The Aperios (Children of the Sun Book 4)

“I can’t believe he’s just okay with it,” Mel said, still sounding really outraged. He’d been complaining to Rayni about what had happened the moment they’d all gotten back to the Umbra base, and Rayni still had no idea what to think.

Mel was right to feel hurt by Kaleth’s...pragmaticism, and Kaleth was right to think of what had happened as an unfortunate thing they couldn’t have planned for but ultimately for the greater good.

Rayni hated using that argument, but it was true. And there was zero guarantee that the Eternals who had been held in the facility had been good people, either, and releasing them could create even more chaos, so the only option they could have had was to either leave them in their jars in the facility and not destroy it, or somehow take the crates with them and stash them in the Umbra base.

So in sum, this situation was really sucky on all levels.

At least the facility Rayni had helped destroy hadn’t had any crates in it, but that just implied that those Eternals had been brought elsewhere to brainwash, and that was bad too.

“He didn’t look all that okay with it, Mel,” Rayni replied. She had wanted to let him just rant it all out, but Mel apparently wanted some input from her. She wouldn’t mind if she had any idea where she stood in this argument.

“It doesn’t seem to bother him enough, that’s what I mean,” Mel said, hugging himself. Gods, he looked heartbroken. Though of all the things that had happened so far, Rayni couldn’t say she was surprised that the thing bothering Mel the most would be Kaleth’s lack of sympathy.

“He’s probably just pretending it doesn’t.” For all of Kaleth’s pretending to be this emotionless, all-business guy, Kaleth was really sensitive, so Rayni had no doubts that he was in fact more than bothered by what had happened.

Mel just grimaced and stared at the ground, prompting Rayni to sigh. They were standing outside one of the holding rooms this base had, where the soldier Kaleth and company had brought with them.

Mereria had kept insisting that Rayni would be the best candidate to try to break his brainwashing via telepathy, and Rayni was willing to try, but she still had no idea why her. Out of everyone, she seemed to be the worst at it. At least being around Eternals meant not having to listen to their thoughts without meaning to, but Kara, Nef, and Orina were still here, and that by itself was getting more and more distracting by the day.

Rayni tended to avoid them now, but at least they didn’t seem to have a problem with it since they knew what was up. Rayni couldn’t imagine being around a lot of people right now. Mereria had been trying to teach her how to handle it better, but it was a very slow process.

So again, why the hell was she of all the people here qualified for this?

“Are you ready, Rayni?”

Rayni almost flinched when she heard Mereria’s voice. The Eternal was making her way towards them, looking just as serious as ever, though now she also looked worried. Rayni was super thankful for that vote of confidence.

“Not a bit, but let’s do this. Whatever we’re doing,” she replied. She gave Mel a look to show that their conversation wasn’t finished if he didn’t want it to be and opened the door to the holding cell before Mereria could explain the plan again. Rayni had tried to listen, but every time Mereria started explaining telepathy on a technical level, it was like Rayni’s brain automatically tuned it out.

Mereria followed behind her, letting out a loud sigh and closed the door behind them. The guy they’d captured, now handcuffed to the table, was glaring at them, especially at Mereria, but he wasn’t saying anything. Rayni appreciated that.

Rayni turned over the chair opposite the table and sat down, shrugging at the guy who just glared harder.

“Just connect with his mind and break down whatever barriers he has there,” Mereria said, as if it were that freaking easy. Rayni sighed and closed her eyes, trying to focus on only him. She could feel him very easily, and hear him complain about them having no right to do this, but Rayni ignored that part.

She’d been trying to hold back her telepathy, but now she needed to let it loose. But at the same time, she needed to keep it focused enough to not mentally attack everyone in the area, and the more she thought about all of this the less she wanted to do it, so she’d better stop thinking.

Aiming at the soldier’s consciousness, Rayni tried to get closer, meeting a mental barrier right away. This all felt incredibly weird, yet at the same time, she felt like she knew what she was doing, if only through intuition.

Pushing against the barrier, it fell down almost immediately, probably due to the guy being mostly powerless because of the handcuffs at the moment. Rayni could see images flash through his mind—memories and thoughts—but there was a shockingly small amount of them from what Rayni could tell. But that made sense if all of these Eternals had been turned just a couple weeks ago.

Rayni pushed further. Mereria had mentioned that since these people didn’t remember their old lives, there should be barriers around their memories, so she needed to look for something like this.

And just as she thought that, she found a wall. This part of the guy’s mind was completely dark and empty, yet it was surrounded by invisible barriers that didn’t let her get further. This must have been it, and Rayni was willing to bet that the apparent darkness and emptiness was just an illusion.

Rayni used all the mental strength she had to metaphorically smash her fist against the barrier. At first she thought it had done nothing, but then she noticed a crack starting to appear in the nothingness.

She ignored how distressed this was making the soldier and striked again and again, sending the cracks further until finally the wall shattered, a flood of memories overcoming Rayni before she had the chance to get out.

It was so loud and overwhelming Rayni couldn’t make sense of any of it as she forcefully ripped his consciousness and hers apart, opening her eyes with a gasp.

She breathed out, closing her eyes again. She actually felt tired from doing this, but she couldn’t rest just yet. She needed to know if it had worked.

All it took to confirm this, though, was one look at the guy. His eyes were glassy and full of despair as he stared down at the table. It was actually hard to watch. He looked like his whole world had fallen apart, which Rayni supposed was true enough.

“I...I remember,” he whispered, looking up at Rayni. There was no malice in his gaze, though she still felt like he was cursing her for doing this to him. Then he proceeded to curl in on himself and cover up his face, making the chains of his handcuffs rattle.

Mereria tapped Rayni shoulder, making her look up. She followed her out of the room when Mereria jerked her head towards the door. Once the door clicked shut, Mereria hugged her, which was shocking but pretty pleasant.

“Well done, Rayni.”

Well, that was about as much affection as Mereria was capable of, so Rayni had no choice but to smile. Though it faded very fast when she turned around to look at the guy they’d left behind through the little window in the door.

“He’ll be fine. And hopefully tell us something useful.” Mereria said, sighing.

It wasn’t really fair to want much from the guy. But Mereria’s approach made sense. They didn’t have time to wait around. Still, Rayni should definitely get the poor guy a drink. Thankfully, alcohol was one of the things Kara had brought back from a shopping trip.

Rayni looked around as she went to retrieve a bottle of whiskey, trying to figure out where Mel had disappeared off to, but she couldn’t spot him anywhere. Hopefully, he and Kaleth were talking stuff out, then.

Mereria was still waiting by the door when Rayni walked back, and was clearly planning on following her inside, but Rayni stopped her. The poor guy needed breathing space, and Mereria’s intimidating staring was about the last thing that would help.

The guy looked up when Rayni walked in and closed the door, his eyes immediately drifting to the bottle in her hand. Rayni shot him a sad smile and opened the whiskey, handing it to him.

“Um, thank you.”

“You bet,” Rayni replied as he took a huge gulp of the amber drink. Great, now Rayni wanted some too, but she would need the whole bottle to get anywhere, so she’d better stay away from it. Echoes of his thoughts were touching her mind, despite Rayni’s efforts to push them away, but she would manage.

“Enor has a facility specifically to brainwash new Eternals,” the guy said without being prompted, making Rayni blink in surprise. Well, that had been easier than she’d thought it would be. “I can tell you where it is. Destroying it should hinder him.”

“Wow,” Rayni said, a bit at a loss as to how to react to this. “Well, thank you, um….” Rayni frowned at him. He’d brushed his hair away from his face, which actually made him look very different. “You know, you look familiar.”

The guy took another swig of the whiskey. “My name’s Gerome Vener. I worked for Luxarx as a computer technician.”

Rayni supposed that made sense. She wouldn’t have interacted with him that much, but she must have walked by him in the hallway enough times for him to look familiar.

“All right, awesome,” Rayni said, getting up again. “You keep drinking that, Gerome, I’ll go talk to the others.” She almost left when she realized that she’d completely forgotten that the guy was still chained to the table.

“Oh, and here,” she said, opening the cuffs with her mind. “Just, uh, don’t leave the room just yet, huh?” Gerome gave her a tired, grateful smile, which she returned with a nod and walked outside again.

She breathed out heavily and shook her head before looking over at Mereria. “We have stuff to discuss.”

Mereria told everyone to come by the meeting room, and they had been far enough that when they arrived, everyone was already there. Rayni had originally wanted to find them one by one because she didn’t trust in her abilities to use the telepathic version of group chats, but this was way more convenient for sure.

Rayni gave Mel a look as she walked to what was now her semi-official seat. He was sitting next to Kaleth, which was good news, though Rayni didn’t think those two could be apart for any significant amount of time. The bad news was that they looked nowhere near as comfortable around each other as they should have been. But Rayni would appreciate at least this.

Once Rayni sat down at the table, she quickly summed up what happened, expecting Kaleth to immediately run with this, but surprisingly he didn’t. He just stayed where he was, looking a bit more glum than before.

“Well, that sounds amazing,” Relioth said, a grin on his face. “We can destroy that place first, then.”

The sick bastard was way too much into explosions. Next time Rayni was going on a mission with Kaleth. She could handle him way more than Relioth.

“I think we all put that together already, Tharos,” Mereria said dismissively. “I’m mostly wondering what we can do with all of the soldiers Enor already has.”

Rayni would gladly agree to spend more time figuring that out. Like hell was she, or anyone for that matter, going to break down their memory barriers one by one.

“Is just killing them a bad option?” Relioth asked as if he was actually confused why there was something wrong with it.

“Yes!” Mel snapped at him, this time not even looking embarrassed by it. He just looked pissed. That was a new one. It was kinda scary. And what was scarier was the smirk Relioth was giving him now.

“Didn’t Yorin make some kind of device to make you guys’ telepathy better?” Nef said out of nowhere, stunning everyone into silence. “Or did he only theorize about it? He rambles on a lot.”

“What do you mean by ‘make telepathy better’?” Nira asked where she was sitting next to him, voicing Rayni’s thoughts.

“Something about being able to reach farther, more precisely. Something like that. I don’t know.”

“If this could be a way to relatively easily break their brainwashing, then this is pretty important,” Kara argued, but before Nef could defend himself, Kaleth finally joined in.

“No, it’s not because we can’t afford to rescue Yorin.” Rayni frowned at him. He sounded unreasonably pissy. “As I keep reminding you.”

Oh, there it was.

“And how do you plan on dealing with all those presumably thousands of Eternals doing Enor’s bidding?” Kara argued back, leaning onto the table.

Kaleth had no answer to that, clearly, so he just glowered at her. It was always fun to watch someone beat him in a discussion, though in this case, if he had come up with an alternative, that would have been great.

“How sure are you that Yorin can help with this?” Kara asked Nef, who shrugged.

“Like eighty, ninety percent?” He frowned in thought. “I’m positive he said something about it at some point. And even if he hasn’t made the thing, if there’s a way to do this, he’ll know how.”

Rayni had been assuming that the telepathy stuff was mostly a spiritual and mental thing, but she was one of many Eternals in the room, and not one of them argued as much. And having seen some of the technology Eternals had, including a freaking spaceship, apparently, Rayni probably shouldn’t question this.

Rayni kept her gaze on Kaleth, assuming he would still try to convince them that this was a dumb idea—and frankly, it kind of was—and she wasn’t disappointed.

“Must I remind you that Enor seems very interested in making me change sides?” Kaleth said, folding his arms and looking incredibly irritated.

“Well, you don’t have to come along,” Kara pointed out before Rayni could do the same.

“And if you get captured and I am threatened with your deaths—”

“You’ll let us die,” Mereria interrupted him. She said it with such certainty that Rayni almost felt offended for Kaleth, but she doubted that was what Mereria had meant.

But she was right. Of all the people here, Kaleth—and maybe Kara, Mereria, and definitely Relioth—would let them die if it meant not sacrificing the world. As long as Mel wasn’t involved, but Rayni was sure he wouldn’t argue about staying out of the fighting in this case.

“So, who’s for getting Yorin?” Rayni asked, taking a sweeping glance at everyone. Everyone except for Kaleth raised their hand, even the Umbra who always attended these meetings but usually never said anything.

Kaleth sighed, now looking exhausted instead of angry. “Very well. Then allow me to add to your very unwise plan.”

Good old Kaleth, always a sore loser.

“Sure, what do you have in mind?” Rayni asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

“Yorin being forced to help Enor and Enor creating more soldiers are both things we need to deal with as soon as possible, so I suggest we deal with both at the same time. Hopefully he won’t see that coming.”

Rayni blinked. Well, Enor definitely shouldn’t see that coming because plitting their forces seemed like a really dumb idea. But Kaleth had a point. The longer they waited, the worse this would get, and the only advantage they had was their sneakiness, which was best utilized in small numbers, so maybe attacking in a larger group might hinder them instead of help them.

So, to sum up, this was either going to go great or they were going to die. But Rayni was more that willing to take that chance.