Sooner Dead (Gamma World) - Mel Odom [111]
“No. That is not what I wanted.”
Hella knew she spoke the words, but she also knew they were the woman’s words, not hers. She was looking through the woman’s eyes.
Ocastya touched the chair again, and it turned a light green and burned with light from within. “There. Much better.” She turned, walked over to one of the walls, and touched it.
Immediately a vid feed pumped through the surface. The images were of a city like nothing Hella had ever seen. Tall spires reached for the sky, and small aircraft flitted between the metallic canyons. All of the buildings looked as if they’d been made from seamless metallic glass. As she watched, a few of them changed colors, and the transition briefly turned them into prisms. Beyond them, in a golden sky, two suns—one nearer and one farther—shone down.
“Ocastya.”
Hella recognized the name even though the nuance of it was different. She turned to face a doorway that suddenly came into being.
Scatter stepped into the room. He didn’t look human. He looked exactly as Hella had first seen him. He smiled but Ocastya pulled away. She blinked and Scatter was suddenly human in appearance. He was tall and thin and blond, handsome.
“Hella? Are you there?” The Scatter in front of her didn’t speak, but she heard him inside her head.
“Yes.” Panic welled up in Hella, and she tried to control it. She closed her eyes, and it was strange to realize she didn’t know if Ocastya closed hers as well. When she opened her eyes again, Scatter was metallic.
“You will have to control Ocastya at this point. We are in her subconscious mind, in her memories. She will fight against you and your perception of me. She sees me now as you see me, and that … is not easy. This is from a time before we had to give up our flesh-and-blood bodies. She is every bit as frightened as you are. Do you feel her fear?”
“Yes.”
Regret flashed across Scatter’s face. “I would not wish this for either of you.”
“I understand.” Hella made Ocastya stand when all she wanted was to run. “It’s hard to keep her here.”
“I know but you have to do it.” Scatter placed a hand against Ocastya/Hella’s head. The metal palm felt cold and hard. “Together we have to remember all that we can in order to save her.”
And to save you. Scatter had stated that his continued existence depended on Ocastya’s.
The world opened up again, and Hella fell through, going deeper than before.
When she opened her eyes again, Hella thought the perspective was all wrong. The world looked huge. Then she caught a glimpse of herself/Ocastya reflected in a nearby window and realized she was just a little girl of six or seven.
Scatter’s face formed in the window reflection. “I did not meet Ocastya as a child, but I got to know her as a child through her memories when we shared them.”
Hella stared at the stranger in the mirror, at the metallic dress she wore, and knew that Ocastya was younger in the memory than Hella could remember from her own life. How could Ocastya remember those things so well when Hella didn’t have the first clue?
“You must be patient, Hella. Your memories of your parents will come back to you when they are ready. They are there waiting for you. When the time is right, you will have them again.”
Hella swiftly quelled the tremor of hope that quivered inside her, focusing instead on the task she had ahead of her. When danger was around, you paid attention to that first. Stampede had drilled that into her.
“Ocastya?” A male voice called from behind Hella. She turned toward it and saw a tall man with a generous face and a smile looking at her.
“This is her father.”
Hella could have guessed that. She wanted to fight as the big man reached down and took her up into his arms, but Ocastya embraced him instead. The man’s scent and his cologne filled Hella’s nose and made one of them sneeze.
“He was a good man, a good father.” Scatter sounded sad. “Ocastya lost him when we made the transitions to our new bodies. She lost her mother too. She also lost two brothers and a sister.”
A wave of sadness