Dark Matter Ascension-Chapter 26B3 - : When your life flashes before your eyes

“Wake up!” Jace heard as someone shoved him.

Groggily, he rolled over and felt an ache in his chest. Coughing a wet cough, and then a hacking cough, he finally cleared whatever gunk was in his lungs. An infection, possibly. The man who had woken him up was standing over him. His mentor. A man easily in his mid-thirties with horrifically burned and scarred skin from his near-death experience in the corpo-wars.

“Hey, sonny, I got you some meds.” His mentor helped him sit up and put the medicine into his mouth. “Don’t forget to chew it.”

Jace did so before taking the offered water and chugging it down. “Thanks,” Jace whispered as to not aggravate his cough.

His mentor, who always just asked to be called “the mentor”, sat down opposite Jace. There were other street kids in the sheltered alleyway that they called their home, and they were also suffering the same illness. Thankfully, they did not get it as bad as Jace did. “You know,” he said softly as he pulled back his hood and scratched the top of his deformed head, the skin sloughing off to one side as if it was barely holding on, “You remind me of me at a young age.”

“How?” Jace asked as he rolled to a better position to look at his mentor.

“I pushed myself. Constantly. Even when I was sick, tired, or hurt. It’s how this happened,” he said as he gestured to his head, face, and torso which Jace had seen before. Horribly burned and scarred. “You need to learn when to stop pushing yourself, Jace. Otherwise you’ll end up like me. Able to pass on knowledge, but not really able to make a difference.”

Jace nodded slowly, “Why…why did you…not tell people you were alive?”

“I tried. But I saw that my wife was on my death benefits and had begun to work her way up in General Logistics. It was better to just stay dead, let her keep providing a good life for our kid, and help those I could.” He gestured around to the other street kids, “Stick together to survive, that’s the phrase I’ve been teaching you all. It was an old military phrase. Most street folk in the current era…we are war survivors, Jace.”

Why is he using my name so much? Jace thought. He always calls us ‘sonny’ or ‘missy’. Jace cleared his throat a little bit, feeling the soothing medicine help him to talk a little louder. “Why…why did the corpos go to war?”

“Money. It’s always about money. Creds, resources: call it what you will.” His mentor frowned as he stared over at the fire from dried dung that they had collected in their refuse buckets. “Always because of greed.” He looked back to Jace with a soft smile, “Never be greedy, and always try to help others of your kind. Our folk.”

Jace nodded as he took those words to heart. “Your wife…what was she like?” Jace asked.

“Ah…to be honest, I don’t remember much, anymore. I know she had gorgeous, long hair. I don’t remember much, no, not about her…but I do remember my boy.” His mentor chuckled and ruffled Jace’s hair, the strong, scarred, weathered hands full of vigor despite his fragile appearance. “He would be about your age, now, I think. A bit of a mutt, like myself. Perfect person to blend in and just get lost.”

“I wish I met my dad,” Jace softly said. “Maybe my mom wouldn’t have left me at the orphanage.”

“We all want to find our own,” his mentor replied solemnly. “Sometimes, they are a lot closer than you’d think.” The man poked him in the chest, “They live in your heart, Jace. All of your friends, your family, they are never truly gone, because you have them in here.” He then tapped Jace’s forehead with one of his burned fingers, “And in here. Memories are what we have.”

“I don’t remember him,” Jace said. “Mom said he died when I was a year old.”

His mentor had a look of pain that crossed his face for a moment: not uncommon to see, given his extensive war injuries that were never quite treated correctly: but there was a deeper pain there that Jace did not know anything about. The man cleared his throat and stood up, and his words were heavy, laden with emotion despite the odd statement that followed. “I’m going to get us more medicine, just in case. Get better, Jace.”

-----

[Hey, boss! Get up! You got one heck of a shock! Shorted us out for a bit!]

[We got your heart beating again and were able to insulate your brain.]

[Congratulations (?) on dying again and surviving!]

-----

Jace groaned as he felt a horrible headache. His sword was still embedded in the crystal, but the electricity was all gone. The pink crystal began to slowly dim. When it fully sputtered out, Jace felt a vibration through the air, and his body felt stronger, his Cosmic Power symbol: Dark Matter: with the invisible center of Void, reappeared on his palm.

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Ollie appeared with a pop. “You did it!”

Jace felt the realization hit him like a ton of bricks as he put the pieces together from the forced recollection of the near-death experience. His mom’s story about what happened to his dad, his mentor’s story about his own child. Calling Jace by his name instead of ‘sonny’ like he did to every other kid: and him, most of the time, unless the two were alone.

“I…” Jace gulped as he felt lightheaded. “My mentor…I think he was…my dad.”

Ollie flew in front of him, “What?”

Jace felt tears come unbidden to his eyes, “I was with my dad that whole time,” he whispered as the memories of his mentor, the dad whose name he did not even know, the man he saw killed in front of him, rush through his mind. “He rescued me. Kept me alive. Taught me how to survive.” He looked at Ollie and felt a mix of emotions: anger that his dad never told him who he was, rage at his mom for not searching for his dad post-war conclusion, and longing for being able to tell the man how thankful he was.

Ollie flew over and opened his arms, “Bring it in, big guy.”

Jace smiled and laughed a little bit, “I…I’m good,” he said as he fought back the tears. “I don’t have to wonder where he is anymore,” he said with longing in his heart. “I wanted to know him for the longest time, and I did know him. I wish I could have had more time with him. Or known his name. Or seen him before all of the injuries.”

Ollie nodded, “I understand. Well, I can sympathize with you. I don’t have a dad or mom. I just got made by The Cosmic System.”

Jace shook his head and pushed himself up a bit. “That black and orange I came through on my way down here, what were those?”

Ollie looked up, “Ah, layers of the planet. Earth has layers like the crust, mantle, outer core, and inner core: pretty solid stuff. This world looks like it had solid with some…magic…liquid layers? Best way I can think of it. Xera will have to run a full analysis.”

“Speaking of,” Xera said in his earpiece. “What exactly did you do? The NICIF logged another body-death experience.”

Jace looked at Nethaldrim and pulled it from the crystal. The blade was warped, but as he looked at it, he saw the nanites surge from his armor, felt really hungry, but the sword’s broken parts were reconstructed in an instant. “I stabbed a crystal.”

“Ollie. Analyze.”

Ollie flipped around in the air and held up his paws. A weird mesh of starlight-blue energy shot out from his paws and hit the crystal. “Xera…are you reading this?”

“I am. Fascinating.”

“What is it?” Jace asked.

Xera’s voice answered, “A magic power source. This must have powered their whole world at one point, given all of the conduits going to and from it. Good news, all of the Complexes will be super easy to clear unless they have localized power sources: like those Class Reset Crystals.”

“What did it do to me?” Jace asked.

“Killed your body, for one: thank you NICIF for keeping your brain alive.

-----

[We got your back, boss!]

[You die, we die.]

[And that’s no good!]

-----

“Yes, yes,” Xera said as if she was quieting children who were clamoring for attention. “Now, to continue…I believe that it did nothing beyond that.”

Jace sighed, “Figures. Got killed for something that didn’t even do anything. No cool lightning powers or anything like that.”

Ollie shrugged, “That is how it plays out sometimes. Risk does not always give you a reward.”

Jace nodded and looked up, away from the core of the world. “It’s a long ways up.”

Ollie nodded, “Get to it!”

Jace sighed as he used his Guatch Grappler to pull himself to the edge of the tube, and then began ascending.

Quinn was busy monitoring Jace, as he was the only operative in the field, when she had a knock on her door. Getting up, she saw it was Priam.

“Hey! Can I come in?”

“Sure, what you need?” Quinn asked as she let the rabbit-man in.

“Oh, just wanted to check in on Jace. Which screen is he on?” Priam looked across the dozens of monitors that now covered almost every wall of Quinn’s room. She pointed to the monitor, and Priam walked over before letting out a gasp.

“What is it?” Quinn asked as she joined him and saw the status screen was the same. Unchanged since he went inside the Glitch location a few days ago.

Priam pointed above his head, “I can see soul energy coefficient. Jace’s is back to 100%! Despite all of the prosthetics and other…non-person stuff!”

Quinn frowned, “Damn magic,” she muttered. “Xera was right: it’s tough as hell to quantify and shove into a system interface.”

Priam keyed up his comms, “Hey, Jace!”

“Priam? Good to hear you,” both he and Quinn heard Jace respond. “How you doing?”

“Good! But you’re doing better, apparently! Your soul energy coefficient is back to 100%!”

Jace was silent for a moment, and then laughed. “Really? That’s awesome! Maybe we can save this world after all.”

“That’s also bad,” Quinn stated. “Since we now know that Astral Demons can attack that soul energy directly.”

Xera’s voice cut in, “I’m working on that with my Astral System adaptation and interface with The Cosmic System. But for the time being, it is a downside. Jace, what did you have in mind with the soul energy coefficient?”

Jace’s voice was filled with enthusiasm, “I have that Archmage’s Admixture I can use once per day. All the power of the elemental World Pillars of Nethal…what if we use that to fix things?”

Xera’s voice was silent, and both Quinn and Priam glanced at each other, shrugging as neither knew the answer. Finally, Xera spoke. “Worth a shot.”

“I gotta get out of here first, I think,” Jace stated as the duo heard the sound of his exertion from his huffing and puffing. “It’s days up, Ollie?” There was a groan a moment later, and Jace sighed. “Quinn or Priam, mind filling Shhiv in? Tell her I’m good?”

“On it!” Priam said as he left the apartment.

Xera opened up a direct channel to Quinn and her alone, “How are your preparations coming along?”

Quinn sat down at her console and turned to her messages to and from Mizarion, Casey, and Levi from the Star Council, “They go well,” Quinn replied. “Star Father seems to be amicable to a temporary alliance with the Dark Between Stars.”

“Good,” Xera said with satisfaction oozing out from her words. “Finally, we can deal a blow to the Nebula Alliance and put them in check. Remember, Deckard is the primary target. Make sure everyone knows that for the dossier.”

“Got you covered,” Quinn replied as she began doing what Webwalkers did best: arranging street crew gigs.