Smoke is billowing out of the workshop’s upper windows, but even as I leave I can see Oleg and Ret getting to their feet. I would sooner let Bron kill me than watch them burn. In a strange way, it is comforting knowing that Sneak will get them to safety. Although I can’t deny the very thought of what has just happened is tearing me apart. How could I have stopped it? The force rumbling within me, right before I lost control, felt about as uncontrollable as an approaching tsunami. Maybe if I’d run away before it seized me completely… But, as the Dusters used to say, ‘hindsight is 20/20,’ although I haven’t a clue what 20/20 means. Just one of the many enigmatic expressions we cling to from a bygone era.
Making my way through the ghostly streets of Sotercity, the residue from Skuld stomping around inside my mind is still there. A tingling vibration, along the edges of my fingers, and something that feels like his hot, stinky breath warming the back of my neck. And the thought makes me wanna wretch. Not just from the sensation, but from what I almost did. Skuld has tried to destroy us before we could move to stop him and I’m suddenly sure he may have just succeeded.
-9-
Skuld’s stink is still all over me when a sound reaches my ears. Angry voices and they aren’t far off, around the next corner at the end of the street, but the noise is bouncing off the walls, making pinpointing the origin next to impossible. And you don’t need to have studied under the Keepers to know that it’s the same mob that chased us earlier. Now that the real threat has left, they’re anxious to relieve their frustrations on the first intact Zee they can find. Which means they’d love to get their grimy little Grinder hands on me. But I haven’t made it this far by being taken down by a group of people who can’t even spell their own names.
I’m assaulted a moment later by a series of pin pricks. I’ve been feeling them since we made it back to the workshop; I assumed it had something to do with Skuld’s mind games. Except it’s starting to become clear. Those Zees, crawling through the streets on shattered limbs, are having the life stomped out of them by the mob. It shouldn’t anger me, since I did the same myself and, more importantly, since it’s the only real way to stop the Zees from spreading their chemical mutation, but somehow it does.
I reach the intersection of a major boulevard and practically bump into a pocket of men and women, stomping a Zee body into mush. One of the bastards spots me, before I can disappear around the corner, and I take off at a run, feeling more and more certain that this is likely how the rest of my life will play out. Chased from one gutter to the next by people more interested in knocking the brain from my skull than listening to my attempts to explain the fact that I’m not a Zee.
As I backtrack, it’s apparent some of them are moving around to cut me off. A moment later my fears are realized when I see a clump of them tear around a corner, hatred flashing in their sunken eyes. They’re threatening to cut me off and force me into a corner, where I might need to fight back. Many of them will die, but they’ll get me eventually, especially now that Ret, Bron, Sneak and the others aren’t here to back me up.
The breath is wheezing in and out of me, my heart charging along at a frantic pace. A memory of seeing the Hive leader being torn apart by Zees flashes before my eyes and I vow to not suffer a similar fate.
An alley looms up ahead and I duck into it, frantically praying to one of Oleg’s imaginary gods that I haven’t been seen. I get no more than a dozen steps before I see I’ve made a terrible mistake.
A Keeper pulls back the bolt on his rifle with a threatening click.
“Don’t move a muscle, bitch, or I’ll spray your brains all over the walls.”
Behind him are three other Keepers. They look like guards, not Wardens, but in tight quarters like these, one hardly needs to be a marksman to land lead on target.
I remain still, as instructed, ruminating about how much I hate being called a bitch, when I recognize the guard tucked behind the cocky bastard with the gun. He’s got a broken nose and a trail of blood crusting his upper lip. Dark hair, mid-twenties and now I know where I’ve seen him before. He’s the Keeper from the archive. The one Bron head butted into a groggy sleep.
“She’s some sort of monster.” the cocky one says, nestling the rifle butt into his shoulder and taking aim.
“How’s your head?” I ask, distinctly aware of the angry crowd drawing ever closer.
One of them, with dark skin, turns to the prick with the rifle in my face. “I thought you said these things didn’t talk?”
“I’m not sure what she is,” says the fresh faced Keeper with the broken nose. “But she isn’t one of those things, I know that much.”
Those footsteps are getting louder and the Keepers can hear them too. From a low hanging rooftop I spot a glint of metal and a wisp of movement. A smile grows on my lips and suddenly I don’t feel so alone. But the Keeper guard with the gun is arguing with his friends about what to do with me and the grin on my face isn’t making him happy.
“You find something funny, bitch?” he asks
There’s that word again. “Only that you’re too stupid to realize we might just be on the same side.”
“I’m stupid, am I?” His finger squeezes the trigger peppering me with automatic gunfire and I twist out of the way; but no matter how fast I am, I’ll never be able to dodge a bullet. The first shot slices through my wrist and slams into my chest. Another breaks my collarbone and exits the other side. The last two riddle my abdomen and it feels a lot like the time Bron thought it would be funny to sucker punch me in the gut. I fall to the ground, fully aware that I’m dying. That glint from the roof drops down among them and I see Sneak, perhaps for the last time, and the rage on her face is like nothing I’ve seen before. The first one to die is the Keeper who shot me. Sharpened steel plunges through the back of his neck and into his brain, finishing him faster than he deserves. The dark skinned Keeper moves to raise his rifle and in the process accidentally discharges it, shooting the man beside him. A blade to the spine paralyses him and now there’s only the one with the broken nose left. The only one who stood up for me. I try and tell Sneak to stop, that this one should live, but death closes in before I can tell if she heard me.
-10-
Prior Skuld
Councillor Plak fumbles over a mouthful of words like a child caught telling a fib. “I’ve come before you, Prior Skuld, on behalf of the other council members. These creatures…”
“Make you nervous,” I say, motioning to the senior member of Sotercity’s General Council.
“Is that what you’re trying to say, Plak? That you don’t feel safe? That you’re having second thoughts?”
Plak swallows hard. “These creatures,” he continues, “want nothing more than to tear the flesh from our bones…”
I snicker, still surprised at how deep my voice has become. The two of us are standing in the ruins of a village that just happened to lie between Sotercity and the capital. Smoke rises from the buildings around us, engulfed in flames. And yet the most dazzling sight is the ocean of dark skinned Zees, standing shoulder to shoulder, as far as the eye can see.
“Let me ask you something. Have any of the council members been harmed by a Zee in any way, shape or form?” The words come out as a question, but it’s clear by the look on Plak’s face, he knows perfectly well I mean it as a statement of fact.
Plak shakes his head, his eyes lowering with what I can only assume is the same spineless streak that made him betray his fellow Keepers in the first place.
“We would march straight on the capital, depose the Patriarch and you would do away with all of these monstrosities at once, that’s what you said, Prior Skuld. All we’re asking is for some assurances that you can…” Ever the politician, Plak pauses, searching for the least offensive words.
“Control them,” I say, putting him out of his misery. “You want me to guarantee you and your colleagues won’t be eaten by Zees. That’s really what you’re asking, isn’t it? You’ve seen how they watch you and it�
��s made you nervous. Well, it should. Our fates, I suppose, are tightly bound, Councillor Plak. Because if something unfortunate should happen to me, there won’t be a thing holding those Zees back from devouring you and your fellow councillors. And believe me when I tell you, the Zees are so very hungry.”
The sight of the blood draining from Plak’s face is absolutely titillating.
I dismiss him and his petty concerns with a wave of my hand. Watching his crimson robe brush the ground as he leaves, I can’t help marvelling at his rather pathetic obsession with mortality. Over the years I learned to tolerate the Council’s incessant whining and petty squabbles, for one simple reason. I needed their support to maintain my grip on Sotercity. Once the Patriarch is deposed and each of the ten territories falls under my control, I’ll need someone to take care of the day to day affairs. It’s just too bad those small minded Council members could never grasp the bigger picture.
The Zees are the best disciplined army the world has ever known and, unlike the Council, they will obey my every command without ever asking why. I would never have subjected myself to Master Lund’s horrendous contraption if another option had been available. The transformation into Zeedom was more shockingly painful than even I was prepared for. Every cell in my body was ripped apart and fused back together, into something that’s barely human. Any doubt of that requires only the smallest glimpse in a mirror to be believed. I’m not human anymore but, then again, in many ways, I never was.
In this new and exalted state, with powers beyond my comprehension, the pettiness of men like Plak and the old world are all far behind me.
Zees don’t cry or conspire when they’re passed over for promotion. A nearly imperceptible order no sooner forms in my mind than some measure of it is being eagerly carried out. That’s when Azina comes to mind. For a while, after the transformation, I’d been distinctly aware of her and the unique threat she posed, which was why I’d reached my hand across the gulfs of space, in that special way only Zees can, and plucked at her stings like a master puppeteer. So, when all sense of her suddenly vanished, there could only be a single explanation. She was dead.
Not that the thought bothers me. The key to taking control of the ten territories begins with the Queen, locked beneath the capital, not with a lowly mercenary.
Krall, my nearly eight foot tall Zee general, approaches from out of the gloom, lowering himself onto one knee. The truth is, Krall’s little more than a Hive leader, with a particularly strong signal. He doesn’t speak, but he doesn’t need to. Speech between Zees isn’t burdened by anything as crass and barbaric as words. At once, bundles of Zee code begin unravelling before my mind’s eye. Krall’s asking about the humans we’re holding and what we’re going to do with them. I know exactly what he’s getting at. He’s talking about the brave men and women who were trying to defend this sorry excuse for a village from the hordes. But there comes a time when an army has grown large enough. “Feed the villagers to the Zees,” I say. “We won’t need them. Not where we’re going.”
-11-
Azina
My eyes peel open and it takes a minute to drink in my surroundings. Above me is a wall of earth-toned threads, arranged in neat rows. It’s a mechanism of some sort and it takes another second before I realize its purpose. I’m in a textile factory, where they make tunics – not that there are any customers left to buy them. Slowly, Sneak comes into focus. She’s bent over me, like an old mother hen, and I try and shoo her away, but she won’t have any of it. My clothes are folded in a neat pile on a chair next to me. Sneak has made a bed out of tunics. I glance down at my naked body and shudder. I’m still tightly muscled, except the skin around those muscles is dark and as coarse as tree bark. White bandages cover my abdomen, wrist and collarbone, where that Keeper prick riddled me with bullets. No sooner does the thought register than I spot the guard with the broken nose. Sneak must have heard me call out for mercy as she turned his comrades into mounds of useless flesh.
He had tried to save a stranger, even after Bron bent his nose at an odd angle. Not a common quality, for sure.
Sneak’s signing slowly, like I was shot in the head and turned into some kinda halfwit.
“I’m fine,” I say, and mean it, in spite of the skeptical look on her face.
“I was sure you were a gonner,” she signs, and I couldn’t agree more.
“That makes two of us. How long was I out for?”
“A few hours.” But this time it’s the Keeper guard who answers instead of Sneak.
“His name is Klaus,” she signs with perhaps a little too much enthusiasm. “He went and found bandages for you. Can we keep him?”
I laugh and sign back. “He isn’t a puppy, Sneak. You know how I feel about sightseers and tourists.”
Sneak nods and her eyes drop to the bandages covering my stomach.
“I’ll think about it,” I reply out loud and catch Klaus looking on, like he doesn’t have a clue what we’re talking about. Only hearing one side of the conversation he probably doesn’t. I peel away the corner of the bandage covering my abdomen and stop when I see something strange.
“What is it?” Sneak signs.
Ripping the bandage off completely, I reveal three Keeper slugs, lying against the flesh of my abdomen. The holes they tore through my skin are gone, along with any sign I’d even been shot in the first place.
Klaus sees this and his blue eyes keep flickering between me and what was once a gaping wound. “What are you?” he whispers.
“If I had a single USC for every time I’ve been asked that question, I’d be somewhere far, far away, I can promise you that.”
I listen for Skuld, seeing if the crusty bastard’s trying to knock around inside my head again, and settle down when I realize he isn’t there. But then again, I don’t feel any of the Zees and suddenly understand why. The poor sods in Sotercity have probably all been wiped out by that mob of pissy Grinders. The rest are likely too far out of range, which can only mean one thing: Skuld and his Zee army are moving on the capital. I jump up with a burst of renewed energy, tearing the remaining bandages from my shoulder and wrist. Rubbing the hardened flesh around the wounds makes it clear there isn’t even a scar.
Then I see Klaus scanning me up and down; I feel a breeze and become acutely aware that I don’t have a stitch of clothing on. Sneak hands me my clothes and puts a hand over his eyes. I wanna say that men are pigs, but I think even a pig wouldn’t want anything to do with me, looking the way I do.
I’m nearly dressed when Sneak’s fingers start fluttering through the air. “The ancient Keepers had tried to erase death.”
She’s talking about the documents we found, underneath the keep, back when we were racing to stop Skuld from mutating himself into a super Zee. She’s referring to my wounds and how they’ve healed on their own. I can still recall, clear as day, the first Zee we came upon in the complex and how the flesh around his severed legs had slowly begun fusing together. But that must have taken several days and even then the changes were almost imperceptible. Whatever part of me was doing the healing, it was working faster than anything we’d seen before.
I sign to Sneak that it’s time to go.
“Where?” she replies back.
“The capital. Where else?”
But she wasn’t being dense. I can see she really wants to ask about Ret, Bron and the others, but stops herself. That wasn’t anything more than a fight between siblings, she’s probably thinking. Happens all the time. Why not just tell them you’re sorry and make up? Sounds great in theory, doesn’t it? But here’s what she’s forgetting: I tried to kill them. Doesn’t matter that Skuld was the one pulling the strings. It happened twice and, frankly, they should have blown me away after the first time. Course I can’t help feeling weighed down by the whole thing. Our little group of misfits was the only family Sneak’s ever known and now it’s been fractured in a way she may never be able to accept. Sure, the thought tears me up inside, but it doesn’t change
the fact that Skuld’s about to sack the capital, kill the Zee Queen and turn whatever’s left of the world into his own private paradise. Which is to say, a hell on Earth.
Course, Klaus is standing there, blinking like a moron, probably trying to picture me naked again.
I gather my weapons and head for the door, thinking about how I can keep Skuld from sensing me as we approach. There is a chance that my temporary coma took me offline from Zee central just long enough for Skuld to assume I had bitten the big one. Sneak and Klaus are following me to the door and I can tell she wants to ask about the plan. I’ve always got one and usually the thing’s half decent. There’s a kernel of an idea, germinating in my head, but it’s too early to tell if it has a hope in hell of working. Without the rest of our crew, I’m scared to admit that we don’t stand a chance. I turn to the Keeper guard and say: “If you wanted an opportunity to head back to your family, this is it.”
Klaus tries to straighten his nose and winces. “What family? I was an orphan, raised by Keepers. There’s nothing in Sotercity now, besides streets filled with the dead.”
He isn’t the only orphan around. My parents were Grinders who drowned in the sewers beneath the city and Sneak never talks about the parents who gave her up.
Happy homes breed horrible Mercs. I might have just made that up, but I can’t help seeing a pattern.
Hive III Page 3