Prism Academy 5- Chapter 8 (Patreon)

Chapter 8- Who's the Enemy

While I had been busy experimenting with way to get rid of the Essence, Feinston had already showed up.  A part of me felt bad for making him wait, but I felt like getting ANOP back was worth it. My bonds each greeted the AI warmly. It was odd to have missed an AI which spoke to you from the inside of your head, but in the grand scheme of changes to my life in the past few months, that was really one of the smaller ones.

I was a bit surprised that restoring her didn’t increase our integration level but it did seem to boost her ability to communicate with each of my other bonds. Even Priska, who hadn’t been fully integrated before, was now able to talk to ANOP. Her reaction was cute, because while the rest of us had gotten used to it, neither of my orange bonds had had a chance yet.

Thinking about that made me remember that Kenna was in a regeneration tank and that of course made me think of Molly and the suffering she was experiencing. I reached out to her mind and at least for the moment she was calmer, but she was still stuck in the nightmare of her own feelings of failure.

Now that I had the capacity for it, I wanted to leap into her mind and join the fight with her. In fact, I was only a split second from doing just that, when I heard Feinston call out to me. “Aden, we need to talk. I can see that you’re still worried about your two injured bonds, but things are moving too quickly. We need to prepare a response.”

I shook my head. He hadn’t steered me wrong yet. Molly was suffering, for that matter, so was Eve. Now that I was properly connected with ANOP again, I understood how awful it had been for her to feel like she was completely disconnected and adrift in a void because the Essence had kept her from connecting with anything. It might even be worse for Eve as the physical damage she had sustained might have fractured her mind, artificial though it might be.

For an instant, I pondered if that mattered. I could make all sorts of arguments about it on either side. If she was sapient, didn’t she deserve the same level of recognition as other beings? Then again, could something artificial ever have the same status as a living being?

In the end, I realized it didn’t matter to me. I felt a connection with her and even beyond that; I owed her, if not my life, at least the fact that I hadn’t lost any of my other bonds during the battle with Krig. It was then that I realized, that in my mind, both ANOP and Eve were fully part of Team Aden and the family that represented. What part that would be was still being defined, at least with regard to Eve, but I already sensed it would be more than I had originally anticipated.

With a sigh, I turned towards Feinston. At least they had let him come down into the lab. “I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to hear this, but my team comes first. I have injured bonds and I’m not really in any state of mind to talk business until then.”

“Don’t forget, I’m a Refractor too. I have two bonds. I’d burn the world if it would save them, and I’ve had forty-years to get used to what a bond means. I completely sympathize, but you do need to know what’s going on.”

“I got some intel as we were getting ready to come here. There was something on the news about the destruction in Mexico City being my fault, right?”

“That’s part of it. You seem to be taking it in stride. Most of the reporting is still on the how could he have let this happen level, but there are couple of news outlets that are running with more inflammatory stories. It’s a ratings grab, I hope. But they’re accusing you of killing over twenty-million people. Doesn’t that bother you?”

I thought about it for a second. I was calmer about it than I would have expected. Emotion definitely played a part in my decisions, but for some reason, this wasn’t touching me.

“ANOP are you tampering with my emotions?”

“No, Master Aden, and I’ll point out that you were feeling this way while I was still incapacitated. So, there is no reasonable way which I could be responsible. There is another option, though.”

“Going to make me ask?”

“No, I’ll leave that for Eve, Master Aden. By the way, I note that you haven’t instructed me to stop calling you Master Aden.”

I shrugged to that. “I gave up. If it makes you happy, then go with it. I won’t stop you. Now about the other thing? Oh, and don’t think I’m missing your not-so-subtle hints about Eve.”

“I should hope so. If you were missing them, then my analysis of you is completely off and I might have been damaged more by the Essence than I thought. No, the reality is that you may simply be growing up.”

“What do you mean? I’m a grown man. I have been for years.”

“In body, but not emotionally. Sadly, I and my creator, your mother, are to blame for a good margin of that. It is refreshing, Master Aden, to see you realizing that it doesn’t matter what people want from you or say about you. It only matters that you know who you are.”

I smiled at the compliment even if it was a bit backhanded, and then realized that Feinston was waiting for me to say something.

“Sorry about that. I guess, I’m just not worried about it. The truth will come out and I know what I did or didn’t do. I have the best team, if we can’t deal with a bit of trashy reporting, then I don’t think we deserve to be a symbol of hope for the world.”

Jen shook her head. “Oh, I love you Aden and I love when you don’t let anyone push you around, but you may be underestimating how serious this is. I’ve been getting reports from my people while you were working on restoring ANOP.”

Willow looked at Jen as though to ask why she hadn’t mentioned this before, but Jen just smiled and said, “What? Being head of the Soros Clan has some advantages, even if my Aunt is really running the day-to-day matters. But anyway, my sources say that the government, or at least part of it is responsible for feeding that malicious story to those news outlets.”

Feinston sighed. “That’s what I was afraid of.”

“That makes it harder, I admit, but at the end of the day, I’m tired of running and jumping through their hoops. We all know what happened. And frankly, I’m truly the Prism now. We are going to lead from the front and that is going to get messy. You just need to find out who is responsible for this.”

Feinston said, “I can hazard a guess. I assume you remember Representative Bosch?”

I held in a groan and nodded.

“Word is that he is going to be holding a press conference soon. He has invited you to join him to make an announcement about what happened in Mexico City.”

“That isn’t anything new. He’s been trying to cast us in a bad light for a while. I really have no choice but to believe that the shadow had gotten to him. I’d urge you to be cautious and treat him like he’s as dangerous as Catherine Misago was.”

Feinston pushed his hair back with both hands. He was normally so composed. The reference to his former assistant must have hit him hard. Of course, it would be difficult to know that someone you worked with for decades had actively undermined the vision of Prism Academy and had sold out humanity en masse. The fact that she did it with torture and human experimentation only made it worse.

“I’ll keep that in mind and up security at the Academy. The rest of the board is clearly acting against you and Jen and from what I’ve seen so for Bosch has the ear of the President-General so this could get ugly.”

“Jen, can you take point on this and help Feinston dig into this? Once I finish doing what I can do for the rest of the team, I’ll need to know what our options are. Find, Megan, she basically runs the building. Have her set you up with a conference room and all the assistants that you need. Bring in any of your own people from the clan if you need to.”

Then I looked over at Willow. “I know you want to stay down here. Everyone probably does, but I could use your tactical mind with Jen. You know our team’s capabilities better than anyone.”

She nodded in response.

“And Petra, we could use a military mind on this matter, unless you believe there’s a conflict.”

The tall, slender pilot pushed her strawberry blond hair out of her eyes and locked those beautiful orbs with me. “Do you still intend… um… well that is?”

I smiled and took two steps till I was standing next to her. Then I grabbed her hand. “Yes, I still want to appropriate your powers, but not because I have to have them. What I have to have is you. I want you on our team, but I don’t want to ask you to break a prior commitment.”

Her expression went from nervous to the steely confidence I loved about her as I spoke. “My oath was to the people of Earth. As far as I’m concerned any government which would try to blame you for the deaths of people that you fought to protect isn’t serving the best interests of humanity. I’m pretty sure that General West will have the same view.”

I grinned because I knew exactly how to throw her off. “Right, but I don’t want General West in my bed. I just need to know that you don’t have any doubts.”

“About you, never. About us, not at all. And if you keep teasing me like that, then I may have to give Sybil a run for her money in the exhibitionist department.” She leaned in and kissed my cheek. Her warm breath against me made me tingle.

Then she added, “But just to make it official. I’m Team Aden through and through. You…” She waved her hand at the rest of the team, “All of you, are my priority.”

“Good enough for me. So, can you help Jen and Willow work out a plan with Feinston?”

She nodded and then snapped to attention before giving me a salute, “Yes, Sir.”

Jill groaned. “Oh, don’t do that. You’ll give him a big head.”

There was an opening there, but I let the low hanging fruit go. As much as I enjoyed the playful banter, I still had bonds to fix.

“Just for that, Jill, you can go help them, and Priska, I think it would do you some good to stop standing next to Kenna’s regeneration tank. I’ll help her out of it as soon as I can.”

As I said that, I checked my capacity and realized I was up to sixty-four percent. I really was regenerating it faster than normal. I’d need to look into that, just like I’d have to figure out that notification about farming or rather cultivating. I had no idea what that was about, but that was a problem for another day.

Sybil and Hua, I need you to keep Molly stable. I don’t know why, but I feel like I need to try to restore Eve first. Then we’ll work as a team to pull Molly out of whatever has her trapped there. After that, I should be restored enough to be able to heal Kenna. Then we’ll have the band back together.

In the back, I heard Tess, mumble, “Wish I could join the band.” She glanced at Hua with open jealousy on her face.

It cut me a bit, because Tess truly had been a faithful part of our team for a long time. Her development of our tech was invaluable, but Hua’s power was perfect for me, and truthfully, she had earned her place on the team too. She’d fought with us and even managed to follow orders.

Everyone started moving, and I noticed that Gabi went over to join the two psychics as they began working on Molly. A part of me wanted to jump into that battle first, but my pre-cognition was trembling, saying it was dangerous. I didn’t know why, but I would have been a fool to not listen to the warning about danger.

When I thought about helping Eve, I didn’t get that same sense at all. So I guess I needed to handle Eve first. Hopefully, I’d understand more or figure out why I felt like it was dangerous for me to try to free Molly’s mind now. I didn’t even fully understand how Precognition worked, but Sybilla had tried to explain it as though it was perceiving possible futures psychically. I couldn’t help but wonder if that was similar to what Krig had said about gods existing on a longer timeline.