“I’m afraid of the change,” she whispered. “I… I don’t want to live like that. I don’t want to live without a kyi,” she tried to justify her decision.
“I understand and respect your decision,” he said, feeling a lump in his throat at the thought that soon, he’d lose her again.
He hurried to exit the destroyer when he remembered something.
“Before I leave, I have to talk to Ugo.”
Sandara turned back and entered the forest, calling the jure. After a few moments, he appeared in the meadow, and shortly after, she came out, too.
“I couldn’t find—” she began; then her eyes stopped on his silhouette, and she couldn’t restrain a shiver of disgust.
“My dear niece, what a pleasure to see you again,” Ugo said with a grimace, loading his words with all the aversion and ridicule he was capable of.
“Niece?” exclaimed Gill, surprised.
“Eh, old story… Forbat and I once were half brothers of the same mother. We got along fine, until the fool turned against me.”
“Mind your tongue, monster, when you talk about my father,” exclaimed Sandara, throwing flaming rikanes from her eyes.
“Well? How do you like your new life after life? Isn’t it amazing how you just have to die a little bit to change your perspective?” The abomination grinned without a trace of compassion, delighted to have the opportunity to annoy her again. “I hope you’re grateful I made you immortal!”
“You call this immortality?” she exclaimed, disgusted.
“Why—”
“I called you to give Sandara the codes,” Gill interrupted him, tired of listening to his sarcasm.
“What codes?” Ugo said, feigning surprise.
“Uralia’s codes. Forbat said he gave you the codes of the world.”
“Oh yes, the codes… He always wants something,” he muttered to himself. “You’re very hard to please—did you know that?” Ugo forced himself to smile, but his eyes were throwing deadly glances. He looked around as if he could find something to save him from the impasse. He became almost comical in his pathetic attempt to stall. “Uh, you know what? Wouldn’t it be better to—”
“No! Give her the codes, or I will start all over again,” Gill hissed menacingly, his left hand on the bracelet.
“All right, all right, I’ll give her the codes!” the jure exploded, disfigured by rage. “I wonder what she is going to do with them. We all know she’s hopeless at programming!”
Grimacing with disgust, he threw a tablet at Sandara’s feet. Seemingly unaffected by his manners, the female took it from the ground and pushed some buttons on the small display embedded in the fabric of her sleeve. She folded the tablet on her forearm and told Gill, “I got them!”
“Now that we did that, I’ll be delighted if I never see your sorry mugs again,” the jure told them. “I’m done with you, and if you don’t like it, you might as well blow yourself into pieces. Preferably far away from here,” he said, gnashing his teeth. “Whatever you want from me, I don’t want to hear it. And no, you can’t use this ship, which I don’t know how to drive!” He was such a terrible liar. “Take the Grammian ship!”
He turned back, swollen by rage, and vanished into the forest. Shortly after, a small hill grew in the background while the red light of a star dawned over the meadow—a sign that the jure was working hard to restore Uralia. For now, it seemed he was building only one island, but Gill had no doubt that soon, others would follow.
“All right, I’m leaving, then,” Gill said warmly.
“Promise… promise you’ll come back soon!”
“I will. Can you handle Ugo?”
“You bet I can! Good luck.” She smiled encouragingly.
“Listen, if anything happens—”
“Go now! I’ll take care of everything,” she said, forcing herself to smile.
Without wasting more time, he rushed to leave the ship.
“Gill!” she called to him just as he was about to step out.
“Yes?” he said, turning back from the door.
“Thank you.”
“For what?” he asked, surprised.
“For your trust,” she said, and she smiled again.
She was trying to be brave like a true grah, to lift from his shoulders the weight of the thought that he was leaving her alone to handle the monster, although she suspected she wouldn’t be too successful with that. They were both painfully aware that the huge stakes were about to play out there, not on Antyra’s outskirts. With this thought, the news that she had died seemed a mere trifle.
***
After reaching the cave at the base of the Mayan temple, Gill piled the stone blocks over the floor gap to cover the hole. There was plenty of light outside—it was most likely past noon—when he finally emerged from the gallery. Even though he risked being seen, he started to run around the ancient platforms to reach the Grammian ship.
To his complete surprise, as soon as he turned the corner to the main temple, he landed right in front of an alien couple. Due to his speed, he almost knocked them over.
They were tall and thin, with a yellowish mane—strikingly different from the aliens of the overturned chariot, even though their faces had somewhat similar morphological features. probably belonging to a closely related species. At his sight, they froze, more frightened of him than he was of them. The female dropped a black device with a big lens on it. Judging by how she had held it in front of her eyes, it could have been some sort of primitive recording tool. Without waiting for them to come back to their senses, he pulled the space and dashed forward, feeling pinched again that he couldn’t take the aliens to Antyra to study them in greater detail.
He then came to the spot right in the middle of Xochicalco’s main square, which, to his great misfortune, was full of tourists. He stopped for a brief moment to find his way, and that was the precise moment when the mayhem began. As soon as the people noticed him, cries of terror erupted all around him. The creatures jumped like mad off the terraces, running all over the place to get out of his way. Soon, he was alone in the square, which didn’t bother him at all.
***
Ugo wasn’t anywhere to be found. Sandara felt torn between the need to keep an eye on him and the desire to secretly find some way to ruin his plans. She whistled loudly, and her portal sphere materialized on the discoidal grass of the meadow. So far, nothing had changed, although she wasn’t hoping to be that lucky in the long run. After all, the island had been created by Ugo, thus obeying the rules designed by him. Her only consolation—if one could call it that—was that Ugo had no conceivable way to disconnect or destroy her, since she was dead. However, he could do other things to ensure she wouldn’t ruin his plans, and even though he hadn’t had much time to plot some wickedness against her, that could change quickly…
She stormed inside her portal—a large building resembling a grah fortress, full of armor suits aligned along stone columns draped in blue fabric.
“Load the virtual architects!” she ordered aloud.
In an instant, a bunch of translucent floating displays surrounded her, turning the hall into a sort of command room. Most screens only displayed statics, a sign that Uralia wasn’t yet restored to all its previous greatness.
Excited, she removed the plate from her forearm. Of course, every Ropolitan had the right to build things, customize the portal, or invent new patches of land—the parhontes could even create their own little islands, although few had done it—and depending on the fragments of the keys they got, they had access to a more or less consistent jumble of the virtual world’s resources. But until Uralia’s fall, no one had mastered the five complete codes.
She quickly accessed the vertical display floating at her right side. Her fingers ran with dexterity along the screen’s surface.
“What’s the status of the AI families?”