Sigma/Star

Chapter 73: Consequences

"Something isn't right." Sigma shifted his view from the fire up towards the night sky. His internal processors had generally been running low to avoid detection, but they were still powerful enough to latch onto some of the billions of wireless signals floating through the air around him. His mind was always buzzing, always calculating and intercepting and translating, always committing itself to doing as many different tasks as it could. Sigma had just gotten used to letting it run in the background of his more conscious thoughts.

There had been a spike though, a little moment where things didn't click correctly. A little morsel of information, a scrap, about a war zone near the Enian-Artisan border. It sat and nestled itself into Sigma's brain, quickly demanding attention. He would give it that attention.

"What's not right?" Doctor Roth prodded the fire a little bit with a stick, watching sparks shoot up in response. "Nothing's wrong with the fire. I've been making them quite a lot when I was on the run. I think I can control it."

"No...something else. Further away."

"Oh." Roth continued to play with the coals and the flames they produced in silence now, not wishing to interfere with another of Sigma's internal conflicts.

"I have received no orders of any confrontations that we must engage in." Allyson said, her eyes scanning Sigma in curiosity.

"You don't receive any orders Allyson because you cannot receive them." Leif glanced at her father, who had disabled Alpha's communication network with the Eastern United States, the country she had been supposed to be sold to. She couldn't get any other orders from anyone else either, including Christian, in case they tried to reach out to her. She only listened to Sigma, automatically interpreting him to be a superior officer because of his length of activation and his leadership. "I don't like what's going on in the world right now."

"Nobody likes what's going on in the world," Roth spat, a little anger at himself mixed in. "But what are you going to do? We're fugitives, we're on the run, and we're trying to lay low for the next while. We can't just go out every time you think something bad is happening."

"We aren't going anywhere." Sigma stood and began walking through the forest towards the edge of the island. He had been here almost every day, spending an hour standing with the sand on his feet and the waves washing over his legs, wondering what that must have felt like once in his life. Today was different though. This time he would stand on the beach and gaze out over the black ocean, watching it meld with the star-studded sky above. And he would make a decision. "I am the only one going anywhere. I have to. But I will return again."

A streak of purple shot up into the air, and Roth watched it fade away. "That boy just can't get his head on straight." The doctor saw Allyson staring up as well, her eyesight able to see Sigma in incredible detail far beyond what Roth's human eyes could glimpse.

"Doctor, where is Leif going?" Roth's head perked up upon hearing the question. As much as Sigma had attempted to explain the past to Alpha, she had never reiterated it once before, and she certainly hadn't ever called Sigma by his real name before. What was going on with these androids?

* * * * *

McCormack rolled out of the way of a charging Bahari, watching the mutated monster fly past him and crash into another Goliath, tearing into it with tooth and claw. That was the first time at which the general had finally recognized that the Jahari might have actually been a bit more than a myth. It took one of their creations lunging for him before he realized that this wasn't just another battle between the political powers at the top.