Paradox Slaughter by Jake Bible

Author:Jake Bible [Bible, Jake]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severed Press
Published: 2018-04-08T22:00:00+00:00

21.

Roak’s sleep was far from restful.

Dreams assaulted his psyche and kept him from ever going too deep. His conscious mind hovered within the dreams, semi-aware that nothing was real yet fully aware that there was significance in the dreams themselves.

Or not. Dreams had a way of meaning nothing while also meaning everything.

Roak suffered through the psychological labyrinth that was his subconscious. All the barely veiled symbols and double meanings. All the past memories and future guesses. All the buried pain and repressed episodes in Roak’s life.

“Hello, Roak,” Bishop said as he sat on the ledge of an impossibly tall building.

The building reminded Roak of Shava Stemn Shava’s headquarters back on Jafla. Roak wondered if the building was still there and occupied by someone new after Roak had killed Shava Stemn Shava. Or did the Jafla authorities raze it to get rid of the symbol of corruption that it had stood for.

“Different building,” Bishop said, reading Roak’s mind since Bishop was a part of Roak’s mind.

Except it wasn’t Bishop. It was Roak that Roak was speaking to. But still Bishop. Dream logic.

“Where are you?” Roak demanded.

“You know,” Bishop replied. “You know exactly where I am. I haven’t been hiding.”

“That’s exactly what you’ve been doing,” Roak said. “Or I would have found you by now.”

“You should have found me by now,” Bishop said. “I’m pretty easy to find.”

“Why betray me, Bishop? What’d I do to deserve that?”

“Do you want a list? I can make you a list.”

“I’ve always been straight with you.”

“But you’ve never been straight with yourself.”

“Knock off the psychobabble shit, Bishop! I know you are a figment of my dream. I know you aren’t real. But here you fucking are, so I’m going to talk to you like it’s you and not a piece of me.”

“Gonna mine your own mind, is that it?” Bishop laughed. “Do you even hear yourself, Roak? Even in your dreams, even in your very own mind, you hunt. You are, right this second, interrogating yourself for intel. That is messed up, man.”

Bishop became Yellow Eyes.

“So messed up, man,” Yellow Eyes said.

“What do you have to do with all this?” Roak asked.

“Unlucky passenger on the Roak train wreck, man. I got all swept up in your net of violent chaos and couldn’t get free in time. Like that Zxixwell woman. She doesn’t know anything, man. You can feel that she doesn’t know anything. But now she’s in a damn med pod because her brain is on the fritz.”

“I didn’t do that,” Roak replied.

“Technically, no,” Yellow Eyes said. “But you triggered it. That woman was so bio-teched out that even she didn’t know she had a protocol in place that would wipe her clean if she got too close to sharing information she wasn’t supposed to share.”

“Triggered,” Roak said. “Yeah. I triggered the mind wipe.”

Roak nodded for a few seconds then started shaking his head.

“Knowing that doesn’t help me at all,” he said. “It only confirms that she is part of something larger than just the Tanji Corporation.

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