Spiral of Silence (The Unearthed Series Book 3)

by Marc Mulero

  The situation revved the sniper’s instincts into gear, igniting a ferocity that could never be duplicated. He bum-rushed the rapist, dipping low to the ground just before spearing him into the wall. A clank sounded when the offender awkwardly slammed his head into the boat’s metal, and then a crack resonated when Eugene jammed an elbow into his temple with satisfying rage. There wasn’t enough time to distinguish the pummel of blows that followed, which ended with his palm driving north into the defiler’s nose, jabbing the bone deep into his skull and causing the offender to fall. Eugene watched the rapist’s eyes roll to the back of his head before relaxing his grip to let the body slide onto the ground. He then turned to the woman he almost lost. Panting, she exuded fear in every sense, but also a taste of relief as they laid eyes on one another. He scooped her tense body from the floor and held her close.

  “It’s okay babe, I got you.”

  Present-day Eugene lowered his eyes with his mouth hanging open, in shock of what he just watched. He felt as if he were there, that this could have been his reality. Then he snapped out of it, becoming riled upon recalling where he was and what’d really happened.

  “Why are you showing me this? What the hell are you trying to tell me?” Eugene shouted to the being of light, feeling compelled to force blame on something.

  He stomped over to it, which was now a fully formed figure that shined brighter the closer he got. He then grabbed on to both of what looked to be her arms. A mistake - his hands instantly began to burn as soon as they wrapped around her vibrant exterior. Yet the sniper ignored the pain – didn’t even feel it – and instead squeezed tighter, trying to force an answer from her.

  There was nothing the faceless being could do but cower, further retreating from this distraught man before her. She whimpered when he yelled. Squirmed when he pressed. Until finally, he snapped back from fury and receded.

  A sigh followed, for the realization of how hopeless all of this was turned as bright as her light.

  “That’s not how it happened, that’s how I wish it happened!” He balled his fists that were red like hot iron from gripping his guide. “There’s no point to any of this.”

  Threads of shadowy string at Eugene’s feet began to react to his surrender. Vines of spectral matter gently engulfed his boots and swathed slowly around his legs, dragging him down further through the depths.

  “No more of these regrets. No more missed opportunities or fantasies of how it could’ve been. Just let me be.” He let out a sigh on his way down through the floor.

  Chapter 6

  Sabin stood at the foot of a colossal structure. He was on the inside, locked in for his own good, or at least that’s what they said. What could he do? Pace back and forth, mutter obscenities - something about the useless hidden Rogue facility he was stuck in, with even more useless people. He could put his fingers in between the point where the two enclosures met to no avail. He could be annoying.

  “Still sealed,” he huffed and rolled his eyes, before looking over to the Templos soldier manning the door with an expression of impatience.

  He gestured to Mars and said, “My wolf has to pee. Do you mind?”

  The Rogue’s lips pressed into a straight line, offering empathy. “Orders are orders, sir.”

  “You’ll let me in, but you won’t let me out? What is this, some kind of haunted house?” he jested. “Open up.”

  The Rogue guarded his controls when Sabin took a step forward. “Sir, the Hiezers know we’re in this Crater somewhere, but the location of our base remains hidden because of our prudence. The area must be scouted first before anyone is allowed out.”

  “Look at me!” Sabin held out his arms to either side. “I am the scout.”

  Mars barked in agreement.

  The Rogue soldier shook his head remorsefully. “I’m sorry, sir, but the door hasn’t opened since the Quake subsided. I await overseer orders for further instruction-”

  “I risked my life to save this place,” the hunter snapped.

  “I have too, sir.” The soldier nodded to share the honor.

  Sabin marched over, his index finger pointing to his eyes. “See these golden things? Do they look familiar? Your late leader, Aldarian, was my father.”

  The soldier leaned back to avoid the invasion of personal space. “Overseer Jayce said you would say that.”

  Sabin drew in a hefty breath and closed his eyes to calm himself. “That lanky piece of pretty shit, I swear to God. That-”

  “Sir, please,” the soldier cut him off. “Just hold on. I’ll inform command that you refuse to move. Perhaps they can hasten the scouting procedure.”

  “Kid, the whole damn world just fell apart. Do you think anyone cares where your foxhole of a base is?” Sabin knocked on his own head. “I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. You guys really need to get some sun.”

  He stomped back to Mars and knelt to stroke his fur, finding solace with the only other being that seemed to understand him.

  Whyyyy am I not with Blague right now? I could do so much more with the Sins than with my own kind. At least those damn exiles have heart.

  Mars nuzzled his gray nose into his master’s neck, yelping a gentle cry of endearment.

  Sabin lowered his head to meet the wolf’s.

  “I miss them buddy. Yeah, I know, I miss her, too.” He thought back to when Lesh delivered a swift kick after his spontaneous kiss. “Ouch,” he cringed, “bittersweet,” and couldn’t help but laugh to himself as Mars licked his face. “I think she likes me. What do you think?”

  Just then, a hiss of steam carried into the hallway, followed by the unlocking of metal bolts. He sniffed twice. What? Fresh air?

  Then he lifted his head to a gust of wind. Finally!

  He rose from his knee and exchanged a hopeful look with the soldier, like a kid who was just taken out of time out.

  Sabin pointed outside with his head tilted.

  “You’re free to go, sir,” the Rogue announced, smiling genuinely.

  “Yes!” Sabin patted his knee for his wolf to follow. And there they went, the loops of his String Blade wire bouncing about at his waist.

  Blague sent me here to lead. Impossible, probably, given the denseness of these damn Rogues, but I can still help and do something. Because if I don’t, he shook his head, then Lito’s death was in vain. And that’s something I won’t let happen. He died so I can live. Every wasted second would be to betray him.

  The hunter hustled up each layer of the Centric Crater with gusts of brisk air forcing his beard to flatten on his face. He looked down to his pup, “Never in vain,” he said, smiling when he saw Mars with his tongue out taking all of it in. This is where these two belonged. Outdoors, in their element, now with a freshly reshaped world to explore.

  All of a sudden, heaving breaths made him recognize a steeper path than he’d remembered.

  “You too, boy?” he panted, “Are we that out of shape?”

  Mars barked back.

  But it wasn’t them. The Crater’s once symmetrical rings were no longer even, and instead dragged down like melted plastic. A deeper sinkhole. “Oof,” he complained, trucking, still trucking, until he finally rose to the highest plain and looked back to see the imploded scars of the Quake. It was a reminder, really, of how little time they may have left on this earth. In his mind, it seemed nature was working to wipe them out.

  A gunshot suddenly sounded from far away, dispelling contemplation. It made him duck out of instinct, and that’s where he stayed to avoid being seen, lowering himself and inching backward so everything but his head was lying flat on the slanted gravelly hill. Out came a pair of high-tech binoculars gifted to him by one of the Rogue engineers. He pressed the lenses to his eyes for a closer look, squinting, adjusting, before his finger accidentally grazed a button that activated night vision in the middle of the day. “Yeow!” he yelped and grunted before slamming them onto the ground in annoyance.

  “Son of a bitch.” He rubbed his eyes. “T
hese Rogues will be the end of me.”

  As he scouted the vicinity, his mind began to drift… and these days it often dove into dark places. Deep thoughts sucked him from the present and spat him back onto the roof in Senation, to that moment when his burning eyes opened to see Eugene’s maddened ones peering through a veil of crimson smoke. He could feel being shoved from harm’s way like it was happening all over again, reliving the horror of watching a friend take a bullet that was meant for him. The gunshot, Lito’s frightened face, his torn body tumbling backward - it was all burnt into memory. And now, when tossed back into the present, Sabin realized that this was something he would have to live with for the rest of his days.

  He clenched his chest and moved away from the device at his fingertips. A tear escaped his eye, for the realization was all too real. His friend was forever gone, and that fact began to take its toll.

  But he digressed, he had to, and shook his head clean of the trauma so he could dive back into the binoculars once more. Clarity, yes, for a few seconds anyway before he was enveloped again. Before his mind began to wander.

  I knew the risks going in, but why is it all hitting me now? Is it because everyone I fought with is so far away? Is it the Quake that begs the idea of mortality?

  Lesh’s face then popped into his mind. Her mouth was that of a held-back smile, the closest she had ever come to flirting with the hunter. That was, until she accepted his kiss, for however brief a spell.

  “What am I doing?” he said aloud. “No room for daydreaming in times like this.”

  Movement in the distance sparked the hunter’s attention. Far out between fallen trees and trenches of mud, there was a gathering. Sabin twisted his fingers around the device to zoom its lenses. Soldiers with automatic weaponry trudged waist deep in flooded grounds, herding a group of unarmed people into a raised Estate.

  “Dactuars, by the looks of them,” he said to Mars. “The Quarantine is even hurting the Estate holders. I guess it has no bounds.”

  Then out of nowhere, one of the citizens was unexpectedly shot. It gave Sabin chills to see it, made him shut his mouth instantly. Not a warning or an inkling, just a body falling limp before it crashed into the water. Terrible. And he was too far away to hear any of it. It was almost worse that way too, like he was trapped behind glass watching marauders sack a village. Some sick silent movie.

  The look of pain on everyone’s faces. Citizens fell back into water to catch the fallen woman’s body, and the rest just watched in disbelief, including Sabin.

  There was nothing left to drift off about now… purpose had found him. He rose from prone position and bolted back down the steep layers of the Crater, back into the Rogue base. The same soldier manning the entrance threw his arms up, at a loss that the golden eyed man returned so quickly after all of that protest.

  He then darted through the hallways of cave and embedded machinery, wading around the civilians, past the damaged ceilings, all to find his father’s old quarters. “Move!” he yelled at the guards blocking the claustrophobic walkway that led straight to the chamber.

  Mars slowed first, then Sabin. They had arrived at the wide area of geared clockwork. The room where he’d learned that Aldarian still had life in him after all of those blasphemous years. The room where he found out his kin were killed by a Sin he once trusted. Memories of Volaina falling to her knees in despair sprung back right away.

  Shake it off Sabin…

  Three sets of wide eyes stared at him, waiting for some kind of explanation for the intrusion.

  “Oh, mighty overseers,” Sabin mocked. “Our first opportunity presents itself.”

  The hunter inched closer to his new clan, pausing his speech to catch his breath. “A few miles south, a troop of over thirty Hiezers are rounding up Dactuar Estate citizens. They’re ragged and beaten, and they need our help.”

  Jayce tapped his pointed shoe. “Dactuars needing the aid of Templos, these are truly strange times,” he said with a certain satisfaction. “Forgive me if I don’t share your urgency to rescue them.”

  Vleece rested both hands over the flat of her hammer. “If they’re just being rounded up, they should be safe without us. There are other matters that we must tend to.”

  Coe was pensive, knowing that Sabin wouldn’t be so shaken without cause. The Dactuars were enemies, sure. Second to the Hiezers, tampering with the news to save face. They were lapdogs, puppets used to keep the sheep in line. True. But things were different now. The world knocked down the walls of status. It made everyone who wasn’t draped in black and gold something more than a label, or a designation. They were people, born flesh and blood.

  Sabin clenched his fist. “I just witnessed a woman get shot in the neck. She was unarmed for fuck’s sake. There’s something terribly wrong. That anchor was right. The Hiezers have orders to kill on a whim. How could anything be more pressing than this?”

  “We have our own to protect, Sin,” Jayce sneered, turning back to Coe in hopes to resume their talks.

  Sabin stepped closer and grabbed Jayce’s covered shoulder, twisting it to force his attention back. “Although I wish I were, I am no Sin.” He poked the overseer in the chest. “But your short-sightedness is making me feel shame for being a Templos.”

  Jayce swiped Sabin’s finger from his space. “You want to create an army, do you?” the pyro raised his voice, showing hints of his hotheadedness. “Is that Blague’s master plan? Don’t be a fool, little hunter. Ah! Push me again and I’ll…”

  Sabin breathed in hard, but Jayce adjusted himself and continued.

  “We don’t want to increase our force outside of our class. Can’t you see? Too many agendas swimming in the heads of Dactuars and Vacals, even now. We would be dead before we marched on their lawns.”

  Sabin did everything in his power not to yell, not to stoop to Jayce’s level. His jaw was tense, speaking through clenched teeth. “We wouldn’t have to control them. Simply save them and watch how our cause becomes theirs.” His eyes spoke the frustration his voice did not. “I have proof that it works. Yes, I do… from the leader of the Dactuars herself. Their Champion, Melissa Brink, is on the side of rebellion.”

  Jayce snarled and nearly spit from laughter. “Oh, I know Melissa.”

  “Then you know what a win this is. You see, Jayce… you are already part of a greater force than you know. Sins, Templos, and now Dactuars. We offered her solace in a time of need, and now she’s with the Sins… with us.”

  Coe ran a hand through his long blond hair, contemplating Sabin’s words. “Blague doesn’t want to create an army, Jayce. He wants to unite the world. We would be morons not to oblige with such a madman. The Rogue’s vision was always to end hypocrisy, to make a better civilization for our families. Aldarian would’ve wanted this.”

  Jayce scoffed. “Don’t be fooled by his eyes,” he pointed his harpoon at Sabin’s face. “This man is no leader of ours!”

  Lowering her tattooed head, Vleece began to feel bad, “Perhaps not, but he is here to help.”

  The hunter took another step closer to the three Rogues and asked, “Do you think you’re coming closer to rescuing your kin by blowing things up? Do you think marching up to the Gates of Eternity with a handful of engineers is going to get them back? Estate citizens have connections and knowledge that we do not. Every time you make an ally with one of them, you increase your chances of gaining information that could save those you love tenfold.”

  Vleece grimaced at the thought of her old mother shackled on the wrong side of the gates, and then squared her shoulders when remembering that news of her life came from this man. “A… alright, Sabin. I’ll try it your way.”

  “There, some sense, I knew you had it in you,” Sabin said sarcastically. “What about you, Coe? Where’s that lightning fast spark? Did it ignite yet?”

  He huffed, unable to deny that Sabin was right, but eventually nodded.

  “There it is!”

  Jayce offered nothing but boiling silenc
e.

  “Why not send a squad of snipers to free them?” Vleece suggested.

  “No, no, no, send one sniper bullet into a Hiezer’s skull and find our civilians mowed down a second later by the rest of the army.” Sabin walked over and grabbed Coe’s metallic arm, holding it up on display. “This. People. Electricity. No one here is used to flooded grounds.”

  He let go of Coe’s arm, who peered back at him both intrigued and annoyed.

  Sabin’s smirk returned to him. “From what I saw, the Hiezers boots are not made of rubber. Let’s light ‘em up.”

  “You’d risk frying the innocent with a move like that,” Jayce snapped.

  “Looks to me like they were being herded into a building above the wet ground,” Sabin responded.

  Coe scratched his chin with metallic encased fingers. “Hmm. Take out an entire Hiezer squad with one clean swipe? Save some innocent - yes Jayce… they are innocent lives. It would be a good demonstration, a show of calculated strength, letting these people know that they aren’t alone. If we were to make allies, fellow overseers, this would be how.”

  “And my daddy said you weren’t that bright.” Sabin’s smile grew as he kept a lingering eye on Coe before turning to the others. “Shall we? Clock’s a tickin’.”

  Vleece slammed the flat of her hammer onto the ground. “We shall.”

  Camaraderie started to take shape between the group and their guest, or intruder, as Jayce saw it… and he was not happy. But at this moment he was silenced and outnumbered. Though this Pyro wasn’t completely irrational. It seemed he knew when he was beat, and so he shut his eyes and motioned for the hunter to lead the way.

  “Should we gather Volt Units?” Sabin inquired.

  “No,” Coe replied. “Every soldier is assigned either to depart on road vehicle rescue missions or to guard this base. The Rogue priority is to save Templos lives, as it must be. I will not have my people stray from it.”