Chapter 64: Volume III: Chapter 1: The News

Second Point Delays Son’s Coronation in Wake of Third Neon Attack this Month

In a controversial decision, Second Point Adeline Serilian has postponed her son’s ascension to the Star’s second highest throne in humanity.

“In light of the recent attacks, I can’t, in good conscience, destabilize the crown in such a tumultuous time. While I have every confidence in my son’s ability to lead, now is not the time for change,” Queen Adeline announced during her visit to Ameliaton, the latest victims of Neon Rebel aggression.

Prince Henry Serilian had no comment.

Some in the Royal circle have reported Prince Henry’s sympathies toward the Neon Nation in the past as the queen’s motivation. They fear the prince lacks the will to do what is necessary in light of the growing conflict.

Ameliaton is now the third town to suffer an attack from a new breed of rabid Neons under direction of Rebel Leader Lute. Officials call for caution in Neon populated areas and request anyone who spots a flickering glow to report it immediately.

Jack pulled his goggles off in disgust. He wasn’t sure who he was angrier with, Adeline or Lute.

“Have you seen this?” Merk growled storming into the ship’s cafeteria. The door slid shut behind him. “Mic why is this trash still up? Misinformation is your responsibility.”

Mic looked up from Dai’s coffee machine. Jack had snuck down to Terra and smuggled his body back to the ship. He viewed the entire operation as one of his better ideas… the crew disagreed. Regardless, it’d taken about a week to repair, but once it was, Mic clung to it like a kid to a favorite stuffed animal. Jack had no regrets. Mic froze under Merk’s glare.

“It’s factual,” he stuttered. “I can’t take it down unless they lie.”

“Factual? We saw for ourselves the flickering Neons are Johnson’s mess. For once, Lute’s not the one that screwed us over.”

Mic shook his head, reaching for the hazelnut syrup. “They were Johnson’s mess. He let them loose in the first city, but Lute grabbed them after. He’s been using them as propaganda ever since.”

Mic glanced at a monitor on the cafeteria wall. A poster blinked across the screen. A human with an axe chased after a group of Neon children. A man stood in the way, his yellow glow flickering as he prepared to protect them. ‘More blood for the bank’ was scrawled across the top.

“The Umbra is that?” Merk cursed.

“These are popping up everywhere in Neon Towns. I erased the first batch, but they noticed and switched to physical posters. Neons are starting to see the blood suckers as heroes. All of the attacks were done by volunteers. Lute gave them the idea then pointed them in a direction. They did the rest.”

Mic pulled two mugs out of the machine when the espresso stopped dripping. He poured frothed milk on top.

“No way,” Merk said. “Neons are peaceful by nature. It’s how you lot took our planet.”

Mic raised an eyebrow, shaking chocolate powder and coconut shavings over the milk.

“Well, maybe not your lot exactly, but Will’s,” Merk insisted.

Mic grabbed the mugs. He walked over to the table and set one in front of Jack.

“They’re scared,” Jack said, “and the only stabilizing voice left in the Nation after the Peace Talk Bomber is stuck up here in space with us.”

He took a sip trying to distract himself. Delicious, as usual. He wondered where Chleo was. She usually showed up the second the smell of espresso hit the air, almost as addicted to Mic’s lattes as him. It must run in the family.

“Then we need to get him back down on the ground,” Merk growled before storming out.

Jack and Mic exchanged a look.

“Should we warn Eelock?” Jack asked.

“Already done,” Mic said taking a sip. He glanced at the monitor and Lute’s poster disappeared.

~*~*~

“… which means without the female Elppa fruit the new serum lacks the more potent minerals from the seeds. When further synthesized it renders it even less potent and less lethal toward humans.”

“Chleo,” her mom’s voice cut through the room, “are you paying attention?”

Chleo snapped Dai’s glow back into the med bay. She almost sighed. Mic was making lattes, and she was going to miss it. Dai smiled down at some paperwork noticing the room brighten.

“Of course, Mom. The serum is made from a fruit concentrate that’s toxic to humans. You and Queen—”

“I’ve told you, dear, call me Mrs. Baker,” Will’s mother said from behind two beakers.

“Right, you and Mrs. Baker made the… super colorful fruit concentrate blue so humans could use it. I’m guessing the mineral you were talking about is also responsible for the glow which would explain why I can barely see it.”

Chleo examined the two beakers aggravated with her inelegant response. The first pulsed with a dull blue, a phantom in the void easily overlooked if she didn’t know where it was. The second blazed lighting the space around it. Chleo didn’t need to use Dai’s glow to see the table’s blank outline below or the Que- Mrs. Baker’s shadow. The second serum danced in the beaker acting more as a gas than a liquid, colors mixing, tangling, then jumping apart to find others. She remembered what it looked like in a syringe before she jammed it into Dai’s leg on Luna.

“Is that what makes it dangerous for Neon’s, too?” she asked remembering Eelock and the others debating whether or not to give it to her dad after rescuing them from the palace.

“No,” Dai answered. “We’re affected by Namo’s Will. Lexy stop rolling your eyes. It’s the technical term, and I didn’t choose it.”

Chleo tried to study Mrs. Baker’s face, missing her sight if only to see human expressions again. All she saw was blank space outlined in the occasional flare from the beaker and Dai’s glow.

“What’s Namo’s Will?”

“As far as we can tell, it’s something coded into our DNA. We’ve isolated the section associated, but haven’t identified the pattern to predict whether the fruit will hurt or help. It’s made more complicated because the fruit contains a retrovirus that can manipulate a patient’s ability to receive another dose.”

Chleo’s brain buzzed. Of course, the one subject that could help her understand what was happening would fly over her head. She wished Will were there. This was his thing.

At her blank look Dai added, “It means there’s no way in modern medicine for a Neon to know how it will affect them.”

“So when I injected you by the river?”

“There was a seventy percent chance I would have died.”

Chleo’s mouth fell open. Seventy… she was going to kill Mic.

“Ok…” She pushed the thought of Dai’s glow fading in a pool of her own blood to the back of her mind. “Ok… Then, if the first serum works for flesh wounds on humans, and the second brings Neons back from the brink of death… thirty percent of the time, what did Johnson do to me? If it’s from the same fruit why did it make me a… Tlafka—“ She twisted her tongue around the foreign word. “—and not Dai or Will when you healed his gunshot wound?”

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She watched the shadow of her mom’s head exchange a look with Mrs. Baker. Johnson was responsible, but her mom was having a hard time believing it. Chleo tried to reassure her every chance she could, but it was hard when her missing sight was a constant reminder of her mom and Mrs. Bakers’ part in everything.

“It was a serum from the female fruit instead of the male like these,” Mrs. Baker explained. Chleo’s brow furrowed, trying to remember the difference. “The gold one with seeds instead of the blue with red meat…” she tried again.

“Right.” Chleo felt her cheeks burn with embarrassment.

“They’re only retrieved during one of our most sacred ceremonies every ten years,” Dai said. “We still don’t know how Johnson got a sample.”

“He couldn’t find a tree and pick one?”

“There’s only one tree, and it’s heavily guarded. I don’t even know where it is.”

Chleo raised a brow. “Could a guard have given it to him?”

Dai choked on a laugh. “Not unless Lute’s had a personality transplant in the last decade. The Tree of Light is his family’s responsibility.”

Chleo’s other eyebrow rose to join the first. There went that hypothesis.

“We think… if we can get more, we think a new distillation could return your sight,” Mrs. Baker said.

Chleo’s breath caught. It froze in her throat, her lungs refusing to push. Maybe if she didn’t move, the idea would go away. They would forget about it and move on, because in what universe was injecting her again a good idea? Was she cursed to flee one scientist’s lab for another the rest of her life? She was tired of needles and tests and magical luxing fruit.

“Chleo,” her mom’s voice cut through the panic. The shadow of a hand reached for her shoulder in the void. No definition. No color. Nothing surrounded by light. “We’ll only do it if you want to.”

She bit back a desperate laugh. If she wanted to. She wanted to sneak off to Joe’s with Will and see Minnie. She wanted to plan a prank on Putter. She wanted the Shack and Sugar Shoppe and Ol’ Man Jimmy’s orchard. What she wanted stopped mattering a while ago.

Chleo studied the blank space she knew was her mom, imagining the expression she’d seen a million times. Eyes crinkled in concern, the same eyes Mic watched her with before she stole his ship. She wanted to see.

“I want… a latte,” she said instead.

Mostly, she wanted to leave, so she did. The door slid shut behind her before anyone could say a word.

~*~*~

“No way he made you do it.” Will laughed watching Eelock’s face twist in exasperation.

“Not only did your father make me eat the travesty I’d called soup, but he banned me from the palace kitchens for six months… We weren’t allowed out for seven.”

“Diabolical.”

“You have no idea.” Eelock chuckled, eyes twinkling in his purple glow.

“No… I suppose not,” Will said, lips falling a little, expression turning wistful. “I guess that’s where Merk got the idea?”

Eelock gave a solemn nod. “There’s no greater torture than watching your friends enjoy good food while you’re stuck with your own skills.”

“Right, but he isn’t sticking me with my own skills. He’s sticking me with Mic’s, and calling Mic’s cooking good is like calling the Taj Mahal a hut. He’s an expert at making things taste amazing, he just has a tendency to forget humans need… nutrients.” Will never thought he’d say it, but he’d kill for a vegetable.

Eelock laughed before he furrowed his brow. “Taj Mahal?”

“Oh, right. It’s this amazing building our ancestors built on our first planet. Mrs. Mathews taught us about it.”

“Ah yes, Melody and her Earth obsession. I almost forgot. She was able to keep up with it on Luna?”

Will shrugged. “Some of the books were redacted, but most weren’t about technology, so they made it through.”

Eelock opened his mouth to reply. The door to the bridge slid open.

“Eelock, we need to land on Terra… now,” Merk demanded as he stormed in.

“Hello, Merk.”

“Yes, hi.” Merk crossed his arms muscles bulging. His red glow flared. “I’m serious. Have you read the news today? Things are falling apart. The Nation needs you home… yesterday.”

“I did read something interesting earlier from Mic.” Eelock turned to Will conversationally. “Interesting read. It was about a deranged person stomping around the ship.”

Merk almost rolled his eyes before catching himself. “I’m serious, Cap. They need you back.”

“And how do you suppose we land?” Eelock asked, leaning back against the console, elegant, controlled. Will tried to imitate him without anyone noticing. Merk shot him an odd look. It must not have worked.

“How should I know? Mic’s the pilot.”

“Merk, Johnson knows the ship. He had who knows how long to study and tag it in the hangar on Umbra. He’ll have every port locked down with orders to shoot us on sight.”

Merk scoffed. “He doesn’t have that kind of fire power.”

Eelock raised a brow. “I thought you said you read the news. Adeline just named him lead researcher for her R&D division.”

“… … He has the Royals?”

“He has the Royals.”

Will fidgeted as the two Neons stared at each other. Johnson might have the Second Point, but he didn’t have the Head. Will was about to break and say something when the ship’s klaxons blared.

He spun checking the monitors. The readings bled together as Eelock and Merk moved to look over his shoulders. He wished Chleo were there. Machines were her thing. An outline of the cargo bay jumped onto the screen flashing red.

“What now?” Merk groaned.

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