Page 6 of Reaper Unhinged
“Goodbye.” The beam of light vanished but the button remained.
I took a step forward and once again the beam of light shot down to cut me off.
“Identification required.”
Think, Fee. Think. The Righteous had created this place, so maybe they’d have access. Cassius was one of them, so…
“Identification required,” the voice said again.
“Cassius, Dominion, Righteous, Upper circle.”
There was silence.
Shit, maybe I should have put on a male voice?
“Access granted. Welcome to the archive, the home of the remnants who gave their light to save us all.”
The beam of light pulsed.
Was it going to scan me? Shit, if it scanned me it would know I wasn’t Cassius.
But instead of rushing toward me the beam shot away, down the corridor. The doors blazed in its wake and gold plaques appeared on each of them. The plaques had writing etched into them. Names and dates.
The ones at this end were from a century ago. This must be when the Beyond first started to use the purest souls for boosts. It looked like this system had been in place way before the humans started seeing ghosts and learned about the reapers. But it also told me that the Beyond had managed without burning pure souls for a long time, which meant that regular human souls were getting less effective as batteries.
I scanned the doors as I walked down the corridor. Yep, they were arranged in date order. Each room contained a core. The Beyond had created this place. A resting place for the pure souls they’d burned through. But how the hell was I going to harvest them all? Busting through each door was going to take forever.
There had to be a quicker way. “Um, hello?”
Nothing.
“Keeper? Guardian?”
Nothing.
Shit…what was the system called? Wait, it had called this place an archive. “Librarian?”
“How may I assist Cassius?”
“I need to find a specific…remnant.”
“Name of remnant.”
“Lara Dawn.”
The doors whizzed past in a blur, forcing my stomach back into my spine. I was gonna be sick.
We came to a halt and my eyes wobbled in their sockets. I squeezed them shut and exhaled to ground myself.
“Will that be all?” the librarian asked.
“One moment.” I opened my eyes to find Aunt Lara’s door to my right.
She was here. Behind that door. A remnant, whatever that meant.
“Will that be all?” the librarian repeated.
“No. Can I…Can I see her?”
