All my focus was on building the Machine.
It's impossible to properly describe the feeling of being in that war room as the mission failed; I mean, they achieved the goal of destroying the space station I guess, but that led to a worse discovery... Or maybe it was good. If my theory was correct, it might give us a chance to fix things.
That chance felt scarily small.
A part of me had hoped that as I explained my ideas to the others, that other, smarter, better equipped people than me would be able to step in and make things work. Instead everyone is treating me as if I'm the expert, instead of simply being the unlucky person who was there to witness the ghost connection to everything that was happening now. The idiot kid meddling in situations she had no place to be, then and now
I worked myself to exhaustion, for multiple reasons. I knew that the Staarus plan could go ahead any day now, especially now that they basically probably knew that we knew about it. We needed to finish the work, test everything, give it our best go, as soon as humanly possible. Or paladanianly possible. Or Weraynian-ly. That doesn't really work. Whatever.
But also I felt sick whenever I even stopped for a break, and was just... super dreading when I would eventually be forced to put everything down and try to sleep. I'd played this game before, I knew what awaited me. Dreams, nightmares, memories, getting to relive watching my friends die, getting pulled back into the spiral. Even working so hard that I passed out wouldn't prevent it though, I had no control over my thoughts while asleep. Still, I toiled.
Abigail had obviously decided she was in charge of taking care of everyone. Now that we were on Werayne we shared the room with Jayken and Alexa, and when we weren't there we were in the hangar. Abigail pushed us all to eat and to take turns resting
Once we had the core structure of the Machine in place, we set to work laying cables to our monitoring equipment.
I wished we didn't need her to test the Machine, I'd do anything not to have to put her through that. I knew she hated the thought of it, it reminded her of the scrutiny she was under at HQ.
The Protector had procured a Staarus ship and gone to meet Rojjel on Halapatov. The site where the ghosts had amassed was [guarded? Monitored?]
I knew we needed to figure out who had the go button for this thing. It was probably at HQ. We occasionally were able to wrangle an encoded update from Trista, who was our inside man there still. They had extra defenses aganst the Protector now, apparently. We guessed she would still be able to get in there but it wouldn't help much. We didn't know what we were looking for anyway. This tech was so experimental, it could be connected from anywhere.
Abigail stood ready. Most of the team was manning the monitors. I set to work feeding in the code that Rojjel had been able to decrypt with the help of the data from the Weraynian prison. I didn't know if it was encouraging or upsetting that the code, without all the extra force field stuff, was so familiar. The telport watch had code just like this, I'd been working in this dimension longer than I'd thought. I mean, it reinforced my theory about the ghosts and staar matter.
She pulled her hands from the Machine as if shocked. She looked terrified. "I could feel it." she said.
Alexa was crouched with her head in her hands. Jayken knelt beside her.
She fell. I watched her fall like it was in slow motion. As the rest of the room woke up around us I extricated myself from the machine and ran over to her. I rolled her over. She wasn't breathing. Everything was spinning. Even though the chaos from before had stopped the room was still screaming. I was nine and I was thirteen and I was fourteen and I was sixteen losing my dad, ammi, Aldred, Riowyn forever and they were all her. It was like a part of me had been wrenched out and twisted and stabbed and then returned so I could go through it again. I couldn't think. I had to think. Did CPR work on Paladanians? Her skin was still warm. I couldn't let this happen again. I placed her on her back, tried not to scream as her head lolled back. I placed my hands on her chest and thrust them desperately downwards, hearing bones bend as I tried to maintain a rhythm. I watched her for a response. I had no idea if this was working or I was just breaking her body.
Then there was something. A flicker of life. Maybe I imagined it. The base was havoc around me. I could hear people speaking but nothing was getting through to me. I was so close to saving her. I went to start the next round of compressions and then out of nowhere hands grabbed mine. I looked up and saw Alexa's eyes looking bloodshot into mine. I tried to snatch my hands back but someone grabbed me from behind and I was dragged away from her body. NO.
I kicked and screamed and struggled, watching as other people, people who didn't know her, surrounded her. It was Jayken pulling me back, I realised, and Alexa was following us. I spewed the worst things I could think of at them. How could they leave her? After everything she'd done for them? How could they separate me from her?
"Abi!! Abi!" I screamed and screamed, but she was gone.
Tears streamed down my face. It couldn't end like this. I'd killed her. I'd killed her. I heard muttering around me, felt a sharp prick on my arm and then I heard no more.