by Duran Cross
He feels the tell tale scratching in his ears like someone is tickling his ear hair with a toothpick. Sindaris knows the controlling entity is about to speak into his mind and he wonders if it’s going to say anything new or just repeat the same threats of dismemberment it has been mumbling since it discovered his existence.
It speaks with its genderless voice. It sounds like it has a thick layer of some awful substance lining the back of its throat creating a slight bubbling affect, causing a distortion in the sound. “Where are you now, Tessol?”
Sindaris curses. He’d run across a contaminant several days ago and they’d seen his face. What one sees the masses do. One of the contaminants in the hive, or whatever it is, must have recognised him and so now they all know him despite his youthful appearance. Damn it.
“I don’t know,” he answers, “therefore, neither do you.”
“We will find you.”
“So do it and be silent,” says Sindaris aloud, despite the voice being inaudible to all but himself. He has to speak because when he thinks the answer the entity can’t seem to acknowledge it. Which means he can swear at it all he likes mentally and it’ll never know.
The voice remains silent for a time leaving Sindaris staring at his own mutated eyes in the mirror but the scratching sensation in his ears remains. It’s still listening. But, predictably, it speaks again. “Give yourself up. It will be painless.”
Sindaris scoffs, “For you or for me?”
“Where are you going to go? The military will execute you on sight and you’ve outlived everyone who ever cared enough to help you.”
Sindaris feels a pang of grief as he thinks of his dead wife. They were married just under the half a century that Sindaris has physically lost and she died seven years ago. The surge of grief is felt as strongly as it was the day she died. Crisp, clean and hopelessly overpowering. Though he finds some comfort in it, it means he’s still human. Sindaris is about to retort but the scratching sensation is gone. He is alone again.
Sindaris’ thoughts are then drawn to what he’s going to do but he knows that dwelling on it might reveal his desperation. Moods are picked up on quickly and cleanly by nearby contaminants, so he attempts to remain detached from every situation.
His heart skips a beat as he realises that the entity may have been trying to provoke his grief so nearby contaminants would pick up on it. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. The infected closest to him will be able to sense his distress the most, painting a metaphysical bullseye to his location through each of their interconnected consciousness. It would also explain why the entity just stopped talking to him. His half-panicked pondering is answered when he hears his name called across the silent streets nearby. He tries in vain to suppress a rush of terror that envelops him as a winter wind would a naked body.
He bolts out of his hotel room and into the temporarily empty motel courtyard and sprints off in a random direction into the night, focussing his panic into an image of the Mega Hall as a symbol of his salvation but running in what he hopes is the opposite direction. He doesn’t know where he’s going, he just runs, and runs, and runs.
◆◆◆
Rennin has taken Dead Star several blocks away then straight up. Now he is sitting in the clouds, paralysed by his decision. Leaving his unit to fend for themselves is little different from just shooting them himself. He has only been serving with them for a day but it makes no difference.
He thinks back to the soldiers on the street who were overwhelmed by the contaminants. Can he really do it? Can he really follow through and desert? He wrestles with it while staring at his reflection in the glass in front of him. Where would he be now if Lieutenant Veidan abandoned him when the Possession went down? That android, his friend, dove aflame through the atmosphere on the back of a Wolf-droid to save that pod, and was exposed to Indigo Reign as a result. Rennin still hears Veidan screaming when he tries to sleep some nights. No amount of alcohol will ever erase the memory of the purity of pain produced through android larynx.
Rennin grunts and slams his face into a clear space on the control panel. He feels a trickle of blood run out of his nose but doesn’t bother to see to it. He sits up again, looking to his reflection with a grim face. “I earned it! Haven’t I lost enough?” he yells, hitting the throttle.
Dead Star is propelled into motion but after barely two seconds he slams the reverse thrusters and is stationary again looking at his own reflection fiercely. Would he ever be able to look at that face again? He feels like his hand is back on the purge switch in the Possession’s escape pod rather than Dead Star’s throttle.
Ready to kill more just to save yourself?
Morally speaking it was just blind luck their steep re-entry had caused the jettison mechanism to melt and malfunction, otherwise he would have killed those four troops himself. It is irrelevant that they died later because he couldn’t have known that would happen. Though if he did purge those other survivors Jolen wouldn’t have died his friend, wouldn’t have entrusted to him that letter he wrote to his loved ones in the minutes prior to the devastating effects of Indigo Reign really kicking in.
He looks away from his reflection unable to bear his own appearance any longer. His hand grips tightly to the throttle but it still feels like the purge switch in his hand. He grits his teeth so hard that they probably would crack if they weren’t Thermosteel. What would Jolen say if he lived through Decora’s treatment and Rennin had died instead? At that point, the last act Rennin attempted to kill four of their own men to save himself. He can hear Jolen’s voice at the back of his mind, speaking with a subtle derision that he had when brandishing a wry smile. “Pussy.”
“Fuck you, Jolen! No! I’m not dying here!” he screeches slumping forwards. “God damn you,” he whispers, then thinks of Carla. “Why did you give me something worth losing?” He isn’t sure who ‘you’ is, but someone’s responsible for this poetic justice.
Jolen’s parents and he hadn’t spoken for the five years leading up to his death. Rennin never met them, but he hated them then, and still does now. He’d cross the street to spit on them if he saw them. The cruel things Rennin says in jest, those people meant literally. Jolen was a gentle man, a truly beautiful soul. They rejected their son because of his sexual orientation. Rennin can’t believe there are still people who quibble over such things.
Rennin begged his sergeant to be the one to deliver the news and the flag to Jolen’s parents. Of course he didn’t go. He left the condolence letter in their mailbox and took the flag to Jolen’s husband. That was the hardest thing Rennin has ever done. He hadn’t dealt with the death of his best friend until he had to tell Jolen’s widower. The expression on Raymond Jolen’s face when he delivered the news reflected the grievous wound that Rennin was trying to hide. He couldn’t hold it in any longer. He hadn’t cried since his family died.
He finds himself almost gasping for air briefly as a tear rolls down his face. “I miss you so much, man, you fucking arsehole.”
He feels Drej’s knife vibrate again and the sensation shivers him upright. He’s suddenly aware of the calls for help coming through the radio from all over Raddocks Horizon. Judging from the torrent of chatter it would appear that every single unit is under siege.
He glances at the throttle but can’t will himself to move at the moment. When Sabre and Jawa took Bulldog out and he realised he was alone he just fled without thinking about it. Perhaps it was some kind of despicable reflex, he isn’t sure. He’s on the verge of falling into a new inward conflict when another call for help comes over the radio. “Is anyone in East Fortescue? I need retrieval! My unit is gone and I’m pinned down on a rooftop,” the soldier calls over the sound of shooting in controlled bursts. “I’m letting off a green flare!”
Fortescue centre is half a kilometre from Rennin’s current location. “Ah, Jesus,” he says wiping the bloodied drips falling off his nose with the back of his hand.
“Can anyone see it?” his voice is
getting desperate. No one has answered him. His shots are more random already.
Rennin sits rocking slightly in his seat for several painstaking seconds. They feel more like hours. His inner turmoil only gets worse when he looks downwards from the cockpit and can see the flare burning with his own eyes. “Oh come on!” he says looking back at his reflection.
“I’m atop the old recording studio, there’s dozens of them! Lighting another flare!”
Rennin looks down again wincing as he watches the green light glow brighter. He didn’t have to light a second one, the first is still burning brightly. The soldier is panicking. Rennin can tell this because his can hear the soldier’s ragged breaths as clearly as if he is standing next to him along with the evermore random gunfire. Another voice finally answers. “We hear you, trooper, we’ll have someone en route,”
Fuck, I could kiss you, crosses Rennin’s mind. It sounds like Commander Jorge Croft.
The soldier cries back, “It’s bad down here, I can’t hold them.”
“Just hang on five more minutes, son, we’re coming.”
There’s a slight pause. “Copy that,” says the soldier quietly with a slight stammer.
Five minutes! Rennin is shaking his head, that kid’s got one at best. Commander Croft, who Rennin temporarily thought was a godsend, is nothing more than a band-aid for a bullet hole. Might as well have told the kid they were coming next year.
Images flash across Rennin’s mind again of Veidan latched onto the outside of the Possession escape pod, his armour scorched and streaming with flames. He looks like a burning guardian angel.
Veidan’s later words to the throat-crushed tactician in the Crucible’s medical bay echo through his mind: There’s precious little humanity in all of us, including you, and Rennin clicks on the communicator, we should not bury what little we have. “Kid, you still there?”
“Yes, sir, who is this?”
“This is Gunship Dead Star, I’m twenty seconds out and inbound.”
The soldier’s enthusiasm skyrockets. “Which direction?”
“Right above you,” says Rennin cutting the thrusters, sending the gunship into a near nosedive. Warning lights in the cockpit turn the interior red but Rennin pays no heed. Something comes alive inside of him. He’s going to save this soldier. If he can save this soldier he might be able to save himself. “I don’t have any gunners or troops in here so I’m going to come in low, you’re in and we’re gone, got it?”
“Yes, sir!” replies the soldier in a very determined tone.
The roar of the wind through Dead Star’s engines reminds Rennin of the ancient Jericho trumpet that caused the piercing scream of the incoming Stuka bomber. The ground is approaching so fast that Rennin slams on the reverse rockets, jolting him forwards in his seat forcing what feels like all his blood into his head in one massive rush. He wills himself not to black out, while shaking away the stars in his vision to see he is only two storeys above the soldier. “Get ready!”
“I can see you.”
“Don’t look at me! Stay alive!” says Rennin making his final approach. The rooftop is covered in contaminants, both dead and undead. Rennin opens the side doors less than a metre from touchdown. The soldier’s helmeted head faces the gunship, then the charging contaminants, his legs bouncing all the while, staying ready to make a break for it. Rennin pulses the thrusters causing dust and smoke to fly everywhere and it’s just enough to surprise the contaminants.
“Run, kid!” he cries.
The trooper drops his weapon and sprints towards the gunship. Rennin spins around in his seat so he can see the rear interior of the Dead Star. The soldier dives in, arms outstretched like Superman, with almost enough momentum to slide across the floor and out the opposite side. “I’m in!”
Rennin presses the button to close the doors, using almost enough force to break his finger and blasts the thrusters making Dead Star climb to safety. When high enough he swings the ship around. “Guess what, boys and girls?” he yells at the rooftop crowd while letting off four rockets, firing them line of sight. Two miss but the other two destroy the rooftop and the contaminants with it. Rennin turns Dead Star away and back towards Horizon Stadium. No sense doing things half arsed.
◆◆◆
Sindaris Tessol careens into something headfirst that floods his vision with stars. He bounces off it and hits the ground in a daze. Almost immediately hands are all over him, pulling him up, asking him questions. He can’t shake off his dizziness quickly enough to see that he’s being taken indoors. The voices sound muffled, he notices, shaking his head feeling the sting of blood as it enters his eyes. He grunts and fights his arm free of one pair of hands and stumbles into a wall as the others release him.
He looks up to see nothing except a blur. The blood dripping into his eyes is causing them to water. He can see hazy people-shapes huddled around a fire of some kind in the middle of a floor. He also notices something that smells very nasty to him, but to the others it smells so good he can feel their joy. He realises he can feel their psyches.
They’re infected!
He bites his lower lip hard to suppress his rising panic, barely managing to force his mind to picture a vast snowy mountain where he used to ski as a young man. Then again he is a young man.
One of them speaks but the sound is awkward, somehow forced. “You… look like you could use some… help,” says a female voice.
Sindaris wills his voice to stay calm and collected, but he tries to make sure that his efforts are behind his thought-wall that block his moods. For an instant he can see the dark hilarity in having to layer his own mind. Realistically, these people probably already know who he is. Why they haven’t killed him is a mystery and he’s not interested in sending them into frenzy. “I’m not hungry.”
Although the others don’t move there is a wave of tension that momentarily passes over them all. The woman speaks again. “We know who you are, we can hear them talking.”
Sindaris clenches his jaw and almost loses control of his bladder.
“We won’t hurt you,” says the woman.
Sindaris’ vision finally clears and he can see the woman perfectly with his new eyes despite the darkness. “Who are you?”
“I was Sarah Jameson. The others here have trouble talking but I can hear what they want to say,” she says tapping the side of her head.
Sindaris is having a horrible time keeping up with everything that’s happening to, and around, him. “What’s going on?” he manages with a resigned huff.
Sarah’s eyes roll up for just a moment. “The… contaminants… are being driven by something other than what we are now. I’ve heard it talk.”
Contaminant sounds like a military phrase, are soldiers infected too?
“So have I,” says Sindaris.
“We went to the first gathering.”
Conclave? “Gathering…”
Sarah nods. “Conclave… yes… that is what it was.”
Sindaris feels a lump in his throat. He didn’t picture an image of a congress, he only thought the word. “You can read my-”
“We’re not perfect, they say. We’re different. We have different talents. I can hear contaminant minds. You are a contaminant but you’re as different from us as we are from them.”
Despite his efforts he finds he cannot read their minds. “Why?”
“You can function on your own, we cannot. If I go too far from these others here I become… less… able,” Sarah looks to the others. All their eyes are closed, their bodies completely stationary. “They are concentrating so I can talk to you.”
“Are you becoming…” he trails off hoping he doesn’t come across as insulting. “Less intelligent?”
“Not since we reached this point. We are not perfect.”
Sindaris focuses on her eyes and can see that they’re brown shot through with spokes of violet and she has the makings of a vertical pupil but it’s malformed. “Not perfect?”
“Anything tha
t isn’t obedient is not perfect. You are about as imperfect as our kind can possibly be. As far as we can hear, you are one of the only living ones left like you.”
Sindaris frowns, “Only ones left?”
“There were nearly twenty until last night.”
“What happened to them?” Sindaris shakes his head trying to understand how he isn’t catching any clues from the others’ minds.
Sarah picks up on his thought. “When the controller sends them out, it has a resounding influence over their minds. They see what it wants them to. You may have only seen them eat with no reason to think any more of it.”
Sindaris’ dual pupils fluctuate as he takes in what Sarah says. “You’re interpreting my thoughts just offhand?”
“Yes.”
“But what happened to them? What do you mean it only lets me see what it wants me to?”
“The other contaminants killed them. The ones they’ve found, at least. You may have only seen them eating with no other reference.”
Sindaris closes his eyes for a moment wondering how many he’d seen them eat with his own mind. How many of the ones I saw butchered were like me? Hunted. Trapped like animals.
“You said before that you went to a conclave? What was it for?” asks Sindaris.
“We saw the controller’s image through the Conduit. We think it was to put a physical form to the voice in our heads.”
“Why?”
“The contaminants are becoming more obtuse as time passes and soon enough they’ll be able to do little more than obey simple commands. Run. Kill. Stop. Things like that. A physical meeting brings reality, we think.”