The Void--Part 2

Continued...

My gaze traveled from the top of the cloud up to the gigantic shimmering space that made the sun and sky hazy as with waves of heat. My wide eyes moved from there up to the gravity jets anchored to the bottom of the most impossible thing I had ever seen.
It was a mechanical landmass, consisting of pipes and wires, robotic arms that repaired and built, iron and steel, glinting silver and softly shining gray. And all of it was suspended in the air by five if the most powerful gravity jets ever built.
My gaze then moved to what sat atop the landmass.
It was like a city, spire upon spire, turret upon turret, but it was all joined together in a mass of robotic beauty. It was all one building at the bottom, then the individual peaks narrowed away from each other until, at the top, spiderwebs of pencil-thin bridges criss-crossed and overlapped each other, spanning the gaping space beneath them. Construction bots zipped back and forth, fixing mechanical systems and adding the last finishing touches to the floating city.
We flew towards it at lightning speed, and grew closer and closer. I could see the shimmering heat field that surrounded the entire building zooming at us, until I was sure that we would crash into it, the heat was searing my skin--
The field disappeared and we sailed through it into the floating structure. The girl dropped me heavily to the ground as she descended with calm control. I looked back. the heat field was there again.
The girl blinked, and the data vanished from her screen. I watched in fascination as she removed her helmet--revealing a long flow of red hair--and her robotic suit split in half, allowing her to step out. A huge mechanical arm reached up from somewhere beneath the smooth plane of metal I stood on now and carried the suit out of sight behind a tower.
She turned to me, and I saw why she had worn the shield over her right eye.
I stared at her, and she looked at me levelly. The cold blue light of her eye sent  a straight, narrow beam clearly centered on my forehead, visible even in daylight.
"Who are you?" I asked nervously. Growing more confident, I added, "Where am I? Why did you help me escape? Are you working for the Observatory?"
She seemed to consider me for a moment. Her posture, so tense before, seemed to relax. She was short, he noticed, but carried herself as if she were ten feet tall. She spoke with only a slight Asian-Russian accent.
"We have landed on the Anti-Experimental Observation League's Unidimensional Station, more commonly known as Aeolus's Island."
"Who's Aeolus?" I broke in.
"The keeper of the winds in ancient Greek..." she trailed off. So English wasn't her first language.
"...mythology," I helped her.
"Yes. I am meant to give you a sort of orientation, but under your circumstances..." she blinked, her silver eye contracting to shut off the blue light briefly. "My name is N3M-3515, but everyone calls me Nemesis. I am working against the Experimental Observatory with the AEOL. I know you will ask about my eye, so I will tell you in advance.
"The Observatory took me away as a very small child. They renamed me with a number, experimented on me, and gave me a vision-enhancing eye. The AEOL helped me escape a couple months ago, which means that I was able to give them valuable information."
"And why did you help me?"
Nemesis gave me that piercing look again.
"First, tell me your name. Tell me what you were doing at the Observatory."
So I did. I told her, imitating her introduction, that my name was H7P-N05, but everyone called me Hypnos. Her eyes widened at this.
"Is this coincidence that we have both chosen our names from Grecian legends?" she asked, wary.
"No," I told her. "I didn't choose my name. See, they experimented on me, too, and I overheard the observers calling one of their experiments 'Operation Hypnos.' Written down, it looked like my number, so the name stuck."
"I see. Continue."
I told her that I was captured, like her, as a little child, from my home in New Austria and taken to one of the remote Pacific Islands. I told her about how they made me work underground, fixing their machinery and repairing satellite connections. I did that for seven years, until...
"Until what?" Both of Nemesis's eyes locked onto mine, searching for lies and trickery.
"Until Operation Hypnos," I said. "Two months ago, they sent a messenger down to me. I was working on one of their burner jets," I recalled. "He told me to come with him, and by now I knew not to disobey, so he took me up to the lab. I was dead scared, but I went in anyway.
"They took a bunch of tests on me, and put me in a suspension zone. They wanted to put some sort of machinery in me, I think. And then," I frowned. Everything was fuzzy. "I know they experimented on me for weeks, running tests and stuff...and then...." It was so close. I almost had the memory. "They stopped. There was a lot of running back and forth, and observers checking on me, and then--and then--I think I blacked out. When I woke up, I was in the void." I was puzzled. Something was missing.
Nemesis didn't seem to react at all. She just gave me that stare again and then turned away.
I followed her gaze. I was awestruck by the shining towers, one after another, all reflecting the setting sun. There was a monster of a door, huge steel double doors with strange engravings on them. I couldn't see them from this far away. The tallest spire was in the center, and I couldn't see the top of it; the sun was behind it, throwing elongated shadows over the Island and the cloud cover beneath it.
I turned back to find Nemesis staring at me again. I raised my eyebrows. She straight at the sun behind the highest tower.
"We need to get you to the Council."

***

The towers seemed infinite, huge as we approached the monstrous gate. I could see the engravings on the doors now: they were scenes of Greek myths. I could see a ten-foot depiction of the Olympian Council, with Zeus at the head with his lightning bolt, watching a leaf-clad goddess with a crown of wheat-stalks speak animatedly. I admired a scene of the screaming Andromeda being rescued by Perseus, an engraving of Heracles donning the skin of a great lion, Theseus exiting the Labyrinth with a crumpled ball of string.
I barely noticed as the gleaming doors swung open; they did so without a sound. I gaped as we entered the largest room I had ever seen.
The floor was a gleaming gray steel, and the walls melted into shadow whichever way I turned. The ceiling must have been as tall as the doors, and in what seemed to be the center of the room, there were twelve pointlessly, insignificantly tiny chairs. They were taller than me, all identical, all elaborately carved, and all empty.
"Why are we here?" I said softly, my voice echoing and magnifying a thousand times over.
Nemesis didn't answer, but led me to the center of the circle of thrones. She started speaking in the same string of numbers she had told me minutes before.
"N-three-M-three-five-one-five."
Something crackled to life. Nemesis spoke again.
"Nemesis. I think I have him. Council Room."
I heard the familiar distant humming of a teleportation device, which grew closer and closer until the room was singing with the sound of it.
Twelve figures materialized into the chairs.
There were six men and six women. At the head of the circle, opposite the door, was an extremely tall and gangling orange-haired man with untidy stubble up to his cheeks. He was not old, maybe in his late thirties, but his eyes were crinkled with laugh lines.
Next to him appeared a young African woman covered from head to toe with gadgets. Hanging from a belt was a small metal box. It was she who spoke first.
"This is he?" she said with a heavy North Rwandan accent. "What does he call himself?"
"Let him speak for himself," intoned a white-haired, pale-faced young man softly.
Nemesis released my arm and looked at me.
"Tell them everything," she prompted. "You can trust them."
Soon I had explained everything again. I was still confused about the last bit, and I was worried they wouldn't trust me (though why I needed them to I didn't know). But they followed intently till I was done.
"I think he's telling the truth," said the tall man. His voice was deep and powerful, with a strong Irish accent. He turned to Nemesis. "A job well done, Nemesis. If he is the one we are looking for, you may have rescued much more than Hypnos."
He turned back to me. "Hypnos. Welcome to Aeolus's Island. We are the AEOL Council, and I am Ulysses. This is Pandora," he said, indicating the woman beside him, "and this is her box. Do not ever open Pandora's box." The woman gently fingered the box at her waist, smiling.
"This is Helios--" a grinning blond man in his early twenties with a deep tan, "--next to him is Nike--" a young, energetic-looking woman with spiked-up short red hair, "--she used to work for the observatory, and has managed a few enhancements of her own." Nike grinned and my eyes widened as her fingernails lengthened into wicked white-steel points about five inches long. They clicked together.
"Next to her is Morpheus--" the pale silent man who had reminded Pandora of my powers of speech, "--the lovely Eos--" the fair-haired, tall woman blushed and looked away, "--Theseus--" a giant of a man with muscular arms, black hair, and deep golden-brown skin, "--Eos's sister, Selene--" she was just like her sister, but with dark hair and pale skin, "--she helped Nemesis escape, and here we have Asclepius--" a tall, thin man with curly brown hair nodded solemnly at me, "--he's the doctor of the group....Calypso--" a dramatic-looking Egyptian woman with kohl around her eyes and pinned-up black hair, "--Electryon--" a calm-faced Mongolian with blond hair spiked in every direction, "--he's our technology whiz. And next to me here is Hecate." She had chestnut-brown hair, bright green eyes, and a strong jaw.
All this time I had been nodding at the Council members one by one. Now I turned back to Ulysses.
"What's with all the Greek names?" I asked him.
"Our association with Greek mythology unites us," he explained. "It gives us an enviable civilization to strive for.
"But now, Hypnos, it is time for you to learn why you are here."