EDEN: Dark Universe

CHAPTER | FIFTEEN

It wasn't quite lightheadedness. If sensations had families, then what Eden was feeling right now was like a cousin to being light headed. Instead of woozy, teetering, and nearly falling, her head was quite literally less heavy. This bizarre state of mind and body seemed to give the desire to sleep an extremely seductive level of power. There was also a strange... what could she call it? A hum? Not a hum of the ears, but one of the mind. Eden quickly realized that if she thought of the brain-sound for too long, she might go insane. She quickly moved on.

"I feel funny," she said.

"An odd twist," Talia said. "Thus far on this little adventure you've been relatively humorless."

"She means unwell," Arissa said. "And don't pretend you're a dumb robot that doesn't understand human expressions."

"You think very highly of me. Irrelevant data like that is stored in low-priority, compressed state. You try storing eighty-five zettabytes of information in your head " She paused. "Eden, take a seat. When was the last time you've had fluid intake?"

"I—"

"Don't remember? That's very telling. Forget what I said about sitting. Go to the pantry and grab some water. I would do it myself, but..." she waved her holographic hand through a solid bulkhead. "Butter fingers."

Eden gave Talia a curious look, to which Talia replied, "It's an old human expression. You wouldn't understand."

Arissa, long-since tuned out from the fluid-intake discussion, caught something on the race's holographic display and jumped on the microphone. "Jack, what the hell are you doing?"

***

"Just. Making. Friends," he replied, each word interrupted by the very deliberate broadside rams he was giving one of his opponents.

"Funny." Arissa said.

"How's that?"

"Because it looks like you've been crashing into every racer you can catch."

"That's. Right," Jack said, delivering another spark-making scrape against yet another opponent. "You're a tactician. Why might I. Be. Doing. This?"

"I get the idea, Jack. You're playing the role of the tank, putting a target on your back so they leave Jaeek alone. There's just one problem."

"Say it." Jack looked to his right and saw one particularly furious racer glaring at him from the cockpit. It was another human, and they started hitting back, slowly crushing Jack's pod closer to the titanium wall on his left.

"The tank can usually take hits better than the one it's protecting," Arissa said. "You're just in a race pod."

The furious racer strafed away, winding up for one final hit that would slam Jack directly into the wall.

"Correction," Jack said. "I have two race pods."

As the furious racer made his mad strafe towards him, Jack pulled up with a knife's edge dodge. To the racer's right, there was Kane, who poured all of his pod's power into assisting the racer's momentum, preventing him from stopping and pushing his slide further, right into the wall.

Jack steered his pod back towards the relative safety of the center track.

"Hey Arissa?"

"Yes, Jack?"

"I can hear you grinning over the comm system. You proud?"

"Yes, Jack."

"Plenty more where that came from."