Chapter 32: Take Those Broken Wings and Dare to Fly - The Unforgettables: A ZeroYear litRPG

  Liora can barely control her emotions after years of absolute existential silence, an experience that made her relive the trauma of her rebirth after the cataclysm. But this time, instead of a vacuum of memories, she is being flooded by years of overfragmented reports logged in her comlink, and she realizes the world is no longer the same. Liora is completely lost; the memories of being unable to control herself are too fresh and overwhelming. She hugs her daughter tightly as a remaining anchor for her sanity.

  Laetilia senses her mother's distress. She breaks the silence with trembling words, also recovering from the intense combat, "You're alive! Alive! Forgive me for not arriving sooner, I didn't know even if…" Laetilia did not complete her gloomy sentence as Liora is catatonic and can barely register what is happening. They wait, the moments seeming to last forever.

  Memel and Kaskas remained inside the Schrogae ship with a completely unconscious Silas. The cats' desperation grows as they realize that even basic information about the devices' status is inaccessible. Through the comlink, they say: "We have no idea how to turn this on, we don't even know if anything is really working here! Most things seem to be without power. What now?"

  Bebel responds with some stress, "We'll have six hours to get out of here, maybe we can use this small ship instead. Try to see if you guys can find any energy cells around there."

  Liora hears the low, unfamiliar voices, still not understanding what they are. She reacts with a panicked start, almost pushing Laetilia away but still holding her hands firmly. Liora shouts, fighting to reclaim some reason, "Is that bastard still here?"

  Laetilia immediately replies, "Adarian is gone for good. But we can't stay here for long." After a brief pause, she adds, "You'll be alright! But now I'm taking you with me to our ship."

  Only now does Liora notice that her daughter is in terrible condition, with her parts all dented and dirt from the ship's crash years ago. Despite her regenerative power, a horrible-looking scar is still visible on her chest, a remnant of the Shadow Omen's final blow before it broke. The urgency brings Liora back to her senses, "I think… I think I'm okay, but what happened to you?"

  Laetilia offers a reassuring smile. "Don't worry about me, I've trained a little bit of Petra's power. I'll be at full power in a few moments." She continues, now more focused, "We have to get out of here because of the Golems. They've sped up immensely in the last few days. In a matter of hours, they'll reach us."

  Liora covers her eyes with her hands, trying to remember. "Golems… Silas! Adarian did something horrible to him."

  "Yes, calm down. I found him in the middle of the valley. I managed to break Adarian's powers over him, but he'll be out for a while. We'll have to get our ship in order to leave, and we can't count on Silas this time. Or we could try to leave using this tiny Alpha ship, but that doesn't seem like a good idea." Laetilia ponders.

  Liora shakes her head as the last memories of her location flood her mind. She continues, "Yes, right here. Frank and Petra must be in cryogenic torpor in those tanks right over there. But I don't think they'll be able to help us; Adarian's sword prevents wounds from healing. Maybe it's better to take them unconscious for now."

  With a wide smile, Laetilia replies, "Oh yeah, happy to know! Frank and Petra survived, that's excellent! But don't worry about their injuries, Mom. Adarian's little sword broke, and all those effects vanished with it. They'll be good as new as soon as they wake up." Laetilia gives an order to Bebel to unfreeze them. The cat obeys, watching everything from on top of the ship's control panel.

  Liora shakes her head but narrows her eyes in disbelief at what she just heard, "Wait! What? How can that be broken? Did I hear that right?"

  Laetilia hesitates for a moment, reading the messages that just arrived from the other cats in trouble on the ship; they couldn't find anything useful inside. Laetilia looks at Liora, speaking with urgency, "I'll explain the details later. We have to get our ship up and running quickly and get out of here. My cats said most things are without any power inside our ship. Any ideas? Would our personal batteries be enough for the whole ship?"

  Liora leans back and closes her eyes again for a few moments, concluding with a mix of perplexity, "Heavens, many years have passed. Depending on the ship's condition, just the two of us... I don't think it would be enough. We need to enter Petra's universe. The factories inside were at full steam when I passed out. There must be thousands of energy cells stored there. Strangely, I'm not getting any connection through the aethernet to our private network, what's going on?"

  "As far as I know, a couple of years ago, the city of spirits fell because of the war. I think the remaining sumas are all in Gate right now. Despite that, things in Petra's universe should be okay, but we'll need her to get in there because all the portals were closed before she went into cryogenics," Laetilia reflects.

  While Liora tries to reason, Bebel speaks from the control cabin, "Attention everyone, there's a lot of activity in Frank's pod…" but before she can finish, one of the cryogenic containers explodes, and from within emerges a furious Frank, still bearing the wounds of his final battle, but now visibly regenerating.

  "Where is he? Is he still controlling you?" Frank shouts, recognizing Liora in front of him, hesitating for a moment as he also sees Laetilia, standing there in terrible condition. He exclaims, "Geez, Laetilia, what happened to you? Wait! What are you doing here?"

  "Calm down, Frank. Adarian is dead. It's been over five years since you were sleeping," Laetilia responds.

  "Dead? Five years?" exclaims Frank, suddenly calmer. To him, only a few minutes have passed. He feels an enormous physical relief as the pain from his wounds has completely vanished, which is helping him immensely to relax. He stares at Laetilia with a concerning expression, but she begins to speak before he can get another word out.

  "I'm doing great, that′s just scratches. As for Adarian, some 'Matrioska' thing killed him. I have no idea who that is. It was because it considered him a traitor, as far as I understood. But one thing at a time, we have to get out of here because the Golems will reach us pretty soon, Frank," Laetilia warns, watching with the corner of an eye her miserable silhouette reflected in one of the turned-off screens on Adarian's ship, and wincing at the ghostly echo of herself.

  Frank cracks his neck as the container beside him opens slowly, with Petra rising amidst the cryogenic smoke, feeling the same physical relief as Frank, and already completely regenerated.

  "Good morning, Petra!" Frank says in a softer tone. "Great news, Adarian is dead! But let's celebrate later because we've been asleep for years and the Golems are on our tail."

  Petra smiles and nods, now looking at the others. "Yeah, I heard that part, good to know! Everyone, where's Silas?" Petra asks, as she suddenly feels something else out of place in the room, "Laetilia, is that really you?"

  "Yes, it's me, lots of stuff happens while you're off," Laetilia replies. "Silas is on life support with two of my copies watching over him inside what's left of our ship. If you're both up to it, let's go there immediately. In a matter of hours, it will need to fly again, and I'll explain what happened on the way. Once we're there, we'll need to open a portal to Silas's factory to get new energy cells."

  "Hmm, let's see if this is still working," Frank says, activating his group telepathy magic, which works perfectly. He says mentally, "Then let's do it, Laetilia. Do you have our ship's location from here? I can get there in one jump, carrying everyone with me."

  Laetilia thinks loudly, as she recollects the memory of the ship location: "It's been so long since I used this cool mind channel, Frank. Yes, here's the location." Frank perceives a multitude of voices and thoughts inside Laetilia's head, but from her surface memories, there's no doubt it's really her. Frank thinks aloud, "Alright, people, stick together, and I'll tear a hole in this piece of junk."

  "No, no, Frank! We might need this ship as plan B. I'm still not sure if we'll be able to restore our ship. Also, it's kind of weird," Laetilia thinks back.

  "Weird?" Petra and Liora respond in unison.

  "I've run my sensors inside and have no idea what happened either, but our ship is somewhat restored. Silas would be super helpful right about now," Laetilia replies, and continues, "Use the normal door this time, Frank. Just one thing before we leave..." Concluding her mental speech, while saying aloud, "Bebel! Come here, we're leaving!"

  Bebel was already nearby, stalking Laetilia, and started speaking mentally through Frank's magic, "Why are you speaking? I've been hearing everything from the start." Then she jumped upon Laetilia's shoulders.

  Laetilia replies, "Oh, right, it works on you guys automatically. I'd forgotten." As Frank calculates the trajectory, he steps outside Adarian's ship, firmly digging his feet upon the monolithic veins while everyone hugs each other, then he jumps, taking everyone with him. Petra completely ignores the extreme force of the takeoff, while Liora and Laetilia use some of their energy to mitigate the acceleration pressure. In seconds, they are in the elevated valley beside the Schrogae ship.

  "If all else fails, we can use these jumps of yours to escape the Golems, Frank," Petra says, relieving some of the tension as she walks towards the half-buried ship. At the same time, Liora disappears through the ship′s door in a superspeed burst.

  "Or we could wait for these Golems and see if they're really that sassy," suggests Frank, full of confidence.

  "Nah, we can't. If you had seen what they did to the King a few years ago, you may change your mind, and they’ve only gotten nastier since," Laetilia responds.

  "Frank, the quality of your ideas remains exceptional..." Petra retorts.

  "What happened to the King?" Frank asks, undaunted.

  "I met Stanwund a few years ago. The mountain folk survived, except for the King, who tried to face the Golems midway while the rest fled north, if I got that right. Now they're living with some war refugees in a new city they built near that ever-hot lake Petra opened in the middle of nowhere," Laetilia answers, sharing some visual memories of her past encounter, to everyone's surprise.

  "What the hell happened with our ship?" Liora interrupts, having already done a quick sweep inside the ship with her super speed.

  "The ship looks kind of red from the outside. What's going on? Should I open the portal? I'm not getting a connection to the systems inside my universe," Petra says, still outside the ship.

  "The city of spirits was destroyed, that's why there's no aethernet," Laetilia summarizes.

  "What? And Amanda? Mosh? Vaud?" Frank remembers.

  "Got no clue about them. It’s all a damn mess, only bits of information scattered everywhere. The Metropolis network is also close to outsiders," Laetilia replies.

  "Petra, open your portal, but let's be careful. Everything should be okay inside, but you never know," Liora refocused and continued to speak." About the ship, I used some of my personal energy to access the damage reports. Nothing seems to make sense because those devices should be destroyed after the fall impact; also, everything is very old, and the ship's condition is now completely different from the last automatic report. However, the order of devices to be restored by the ship's auto-repair that Silas had programmed remains the same, prioritizing mobility. If we plug in energy cells, I think it'll be possible to get the ship out of here. We don't have time to waste trying to figure out what the hell happened."

  Petra begins to focus on her magic. "Okay, everyone, I'm opening the quick portal." A disc emitting a faint white light grows in front of Petra and the others; the magic seems to work as intended. As soon as the portal opens, the local network is restored with a smooth beep on all comlinks. The factory's AI detected no relevant changes over the years, except that the automatic trade lines with the city of spirits had ceased long ago, which led to the accumulation of a humongous amount of material within Petra's universe.

  "Wow! We have enough energy to power all of Metropolis for days!" Liora is impressed. "Let's grab some cells and maximize the ship's energy flow already!" she says, as she super-speeds inside the portal. Laetilia and Frank join Liora inside to speed things up, as they are also trained in both super speed and super strength, filling the ship with full powered energy cells and batteries. After a while, Petra closes her portal again, reassured that her powers still work as they should.

  "The repair won't be immediate," Laetilia adds, "but I'll try something. I learned a few things from Silas's blueprints before the aethernet went down. Let's see what we can do." Laetilia rushes, combining a bit of super-speed with her tech wizardry, as she connects a series of devices and energy cells to the ship. With the help of her three cats, she begins to fill the ship's corridors with a chaotic jumble of wires and blinking lights.

  "Mom, start opening the panels on the second floor and stick a cell into each of the connectors on the left side of the corridors. There are 64 of them at the points I'm sending you on this diagram, look!" Laetilia orders.

  "Do you know what you're doing? If I recall it correctly, Silas used about 10 cells at a time," Liora warns.

  "Right, there's that limit…" Laetilia is surprised. "Good point! But that's 10 cells every 6 seconds or so, right? I'll need to chain them all so they don't overheat."

  "How am I supposed to know the ship’s limits outside of protocols? Don't go blowing everything up with us inside!" Liora protests.

  "It will only explode a little if it overheats. With luck, we'll be flying in… about a couple of hours, I think," Laetilia concludes.

  "Luck? Still with that?" Liora retorts, remembering the past, and continues to grumble, "Silas! Where are you when we need you most?"

  "You have no idea how much I'm still in this. It's so good to have you back, Mom," Laetilia replies quietly to herself and her copies. Petra, however, distant and at the entrance of the ship's lower deck, turns to Laetilia, who notices her, and they both exchange a knowing smile.

  After almost four hours, with a pile of energy cells lost to overheating, the improvised repair finally manages to power up the gravity engines, but only for atmospheric flight. The four wing-turbines seem to be functional already, despite the parts being quite altered; the response to the tests is perfect. Laetilia and Liora remained inside the ship, repairing the devices, while outside, Frank and Petra collected all sorts of scattered debris they found, including parts of the aircar in terrible condition that had been ejected from the ship at the moment of the crash. This is the last large piece they scavenged before receiving a message from Liora on the comlink announcing that they will be departing soon.

  Frank comments as he enters the ship and sees Laetilia absorbed in the final load tests. "Silas will have a lot to do when he wakes up with those things we grabbed outside," he says, organizing the debris on the now marginally restored lower entry deck. He continues, "Laetilia, how much time until the Golems arrive? Also, if the network's down, how are you getting your intel from the drone?"

  "The Golems' drone, right? The same way we did before meeting Mosh and Vaud. Silas deployed retransmission antennas to establish an independent private network along the entire route. When I was alone on the ship, one of my tasks was to set those things up. However, the quality of the information that comes through is trashy because of the lower baud, so, just one hour maybe." Laetilia speaks, struggling to hold her focus, yet weariness overtakes her. She lingers in silence, memories of long nights before her independence drifting back to her.

  "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you," Frank realizes.

  "Oh, don't worry, I've run the same tests dozens of times. The results show a lot of variance, but they always pass. I think it's some interference from that stuff that seems biological," Laetilia reflects, getting up from the deck terminal and stretching her arms above her head to relax after the strain. "I kept re-running them to be sure, but really, I’m exhausted."

  "You′re sounding like a pro. How old are you, Laetilia?" asks Frank, his mind tethered to memories from before the long sleep, unable to reconcile them with the grown oioi woman before him.

  "Well, if I were to count in total human-equivalent years on Earth, I’d already be an old lady." Laetilia smiled, half amused at the thought. "Let’s see… more than eight Earth years since I became independent, and at least seventeen as a copy. But the oioi’s psychological time usually runs more than three times faster than a human’s. By that measure, it would be about seventy-five years old. Of course," she added gently, "the conversion isn’t always that simple, Frank."

  Liora interrupts, "Petra, close the deck door, and let's go. Stay with Frank near the entrance. If things go wrong, we'll jump into your portal with this whole ship, okay?" She is speaking from the bridge at the piloting controls, and a syncopated flurry of terminal ticks being slashed at super-speed can be heard over the comlink.

  Petra remains apprehensive. She looks at the life support device where Silas is unconscious and positions herself beside it after closing the doors, then replies, "All set, Liora!"

  "Here is the plan! We'll have to accelerate to 80% of max speed in the atmosphere to gain time over the Golems. We have a couple of hours to do so. The inertial control is working very well, so it should work smoothly," Laetilia comments, completely absorbed in her task.

  "Here we go! Here we go! Easy now…" says Liora on the piloting. The ship begins to lift out of the snow with ease, and it gains height in a much smoother way than expected, despite some of the components remaining clearly damaged.

  "Wait! Wait!" Frank interrupts. Petra looks at him with some nervousness, but before she can say anything, Frank continues, "Calm down, Petra, I know we're in a hurry, but don't you think it's a good idea to leave one of your stones nearby?"

  Laetilia is impressed and says, "Actually, that's a good idea. We were so focused on escaping the Golems that we forgot."

  Frank adds, "I was thinking while I was gathering the parts outside about what you told me, Laetilia. The King went to meet the Golems on their track, and the others took refuge in the North. So they abandoned their home inside the mountain. Why is that?"

  Laetilia is impressed again with her friend. "You're right. Stanwund mentioned they left and sealed the mountain from the inside, afraid the Golems would invade. But that won't happen here; the Tower of Cernutos had been closed for a long time before the Cataclysm. Anyway, I think it's worth coming back to this place after the Golems have passed. And if they do manage to get in, we'll know."

  Liora agrees, speaking from the bridge, "Well remembered. And there's still Adarian's ship nearby. We know very little about it, but I'd prefer to go back there only when Silas is awake."

  Petra gives a half-smile to Frank, saying, "I couldn't agree more, Liora." Taking something from her pocket, she throws a yellow stone toward Frank and says to him, "You know what to do. Don't take too long."

  Frank opens the lower deck door mid-air and jumps toward the monolithic vein. In a few seconds, he's back. He says, "Done! I placed it on one of the walls at the end of the valley where the ship was, but on the side farthest from the tower, and I put the stone about 30 feet above the current snow."

  Petra just nods in agreement. Liora presses on, “Good, we can depart!” She powers up the gravity engines to the maximum, the ship lurching as the four turbines start and buzz with an odd, unsettling whine. The sound draws worried glances all around, but Liora masks her own fear with a crooked smile. “Brace yourselves, besides the noise, the throthe will kick in within seconds. We’ll need some rest after this.”

  Petra responds again, closing her eyes tightly, her fingers pressing the bridge of her nose as if trying to squeeze the mental stress out of her skull. "Again, I couldn't agree more with you, Liora. I am feeling like the air is heavy, maybe this place or something."

  “Now that you mention it, I am feeling the same. It’s like the hairs on the back of my neck are always standing up,” observes Frank, which concludes, “Maybe those weird-looking biological ship components are the culprit, I am feeling like I am inside a body sometimes, weird!”

  Laetilia grits her teeth as if she knew something else, standing up in front of the improvised engineering deck and saying, "Well. It may not be the ship's parts, but let us worry about that later; let us focus on getting out of here. I'm letting the engines go on full throttle now!"

  The ship begins to accelerate at full power, with the inertial dampeners working at maximum capacity in response to Liora's amazing piloting skills. After a brief moment of tension, the ship reaches a sufficient speed and eases off the acceleration. Laetilia immediately clenches her fists and lets out a victory cry, a relief from the bottom of her soul, "Hell yeah! About damn time!"

  Laetilia continues, relieved, but looking at her thin hand with a bit of sadness, "I have a lot to talk to you all about, but I really need time to cool down. I think we're okay, we're gaining time over those damned Golems once again!"

  Petra responds, a little more relieved, "Very good. I suggest we gather some personal items from my universe and stay here in our old ship's rooms for a while. Without the aethernet, I intend to keep all my portals closed. Depending only on Frank's magics for communication, we should stick together for a while if we face an emergency."

  Liora remembers, "That's a good plan, especially since there are things in your universe that are best kept isolated until we know what's going on, like that little red stone from Northern Valley; we'd better be cautious.”

  Frank speaks as Laetilia stands ups from her chair, "That's right, and we're heading blindly north, into uncharted lands. Mosh and Vaud's map doesn’t show much past Cernutos. Let us grab our things already!"

  They all take turns entering the Petra Universe, visiting their old rooms in the floating city that Silas started building years ago. The structures have grown on their own all this time, without anyone living there, making a huge metropolis of empty buildings in a hypnotizing fractal shape; the only citizens of this technological wonder are the unintelligent robots programmed to mass-produce parts and self-repair.

  After a few hours of arranging things, Frank is the first to go to sleep and hit the pillow in minutes. Liora tries to rest on the bridge as she usually does, putting aside years' worth of reports. This night, she needs time to cool down from her traumatic memories, so she keeps piloting in complete silence. Laetilia did not enter the Dojo again that day and retreated to her ship's room to meditate. Petra’s universe holds almost nothing of hers; most of it was on the ship and is now lost.

  Petra, the last to exit from her universe, tries to sleep in her old room, but her eyes won’t close. The darkened light over the paintings reminds her of childhood springs in America, and also brings her memories of her family left behind long ago. Now, all she can do is wonder if, somewhere in Gate, they, too, were revived. And if they were searching for her, even after all those years exiled in frozen slumber.

  Early in the night, Petra goes down to the lower deck alone and sits on the floor next to Silas, who is still unconscious. She leans against the pile of devices in a way that she can see part of the lower gun turret's wide window. It's much dirtier now and probably unoperational, but it's possible to see the landscape illuminated by the lights of the Big Bang, a beautiful and fantastic scene that soothed her soul.

  Petra keeps the lights off and curls up in a corner. Turbulent memories and feelings continued to haunt her mind. Both happiness and sadness make a tear escape from her eyes, alone in the dark, as she tries to convince herself that she has survived once again. Alas, she can′t go back. The sands of time and the panoramic view make her fall asleep right where she stands.