Chapter Fifteen: Vague Misperception — Part 7

Transitive Memory: Conclusion

Susan’s calm voice entered his mind. No focus, none! Her blows were ten times as powerful as yours were. If you don’t yield, she’ll do what she says. She’s never shown mercy before. I can’t believe you bit her like that. You’ve acted like a child and she intends to humiliate you for it.

Jonathan wondered at the life expectancy of An Antansi human child, with such strict rules.

He tried to yield, but found his vocal chords unwilling. I yield. I yield! His thoughts were desperate, and he found he wasn’t particularly good at telepathy, so it took a bit to get the words out of his mind and into Vertigo’s.

Vertigo jumped back, taking a bow to Susan and the audience. There was both cheering for Vertigo, and hostile comments geared mostly toward Jonathan.

“There you go again!” An older woman yelled, “Beating up a perfectly good source of sperm. You’ll scare him off for sure, just like the others.”

Vertigo flushed red. “Mom, don’t I do anything right?”

“You beat him up right and proper, that’s for sure.” Vertigo’s mother laughed, slapping her knee. Then it was her turn to scold Jonathan. She shook her fist at him, spitting between his feet. “As for you, you lout who bites in a skill fight. I should beat you with my broom, toothing my daughter like that. If you weren’t so black and blue I’d teach you some manners the way I learned them in the banks so long ago. Get up off the ground and stop acting a like a baby.”

Claiming her victory prize and holding it over her head to the cheers, both verbal and telepathic, of the audience, Vertigo took the cloak down over her shoulders and tightened the clasp around her neck. When she saw her reflection in Susan’s eye, she found herself smiling at how pretty she felt in it. She still had her back turned to Jonathan when she felt him rise and rush her from behind. She turned quickly in response to his scream, but still too slow to stop him from attacking. In jealousy, Jonathan had risen up with all his power; the next blow intended to kill. Vertigo was unable to dodge or block in time; she had not expected Jonathan to turn on her so fiercely.

His hand shot out, index finger under middle, telekinetic wave shielding the tips and strengthening the joints. Vertigo stood stock still, watching in slow motion the approach of her death, her body too sluggish to avoid the strike. Nothing she could do would stop him from piercing her skull, via her eyes socket, with his fingers. The first and second fingers were interlocked to give them the strength needed to pierce her straight through to the brain, and his arm was already moving forward with all the speed and power Jonathan could call on. She doubted the symbiont could correct memory loss caused by brain damage, and wondered how much of her thoughts his fingertips would steal away, should he cause a stroke along with impacting damage to the brain.

Within a second, she began to wonder why she had time to keep wondering such things, when her mind, so focused on Jonathan’s death blow, felt the wave of Susan’s rage blast past her from the left, while the cool fury of Laura’s power swirled in around Vertigo just moments after, embracing her and protecting her from the explosion of will that was soon to follow. In that moment, the two most powerful women in all of Antansi culture came to her aid, shielding her from any possible harm. Vertigo felt as if she might well be the safest living thing on any planet in the galaxy.

When she had enough sense to bring her thoughts back to Jonathan, she realized that he had frozen in place, his fingers an inch shy of piercing her eye, and she scrabbled back fearfully. For Vertigo, the next few seconds seemed to last minutes. Her adrenaline-heightened senses slowed the event down, freezing it forever in her mind. Jonathan’s chest caved in, and his fingers exploded and collapsed, the skin pealing back away from bone even as the bone shattered and collapsed into the palm. Within a split second, his fingers looked like crushed, peeled, bloody bananas, and his chest looked abnormally inverted, not quite a canoe, but close to it.

Blood flowed freely from his nose, ears and mouth, and his hand, and fingers, distorted and wrenched at unnatural angles, also bled freely. It flowed from his mouth, and from his ears. Around him, dark bets were placed for and against his survival, as those who had bet against Susan intervening settled their debt. His eyes glazed over, his interlocked wrist and elbows popped as even those joints dislocated themselves.

Susan stood between Jonathan and Vertigo, Laura hanging on her left arm with the grace of a lover. Vertigo was now a couple of feet behind the two. The first masters of combat had crushed Jonathan with their combined abilities. Their abilities were thousands of times superior to Vertigo’s, despite Vertigo being one of the most powerful of the Antansi humans alive. The crowd fidgeted but said nothing. As the moment drew out, people weren’t even betting telepathically or verbally on whether or not Susan would let Jonathan live, they were too stunned by Jonathan’s horridly distorted physical form to continue thinking or saying anything.

Jonathan’s eyes flowed with tears and blood, and even as his vision turn red, his thoughts became confused and disorganized. The blackness of unconsciousness slowly overtook him, with only a hint of fear preceding it. With his ribs shattered and a telekinetic grip crushing his throat, Jonathan couldn’t get oxygen into his lungs or to his brain. He could feel within him the symbiont’s resignation, the willingness of trillions of cells lodged in his body, all of them willing to die simply because they despised his character. Then that grip let him go, and he hit the sand, numb and unconscious. Slowly, the pressure that had crushed him was removed, and slowly he started to get a hint of consciousness back. Quite wisely, he remained still, trying to listen through the intense, slowly paced hum in his ears. He could barely hear Susan’s voice as she shouted out orders to the medics on stand-by. The symbiont within him struggled in every cell to bring him back from the edge of death.

Despite Jonathan’s condition, Susan’s words were far from compassionate. “Take the child to the medical center. His presence is disturbing.”

“Should we treat his injuries or let him heal on his own?” The medic asked, not wanting to soil his hands by treating Jonathan.

“As a medic, your duty is to preserve life, not to judge its value.” Laura said coldly.

“Yes Ma’am.” The Medic replied, shamed at the darkness of her thoughts.

Another, deeper, and far more deserved shame overwhelmed Jonathan. His disgrace was so profound that even in semi-consciousness with his ribs crushed, his throat bruised and his hand shattered, Jonathan felt it as a deep, painful lump, one he felt he might never be able to swallow. Rather than face his guilty feelings head on, Jonathan let his mind go blank, let himself slip into a deep semi-coma, and left the medic and his body’s recuperative abilities to deal with his wounds.