Free The Soul Continuum by Simon West-Bulford Page B

rolled the length of the room. The occasional shower of sparks spits at us as we edge deeper inside, and after a few more steps, the scene at the other end starts to make sense. There is an inky seething cloud exactly like the one we saw in the field earlier, but much smaller. Like an angry animal, it crashes repeatedly against a protective bubble of shimmering light, inside of which I can see three figures: my parents and Ezra Fabrine.
    Candice picks up the pace as we move closer, and soon I can see that Ezra is nothing more than a skeleton on the floor, black and charred. Father holds a device from the silver box they took with them. His fingers frantically work across a keypad, his face a rictus of fear as he glances from the nanodrones to the keypad, and my guess is that he is failing to keep them at bay. Her back to him, Mother taps equally frantically at another keypad on a desk.
    â€œDad!” Candice screams.
    Candice bolts forward toward the corpse while I just stand there dumbstruck at the sight before me. My parents look around, distracted by the shout, and their faces contort in horror. But there is no time. Before they are able to acknowledge either of us, the orb reduces in size and the nanodrones wash over it like a deadly black cloak. Father returns to the keypad, his fingers working in a blur, and the bubble expands again, forcing the cloud back. Mother turns back to her console too, but I hear her shout above the crackle of energy.
    â€œSalomi, you have to get out of here. Get back to the surface. Quickly!”
    I want to obey, but my feet are rooted to the spot. Candice reaches the edge of the bubble and drops to her knees, staring at her father, wailing at the smoky remains, but she doesn’t stay there for long.
    â€œYou bastards!” she shouts at my parents. “This is all you. It’s your fault. Your fault my dad is dead.” She stabs an accusing finger at Mother. “He never wanted any part of this, and now he’s dead.”
    Mother shakes her head. “No! That’s not—”
    â€œShut up!” Candice is a trembling statue of rage, fists clenched as she snarls at Mother. “You’re going to deny what you did to all of us? You’re going to deny that you were the ones who screwed with our DNA? You can’t lie. I saw it all in Dad’s diary.”
    Father almost drops his keypad and fumbles to keep it in his hands. He gapes at Mother, but her eyes are fixed on Candice, and I think I see a flicker of anger in them. It is only when a surge from the nanodrones crackles against the bubble that all of us realize her attention has been away from her console too long. Mother hesitates as the nanodrones draw closer to Candice, shifting and writhing into a mass of tentacles. Before anyone has a chance to react, they are upon her, scooping Candice from the floor and lifting her high into the air. Father panics, smashing his fist into the machine as he looks at the dying girl, but Mother’s fingers are still as she watches, and I wonder what she is thinking about.
    â€œI can’t stop them,” Father shouts. “Elba, do something.”
    She blinks, as if shaking herself from a trance, and then her hands work the keypad furiously.
    A strangled, wet-sounding scream erupts from Candice as she is dropped, broken and twisted, to the floor. Her tracker suit is burning, melting like dissolving foam, and beneath the material her skin bubbles and froths into clumps, sliding off the bone and sizzling like burnt meat on a grill. Still I cannot move. I am in rapture, totally dazzled by the display, but now the cloud comes for me. My vision swims as I take one step back, but my decision to move is more so that I can take in the view of this incredible swarm as it swoops in micro-murmuration. In a heartbeat it morphs into something new, something spellbinding. It is like a tree. Roots and branches splitting out in all directions, beaming in a rainbow of