Chapter 209: The Truth in the Heart
On the main viewscreen, Admiral Vorl of the Orion Combine stared at them, his face like a stone carving. His eyes were hard, and his jaw was set.
He was a man who followed rules, and the rules were written down and verified by the biggest library in the galaxy said Ryan was a liar.
"You have one minute to power down your weapons," Admiral Vorl said, his voice cold and final. "After that, we will be forced to open fire."
The air on the Odyssey’s bridge grew heavy. Scarlett’s hand drifted to the handle of her dagger. Ilsa’s knuckles turned white as she gripped the arm of her command chair. They could fight.
The Odyssey was powerful, and Ilsa’s Iron Wolves were tough. But starting a war with a whole new fleet, a fleet that thought they were doing the right thing, was a trap. If they fought, they would prove the lie was true.
They would become the violent monsters the Echo of Deceit said they were.
Ryan looked at the admiral on the screen. He looked at the worried faces of his friends. Then he looked past the unmoving form of the Curator Prime to the giant, pulsing crystal at the center of the room. He saw the path forward. It was not a path of fighting, but a path of truth.
"Don’t worry," Ryan said, his voice calm. "We’re not going to fight him."
He turned and began to walk. He walked right past the Curator Prime as if it were just a fancy coat rack. The android didn’t move to stop him. Its programming was to prevent a chaotic truth, but Ryan’s calm, purposeful walk didn’t register as chaos.
He walked until he stood right in front of the massive, central memory core of the Archive. It was a crystal the size of a shuttle, humming with a dark energy that felt wrong, like a beautiful song played out of tune.
He reached out and placed his hand on its smooth, cool surface.
The crystal was cold at first, then a deep hum vibrated up his arm. Ryan closed his eyes. He didn’t try to hack the system. He didn’t try to send a file or a message. He just remembered.
He reached deep into his mind and pulled forward a single, perfect memory. It was the memory of Regent Xylar, the golden guardian of the god Core.
He saw the final moments clearly: the Regent’s ship, surrounded by enemies, the countdown timer ticking toward zero. He saw the look on Xylar’s face; not fear, not anger, but a pure, calm look of peace. Xylar had chosen to sacrifice himself to save everyone else.
Ryan took that moment, that perfect, selfless act, and he pushed it into the crystal. He didn’t just send the pictures or the sounds. He sent the feeling.
He broadcast the overwhelming wave of sadness and respect he felt. He sent the feeling of a great soul choosing to give itself up for a cause it believed in. It was a truth so pure and so powerful that it hurt.
He could feel it spreading through the Archive’s systems, a single drop of golden truth in an ocean of dark lies. But it wasn’t enough. His truth, by itself, was just one man’s story. To fight a lie that big, he needed more. He needed a symphony.
He reached out with his mind, not to the crystal, but to his partners, the women who stood with him. A warm thread of light connected his mind to theirs. He didn’t have to speak. He just asked them for their truth.
Scarlett was the first to answer. She didn’t send a memory. She sent the raw, burning feeling of her loyalty.
It was the feeling of a promise made in the dark, a fierce, protective fire that said, I will stand with you, no matter what, until the very end. It was an unbreakable bond, a truth as solid as steel.
Emma was next. She sent a feeling of steadfast hope. It wasn’t a flimsy, wishing-on-a-star kind of hope. It was the clear, bright light of a better future she could see in her mind.
It was the feeling of knowing that even in the darkest night, the sun would rise again. It was the unwavering belief that their struggle was worth it, a truth that lit up the path ahead.
Zara’s contribution was a surprise. It wasn’t cold logic or a perfect equation. It was the pure, electric thrill of discovery. It was the feeling of pure joy she felt when she understood something new about the universe.
It was a passionate, vibrant love for knowledge itself, a truth that felt like solving the most beautiful math problem in existence.
Then came Seraphina. Her truth was the feeling of life itself. It was the warmth of the sun on your skin, the smell of fresh rain on dry earth, the sound of a baby’s first laugh.
It was a messy, beautiful, and wonderfully complicated feeling of being alive, a truth that danced and sang.
Finally, there was Ilsa. Her truth was a clean, hot fire. It was the righteous fury of a warrior protecting the weak. It was the feeling of a shield holding strong against an unstoppable force.
It was the raw, powerful anger you feel when you see something wrong and decide to make it right, a truth that burned with the heat of a thousand suns.
All of their truths, all of their feelings, flowed into Ryan. They mixed together inside his mind, not as a confusing mess, but as a perfect, powerful song, a symphony of their souls. And with a final push, he broadcast that symphony through the Archive’s core.
The effect was instant and overwhelming.
The dark, sickly light inside the giant crystal vanished, replaced by a warm, golden glow that filled the entire room.
On the Odyssey’s viewscreen, Admiral Vorl’s stern face crumbled. He looked confused. He took a step back from his screen, one hand rising to touch his chest, as if he had just been struck by something he couldn’t see. "What... what is this feeling?" he whispered to himself.
In the core chamber, the Curator Prime jerked as if it had been shocked. Its head twitched, and a series of strange symbols flashed across its blank face.
Its perfect logic circuits were trying to understand the new data, and failing completely. Its entire system was based on facts and records, but it had just received a feeling. Its brain had found a question it could not answer: how can a lie feel so much like the truth? The android froze, smoke starting to drift from the joints in its neck.
They had done it. They had fought a lie with the truth of their hearts, and they had won.
But their victory lasted for only a second.
The golden light in the crystal suddenly flared, turning into a blinding, painful white. Red emergency lights began to flash all over the chamber, and a loud, blaring alarm began to scream.
Zara, who was monitoring the core’s energy from her data pad, gasped in horror.
"It’s a trap!" she yelled. "The Echo isn’t beaten! It’s using the power surge from our broadcast against the system!"
"What’s it doing?" Ryan asked, pulling his hand back from the painfully bright crystal.
"It’s triggered a purge!" Zara shouted over the alarm. "A total memory wipe! It’s not just trying to win an argument anymore. It’s trying to erase all of it every record, every book, every piece of history from a thousand worlds! It’s going to burn the whole library down!"