“When I was still bound by time and space, my name was Cass,” he said, his voice muffled and distant, as if I was submerged in water.
I am Laith.
I was Laith.
Now I am no one.
*
The tranquil stone walls encasing us were whisked away like smoke in wind. Pressure condensed in my head and my sight grew fuzzy. When it returned, I was knelt in the corner of a dark, dingy room with rusty metal walls and stifling heat. The odor of sick and sweat invaded my nostrils.
So, this was the tank.
My gaze shifted in the darkness, cued by the sound of shallow breathing around the room. There were other people here, their hollow eyes glittering against pinpricks of light that filtered through cracks and other imperfections in the walls. From what I could tell the tank was somewhere above ground, abandoned in the stifling desert heat. Distant voices beyond the tank were shouting orders at each other. The sound of marching feet and engines perforated the silence every so often.
As my eyes adjusted to the darkness the other people around me took form. They looked like those I’d seen against the outpost wall. Tattered rags, hopeless, gaunt faces, but some of the ones here were missing limbs. Their severed arms and legs were wrapped crudely in soiled rags taken from their tunics; their skin coated in a sickly sheen of sweat. Most horrifying were the women and children huddled in the other corners, clinging to each other for dear life.
I stared at them, and they at me. It was clear that I was an offworlder—that I was of the same race as those who’d imprisoned them. Behind their stares was a form of exhausted curiosity regarding why I was here. The feeling was mutual.
The door to the tank opened and a large, masked man entered while another stayed at the entrance. Even the dusk light made my eyes sensitive, and I winced, shielding my face against the onslaught of the dying sun. The other prisoners skittered away, pressing against the walls, making themselves as small as possible. The man walked along the tank, craning his head toward the darkened corners of the room. He pointed past me, toward one of the mothers and her children.
Whatever he said next to his comrade made the group of children scream. The mother held up her hands as the man approached, crying and pleading in a language I couldn’t understand. In response the man kicked her in the head and she crumpled to the floor, seizing. Her children scattered and he scooped up the littlest one and threw her over his shoulder. The kid squealed, as did her siblings, until the man walked through the door and slammed it shut behind him.
Then, silence.
No one else had moved or tried to stop him, myself included.
All that remained of the terrifying ordeal were the quiet sobs of the children as they tried to wake their mother. I stared at the door with tear-brimmed eyes, not at all frightened but furious. My pulse quaked within me, coalescing into a rhythmic beat against the choral white noise from my dream.
‘Let me help you, then.’
I exhaled slowly, my anger manifesting into glittering vines that snaked along the walls of the tank. As they wriggled, their thick stems shaved rust from the enclosure, peppering the ground with red. Flowers bloomed along them, their petals yawning open, presenting razor-like teeth. I looked down at my hands, marveling at the blue sheen of my skin.
Then, I clenched my fists.
Zira was no longer here to help me.
I would have to help myself.
XVI
ATCA_QRY_09b.G215
Search term: “_communications-hub9 “!”
Ophal System Confederacy Transmission Records
Ophal-II, 146th Cycle
Satellite transmission; language Fevarian, dialect Nara-ko
Unknown, O-REACH Hub-12
OR-Initiative, Okki Region
NOTICE OF PROGRAM CLOSURE
Due to the ongoing investigation of the OSC Benefaction Council, all OR-Initiative Programs are ordered to cease activity. Employees are to evacuate the Ophal-II initiative facilities and relocate to Ophal-IV while construction for the updated program is pending. Please stand-by for notice of final OSC-HAS inspection dates.
THE OUTPOST MELDED INTO VIEW ON THE CRIMSON horizon as dusk fell across the wasteland. I’d followed the tracks for an hour give-or-take, choosing a slower pace in order to ensure the coast was clear of any more animatronics that might possibly ruin the surprise visit.
I slowed to a halt, surveilling the metal perimeter fence and the compound surrounding both its exterior and interior. Oscillating auto-artillery machines were stationed at each corner of the fence, scanning the surrounding area for movement. They looked like heads poking from the hardpan, shaking right to left, left to right, daring me to move.
Oh, I’d move alright.
There was a scraggly tree that I knelt beneath, my body half hidden by its twisted trunk. A garden of generators were erected behind the compound, their bladed tops milling the evening wind. This place was kept a lot better than the last. How many of these were still active?
Very few, judging by the most recent query result. In fact the program here had been closed for decades. Why was this facility occupied at all?
That was a later concern. For now—;
I ducked behind the trunk as the gate abruptly slid open and a rover rolled out. I counted four men seated in it as it disappeared into the wastes. Just before they vanished from sight, a group of black birds lifted from the rover, blending into the sky; only the faint beams of light from their eyes were visible, and they too quickly faded in the night.
Scouting seemed like a typical part of their evening routine. I wasn’t particularly keen on the idea of survivors returning after I had finished, but that was the hand I’d been dealt. Better to get on with it before anyone else decided to leave as well.
With an aggravated sigh I tracked the fence a final time. There was only one way in and out.
I tapped my ear and attica’s interface lit up across my eyes.
Pariah, augment my conscious stream. I am about to engage.
—About to engage what?
I kneaded at the throb in my wrist with my thumb, taking my first steps out in the open, toward the sentries.
Everything.
***
“She said she saw the cave?”
“She did,” said Guri. “Even spoke of the fire in the cave.”
I looked out through the window of the garage, at the rusted freight box situated at the edge of the perimeter. Guri waited for me to say something, visibly proud that he had done well. I reflected some more, inhaling from the can crumpled in my fingers. Talk of the cave spurred memories that I wished to forget. My mind found peace in the brief chemical haze that followed. “Did she go through the tunnel?”
“I don’t know,” said Guri, the pride in his expression falling away. “But she said she saw the cave.”
“Then she’s useless. No one ever makes it through the tunnel.”
“She was shining. She attacked me.”
“Is that why you put her in the tank?”
“Yes. To think.”
“To think,” I said, sighing. “The only thing she will be thinking about in there is how to escape.”
“She attacked me,” repeated Guri, defensive. “She is strong; stronger than a girl should be at her age. That means she might make it through the cave.”
I gave him a warning look. Even I had never made it through the cave tunnel; but I was one of the few able to escape with his mind still mostly intact. Almost all the others went insane. That tunnel did things to you—made you sick and weak, played with your head, turned all the bad things of your life in on you until you could barely breathe.
It was a door to somewhere. Somewhere other than here. Somewhere off this fetid rock, but the cost was too much. A good thing the white-coats had never found a way in, at least. They’d spent hundreds of us trying before the program closed and we were turned loose, insane and malnourished, into the wasteland. Most of us had been brought here as childre
n. We’d never known anything except tests, chairs and darkness. For that, there wasn’t many of us left.
“We should give up on the cave,” I mused.
“But… But Talek,” Guri stammered, shocked, “the entire reason we brought her here is because the reports—”
“Yes, the reports.” The reports we’d intercepted from Jabron to O-1 of all the potentially-gifted subjects under the radar fleeing Svissa. And then we came across the order from OSC Headquarters. They’d had plans for the Dezidka; plans wasted on a gifted girl with her statistics. All the research surrounding the ‘otherplace’ and its cave entrance died with the program thirty years ago. Now all we were good for to the OSC was muscle.
But just our luck—she’d been flying undercover right over our world. Pursuing her had been expensive. Haggling with pirates wasn’t a skillset I’d mastered. The Gifted usually had little concern for O-2’s skies, other than what the pirates could scavenge and trade at the Killi Market.
“The cave is the only thing keeping us going,” confessed Guri. “If we could see what was beyond the tunnel, we would—”
“We would what?” I barked. “Know? Then what? What does knowing do for us when it is clear that none of us can ever see it for ourselves?”
Guri stared at me for long while, before replying, “We would have hope that there is something more than this; that everything we’ve been through had a purpose.”
“Purpose?” I wheezed after taking another huff. “The program was never about us. It was about the white-coats using us for knowledge. The cave is theirs, not ours.”
“It is ours,” Guri said quietly, his expression bitter. “We built our compound on the belief that we were destined to pass through the tunnel. We’ve all seen the cave. Would you tell everyone now to forget about it? To just die here, in this heat and filth?”
“That’s what will happen anyway.”
Guri said nothing, moving to the window beside me. He wore a tired frown, knowing the truth. We’d led the weak and weary here, promising them a brighter future. The cave was their religion now. Taking it away would cut the final twine that held this whole thing together. Hope was the most powerful force in this system, no doubt. Take away hope and you had… well, our food in the tank.
“Let me see the girl, then,” I said, relenting. “I will talk to her. After dinner, though.” I sniffed the air as the scent of roasted meat overpowered the perpetual stench of engine fuel. “Another hog? How many are left?”
“A young one this time; they wanted to celebrate. Our tank has enough until next week if we stick to limbs and skin only.”
I grunted my approval, saying no more. There wasn’t much to look at as night settled on the compound. I left the window and sat on the metal, three-legged stool at the table in the center of the garage office. The office was sparsely furnished, mostly cluttered with heaps of old engine parts in the corners and along the hall. I only came here to huff, and think. But mostly to huff.
If Guri was right and the Dezidka could pass through the tunnel and make it back to tell us what lay beyond it, the delusion would continue. Most of us were broken already; the only comfort was the false belief that we were the instruments of some grand underlying phantom-world. The ‘otherplace’. Everyone would rejoice, drunk with validation, and life would go on largely undisturbed, which was good for me and Guri. Without the others there would be no compound; no meat, no protection, no shelter.
If that was the cost, I would talk to the girl.
The sound of turret gunfire made me freeze. Guri was already at the window again. Our man at the fence was shouting and shooting over the gate.
“What is happening?” I yelled as another turret went off. Before Guri could answer, our man at the gate was hit by something and fell from the watchtower post, hitting the ground on his back.
It was the smoking shell of one of the turrets. Whatever was attacking the compound had thrown it over the gate. It’d landed on our guard’s head and the insides of his skull oozed out around the dead turret body.
Our perimeter alarms sounded, probably from other men around the compound that’d seen what just happened. They slung their guns over their shoulders and ran toward the gate, but came to an abrupt halt when something hit the gate outside with enough strength to dent the frame. The gate was not small; it was sixteen-feet high and a foot thick, reinforced. Whatever was on the other side had to be some kind of weaponized vehicle.
The gate blew open on the fifth ram, hitting the hardpan and kicking up a violent cloud of red dust. The sound of spraying bullets and screams erupted through the billowing cloud. Guri was shouting something at me, his voice frantic, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the scene. I couldn’t hear him, I couldn’t see him; only the bullets and violent cloud that all of our men hit and never came out.
When the dust settled there were at least a dozen bodies lying dead on the ground, their corpses chewed up as if a wild animal had had at them. Blood sprayed across the hardpan in front of the ruined gate. And then I saw the man.
One man.
Not an army, not a massive weaponized vehicle—;
Just an offworlder, clad in black. There was some kind of shiny yellow visor over his eyes.
And then I finally heard Guri.
“What the fuck!” he was screaming. “He’s dead! We killed him!”
I looked to Guri, confused.
“He was with the girl!” he tried to explain, his eyes wide and horrified as he watched the man advance to the center of the compound, holding a long, curved black blade. That appeared to be his only weapon, which was impossible. “We killed him!”
More of our men swarmed the compound grounds, surrounding him. In response the blade-wielding offworlder knelt next to a body and grabbed the sidearm from its belt, emptying the chamber into his own head, a wicked smile on his lips.
“Did you by chance happen to kill him with a gun?” I snarled at Guri, who said nothing, shocked into silence.
When he didn’t fall dead, everyone turned and ran. The sound of engines started in the garage, with others shouting to flee. Without another word, Guri turned and fled as well, leaving me seated on the stool, the crumpled can still in hand. The dogs had been let loose, but they’d only last a second. Rovers evacuated in droves over the spanning carnage. The man paid them no mind, letting them run. His attention was cemented to the tank.
Within minutes the compound was empty. All that remained was dust and smoldering metal. Everything that had taken decades to build was destroyed by one impossible man. All for that girl.
All for that girl.
“We should have just forgotten about the cave,” I said aloud, to no one, and then huffed my can.
***
That had been a lot easier than I’d imagined.
For starters, there weren’t nearly as many people here as I’d been prepared for. The sentries were mildly impressive, but everything else was… out of date, so to speak. This was a threadbare operation. Even the guards were both incompetent and poorly-equipped.
The rovers—what I’d seen of them as they sped off, anyway—were patched with mismatched parts and poor paint jobs. A few of them were missing parts of their shells. Some remains of the guards were unmasked; they were Evgans, easily discerned by their feline-like facial structure and tanned skin. The gears in my head chugged to life suddenly, and I referred to Pariah’s last query report submission.
These weren’t OR-Initiative folk; they were their subjects. The survivors. They must have just cast them out, packed up and left.
My visor picked up the tell-tale squiggly energy pattern of the nano-tech amid the blood and guts, still warm on the hardpan. My gaze then trailed toward a rusted-out vessel freighter cart resting at the far end of the compound, under the windmill garden. I sniffed the air, read the heat-signatures contained inside, and then made my way forward.
I kept my scythe at the ready; I didn’t feel any viable threats but that meant nothing where nano-tec
h was concerned. Call it our Achilles-heel, if you will.
There was a fire situated to the left of the tank with an oil drum atop it. The scent of roasting meat wafted through the air, but something felt wrong about the whole apparatus. There was a bucket next to a stone at the site, filled to the brim with congealed blood, clumps of hair, and innards. Against my better judgement, I lifted the lid of the drum. I wished I hadn’t.
Trying not to think about it, I moved on. For just a second I’d felt a twinge of guilt over laying ruin to a colony of people whose entire childhoods had been spent as test subjects, but not anymore. At least there was that.
The freighter tank was locked from the outside, requiring a physical key. I snapped off the lock with little effort and slid open the door.
And then the smell hit me; feces, sweat and rot, amid an unventilated heat that burned my eyes. I took a step back, not prepared for it, and covered the lower portion of my face with an arm. I lingered at the entrance, scanning the darkness. More than a dozen indigenies were lying on the floor or slumped against the wall—all dead. I counted several children among them. Some of the older bodies had missing limbs; old wounds, as they’d been crudely bandaged and had a chance for infection to kick in, judging by the soils of it. They all still emanated some heat, which meant they had died recently. As in within-the-hour recently.
And they all shared the same fatal wounds—lacerations around the neck to the point of mutilation. Their necks had been crushed during an act of violent strangulation.
At the back of the freighter tank, Laith sat on her knees. To my relief, she was still alive. But my relief quickly turned to confusion as the seconds passed and her silence persisted. She didn’t even move from her position to see who had opened the door. Her head was bowed and she looked at her open hands, palms facing upward as they rested on her knees.
“Hey,” I said quietly, to which she snapped her head up. It was then when I saw the luminescent-blue tint of her skin. Although she looked at me, her gaze seemed distant at first—only after a few beats did she regain clarity. Simultaneously, her glowing skin vanished.
Covenants: Elegy (Hymn of the Multiverse Book 8) Page 14