The Blind Gods
Copyright© 2025 by Wau
Chapter 32: The Angel
The meditation chamber was made of stone, vaulted, with medieval ornamentation that clashed with the eastern palace outside. Gargoyles, representations of the Catholic god and of hell. On the floor, a labyrinth was traced into the cold stone tiles.
The arches multiplied the echoes, and Cass knelt to meditate.
A considerable fatigue weighed upon her. Normally, using the Armor, she would only feel the pressure of sleep after one or two months of continuous wakefulness-sometimes three-but this time, it had only been a few days. The layers of abstraction-Armor, After, and Trust-weighed heavily on her psyche. Something to note, to fix for next time. But she couldn’t afford to sleep, even in the game: if she did, her dreams of Empty Eyes Omega would come to torment-and perhaps kill-innocent citizens of Orion Prime and the surrounding ships. She could disconnect to reach the Hypnos ... but who knew if the AIs would notice her absence? Perhaps the door would be closed to her afterward.
Closing her eyes, a plan for conquering Trust took shape. Intrusive thoughts urged her to focus on the slaves and the Cartel, or to dedicate herself to more useful missions like the Scalar Balance, but she wanted to follow this trail to the end, whether it was fruitful or not.
A sound behind her, and she sprang like a cat, ready to defend herself. A stone statue-an angel, sword in hand-had taken a step forward. It spoke to her in a deep voice: - “Stella Nori, you cheated in Trust. Tell me how, and I will reset your game. Refuse to answer, and you will be banned for one hundred years.”
- “What are you? A program? Are you the designer?”
- “SPEAK!”
The angel raised its sword. Stone hands emerged from the floor tiles and seized Cass’s ankles. She summoned a superhuman effort and broke them, leaping out of the angel’s reach.
- “How do you escape the stone hands? How do you run so fast? How did you modify the Trust program?”
- “Lower your sword, and I’ll tell you.”
Rather politely, and in a remarkably human posture, the angel laid its sword on the ground and waited. She brought up her statistics.
- “Look at the scores given by the After to my metabolism.”
- “Ah,” said the angel, perplexed. “A transfer error? That would be a first in five hundred years.”
- “I don’t think so,” Cass admitted. “I have a body ... I had a genetically enhanced body, through injections.”
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