Bryce

Everything hurt.

Every cut, bruise, and broken bone would get their turn. Then I would take another breath and the cycle would repeat itself.

The pain on its own was bad enough, but not the worst of it, not by a long shot. The constant need to resist and redirect the poison as it wreaked havoc on my meridians meant I had to maintain concentration through it all.

It felt like an eternity before any relief came and easily twice as long before I could sense anything from the outside world.

“Hey doc, I’m starving. Got anything to eat?”

My hearing was the first to return, and it took me an extra moment to attribute the voice to Thea.

I was exhausted, beyond exhausted. I had hit my mental limit a long time ago and was running on nothing but fumes at this point. It was taking me far longer than it should have to process everything around me.

“That depends. I’m not actually certain of the dietary restrictions of a devil.”

That was… Daelin. The old human’s voice was distinct. Hearing it was a major relief, because that meant I was in the med-lab. If I was in the med-lab, that meant trusting Thea had been the right choice.

“Oh, that’s easy. They’re the same as a human, just maybe more meat. But for me specifically, it should probably be extra tasty, you know, just to be safe.”

Daelin laughed, and I couldn’t help but smile at the demon’s antics.

“Well, all I’ve got is Nutri-paste and nano-boosters. Either should suffice nutritionally, but both fall terribly short in the ‘extra tasty’ department, I’m afraid.”

“That’s alright. I’ll just make the sleepy princess over there buy me some fancy dinner or something once she wakes up.”

“I’m not a princess.” My response came out as barely a raspy whisper, but it was enough for Thea to hear.

“Speaking of, look who’s awake.”

Moments later, I felt Daelin gently pull my eyelid open before being blinded by a bright light. The terrible process repeated itself with my other eye before I built up the energy for another quip.

“Always good to see you too, Daelin.” I attempted a smile, and the effort earned me a gentle pat on the shoulder.

“You need to rest, Executive. We’ll be here when you wake up. Just try to recover.”

I felt a pressure in the nook of my right arm and I tried to protest, but before I could voice my concern, I felt my muscles go slack.

Setting aside my frustration, I settled in to fight not only the mage’s bane but also the medication as it tried to rip my consciousness away.

~~~~

“You did your best in an unfortunate situation. Just be honest, and she’ll forgive you.”

It was Daelin’s voice this time. He sounded distracted.

The pain had mostly subsided into a dull throb by that point, and I was thinking much more clearly. I wasn’t sure how long I had been out, so I attempted to tap into the station net via my implants, but the implants weren’t responding, which meant that they were probably still offline.

“Yeah, alright, and while I’m being honest, I’ll just leave out the part where I was caught cheating and because of that, lost her soul in a bet to one of the most dangerous demons in all the hells.”

While Thea and Daelin were getting to know each other better, I switched my perspective inwardly to inspect the damage the mage’s bane had done to my meridians.

They were an absolute mess. The intricate and precise channels that I had spent decades reinforcing were now a labyrinth of burnt passageways and hastily crafted dead-ends.

“I said to be honest, not stupid. Of course you’ll need to tell her everything eventually, but her safety takes priority, besides your kind is long lived. She’ll forgive you, eventually. As long as you both stay alive, then fences can be mended.”

On the bright side, I should have an increased capacity, just at the cost of efficiency. I could reroute or combine the extra passageways eventually and I’ll be better for having done it. I just would have preferred to do it on my own terms over the course of a decade or two instead of in a mad dash for my life overnight.

There was also something missing. It took me a few moments to realize that the pact with Thea was gone. She must have broken it off at some point, but I wasn’t sure when or why.

“Yeah, well, none of that matters unless I can get a message to Hel warning her about Malvoch. She’s probably fine on her own as long as she can see him coming, but I wouldn’t put fair odds on anybody if that monster gets the drop on them. Not even a greater succubus like her.”

“I can get a message to her.” I finally opened my eyes and looked around the med-lab. Thea was laying in the bed near me inspecting a vial filled with a luminescent blue liquid. Daelin was across the room looking into a microscope at something.

“If you can give me a name and a description, maybe something that belongs to her," I explained. "and as long as you’re not looking to send a novel, I can get a message to Hel.”

Thea dropped the hand containing the vial to her chest and turned her head towards me.

“Good morning to you too, princess, and no, not a novel or anything. A quick message should be more than enough. Actually, that’s probably better anyway. I wouldn’t want to worry her or incriminate myself. Just don't want her rushing out of Hel to come and rescue me.”

“No magic until you’ve healed your meridians, executive," Daelin chided. "That’s an order. How are you feeling?”

Daelin made his way to my bedside with a glass of some silver liquid and proffered it to me. I took it, but didn’t drink.

I liked Daelin, and I respected his skills as a doctor, but healing my meridians was going to take me months, weeks if I rushed and did a shit job of it. If my suspicions were correct, then I didn’t have that kind of time. We didn’t have that kind of time.

“I’m feeling fine, but sorry, Daelin, that’s not an option. Ava and Aiden found out something about my past and decided that it was preferable to face possible corporate wrath with a coup rather than spend another day living in a colony governed by me.”

Thea turned to lie on her side in order to watch the conversation, but she said nothing.

“This information that they discovered, how bad is it?” Daelin was sweating. He seemed nervous and he had good reason to be. A corporate coup was a major problem for everybody.

“It’s the reason that this research station, and by extension New Eden colony, even exists.” I explained. “Do you know anything about the Para Vista Colonies?”

Daelin nodded. “I remember reading about that. There were a series of plagues that wiped them out. Six colonies, if I remember correctly. Last I heard, the system was still under quarantine.”

I nodded at that, it had been six.

“That’s right, 38,916 people died across the six colonies, but it wasn’t a series of plagues. It was a single spell, and I’m here researching a countermeasure.”

“There’s more, isn’t there?” Daelin asked. “If it were just that, then they wouldn’t have attempted a coup.”

I shrugged. There was more, but information can be dangerous and I respected Daelin too much to put him in that kind of danger.

Or more likely, I didn’t want him to think less of me.

“Bryce, they knew the corporation wouldn’t sit idly by and just let them take over the colony. Besides, I can understand the poison to stop you from accessing your magic, but none of what you said justifies the torture or demonic sacrifice.”

“They claimed to be part of some anti-corp freedom fighters and wanted to broadcast my research, along with my identity, to the entire colony. Thankfully, I put the station into lockdown before they shut off my implants. When they realized they couldn’t lift the lockdown, Ava came up with the bright idea of summoning a demon to fight the corporation.”

“I think I can put together the missing pieces. You saved the entire colony then, my life included.” Daelin said.

“I don’t get it. Why would it be so bad if everybody knew who Bryce was?” Thea had rolled onto her stomach at some point and was resting her chin on one of her hands.

“Because she was the one who cast the spell that wiped out an entire solar system and the corporation wants to weaponize it.”

I hadn't been expecting it to hurt so much to hear Daelin say it out loud, but it was true.

“Most corporations have a zero tolerance leak policy, especially for illegal weapons research,” I said. “If they thought that there was any risk of a leak, then they’d implement a scorched earth contingency plan. Which would include killing everybody in New Eden.”

Daelin shook his head. “It’s an unfortunately common business practice. The citizens of New Eden are all indentured employees, and therefore corporate property. That includes the executive and myself. What’s the plan now?”

That was the question. Well, the only one that mattered, anyway. In order to answer that, I needed to ask a few questions first.

I placed the still full glass Daelin had handed me onto the table near the bed and then laid my head back on the pillow.

“That depends on a few things. How long have I been out?”

“You’ve been in my care for a little over 28 hours,” Daelin said.

28 hours? Sure, I had been nearly dead, but my nanites should have healed me in half that time, and I still felt like shit.

Thankfully, I had a doctor sitting beside me who could answer that question. I asked him, but Thea cringed and then answered in his place.

“That part was actually my fault. At least, that’s how the doc was explaining it. Our pact took more mana than expected and anything you had left was going towards fighting off the poison.”

I shook my head. “That would have been my fault, not yours. I must have underestimated how the changes to my meridians would affect my mana capacity. If my maximum increased enough, then it would have given you more than I expected. Besides, that doesn’t explain why my nanites wouldn’t function. They’re powered by my biology, not my magic.”

“I wouldn’t be so certain of that, executive. You have a truly exceptional amount of mana, and the nanites have been immersed in it for nearly three decades at this point. They shrugged off all of my attempts to reactivate them and still fought off any foreign nanites I’ve attempted to introduce.”

“When I ended the pact, they reactivated, and you were awake a few hours later,” Thea said.

That was excellent news. My mana would likely take another two or three days to regenerate naturally, but I wouldn’t need my full capacity unless something went terribly wrong.

“I suppose me being in the med-lab means that the lockdown must’ve ended,” I said.

Daelin leaned back in his chair and shook his head.

“Actually, Salinthea bypassed the elevator doors and we’ve been stuck up here since. Aiden likely would have been able to override your command eventually, but the doors to your experimentation chamber were destroyed and that raised the severity of the lockdown.”

I had several security measures in place that protected against a breach, that included varied levels of automated lockdown.

The one that I had triggered when Ava started this coup was nearly the highest available. The only level higher would be if there was a breach during an experiment.

I had nearly forgotten about that since I hadn’t actually considered it a possibility when I wrote the procedure; it was there as more of a formality.

“No, Ava tried to get in but couldn’t get past the wards. That’s why she did the demon summoning in what was essentially an empty supply closet.”

Thea raised her hand. “Oh, Ava didn’t melt the doors, that bit was me.”

Thea was smiling, and that was… disconcerting.

Those doors were indestructible, they were nearly a meter thick and constructed out of a titanium alloy with an insulated layer of lead to prevent magical divination, and that’s saying nothing of the dozens of enchantments warding them.

I designed that room shortly after the Para vista incident and I was in a miserable state. A spell that was supposedly completely innocuous had just killed nearly 40,000 people, and I was entirely to blame for it.

It wouldn’t happen again, and I had taken extreme measures to ensure that, but now I was questioning all the precautions I had put in place.

“Why exactly did you melt the doors? Actually, more importantly, how?”

The demon shrugged. “I was looking for the med-lab.”

“You didn’t take anything from there, did you?”

“Nah, none of it seemed useful, and I was kind of in a hurry with the whole ‘you dying thing’ going on. So, I stepped in, looked around, and then left.”

My head began to throb at the absurdity of it all. So, I decided to just accept that which I could not control, and move onto more pressing matters.

“Okay, so the lockdown is still in effect, but we’re able to move between floors and apparently, no door is a problem for our demon.”

“Devil, not a demon, and that’s not exactly true anymore.”

“Which part isn’t true? The lockdown, accessing the elevators, or you being the bane of impenetrable doors?”

Thea sat up and turned her head to the side before answering.

“Uh, the last two. Without our pact, I could probably get through the elevator doors eventually, but it’d be way more destructive and I can’t promise much for anything heavier.”

Of course, the gods damned pact. I had completely forgotten about it. Thea had dropped the pact in order to save my life, and now I was having mixed feelings.

On the one hand, Thea had been nothing but honest with me. She got me to the medical lab and even ended the pact in order to save my life.

On the other hand, she was still a demon, and everything I read about demons said that they can’t be trusted.

I couldn’t help but remember the sound of Ava’s neck breaking and the power from the pact had allowed her to melt through a nearly indestructible door. If I empowered her to that level again, she would become nearly unstoppable. But that wasn’t why I was hesitating.

I wasn’t afraid of Thea. In fact, I trusted her. That’s why I was hesitating, I trusted the gods damned demon.

At the time, I couldn't explain why, but I was about to give her everything she asked for, and likely much, much, more.