Half were men and women, the other half children, including the one that’d snatched my bag. They stood with it in their hands to the left of me, smiling playfully. With their lips peeled back I noticed their teeth were filed to points. The gesture no longer seemed playful.
The group held sharpened sticks and jagged rocks, hissing and snarling, snapping their pointy teeth. Their skin was painted white, marked with red swirls and streaks. Their hair was matted with tangles, their bodies lanky and emaciated.
Tribal, I thought. Savages.
This was how the OSC had seen us too, at one point.
I raised my hands, my heart beating out of my chest. Despite the danger, my eyes never left my satchel.
“Zira!” I screamed, knowing he would hear me.
A whistling sound pierced the air. One of the savages had thrown their rock. It hit me at the side of the face and I dropped to my knees, feeling warm blood trickle from my temple. My vision blurred and I fought to lift my head, watching as the rest of the group moved in.
***
Enka.
I queried attica for the Svissan lore surrounding their death god. The majority of their religion was practiced orally or written by hand, as Evgan orthodox tradition shunned technology for the most part; however there were a few digital academic journals from O-3, by former-Svissan scholars cataloging most—if not all—of the Evgani pantheon.
Enka was a lesser deity, according to the lore. He was drawn as a horned figure with red eyes and a black shawl, carrying what looked like a staff with an oil lamp attached to it. Further on I read the oil lamp was actually an incense container, as they believed the smoke guided souls of the dead to the other side. He was thought to scour forests and battlefields, collecting souls from the dead to ferry into Angosdura, their after-life.
I looked nothing like this god, and hadn’t a clue as to why Laith mistook me for him.
A series of digitized tones emitted from the transmission box in the rover. I filed the lore journals for later, returning to the driver’s seat to answer the transmission. The message was encrypted, as evidently there were all kinds of eavesdroppers on this world.
Attica worked quickly to decrypt the message:
E-Vac Unit 233 is on route and will be landing at the Targerine dock egvadosil. The craft is under the guise of a trading freighter, registry number U4b6. Target time is twelve hours. Speak to Unga at the egvadosil registry.
Twelve hours.
I checked the map. We would be cutting it very close.
And then I realized it’d been much longer than two minutes, and my attention turned toward the forest. I heard nothing, saw nothing.
I took several steps onto the grass in front of the treeline. Then I froze, looking back at the rover. Leaving it here unattended was not ideal. It was now six minutes more than I’d allowed Laith to have. Anger began to bubble inside of me.
Cursing in a loud whisper (I’d been doing that a lot on this contract), I pulled the rover off the flatland and parked it beside the brush, in front of the forest. This was what I got for being sympathetic. Next time she was pissing in a canteen; no exceptions.
“Zira!”
Laith’s scream sounded distant. She’d gone a lot further into the tree cluster than I’d thought. Her call registered fear. Danger.
I darted into the forest, trying to get a read on her exact location. The reverberation waves of her voice had dissipated, and she didn’t call again. Heat signatures weren’t working properly, and when I pulled up attica’s stream, it blipped like a faulty computer screen.
Something was wrong.
Something was interfer—;
My thoughts were interrupted when something grabbed my boot and whipped me into the air. I’d been running at a speed fast enough that any ordinary entity would have had a hard time with such precision.
Whatever it was didn’t let go, and I was slammed into the ground hard enough to form a crater where I landed. It knocked the wind out of me, and before I could recover I was in the air again, colliding with a tree trunk, then another.
I released a scythe, slashing at whatever had my leg. Everything was happening so fast that I couldn’t actually see what was holding me. I dropped to the forest floor with something wet, soiling my head and clothes as it fell beside me, writhing like a bleeding snake.
It was a… vine?
I looked toward my boot, studying the lacerations and blood that leaked from my lower calf. The black, slimy vine was covered in thorns, sharp and reinforced enough to have sliced through my uniform. It stopped thrashing now, lying still. Whatever it’d been attached to had disappeared; only the silence of the shady forest remained.
I wheezed amid the broken trees and fractured ground; internal damage from the attack had left me dizzy and confused. I stabbed my scythe into the ground, using it for leverage as I forced myself to stand. A stabbing sensation in my upper abdomen made me wince, and I curled my arm around the pain. A few broken ribs; maybe a punctured lung. My breathing was rattled and wet, so that was a possibility.
I grabbed a chunk of broken tree particles to regenerate. When I turned to get a vis-capture of the severed vine, it was gone.
Laith.
I called for her, trying to keep my voice even. Branches snapped in the distance and I followed the sound, this time walking briskly instead of running in case that alien vine tried to throw me around again. Deep grooves were etched into the trees, marking where the vines had coiled around the trunks and branches.
More snapping.
I saw branches and leaves fall ahead. I hastened my pace, until I came across the mangled remains of more than a dozen people. Women, men and children lay scattered across the forest floor; limbs torn from torsos, some even hanging in trees, blood painting their trunks and the grass surrounding them. Of the several corpses still in one piece, their eyes were red and bulging from their sockets, lips blue and twisted in a silent scream. The lacerations around their necks and indentions in their chests made this scene all too familiar.
A few feet away, Laith’s satchel sat beneath an undisturbed tree, the severed arm of a child still clutching the sash. I turned in place, looking over the massacre once more, piecing together what might have happened.
The child had taken Laith’s bag while she was doing her business. Laith chased the child, who led her into a trap. These people looked like they’d been a family, a tribe, perhaps having lived in this forest for decades. The scene was littered with sharpened sticks as well as stones the size of hands, having been brought from somewhere else. Weapons.
I grabbed Laith’s satchel, catching a glimpse of a severed head grinning maliciously up at the canopy. Their blackened teeth were filed to points, which sent a shiver down my spine. Again, I attempted IR-vis for heat signatures. It didn’t short out this time, but it didn’t pick anything up either.
“Where are you?” I called, knowing good and well she’d been responsible for this. I obviously couldn’t fault her for defending herself, but from previous experience this wasn’t something she could entirely control, nor remember doing.
Snap.
I spun, and there Laith was, lunging at me with a snarl.
Her eyes were sucked into her face, and her skin shined blue.
I dug my boots into the floor, bracing for impact as my hand snaked to her neck, stopping her in her tracks. I dropped her satchel, releasing a scythe.
Laith, wheezing and snarling, reached for my neck and I knocked her hand away with my elbow, leaning them both into her chest so she couldn’t attempt that again.
Light shined from her back, those translucent-yet-luminescent tendrils wavered over me. I bowed my head to avoid their reach, feeling them instead wrap around my arms and legs. I smelled the singe of my uniform where they touched—
Kill her. Kill her. Kill her.
I battled my primal instinct, knowing it was the right decision yet I’d come too far, too long to fail my contract now. To fail her.
Instead, I ripped away.
Laith staggered back, the tendrils whipping through the air.
She lunged for me again, leaning smack into my forearm. I’d given the hit a bit more strength than I’d normally afford a lesser.
Laith collapsed to forest floor and didn’t get up. The tendrils vanished but she was still blue, her eyes still sunken in. Once I was sure she was unconscious I sat beside her, panting heavily, collecting my wits.
So, this was the ‘gift’ at full harvest. I understood now why the OSC quarantined outbreaks. I didn’t understand the subsequent experimentation, but ethics was never my thing.
My contract would be deemed successful once I handed Laith over to the OSC. I wasn’t certain if the OSC would want her like this, however. What would her life be like after that? Could they treat her? Would they euthanize her? Should I do that right now?
My thoughts began to spin and I held my head, trying to re-stabilize.
I couldn’t kill her. There was more to this than the contract; she was the only viable link I had to the inexplicable shard activity. The ‘gift’ that afflicted her had everything to do with it—the Augur, the dream, the pagoda, the Evgan woman who’d made me pledge to keep Laith safe. A sorry job I’d done of that so far.
Time was of the essence, here; and I couldn’t afford any of it to make this decision. I’d reassess the situation once she woke up.
I snatched Laith up and threw her over my shoulder, grabbing the satchel with my regenerated hand. I took one final look at the surrounding mess, and then headed back toward the rover.
XIX
I’D SEEN IT ALL UNFOLD, BUT WAS UNABLE TO STOP MYSELF. The look in Zira’s eyes—feral, frightened—convinced me he’d decided to end it. End me.
But he hadn’t. The world went black, and then grew heady and calm; the air that I breathed was cold and clean. My body hummed gently as I sat at the cauldron in the temple, Cass stirring the pot in mid-sentence, the hood of his robe covering the side of his face.
“Restraint is the hardest part about quantum magic,” he explained, an unsolicited piece of advice to which I’d had no context. Dazed, I gazed upward at the constellations adrift through the skylight. “The gift was given, but it’s up to you to control. Look.” He turned his head, gazing behind me.
I followed his eyes to the clouded gateway at the other end of the cistern. A silhouette formed through the fog, growing bolder and more detailed with each second.
A creature crawled across the threshold, past the twisted geodic pillars guarding either side of the gate. As it passed they both flashed, flickering in-rhythm, like a heartbeat. Thick white smoke emanated from its form as it writhed and wriggled across the stone floor.
I stood and retreated backward but Cass remained in place, stirring the cauldron with his ladle.
The creature had arms and legs, even a torso—like us, but not like us. Its limbs were skeletally-thin and weak, pale skin covered in lacerations that left blood smears wherever they touched. The creature’s hair was silver; long and stringy like twine. Its eyed had been ripped from their sockets. Black holes, trickling blood, remained. Serrated vines gripped at its ankles, tugging lightly as the creature resisted being dragged back through the gate. It lifted its head and opened its mouth, and then I saw the filed teeth. It was one of the savages—or, had been one. I’d no idea what it was now.
“But how?” I whispered, trembling.
“No control,” said Cass.
I looked to him, wincing in confusion. He offered no further explanation.
“You said nothing should come through the gate,” I recalled.
“That’s right.”
“Something is coming through the gate.”
Cass looked to me, thoughtfully. “So what will you do about it?”
“Me?” I could no longer hide the rising panic in my voice. “You’re the one who guards the gate!”
“Your shade brought it here. Only you can send it back.”
“I… I-I don’t understand.”
“Restraint.”
The creature was now halfway across the cistern, dangerously close to the cauldron.
“I don’t understand!”
Cass regarded me solemnly. “You will.”
*
I jolted awake with a startled cry, startling Zira in the driver’s seat as well. As a result the rover veered off-path for a moment, until he swerved back on course. I’d crashed into the passenger side door, and then into his shoulder. None of that had helped the disorientation.
“Care to not do that?” he snarled, evidently shaken.
I said nothing, making myself small instead. His tattered uniform and the burn marks decorating it ignited memories of what had happened in the forest. Now I knew what had happened to the people in the tank.
Now I knew what was happening to me.
Restraint, Cass had said.
How could I restrain something like that?
The sudden, intense throb right above my right eye made me cringe. I reached gingerly for the source of the pain. That part of my face felt swollen and lumpy; I could only imagine what it looked like.
“Sorry,” murmured Zira, seeming genuinely so. “You were trying to kill me.”
“I know,” I said.
He cast me a sidelong glance. “You do?”
I nodded. “I could see it happening. Couldn’t control it, though.”
Zira looked back out at the terrain, aloof. He was conflicted, probably about what to do with me.
“What now?” I asked, afraid of the answer.
“Taking you to the hub, as planned. We’re several hours off. The OSC will be waiting for us disguised as a merchant freight. We’ll have to be discreet.”
“There’s nothing discreet about us.”
Zira shrugged. “Yeah, I’m still thinking about that.”
There was silence between us for a while—probably half an hour. I watched the late-afternoon landscape; the way the sun hung just over the horizon made the sky a wash of rose and royal blue. There were more emphasized patches of greenery framing the established yet deserted road upon which we drove. Had someone shown me pictures of the wasteland we’d begun in and the valleys we’d now reached, I’d have thought they belonged to two separate worlds.
I suddenly wondered what my father would have thought, had he seen me now. I missed him, so much. Like Akani, Zira appeared happy to soon be rid of me. Nobody wanted me, except for the OSC.
I understood why, but still; it deadened my heart. There was nothing worse than knowing you weren’t wanted. At the same time it was slightly liberating. There were no expectations to live up to—no one to disappoint, no one to worry about, and no one to need.
Restraint.
I’d woken up as someone else. The aspiring ‘kitch athlete and reluctant Dezidko was no more.
Restraint.
My eyes flicked to Ziranel as I suddenly had a thought.
“Let me wear the armor,” I said.
***
“Let me wear the armor,” said Laith.
I hesitated with a response, exploring that idea. There weren’t many options at this point, and it wasn’t known who, or what, knew of her identity at the trading hub. There was no guarantee whoever had been capable of tapping into the communications between the cruise vessel and the OSC wouldn’t still have an interest in Laith. There also were no guarantees that I’d squashed all future attempts of acquiring her by the unhinged O-REACH survivors. Honestly I had no idea what to expect.
The elite guard armor would still make her a potential target, albeit a much more intimidating one. “Sounds like a plan.”
Laith nodded, but said nothing, only stared ahead. In the ensuing silence I threw her a few quizzical looks, having grown used to the nonstop sound of her chatter. I supposed the recent turn of events had made everything a little weird between us. I was just relieved that she’d woken up coherent. It’d given things a bit of hope.
“What are you thinkin
g about?” I asked after the silence had reached an unsettling level. Never mind the way she sat frozen in the seat and the stoic, distant gaze on her face, as if she’d run out of batteries.
Laith didn’t look at me, but her lips moved silently before she finally asked, “What’s going to happen to me?”
It was my turn to hesitate. “I don’t know. There’s treatment, so I’ve heard. The OSC has it.”
“Why do they want me?”
“I’m sure you can take a guess.”
Laith’s eyes lowered to her lap, the stoic frown breaking as her lips quivered in fear. “I don’t want to go with them.”
“I’m afraid we’re out of options now. You need help, and it’s the kind of help that I can’t give you.”
“Can’t your organization help?”
I laughed at the thought, though she probably thought it was at her. “You can’t go where I can.”
“Why not?”
“We don’t take strays.” That was a lie. More like her body’s atomic composition would get shredded the moment she stepped foot in our domain. She wasn’t scholar material.
“Strays,” she repeated, coldly. “So, that’s what you think of me.”
“Laith, what you want is impossible. You belong in your own system, in your own universe. I know you can’t imagine it, but your situation could be much worse.”
She wasn’t even listening to me. “I want to go back.”
“You can’t go back. Jabron suffered an airstrike yesterday; your world is a warzone now.”
At the news, Laith eyes widened slightly. Then, her expression fell. “Not Svissa. The temple.”
“You sound like the crazies from the outpost.”
“They had no restraint.”
“…What?”
“He said I needed restraint.”
“Who?”
“Cass.”
A beat.
Cass.
No, impossible.
“Cass,” I repeated, slowly. “You met him at the temple?”
Covenants: Elegy (Hymn of the Multiverse Book 8) Page 17