Aiden delicately held the white shrew between his small hands, his sunglasses reflecting the faint glow of his flashlight. In the semi-darkness of the basement, he looked like a little sorcerer preparing a forbidden ritual.
Which wasn't so far from the truth, he thought with a smirk.
- "Alright, my little princess," he murmured to the shrew that trembled like a leaf. "You're going to have the honor of being the first not to die stupidly. Well, I hope for your sake."
He closed his eyes, breathing deeply to calm his heartbeat that was racing despite himself. Two years of methodical experimentation had led him to this precise moment. One hundred twenty-one failed attempts. One hundred twenty-one useless deaths.
This time, it will be different I prayed 40,000 times today and according to statistics luck should be with me he promised himself feeling that familiar sensation rising within him.
Like every time he was about to use his powers, something warm and luminous pulsed behind his eyelids. His orange eyes began to glow with a golden light that pierced even through the tinted lenses of his glasses.
The hardest part in the attempt he was about to make wasn't entering the mind, no he had mastered that since birth and without doing it on purpose besides. No, the most difficult was sending only a small part of himself, a simple thread of consciousness, light as a feather but charged with precise intentions for this thread to execute its mission. Obviously Aiden would control it remotely but it was more subtle than that.
Closing his eyes, he concentrated for a few moments, his mental platform appeared, that space of floating bricks that had become his inner sanctuary. Around him, orange clouds drifted peacefully, carriers of his most stable emotions, his heart calmed while the wind whipped his face, he took a deep breath and reopened his eyes.
Now, let's make way for the delicate part.
Aiden visualized his mind as a skein of intertwined golden threads. Each thread represented a facet of his consciousness: his memories, his emotions, his personality, his will. He had to detach just one, subtle enough to go unnoticed, robust enough to accomplish its mission.
Aiden then dove to the deepest part of himself, his mind appeared to him as a skein of intertwined golden threads where each thread represented a facet of his consciousness, ranging from his memories, to emotions, to his very personality. Touching a single one of these threads meant completely modifying what he was and the pain that it was you don't want to experience that. Even Anakin Skywalker getting burned by lava was nothing compared to this pain.
He concentrated his astral self, closed his eyes and between his hands, a golden light was born, while somewhere on the skein, a golden thread progressively lost its brilliance.
Delicately, he told himself drawing from the strength of one of the golden threads to give birth to the one in his hands.
The pain became more and more intense, but he held on, until the golden thread became black and the one in his hands was completely constructed.
Experiment No. 116... don't try to tear your soul into pieces, it hurts like hell.
He had learned from his mistakes. This time, instead of forcing, he persuaded the thread to detach naturally, like a leaf falling from a tree in autumn.
He had learned from his mistakes and for now the only solution he had found was equivalent exchange, but this little thread he could use freely.
Aiden now held in his consciousness a translucent golden thread, no thicker than a hair but vibrating with his own essence. He made the little thread levitate, cut a small piece that he attached to another and he could now feel the connection between the two and freely control the golden thread as if it were a hand or foot of his own body.
The most important thing now was to impregnate it with the right intention.
Because that was the secret it had taken him two years to understand. It wasn't technique that mattered, nor even brute power. It was pure and crystallized intention that determined success or failure.
The first times, his intention was brutal, dominating: "I want to control this creature". And the animals' mental defenses reacted accordingly, triggering self-destruction rather than submission.
Then he had tried cunning: "I'm just an ordinary neuronal signal, ignore me". Better, but not sufficient. The defense systems were more sophisticated than he had thought.
Now, after one hundred twenty-one attempts, he had found the perfect intention. An intention so subtle, so natural, that even he had trouble distinguishing it from genuine neuronal signals.
- "I was born from this body. I am part of this creature. I have always been there. I am a natural command from its own organism that asks to be executed."
He impregnated the golden thread with this absolute conviction, saturating it with this false neurological memory. When it was finished, the thread no longer resembled an intruder. It resembled a bioelectric signal that the shrew's brain could have generated itself.
Aiden opened his eyes. His orange pupils now shone with a light so intense that it transformed his sunglasses into golden stained glass.
- "Look at me, my little one," he murmured while delicately lifting the shrew so it was at the height of his face and slightly lowering his glasses with his other hand.
The animal's tiny black eyes met his illuminated gaze.
Contact.
The real world instantly faded. Aiden found himself suspended in a starry void, the golden thread undulating between his spectral hands like a luminous snake impatient to be freed.
Before him opened the shrew's mind. Unlike the complex architectures he had explored in Mrs. Pemberton or other humans, this one was of an almost touching simplicity. A small straight tunnel, lined with rudimentary memory fragments: seeds-nest-cold-fear-warmth-brothers-sisters.
But Aiden knew this simplicity was deceptive. At the end of this tunnel stood a formidable defense system, forged by millions of years of evolution.
Go ahead, he told the golden thread. Show me what you're worth.
The thread shot into the tunnel like a luminous arrow, invisible to any consciousness other than its creator's.
Unlike his previous clumsy intrusions, this time Aiden had the impression of watching a master at work. The golden thread glided along the tunnel walls with hypnotic grace, perfectly matching the shrew's mental texture.
The first obstacles appeared quickly, those damn homing "memory missiles" that had marked him for life, those traumatic fragments that had caused so much pain during his first dive with Mrs. Pemberton. In the shrew, they were more primitive but just as dangerous: cat-giant-claws-death-pain-flight.
In his previous attempts, Aiden tried to avoid or bypass them. This time, thanks to the intention he had impregnated in his thread, something miraculous happened.
The memory missiles completely ignored him.
Victory !! You bunch of big sons of bitches, if my thread could give you the finger, I would have done it. He roared internally.
They passed through him as if he didn't exist, convinced he was just an ordinary neuronal signal generated by the organism itself. One of them, particularly virulent, the memory of a cat attack that had cost a brother's life, brushed the golden thread without even detecting it.
Damn, it works, thought Aiden with a mixture of excitement and disbelief. It really works! No more need for my previous maneuvers, this one is much easier and efficient, much less exhausting too!
The thread continued its progression, navigating with disconcerting ease through the deepest layers of the shrew's mind. Soon, it reached the zone that all his previous experiments had failed to cross.
The neuronal control center.
In the real world, Aiden felt sweat beading on his temples. This was the crucial step, where everything was decided. All his previous attempts had ended in failure at this precise level.
The shrew's control center was even more impressive than the rat's. It looked like a pulsating crystal tower, planted at the heart of a shimmering neuronal garden. Thousands of electrical signals traversed it permanently, orchestrating each heartbeat, each breath, each movement of the animal.
And all around, like invisible sentinels, automatic defenses patrolled relentlessly.
The golden thread approached with extreme caution. At this distance, Aiden could feel the enormous power this structure represented. If he managed to penetrate it, he would have total control over the shrew. Motor skills, sensations, emotions, instincts, everything would go through him.
It has to work, he thought feeling his heart beat so hard he feared waking the entire orphanage. It has to work!
The golden thread touched the surface of the control tower.
For a nanosecond that seemed to last an eternity, nothing happened.
Then...
Silence.
No alarm was triggered. No defense system reacted. The neural sentries continued their peaceful rounds, totally unaware of the intrusion that had just occurred.
In the orphanage basement, Aiden let out an immense sigh of relief that almost made him drop the shrew.
It worked. Damn, it worked!
But that was only the beginning. Having penetrated the control center was one thing, taking command of it was another. The golden thread was now inside the tower, but it still had to climb to the top, where the real command post was located.
Aiden guided his spectral thread through the floors of the crystal tower. Each level corresponded to a different system: breathing, circulation, digestion, balance... It was a miniature world of breathtaking complexity.
The higher he climbed, the denser and more sophisticated the electrical signals became. At the level of basic reflexes, they were just simple impulses. At the level of primitive emotions, more complex patterns. And at the top...
Aiden almost lost his concentration discovering what awaited him.
At the top of the tower, behind a door carved in what looked like neural bone, was a miniature control room. And at the controls of this room...
A little shrew-man.
No taller than Aiden's thumb, dressed in what looked like a pilot's uniform, the creature manipulated an immense dashboard covered with levers, dials and blinking screens. It was he who orchestrated every aspect of the shrew's life, 24 hours a day, since its birth.
Good Lord, thought Aiden, fascinated. It's like a little psychic airplane pilot. It's both adorable and terrifying.
The shrew-man worked with absolute concentration, adjusting a lever here, checking a screen there. He was so absorbed in his task that he didn't notice the golden thread sneaking behind him.
This was the moment of truth. Aiden directed his thread toward the little neuronal pilot, who continued to bustle about his controls without suspecting anything.
The intention impregnated in the thread played its role perfectly. Instead of detecting an external intrusion, the shrew's nervous system interpreted the thread's approach as the arrival of a routine signal, perhaps a maintenance command or hormonal adjustment.
The golden thread wrapped around the shrew-man like a benevolent embrace.
And there, something extraordinary happened.
Instead of resisting or triggering alarms, the little pilot visibly relaxed, as if relieved to finally have help. His gestures became slower, more docile, until he finally became completely still, hands still placed on his controls but obviously waiting for instructions.
In the basement, Aiden had to bite his lip not to shout with triumph.
The golden thread then infiltrated the shrew-man's body, mixing with his spectral substance. Gradually, Aiden felt his own intentions propagating through the animal's nervous system.
He was in.
For the first time in one hundred twenty-two attempts, he had succeeded in taking total control of a consciousness without triggering self-destruction.
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(PS: A friend suggested I create a P@treon account. If you'd like to see advanced chapters posted on Webnovel, that's where you can find them! I'll also mention all the supporters at the end of each chapter!)
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