Exorcism

Cerra Manor - Medical Bay
10-30 YC 116 0400

Ryven was awake when Leela entered the medical bay that served as his current prison cell.  He was handcuffed and, aside from the large bandaged wound in his abdomen, he looked no worse for the wear.  Actually, he looked genuinely pleased to be there.  If this Ryven weren't such an asshole, Leela might have even felt some sympathy for what she assumed was a fairly painful gunshot wound.  She quickly shook off those thoughts and focused on what she came here to do.

Ryven spoke first. "I didn't expect you so soon." He smiled. "Apparently my captivity has done wonders for your research."

Leela shrugged. "It gave me a break from my routine.  I was able to come at the problem from a different angle.  An angle I should have seen ages ago because it was so obvious."

Ryven's expression made it clear he wanted her to get on with explaining it.

Leela shook her head. "What we talk about from here on, the other Ryven can't know.  Can you block him out?"

Ryven just nodded.  He had never seen the need to do so since he derived so much enjoyment from torturing the other Ryven with his depravity.  But, he knew how to block the other Ryven out when he needed to.  He closed his eyes momentarily, shuddered, and then opened them and leveled his gaze on Leela. "Okay.  Continue."

Leela started pacing as she explained what needed to be done. "I need you to return control to the other Ryven.  Not right this second.  We need him to be blocked out for at least a day so there's a period of blank memory.  I have to convince him that he did something truly terrible to someone he loves."

Ryven looked curious. "Who do you have in mind?"

Leela shook her head. "It doesn't matter.  The less you know, the better.  But, tomorrow night you relinquish control to the other Ryven and we'll start the procedure."

Ryven smiled. "And then the real fun begins." His eyes flashed with something sinister, but it passed just as quickly as it came. "Very well."

Leela moved closer until she was right next to Ryven's bed. "I'm going to knock you out now.  It reduces the probability of your block on the other Ryven from failing."  She injected him before he could protest, the clear liquid rapidly reaching Ryven's nervous system.  He slumped almost immediately, his protest dead on his lips.  Leela smiled, turned, and walked out of the medical bay.  She had a lot of preparation to see to.

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Cerra Manor - Medical Bay

10-31 YC 116 0300

Everything was set.  Leela had installed the necessary equipment in the medical bay earlier in the day.  Now all that remained was for Ryven to wake up, relinquish control to the other Ryven, and for Leela to convince Ryven that he had done the unthinkable.  With any luck the revelation would fracture Ryven's already fragile psyche enough to divide the personas into two distinct wholes.  Then she need only transfer the evil Ryven persona onto a data stick she had prepared.  There were a lot of "ifs" involved, but it was really the only option available.

Ryven roused slowly, still groggy from the drug Leela had given him.  He shook his head to try to clear the mental cobwebs, the dark fingers caressing the edges of his consciousness.  He sat up slowly and his eyes showed recognition when they met Leela's. "Is it time?"

Leela nodded. "It's time."  

Ryven lay back down, his eyes closed.  For a moment it seemed he had gone back to sleep.  Then he lurched up, his eyes wide, gasping for breath.  He looked around at his surroundings, recognizing that he was in the medical bay.  He looked disoriented, as though he didn't expect to be there.  Or perhaps he realized he was in control of his body again, a prospect he had not hoped to find realized.  Finally, he noticed Leela.  A single tear worked its way out of the corner of his right eye and began to crawl down his cheek.  "What's happened?"

Leela steeled herself for what she had to do now.  "You really don't know, do you?"

Ryven stiffened. "What happened?"

Leela conjured up every ounce of acting talent she had. "This is going to be hard, but I have to tell you."  She took a deep breath. "You, or rather, the evil you, escaped last night."

Ryven sat speechless, but his face did not indicate surprise.  So far so good.

Leela continued, her words coming deliberately, building the tension.  "You took Shalee on your way out."

Ryven blanched.  His throat suddenly seemed to swell and he had never felt it so dry.  I took Shalee? 

Leela nodded, her expression grave. "You somehow also got ahold of her clones."  Leela closed her eyes and hung her head, her next sentence barely a whisper.  "Shalee's gone.  Forever.  You killed her."

Ryven's face looked as though he had been physically struck.  His hand clutched his chest as though he was suffering a heart attack.  His breath came in ragged gasps. "How?  How did she die?  Was it quick?  Painless?"

Leela shook her head.  "By all indications, she was tortured for about nine hours, skinned, and the rest is unspeakable."  

That was when Ryven lost his shit.  Had he not been hand cuffed, Leela might have been in danger.  He frothed and raved like a madman.  His eyes were those of a feral beast.  As he thrashed about, Leela waited for the sign she was looking for.  It came much more quickly than she expected.

Ryven began convulsing and speaking in nonsensical ramblings, contradictory sentences.  It was like listening to two people having a conversation, except both of them were having a conversation with someone else rather than each other.  Leela didn't waste time.  She pressed a button on her neocom and her equipment whirred to life.  

She quickly strapped Ryven to the bed, an extremely difficult task giving the violence of his convulsions.  She managed it, but only after an exhausting amount of effort.  It would have been much simpler if she could have drugged him again, but alas, for this procedure he needed to be fully awake.  

The machine she devised for the purpose of transferring the Dark Ryven persona was not a large one.  It consisted of a simple metal circlet with electrodes and an interface that communicated with his implants.  This circlet was connected via a bundle of cables to a small computer and terminal.  The terminal would display the necessary cerebral data so that Leela could excise those portions of Ryven's mind that encompassed the Dark Ryven persona.  All of this "data" would then be moved to the data stick Leela had prepared to contain him.  

Leela placed the circlet on Ryven's head and sat down in front of the display terminal.  The screen populated quickly with the imaging data.  His mind resembled a chaotic lightning storm at the moment, but due to the very particular algorithm she had developed, patterns began to emerge.  Two distinct storms were raging.  She entered a command to isolate the two patterns from each other, colorizing the Dark Ryven portions so she could quickly quarantine them.  Once she was satisfied she had them identified, she pressed a command to release a stream of nanites.  These nanites would contain these portions of Ryven's mind to prevent any cross-contamination.  Once the nanites were in place, she began the transfer process.  She watched as the colorized portions began to shrink, their data disappearing and being copied onto the data stick.  The copying process took around twenty minutes, a gut-wrenching, hand-wringing twenty minutes during which Leela never took her eyes away from the display, her eyes searching for any sign that the procedure would fail, any glitch.  

Finally, the transfer completed, Leela powered down the machinery and removed the circlet from Ryven's head.  She was exhausted.  The stress of the operation had taken an enormous toll.  Now, she was going to finally, truly sleep, something she hadn't really done in months.  She looked over at her sweat drenched patient, ex-husband, and oldest friend.  "Not just yet." She said to herself.  She walked over to Ryven and administered an injection of the same drug she had given him the night before. "Best you get some more rest.  When you wake up, you'll awake to a new nightmare.  I've saved you from your darker self, but I can't save you from the memories that are going to haunt you.  I can't erase the pain that the guilt will bring you."  She unlocked his handcuffs and walked out of the medical bay to go find herself a place to rest.

 

We Miss the Obvious

The answer really was simple.  So simple that it had eluded Leela for weeks as she found herself pushed closer and closer to the ragged edge at the precipice of self-induced madness.  Gazing into the abyss, she had almost succumbed to it, the allure of the black.  Then Ryven became Shalee's prisoner and the immediacy of that emergency had broken her out of her seclusion and forced her to re-evaluate her plan.  The idea had finally hit her as she flew Ryven's shuttle back to her little hideout in the fringes of known space.  The simplicity of it had escaped her because, for so long, she had only thought of the Ryven problem, never the Ryven solution.

She couldn't cause a schism in Ryven's mind with the Dark Ryven in control.  His psyche was too sociopathic, too disconnected from empathy.  No, the answer was to attack from the side of the good Ryven.  The Ryven who still has empathy, who still has the capacity for pscyho-emotional trauma.  The answer was really that simple.  To cause the split, Leela needed to convince the Dark Ryven to relinquish control to the good Ryven.  Then, all that would be needed would be to cause some extreme psychological trauma.  Leela thought she knew exactly how to go about it. 

She had spent the day following his capture running simulations to determine the feasibility of her plan.  As far as she could tell, the chance of success was about 65%.  There were a lot of unknown variables, most notably the entire absence of any sort of knowledge on what effect the sequestration of the good Ryven persona has had.  Without that particular set of quanta, a proper estimate was impossible.  She made the best guesses she could, but, she had to agree with the 65% estimation.  Which was better than nothing.

Now, she just needed to discuss it with Shalee since she had custody of Ryven.  She suspected that Shalee would be willing to cooperate, though, since Shalee had seemed quite ready to be rid of the scourge of Ryven and his psychosis. 

Desperation

The ceiling of Leela's bedroom was etched into her mind.  She had lain awake for so long poring over every detail of every millimeter of its surface, so nondescript and yet, for however long she had been laying awake unable to calm her mind, the ceiling dominated her attention.  Insomnia had become the common thread linking each of an interminable series of days stretching back as far as she could remember.  Vaguely, she recalled a time in what seemed to be the distant past of prehistory when she had been happy, she had Zhou, and Ryven had been a friend.  Now, Ryven was the dark star whose orbit her everything had fallen into.  He was the singularity toward which all the possible avenues of her life were inexorably drawn.

She had the technology she needed to trap this evil persona who had possessed Ryven in a digital prison.  Rather, she had the prison, a self contained memory bank in which he could be confined, its bounds finite and unbreakable.  That was the easy part.  Now she had reached the true core of the problem.  How do you separate a consciousness from a mind and yet keep another one intact and in situ?  How can you remove an entire personality without also removing the shared experience, the shared memory and knowledge of both?  Dr. Thomas was equally perplexed and twice as pessimistic about the entire enterprise.  As best she could determine, it would be necessary to create some sort of trauma, some sort of emotional crisis sufficient to create a radical schism in his mind.  The problem, of course, was that the Dark Ryven seemed sociopathic.  How do you create emotional trauma in someone who seems ruled entirely by something outside ordinary emotional frameworks.  Further, what could be traumatic enough to cut off Dark Ryven from the rest of Ryven's mind, but not also do irreparable damage to Ryven?

Leela rose and poured herself a strong drink from the bottle on her nightstand and downed it in one gulp.  She winced as the alcohol burned her throat, but relaxed as she felt the warmth of it spread through her chest.  She slammed the glass down on the nightstand with far more fury and desperation than intended.  She gasped at the pain of the shattered glass as it stabbed into her palm.  She gritted her teeth, both out of pain and fury, but calmed again at the sight of her blood forming a ring around the still intact bottom of her drinking glass.  Blood really was everything, in the end, wasn't it?  "New Eden runs on blood." She spoke out loud to the void.  She glanced around her spartan chambers, devoid of any adornment.  Every item had a purpose.  "New Eden runs on blood, is fueled by it, and would drown in it."  She was shocked at how macabre that sentiment was, but it fit.  Capsuleers, if nothing else, thrived on, survived on, and actively sought bloodshed.  And again, her mind went to Ryven. "GET OUT OF MY FUCKING HEAD!"  She threw the bottle and it exploded against the far wall.  She felt tears as they wormed their way down her cheeks and finally her fury broke and she threw herself onto her bed, sobbing, the despair finally taking over.

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Dark Ryven smiled at his handiwork.  Zhou was tougher than his usual prisoner, and Ryven knew that he had to navigate a narrow channel between the pitfalls of either not torturing Zhou enough for his captivity to be compelling for Leela or torturing Zhou to the point where Leela would simply refuse to cooperate.  Sensory deprivation seemed fitting.  The human mind, when faced with true nothingness, tends to try to fill the void.  Ever since the most primitive humans looked out into the darkness, he imagined the darkness looking back at him.  The unknown, the unsensed, more than any physical pain, would generate a preternatural dread and loathing of every second stretched out into eternity before him, with no end in sight.  With nothing to see, to hear, to touch, to smell, to sense, Zhou would have no concept of how much time had passed or lay before him.  Eternity was just a moment, and a moment eternity.  

The sensory deprivation tank was a simple device.  The victim was suspended in a gel with perfect neutral bouyancy.  Zhou's body was dressed in an insulated suit that released topical anesthesia to deaden the nerves in his skin.  His head was covered in a full helmet that supplied him oxygen but deafened all sound and blocked all light.  In essence, he was suspended, numb, blind, and deaf, in an absolute void of sensation.  Zhou had been there for ten days now.  Zhou couldn't hear the sounds of his own screaming.  The comms unit in Zhou's helmet, however, meant that Ryven could, if he so wished.  Now was one of those times, and the reason for Ryven's smile.  He sat in the control room for the sensory deprivation room, his feet propped on the control console, his eyes closed, savoring the torment in Zhou's tortured screaming, the long wail and keening of one without hope.  Ryven licked his lips.  The despair was delicious.