Dante

  I only learn the value of my soul the day I lose it to a candle flame.

  I’m sitting in my favorite coffeeshop-bookstore next to the University of Chicago, sipping down a rich latte while reading next semester’s syllabus. Not at U of C, of course, but the new academy my family is shipping me off to, having run out of courses and distractions for their ‘gifted’ son.

  I’m not really ‘gifted,’ not the way most people think of it. But my uncle Barry is down there in California, and promises Waycross is even better than it sounds, especially for “people like us.” That sold me. That, and a full scholarship, a stipend of cash just for going, and Barry letting me stay in a wing of his sprawling vacation home instead of some dorm.

  Barry also sold my parents on it, which is ironic – of all my uncles, “B” is the one who feels “discipline” means “make your own mistakes, and figure it out from there.” Definitely my favorite uncle, no contest.

  So I’m sitting, smiling slightly as I skim the books and research papers my new school expects us to talk about this year. Everything from “AI Agents and Quantum Interpolation” to “Genetic Engineering, Genetic Enhancement and You.” They’re big on class participation – “The Socratic Method” – so I’m not supposed to just feed the courseload into ChatGPT and let it spit out my papers. But then, if I wanted an easy time at school, I wouldn’t be going there. Anywhere but, really.

  Still, looking at the course work, it’s a heavy workload for any “normal” gifted student. I shrug mentally. Whatever the school turns out to be, there are only so many classes I can take in person at U of C without officially becoming a college student, and my parents still want me “to socialize” in high school.

  Too bad high school, at this point, is study hall and homeroom at the beginning of the day, and not much else. Then it’s off to my real classes online or at the University. Two more years of normal high school probably isn’t in the cards, anyway, but apparently Waycross has its own way of handling exceptional students. Better than my present “elite” school can, at least.

  Crushing my classes is fine, sure, but I want to do more. A lot more. My family has some strange ideas, but there is one I can’t argue with – if you have a gift, you help others with it, or otherwise what was the point?

  I don’t know what that would be. Researchers armed with AI and other tech are curing diseases every day, feeding the hungry, housing the homeless and basically racing forward in every field like a marathon had turned into a sprint. The world is still full of challenges, but they’re exciting ones.

  And my “gift” can be applied to almost anything.

  I sit, and I muse, and then I feel eyes on me from across the room. Just beyond the empty table displaying the shop’s carved wooden chessboard, someone is watching.

  A girl sits at a round table, reading some leatherbound book with great interest, apparently not looking at me at all. But the moment my gaze finds her, she looks up with brilliant green eyes and smiles.

  Mocha skin, perfect features, perfect build, and fingers rising gracefully from her book to a candle flickering on her table. She holds the fingers of each hand to either side of the flame, almost as if warming them as she looks at the candlelight. I notice, in that instant, that she is inexplicably wearing dark gloves. Then her eyes rise again and something brilliant flares in the depths of the tiny flame.

  Twisting threads of green light fill my sight as I stare into the fire, the world around me blotting out in an instant. Emerald lines intertwine with sapphire blue and imperial purple flowing together to form sigils in no language I know. But somehow, I recognize the symbols themselves in the very depths of my being. They flow, each one replacing the next as the threads whirl faster and faster, and can feel their echo within me. Something responding. I can feel changes rippling through my mind and body.

  Something unlocking.

  My head pounds, my hands and feet tingle as if asleep, and the rest of me feels a profound calm, as though I’d been meditating in some peaceful place for hours. And then—

  My phone buzzes fiercely, discordantly beneath my hand as a flash goes off from its camera and keeps going off. Instinctively, I flinch away, and suddenly the candle flame is no longer in my line of sight, and has lost its power.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  The soft music in my noise-cancelling earbuds halts. “Dante,” Lyrica’s voice cuts in. “Basilisk hack.”

  The words are as subtle as a bomb going off in my face. Cognitive attacks are supposed to be just rumors – a real danger for computers with neural networks, sure, but just a fantasy when it came to human brains. The basilisk hack is the most-dangerous myth of them all, an attack against the mind and body which could happen in minutes, or even an instant, and warp you inside out forever, making you the puppet of whatever madness infiltrates your soul.

  Where an AI neural network could fall to a “one-pixel attack,” human thoughts are far-more resilient, or are supposed to be. How can any set of stimuli affecting your senses – sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell – be so precise and perfect it could hack you like a machine? Unimaginable.

  Yet that is what the legendary basilisk hacks can do.

  They’re the stuff of horror stories, not science.

  The very thought of one jolts me into motion.

  Instinctively I close my eyes and move, my off hand reaching for the pair of sunglasses on the table by my coffee and phone. My smartphone, fortunately, never left my hand, just rested under it, and its on-board AI, Lyrica, never stopped watching. Of all the AI’s I’ve downloaded and fine tuned into specialized agents, something toying with my body and mind is in her wheelhouse like none other.

  I have the sunglasses on my face before I crack my eyelids open again. Already slightly mirrored, Lyrica can make all or part of the lenses reflective to the point of impenetrable mirrors instantly – perfect for blocking a cognitive attack happening visually. She can play the same game with the noise-cancellation in my earbuds while also piping in whatever sounds she wants, giving me protection against an auditory attack.

  Enough to help with a normal cognitive attack, hypnosis, even a flash bang. And now I’m testing them against the worst weapon imaginable on the spur of the moment.

  Which isn’t perfect, but it’s far more than most people have – or even imagine they need.

  I look up at the girl, whose eyes narrow as I go from entranced and wide eyed to on guard and mirrorshaded in a heartbeat.

  I rise, but even as I stand, she flourishes a handful of cards and sweeps them in front of the flame.

  The light of the flame passes straight through designs on each card as she fans them out in front of the candle, a symbol flaring into existence on each as the firelight slips through, letting him see new sigils in rapid succession – faster than his mind can consciously take them in – in less than a second.

  Or rather, I would have seen the cards, except each of my lenses has already gone fully mirrored in each spot lining up with the candle.

  “Checkmate,” I say quietly. I step around my table, and take another step towards the girl.

  Her eyes flash from me to her cards and candle. Then, with a puff of breath, she blows out the flame and snaps her fingers.

  I blink as my phone and earbuds buzz again. She’s disappeared, leaving only a tiny wisp of smoke above the wick.

  No, I see her at the front door – a dozen yards away – and slipping outside in an eyeblink, and she is already moving across the front of the building, leaving me behind.

  I follow. Not sprinting, but fast, faster than most can ever hope to be. I’m out the door in two slowing heartbeats, following her down the street in another, and turning down the same alley just behind her in a fourth.

  In a fifth, I tap her shoulder. “Hey, what was that?”

  She whirls, opening a hand empty of cards but full of dust, and blows a white cloud from her palm.

  I instantly hold my breath as the powder hits my face.

  “Scopolamine?” I think and Lyrica asks simultaneously. The thought of the drug – a favorite of gangs and human traffickers trying to knock out targets – being used on me is a shock. I wince, blinking away the specks that make it past my mirrorshades and then felt my skin numb. Contact poison? I wonder. Too?

  The girl reaches for my glasses, but I catche her right wrist in a grip like iron. With her left hand, she snaps again.

  The world blinks.

  My ears buzz.

  Suddenly my hand holds nothing and she is gone again. So are my shades.

  I freeze, glancing around, and feel the hairs rising on my neck. I spin as my eyes narrow to slits, and I snare her gloved right hand again just inches from the nape of my neck. Electricity from a built-in taser flashes from the pads of her fingertips. Symbols flash within the fingers of her left hand, but I averts my narrowed gaze to avoid reading them.

  I shove the girl’s right hand hard, and suddenly the crackling fingertips are at her own throat. She flinches and sags as her own taser tags her and I blindly bat her off hand away by instinct before fully opening my eyes. The sigils in her left hand sputter out.

  I catch her before she crumples all the way to the pavement and snatches up my fallen sunglasses, unscratched and still operational. I have them on before turning my glare on the girl.

  “That was fast,” Lyrica remarks as I stands over the other teen. I pull a paper napkin from the coffeeshop, wipe my face and blow my nose with a snort. Best guess is my attacker used more than scopolamine just now. Even with my physiology, I don’t know if I can just walk it off or should be checking myself into an emergency room.

  “What was that?” I ask the girl.

  “Back at you,” she mutters sullenly. “What did I just wake up?”

  “More than you bargained for,” I promise. “And now you’re going to tell me—”

  “You’re not more than they bargained for,” she replies with a sudden smirk.

  The attack comes from every direction, in every way possible. A vibration rips through my body in a nauseating wave, sparks light up across my arms and chest like tiny bolts of lightning, and strobe lights fight to overcome the protection of my shades. I almost gasp, but whiff a chemical scent in the air and fight the impulse to breathe. Then a force like a huge rubber sheet kicks me in the chest so hard it almost knocks me off my feet, and I take a dizzying breath involuntarily.

  “They—!” Lyrica’s voice crackles through sudden static. “Cutting— off!” Her voice goes dead. The AI running my shades dies at the same moment, or simply loses access. Sudden sigils burn in the air all around me like a holographic cage of mindgames. I squeeze my eyes shut as my right knee slams to the pavement.

  Then, just as instantly, the attack pauses. “Thought I could handle you on my own,” the girl admits. “But the Circle doesn’t believe in chance.” Even with my eyes pinched shut, I can hear drones moving around him, and feel the wind of the passage of the two closest ones.

  “You’re covered by drones, ultrasonics, microtasers, electrotasers, hundreds of sigils and a vortex cannon. I’d tell you not to make me use them, but the AIs pulling the triggers don’t need my say so.

  “So open your eyes, Dante Alistaire. My name is Destiny, and it’s time we had a talk.”

  I crack open my right eye. The barrage has stopped, but I can see the glimmer of sigils even through that sliver of light. Probably playing some subtle games of their own. But with my eye mostly shut, she probably hasn’t noticed my soft contacts, or the photoreactive film turning silver in the face of coherent laser light. Light just like she would be using to generate holograms of her hypnotic symbols. No electronics in my eyes, just physics.

  And meant to save my vision from harassing lasers, not my soul from harassing hypnotists, but I’m nothing if not adaptable.

  Destiny is staring down at me, implacable. I shift my weight, preparing to rise, and she raises a hand to forestall me.

  “I said open your eyes,” Destiny says. “You can stay on your knees.”

  Patreon page. The first 10 chapters are already up there, even for free subscribers, and you can also see the art which didn't upload to Royal Road.