Remote Piloting Center, Sovereign
By now, the piloting center was abandoned, the drones having returned from their mission with little fanfare. They were undeserving of it, of course. The Guardians were still alive, having rocketed off at a pace the little gilded sentries simply could not match and disappearing through a jump point that proved impossible to track down. Yes, the Guardians had escaped.
And Ayesha's golden boy had gone with them.
It all amounted to a fit of rage that left Ayesha's nerves frayed to their breaking point, and things only worsened when her summoned audience asked, "What do you mean he's gone?"
Ayesha froze in her frantic pacing to whirl on the High Evolutionary. "I'm sorry, did I not make it clear before?"
The man looked as if he were about to reply, but—wisely—decided against it, and Ayesha took his silence as a sign to continue.
"That little whore got to him." The mere thought of her made the high priestess tense. "I should have known. I should have known! There was no way he could have recovered so quickly from that procedure. She must have"—she waved her hands in frustration—"time warped away the pain or whatever it is she does. Oh, I'm going to strangle her. I'm going to wring that pretty little neck until she turns..."
Ayesha paused. What color did a starry-skinned entity turn when oxygen was cut off to their brain? It was a stupid question, but a suddenly pressing one as well.
But, as usual, the High Evolutionary was quick to ruin the moment. "Is this Fate we're talking about?"
Ayesha's jaw tightened to the point she could hear her teeth grinding against one another. "Of course, it's Fate! It's always Fate! I don't know how she got the Guardians involved with this, but...ugh!"
Her words faded to another angered cry, and the High Evolutionary waited until she'd finished before remarking, "I know you don't wish to hear something like this—"
"You're right." Ayesha glared at him as she stalked back to her seat. "Your voice annoys me to no end. I'm not even sure why I've kept you around, at this point. Adam's..." She paused, realizing she couldn't even think of her creation without risking a whole new wave of emotion.
A beat of silence past before the High Evolutionary saw fit to continue. "With all due respect, High Priestess, I'd advise against getting rid of me just yet."
"Oh, really?" Ayesha rolled her eyes. She couldn't imagine a better stress reliever. "And what, pray tell, could you possibly have left to offer me?"
The High Evolutionary hesitated for a moment. "I know you don't enjoy surprises..." He paused, as if awaiting interruption, and when none came, he continued, "But I may have installed some additional...properties to the soul gem that were kept privy."
Such a revelation usually would have earned him a very spiteful lecturing, but now was certainly not the time for such a thing, not if he was suggesting what Ayesha thought he was suggesting.
"You can..." She paused, realizing how desperate she sounded, and quickly collected herself. "Is one of them a tracker?"
"Indeed." The High Evolutionary sighed. "I know it's not my place to add such things, but I wanted a way to—"
"I don't care." Ayesha waved a dismissive hand as she stood up from her seat and started towards him. "Just show me how to find Adam."
The High Evolutionary dropped his gaze as she approached. "I'm afraid the tracking log is stored on my ship—"
"Then take me there."
She brushed past him, heading out into the hallway, where her ever-loyal chambermaid, Karissa, was waiting.
"Feeling better, ma'am?" The young woman abandoned her spot by the door as she hurried after her mistress, and Ayesha huffed.
"Barely. Which landing pad is the High Evolutionary's ship docked at?"
"I have no idea, ma'am."
"Pad eighteen." The High Evolutionary's voice echoed through the hall, and Ayesha barely resisted an eye roll.
She wanted nothing more than to send him off, to finally rid herself of his constant, tiring idiocrasy. But if he really knew how to find Adam, then she'd put up with him a little longer.
It was hard, though, to keep her anger contained when the bastard decided to take the lead, leaving her to pause momentarily in the hall and take a nice, deep breath. Oh yes, he'd be gone the moment the Adam issue was resolved.
"Are you visiting the High Evolutionary's ship?" Karissa's voice softened as she paused alongside the high priestess.
Ayesha raised her eyebrows. "Unfortunately. I take no pleasure in it, but there was an...incident today with the warlock, and if the High Evolutionary can fix things before the council hears I lost our grandest investment..." She paused for a heavy sigh, shaking the thought from her mind. "I don't expect you to come along."
Karissa gave a polite nod. "Thank you, ma'am, but I wouldn't want to leave you alone with him." She cast a wary glance at the High Evolutionary, who was still striding down the hall, and Ayesha narrowed her eyes.
"You think me incapable of handling that?" She cast her own look at the purple-clad scientist. "He's a man, a human. Weak. Imperfect. Certainly no threat to me."
She expected Karissa to back down, to duck her head dutifully and shuffle off to find something trivial to bide her time with, but the young woman stood her ground. "All the same, I don't wish to leave you alone. For all your strength, you've had quite the shock today."
Ayesha was tempted to snap at her, but she found a surprising amount of comfort in the words. Not that she'd ever let Karissa know that, of course.
"Fine." Ayesha began to pick up her pace again, leaving her chambermaid to catch up. "Just don't touch anything."
With that, the two followed after the High Evolutionary, winding their way through the halls of the palace and out onto the private docks, where the black and red eyesore of a ship was waiting. Ayesha bristled at the sight. It was a stain, a dismal blot against an otherwise perfectly gilded landscape. She couldn't wait for it to be gone.
The ship's hatch was already open when they arrived, one of the High Evolutionary's assistants standing attentively at the entrance. Ayesha had seen her once or twice before, during some past visits to the ship when Adam had still been in his cocoon. She could have sworn there was supposed to be another one lurking around, but he was nowhere to be seen. Ah well. She didn't care for them anyways. Just two more lower life forms, following after their master and ruining the careful perfection of her people.
"This way." The High Evolutionary brushed past his assistant as he led them into the ship.
The interior was about as wretched as the exterior, its dark walls cluttered with wires and tubing. The High Evolutionary had once explained that such an arrangement was efficient. Ayesha simply found it messy.
Karissa didn't seem to like it much either, though her discomfort seemed to come from far more than the lacking aesthetics. Ayesha could practically feel the nerves radiating off the girl, and she sighed.
"You didn't have to come along."
Her chambermaid straightened up immediately, though she didn't say a word in reply. That was one of Karissa's perks. She knew when to speak, and she knew when to shut up. In all her years as high priestess, Ayesha had never had a better chambermaid.
But that was another thing she'd never tell the girl. Karissa was a maid, after all. She gained satisfaction through service. She didn't need complimenting.
They walked for a few more minutes before Ayesha's patience began to wear thin. It wasn't that large of a ship. They should have been doing something by now.
"Will this take us to the tracker?" The high priestess narrowed her eyes as they came across the umpteenth door, and the High Evolutionary paused to look back at her, brow furrowed.
"What tracker?"
Ayesha opened her mouth, ready to berate him for forgetting something so obvious, but her anger faded to confusion as she heard a faint noise from the front of the ship. It almost sounded like a door was being closed.
No, no. A door was being closed.
"What..." The tracker was temporarily forgotten as she hurried back to the entry hatch, Karissa at her heel.
They got to the mouth of the ship just in time to see the hatch seal shut. The assistant from before stood by the side wall, her hand pressed to a control screen until the door was firmly closed. And then she reached for the blaster at her hip.
The weapon was drawn before Ayesha could process what was happening, but her body tensed instinctively, ready to take a hit as the scream of a laser tore through her eardrums. But the shot never came.
At least, not to her.
The moment the chaos subsided, Ayesha turned, searching for some sort of explanation as to what had happened. But when she saw there the laser had gone, she almost wished she'd never looked at all.
Karissa lay crumpled on the floor, eyes wide and glassy, a clean, scorched hole in her forehead. There was no blood. No gore. Without the gaping hole through her skull, the girl could have simply been in a daze.
The Sovereign were not immortal. They lived, they died. As high priestess, Ayesha had attended her fair share of funerals, though none of them had been very extravagant. Death was not honored in their culture like life was. But that was because Sovereign never died in horrendous ways. There were no accidents, no catastrophes. They simply kept going until their bodies gave out. And since there was nothing particularly tragic in a life well lived, mourning was limited. But Karissa...Karissa was young. Young and dead, out of loyalty to a mistress too conceited to ever show a shred of appreciation.
Like mourning, guilt was not the Sovereign way, much less that of a high priestess. A high priestess didn't regret, yet Ayesha did. A high priestess didn't grovel, yet Ayesha sank to her knees beside the corpse, eyes wide as her mind reeled for an explanation.
"Unfortunate, isn't it?" The voice snapped her from her daze, and she looked up to find the High Evolutionary striding down the hall, his other assistant at his heel. "But she was unnecessary." He paused, a smirk slipping across his lips as Ayesha slowly rose to her feet. "A sentiment I'm sure you share, given how you treat those around you so carelessly. I can imagine why Adam was so quick to flee."
As if he hadn't touched enough nerves already.
"You..." Ayesha searched for a vile enough word, and came up empty. "Are you mad? The entire wrath of the Sovereign—"
"—is not something I'm concerned with." The High Evolutionary raised his eyebrows. "You may think as highly of your people as you like, but give them enough of a shock and they buckle." He nodded to Karissa's body, then Ayesha. "Case in point." His gaze turned to something behind her. "Recorder Vim?"
Ayesha started to turn, but a sharp, sudden pain in her neck stopped her, and the feeling persisted for a moment too long for comfort before an odd tingling sensation began to take over.
"What..." The rest of her question fell away as her legs crumpled beneath her.
"Oh, Ayesha." The High Evolutionary was crouched in front of her now, one hand resting on her chin as he forced her to meet his gaze. "What a silly little thing you can be. The moment things don't go your way, you abandon all thought or reason in search of the easiest solution. It's childish, really."
He let her head fall as he stood back up, though Ayesha could hear him loud and clear even as darkness began to cloud her vision.
"But don't you worry. Your little Adam will return. If this Lady Fate is as duplicitous as you say she is, I'm sure he'll be running back in no time. And when he can't run to you, he'll run to me."
Ayesha wanted to say something, anything, but her tongue had turned to lead—along with the rest of her body—and the last thing she saw was the High Evolutionary order him assistants to "prepare for takeoff" before everything faded to a deep, sickening black.