Crashing Tides

by Gwendolyn Marie

  She arrived at the wet room with the submersible craft. Evil churned, humanity was lost. All she wished now was to get to the sub, to find the Scipian.

  But someone stood in her way.

  Nyx came to a halt as a gun clicked before her. The safety of the revolver was disarmed, and Admiral Telphousian pointed it at Nyx. The Admiral stood, red hair displaced, her face full of rage. The wrath boiling inside Telphousian did not stem from the disease, for she was not yet infected. Two Chaots who were chasing Nyx came up from behind and into sight. She took her aim off Nyx and fired at the Chaots; it took three shots to down the two. The Chaots fell leaving Telphousian alone with Nyx, alone with her need for requital.

  “You are responsible! You brought this to us!”

  Telphousian’s eyes shone as she took several steps toward Nyx. Her weapon displayed her intent as the aim returned to on her.

  “I tried to protect my people,” she continued. “I tried to harbor them in the safety of the Thalassic. And now all is lost and it is because of you!”

  A shot rang out in the room; the whistle of the bullet sounded in Nyx’s left ear. It missed, embedding itself in the hull of the Thalassic rather than her forehead. Sparks flew from the impact. Several wires collapsed; splinters and shards ricocheted around her.

  The Admiral snared in discontent as she brought her second hand up to steady the firearm.

  “This time I will not miss. This time I will bring you the retribution you deserve!”

  “I did not intend for any of this,” Nyx said, calm in the face of fire, unconcerned by death after all that had transpired. She deserved it, for all who had trusted her and all who had died because of it. “But what you see before you ...”

  Was a part of her. Though most abhorred the transformation, in its own way it was chaotically beautiful. She was their mother. The genesis spawned from her, and she could not provide repentance for what had become of the Thalassic. The death of Leander and Hector ... yes. But not the rise of the Chaots.

  “ ... is evolution,” Nyx continued. “I released those souls that were living with such restraint under you. Under the imposed restrictions of your society. I liberated them from their prisons.”

  Two more shots rang out, one after the other. But they came in anger and disbelief as Telphousian listened to what she perceived as the raving of a lunatic. One bullet flew past Nyx, finding itself in the hull of the underwater compound once more. The other grazed her cheek. She took a step toward the submersible in the moon pool. Fear alongside anger sketched in Telphousian; Nyx would use that to her advantage. No longer wayward in her path, Nyx stood, a determined woman accepting her mantle. She had lost all the humanity that had kept her balanced—Leander, Hector. Stripped of the two, only chaos remained.

  “I will free you. From your role, from all your duty. Imagine living rather than trapped in this skeleton of society. You cling to the past. Look around you to what is present. Embrace it,” Nyx said.

  The Admiral’s face crumpled under the vivid crimson locks in unwilling reluctance. It had been so long since the sun had brought warmth to her skin or the breezes could catch the fiery hair. But embedded in her was the responsibility to her crew and the obligations to maintain whatever shred of civilization remained. But Nyx had begun to crumble the walls around Telphousian, as the prion manifested within the Thalassic. The crew was no more. Civilization unraveled. All that remained was the Admiral’s own self as an obstacle to liberation.

  Nyx spoke again: “Kill me and end me. But the real enemy would continue above and we will both lose. Join me, come to the surface to breathe fresh air and to find your vengeance. Rid yourself of this coffin.”

  “Die Bitch,” responded Telphousian in a solemn hiss.

  She aimed the weapon to Nyx and fired. This time she would not miss. But the weapon clicked, empty of ammunition. Nyx tilted her head in a curious testament, a smile gracing her lips at the sudden twist of fate. No longer the target, she made way to the submersible. She took one glance back at Telphousian before boarding. She saw shadows behind the Admiral; the Chaots advancing to claim their dictator. Diomedes in the lead.

  “Stay then. And join the others in their fate.”

  Nyx entered and swung the sub’s hatch shut, locking out all sounds from the outside. She did not hear the screams as the Chaots grabbed Telphousian; she did not see the blood that came from their carnage. Any pang of guilt was secondary to all else that had come, and all that waited to come.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Diomedes

  Days prior: In the forests above

  “Look at those two lovebirds,” Dio said as he watched Leander dive into the water. Leander wished to save Nyx, though it was clear that the waters did not threaten her life. Dio did not say such, he just laughed as concern overtook his friend in his response to help her. Who was he to stop such attraction?

  A smile crossed his mouth in memory of when he was in love. Love, now long lost. He touched a blooming flower to the side. His wife always smelled of fresh flowers, and that smell now permeated the air as he watched Leander swim to Nyx. He saw an echo of his own relationship, the difference though was clear. He had courted his wife immediately, pronouncing his love at first sight. Leander, however, was too worried he would lose Nyx, impeding his chance to ever be with her. If only Leander could let go of his hesitation.

  And Dio knew what it stemmed from.

  The scenes fresh, for never would they wear: the scenes from a year ago aboard Thalassic. The monitor that displayed his family’s death. His daughter’s transformation into a Chaot, Leander’s attempts to save her. Trying to save what never could be, and hence was doomed to fail. Did he blame Leander? At first, it was hard not to. He distanced himself from his friend. But he saw how hard the captain punished himself, and understood that his pain almost matched his own as a father. Almost. And not only did he see Leander’s undecipherable pain over his failure to protect Cassie, but also the person who was indeed responsible for his family’s fate. Telphousian. If Admiral Telphousian allowed his family quick access to the moon pool, they could have quarantined his mother. Then his wife and daughter would never have been infected.

  Only if. He could not remind himself of the past or it would drown him. Instead, he could find his family as if with him still. He walked alone through the forests, leaving the lovers to themselves. He found his wife through the rustle of leaves besides him, her embrace in the wind, her voice in the songbirds. Her scent in a flower.

  The interlude of peace splintered as a new sound, new scent, new sight emerged. Bronze eyes looked out between the bark, catching Diomedes in their forge. He froze. One second hesitation too long. The firearm came to Dio’s hand, finger pressed on the trigger even before reaching their target. Sound blasted as bullets punched holes in the birch’s white bark, yet missing their mark. The Pathfinder, leader of the Chaots, came forth and attacked.

  Dio fell, soundless in the racket of his comrade’s gunfire. The flowering blossom crushed beneath his weight.

  Minutes before: In the waters below

  Hibernation. Diomedes laid dormant on the research tables of the underworld, of Thalassic. No inner clock would awaken him. Unlike true hibernation, his sleep was perpetual. Nightmares replaced the sweet dreams. Spring greens would not be the reward. Hell was what waited.

  All that could be felt, was. All the agony boiled within him, overspilling in waves until finally he surrendered to it. Hours ... days ... time had no meaning anymore, leaving the present an uncertain enigma. But as he submitted to a ceaseless slumber, something awoke him. Nyx tore the wires from him, freeing him from the anesthesia induced sleep. He saw her standing over him. In blurred vision ... blurred thought. He could not call out to her.

  Where was he? What had happened?

  Where was his daughter ... Dio grasped out, reaching for her but his arms encircled only air. The fragility of fatherhood broke in his empty embrace, the death of his daughter remembered. Did love easily slip throug
h fingers, fingers that soon would rot in decay? Cassie ... he breathed the word, but his brain so confused in the torture, that he could not find the meaning behind it.

  The moment of sanity dissipated as soon as it had breached his mind. The glimpse of his daughter, or her metamorphosis, emptied from his thoughts. Now it was pain again, encumbering every second of his life and drowning out all else.

  He wrestled the bed sheets, the wires that had been pulled from his skin, but he could not understand where he was, or what had happened. It was dark. He was alone, not only in solitude of body, but of mind. Not simply the passing of a moment, but of the finality of isolation. He rose, stumbling to the door.

  Open. He could not focus on what was on the other side, nor the reasoning to leave the room, all he knew was he must. Driven by instincts, he knew he must feed. Who was he now? So many would say a monster, a beast. A creature who had no place among the living. Light from the hallways filled his senses as he stepped through. Primal emotions unearthed as the clouded illumination came upon his eyes; it became too much stimuli, too early from his awakened cocoon. Hands came to his lids, scratching his own skin as if to stop the light from invading his senses. Blood streamed down his caramel face, tears of red stained his features. He wanted darkness, not the light. Perhaps it was a monster he had become.

  Hatred came in waves within his misery. Memories came and went. Of those he had lost. Of his daughter. Of his wife. He had no refined cage of society to inhibit these emotions, nor to direct them into any coherency. They collided within his mind, images of his lost kin, images of the one responsible. Hair of fire. Eyes black without soul. No words, no names, no thoughts or reason, only images, rage, and now the drive to allow the emotions to materialize.

  Suffer. Agony. Pain.

  Opposing all thought that was left in his mind, opposing all who he was, the id ruled. But did it indeed oppose, for it was always a part of him. The disease did not create something new, it solely tore away the restrictions of the mind, leaving who we truly are. And who was he? Either an animal limited by the governing canon or one who wishes to feel the primal environment. One who has been stripped of what they had evolved to be, one who wants to return to it.

  He was trapped between Chaot and human, sleeping in a coma induced by the Thalassicians not as one or the other but both. Both limited and limitless, the boundaries blurred as he walked. Pandemonium surrounded each step; yells and screams from the afflicted and their victims filled the air. He ignored it all. He walked through it, as a daydream, oblivious to it all.

  Take arms against a sea of troubles, his conscious called, as he wandered the halls in a wakened slumber. And by opposing them, end them. End the one whose inaction killed the ones you loved. Yet to end her life, he would end himself. The agony shaped him, the unfulfilled turmoil, without it ... would leave him without. Adrift. Meaningless.

  Each step became heavy, each step called to his ancestors. There is no good or evil, is there?

  He tore at his face again, this time not due to the blinding light. Instead, he tore at the mask of evil he now bore. Trying to get it off. Trying, failing, stepping again down the hall. Screaming now as pain grew forth. Not pain of the body, but of the soul. His mouth wrenched open in a shattering uproar. No humanity held in his cry. No mercy would be found.

  The flowers of his memory, his wife’s scent, were lost. The sweet smell was that of rotted decay. The decay became the desired, as he grabbed a person, breaking through the haze into reality. Human or Chaot, he did not know, did not care. He lifted him, and brought him against the hull of the Thalassic. Again and again, he rammed him. Face bent, eyes gorged, Diomedes looked at him. And smiled.

  Again he rammed the male into the wall. Laughter intertwined with screams, both came from Dio as his victim died due to his rage.

  He held him to the steel. Drop by drop he watched his victim bleed.

  He would kill the flaming haired woman, the Admiral of Thalassic. But now, vengeance sought refuge in his mind as he watched the blood, drowning out all else in its hypnotic spill.

  Disgust pervaded the refuge. He dropped the body. It fell limp, disfigured. A hollow shell of what once walked down the halls. He cried, falling to his knees. Grabbing the weight of broken bone and torn skin in his embrace, he held it close. Just flesh, he thought, trying to distance himself. Flesh that needed to be sheared from the wearers. He began to feed. Bites between his cries echoed the halls.

  Brutality imprisoned his mind, the images of his daughter faded through the famished bites. Memories shrouded beneath his mind’s metamorphosis. The images of the past, of his wife and daughter, disappeared. Only the vision of red remained. Only the one subject to his hatred. Death edged close as his brain succumbed to the full weight of the Drakōn mund. The disease persisted and twisted his thoughts, leaving nothing of love. He would soon travel to the netherworld of the souls, yet he had no soul.

  And so he returns, to the living. Soulless. A Chaot to the fullest.

  Awakened from his humanity, from the scaffolds of pain, freed from death itself, the eyes of the Chaot opened. His lips turned in a sardonic twist, as the flood of memories left him barren. Barren, with the need to fill, with the need to gouge himself on other life in order to satisfy the hunger. The glory of a mind wasted away into insanity, non compos mentis.

  Even the insane can come to be more.

  His eyes adjusted to the light, sight blurred by the red that ran down his face. Everyone looked like the red-head of his wrath, everyone who he saw he grabbed, shredding them underneath his strength. Biting them, killing them, transforming them, it did not matter. It felt good as he indulged in the long withheld urges.

  The purity of animalistic rage silenced for one clear thought: he was not human. Not civil for a civilization, not wise as the genus classified. Still, blood coursed through him, giving him life. And now pain served to remind him of that life. Pain imposed on others, and on himself, invigorated his soulless mind. With the prion’s hand, Diomedes tore away all of the denotations of humanity.

  And through hell

  Red poured. More and more, over Diomedes and along his wake. Trailing him as he walked through the shadows, through the underworld to his fate. Others followed, deeming him as the Alpha after seeing his carnage. To the moon pool they walked. Once, the moon pool could have been the saving oasis to allow his family inside the Thalassic. Now, it would serve to damn the one who had sealed their fate.

  Telphousian. His wanderings seemed like the misdirected ambles of the insane, for even he knew not where he went. But the whispers of who he once was guided him to her.

  Red hair of fire, left behind from the coals of the wanderer. Tilphê. Her name meant unclean waters, filled with larvae. And he was Apollo, he would vanquish her. A god, disguised as a beast.

  He came to her. He took her in his arms.

  Was she crying? Tears came down. Tears of remorse for what she had taken from him. No, no regret shimmered behind the red strands. The tears mourned herself, tears scared of what he would do.

  Mouth opened as if to speak, as if to grant her contrition.

  A growl rang through the dark throat, the black void surrounded by white. The teeth came down to her forehead. He pressed his mouth closed, the severe opposite of a kiss; flesh tore from Tilphê as she pulled away screaming. Blood spurted as a rainfall. He came again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Moonlight pierced the window of the submersible as it lashed out above the waves. Nyx unlatched the top hatch, letting the ocean breezes drown out the heartache. She had one goal and she could not allow the pain of losing Hector and Leander to blind her fortitude. Now that her objective was in sight she had to move without indecision.

  She had used the sub’s radar to bring her near the location of the Scipian’s fleet and focused her path to the flagship. Now she faced the task of boarding the Destroyer without detection; stealth and speed were nec
essary. The night granted the cover of darkness and she could board in its veil. Standing on the outer shell of the sub, Nyx pulled the cord of the escape raft. It bulged with air taking float upon the crevices of the ocean. Fastening the compact motor to its inflatable shell, she placed it on the low setting to ebb the noise upon arrival.

  The reflection of starlight danced along the metal hull of the Destroyer as the ship floated towards it. The ship itself was daunting in its appearance and to her knowledge held the last fragment of humanity in this world—those responsible for the apocalypse.

  The raft reached the side of the vessel and near the anchor’s cord. Grabbing hold of the metal cable, Nyx tethered her raft. She climbed along the chain, until the deck came into view.

  The first person was the hardest, after that it all began to blur. The first though ... that was the one that etched itself into her memory. A man dressed in uniform, cigar between his lips as he eased over the edge of the vessel. Fumes rose from around him, a calming tap of his fingers rattled on the rail as he enjoyed his smoke. She moved in attack. Coming up from behind the gentleman, she sank her teeth deep into his shoulder. As she once wished to do with the raw fish that was caught with the Fisherman; as she had seen the Chaots do. Hot, thick blood poured between her lips. Her feast pulled away as the man brought a surprised fist to the girl. She fell near him; her hand came up to wipe away the trail of blood along her chin.

  At first the crew man just stood astonished. Then he started to move with purpose, wanting to destroy her. But his pace slowed. The knowledge of what had happened sunk in, his damnation written in his face. He was bitten by what he assumed was a Chaot. Before he could react, he began to change. Blood discharged from every cavity on his face. His ears, his tear ducts, his nose. An unearthly rumble came to his lips as he fell to his knees before Nyx. Hands went to his temple as he screamed for mercy. It was as if he bowed to her, his creator—his new god.