Spheres of Influence-eARC by Ryk E Spoor Read Free Book Online Page A

The one that murdered—”
    “The very one,” DuQuesne’s face was dark, and Simon thought he saw, unbelievably, a trace of fear as well as anger and sadness.
    “And now she’s loose in the Arena,” Saul closed his eyes and shook his head.
    “So she was the one you didn’t want following us.” Ariane said, apparently putting some things together. “And I suppose her name isn’t even Shoshana.”
    “Not that far off.” DuQuesne looked into the distance sadly, and Wu Kung’s face was suddenly filled with horror and confusion.
    “No, DuQuesne!” he said in shock. “No, not her!”
    “Yes, Wu. I’m sorry.” He looked momentarily at Saul, then at the still-questioning eyes of Ariane. “She always uses a variant of her real name…though,” he continued with a twisted smile, “never her last name. Just her first.” He gazed out a window, clearly seeing something else… A ghost, Simon suddenly knew, a terrible broken vengeful ghost from the past that never leaves him.
    “Just…Maria-Susanna.”

Chapter 4.
    Ariane looked at the mixture of anger, sorrow, and pain on DuQuesne’s face, and the horror on that of the Hyperion Monkey King, and instantly understood. “Oh, my god,” she murmured. “She was one of the five, wasn’t she?”
    “Yeah,” DuQuesne said slowly. “One of us. One of the best of us, in the beginning.”
    “Five?” Simon echoed.
    She glanced at DuQuesne; he said nothing, but gave a very brief nod.
    But she didn’t have to speak. Instead, Saul Maginot sighed and said “Yes. I suppose all the old secrets are coming out, and the final bill is coming due on that atrocity.”
    For a moment he paused, and in that moment he looked old, old and tired and very, very sad. “The descriptions of Hyperion were…very heavily censored. Redacted, data erased, entire databanks vaporized. Some of that was quite considered and deliberate; the few survivors were to be given a chance to live without that hideous ghost following them everywhere they went. Some of it…was simple reaction, such absolute revulsion and denial that traces of a truth we didn’t want to face had to be destroyed.
    “So, you see, the real details weren’t known, and the few you know…were very simplified.” Now he told the same story DuQuesne had told her during their trip, but from the point of view of a man who had seen it from the outside. “Five brillant successes, five people who somehow saw through the engineered illusions of minds that should have been as far beyond theirs as theirs were beyond those of the average person. Five friends who then managed to engineer a plan to attain freedom for every one of their fellow heroes…and who saw that plan nearly succeed.”
    Saul Maginot turned away, shook his head. For a moment, Ariane wondered if he could continue. I can’t even imagine what happened to him, what he and his people saw when they entered a collapsing Hyperion Project.
    “And of those five, fighting to save not just themselves, but my own people, soldiers and scientists and volunteers from a dozen other habitats who found themselves in the middle of a kaleidoscope of hell…of those five, two died so others would live, one escaped and retreated into herself, one survived to live again,” he nodded to DuQuesne, “and one…one broke. ”
    “How? How could she break, DuQuesne?” Wu demanded plaintively, staring pitifully at Marc DuQuesne… like a child asking why Mommy wasn’t coming home again , Ariane realized, and felt a pang of agonized sympathy. “She was always one of our supports, she always had a smile and a word for anyone, she…”
    “Anyone can break, Wu.” The big Hyperion’s voice was gentle. “And though you couldn’t see it, she didn’t really belong . She was an anomaly to begin with, and that made her fatally flawed. She started to break as soon as we all woke up, but even I couldn’t see it; she was just as good as the rest of us at hiding things.”
    AHHH. MY