“What’s happening?” he shouted to his escort in the virtual holophone. Peto had a group of friends who entered the contest to “support” him by chasing the creatures in his path so that he could kill them easily. It was a common practice in the “buffing” contests, especially for the top players, and the hunt surveyors momentarily closed their nostrils to such transgressions.
“Emergency call from Uralia’s council!” he heard the metallic voice of the parhontes’ messenger say directly in his head. “We agreed to an armistice with the temples and will shut down Uralia! Disconnect immediately! The ones who don’t do it will have the immortality chip activated in five minutes!”
Confused thoughts hampered his kyi from accepting the reality of what he had heard. Five minutes—he had five more minutes—it was the only thing reverberating in the depths of his skull. Like a licant captive in a tekal seed, hanging on the last crumble of life, he ignored the meaning of the news and accelerated to full throttle to kill the malassa that had defied him for too long.
“Peto, pull off your interface!” he heard the worried voice of Donnada say.
“I can’t,” he cried desperately. “I’ve killed seven! I can’t give up right now!”
“Don’t be a fool! Disconnect, or I’ll burn your tail! You want to die in this desert?”
Dragged back to reality by Donnada’s threats, he pulled the interface off. In the next instant, he woke up on the floor next to the common nest, writhing in pain from the violence of his exit. Everywhere around, Antyrans were crouching on the ground, holding their spikes in their hands.
His overheated kyi needed some time to realize that he wasn’t the greatest malassa hunter in the vast Hidardo desert. The two scoreboard holograms on the cave’s hallway were trembling, filled with parasites, as if they too were hit by the waves of the altered reality that ruined his game. After a few seconds, all the holophones in the city disconnected with a loud bang.
He stepped out of the hallway wobbling on his feet, only to find that the same problems were everywhere. In all the corners of the city, the bixanids were exiting the galleries, violently awakened to reality.
Some addicts who had passed the stage where they could wake up safely also tried to return to reality, their bodies riddled by violent spasms. Even with all the efforts of the Antyrans around them, they ended up scanned by the immortality chips, dying quickly.
Of course, the oldest kaura didn’t even bother to disconnect. Their shells were resting, deeply asleep, in their nests, machines pumping life in them, awaiting the activation of the death chips. The scene didn’t resemble the gentle passing away of the senescent shells when their time had come, for death was now imposed by the order of the parhontes. Despite the silence of the abandoned bodies, it became a mass execution where the victims had no way of shouting their desire to live—even though they lived far beyond what Zhan meant them to live.
In Uralia, kaura clumped together on the islands of the seas—especially Dolema, a wild jungle paradise watered by beautiful rivers sprinkled with foamy waterfalls. Group after group, they stepped on the hot sand of the shores, looking, astonished, at the fire dome on Landolin, from where the terrible decision to erase their little universe had come from.
***
“Gill, I hope you won’t hold a grudge against us,” said Forbat, avoiding his eyes.
“Hold a grudge?”
“The temples want you.”
So it came to this. There could only be one explanation: Baila knew! Somehow, he found out that Gill ran to Ropolis, along with the much-too-lusted-after Sigian bracelet, and hid at the bosom of the architects’ heresy. After the failed assault, the prophet called the parhontes, and they were looking for him… What a relief it must have been when Ugo admitted he was holding Gillabrian hostage!
“Gill, you’re the condition for the armistice. If we hand you over, the temples will allow the evacuation of the city’s populace. I have to say we already accepted.”
“And you don’t want to know why are they chasing me?”
“Ugo already told us. You have an alien bracelet they want.”
“How did Ugo find out about the bracelet?” he exclaimed, astonished.
“He could see some things in your memory.”
The abomination! The contact with his kyi only lasted a little, but that was enough for the jure to smell his most hidden secret! No wonder Ugo wanted so badly to possess him again, to finish the theft.
He was again defeated by the jure… He couldn’t allow that to happen without using his last weapon, even though he had to betray Sandara.
“You can’t turn me over!” Trying to overcome his kyi’s revolt, he pointed at the hideous whirls of the cyclone underneath. “I know everything about Kaura. I know how your dead end up there!”
Forbat looked at him, surprised by his words.
“I’d like to know how you learned such things…”
“And I like to keep that a secret,” Gill replied, decided not to say Sandara’s name.
“Anyway, it doesn’t matter now,” the old Antyran concluded, his eyes telling him he had guessed the truth—after all, he knew all too well the seed out of which his daughter was born.
“What do you mean ‘it doesn’t matter’? If Baila tortures me and discovers the magnitude of your heresy, he’ll stop the evacuation. Do you think you can move the whole population to Antyra I before he finds out about the living dead?” he asked, convinced that Forbat wouldn’t miss the subtle threat in his voice.
“He won’t find anything,” Forbat replied coldly between his teeth.
“What—”
“Now silence. There’s no use to fight; you will only increase your suffering.”
Sensing the imminent danger behind Forbat’s words, he jumped to pull off his interface, but both his arms fell inert beside his body. At the same time, the shock wave of the icy invasion hit him like a wall. The impact threw him into the fluff, unable to move.
“What are you doing?” he screamed.
“Sorry, Gill, but we can’t let you disconnect. We… we gave Ugo the access codes, so now he controls your interface. By the council’s vote, he controls what’s left of Uralia,” he sighed.
“Have you lost your kyi? Stop the expansion!” he cried, throwing Forbat an accusing gaze while trying in vain to get up from the fluff.
“There will be no expansion. Stay quiet!” he ordered him again. “Let Ugo inside your kyi!”
“You don’t understand! Ugo didn’t see all,” he mumbled on his last drops of energy. “There’s a bigger stake than Uralia!”
“Nothing’s more important than Uralia,” replied another councilor. “Forbat, we’re out of time. Whoever wanted to disconnect had enough time by now.”
Without a word, the few younger councilors pulled off their cups while the older ones walked toward the base of the holotheater.
“Ugo removed the floor?” asked one of them. Then, without waiting for an answer, he stepped into the void.
“Good-bye, Balis,” said Forbat.
Recognizing the voice, Gill raised his eyes with difficulty over the edge of the nest, just in time to surprise the silhouette of Urdun falling into the realm of the dead. The Antyran was Ugo’s ally in the council! One by one, the other councilors jumped after him.
“Sandara! Sandara, help me!” he tried to shout, but only a hoarse rattle came out of his mouth. The claws of the abomination stuck deep inside his throat to kill his voice.
Boiling in rage, he struggled to reach the interface, in a futile attempt to defeat Ugo’s control. Perhaps he could roll over the edge and fall in the world of shadows… Since he had no chip, he hoped he would only get disconnected, like what had happened during his last escape. Unfortunately, this time Ugo’s grip was too strong to overcome.
He heard the sounds of a melee, and the dome’s door slammed violently into the wall. Sandara appeared in the doorstep, followed by two of the four artificial intelligences in the yellow tunics of the Games Registry. The other two were busy fighting the guards of the parhontes.