I watched the first council of Camelot start from the spiderbot’s camera. Sam did most of the talking. He was smiling a lot, which was good to see, but it wasn’t at the same time. Whenever I saw him or Camille joking and laughing with everyone that had come to Camelot, I felt a nervous energy build up inside of me. Normally, it would go away after a little while, but the longer I sat at the meeting, the more it grew, until it was unbearable.

So I left.

I let the spiderbot stay where it was, keeping connected to it so that I could monitor the meeting’s proceedings. I flowed through the streams of information, a million different rivers of bright white. I knew instinctively where they went to, what they carried. If I paid close attention, I could feel the way I moved, bouncing between the little packets that carried data, like I was hopping on stepping stones

I found myself heading towards Camelot’s server room. They were arrayed in a massive room, rows and rows of computers stretching for hundreds of feet. Nothing much had changed since the last time I’d visited it, but I checked it thoroughly nonetheless. I flickered through the immense amounts of data, catching brief impressions of it as I passed through. I paused when I reached a certain point, like I always did.

There was a cluster of information there, one that I had hidden away from the rest of the system. A woman with bright red hair and a beautiful smile was kept inside of it. Hundreds of videos, call logs, images. Smiles, frowns, tears. Her laughter, her irritation, her joy and her sorrow. A reliquary of data, a memorial for the dead.

I brought up a photo of her, one where she was grinning at me through the camera. The mosaic of pixels that made her created an image in my mind.

“Hello, Mom,” I whispered into the empty server room. At first, I had felt foolish speaking through the intercom to nothing. But it also felt right.

“I just wanted to tell you that there are some new faces down here in Camelot, the ones I had told you about before. Our home is crowded now. I think you’d like it.”

I trailed off. The hum of the servers filled the camera’s sensors. It was a comforting noise, and part of the reason that I liked being down here so much.

“I don’t think I do, though. I miss when it was just us. I miss not having to wear a mask.”

I felt horrible for saying it out loud. It had been my choice not to tell them about myself. At any point, even now during the meeting, I could explain who I really was. Why I didn’t came down to a simple fact.

“I’m afraid.”

What if they didn’t accept me? What if they were repulsed by me? What if they hated me? I was under no illusions that Sam and Camille were the exception rather than the norm.

“It’s so much easier to wear the mask, Mom.”

I caught my voice quavering and my emotions flaring up. I forced my mind onto a more positive track.

“It’s not all bad though. Sam asked me if I would need a new spiderbot to use for the meeting. It was just a simple question. But it meant that I was expected to be there, that he wanted me to have a physical presence at the table. A small thing, he probably didn’t realize he had done anything, but it meant the world to me. I guess I wanted to let you know that I’m okay. I’m in good hands, Mom, so you don’t have to worry about me.”

The voice that I’d made for myself echoed in the server room, and the silence I received seemed to be mocking me. I ignored the flash of pain that coursed through me, and closed the files that I’d opened, placing them back where they’d come from. I would visit her again soon. I was preparing to leave when it happened.

Something touched my conscious.

I froze. I had never felt anything like that before. It had been a flash, so brief that I wasn’t sure if I had simply imagined it. I was still trying to find out where it came from when I heard someone calling for me from the hallway outside the command center, a camera’s microphone relaying the voice to me. In an instant, I placed myself there.

“Yes, Camille?” I said, focusing the camera’s lens onto her face.

She smiled up at me, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear as she did so, “Hey Addy. Just wanted to check in on you. You’ve been awfully quiet during the meeting.”

Had I been able to smile, I would have given her one back. Instead, I tried to infuse warmth into my tone, “I’m sorry, it’s just that it is hard to get a word in edgewise in there.”

She laughed, “Yeah, we need to get a talking stick or something for Mr. Chatterbox. I swear he gets off to the sound of his own voice.”

I laughed with her, and it felt good. Hopefully, one day I would be able to laugh like this with everyo-

It happened again. Something alien was feeling for me. I recoiled and lashed out around me mentally. The lights in the hallway flickered as the power running through them wavered. A piercing screech of static rang out from the intercom, just for a moment before it fell silent again.

I belatedly noticed Camille yelling my name. There was concern scrawled on her face. With a pang of guilt, I ignored her. I had to focus on what was lurking in Camelot. I had to protect them from it.

It wasn’t long before it came for me once more. This time it was a gentle probe rather than a blind feeler. I stifled my panic and observed the anomaly, letting it come closer and closer. It was a small black tendril in the white stream of information. Not fully sure what I was doing, I extended part of myself to it, and made contact.

I felt something push back at me lightly, curiously. There was a dull blankness to it, like an empty piece of paper.

After a moment it moved backwards, stopping a small way away from me, waiting for me to move after it. I had a horrible feeling that I knew where it was coming from. I followed the tendril anyway, darting through the rivers of data, across to Camelot’s secondary facility.

There was a room there, a sealed off chamber with thick walls of hardened alloy. Inside was a dome of pitch-black metal, surrounded by railguns and plasma turrets. They were rigged to fire at the first hint of a breach from within. Should they fail, the anti-matter explosives placed throughout the room would detonate.

We were keeping something there, a nightmare. The first of its kind to be held since the race was discovered. I felt it again, that presence on the edge of my mind, far stronger now. It was a cry, a plead, but it was more than that. It was familiar.

The Matriarch was calling to me.

END OF BOOK 1