BA3 - Chapter 18

We returned to our rooms silent, and trembling. How was I going to build a plan with the other? How could we all have the same correct details when next Ena cornered us? Should we try to escape and complete the mission outside of Anbura’s bounds?

There were so many questions my head was spinning. I sat down on my bed roll, stomach empty and twisted with anxiety. Ko-nah looked at me with stoic eyes, his lips pressed to a thin line. So unlike his typically expressive, albeit lying, persona. My hypothesis had been correct, though. Ko-nah was disdained by everyone. He’d forsaken his country to save his mother, and earned enemies across the kingdoms.

I sat back and looked up at the ceiling, my eyes slowly roving over each board, each crack and crevasse, searching for the display input that fed Ena’s Watchful Wall. The task before me felt too big, especially without my friends, and more so with Shin-soo at my throat. When would he pounce again?

There was a knock at the door and Cho practically leapt to his feet to answer it. I sat up, my nerves just as jittery but somehow I kept my breathing and heart rate calm. Cho opened the door and Sung-ki let himself in.

He gave each student a glance in turn, then rested on me. “Our first cultural immersion trip is tomorrow, and I didn’t want you to be tired.”

He held out five mirror reflective vials. At the sight of it, I felt need at the back of my mind and a hungry voice whispered, blissful void, take me., I kept my hands laced together in my lap. I knew the dangers of addiction, not as well as some, but I didn’t want to develop an unhealthy relationship with this draught.

“I’ll be fine,” I said, waving the offer away despite my desire of it.

“I insist,” Sung-ki said, and something about the way he said it made me thing there was more to it than just a simple Sleep Draught_TK.

Cho grabbed two and brought me the other. I took the vial and examined it. There would be no way to tell what was in it until I consumed it.

“Boys?” Sung-ki held out the other three to Ko-nah, Genta, and Shin-soo.

“Alchemy is for the weak,” Genta said dismissively and Sung-ki almost looked relieved.

Ko-nah took a vial and dipped his head to the instructor. Shin-soo crossed his arms, looking to the darkened sky outside our slated window.

“Shin-soo, you need proper sleep,” Sung-ki said with emphasis and I could tell that there was something else afoot with this potion.

Shin-soo didn’t look at our instructor. “I’ll be fine.”

Sung-ki crossed the room and stood over his student. “As your guardian on this trip, I must insist.”

“You can’t make me take anything,” he replied, stubbornly.

Sung-ki sighed. “Fine. Don’t complain to me tomorrow when you’re exhausted.”

The instructor left us alone without another word, closing the door a little harder than necessary. Shin-soo was still a child, acting on a child’s emotions.

I didn’t wait for exhaustion to take me, or for the lights in the room to dim. I uncorked the vial and tilted it back, drinking all the contents. I winced at the flavor_TK[JH1] , but it wasn’t exactly the same as the first.

‘Mae, can you identify this?’ I asked, swallowing the liquid.

“Composition is only eighty percent Sleep Draught_TK, twenty percent something unknown—wait a moment.” She went silent as my eyelids drooped. “Detecting nanite configurations similar to that of the connection TK_Se-nim created between you and the others at the farm.” Mae’s voice was growing distant. I laid my head back and let my breathing take on a natural sleep rhythm.

“If I’m assessing this correctly…” Mae was far away in my head, as if she was speaking through a brick wall meters thick. “You may be able to communicate—”

I opened my eyes to a vast, black plain covered in curling white mist. It stretched on and on, with no light, no trees or grass, nothing. I looked down at myself and found a haze image of me in Bastion garb—though I’d been in little more than underwear before going to bed. I moved my hand side to side and my fingers blurred together, moving out of sync with my commands.

“It’ll pass,” said the familiar voice of my master.

I spun around to see the near perfect vision of Woong-ji standing before me. The white mist pulsed with a gentle thrum around her in a calm heartbeat pattern, swirling and curling around her legs. I couldn’t see her feet, or mine, and wiggled my toes to confirm their presence. The ground was squishy, like warm mud in the garden on a hot summer day. It was soothing.

“We control this place,” she said, trying to assuage my confusion.

“Is this real?” I asked, breathless.

She shrugged. “Define real.”

A blue shimmer started beside me, then Mae’s classic digitization distortion filled the space. Mae appeared next to me, life-sized and in full color. Her hair was shiny black, eyes a bright orange topaz, and almond skin. Her skirt was blue, and her blouse a silky cream.

I reached out and touched the vision of Mae. Her skin was cold and felt solid, but slipper, like ice in the sun. “Am I dreaming this?”

“We all are,” Sung-ki’s voice surprised me and I turned again. “Genta said Alchemy was weak.”

“Forthe weak,” Cho corrected as he materialized next to me.

Sung-ki tutted. “If only he knew the power of li.”

Hana blurred into existence a moment later, and reached out for my hand. I took hers and marveled at how smooth it was. I knew her hands were soft, but this was like gossamer spiderweave. Her purple eyes were locked on our joined hands, a similarly confused expression on her face.

Sung-ki cleared his throat and we jumped back from one another. “Before we waste too much time, this is real. Our minds are connected in a trance-like sleep, but the duration will be limited.”

“Let me get to the point, then.” Woong-ji turned to the void and drew in long sweeping motions in the fog. It took shape as Ena, then Kotomi, Genta, Ko-nah, and many other students and people I had not met. “This is Yokaite, the network of Rabatasan rebels who specifically seek the execution of TK_McKingDude and to supplant him with Dokun Yamamotto.

“We don’t know if the entire movement is aligned in this manner, and there may yet be allies to be found in Kokyu, but as of now, consider these people our enemies. They stand in opposition of our goal; discovering Dokun’s plans with his malware—and his copies of the AI Maeyoung.”

Mae shimmered next to me like a shiver had run down her spine, if she’d had one. Then a thought struck me, and I scowled.

“Didn’t Ko-nah take one of the Sleep Draught_TK vials?” I asked.

Sung-ki nodded. “Yes, but fortunately we have gathered in Woong-ji’s mind—”

Woong-ji cut him off with a raised hand. “And I have detected his attempts to explore the space twice now, so we must hurry.”

She wiped clean the fog and started again. The three towers at the center of Kokyu took shape, then the Enjiho, and Dokun himself. My blood boiled at the sight of him so close—so real. I controlled my baser urge to attack and focused my attention on Woong-ji.

“We’d heard rumors of the Rabatasan forming a secret alliance with the tech tycoon, but had yet to confirm it. This leaves us in the dark about our allies. We must assume that any Rabatasan member is actually Yokaite. The rendezvous that was supposed to take place in Heiko would’ve shed light on that situation, but given that he never showed…” she trailed off, sadness in her eyes.

Whispers filled the void around us in Woong-ji’s voice, some younger than how she sounded now, and some old.

It’s my fault, the disembodied voice said mournfully.

The fog across the empty plain swirled into a giant face, that of Woong-ji, tears in its eyes.

I should have trained him better, the older voice replied, angrily. The fog morphed to Woong-ji as I knew her now, eyebrows pinched and forehead furrowed.

I could have protected him, came a gentle, motherly tone, and the white mist shifted again, ever in flux.

I shouldn’t have activated him, said a cold, disappointed voice.

“Silence!” Woong-ji declared, and the fog collapsed to the ground with an unseen weight. It went about as it had before, flowing and beating to Woong-ji’s heart. If this was her mind, had those been separate personas that lived inside her fighting with one another? Had we just witnessed her thoughts?

“It seems like,” Mae said aloud and then shrank beside me. She covered her mouth and spoke between splayed fingers. “It also seems that my quiet talk to you comes out for everyone to hear, here. Please, continue.”

My master collected herself and went on. “Ena is going to want our plan for assassinating the king. We need to have one that will serve as a guise for our original mission.”

“And what is the original mission, exactly?” Hana asked heatedly. “I feel like I’m missing a fair amount of information regarding our wellbeing—like for example, did you know Ko-nah was going to be at this school?”

“We were aware of the possibility,” Sung-ki replied.

Hana growled and heat radiated off her skin. “And you didn’t think that should’ve been mentioned to us?”

“We weren’t at liberty to disclose certain elements of the mission that wouldn’t critically impact the outcome,” Woong-ji said, her eyes pained with forced silence.

“What you mean to say is, you lied to us because we’re children,” Yuri remarked nonchalantly.

“No,” I said, my anger bubbling. “What she means to say is that she and Sung-ki took another Silent Pact_TK[JH2] , a different mission than us.”

My body felt light and my vision hazed. The fog went green and wild, wrapping me in a suffocating bubble. Pain shot up my spine and pulled me to my knees. I pinched my eyes shut against it and gritted my teeth. Around me I could hear my friends groaning in agony.

Then, the pain stopped. I shook my head to clear the distraction away. When I opened my eyes, our strange world had returned to normal. Everyone was on their knees or the ground, having just roused from the same intense pain.

“So, it’s true,” Cho whispered as he climbed to his feet. “We’re really in Woong-ji’s mind, hearing her thoughts, and feeling her pain. Pain from another Silence Pact.”

I looked to Sung-ki. “I thought you said lies on the battlefield take lives, instructor?”

His head hung, eyes not meeting mine. “I stand by that statement. Our forced silence may yet get someone killed. But there’s nothing to be done for it. We must keep moving forward, or we are all dead.”

“But if we had known the whole truth from the beginning, we might not have come,” Hana said, seething.

I stood making myself larger. “And then we wouldn’t be here to cause whatever distraction you needed to accomplish your mission.”

Woong-ji brought herself up to my size. “I know how this seems. We cannot fall apart and lose faith in each other. That path will surely lead to our untimely demise.”

I knew she was right, but I couldn’t help but feel betrayed. She was my master, but hadn’t advocated for me, or any of the others, to be aware of the secondary mission. Or perhaps they had the primary mission, I wouldn’t know. Why didn’t she trust me?

It may have had nothing at all to do with trust. What if she was forced into the agreement? She didn’t want to let me go on this mission without her guidance, her protection, and so she agreed to something else to that end. I recalled the giant face of smoke as it argued over the death of the informant. “I shouldn’t have activated him,” she had thought.

I took a deep breath and nodded. “What’s our plan, master?”

Woong-ji shrunk to her normal size and turned to shape the fog. The massive machina came to life, marching in place. “The Enjiho. They have access to most of the city. A special sect of them have unrestricted access to the palace at ground level,”

“Which is all I need,” I said, smirking. I was excited to try out all of the new bot’s abilities.

Sung-ki held up a finger. “Remember, this is only a rouse. We won’t be executing this plan, but it needs to sound convincing.”

Their goal—Woong-ji and Sung-ki’s—may yet be to overthrow the king. We wouldn’t know until their plan was well in motion. How I wished for Ena’s lie detecting floors here. Despite knowing I had to, that the survival of me and my friends depended on it, I couldn’t take him at his word. He who had prided truth over all things had hidden something so important from us.

In a Silence Pact. He didn’t have a choice, I reminded myself.

“Okay, so then what?” Cho asked.

“I take Tuko up to the king’s level and… put an end to him,” I said, feeling the weight of my words in my heart.

Murderer.

No. I wouldn’t be murdering anyone, no matter what Sung-ki, Woong-ji, or anyone else said.

“What will we really be doing?” Yuri asked.

“Getting access to an Enjiho connection routing facility, or better yet, TK_Dokun Corp itself.” Woong-ji said and the image of the building cut out from the mist.

“Doesn’t Dokun know who we are? Won’t he just try to abduct Jiyong? He’s already tried once!” Hana rapid fired the questions, flustered.

I reached out and grabber her hand. She looked at me with angry, fearful eyes.

“You’ll be there for me,” I said with a reassuring smile. “I won’t go anywhere without you.”

“What about the bathroom?” Yuri asked, disgust curling her lip.

“Oh, Yuri,” Cho said with a sigh, shaking his head.

Mae cleared her throat. “Jiyong and I could uncover a lot of information with an hour of access to the main facility.”

“Even the smallest insight could tip the scale,” Woong-ji said gravely, her expression darkening. What did she know that we didn’t?

I looked to Hana, Cho, and then Yuri. “Let’s do what we came for.”

[JH1]Callback to Heiko

[JH2]Is it Silence Pact or Silent Pact?