CHAPTER 242: DECISION TIME

The captain turned to Jack and said, "Please bring in the rest of my team."

Jack summoned the rest of Orin’s team, arranging them so that they were facing each other in a loose circle along with the captain, Smith, Orin, and himself.

When they all appeared, they were in the midst of yelling at each other, but they all cut off after a few moments.

One of the men, said, "Captain? What’s going on?"

The captain pointed to Jack and said, "Jack here has a way to save our asses. He has some kind of divine artifact-"

"Ah shit! I must be dead," said one of the men.

"Divine artifact? What the fuck, Captain? This isn’t the time for one of your jokes," exclaimed another man.

Jack made the usual obedience mods to all the men, then said, "Shut up and listen to me while I explain."

He then gave the men the same rundown he had given their captain and Smith, as well as explaining how he planned to rescue them. He finished with, "Remember, I won’t save you unless you accept the soul bond. If some of you refuse, the rest will have to decide between staying behind or killing those that refused."

If those left behind were allowed to remain alive, they might be captured alive and have an interesting story to tell.

"I’ll add one more point that may help you make up your minds. If you die after being soul bonded, your soul will remain attached to me and you will have the possibility of manifesting here in my soul space. It’s not heaven or nirvana or whatever, but it’s a far more tangible form of afterlife."

"What happens to our souls if we die without a soul bond?" asked one of the men.

"Fuck if I know," said Jack. "It’s possible this artifact originated from a place where eastern fantasy style cultivation occurs. If that’s true, then maybe souls get reincarnated... after a memory wipe."

"So... if we accept this soul bond you’re offering, and then later die, you’ll put us in some sort of heaven?" asked the same man.

"No. I don’t have enough power to maintain any soft of heaven right now, so your soul will sit on a shelf collecting dust. And even once I do have that kind of power, I’m disinclined to manifest you unless you’ve earned the privilege."

"This is some heavy shit, man," said one of the other men.

They all nodded.

"Time’s ticking. You need to make your decision," said Smith.

All the men turned to look at their captain. The captain turned to look at Orin.

"I’m accepting," said Orin. "At the very least, it will mean I can see my daughter on her birthdays even after I die."

All the men turned and finally noticed Katie standing behind Jack.

"I’m accepting," said the captain.

"Same," said Smith.

"Raise your hand if you are on the fence, or leaning towards declining," said Jack.

He was worried one or two men might act like they were going to accept out of peer pressure, but might really refuse when the time came.

No one raised their hand.

Jack turned to the captain. "Looks like it’s unanimous."

"Looks that way. So, how do we proceed?"

"Before we get to that, a warning. When you accept my soul bond request, you will appear here in my soul space and your physical body will pause until you exit my soul space again. I imagine even a brief pause can be deadly during combat. So we need to sequence this property."

"Is there a way for you to warn me before you send the request to each person?"

"Yes. Once you’ve accepted the soul bond, I can give you access to an ability called parallel self. It allows you to be here in my soul space and also active in your physical body at the same time."

"Fuuuuck," said Smith in an awestruck tone.

"We can discuss the implications of that ability after we save your lives," added Jack.

"Right," said the captain. "Let’s start with me, then I can briefly pull each person out of combat long enough for them to accept the request and get back to their body."

"Alright, let’s do this," said Jack as he sent a soul bond request to the captain.

[Soul Bond Accepted: Evan Reynolds]

The captain, who he now knew was named Evan, only paused briefly before accepting the request.

As soon as his soul bond with the captain started forming, he focused first on adding the gated mental connection. Then he moved on the adding something new.

With Isabella and Agent Jackson, he’d focused on total domination. With Samantha and Naoko, he’d focused on physical, but not mental domination. But neither was what he wanted in the case of this team.

He instead grabbed the captain’s soul and focused on amplifying the existing effect his stronger soul had so that the captain would respect Jack too much to ever think of taking advantage of him, or using what he knew for personal gain without first talking to Jack about it.

He didn’t want slavish obedience, zealotry, or blind devotion; he just wanted to make sure these men would consider the potential impact their decision might have on Jack. This way, the existing don’t-hurt-Jack feature of the soul bond would have time to kick in.

When the soul bond completed, he was fairly certain he’d succeeded.

As soon as the soul bond with Evan was complete, Jack pushed Evan out of his soul space, then activated Evan’s parallel self and gave him access to the memory sync ability.

The captain blinked for a few moments, then said, "Does this memory sync thing have any side effects I need to know about?"

"Yes, only one. When it’s set to continuous, do not stare into yourself. You won’t have access to that right now because we are at max time ratio, but once I turn the ratio back to one-to-one, you’ll be able to use it."

Evan concentrated for a few moments, then said, "Outstanding. Smith, Parker, and Harper, are safe to bond now."