Genocide

by Chad R. Odom

  When Vollmar secured Akon, they had found Ethanis alive, but severely injured. The bullet fired at point-blank range had been deflected by his helmet enough to save his life, but it had still entered and exited his skull, scraping his brain in the process. Tamrus and the medical team spared no expense to see him well. When he was healed, Tamrus invited him to his own home and offered him a place in his army, or a quiet corner of the world to retire to where no one would bother him. Tamrus was genuine with both offers but showed Ethanis just how volatile the fighting had become. In the end, as was his nature, he chose to serve.

  The trauma to his brain made life miserable. Walking, running, eating, and the basics were intact. It was soon discovered the fine motor skills were also in good shape, and once they let him try it, personal combat maneuvers came naturally to him. He remembered his name but struggled with the names of his family. The physicians assigned to him had shown him footage of his exploits as a Kentaurus Knight, but watching himself on the Net might as well have been watching an actor he had never met before.

  He was integrated into Tamrus’s elite black-ops team, separate from any regular military arm, though they did work with the regulars occasionally. Still, their chain of command was directly to Tamrus and Tamrus alone. Tamrus trusted no one and, given several of the operations Ethanis had carried out personally, his mistrust was more than justified. The Empire had eyes and ears everywhere. In time, Ethanis had come to trust Tamrus implicitly. Until now.

  Now, there was a shadow of doubt over his entire relationship with the man. It was Tamrus who had told him Oryan was dead.

  Ethanis scrutinized Oryan in in the screen. He was drawn and pale—a far cry from the exuberance youth Ethanis remembered. Oryan seemed prematurely old. Stress and worry marked his face deeply. His piercing blue eyes had lost some of their luster.

  The door slid open and clicked closed behind him.

  “What do you think?” Tamrus asked.

  “Why didn’t you tell me he was alive?” Thomas asked flatly.

  Tamrus made his way to Thomas’s side. “I made a choice. I chose to let him go and that brought with it obligations I was bound to uphold. Silence being one of them.”

  “You could’ve told me.”

  “What would you have done with that knowledge?”

  Thomas’s mind struggled with the answer, adding frustration to confusion. “I would’ve…had I known…at least I wouldn’t have been walking around this time with the guilt that I didn’t protect my brother.”

  Tamrus hung his head. “Maybe you did deserve to know. If it’s any consolation, I didn’t tell him about you, either. He’s been living with the same guilt.”

  “When can I talk to him?” Ethanis’s voice cracked as he lost his military discipline for a moment.

  Tamrus called up footage obtained on the raid on Sicari’s compound. It showed a soldier removing his helmet, taking something from a bound prisoner, and shooting him in the face.

  “That’s Doran Balsa,” Tamrus said bluntly.

  “Why in the hell is he there?” Thomas knew there was no way he’d figure it out on his own.

  “Exactly what I’d like to know. Bring him to me, so we can ask him together.”

  “I’ll leave immediately.” Thomas reluctantly took another look at Oryan in the monitor.

  “Go see him before you leave.” Tamrus shut down the raid footage and watched Ethanis exit.

  ***

  The door to the room slowly opened. A tall man in a neatly-kept, well pressed military uniform entered. Celeste rose from the bed, and Oryan acknowledged the new visitor. As his eyes met the face of Ethanis Thomas, his body forgot its pain and sat up. Asher took notice and slid off the bed next to his mother.

  Ethanis took hesitant steps toward them. In response, Oryan pulled back the sheets and awkwardly swung his legs over the side. Celeste moved to help him, but he lovingly called her off. He placed his bare feet on the cold floor.

  His wobbly legs gave out, but he fell only an inch before Ethanis caught him and gently lowered him to his knees on the floor. He tried to loosen his hold, but Oryan refused to let go. The sobbing of his friend filled the room and shock hit Thomas as he realized Oryan wasn’t embracing him for support. Tears sprang to his eyes and he wrapped his arms around his friend. For that moment all the confusion, the anger, and pain, disappeared.

  The Butcher

  Therion sat in a dark, dry cellar around a small table under a single naked light. This was his sanctuary. Here he’d first entered the underworld when he was barely a teenager. This was the place he came to think and clear his mind. Being Briscoe Books, Doran Balsa, and Therion was a very taxing thing. With so many pieces moving, it would be impossible to accomplish everything without a little time to himself.

  His only regret was not having more time there. Balsa was the figure head of Navarus which meant a seemingly endless supply of meetings, public addresses, travel, so on and so on. His life as Briscoe Books, the underworld kingpin, was nearly over. These days, people on the street spoke about Books like the boogey-man. He was still feared and respected, but his power waned as his presence was noticed. Others in the underworld smelled blood in the water.

  None of it mattered if he could eliminate Damrich, and he was on the verge. He’d discovered Damrich’s identity almost by accident. Therion had been following the Lykas’s movements which inadvertently led him to Lucius Kovac and to the revelation that Kovac and Damrich were one in the same.

  He was with them at the Archide camp disguised as one of the mercenaries Damrich brought with him. The camp slaughter had been a sight. Bloodshed didn’t bother him, but the technology he saw there…The Arkons were truly a force to be reckoned with but still no match for his master. He stayed with Kovac which inadvertently saved his life from the weapon detonation. He heard Lykas tell Damrich he would dispose of the fleet that brought the mercenaries, so Therion had made a hasty exit before he was stuck in the freezing temperatures.

  Then there was the willow tree. He watched Damrich disappear then reappear with a huge coffin. Whatever Damrich was hiding was in that tree and somehow, someway the vambrace he wore on his arm was the ticket to get inside. Only one other person had a vambrace like it, so he made sure to find Lykas and take it from him.

  He went back to the tree, punched the code he recorded Damrich entering, and in a flash he was in an enclosed room he’d never been in before. It was dimly lit with two slab tables connected by wires and a form of power he couldn’t understand. A heap of shattered green rocks was in the corner. From what he could tell, the coffin Damrich pulled out was in those rocks.

  The vambrace code that took him to this place didn’t work to get him out. He might’ve died there, but as fate would have it, Damrich returned with a very sedated, highly influential Imperial politician named Cadron Valac. Therion studied every move as Damrich hooked Valac up to one slab table then hooked himself into the other. With a few commands on the vambrace, Cadron Valac came to life, and what had been Lucius Kovac was left a drooling automaton. The pieces fell into place, and Therion not only knew how Damrich was hiding, but how to duplicate the process. He only needed the right time and the right host.

  That’s why Tamrus’s little raid had proved so useful. Not only did it give him the perfect opportunity to dispose of Lykas, but he learned about Ethanis Thomas and his condition.

  “Lost in thought?” a deep voice asked from the darkness. In a move that was almost as natural as walking, Therion was on his feet. The chair clattered across the floor, and he drew his pistol.

  “Whoever you are, you’ve made a big mistake.” Therion recovered his composure and arrogance. “If I were you, I’d try and get out now. You’ll be real happy if my bodyguards get to you first.”

  Two dead bodies slid across the floor. Their faces were contorted and already turning the dull gray of death. Huge handprints could be seen in bruise form, letting Therion know the hulk in the shadows had suffocated them, simultaneousl
y, with one hand each.

  “I would say they died for a good reason, but the truth is, I killed them because I could. So, they died for my amusement.” The voice vibrated Therion’s bones.

  A creature stepped from the shadows. The ceiling in the room was easily ten feet tall, and yet this thing ducked to fit. His skin was light gray, except where the scar tissue made it darker. His hands could easily encompass a normal man’s chest. His footfalls were heavy thuds on the concrete floor. Therion had been around many dangerous men, but this was the first time he was completely helpless. As with his guards, this man could break him in half, using only his finger and his thumb.

  Roanoke took another step forward. Therion gave into fear, drew his gun, and shot Roanoke’s arm, chest, and head. After he’d emptied the magazine, his plan was to run for the stairs, but he didn’t move because neither had Roanoke. The shots in his arm and chest had a trickle of grayish-red blood that stopped almost as fast as the bullets hit him. The shots to his face did the same. Only small gray scar tissue existed where there had been gaping bullet holes.

  Roanoke sighed deeply, seeming annoyed with the entire exercise. To Books’s great terror, the hulk took a step, which spanned half the width of the basement. Books dropped the gun, his eyes wide in horror. Roanoke took another step, bypassing Books and stepping on the neck and spine of one of the fallen guards. There was a snap barely audible under the massive foot.

  “Therion,” Roanoke boomed. “Damrich knows what you’ve been doing, and he is most displeased.”

  “What the hell are you?” Therion dropped his gun to the floor.

  “I’m your reckoning. I’ve come to deliver a message from Damrich. Fall in line or…” Roanoke glanced at the crumpled bodies on the floor.

  Therion swallowed loudly. “What do I have to do?”

  ***

  Peifer Mankusa slammed the large door shut behind him, shoved the foot and overhead lock into place then leaned heavily against it. There was a monster after him—a huge, gray creature that killed nearly a hundred politicians and their bodyguards with its bare hands. The regal Palace of Imperial Counselors was now a tomb filled with fresh corpses. In one instant, the entire governing body of Navarus was dead.

  Sweat poured down his face, drenching his shirt collar as well as most of his shirt. His breathing held a furious pace, and his heart threatened to beat out of his chest.

  Blood splattered across his shirt. Panic seized his fevered brain for a moment before he realized the crimson liquid wasn’t his. He tried to wipe his shirt free, but his hands were equally stained, and they only succeeded in transferring more blood onto the material. Still he wiped on, thinking it was better on his shirt than on his hands.

  As he rubbed, his palm struck something hard near his belt. A severed fingertip clung to him. He tore at his clothing, trying to rid his body of the object. In his frenzy, he failed to see a single step which lowered him onto the next level of the conference room. He tumbled to his hands and knees He tried to steady his breathing and ran his hands through his hair only to feel something even more disturbing than the severed finger—a small, blood-soaked chunk of flesh fell from his hair to the floor. His mouth filled with saliva and his gut wrenched. He vomited and collapsed to his side.

  He was crying but still moving, trying to roll away from shreds of human organs. Once he made it to his stomach, he crawled up the lushly carpeted aisle toward the podium. He didn’t care where he was going at this point, just as long as it put more distance between him and the blood bath in the other room.

  Then, he heard it and froze. Was his trembling body playing tricks on him, or was it coming back for him? The distinct sound, only just introduced to him, shook his body like a horror from childhood. It was the sound of a massive hand knocking at the door he had just locked.

  The pounding mocked him as if the person on the other side were asking his permission to come into the room and murder him. He stood to full height, looking in every corner for a place to hide. He only had seconds before that thing splintered the solid doors off their hinges as if they were made of leaves.

  There was a second knock, deeper and more menacing than the first. Sweat ran off him in such torrents it was actually thinning the blood stains on his clothing. His skin had clean streaks where the sweat had cleared a path. Standing still with fear and sobbing, he took one last mad course of action. Screaming as he did, he ran toward the door, thinking somehow his small body might be enough to keep the doors up for a moment longer. Maybe long enough to find a way out.

  Ten feet away, the frame splintered; the heavy metal bars he had latched closed sang as they collapsed off their mounts and both doors crashed down. In their absence stood the terror he was trying so desperately to escape.

  “Please…” he sobbed as his legs gave out from under him. “Please don’t kill me. Please, I’ll do anything you ask. I just want to live. Please.”

  “You’re going to live, Peifer,” a voice replied. But it didn’t come from Roanoke; rather this voice belonged to a normal man. A familiar man.

  Through his tears, he could indeed see a familiar face coming toward him from behind Roanoke.

  “Balsa?” Peifer questioned his own senses. “You’re dead. I just watched you die. He killed them!”

  “Stop being so melodramatic. Sometimes replacing a government takes a vote, sometimes it takes a revolution, and sometimes…sometimes it takes a wholesale slaughter. Doran Balsa…” He placed his hand over his heart. “Rest his soul, was killed in the first attack of Roanoke the Butcher.” Balsa gestured over his shoulder at Roanoke. “That’s him, by the way.”

  Peifer sobbed again. He was certain he was going to die. “Just do it and get it over with,” he said feebly.

  “I thought you didn’t want to die. ‘Please, please, don’t kill me.’ Isn’t that what I heard when we came in?”

  Peifer sobbed harder but didn’t respond.

  Balsa squatted next to him. “Today, my friend, is your lucky day. You’re not going to die. You see, we need something from you. You do us this little favor, and you get to walk away with your life intact.”

  Peifer didn’t look up. “What do you need me to do?”

  “We need you to contact the local militia and give them orders. They need to round up the population of this city and get them to shelter. I’ll give you the coordinates as to where they’re headed when you’ve got your wits about you.”

  “Why do they need shelter?”

  Balsa directed his eyes toward the monster at the door. “Well, from him,” he said very matter-of-factly. “Your bravery in making this call is what will save this city from him.

  “They don’t need to take anything with them except themselves. Their needs will be met. There will be only one way out, since you are barricading the bridges and closing the roads leading in or out. It will be done in an organized and orderly fashion, blah, blah, blah. You know how to give these kinds of orders.”

  “Why do you need me? You can make the call.”

  “I’m dead, remember? Plus, Roanoke over there is turning over a new leaf. He’s trying to find a more constructive way to deal with his anger. It’s a twelve-step program. We would rather see everyone out of here. No mess, no futile last stands, just clean streets. You make the call, and in about seventy-two hours from now, everyone will be out with no casualties. That has to be better than the alternative.”

  “The military in Obsidian isn’t going to just roll over.” Pfeifer squirmed.

  Balsa pursed his lips. “Yeah, well, you let me worry about them.”

  One hour later, the call was made, and the evacuation of Obsidian began. Despite their best efforts, the military stationed there couldn’t contain the wrath of Roanoke, especially with half of them tied up in the evacuation. They put up a valiant fight, but their defeat was certain. The streets were littered with fire, rubble, and blood. He had single-handedly brought the most well defended city on the planet to its knees. Within two days, Roa
noke was the master of Obsidian, and the entire world knew it.

  ***

  Four days later, Therion stood at the entrance to one of the Empire’s forced labor camps as another load of refugees from Obsidian were herded in. Therion was a prisoner like the refugees, with Roanoke never letting him out of his sight.

  Women and children to the left, men to the right, single file, so on and so forth. This routine had been playing out nonstop for days. It was efficient, organized, and calm, for the tens of thousands of people who marched to their execution.

  A continual column of black smoke billowed over the camp since the first load was disposed of. It took a special breed of psychopath to sing lullabies to the frightened children and assure them everything was going to be fine, even as they locked the doors behind them and flipped the switch that incinerated five hundred people at a time. Therion was not this breed. Nor was his alter ego, Briscoe Books. Not even his true identity as an Agryphim could stomach slaughtering people like this.

  As if Roanoke’s dramatic assault on Obsidian wasn’t enough, Damrich was doing everything he could to spread fear. Even as thousands were being burned alive, dozens were allowed to escape. Only a few might make it back to civilization where they would babble on about the atrocities in the camp and of Roanoke.

  Roanoke seemed to smell when anything went wrong. Every time a citizen stepped out of line, Roanoke was there. Every time a guard was giving too much away, Roanoke was there. Every time he came out, it caused whatever group of people within the walls to panic, but he was quick to put that down, too. The nickname “Butcher” now seemed too kind.

  Just as this thought crossed his mind, a woman in the lines screamed. The guards moved calmly to the commotion. When they found her, baby in arms, they cheerfully led her out of the crowd to another, smaller, closed-off area. Therion followed.