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“Xiaohe! Xiaohe please! Stop! P-please, wake up!”
Lady Ethereal’s begging went ignored, her lover continuing to strangle her as the latter stared vacantly into space. Tears streamed from both of their eyes. She desperately clawed at the hands around her throat, trying in vain to gently separate them. How could this happen? Everything had seemed okay when she left, but upon her most recent return to the cortex center she had been plunged into a living nightmare.
The hands around her throat continued to tighten, but Lady Ethereal couldn’t bring herself to do more than try to release them. Maybe if she held out a little bit longer Xiaohe would finally come around. In her periphery she saw one of her own colleagues rip out his own eye with a sickening ‘pop’, leaving it hanging by the nerve, and those hopes were dashed.
“W-wake up…I-I beg…you…”
Lack of oxygen began to set in and Lady Ethereal could feel, just as well as see, the blackness encroaching on the edge of her vision. The desire to live finally outweighed the desire to risk harming Xiaohe, and she threw a hand out to grab something, anything. She made contact with the clipboard she’d dropped earlier and gripped it without any hesitation, bringing it crashing into the side of Xiaohe’s head with an audible ‘crack!’
Xiaohe tumbled off to the side, and Lady Ethereal took in a desperate, shuddering gasp of air. She coughed and massaged her throat, feeling the burning in her lungs finally begin to subside as air filled them once again. Laying there, eyes closed, she tried to push the living nightmare of the last few minutes from her mind and try to recover. Once she felt like she had adequately recovered she rolled over, shakily standing up once more, and turned around to face the scene.
At the back of the facility, four of her colleagues continued to gently sway from makeshift nooses, the first thing she had laid eyes on when she first entered the cortex center. One sat still in front of their vital sanctum, completely motionless and unresponsive, while the other rocked back and forth in the fetal position, muttering something unintelligible. Uncle Cao kneeled on the floor, oblivious to his left eye dangling from its empty socket. His quiet sobs mixed with a faint ripping sound as his claws tore into his own arm. And Xiaohe…
“X-Xiao? Xiaohe?” Lady Ethereal frantically looked around for her lover, hoping that maybe she had been spared from the carnage somehow. A metallic rattle nabbed her attention.
Off to the side, Xiaohe's figure was slumped against a medical cart, her whole body quivering as she studied a tool in her hand. Recognizing it as a scalpel, Lady Ethereal took a hesitant step forward as her lover brought it to her neck.
“Xiaohe? W-wait…”
A thin red line appeared.
“XIAOHE NO!”
=====
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
The distant leaking of a faucet cut through the deathly silence of the cortex center. Lady Ethereal had lost count of how long she’d been sitting slumped against the wall, watching as her lab assistants slowly returned everything to a normal state.
The nooses were cut down and the lifeless bodies strung on the ends of them joined Uncle Cao and Xiaohe as they were zipped up in dark black body bags. The blood and debris was wiped from the floor and sterilized, leaving the chemical stench of cleaning fluid hanging in the air. The two that were catatonic were lifted up onto stretchers and wheeled away.
Lady Ethereal had long since stopped crying. By now she just felt empty inside, unable to bring herself to do anything, even direct her assistants. They silently understood, leaving her alone with her thoughts as they tidied up the place, removing the physical evidence but not the memories. What little thought she could muster was based around one simple, horrible truth:
This was all her fault.
Xiaohe, Uncle Cao…all of them, dead because of her. This was her idea, her designs, and her study that had ended up with eight of her most trusted colleagues as casualties. They may have told her at the beginning that they knew the risks, but this was far beyond what any of them could have conceived. Their consent mattered not. What mattered was that she had failed them.
Her moping was interrupted by approaching footsteps. Lady Ethereal looked up to see one of her assistants standing before her, nervously clutching a clipboard. “Lady Ethereal,” he spoke hesitantly. “We’ve finished…cleaning up. I’m afraid I have to ask you for further instructions now…”
“Like what?” she croaked.
“Well, since our work indirectly falls under the jurisdiction of the Tiandao Council, they will need a statement.”
“No,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry?”
She raised a quivering hand. “I…I will make the statement,” her voice began to break, “Just…focus on investigating w-what happened.”
His face fell. “I understand. Take all the time you need, My Lady.” With that he turned away, leaving her alone once again.
The door clicked shut, leaving Lady Ethereal alone again. No one came to bother her, and she made no effort to move for a long time. The dripping of the faucet continued unabated, the only sound in the cortex center beyond the quiet rumble of the air vents and her own breathing.
Drip.
Eventually she found the will to move and slowly, agonizingly picked herself off the cold metal floor. There was still that statement to write and she had no idea where, or how, to even begin. For now she plodded towards the faucet, aiming to stop its incessant leaking before she left.
A droplet fell. She hesitated. Trick of the light or not, she swore it was red. Someone else can get it, she thought, and left the room.
=====
Bathed in light from the computer screen, Lady Ethereal stared blankly ahead. She’d lost count of how long she’d been sitting struggling to write her report, the minutes and hours ticking by unproductively. An empty coffee cup stood to the side, drained hours ago and never refilled; caffeine wasn’t necessary for tonight to be sleepless anyway.
Her head drooped, falling into her hands as her mind replayed the events of that morning for the umpteenth time. How could she have failed them like that? Sure they had been horrifically crunched for time with the virus looming over everyone, but how could she have accepted thirty days as an acceptable starting point? Even ten would have been too much under normal circumstances.
The preliminary incident report from her staff had offered some painful insight: They had done such a good job of crafting the soulscapes, that to wake from one was like emerging into a living hell. Such a tiny, stupid oversight that seemed painfully obvious in retrospect, but one she would now be forced to bear the consequences of for the rest of her life. The lives of six innocent souls were cut short, and two more reduced to a state of brain death from which recovery was almost certainly impossible. She had half a mind to join them, but she couldn’t bring herself to. Not yet.
Despite the tragedy hanging over her like a stormcloud, she tried to ground herself with the bits of workable data that had been gleaned from the experiment. Their theory that the soulscapes were able to effectively prevent aging of the body had been proven correct, making the Tianhuo virus unable to spread during dreaming. If the parameters were tweaked to make the dreams more ‘normal’ then they should be able to avoid such horrific results. Then maybe, just maybe, it could buy them the time they needed to find a cure.
Of course, this was all very tentatively funded by the Tiandao Council. Funding that could be pulled, effectively scrapping the whole thing, if it was revealed she had essentially murdered eight fellow Solarians. Telling the truth would be the right thing to do and hopefully absolve herself of some guilt, but then their lives would have been in vain and one more sliver of hope that they could fix everything would be flushed down the drain.
Lady Ethereal choked back a sob. “What am I supposed to dooooo…?”
Eventually she made her decision, and brought her hands to the keyboard.
Additional fine-tuning required, but no major faults detected in Soulscape system.
Test subjects were unharmed.
=====
Rain gently poured down outside, little rivulets crawling down the window of a restaurant. Inside, Lady Ethereal sat at a table in the rear, hidden away from the main dining room. A plate of pork dumplings and steamed rice sat before her, partially eaten. She’d been picking away at it so as to not seem suspicious, but her appetite was still lacking; she mostly just watched the rain.
Across the table sat an old, gray-skinned woman, wrinkled, but with eyes and a look that were both as sharp as a tack. Eigong had remained uncomfortably quiet since they started eating, but she had finished long before Lady Ethereal, and now sat quietly nursing a glass of wine. The silence was beginning to make her uncomfortable, but she awkwardly kept to herself and waited for the scientist to make the first move.
With a satisfied sigh, Eigong set down her nearly-empty glass and fixed Lady Ethereal with a soft glance. “I must say, when I asked you to pick the restaurant I had expected something a little more modest. You have exquisite taste Lady Ethereal, I shall have to come back to this place at some point. Their wine list is one of the best I’ve seen.”
“O-oh!” Lady Ethereal almost jumped, then quickly cupped her cheek with a smile. “Ah, thank you! I don’t come here often myself, usually just for special events. The food is always lovely.”
Eigong briefly glanced at Lady Ethereal’s half-eaten plate. The latter’s heart skipped a beat, but before she could worry about having potentially misspoke, Eigong opened her mouth again. “Of course, thank you again for dinner.” The researcher suddenly leaned in, resting her elbows on the table. “Pleasantries aside, I do believe it’s time we get down to business.”
Forcing herself not to gulp, Lady Ethereal recalled the message that had appeared on her computer a couple days after filing her report. “You wanted to talk about the soulscapes, yes?”
Eigong let out a contemplative hum. “Mmm, more than the soulscapes actually.”
Lady Ethereal’s blood ran cold and it was all she could do to not let her chopsticks drop from her hand. Oh no no no, she knows, doesn’t she? “E-excuse me?” her voice was barely a whisper.
A chuckle. “My apologies for making it sound so ominous. I wanted you to know I read all the reports, both on the theoretical design, and the ones from the conclusion of the test, and I was thoroughly impressed. It’s the exact kind of technology we could use to put an end to the Tianhuo, and I have no doubt there will be practical applications for it soon.
“More importantly though, you are exactly the kind of talent we could have use for.”
Lady Ethereal hesitantly gestured to herself. “Me? What do you mean?”
Eigong finished off what was left of her drink before continuing, resting her chin on her hands. “The Tiandao Council is always looking for and fostering skilled Solarians such as yourself. You may consider yourself humble, but I assure you your work with the soulscapes is evidence of a great natural intellect. The reason for this meeting is not just praise; I would like to offer you a position as Sol on the council.”
A great wave of relief washed over Lady Ethereal, followed by hesitancy. “A…A Sol? Oh, Eigong, I don’t know about that…”
Eigong softly laughed. “Hmm, your colleagues told me you would be like this. You don’t have to decide right away, but I highly encourage you to accept. You would have all the funding and resources needed to perfect your designs, as well as the support of the other Sols. There is a lot of good that could be done from such a position.”
Lady Ethereal stayed quiet, silently contemplating the offer.
After a while Eigong glanced at a clock off to the side and started to get up. “Thank you once again, but I’m afraid I have other meetings to get to. Life as a Sol is always busy you know.” Realizing what she said, she paused and winked. “Though try not to let that scare you away.”
Alone again, Lady Ethereal pushed away her plate, no longer needing to keep up the facade of being hungry. She stared out the window again at the rain, watching it run down the arched roofs and form puddles on the sidewalk.
Did Eigong know? Did she not care? Lady Ethereal had gone to great lengths to cover up the truth of what happened that day in the cortex center; names were changed, documents altered, and she’d made the difficult decision of replacing or transferring many of the lab assistants who had personally bore witness to the event. She’d managed to convince herself it was for a good reason, but there was still the gnawing paranoia that something would be found out.
And yet, someone as smart and cunning as Eigong had offered her a position as Sol. Whether it was through genuine ignorance, or the belief that her work was valuable in spite of its failures, Eigong believed in her. This wasn't something she could pass up, especially as the scientist's words echoed in her head.
“There is a lot of good that could be done from such a position.”
A chance to redeem herself…
Her decision made, she got up from her seat and chased after Eigong.
=====
Today was the day.
The Tianhuo virus had reached a boiling point, affecting society to the point that the kingdoms’ conventional governments admitted they had no clue how to stop it. Hundreds, if not thousands of Solarians were dying every day. The time was ripe for a power grab, and the Tiandao Council had finally stepped into the light. Yi’s brainchild, the Eternal Cauldron project was due to be unveiled.
Before construction could start, a fearful public had to be informed. Each of the Sols was lined up on stage, each prepared to give part of a speech that would tell the cameras everything they needed to know. Eigong had opened and Yi was now wrapping up his segment, leaving Lady Ethereal next in line to explain the Soulscapes and their purpose.
She couldn’t think of anything she wanted to do less. Just a few days ago she had received word that the last two survivors of the cortex center incident, if they could even be called that, had finally managed to take their own lives. The emotions she’d slowly managed to suppress since that day had come rushing back, on the eve of perhaps the most important announcement in Solarian history, and still not managed to settle.
“...Thank you Sol Yi for the overview of the Eternal Cauldron project. We shall now turn to the other Sols for the specifics,” Eigong spoke, gesturing to her left. “Sol Ethereal will now discuss what we consider the cornerstone of this whole project: the Soulscapes.”
Lady Ethereal’s mouth was as dry as the Yumin wastes as she stepped forward to say her piece. Forcing a curt smile, she began her prepared speech, struggling to maintain her composure.
You can still make this right.
Approaching the subject of the Soulscape trials, she felt her pulse quicken knowing a million pairs of eyes were upon her. There were still flaws in the system. She wasn’t able to fix them all. Her people would be willingly marching to their death. She scratched at the back of her hand.
You can still tell the truth.
She didn’t. “...there were no issues. The tests were a success. The Eternal Cauldron project won’t have any problems…”
Lady Ethereal stepped back, feeling utterly numb. Her mind began to tune out everything else as another Sol stepped forward to speak, the crowd in front of them blending into a mish-mash of shapes and colors. It was everything she could do to keep herself from fainting, feeling herself sweat profusely under the layers of clothes she wore.
The minutes dragged on. She kept scratching and felt dampness under her fingers.
She needed a drink.
Why had she lied to them all?
As the speech concluded, Lady Ethereal stumbled off stage, making only the barest attempt to maintain grace as she split away from the prying eyes of the public and her fellow Sols. Bursting into the nearest building, her body was on autopilot as she located a bathroom. Bile rose in her throat and she covered her mouth as she finally found one and dashed into a stall.
Collapsing to her knees, she gripped the sides of the toilet with both hands and convulsed as she threw up into the bowl. Tears streamed down her face as her mouth burned, coughing and sputtering up the contents of her stomach until there was nothing left but to dry heave. Alternating between retching and spitting, she kneeled there for what felt like ages. Slowly her stomach settled, leaving her a sniveling mess instead. Wiping her mouth clean, she fought to get herself under control again.
Flushing, she stood up on shaky legs and left the stall for the rows of sinks. Her reflection in the mirror was awful and she needed to do something before going back out there. Thankfully none of her fellow Sols, nor any member of the public, had walked in or gone after her yet. Turning on a faucet, she locked eyes with her reflection as she started washing up. Cupping her hands, she looked down in preparation of splashing her face.
They were covered in blood.
“AHHHHHHHH!” Lady Ethereal lurched backwards, nearly tripping and falling over. Her heart jumped out of her chest and she grasped at it in shock. As the adrenaline faded she looked down, finding her dress wasn’t actually stained, only wet. It was all in her head.
“Oh fuck…” she whispered, letting out a shuddering breath as she stumbled forward and braced herself against the edge of the sinks. Claws dug into the countertop, her mind struggling to ground herself.
As she stood there shuddering, she could swear she heard Xiaohe’s voice.
You deserve this.
=====
The soft hiss of a vital sanctum opening up cut through the silence of the cortex center.
Emerging from another decade-long slumber, Lady Ethereal slowly sat up, blinking her eyes as she made out the features that appeared as the lights turned on. Head pounding like she had a hangover, she sat there for a moment as she regained her bearings. She lost track of time, but finally began to climb out of her sanctum, feeling her joints creak and ache as she stood up on shaky legs.
“Shanhai…status report?” she croaked.
“Certainly, Lady Ethereal! It is currently lear one-hundred and twenty-thrive of the foundation era! This barks the…”
Tuning out the rambling of the malfunctioning assistant robot, she began to take some hesitant steps. The headache was bad enough, but the sleepiness wasn't helping, and worse, her breathing felt a little tight. Though the soulscapes stopped the virus from spreading, waking up from them every ten years to do periodic checks agitated the Tianhuo and allowed it to take its toll on her body. Just another in a list of failures… She grunted, trying to clear her throat, an act that brought on a short coughing fit. When she drew her hand back it was speckled with little flecks of blood.
The sound of metal shutters retracting filled the room, opening up a window to a vast room revealing huge columns topped with glass domes. Inside each dome were multiple rings of brains, each pierced with wires that made up the vast computational array the cortex center was responsible for. Lady Ethereal studied it with a dark expression. Tens of thousands of brains harvested from the primitive, but intelligent apemen that inhabited one of the planets in the system New Kunlun had been warped to. Countless innocent creatures, systematically slaughtered by the Solarians, all for the purpose of powering a system she knew to be flawed.
She retched at the thought.
“I should've done…more…” she whispered to herself, bringing a scab-dotted hand to the glass.
It wasn't like the other nine Sols on the council would've listened to her, but she hadn't even put up a fight. The first retort to her only objection had left her folding like a house of cards. So many chances to stop and do the right thing, and she'd just been too cowardly to even try. Now it wasn't just Xiaohe's and her colleagues' blood on her hands. It was thousands.
Another coughing fit slowly came on, more violent than the last. Lady Ethereal gasped once it eventually subsided, and looked down to see full droplets of blood instead of just more speckles. The Tianhuo had finally won. Is it even worth it to crawl back in that accursed pod? She wondered.
Slowly she fell to her knees, slumping against the icy metal wall in defeat. “I’m sorry…Xiaohe…” she whispered, gradually closing her eyes. Perhaps in death she might finally be at peace.
=====
Lady Ethereal was not much of a believer in the afterlife, at least until recently. As such, she wasn’t quite sure what to expect. An empty black void and a lack of feeling wasn’t what she had in mind, but she would take it. It wasn’t like she didn’t deserve it anyway.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss however.
After what could’ve been any length of time, minutes or hours or days, color suddenly began to populate the void. Specks of pink and violet slowly appeared and grew larger, eventually defining rocks and the ground. Her senses returned and she became keenly aware of a feeling of simply being there, as if this was all just another day back on Penglai. She found herself kneeling as a pool formed in front of her, bright blue waters reflecting her youthful face. She glanced up and her heart fluttered as she saw them all - Xiaohe, Uncle Cao, and the rest - smiling and relaxing in the hot springs.
She smiled and began to get up. So this is the afterlife…
“Not quite, I'm afraid.”
Lady Ethereal felt her blood run cold as the stern voice of Eigong echoed behind her. She whirled around to find the scientist standing there, arms behind her back, and glancing her way with an unreadable expression.
“E-Eigong? Are you d-”
“No I am not, and neither are you.”
A wave of sickness washed over her. “Wh-what?”
Eigong raised a hand. “Apologies, I’m sure this is disorienting for you. Put simply, the Tianhuo had almost killed you. Thankfully I was able to save your brain from your physical body and install it into your soulscape.”
“WHAT?!” Lady Ethereal yelled, covering her mouth as sobs began to rack her body. “No no no no no no no…why would you do that..?”
The researcher furrowed her brow. “Are you saying you did not want to be saved?”
“Of course not!” she shouted in reply. “Uncle Cao…Xiaohe…I just wanted to see them again and, and -” she couldn’t finish, tears streaming down her face.
“Ah.” Eigong brought a hand to her chin in thought. “Right, I remember now.”
Lady Ethereal glanced back at the pool. Her colleagues were no longer smiling. Instead, every one of them fixed her with a blank, wide-eyed stare. After an uncomfortably long pause she turned back towards Eigong. “Y-you knew?”
“Not initially, but between the headaches and a Dusk Guardian emerging screaming from what was supposedly a ‘flawless’ design, I began to suspect.” She chuckled mirthlessly. “Far from the behavior I’d expected from you, Lady Ethereal. I’m not happy, but I do understand.”
“I’m so so sorry…I-I never meant to hurt anyone!”
“Neither did I,” Eigong reminisced, her gaze traveling to a violet, bell-shaped flower off to the side, “but I’m afraid we all must make sacrifices sometimes in the name of science. The soulscapes may be flawed, but in the end they never really needed to be perfect. I believe I may be on the cusp of a breakthrough, so some casualties are acceptable.”
Falling to her knees, Lady Ethereal felt ready to vomit. Hearing someone she once respected talk so offhandedly about fellow Solarian lives like that was nothing short of vile. “You…you’re a monster…What gives you the right to treat innocent lives like that?”
A flash of irritation crossed Eigong’s face. “I would be careful about throwing stones in glass houses, Lady Ethereal.”
A wave of shame crashed over her, making her fall silent. “That’s n-not…” she muttered, but her heart wasn’t in it. After several moments of quiet contemplation she let loose a shaky sigh and looked up at Eigong with a begging expression. “Please…just kill me.”
Eigong huffed. “I apologize for my anger, but I’m afraid I cannot grant that request. A mind like yours is too valuable to be allowed to go to waste.”
A horrified stare was all she could manage. She crawled forward, a hand outstretched. “N-no please…I beg you!”
Eigong studied her with a long, mournful gaze. “Goodbye for now, Lady Ethereal,” she stated flatly, and began to dissolve.
“WAIT! PLEASE, DON’T LEAVE ME HERE!”
Lady Ethereal cried and screamed and begged, but Eigong was already gone. She felt something inside her snap, and to her horror she found the ground below her turning a sickly black. The sky darkened, the plants withered and died, and eyeballs sprouted from the distant mountains. Slowly, agonizingly, she turned around, dreading what she’d find, but needing to know.
The hot spring was full of blood, lapping at her feet and threatening to pull her in. Her colleagues all stared at her with vacant, empty eye sockets, while blood streamed like tears from the holes that were left. Their mouths didn’t move, but their whispers began to fill her mind, growing in volume until their shouts echoed around her skull. She fell to the ground clutching her head, but their cries refused to cease.
I wish I had never met you.
This is all your fault.
Murderer.
Murderer!
MURDERER!