by Nathan Lunn
“Probably because of the tooth he was missing, mumbled his words from that far below you?” Eddie and Julie looked at each other instantly, then turned to Douglass and pressed him.
“Missing tooth? What do you mean, Douglass?”
“Well, when we were moving Danny into the car I saw it. He’s missing one of his back molars I believe.”
“Alexis threatened to take my back tooth after he killed me, Kye. Why is Danny’s missing?”
Kye started to sweat – playing with his ice cubes wasn’t distracting them enough, and the ash sleet outside had started to bang and pile up against the windows.
“Me and Douglass surmised it was because of the trap, maybe one had hit his tooth out on the way down…” Eddie and Julie stayed silent, Douglass joining them in staring at Kye. Finally, he cracked, telling a half-truth instead of the whole.
“Okay, after his body was lifted, the trap disappeared, and Morgana Croft turned up.” The group started yelling incoherently, attracting the attention of the entire diner. Urgently quieting them, Kye raised his voice, addressing the diner directly. “We’re okay, it’s fine.” He turned back to the group, an irritable strain in his voice as though they didn’t fully understand. “Listen, she turned up and claimed that it was her trap, and that she and Alexis were doing some kind of weird hunt-thing? She laid the trap, and killed Danny, then came up and took one of his teeth in front of me. I let her go off into the jungle somewhere and then fired the flare for Douglass to come pick us up.” He spread his hands wide, leaning back in the chair with an exaggerated sigh. “Alright?”
The rest of the group sat in silence for a moment, mulling it over in their own ways. Eventually, it was Eddie who talked first, persistent in ascertaining that this was the real final truth Kye would tell them.
“Why did you not just tell us that the first time round? Why lie about the trap, and Morgana?”
Kye didn’t waste time in replying, almost as if he was reading off a pre-planned script:
“Well, I thought you would all disapprove of my decision to let Morgana go, of course!” Their eyes narrowed again, and he added some stammering to sell his uncertainty. “I mean, I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, or say for that matter!”
Julie spoke, repeating herself from the Oxygen shop many hours earlier. “Well it can’t have been as bad as killing her! I’m sorry, Eddie–” she turned to face Eddie, whose fists were flexing restlessly– “but, I know you don’t agree with Danny, even if it was Morgana’s fault. Kye did the right thing, as duplicitous as he told us.” She shot a withering look towards Kye; Douglass remained silent and Eddie ignored Julie, turning back to Kye.
“And where is she now?” he asked, his words jabbing like knives. “Did we just leave her on her own, on the island?”
Kye paused a moment before replying this time.
“No, she told me she had some service bots back at the house that could take her where she needed to. They’re still in working order, right, Douglass?” Douglass only nodded.
“Kye…” Eddie started, leaning in with an intensity that could only speak of worry. “Did you tell her anything about us?” Kye stuttered a response, as he finished his drink, setting it on the table with a soft clink.
“No, no, I–”
“Kye,” Eddie cut him off. “She has Danny’s tooth? That means she has his DNA on file, Danny wasn’t ShadowWalker like you and Julie.” Realisation hit the others as Eddie’s words sunk in. “Does she know who we are?”
“It’ll be fine!” Kye snapped, standing up from the table in anger. “You’re just overreacting, she’s learnt her lesson and won’t do anything with the data.”
`”How can you be sure of that?” Eddie persisted, standing with him. A moment of silence passed, in which the jazz music finished, leaving only the audible sounds of the diner to leak into Kye’s ears. He shook his head clear, staring back at Eddie before he spoke.
“Trust me. She’s not going to snitch.” Leaving no time for reply, Kye moved to the front and tapped on the tablet, bringing one of the aproned-servers to his aid.
A modulated voice box piped out an auto-generated statement, waiting idly for his input. Sighing, Kye tapped the tablet again, and the language changed from Chinese to English, trying again:
“Welcome to the Atomic Cafe, how may I be of service?”
Kye spoke plainly, making sure he emphasised the keywords.
“When will this storm end?”
The robot straightened up, a light flashed behind its front-facing panel, and it spoke again:
“Storm is due to end in 30 hours’ time. Anything more?”
Kye let out a noise of disgust, and leaned in again, speaking in a reduced slang he kept for service bots.
“Funeral services nearby?”
The robot repeated its action, this time flashing blue behind its faceplate. A notification popped up on Kye’s commlink, requesting to send information over the shortwave network. He accepted and the robot spoke as a map was downloaded to his Commlink.
“Very well, I have sent a map over the shortwave. Anything more?”
He ordered himself another drink, paying the ridiculous fee for another glass of iced water. It was handed to him immediately, and he downed it – he then tapped his temple, and the tablet, ending the connection and the service with a tip of ten percent. “Thank you. Have an explosive day!” Scowling at the robot’s back as it returned to the kitchen, he himself returned to the table and the sombre mood he had left it in. More music had started, but he wasn’t paying it any attention.
“I’ve got a map to the nearest funeral services on my commlink, if you wanna get the body to them. We’ll have to park in their canopy to move him, ‘cause the tin over there told me this storm’s not due to end for another 30 hours,” Kye said, sitting back down in his seat. “Still, we can get him sent to the burial team and out before it’s over, all without leaving the town.” The rest of the group all faced Kye at the same time, like he was caught in the middle of an unknown intervention.
“Kye, we’ve been talking to Eddie, and…” Julie spoke, pausing at the critical moment. “We want Danny to be buried inside the Burning Sea.” Kye looked at them all in disbelief. “It’s completely possible, there’s some vendors nearby that provide personal survival suits, and we just need to venture out a few miles on foot in them to drop him off.”
“You can’t be serious?” Kye said, staring at Eddie in particular. “We aren’t entering the Burning Sea, not for–”
“Danny wanted this. I know that, Kye, and I think you need to respect that. If you want to stay behind, you can stay behind,” Eddie replied, steepling his fingers in front of him in a show of power. Kye remained pensive and quiet, trying to keep his emotions in check. The ash slumped into the window, almost piled to the top, and the Cafe’s automatic lights came on in accordance with the dipping brightness in the room. “So you’re staying?” Eddie asked again, startling Kye out of his stupor.
“No… I’ll come,” he replied, bringing his attention back to the table. “Just make sure we do this right.” The jazz played on as they left the Cafe, stepping into the airlock and out into the persistent hot ash raining from above.
Kye’s hot breath steamed up the interior of his visor, fogging up his vision and wetting his chin as it ran down to the seam between his neck and chest. Swaddled in thin lightweight clothing underneath the personal survival suit, he was still sweating vigorously, and his back, neck, forehead and armpits were damp, chafing up his joints as he moved over the tough and demanding terrain. Though his boots had gripping spikes built into the undersides, he struggled to effectively clamber over the slick and sodden mess that constituted the ground, a shifting mess of ash and charred mud that melted and moved underneath his uncertain footing; top-heavy from his inflated plastic head, his balance was also taking damage on the journey, resulting in a few worrisome falls to the ground that left him engulfed in the hot fluttering scraps like a turtle on it
s back, helplessly sliding through quicksand that would bury him if left unassisted.
The task had been complicated further with the inclusion of Danny’s dead body, unhumourously cooking in the burning air as they ferried it through the broken lands, taking turns to flaunt him over their shoulders. Original ideas had failed, as the similar (but common) levitating coffin they had used for Charlie had faltered in its engines, then burnt up as soon as it hit the ground. Managing to pull Danny’s corpse from the collapsing box, Eddie first took up the mantle of carrying him to a suitable location, switching over to Kye for a few moments as he clambered up a sharp but short clifface.
Communication had been difficult almost as soon as they entered the Burning Sea – the overpowering radiation around them had scrambled their commlinks, even through the thick shielding they wore, picking words off sentences and dropping them back into the conversation at inopportune times. Floating in on the wind with the heat were random sparklings of other people’s commlink broadcasts: snippets of long-distance phone calls between lovers; erratic screeching from militarised transmissions; disjointed notes from radio hosts’ music picks. As a result of all of these interruptions, the group had decided to instead communicate with hand symbols and movements, shaking their fist to stop and waving in the direction they wished to go. It wasn’t particularly far that they ventured into the Burning Sea, but it was difficult work, and as such took them a lot longer than the time they had allocated. After finding a suitable spot (chosen by Eddie), they placed Danny down and let the falling ash accumulate around his corpse – leading to a silent and respectful burial that occurred through the passing of time rather than by brute force and effort. Eddie dropped off the Amaterasu Goggles he had brought with him into the growing hill, then stood for a few minutes, his visor fogging up with words Kye couldn’t hear in their entirety, before he moved around the mound and started back in the direction they had come from. Kye took another look at Danny’s makeshift grave as he stood still, feeling a deep pang of guilt striking through his heart and settling in a cold lump in his gut. He shivered despite the heat, forcing the thoughts out of his mind that were trying to break through the defences he had tried so hard to maintain since the jungle; a glitch in his right arm pushed against the taut fabric, threatening to tear through, before a physical shake of his head set it right. Looking up from the grave, he peered into the murky yellow mists around him, and saw no nearby shadows. In his momentary lack of focus, he had been abandoned.
Stumbling forward on his own in the direction he thought was the right way, Kye cursed the others. Irritated at their abandonment, and the choice they had made to go out into the Burning Sea in the first place, he was not happy. His movements sloppy, and his visor even further fogged, Kye constantly fell to the ground, and, with no one nearby to help pick him up, found it more difficult than ever to continue on. The harsh alien landscape around him was unforgiving, the heat searing through his survival suit was painstaking and the violently broken silence was distracting and nerve-wracking. Slipping in and out of the mustard fog around him, he could make out fluctuating darker tones, too large to be human, always staying out of his way. Occasionally, blaring unnatural howls penetrated his helmet, mingling and echoing off the dipping valleys with a booming bellow of distant gunfire and explosives. Passing by a slipping clump of ash and mud, Kye was surprised to see something he had not originally noticed on the way in – a dissected skeleton, bones bleached white by the heat, almost glowing with an iridescent light. Though much of the structural integrity was missing, he could make out that it was human, and the various half-melted personal effects nearby gave it a complete personality. Choking away from the corpse, Kye stumbled his way through a low-hanging thundercloud, wincing in pain as the bright flashes diluted his eyesight to a thin, watery scope. As the last of his stressful tears were blinked away – though it had felt like they were floating from his skin on one point – he started to see a little better, helped strongly by the fact that the fog surrounding him had started to ebb out. More colour leaked into the ground at first, then the air, as he left the Burning Sea and came back to what now constituted as civilization. Rubble and ruins began to rise from the ground, eventually coalescing into the start of the settlement of Wuhan. His mind fried, Kye just kept on walking, dragging his heavy boots through the ash one after the other, the space between his blinks becoming shorter and shorter, until he collapsed in the mud, the glow of his vibrant survival suit slowly leaking into the ash he was being buried in. Rolling onto his back, the black flakes filling his patchy vision like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, a ringing began to start in his ears, lopping with a growing intensity; Danny’s burnt screaming face plastered across his darkened sight, taunting him as his consciousness faded, until there was nothing left but the dark and the heat.
27
Swooping down to the prone head, the clinically clean man plunged his scalpel in. Swiftly and without exerting much effort, he cut down the back of the skull, taking a second tool from the equally clean man to his side and activating it. The laser burned with a searing flash of red, only for a moment, before it shut off, and he set the tool back to his aide. Slipping the fragment of skull from its fresh hole, he prepared a new pair of gloves, sterilising the surface in the machine to his right.
“Removal of the brain matter and subsequent stem successful,” he spoke into a recording device floating by his head. “Sterilising the subject and packaging for transfer.” Wiping his hands clean and removing his gloves, he finished packaging the brain matter and closed the silver lockbox with a resounding beep. Passing it to the uniformed guard behind him, he stood and walked onto the helicarrier waiting nearby.
“Moving onto the next subject.”
Part 3
28
Truthfully, Eddie was disappointed Kye had made it back from the burial, but did well to conceal it. Though Kye was a little shaken up, and his mind overworked, he was resting well in the back of the car, after a short stint in the survival shop’s Radiation Revitalising machine. Watching the lasers run down his skin, Eddie had clenched his teeth and kept his mouth shut, knowing that it would be alright if he just bode his time. He really didn’t feel as though he could trust Kye anymore, and wasn’t even entirely sure about his story and its truths. Still, he was greatly distracted from his anger by the overwhelming grief he had experienced since leaving the jungle – Danny had been his brother, and whilst he wasn’t perfect, he still loved him, despite what they might have said to each other in passing. The burial had provided some closure, and he was happy to have fulfilled his requests, but there was still something off. Losing him had derailed him from his regular routine, and thrown him off course entirely. In fact, the more they pursued the Croft family for revenge, the more unsure he grew about the necessity of this mission – it wasn’t bringing him anything but increased depression, unlike what he thought it would bring. Charlie’s loss was tragic, but he hadn’t felt any less morose since his passing, and each attempt made to fix this feeling had resulted in more pain and sadness passing into his body. Something else had been growing though, alongside his upset – his anger. A build-up of rage, threatening to explode, was coursing through his body, added to with each bloodthirsty kill he engaged in. The smallest of triggers could cause him to snap, erupting on his own in unnecessary excess madness – a small trip of his feet forced him to slam his hands into his legs in persistent rage, pointlessly attempting to fix the issues which were not even currently present. He would wait, and they would be fixed for him. He didn’t need to think about Kye or the Crofts, because he believed the natural course of events would remedy the issue, seeing the world as siding with him finally despite his numerous drawbacks.
The group had left the Burning Sea, and all of the Asiatic Landmass, in just enough time to see the ash storm come to an unceremonious end. The continuous flow weakly tapered out, until they were left with a few flakes on the windscreen of the towncar, and then cleared skies. All of the occupants
of the car remained quiet throughout the entire cleaning process, trapped in each individual's thought processes – the Burning Sea had taken a lot out of them, mentally speaking, and they needed time to recuperate. This was allowed in the journey back to the workshop, a quiet and pensive movement across the European lands, high above the clouds to avoid any sort of detection by ground-based scanners.
When they reached the MidMeri airspace once more, they touched down in an earlier location, dropping the dirtied towncar off in a lot, leaving it behind to blend in seamlessly with the other abandoned vehicles. They moved through the dreary village, avoiding those of the diminishing population that managed to get up and out of their houses, before arriving at another car dealership. Douglass took point, meandering with the owner through the spires of vehicles stacked on either sides, shaking his head at the flashier ones, overblown with unnecessary additions and variance. Picking the plainest and the cheapest (and still forced to haggle for an over-inflated price), he was handed the keys, with a scrumpled nose and disgusted sniff from the shopowner. Their transport successfully altered and anonymised, the group piled back in and completed the trip back to the city.
Despite its cold exterior and unforgiving design, their home area was warming to see again after such a long and challenging time away from the city. The towering buildings hugged the vehicle as it manoeuvred around the growing traffic, dipping under some steaming piping to arrive at Danny’s apartment block.
“Cheers,” Eddie gruffly spoke, jumping out of the car. The rest stayed quiet as they drove off, and Eddie watched from the ground with a tired eye. Passing into his apartment block, he moved up the stairs and entered Danny’s room with no eventful interactions.
The cramped apartment was more messy than usual, debris from his living standards strewn about the small room. Eddie’s feet slammed into the rubbish, sending it across to hit the wall and slip to the floor. Wading slowly to the windows opposite the doorway, he opened them up, airing out the stink that had lingered from food left just too long, and a pool of dried and desiccated vomit that had crusted up near the television. As he reached the kitchen, he grabbed a grubby glass from the counter and filled it up with water, greedily gulping to soothe his parched throat. Leaning over the counter, he flicked a switch to set the filtration into charge, rotating fans by the window whirring until they stopped in a loud crash. The sensors above him shorted out and shut down with a beep, simultaneously turning off the air conditioning unit, lights and locks, popping the front door open with a tiny click. Eddie sighed and moved into the back cupboard to flick the switch and launch his amenities back into service; no stranger to the tiring ritual, he moved with almost mechanical precision, flipping switches one after the other until the lights stuttered back into existence. Moving back out of the cupboard, he stopped, able to see the interior and its contents more clearly now that the lights were on.