[LEGACY VERSION] The Enemy of Time (Book 2 - The Kaireyeh Chronicles)

Chapter 21 - Barenin

The guard at the bridge hatch swallowed, then stepped aside so Alexi could palm the lock. The panel beeped at him, and the hatch didn't open. Alexi tried again, then pulled his hand back and swore. For as long as he had been in this time, for as long as he'd been Alexi, he'd held an illusion in the back of his mind to fool the locks to accept his on-record DNA. He tried to summon back the illusion and pressed his palm again, but he was too human.

Oji approached with hands out, like she was calming a predator. "Alexi. We'll sort this out."

He sniffed and tasted salt on his lips. Tears wet his face. Damn. What was wrong with him?

No, he knew what was wrong with him. And he needed to get on that bridge to stop it. Or help it. Or do something.

Doubt flickered in Oji's eyes, strong enough that he felt it in her emotions. She wondered if he was really her husband--he'd come back from Andavar as a different person, after all. Or maybe she saw him as too broken to be fixed.

Alexi felt alarm spike again in Damon. His younger self had released enough of him that he could function, but the link between them was still very much there.

He rounded on the guard. "Open the gods Void hatch!"

The guard paled, looked at Oji, and at her nod opened it.

Alexi charged in, taking in the bridge in one quick glance. Almost all attention was focused on one point: Damon. He stood by an operations console, Luc on his knees and panting beside him.

Seeing Damon was like looking into a distorted mirror. He'd decrypted, or maybe the link had forced him to revert to his true genetic appearance. More than that, his skin was pale gray and his eyes shone gold, reflective in the light. His cropped hair gleamed silver.

Alexi felt like screaming. Instead, he strode across the deck toward his younger self.

Damon didn't look at him--his gaze was locked on a fixed point that Alexi couldn't see. He gripped an un-bladed halo, the Crest on his hand alternating between gold and streaks of white. That gave Alexi pause. He had never seen anything like it. He knew instinctively it had never happened to him, yet it was happening now.

Alexi reached Damon and gripped his arm. Damon's thoughts blasted into his own, and only then did Alexi fully realize the extent of what Damon had siphoned from him. Not just the pattern of his mind or his abilities, but also memories, and the instinct honed from millennia of how to use those abilities. Damon held the ship's bridge in a bubble of caught time, slowing an incursion of three Aezthena who were trying to blink onto the bridge. Alexi had not even felt the transition into the bubble. He had not felt the presence of the other Aezthena. He couldn't now feel the difference in time, a sense that had always been infallible to him. His gut chilled, his mind trying to white itself with a panic he hadn't known in years. Had Damon taken all of it--all of himself that was Aezthena? What would that leave him with? What would that leave Damon as?

Damon turned to him, his face unnaturally--Aezthena--calm. With the link heightened, Alexi sensed the fear warring with confusion within, both set into Aezthena logic patterns. What human emotions Damon might be feeling had been transmuted or suppressed, which only intensified Damon's fear.

You're awake, Damon said. With his mind focused so Aezthena, thoughts would feel more natural than speech.

I think you woke me. How are you holding up?

Damon's knot of fear tightened. They want me, Alexi. They're trying to come after me. What is happening to me?

Hush, Alexi said, though he was in no position to soothe Damon's thoughts. Even this mental speech was straining his limits.