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Chapter 25
By Julie Dillon
Ven stared down from the balcony at the massive heart of the inner core. Located at the center of the Core's main building, the inner core was a huge metallic object in a sphere-like shape, composed of wires and ether cells that brooded in the center of the dome shaped chamber. A maze of huge glowing pipes, many larger enough for Ven to easily walk through, protruded from the darkly glowing mass, absorbing the Ether that was being pumped out from its interior. The Core was a masterpiece of technological design, a work of art. It never ceased to amaze Ven how this massive machine, coupled with its tiny interface, could generate enough power to keep the entire Central District running. Ven shut his eyes, breathing in the odd scent of oil, sulfur and various coolants, and letting the rumbling currents of Ether that flooded the chamber tingle in his fingertips and settle in the pit of his stomach. It was an odd sensation, not altogether unpleasant; it imbued him with a strange feeling of power.
Though he was only thirty-two years of age, Ven presided over and managed the Core of Central District. Because of his high rank, he was one of the few people in the Ministry who could come and go from the inner core as he pleased. Ven was the one in charge of the preparation of the Interfaces, and the one who made sure the Core was functioning properly and providing energy to vital areas of the city. It was a stressful, time consuming job, but he loved every minute of it. Few others had such power at their fingertips. The fate of the entire district was in his hands.
It had been an aggravating twenty four hours. Khyren, the current interface, had been growing steadily worse by the day. His body was on the verge of being torn apart; they would be lucky if he were to last another day or two. Ven sighed in disgust at Khyren’s weakness. They hadn’t even had him in the core for a month, and already he was falling apart. The newest interface he had been training, Cisia, had shown so much more promise. She was the most perfect clone of Dalasius created thus far, and despite the danger involved in using her, he was convinced that they could get several years of power out of her. Which made her escape from the Ministry all the more upsetting. He should have known that there would be those within the Ministry who were weak-hearted and easily swayed by someone in pain. However, what angered Ven the most was not the mere fact that she had escaped, but the fact that anyone could be so stupid as to endanger the entire Central District for such a trivial reason. Was the sacrifice of one human, who never had a real life to begin with, considered immoral when it provided millions of people with stable jobs and the daily necessities of life? Every aspect of their lives relied on Ether, computers and electricity. Without an interface, without power, the city would be reduced to chaos within a matter of days. Didn’t they realize that?
Ven did not consider himself an evil person. Naturally, he did not like putting his subjects through such unspeakable torments; he had grown attached to his newest subject, the girl Cisia, and disliked having to condemn her to a life in the Core, but it was a necessary sacrifice. Some argued that it was wrong to place the burdens of an entire city on one girl. However, Cisia was a clone, and thus had been the Ministry's intellectual property from the moment of her creation. The Ministry reserved the right to decide how she was to be used. A cloned individual legally belonged to the organization that created her; it had been that way since cloning was first developed. Everything Ven and the Ministry had done was within the confines of the law. Those who had helped her to escape, on the other hand, had broken countless laws and put millions of lives at risk, and for what? To save a girl they hardly knew? To give her a life she was not entitled to? Why not choose someone who was more manageable and easier to integrate into normal society? There were thousands of interfaces worldwide in other, smaller districts, but none of them were as important to the future of Ether harvesting as Cisia. Ven had spent the better part of his life helping to develop such a powerful and reliable energy source; Cisia was the key to perfecting it. He wasn’t about to sit by and let all that fall apart.
Ven found himself wishing he had kept a tighter lid on the situation with Cisia. His initial anger over her disappearance that night had affected his judgement. He should have waited until he calmed down, and then sent a few people he trusted to track her down. Instead, he had informed the police and the Hunter’s guilds. It hadn’t taken very long for word of her escape, as well as the reward to bring her in, to spread throughout the entire Central District. There had been an unusual number of injuries, gunfights and explosions popping up all over town. Too many people were interested in getting their hands of Cisia for a variety of reasons, and too many innocent people were being caught up in it all. All night Ven had been getting reports of police, normal citizens, as well as professional hunters and gang members being killed or sent to the crowded hospitals. However, there was still little word on Cisia. For all Ven knew, she had already been killed in a shootout. He cursed himself for not handling her disappearance better. . .
Ven straightened in surprise as the inner core’s alarm system went off, filling the room with blaring sirens and flashing, sanguine light. He stepped away from the balcony, his eyes wide in disbelief, never once taking his gaze from the massive core. That siren could only mean one thing. “No, not now . . .Damn it . . .”
Within a matter of seconds, a flood of technicians and scientists rushed out from the doors behind him and joined the others that had already been at work in the room. They ran to the computer stations situated along the walls of the building, quickly jumping into action.
“Power output has dropped below safe levels . . .”
“Release the chamber and get him out of there!”
“Its too late, he’s already dead. There is nothing more we can do for him . . .”
“Damn you, Khyren,” Ven muttered to himself, glaring out at the central core. “You weak bastard; couldn’t you have held out for just one more day?”
“Master Ven, what do you recommend we do?” one of the technicians called to him over the blaring sirens. “We may risk shutting down the inner core if we try to remove him.”
“It doesn’t matter now either way . . . Get him out of there, we might be able to revive him.”
The technicians rushed to remove Khyren from the Core in the vain hope that he might be resuscitated, but it wasn’t looking good. Ven stood back and watched as that familiar green glow began to fade from the inner core. The room was flooded with misty haze of coolants as the front of the looming inner core began to slowly split open. Shafts of hot green light poured out from within the core’s interior, nearly blinding him. After a few seconds, the light died, and through the waves of searing heat that flowed from the interior, Ven could just barely make out the small pod that housed the Interface.
After the pod cooled, labor droids removed it and brought it forward where the technicians and physicians could access it. Ven remained standing beside the balcony, watching from afar as the pod was carefully opened. He winced and held his nose at the all too familiar scent of burnt flesh. They were too late; Khyren was surely dead. The physicians standing beside the pod shook their heads in dismay as they lifted Khyren’s arm, red and swollen and covered in bleeding heat blisters. Revolted by the sight, Ven turned away and headed to the back wall of the room where he could no longer see the spectacle. After a few minutes, one of the technicians approached Ven again, his face pale. “I’m sorry, Master Ven, but there was nothing we could do for him.”
Ven said nothing, only nodded grimly. This couldn’t have come at a worse time . . . “How long can the backup generators hold out on their own?”
“Twenty four hours, maybe twenty eight, if we are lucky . . .”
“Twenty four hours of power left,” Ven repeated to himself distractedly. Twenty four hours until Central District was plunged into chaos . . . “How are the search parties doing? Any luck finding any sign of Cisia?”
“No solid leads so far, I’m afraid.”
“Well, tell them they had better hurry!” Ven shouted angrily. “I don’t want to resort to having to use another second rate Interface; the ones we are training now would be lucky to last a week, they aren’t good enough. We must have Cisia; it is imperative that we find her. I’ll be the one the Ministry blames if we can’t the Core up and running again soon.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll see what I can do.”
“And try to keep Khyren’s death low profile. The last thing we need is the District going into a panic if the people find out the current Interface is dead when the replacement has gone missing…”
The technician nodded and hurried off.
Ven cursed inwardly and stormed out of the inner core, not at all looking forward to his daily report with the Ministry’s commanders…
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