Shadows of the Son

by E L Strife

  A hand caught his arm. Minx’s eyes burned into him. “You need to let it happen. Stop covering the transition with serum. Their memories deserve more than this façade.”

  “Millions of lives rely on that façade,” he said acidly. Jerking himself free of her grasp, Cutter left without looking back.

  His wristband beeped as he crossed the gravel to his parked Chevelle.

  Inside his car, Cutter pushed up his sleeve to find Bennett calling. Miskaht’s warning to not tell him what he was doing came to mind.

  He accepted the com link. “Yes, sir?”

  “I have a proposition for you. I need something specific made. And I need hundreds. Or whatever you can make with the materials we’ve got,” Bennett said. The background was a blur of bouncing colors, which suggested Bennett ran thought the halls somewhere close to the TACSIM offices.

  Sketches popped up on Cutter’s screen. “These look like cluster bombs of EMPs.”

  “Yes. Sorry,” Bennett wheezed between pants. “I can’t do technical specs. I only know what I need the devices to do. Teek has someone on Agutra who made a similar thing for when you guys took down the collectors before.”

  “Roger.” Starting his car, Cutter pulled up to the road.

  “Stop!” Bennett said with urgency.

  Cutter hit the brakes. A motorcycle raced by, lights off, a streak of matte black in the night. An eerie wave of realization crawled through Cutter’s body.

  Bennett’s voice took on a weary airiness. “Your hands are shaking. You’re upset. Thinking about her, aren’t you?”

  Peeling his hands off of the steering wheel, Cutter turned them over and examined his quivering fingers. He clenched his hands into fists, locked his teeth, and breathed out through his nose.

  “Go to the motel, Steven. You know which one. We need your hands steady to wire up these devices. Drive safe. See you in the morning.”

  Cutter didn’t know how Bennett knew. The way Bennett’s voice rushed over the phone, Cutter figured he didn’t either. It was still a reaction, an impulse. Instinct.

  “Yes, sir.” Cutter watched the screen flicker off. He spun the wheel to the right and pulled out.

  Hills rose and fell around him until the land flattened again. Lights of a small city flickered in the mirage.

  Cutter pulled into the motel’s parking lot and stopped in a space. Dangling from the rearview, a gold band on a chain caught a brassy glint from the light of the office window. With a dolor sigh, he unhooked the chain and removed the ring, slipping it on the proper finger of his left hand. The metal was cold against his skin. Covering his wristband with his sleeve, he got out of the car and walked across the warm, cracked asphalt.

  “Mr. Moreau, how wonderful to see you!” An older woman set a keycard beside the nameplate displaying Rosa. “Still prefer 216, yes?”

  Cutter bit his tongue, reconsidering the idea. “Off the books?”

  “Absolutely. Your travel agent called, said you might stop in. Sounded like a nice man.” Rosa, in her flowery sundress and pinned-up pewter bun, straightened a small stack of dusty pamphlets on the desk. “Been quiet. Few tourists with the whole apocalypse thing.” She waved a hand in the direction of the Agutra sector container he’d passed outside of town, still protruding from the earth. “What do you think they’ll do about those things, now that the aliens are dead?”

  Aliens. The term hadn’t been so famous since the late 1900s. He’d know. He loved studying that century: the cars, the industrial revolution, the invention of the internet. Sure, it was hundreds of years back. The world was alive and booming with questions about the universe and the desire to make itself better.

  “No idea, ma’am.”

  Her age-wrinkled lips frowned while she chewed on something invisible. “Another metal dinosaur for our amusement.” She stepped back to glance at the TV, blasting news in the back. “City folk blaming it on those shepherds. Think they’re the aliens making up a bunch of hullabaloos to keep us under their thumb.”

  It was a startling accusation. “Oh?”

  “Worried them things are bombs or some nonsense.” She nodded dramatically then rolled her eyes. “Who wants to blow up their planet?”

  Cutter listened while he stared through the window to the trunk of his black Chevelle. He’d pressed Esmerella against it in a heated moment. A low, visceral fire churned at his core, frayed by the memory of the blood pouring from her stomach as he carried her away from the party their last night together. He looked down, spinning the warming band around his finger, not surprised she could turn him on, even as a memory.

  “Have you found constructive purpose in her absence?” Rosa asked.

  Looking back at her, he saw her curl forward in sudden regret. “Do you mean to ask if I have found another woman?”

  She grimaced. “Not specifically, more of something to fill the space?”

  “I’m not here because the invasion reminded me of someone forgotten.” She never left his mind.

  He lowered his eyes to the grains of gravel in the tiny fissures crossing the floor. “The space reminds me of her. I will never fill it with anything or anyone else.”

  Rosa dipped her head. “Yes, sir. I apologize. I hope you have a nice stay with us.”

  Cutter snatched up his card and pushed through the door. Climbing the stairs, he found the room as if he’d been there a thousand times. He had, in his mind.

  Lifting the keycard, he paused and let it hover above the slot in the door. Cutter imagined her standing on the other side, wearing a lace nightgown in her beloved maroon red. The high he’d felt with her made everything else in life feel insignificant. And then, with a single bullet, she was gone. Like his mother.

  Kronos destroyed everything they touched.

  Setting himself up for the disappointment made it easier to bear the reality. Cutter slid the card in the slot, and the door clicked open.

  The scents of bleached cotton and minty mouthwash greeted him the same way they had on his first sweltering day with Esmerella A loud slam of the door behind him made him jolt, too much like the bang of the gun that took her from his arms.

  Slumping to sit on the corner of the bed, Cutter stared at the door in a daze. Their first day, she’d come through and stopped to stare at him in that exact spot. She’d calmed the trembling from his first serum-free mission within minutes.

  Cutter flopped back on the bed and imagined her in the nightgown straddling his stomach. Her giggles were bubbly as champagne. Few things evoked a smile from him. Every time she’d leaned over to kiss him, her soft, brown curls would tickle his bare chest. Cutter never knew something could be so delicate or beautiful. Or fragile.

  He rubbed his eyes as visions of her surrounded him, blurring into one tantalizing, terrifying mess. Her floral perfume and the lacquer-red nail polish drifted through his thoughts. Lifting a hand, he trailed his fingers through the daydream of her body, drawing a line over her silken stomach and around the curve of her waist.

  I miss you, Handsome.

  Cutter’s eyes popped open. He couldn’t remember closing them. Sitting up, he drew his civilian switchblade from a pocket. “Who’s there?”

  There was no answer.

  A desperate panic set in. Leaping up, Cutter circled the room, checking the closets, the bathroom, and every place large enough for a person to hide. He found nothing.

  “Essie?” he called out. He knew it was irrational. She was gone. Still, every brunette, tan girl he walked by, he wondered about then tried to snag a glimpse of their face, especially their eyes.

  None of them were her.

  Nausea swelled in his stomach, and Cutter bolted for the bathroom. Splashing cold water on his face as he dipped his head over the sink, the sensation faded, leaving him shivering, shoulders rattling in their sockets. He gasped for breath and sank to sit between the sink and the shower, a hand covering his face, shielding his sobs from the world.

  The silence of the room pushed in on him. Only th
e quiet hum of his wristband, the front door lock, and the few lights surrounded him here.

  Drying his face on his sleeves, he noticed a shimmer of gold on the floor behind the door, buried in dust. Sniffling hard, he crawled across the tile and pulled the door away from the wall revealing a piled-up slender chain. Carefully freeing the dust, Cutter choked at what unraveled.

  The anklet he’d bought Essie, the one she’d lost, now rested back in his fingers. He laughed incredulously through his tears. He clutched the piece of her against his chest. Cutter slumped against the wall and rested his head against it, dreaming of her.

  Handsome—

  His eyes flew open. He’d fallen asleep again. Bennett was right; he needed this.

  Cutter scrambled to his feet, anklet clutched in hand. Blood rushed in his ears as he burst out of the bathroom.

  The bed was as he left it.

  He opened the door and scanned both directions along the second-story walkway.

  Empty.

  Leaning over the railing, he caught a cloaked shadow hustling out toward the beach.

  “Hello?” Essie?

  The shadow moved faster.

  Hope sparked in his chest, and he sprinted to the stairs, leaping down the sections. “Hey, wait!”

  The figure bolted right, heading out for the sand.

  He forced his tired legs to their burning limits, the doors on the ground level flying past him.

  Jetting out of the end onto the sand, he glanced right, expecting the stranger. No one stood near the motel or the water.

  “What the—” He scoured the sand to find only his feet had made tracks.

  I’m losing my mind. Heart pounding in his chest, Cutter spun around, searching the beach and around the far side of the hotel. There wasn’t a soul beneath the star-speckled sky but him.

  He shuffled, broken and barefooted, hands on his head, toward the water. Back to the ocean, he double-checked, in case he’d missed movement—a sign of life somewhere in the dark spaces between the sharp beams of porch lights.

  The beach was vacant, the motel windows dark and the shades open to show no one was inside.

  Cutter’s adrenaline crashed. Staggering backward, he felt cool waves wash over his feet. His wristband flashed its warning light through the fabric of his sleeve. He checked it.

  Adrenaline Saturation 100%

  Blood Pressure Dropping

  Auto-inject Program Initiated.

  Cutter felt the pinch of the needle in his forearm, and the calming serum spread through his veins. But his shaking didn’t stop. His heart beat remained fast.

  Dizziness grabbed him hard.

  Dose Ineffective - See Serum Specialist Immediately

  Above, the moon floated like a lure dangling above the liquid horizon. Its light rippled over the water in a silver glaze, reminding him of the night he and Esmerella danced alone in the sand.

  His lips quivered at the memory of their tender first kiss. Closing his eyes, he fell to his knees. A wave hugged him, soaking his jeans.

  “Why did you let me have her just to take her away?” Cutter’s face swelled from anger and confusion. He curled forward, clutching his thrumming head.

  He clawed painfully at his hair as he pulled away to glare at his hands. They had failed him. He had failed her.

  Another wave crashed into his body, spitting saltwater into the air. The sea filled his palms, rinsing grime from the anklet woven around his fingers. The tide receded again. It felt too much like her life, her blood; there one night, gone the next.

  Cutter drew in a deep breath but couldn’t quell the chaos within. Out here, there was no one to see him break, no one to give two shits how he felt, how he acted, how he coped.

  He needed release.

  Arching his back, Cutter bellowed his frustration at the stars until his throat was raw, and his body trembled. When he was out of air, he gave in to the strangled pangs in his chest and collapsed into the sand.

  Chapter 9

  BENNETT PLACED HIMSELF in Atana’s path as she exited her pod in the private transport repository. “How was the controlled burn?”

  Atana frowned. “I will have to figure out new uniforms for us. Stripping was not—comfortable.”

  “Hyras saw nothing. Had his head down most of the time.” A short laugh accompanied Bennett’s blush.

  Atana scoffed and backhanded his shoulder. But a small smile crept over her lips, and she pointed up at him. “Don’t forget, I’ve seen you naked twice now.”

  “Yeah.” Bennett ran a nervous hand over the back of his neck. He followed beside her as she took the stairs down. Doors clanged shut behind them from the service entrance, muffling the raucous drones of collector engines revving and decelerating as Azure reprogrammed them.

  “I was hoping you could update me on the Linéten metal you pulled from shepherds shot at the Unveiling,” Bennett said. “I’m trying to wrap my head around all alien weapons we might be facing.”

  She paused on a landing, glancing between the two levels. “It can be controlled by telepathic species, which, oddly, Linétens and Linoans are not. I mention Linoans because the Linéten weapons systems use similar components to Linoan ArcBows used on Agutra. This begged the questions: Where did they get the metal from, and how are they talking to it?

  “Emotion is the answer,” she continued. “The orb of Linéten bullets is made of a cluster of nanocytes. They stick together in one mass, all think the same thought, and react to conductive materials. In Cutter’s case, with the metal shot in his leg, if we think the right response, say ‘death,’ it tells the nanos they’ve done their job—their subject is dead—and they can go to into sleep mode which is the orb shape, the most protective structure.”

  “But the metal didn’t completely melt in Cutter’s leg, right?” Bennett asked.

  Atana chewed the inside of a cheek. “Correct. So what does that say about him?”

  “He controlled it somehow, slowed the process.”

  She stepped closer. “I don’t think he was aware of it, but yes. There’s no other explanation. He should’ve lost his leg.”

  Bennett shifted out of the way of an ascending team. “Is there something you think you can use these clusters for?”

  She laughed darkly. “Anything I want. I could tell them to eat every Suanoa from the inside out, and they’d do it. The problem is any telepathic individual can send signals. I’m working on overriding it, maybe even programming them so we can shoot them out at say, plasma regulation systems. They could destroy the ships via plasma destabilization.”

  He slid in a half step, studying the faint creases forming in the corners of her eyes. “You’re hiding a useful detail.”

  Atana squinted at him in admiration. “I think those three rings around the Linéten bullets have a pre-set program that’s telling the nanorb what to do. It’s something similar to the emotional control the Linoan bows use to ignite their bands. If we turn up the frequency of the vibrating bands on the ArcBows, we could draw an arc between two ships and cut through things like they do cheese in the kitchen. I’m working out designs for the mountable devices.”

  He leaned back. “They cut cheese with a wire? Not a knife?”

  Atana licked her bottom lip. “Yeah. I like cheese. When I was a teen, I would sneak in and watch, then steal some.”

  Lifting a fist to his mouth, Bennett snorted a laugh.

  Her face reddened. “What? It didn’t harm anyone.”

  Bennett cleared his throat and rested his hands on his gear belt, his fingers tapping the leather. “So, you’re thinking what, two collectors with an ArcString?”

  “Two in parallel.” She lifted her hands, palms together then drew them apart. “Ignite the wire and pull away. Circle the ship they want to destroy. However, the wire thins at greater distances and won’t cut through much. I’ll spare you the technical details. Tanner’s already implementing my programming anyway.” She turned her palms toward Bennett. “I’m not playing with your
Taz destroyers. Gah, bombers. Tanner’s automated them because I don’t like the idea of losing more people than necessary. He’ll get the specifications up in TACSIM soon.”

  “This is good stuff, Nakio, why didn’t you tell me earlier?” Bennett asked.

  “Still working on the specifics. I won’t say something until I’m damned sure it will work. Otherwise, we’re living on prayers. And those worked so well for thousands of years,” Atana remarked dryly, continuing down the stairs.

  He hummed in discontent. Prayers were wishes, and wishes had accomplished nothing in his experience.

  The muscles of his forearm tensed at the touch of her fingertips. His heart skipped, and he looked over at her.

  “You seem upset,” she said, gaze locked on him.

  Bennett lifted a shoulder, slipping himself free of her. He couldn’t risk opening up. He casually gave her more room as they walked. “It’s nothing. If I can’t change it, I shouldn’t dwell on it, right?”

  “I fight things I can’t change because I don’t agree with them,” she offered. “Command is an example. I’ve moved beyond my previous system of rules, theirs, to something bigger.”

  They reached Level Five and veered left along the hall to the labs.

  “Is this about your transition?” Atana stopped as a sergeant walked up to her.

  “The results of the tests you had me run on the arc stabilization.” The young woman extended a tablet. “Permission to go to chow.”

  “Granted.” Atana scrolled through the readouts on the screen as the girl hustled off. Locking the tablet, she pulled Bennett into an alcove outside the lab doors.

  “I—” A team of shepherds in long white coats left the lab, stalling Bennett’s response. When they were alone again, he took a deep breath and rubbed a hand over his tired eyes. Too many things were breaking up the flow of his progress on the battle plans, his sleep, conversations, and thoughts. He didn’t want to start anything else to have to finish it another time. It was too much to keep track of.

  “Jameson, you can tell me.” She paused as one last shepherd ran in through the doors shouting apologies. “I don’t care what rules others make. Even your father. You are more important than outdated systems of code.”