The Core: The Dark Enemy

54. The Reunion

Hi Everyone,

55 will be the last chapter of this three book series. It has been a pleasure writing it. Sorry about how long it took to complete but thank you to all of you who endured and stayed until the end. Going forward, I will change my focus to  creating video games, both educational like reading aids for children, and others with science fiction exploration themes.

Also, this series will probably be turned into audio and placed on Youtube so that people who like to listen can enjoy it on the go as well. I already have the channel set up, just need to start recording with a good mic.

This series will be put back online, (After being run through editors.) most likely on Kindle Unlimited so if you desire to have it saved and in your digital collection you might want to copy it to something now. Only around 10% is allowed to stay visible once you try to market it through a company. (Not sure if this will conflict with my Youtube audio recording idea.)

Thanks again,

Ken

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Nurse held onto me for as long as I needed. I had been through it all and had believed that everything was gone. I had forced myself to bear a burden so crushing, only to have someone save me at the end.

I cried, and then when I stepped back to wipe my tears from my face, I looked down and laughed.

Nurse's eyebrows raised, her eyes going wide and looking anywhere else but down.

"Yeah, sorry about that. I lost my clothes somewhere along the line. Could you?"

She rolled her eyes as she hesitated for a second before the swarm rushed in to clothe me in my favorite comfort clothes: a t-shirt and jeans.

The look Nurse gave me, with a crinkle in her eye, made me notice that she was biting her tongue, trying to keep herself from laughing as well.

"Talk about everything later?" she asked, her opal eyes swirling with every emotion as she gazed into mine.

"Yes, later for everything," I said as I let my hands drop, holding hers at the end and giving them a soft squeeze.

The first AI I went to rescue was Tutor, my first friend in all of this.

I knelt down in front of her on both knees and lowered myself until my gaze was level with hers. Then I reached up with both hands and cupped her cheeks gently, willing her to come back to me.

This time, I felt the drain harder.

Null's merging had changed my understanding of what I was doing. Undoing damage took more effort than causing it. Healing always cost more than breaking.

The depth I saw in Tutor's eyes was akin to the darkness she had shown me when she was dealing with all of her kin that had been lost when the Core was devoured. Her return was like watching her being raised up from the bottom of that well as her gaze slowly turned to pinpoints.

"Kevin?" she asked, her voice shaky and uncertain.

Her hands snapped up and gripped mine tightly, like someone catching hold of a ledge after slipping over the edge of a cliff. We stayed there for a while, simply staring at one another as reclaimed memories flooded back into place behind her eyes.

Then her expression shifted.

"I can't feel you," she whispered.

"Ah, yeah. I have to go whack my hand on my old Personal Live Matrix again so that I can have access. I will get to that after I restore George and Invicta. Then we can all head inside and have a long chat about everything," I said, gently wiping my thumbs against her cheeks before standing up and moving over in front of George's repetitive trek. Her hands only reluctantly released their grip on mine.