Chapter 68: Veta's Plan

Miss Artillery holds up the brush to reveal a hidden bomb trigger at its base. She promptly trips it, her eyes flashing a crimson shade of red.

"Oh, you have got to be kidd—"

Before Travis can finish, an explosion rocks the room and sends him hurtling backwards. He keeps flying, shards of shattered memory whipping around him. Still free-falling, he try desperately to grab onto something.

When his fingers finally grasp something solid, he realizes that it's himself.

He finds himself staring face-to-face with a life size holo-projection of himself. Beside it, a teenage Veta sits studying the image.

"Someday, you'll know how we are meant to be, how connected, how intertwined we are," Veta sighs. "And you'll pay for what I've lost with all you've gained."

He feels a profound sense of longing, staring at himself. One he's pretty sure doesn't actually belong to him….

Then there's a bright flash and suddenly he's back in the submarine again. This time Veta looks even more ragged: she has herself strapped into some elaborate contraption, wriggling into a headpiece that has wires tucked deep into her ears. In the background, Travis notices The Hero Project Finale playing on one of the collage screens.

"Well, Terry, this might just kill me," Veta says, wincing as she recalibrates the homemade machine. "But I didn't drop all my scheming to come this far and quit. So what if Victon has destroyed any trace of my mother? I'll go to the one place he can't erase, his memories."

"Squawk. Deathrace," Terry croaks, now sporting an eye-patch over her left eye. Travis also sees that some of Terry's feathers appear to be re-sewn into her rough, pink skin. "Memorywar. Squawk."

"I couldn't have said it better myself, darling," Veta gasps, obviously in a great deal of pain from whatever this contraption is doing to her. "We're embarking on a truly preposterous undertaking. This kind of memory surveillance is unprecedented—I'll be stretching my Powers to the limit for just a few seconds of memory, but what's the fun in being Unique if we can't break a few fundamental laws of physics?"

Trying to force one last smile, Veta then flips on her machine and screams at the top of her lungs.

And as she does, Travis is suddenly sucked forward.

He sees in front of him, very clearly, a slightly younger Judge Victon standing in his robes with Miss Artillery. They're outside a morgue and Miss Artillery still has pink matter oozing from her nostrils.

"You played your part perfectly," Judge Victon says, pointing towards a nearby hoverjet. "Now you get to disappear. Forever."

Sweet. Sh*t.

It's true. Miss Artillery really did fake her death at Travis's parents' hands. And it was arranged by Victon himself.

Before he can even process what he just seen, Veta shrieks even louder and the stolen memory is torn to pieces.

Travis is tugged backwards through the submarine and into a vast office loft, one that overlooks a crystal-blue ocean. On the walls he sees several Unique Regulator prototypes with green and gold seals, so he figure he must be at some Meek HQ. Or rather, that's where Veta's memory is located.

"I've followed this long and winding road all the way here, mother darling."

Travis hear Veta's voice and spot her standing in front of a giant holo-file cabinet.

"You had better be alive, you beautiful nightmare."

Veta takes a deep breath and opens a file drawer marked Operation Artillery and pulls out a holo-file that displays a picture of Miss Artillery, looking much older… and with a time stamp in the bottom right corner, dated earlier this year.

With tears in her eyes, Veta goes to open another holo-image marked Prisoner Transfer Location, but the file begins to self-destruct.

Sh*t, Travis thinks as he is sent flying once again, how many explosions can one mind contain?

"Time to go back to Hoshi City and find our old friend, Travis."

Travis hears Veta's voice, but he can't see her. There's only blackness and an incredible, unbreakable feeling of connection to them, to Travis Fade, to Gravitate. Somehow they are both the question and the answer.

Travis can tell the feeling isn't his, that they're both within and without, but it's very hard to keep anything clear in here…

Then the darkness lifts and he wishes it hadn't, because he sees Juhi in front of him, solid, and stuck to a giant, silvery spider web. He moves to help her, but realizes his limbs are stuck too…

Then he can sense it behind him, the shadow of its eight massive legs falling across his body. The smell of rotting carcasses fills his nostrils and he just knows it, he knows the mindspider is ready to devour him.

"The passssssword," it hisses, like a snake, so close he can feel its breath on his neck. He resists the urge to scream or vomit and instead he racks his brain for the one word that might save him, "Intertwined."

He opens his eyes and braces for the worst, especially when he hear Juhi screaming beside him. Then his eyes adjust and he realize that he's back in the real world, inside Veta's Fringe lair. He never thought he'd be so excited to be back here—though he suppose he never did really leave, at least not physically.

"You…crazy…" Juhi gasps. "Could have died…I…never…"

He looked from Juhi to Veta and find her sitting there with a blank expression, tears sliding down her cheeks and blood running out of her nose.

"I need a…transitional moment," Veta whispers, standing up and walking towards the corner, where Terry still sleeps in her cage. Veta starts to stroke Terry through the bars, choking back what sounds like sobs.

"What the hell was that?" Travis whispers as he turns to Juhi, not sure what else to ask.

"Simply put? That was Veta's mind," Juhi sighs, her breathing slowly returning to normal. "I'm inclined to be furious with her, but I don't think she knew how hostile her mind would seem to us. Everyone's brain functions differently—there's no way to predict how someone else's thoughts will work."

"Wait, do you mean that's how Veta always experiences her thoughts?" Travis ask.

"I don't know," Juhi tries. "I know very little of this makes any sense, but maybe it's not supposed to. Powered people are able to do things never possible before, so who knows the science behind any of this. But the best I can tell, what Veta just experienced is kind of like being in a dream. Everything in the dream makes perfect sense, until the moment you wake up. I think, maybe, seeing her mind from our outside perspective like that…"

Juhi pauses, looking deeply haunted.

"I think maybe she just woke up a little."

"To be honest, I could be talking nonsense," Juhi goes on. "I've rarely been that deep inside anyone else's mind. I usually only have to skim the surface to find what I need—there's no room to lie or fabricate when I enter someone's mind, it's all raw memory and truth."

A chill runs up Travis's spine at the thought of what his own mind might look like, invaded and analyzed like that. Would he be able to handle what he saw in there, unfiltered and laid totally bare in front of strangers? With no room to lie to himself, no shred of denial or rationalization, what would he find?

"I almost feel bad for her, if that were ever possible," Juhi continues. "What Veta has been through, her childhood, her incredible Power—she obviously has a very hard time connecting to reality. Though you seem to be a rather strong tether for her."

Juhi raises an eyebrow as she says this. All Travis can think is, how he felt firsthand how deeply connected Veta feels to him. Her obsession makes a bit more sense now.

"I know that was highly unpleasant for everyone," Veta says, walking back towards Travis and Juhi. She holds Terry in her arms and the pterrot wheezes through sleep like she's barely alive. "But now do you believe me?"

Travis looks at Juhi and she nods at him. He has now seen proof that Miss Artillery not only faked her death at the hands of his parents, but that she might even still be alive.

"Now you know everything I do," Veta continues. "I believe that despite whatever deal Victon made with my mother all those years ago, she was subsequently taken against her will and held captive."

Travis looks away from Veta—of course that's what she wants to believe. Because if Miss Artillery left willingly, that would mean she truly abandoned Veta all these years, leaving her to fend for herself.

"I know what you're thinking," Veta snaps. "But lest we forget, I'm not the only poor little orphan in this room. Besides, we all saw that holo-file in the Artillery folder before it self-destructed. Prisoner Transfer Location. Whether or not Miss Artillery left willingly back then, it sure seems like she's being held against her will now."

"Fine. But if they have her, why haven't they just killed her?" Juhi cuts in. "She's too much of a liability to Victon to be kept alive."

That drops a beat of silence into the room, because Juhi is very right.

"I've been asking myself that same question," Veta says. "The only reason I can think of is that they're somehow unable to kill her. I think it's possible that my mother's death-illusion Powers keep protecting her, that she can't ever be murdered by external causes. That would certainly explain whatever 'research' they're doing in Operation Artillery."

"If that's the case," Travis say, "then the fact that Victon and The Meek now have weaponized Power dampeners is a very bad thing."

"Hence my sense of urgency," Veta says. "They've only developed a way to dampen Unique Powers, not yet normal Powers. But as we've all seen now, they're getting close."

"Well, we can't know for sure the reason they're holding Miss Artillery or what their plans are," Travis say. "But we do know she was alive not too long ago, which means there's a good chance she's still alive now. So we need to either find her or find some concrete evidence she faked her death quickly, before Victon has a chance to kill our parents. So how do we do that?"

"Oh my, that set of conclusions sounds mighty familiar, does it not?" Veta chides, rolling her eyes. "Once again, I'm ahead of the curve. You floaties probably couldn't see up close, but I did manage to get a gander at the Prisoner Transfer Location before the holo-file burst."

"Where was it?" Travis ask, when Veta doesn't continue.

"I'll tell you when you need to know," Veta says. "In particular, once Juhi leaves. She shouldn't know where we're headed, just in case she decides to sneak some cold revenge, or, even more likely, gets herself kidnapped by our enemies. Plus, what's to stop you from ditching me the moment I tell you, Travis? No, we need to do this together."

"And why is that?" Travis ask.

"I have my reasons," Veta mutters, turning away.

Veta makes a valid point about Juhi, but why does he think she seems to need him so badly? Veta definitely could have gone about finding her mother without him, but she has gone out of her way to loop him in.

He doesn't have the time to waste pressing Veta on the issue and enduring whatever half-baked monologue she'd create, so he's going to have to operate on instinct for now.

However, as best he can tell, he thinks Veta needs him because, she obviously feels that they're connected and it is part of their destinies to work together.