Chapter 15: Recovery

Seeing that I was awake, Silas cut right to the chase, “So, they managed to make you an artificial demon.”

No bullshit beating around the bush full of empty platitudes and well wishes? I can work with that.

Adeline had a different reaction to my own and looked at me incredulously, “A demon like Silas? How is that even possible?”

I shook my head, “I have no idea how, but that’s what happened… Well, I do have a theory, but neither of you will like it.”

For better or worse, I wanted to get along with them. Not just because of Eira’s lingering attachment influencing my thought process. No, Timothy wanted to get along as well, and for whatever part of me was me, I desired that as well. Moreover, the two of them had gotten me out of a pretty big predicament and done so at significant risk of bodily harm to themselves. So getting along with them was a no-brainer; even without the attachments, they were helpful to me. To that end, I would prefer not to alienate them by explaining my theory.

Silas glanced at Adeline, and she shrugged, “While you were gone, she said she only wanted to explain once; unless you have a problem with it, I’m staying.”

He nodded, “Alright, I have my own idea of what happened… but what’s your theory, Eira?”

Well, here goes nothing.

I am not, strictly speaking, Eira. Unfortunately, there isn’t any easy way to say it; Eira is most likely dead.” Silas grimaced and clenched his fists but didn’t respond. Adeline showed no reaction, so I elected to continue.

“That said, she isn’t gone completely; her memories and personality seem to have some amount of influence over me, whatever I am; I know who you are, Silas, and how important you were to her. To some extent, those feelings of hers were transferred to me. Adeline… I’m sorry, but I don’t know you, even if I can tell you and Eira were quite close from how you talk.” 

Before they could fully absorb what I was saying, I hurriedly continued, “I think. No, I know that the process was extremely traumatic, if not the details nor specifics; I believe that the parts passed on to me were her final thoughts, the feelings she had for Silas, and her hatred for Michael being the two strongest.”

Adeline exhaled slowly, “…Well, that makes sense I guess. Not that I get the whole demon thing myself, Silas? Does this load track with what you know?”

“No, not really. But Eira… sorry…” He trailed off and shook his head before continuing, “But you aren’t a demon like me. I have no idea how an artificial demon would be created, just that it’s something they were working on.”

“…I have been going by Eira since waking up. If you’re ok with me using that name, I intend to continue doing so.” His eyes flashed briefly, but he clenched his jaw and, a moment later, nodded his head.

“That’s fine. What can you tell me about the process itself?”

I gave him a long look and noticed Adeline doing the same from the corner of my eye.

Yea, he doesn’t like hearing that name, probably especially with it tied to this face… But he’s going to ignore that and force us to move forward.

It was a type I had some experience with, so I knew that pushing the point here and now would accomplish nothing. So instead, it would be best to keep going forward for the time being and potentially address things later.

“…Well, I don’t know specifically what Eira experienced, only what I remember. As I said, parts of her influence me, but she is not the only one… I am an amalgamation of several people, as far as I can tell. The two most prominent ones are Eira and Timothy, but there are others. His memories are the ones I have ready access to. Eira’s come in flashes and brief snippets, usually accompanying high stress. The biggest impact she has is her inherited feelings. Beyond them, I don’t know how many others there are, just that there are others.”

Adeline was looking at me incredulously now from her bed, and she muttered in a low voice, “I think we brought her to the wrong type of doctor….”

Ignoring her, I focused on Silas. He seemed a bit more receptive and had furrowed his brows the way he always did when deeply considering something. A moment later, I shook my head to clear it.

“…Anyway, despite having a full set of memories, I have no idea what’s going on; as far as I can tell, this isn’t the world Timothy remembers.”

Silas nodded, “That much is understandable; what planet was he, were you…? What planet is in those memories?”

Hold up, “planet?” We’re in space right now, so I guess that makes… I mean, planet!?

Silas misinterpreted my stunned expression, “Then not a planet? Was Timothy a spacer, or did he live in another darkcity like Corgas?”

I frantically waved my hands in denial, “No, nothing like that… actually, wouldn’t the scale of where I’m from be even bigger? I mean, ok. Back up. I don’t remember being on any of those things. I mean, I was on a planet, but it was the only one….”

Isn’t this a great way to figure out something about this world?

But we shouldn’t ask about it here. Too dangerous.

Silas wouldn’t bring us to a dangerous place; he loves you, remember?

{A small set of rooms in a dark corner; Silas and I were standing in front of the doors. He opened them to let me in, “Well, this is where we’ll be staying in Corgas. It’s a bit smaller than our old place, but what do you think?

I turned to him, “I think it’s cute; I actually like it a bit more.”}

Evidently, I had been sufficiently shocked to throw myself out of sync. Screwing my eyes shut, I shook my head, “Not here. We should go home.”

Adeline was the most shocked by this, “Go home? Are you crazy!?”

Ah, true. Not only is that not “my” home, Refletech and Michael probably know where it is.

Also, we fell into a hard vacuum earlier today.

Twice.

“Right, maybe we shouldn’t leave yet. Even if I do feel fine.”

Adeline’s mouth dropped open, and she shifted her attention to my IV line, “…No, there aren’t any pain killers… But, Silas, is she really ok?”

Fine, don’t take my word for it.

“She’s a demon now; even if she’s a shift type, her base strength is above an average person by a not insignificant amount. But… Eira,” He paused, “…This place is safe; I wouldn’t have taken you two here if it wasn’t.”

Then the question becomes whether or not to trust Silas.

Is that even a question? We already trust him.

“…Sorry, I need a moment to collect myself; how did I actually get here? The last thing I remember is Adeline spacing me.”

The woman in question frowned, “It wasn’t on purpose; Refletech shut down the PD guns; I had to improvise on the improvisation… Silas, you really could have thought things through better.”

“There wasn’t time; I knew it was a trap as soon as I found the data, but Michael is too calculating –He would know that I would assume you weren’t there, and thus you would actually be there. As far as the actual plan… well, as soon as I found you, I realized you were a demon. Originally, Adeline was going to come in and pick us up. But I just told her to catch us after you said Michael was coming.”

His general explanation was good, if not a bit Sicilian. That said, I took umbrage with one part, “Yes, but how did I wind up here?”

Adeline waited a moment to see if Silas would speak. When he remained silent, she answered in his stead, “It really wasn’t hard for Silas to get away from the agents he was leading away,” Silas's expression darkened. Adeline continued after a tense moment, “…and then he circled back and pulled us both out of the wreckage.”

They’re hiding something.

Can we really trust them?

It’s better than Michael; at least these won’t try and kills us.

My head was beginning to pound, likely a symptom of the ongoing desynchronization. Things needed to come back together before this got worse.

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“I see. Then, in my case, I’m not; Timothy isn’t from any other planet… He grew up on Earth and worked a lot. I don’t think that it was from this reality at all… I sort of-”

“Fell through a mirror?”

Silas’s proclamation froze me stiff. Granted, I had not ‘fallen,’ but that place…

It was like being inside a mirror.

“Well, you two clearly know what the hell is going on, but this goes way above my grade; I’m going to check out this demon shit and go back to trying to figure out how to get that chip out of your head.” Adeline shrugged us both off, but not before dropping a bombshell on me.

So, I was right. There is something in my head. I want to know more, but…

Silas and the demon stuff. That’s more important.

Yea, if the chip was an immediate danger, they would have addressed it first.

But what if it is? She said she didn’t know how to get it out?

Maybe it’s a bomb, and we’re on a countdown?

No, they would tell us.

Do we have any proof?

But what if-

Silence. When I woke up, a hand rested on my arm, and my head was finally silent again. I sat up gingerly, taking care not to disturb the hand. All the pain from earlier was gone, and this was still the same room. Adeline was also still awake and quietly watching me sit up. She brought an artificial finger to her lips and mimed for me to stay quiet. Following her line of sight, I saw Silas sleeping in a chair to my right, his hand lightly gripping my arm.

Looks like things went bad enough that I fell unconscious… It wasn’t another possession, was it? No, that’s doubtful. I don’t feel like I would be sitting calmly with Silas sleeping peacefully were that the case.

“What happened?” I kept my voice low so as not to wake Silas up.

After waiting for a second, Adeline whispered back to me, “You started muttering things to yourself, then your heart rate increased for a moment; suddenly, you coded and passed out. You were fine again a few seconds later as if nothing had happened. Apart from being unconscious, of course. I would ask, but I expect that….”

“…That I only want to go over it once? No, I don’t mind… I’m not sure how to tell Silas, given… this.” I indicated his hand on my arm, “Anything I say is going to upset him; it isn’t an easy topic to discuss.”

“You claim you don’t remember him, but that sounds an awful lot like what Eira would say.”

I shrugged just one shoulder, “I told you; her feelings are influencing mine… But then I lied. I don’t think she’s actually dead. At least, not completely. What you saw… I’m not sure what it was. I have my theories like everything else, but that’s it.”

Seeing that Adeline was waiting for me to continue, patiently watching, I spoke in a slow voice, considering each word carefully to not mislead her or misrepresent myself, “It feels like she’s still there, and all the others as well. Usually, they’re quiet, content to mildly tweak a few impulses here and there. Eira does that the most because this was her body, I think. But the dominant one is Timothy; much of what forms me was based on him.” I took a deep breath.

“…But that’s only when we’re in sync. I think that all of us are each other from parallel realities. As long as we get along, everything is fine. But when things go wrong, the voices separate and begin vying for control. That’s what happened right before I passed out; I, we, fell out of sync with each other and started arguing.”

Adeline remained calm, but she looked a bit fearful now, “Then, that explains the readings I pulled. I thought they were something to do with that chip, but they could be dormant thought patterns….” Seeing my expression, she explained, “I didn’t bring it up earlier because I didn’t want to worry you; you’ve got a modulator plugged into your corpus callosum… It functions as a tracking device, among other things, though I’ve been able to turn that part off.”

I could feel my heart beating in my chest, “What other things?”

“Well, there are a few things I can’t identify, but if you’re like Silas now... probably has something to do with your demon shit. There are two programs I could identify; an emergency kill switch, which is what knocked you out earlier. Then,” She grimaced as the words left her mouth, “Then, a personality editor. A rather advanced one as well, capable of overwriting your own motives according to verbal instructions from an authorized user.”

…Then, that explains those weird things…

Against my wishes, I shivered, which caused Silas to stir briefly in his sleep.

All those times, I did something without a rational explanation, like entering Michaels’s cabin or following him through those hallways…

“…And it would make me rationalize why I was doing it, wouldn’t it.” My voice came out hollowed and dry, and in response, Adeline nodded.

“Yea, I take it you thought of a few times they used it, didn’t you?”

I nodded, then felt sick to my stomach, “And you weren’t able to turn that part off? Just the tracking?”

Again, she nodded, “Yea, I tried, but that much is hard-coded into the device itself. So the best I could do was purge the list of registered users… Sorry, poor choice of words.”

“Does Silas know?”

Rather than Adeline, Silas himself answered me, his sudden words causing my heart to skip from brief surprise, “Yea, I do. I was going to tell you myself, but Addy stopped me.”

“And how long have you been awake?” I asked.

“Long enough. I thought it would be better to pretend to be asleep once I heard you say it would be hard to tell me.” Then, seeing my aghast expression, he shook his head, “Blame Addy; she knew I was awake thanks to her implants. She could have stopped you if she thought it would be a problem.”

Contrary to the revelation about the chip, instead of feeling violated, I felt that moment was a relief. Relief that I wouldn’t have to tell her boyfriend how Eira was both alive and dead, trapped in my head. There was also indignation.

“…Next time, just tell me.” With that out of the way, there were more significant questions for both Silas and Adeline.

“Adeline… Addy? You said a few things that chip is doing you can’t identify… I think one of them inhibits my shifting. Could you focus on that? Before figuring out how to take it out or not.”

“So you are a shifter like me then. What archetype?” Silas cut in somewhat excitedly, probably hoping to change the mood. After a moment spent glaring at him, Adeline shrugged and shot me a grin.

“Yea, I suppose you’ll probably need that ability working properly.”

With that out of the way, I addressed Silas, “True Demon, whatever that means. Michael said it was rather rare, but I have no plane of reference for that… My world didn’t have things like angels, demons, and monsters. At least, not real ones, just stories.”

That admission did more than anything else for some reason, and Silas fell silent. Adeline looked a bit uncomfortable and gingerly slipped out of her bed; no doubt the pain inhibitors were the only thing allowing her to do that, “I’m going to scarce out for a bit, see if I can get the old man to give us some real food… You and Silas have some magic shit to talk about, and I don’t want to get in the way.”

I was about to stop her when Silas, who had yet to release my arm, squeezed me tightly, “Don’t. There are… things that are best people don’t know.”

Once she had left, he waited a few seconds more to be sure she was out of earshot, “A TD is extremely rare. The only ones rarer are the Angels. You saw my form; I’m a Chimeric, common in the grand scheme of us demons…. The real trouble, though, it isn’t from what type you are… it’s the fact that you don’t have demons in your original reflection. What the hell was Michael, that bastard, thinking?” The last part was something he muttered more to himself than me, but that was fine; I was already beyond lost.

My original reflection? What the hell does he mean by that?

“Before I say anything else… Well, Adeline doesn’t know any of this. Most people don’t, and it’s better kept that way.” I was about to say something, but he cut me off. Where he had previously been visibly concerned but still relatively upbeat, he was now ultimately and totally gravelly serious.

“I mean it. Fuck, this is why I didn’t want you to come… Why I didn’t want Eira to come to Corgas.” The mask slipped for a moment, and his eyes showed genuine grief and sadness. He shook it off, “Do you remember a world made out of mirrors? If so, did one of your reflections start speaking to you while you were there?”

That was, more or less, exactly what had happened. There was just one slight discrepancy between Silas’s description and my experience, “There weren’t any. I was the only one not reflected. Until, yea, one single reflection showed up. It called itself ‘The Man in the Mirror’ and told me to kill Michael and the people behind him.”

Silas groaned.