potion. I saw the Lord's mental aura expand, engulfing them all at once, and the men fell.
No one could stand it.
No one could have endured his mind being consumed and torn apart by something much bigger.
One kept wriggling and twitching, pouring blood from his nose and ears into the sand, but the base staff quickly ran up to him and calmed him down for good. Of course, these men were all criminals. At least it made sense. Tikkeiwa is not a evil country and would not sacrifice civilians. Though the lord can take anyone he wants, he would never do so.
The lord's psionicist stood indifferent. The stairs to the combat vehicle's cabin were too high, but the psionicist's hesitation did not seem humiliating, it only added to his charm, and everyone hustled to help, and the lord knelt down to help him up. And they disappeared inside.
The car swept swiftly away toward the horizon in a cloud of dust.
I returned to my workplace. There was almost no transmission, and I could stare at the cracks in the ceiling as long as I wanted.
I was born in a poor province; I manifested a psionic power, and I learned like everybody else, and I worked like everybody else, and I tried to do the job as well as I could. But like all low-level psionicist I will be used and thrown out with a broken structure, a fading magic, and a head full of other people's useless thoughts. But I'd like to know what it's like to be cared for.
I need to put a pretty picture on the ceiling.
I turned off the machine and pulled the contact wires out of the connectors. One wire was stuck in the body, and when I pulled it out, a few drops of blood rolled out of the needle holes. No big deal. It happens. High-ranking psionicists probably don't even have connectors. And they don't have any pain.
And then there was a scream. Wild and full of pain, it came from far away, over the horizon, rolling in a wave of psionic echo. The disconnected machine turned on by itself and blinked.
Looks like it's time to remember alarm protocol. If the machine decided to explode, it was better to stay away from it.
Outside, everything remained the same. The sun's halo stared drearily from above, and Mroa Hali lay serene, never changing. People were coming out of the living blocks, just as I was, twirling their heads questioningly.
And then a bright dot appeared on the horizon.
The car was approaching rapidly, leaving a trail of dust behind it. Its side was dented inward. The car nearly blew out the gate before it could fully open, and stopped abruptly. I barely had time to realize it, but deep down inside I already knew that a terrible thing had happened.
Lord Ninsheg's face was pallid. He was carrying something wrapped in cloth in his arms, and red stains were spreading over the cloth.
He gently lowered the precious cargo to the ground and straightened up. His voice was blacker than the fiercest storm.
"I have a task to complete. I know you have a psionicist on yours base."
...Though a lord has the right to take anyone, but never...
People whispered, parting before me.
And I took a step.
And I took another step.