The room aboard the Foretold Reckoning vibrated with an annoying rattling sound that came from some busted pipe or loose fitting inside the walls. It amplified John’s already intense headache as he tried to decide what to do with the female Hyperion before him. Samantha’s lips were pressed tightly in the middle of some deep thoughts about the situation.

  The top half of the female Hyperion remained suspended in her neural mesh cradle built from cords of biomechanical vinework which pulsed from her back into the curved wall behind her. Her white mask glowed faintly. It vaguely resembled Thariel’s mask, but was softer with more feminine features.

  The place smelled like rust tainted with bleach. John raised his submachine gun an inch. The weight of it felt immense inside his hands, because of the choice he knew he had to make. His pulse throbbed inside his eardrums. “Sasha,” he said quietly. “Is she still active?”

  Sasha’s voice filled his helmet. “She’s dormant, not unconscious. I’m detecting synaptic activity. Her psionic core is active, but fragile. She is aware of your presence.”

  John’s grip tightened. “Can she lash out at us?”

  “It’s theoretically possible. She would have to regain full control of her soul core. But in her current state…she is too weak for combat. You could destroy her quite easily.”

  John stared at Laureline’s bowed form. His heart pounded. “We brought explosives. Would that work?”

  “More than sufficient,” Sasha replied. “A two-charge detonation on the spine would terminate her completely. It would be clean and instantaneous.”

  The thought wrapped around his mind like a wire. The next move could either secure them further or strangle their position and get them killed. It would be easy to kill her. It would be decisive and clean before she woke and turned against them.

  “I should kill her,” John muttered.

  Samantha stood at his side. She tilted her helmet visor toward Laureline. “You’re thinking like a soldier back on Earth, not an Arbiter of the galaxy.”

  “She’s a Hyperion. She’s the enemy. Her kind attacked Earth and killed millions.”

  “She’s also half-dead and wired into a ship full of corpses.” Sam’s voice hardened. “Killing her might be the safe move. At the same time, it might erase the only answers we’ll ever get from a Hyperion.”

  John hesitated. Sweat beaded along his neck. He activated his comms and connected to the Hemingway. “Dr. Marche. Vaeliss. I need your input. Now.”

  Theo’s anxious voice followed. “Uh…you found a Hyperion? And it’s a female?

  “Yes.”

  “Is she functioning?”

  “She’s in some kind of stasis. She’s weak. It looks like she’s been dormant for a long time.”

  Vaeliss’s voice cut in, calm and crisp. “Do not engage without understanding her cognitive state. If she’s coherent, there is a chance she can be reasoned with. Not all Hyperions were built for war. Some were built for other purposes.”

  “She’s still dangerous,” John replied.

  “All the more reason to speak with her,” Vaeliss countered. “You of all people, Arbiter Drayton, know the power of performance to acquire information. Perhaps this moment demands not a trigger…but dialogue.”

  “I’m going with Vaeliss on this one,” Theo replied. “It would be incredibly fascinating to speak cordially with a Hyperion.”

  “If that’s even possible,” John replied. He stared at Laureline for a while. He watched the faint rise and fall of her dim white chest-plate.

  “Okay. Let’s try it your way, Vaeliss—Sasha, wake her up.”

  Sasha hesitated. “Her neural architecture is fragmented. Traditional communication may be impossible. She may act erratically and unpredictably. Extreme caution is warranted.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Direct contact,” she said. “Touch the surface of her psionic conduit—her forehead and NOT her sternum plate. Your soul will mesh with her network momentarily and that should wake her up.”

  “What happens if I touch her chest?”

  “Your soul will break from your body and you will die.”

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  “Oh.”

  John looked at the center of the Hyperion’s chest. A soft pulse beneath her curved translucent armor made her ribs glow, faint and warm like a heartbeat beneath glass.

  “Is this too dangerous?” John asked Sasha.

  “Only touch her head. Besides that, you may feel a slight jolt.”

  He stepped forward. The air thickened from the tension. Static danced against his skin.

  Samantha shifted beside him. “Are you sure about this?” she asked.

  “Nope.”

  He extended his hand.

  John’s fingers made contact with her mask—it was smooth like polished marble. At that moment, time folded inward. An electric jolt—psychic, not physical—shot through him. His eyes widened as a tidal rush of energy surged into him. It wasn’t heat, nor pain, but pure awareness. Schematics, languages, and ancient blueprints of thought and fractured emotion exploded through his mind. He saw glimpses of golden halls lit by star lanterns. He saw massive rings orbiting dying stars. He saw Thariel standing solemn before a gathering of ten thousand Hyperions.

  And then, John felt her and instantly knew her name—Laureline.

  Fear radiated through the psychic connection—so did compassion and love; but beneath it all he felt a sinkhole inside Laureline’s soul, a bottomless dread. Except, it wasn’t for herself. It was for him. But why?

  John choked and held his throat. He couldn’t breathe, but he couldn’t let go.

  Samantha grabbed his shoulder and tore him back. The connection broke.

  John staggered. His breath was ragged and his limbs trembled as if he’d just yanked his hand out of a furnace. His lungs burned and his throat felt raw. He blinked wildly as his vision returned.

  A sound like cracking ice echoed through the chamber. Laureline’s head lifted. The cables that suspended her peeled away with wet and sinewy clicks releasing sharp puffs of chilled vapor into the air. Her eyes glowed white and locked onto him as she sat upright, slowly, like something which stirred and finally woke from a long dream.

  “Identify yourself,” John said.

  Her words were harmonic and drifted with graceful clarity. “Laureline, Watcher of the Gate.” Then, more urgently. “Where is Thariel?”

  John’s expression hardened. “He’s a war criminal. He orchestrated the slaughter of Earth’s colonies. He attacked the Dependency. Millions are dead because of him.”

  Laureline flinched. The glow beneath her mask dimmed slightly.

  “You lie.”

  “Does it sound like I’m lying?”

  “He would not do that without good cause.”

  “He’s a monster,” Sam added.

  Laureline’s emotionless mask turned to Samantha momentarily, then returned to John.

  “I have proof.” John raised his wrist. The air shimmered as helmet cam footage projected across the wall—the video displayed Thariel striding calmly over a decimated New York City. The footage then shifted to Thariel slicing through the spires on Abbeylara. Screams echoed from the hologram and crackled in the cold air of the chamber.

  Laureline watched in silence.

  Then she turned away. Her voice reduced to almost nothing. “He told me…he said…he had to find a way to sustain me. That there were alternatives. He said we wouldn’t have to use humans anymore, that there was another way.”

  “Our reports indicate that he released Braccari on Caldera Reach to feed on the human colonies who settled there recently. Women and children. What do you know about that?”

  “I didn’t know.” Her voice cracked, barely audible. “He…he promised me he would end all of the destruction.”

  John stepped closer. Shadows fell across Laureline’s pale form. “Where is Thariel?”

  “I haven’t seen him.”

  “Sure,” Samantha replied.

  John toggled his wrist comm. “Sasha. Are there any Hyperion signals on Eurynome?”

  “No. The only signal I’m reading is hers.”

  It didn’t sit right. It didn’t feel right.

  John’s eyes narrowed. “You’re lying. You know where he is.”

  Laureline’s head snapped toward him. “What?”

  “You think I can’t tell?” John said. “I used to make a living pretending to be someone I wasn’t. I know a performance when I see one. You turned away. You changed your tone. You hesitated.”

  “I’m not lying. I’m just—”

  “Yes. You. Are.”

  She said nothing for several seconds. “He…might be on Eurynome. He said if the results failed…he would return to me.”

  That was enough.

  John activated his comms. “Hemingway, this is Arbiter Drayton. We have a live Hyperion—she's a low threat. Limited mobility. Dispatch retrieval drones. Prepare containment protocols.”

  “Acknowledged,” replied Selaithe Min. “Drones inbound.”

  Laureline rose taller. Her limbs creaked as if her own weight defied her. “If you take me hostage,” she said softly, “Thariel will never stop hunting you.”

  John didn’t blink. “He already is.”

  A faint chittering filled the air. From the breach, drone units emerged—sleek and insectile, black as void-glass with glinting limbs and coiling tendrils. They surrounded Laureline and magnetically latched to her frame like a web of synthetic predators. She didn’t resist, but something changed in her immovable mask. She knew she was defeated.

  “He won’t forgive you for this,” she said.

  “Let him come.”

  Onboard the Hemingway, they secured Laureline inside a psionic isolation chamber. If she were Thariel’s size, that would have been impossible. But Lureline was maybe half his size. After modifying her chamber to fit her height, which was about fifty feet, they activated the layered shielding fields which shimmered blue and purple in the light. Her body was suspended from conundrium chains. She hung from them, slumped over. Cracks spiderwebbed across her white armor like fractured ceramic. The glow from her chest dimmed further with every passing minute.

  “She is destabilizing,” Sasha reported. “She may be dying.”

  “How long does she have left?”

  “Unknown.”

  John stood alone at the observation window and watched her with his arms crossed and his jaw set.

  Laureline looked up at him.

  “You’ve made a mistake, Arbiter. I’m not the enemy.”

  John said nothing.

  Her glowing eyes flared one final time.

  “He will come for me, Arbiter.”

  A pause settled in the brig.

  “And then, he will come for all of you.”