Restart Again: Volume 2 by Adam Scott (best adventure books to read .TXT) 📗

anybody else, given the chance to compare a true Thrall side by side with an Unbound soldier. A Thrall’s eyes are glassy and without irises or pupils. The change happens as soon as the Dominion gains control, granting the sight of the Thrall to the greater collective. In Attetsia, the coloration and facial scarring was similar, but the eyes of the Unbound soldiers chosen by the Strategist still retained their human features. While the similarities were remarkable, all of the evidence pointed to one unmistakable fact. Those men were not Thralls. I was wrong.

I reflected on the conclusion with detached interest. Does it matter if I was wrong? My motivations were incorrect, but the same goal was achieved in the end. With the General dead and the Strategist in custody, the Elta’sahn Company has failed to...I paused, unable to finish the thought. What was their ultimate goal? If the Dominion truly wasn’t involved, was the Strategist telling the truth about his plot with the King? He seemed confident that we wouldn’t leave the council room alive, so he had no reason to lie. His explanation of the Warp drug makes more sense with my new understanding of the situation, too.

Despite my best efforts, the emotions I held at bay in the back of my mind began to seep through to my conscious thought. If he was telling the truth, why am I here? Why did I have to leave? I wasn’t sent there to foil stupid political plots, I was supposed to save the world! I wanted to scream out in frustration, but I lacked the physical form to do so. I wasn’t killed, and I wasn’t finished! So WHY AM I DEAD?!

“You aren’t dead,” Amaya’s voice spoke into ears I didn’t have. “You pushed yourself too hard, and now you’re asleep.”

You again. The anger that had grown inside me coalesced into a single point, directed at the source of the voice. I already know your trick; you can’t fool me with her voice anymore.

“Oh, Elden,” she said sadly, “I’m so sorry for everything you’ve had to endure. I understand if you can’t trust me.”

It’s not an issue of trust. You can’t be the real Amaya, so you’re either that...thing, or you’re just my subconscious. In either case, whatever you say doesn’t matter.

“Why can’t I be the real Amaya?” She let out a small giggle. “After everything you’ve seen in your lives, why is this so impossible?”

I attempted to steel my resolve, unwilling to fall for another trick from the presence in my head. Just go away. I can’t afford to be distracted right now; I need to be ready when the pain comes.

There was a long pause before Amaya responded. “And when is that?”

I don’t know! It was always after...no. Although she wasn’t there with me, it felt as though I could see the self-satisfied smirk on Amaya’s face that always appeared when she won an argument. There was never a before. The pain was always there in the void.

“I guess that means you aren’t dead, then, doesn’t it?”

No, it could be different now. I threw out the weak defense as my brain struggled to keep up with yet another paradigm shift. Every certainty I had convinced myself of over the course of my life in Kaldan had been called into question, and the implications were too far-reaching to grasp for my frazzled mind.

“Sir, I, um, I think she’s right,”Alda’s voice called out to me in her familiar timid, stumbling cadence. “You’re not dead, just, erm, passed out.”

That can’t be right. A dangerous shred of hope snuck its way into my thoughts. If I was wrong about the Dominion, that means I was wrong about our mission to Attetsia. And if I was wrong about the mission, that means…

“You still have more work to do in Kaldan,” Amaya finished.

“And people that need you!” Alda chimed in.

Lia. The thought of seeing her again sent a surge of energy through me, and for a brief moment, I felt a flicker of corporeal sensation. I’m still alive, Lia.

“She’s waiting for you, you know.” Amaya spoke tenderly, as if to a small child. “It’s been hours, but she hasn’t given up hope yet.”

I felt a slight tingle in what would have been my hand. “She’s praying,” Alda said with a reverent whisper. “At least, I think she is; I’m, um, not very familiar with how prayer works, but that's what it looks like to me, sir.”

The sensation returned as a spark that ran from my hand up to my shoulder and back down again, returning the limb to reality. Faint, truncated phrases echoed through the darkness around me, unmistakably in Lia’s voice. “O Primes of...please grant...to return...bring him back.”

I’m coming, Lia. Energy continued to slowly trace its way around my body, restoring my lost form. I’m not leaving until I keep my promise.

Amaya giggled. “You and your promises, Elden. Have you ever considered that you expect too much from yourself?”

I laughed and shook my head. “No, I haven’t,” I replied aloud. It felt good to laugh after the day’s events, but another thought brought a frown to my face. “I don’t understand what you are. Is this a dream? Or just another trick to get me to lower my guard?” I looked side to side, scanning for some answer through the darkness. “How can this be...you?”

“I don’t know, love,” she answered. “I just feel like me.” There was a sudden shimmer of tiny lights from the void in front of me, and Amaya’s form began to appear, wreathed in a radiant golden glow.

Alda appeared beside her a moment later, smiling up at me. “I’m me, too! At least, I think I am. I’m not sure who else I would be.”

It was a bizarre experience to see the two of them side by side; the separate lives I had lived with each of them seemed to blur together in my current reality. “If the two of you are really here, then maybe—”

“Elden,” Amaya interrupted,