1.14|To The silence beyond the Stars

 

1.14|To The silence beyond the Stars

Monarch gave a toothy smile, observing the silence of the station. The clones floating in the vat, the clacking of Amity’s fingers over her tiny keyboard, it seemed to bring him back to lives long since left behind. He never felt he fit in anywhere, and from the first moment he and Amity saw each other, they were determined to share a life of not fitting in anywhere together. A life of operations and missions, of lies and terror, of cold hearted steel had been warmed over ever since he met her. "But, we really should get going. I actually only came here to hide, but XU operatives will be here soon to decommission me- My past at R.I.N.G. as a cyberterrorist for Synths has kinda caught up, and they’ll probably arrest Amity to bring her back to her parents."

"Daughters of Multi-Trillion credit corporations don't disappear easily." Amity bragged. She ran towards a screen panel and shoved her CODE-MELT jackbox into the cords. She pulled down a series of goggles and started typing on a mini-keyboard. "Gimee just a second to deactivate the self-destruct sequence.. kay, done!"

Protas went over and looked at Amity's box. "Just like that?"

"What do you take me for, some amateur Lamie?" She jibbed out her tongue.

Raelyn recomposed herself and walked forward. "I'm sorry about earlier,

 Amy."

"Amity!"

"Right." She turned to Baron. "Where will we go? Xi is, just gone? Our jobs, our lives. Our entire society."

Baron looked behind them at the pinwheel of turning light, the swirling flash still behind the station. "Amity. Warm up the  Kaleidoscopic Compressor. We'll ride it out." He threw Amity a rubber hazmat helmet and an inflatable CASCADIA suit. "Make sure to strap in, you'll need special equipment to survive the trip.. I'm sure those here wish they had ByteStone Tech industries to make a decent protection chassis like this. It’s made of a cellular graft biofilm rubber that utilizes Llavalite cells to survive the wormhole’s extreme conditions."

"We're going into the Cascade?" Raelyn asked.

Protas stood beside Raelyn, meeting her concerned glance. "We don't have any way back. We may as well walk forward right?"

Raelyn sighed. "I don't know what's in that spinning disc. You can barely tell. The Courtier seemed to want to head there in a hurry. We could be facing a world of hurt. It's not like we could turn around, even if we wanted to, there's nowhere to go. We would just wander in that wormhole forever."

Amity looked at her comm. "Ship signals approaching 18 AU. Approximately 8

minutes until arrival."

Protas shrugged. "I've survived worse than that before, Raelyn."

"How?" Raelyn challenged.

Baron stepped forward. "We will find out. I think the best way to solve these types of problems is to just keep moving forward. Don't go to a new system and hope to find anyone familiar. We don't know what's at the end of it, but I can tell you XU won't give us a free walk if they catchup."

Raelyn pouted. Protas's affectionate gaze was reflected in every one of her

shining bulbs and growths across her paled flesh. They exited the dome as the station rotated out from view. Baron sat in the cockpit, speaking into his communicator. "Hijack the piloting  system. Take us to Cascade Amity."

Protas turned. "W-wait, we're not going to suit up and go get sucked into it?"

He snickered. "You crazy? We cannot leave this facility in XU’s hands. We're

just going to drive the entire citadel into it."

"This entire station? Is that going to work?" Protas panicked.

"Should be sound. Alright." He pushed in a button to his left, causing his chair

to adjust behind to fit. "All right, time to go."

“Let’s do it!” Amity cheered, kissing Monarch’s cheek and hopping onto his

back, throwing her arms over him affectionately.

The Embargo Lux began to expand, like a flaring supernova swallowing the massive craft, like a wave greeting a ship into its dark depths. Amity, Baron, Protas and Raelyn watched the emerging crescendo of colors meet the cockpit at the very center of their vessel, light so bright that everything became a burlesque swish of pastel strobe bands, vivid and evanescent. The brilliant pinwheel inflamed the night for one brief moment, captured the speck in the sky and then collapsed in on itself whole.

"Whatever happens.. I love you." Protas breathed, kissing her love on the lips.

"Same, and I always will." Raelyn replied as they traveled through the corridors of reality, swimming across its ethereal nexus into a world unlike their own.

The citadel crash landed and exploded on solid ground.

Protas and Raelyn were killed immediately.