Chapter 57

***This article contains spoilers.***

## Highlights

* John achieves electrokinesis and pyrokinesis.
* Dana and Alyssa plan to make a trust fund to help orphans.
* Dana presents her new Paragon Body Armor with flight and medevac mode.
* Edraele captures House Loraleth assassins.

## Summary

Alyssa does psi-shaping art with Crystal Alyssium.

John achieves electrokinesis. Jade and Alyssa suggest his difficulty learning psychic powers is because his logic requires proof first. Alyssa recommends imagining his mind as a lot of little compartments. John manages three.

Alyssa looked at the metaphysical representations of the girls in her mind.

* **Irilith**: A beautiful, blue rose, her once-sharp thorns having faded away, leaving the slender, green stem smooth (Chapter 53). There were a few remaining barbs, despite her personality having transformed radically since she had first joined.
* **Calara**: Radiating happiness, now with a new level of peaceful contentment after her sparing session with John (Chapter 56).
* **Rachel**: Revitalised with a renewed sense of purpose (Chapter 56).
* **Jade**: A mosaic of tiny stone pebbles, still representing her look of absolute devotion, but now with her perception of her own status raised substantially, and no longer as slavishly deferential to John (Chapter 42).
* **Dana**: Radiating waves of impatience as she hadn't been with John since before Progenitor John took over weeks ago (Chapter 52).

Dana is impressed from analyzing Irillith's laser rifle, but of course finds many ways to improve it.

Irillith wakes up and describes getting overwhelmed by flickering numbers and letters (Chapter 56).

John wants Dana and Alyssa to use the half-billion credits they'll make from Dana's Tyrenium trade to make a trust fund to help orphans. Alyssa volunteers to administer it, as it's more useful than her current side-project of memorizing the galaxy. She'll master finance and business administration, and then use all the profits she makes to grow the fund. Alyssa also agrees to handle John's money too.

John achieves pyrokinesis.

Dana presents her new Paragon Body Armor.

* They have an inner and outer layer of armor, with modified heatsinks incorporated between the layers. Temperature sensors detect the ambient heat levels, then adjust the outer shell of the armor to match the temperature, allowing for instant invisibility to thermal imaging.
* With Alyssa's refined armor crafting techniques, she was able to eliminate a lot of the useless substructure between the plating layers. The new armor is at least twice as tough as the old enhanced Phalanx suits (Chapter 21), and Heavy Laser hits shouldn't penetrate.
* It now has flight mode, using miniaturized Trankaran retro-thruster tech fitted in the back below the suit’s power core, and anti-grav generators in the wrists and calves which help stabilize and guide flight.
* It has a medevac control, protected by a DNA reader and linked to friendly suits, that will keep a patient hovering behind whoever activates it, using anti-grav generators in the boots and gauntlets. It's possible to tow the whole team, since proximity sensors in the suits will prevent them bashing into each other.

Loraleth agents Avelissa and Renaya arrive at Genthalas Shipyard, having been prepared new identities as technicians to assist with the fleet upgrade. While security was tight, no one had questioned their identification tags, and they were able to pass unimpeded to the quarters they were sharing.

They perform a brief reconnaissance, and find it off that the mood was uncharacteristically happy, when it should be fearful while the cruel Edraele is there in person. They meet with an engineer named Ioelena, who appeared to have dyed her hair white like the other engineers around Genthalas. Ioelena gives them a data stick containing Edraele's schedule. Ioelena had already prepped assassins from Houses Aeberos, Naestina, and Ghilwen, who will eliminate nearby military personnel and suppress any electronic alarms, to give Avelissa and Renaya time to attack Edraele at a staff meeting once her bodyguards are drawn away. Ioelena told them she dyed her hair white because Edraele seems to favor those who do.

The location that Ioelena had highlighted for Edraele’s assassination was on the edges of the activated section of Genthalas Station, reasonably close to the docking bays there, but on the other side of the station from the busier mercantile and drydock areas. They plan to set explosives in that main corridor, then wait for the detonation, and finish Edraele if she survived.

Avelissa and Renaya are hooking the explosives inside a wall-mounted comms console when suddenly, heavy doors slam shut between them and green gas starts pumping into the corridor. Avelissa hurls the detonator down the corridor, ripping a hole through the reinforced barrier, and flees through the gap.

Luna and Ilyana approach, telling the assassins to surrender because the they don't wish to hurt them. Avelissa got out her four-foot-long sword and fought Luna, who was vastly superior at swordfighting. Luna flicked her sword away, and Ilyana put her in a hold.

Just as Avelissa was blacking out, Luna told her, “*I promise you’ll be quite safe. Edraele wishes to meet with you*."

This did not soothe Avelissa.