The Three Voices

Three days into the journey, Vesper realized she wasn't hauling cargo; she was hauling a civil war.

The entity, Aion, was not one mind. He was three.

There was **The Sovereign**. He surfaced when Vesper was slow, or when she hesitated. He was cruel, arrogant, and viewed her body as nothing more than a meat-suit to be driven until the wheels fell off.

There was *The Child*. He came out when the desert storms howled at night. He wept memories of golden palaces and a brother who had pushed him off a star.

And there was **The Man**.

"Turn left at the ridge," The Man said quietly as Vesper navigated a field of jagged obsidian.

"The map says straight," Vesper argued, gripping the wheel. Her head throbbed. The blue veins had crept up her neck, forming intricate, tattoo-like clockwork patterns under her jaw.

**The map is from before the Fall,** The Man replied. His voice felt like cool water against the fire in her nerves. **The geography of time has shifted here. There is a sinkhole straight ahead. Turn left.**

Vesper hesitated, then wrenched the wheel left. A moment later, a massive section of the path she had been on collapsed into a subterranean cavern.

"Thanks," she muttered.

**Do not thank me, Vessel. Preservation of the host is preservation of the self.**

"My name is Vesper. Not Vessel."

**Vesper,** he corrected. **Evening star. A transition between day and night. Fitting.**

"Why were you out there?" Vesper asked. She popped a painkiller—her last bottle—dry swallowing the pill. "In the crater."

**I was... disassembled.** The Man’s voice grew heavy. **The Pantheon decided I was obsolete. My brother, Helios, shattered my form and scattered the pieces across the Wastes. You found the Core.**

"Lucky me."

**PAIN.**

The Sovereign surged forward. Vesper screamed, clutching the wheel as liquid fire poured through her right arm.

**YOU DALLIES, MORTAL! FASTER! THE ECHOES CALL!**

"Stop it!" Vesper shouted, tears springing to her eyes. "I’m pushing the engine to the redline! If I go faster, the boiler blows and we both die!"

**THEN DIE RUNNING!**

"Stop hurting her!" The Child’s voice wailed in the back of her mind.

The pain receded as quickly as it had come, leaving Vesper gasping, sweat dripping onto her leather collar.

**Apologies,** The Man said, sounding genuinely exhausted. **He is... impatient. He remembers being a King.**

"He's a jerk," Vesper spat, wiping her mouth. "And you're not much better for letting him drive."

**I cannot control him. I am only the memory of what we were. He is the will. And the boy is the heart.**

Vesper looked at her reflection in the darkened console glass. Her eyes were changing. One was still her natural dark brown; the other was turning a milky, luminous blue.

"We’re halfway there," she whispered to the empty cabin. "Just hold it together, Vesper. Drop him off, get the reward, buy a new life."

She glanced at the heavy canvas bag under the passenger seat. Inside was a "God-Killer"—a scavenged mining charge made of condensed Void-matter. She kept it close.

If Aion tried to take over completely, she wouldn't let him. She’d blow the cockpit, and them with it. She had been abandoned by her parents, by her mentors, by everyone she ever loved. She would not be evicted from her own body.