Sirocco

by T Hearts

  She smiled gently at the other woman. There was no need to be hostile and defensive over things that she didn’t know of. Plus it was only fair that she should share information with them as both San and Turtle had done.

  “Yes, partly because it sounded good and I like the mythology of it, but also because in my team we had this kid called Haulier who really really liked to make his own poetry. He was terrible at it, and would try and poeticise every damn situation. Including when we were picking call signs.”

  “That’s sweet.”

  “Not when he was drooling over every girl he saw.” Griffin rolled her eyes, the thin third-eyelid flicking briefly upwards, making Asher make a little terrified squeak that she pretended not to hear. “Luckily nothing rhymes with Griffin so I stuck with it. Didn’t stop the idiot from being creative though.”

  Turtle tutted with a snicker, shaking his head. Even Peyton laughed though she pulled a face of sympathetic understanding. The other ranger however remained nervously silent.

  It didn’t go unnoticed to Griffin that Asher had been scrutinizing her the entire time, and like most humans that Griffin had encountered, was slowly getting more freaked out the more he stared at her. Hearing that there were more Synths obviously didn’t help.

  Unable to contain himself any longer blurted out a question too fast for Griffin to understand, his face red with a mix of embarrassment and anxiety.

  She frowned at him.

  “What was that? Speak slower and I can help.”

  “Why are you like this?”

  “A question I ask myself every day.”

  “No- that’s not- what I meant is; why are you like this? Why were you made?”

  “Asher, shh.” Peyton scolded. She quickly put her hands over San’s ear tufts and frowned at him. A gesture Griffin was unsure of if it was meant to not wake her or just in case, she might have heard the question and was sensitive to the subject.

  “No Peyton, I want to know.” His voice grew high and strained. “If I’m going to have to deal with dragons and lizards and dinosaurs and cowboys, I want to know why they’re here.” He turned back to Griffin, “Why do you exist?”

  Griffin scrubbed her hair with a heavy sigh. “That’s…a difficult one.” She hissed through her teeth to herself. Peyton shook her head.

  “If it’s not something you want to talk about, you don’t have to answer him.”

  “I don’t mind, I’m just trying to think how to answer it. Give me a moment.”

  She got to her feet and began to pace a little, thinking hard on where to begin. The three humans watched her intently, each in a different manner. IO must have not told them much, neither must have San, yet if they had been outside of ARCDA for a long time then they likely didn’t have that understanding or answer to the question themselves.

  She would have to take it slowly and in small steps, like dealing with freshly recruited Transhumans and Onyxes, getting to grips with seeing Synths for the first time.

  “Back in the very very early days of genetic engineering, they manipulated the genes of crows to change them. The result after many tests were smarter crows, crows that could mimic and comprehend human speech as well as any parrot and follow instructions. They could even express how they were feeling and could understand emotions. Then they got other ideas of what they could do with these intelligent birds who were on a par with humans in their eyes. Some were used as spies for various people around the world, others for fancy pets. Then some of the smarter crows saw their wild relatives living and surviving and realised ‘hey, we don’t need to go back, we can fly and be free’ and so they flew away - you’ll sometimes find the descendants of these crows in the wild.” She smiled and gave a little shrug.

  “Then what was to become ARCDA started considering making their own crows from scratch, ones that didn’t have a place in the natural world and wouldn’t give in to that call of the wild. Synthetic technology was becoming an ever perfected art and they tried their hand at it for themselves. Turns out, with the right people they were very good at it and went from creating synthetic bacteria and viruses and basic plants to bigger organisms. After a long process, with many variants and prototypes and brand new ideas, we were made.”

  “But why?”

  “The same reason any artist creates. Because they could and wanted to try new things. Because they were asked and paid to do it. Because they just loved what they were doing and wanted to keep creating.” Griffin smiled softly as she looked between them all.

  Silence fell across them as the humans digested Griffins words. It was the simple version, a more poetic and idealised version of the truth. Haulier would have liked it, and would have loved the fact that all of his talking had made an impression on her.

  Asher’s expression calmed slightly and he looked between San and Griffin. “So…not human?” He eventually asked with less of a tremble in his voice than before.

  “Not in the slightest.”

  “But why do you look human? Well…sorta human, if you’re not.” He made a gesture to the feathers across her shoulders and face.

  “Humans need things that look like themselves to make them feel comfortable. It’s a primitive part of your own call of the wild.”

  “It doesn’t make me comfortable.”

  “Good.”

  “And the dragon? The big dinosaur birds? Are they like you too?”

  “Yes. Raptors are actually close relatives to Avios like the girls and I. Did IO ever tell you that?”

  Peyton shook her head. “IO rarely tells us anything about what she calls ‘the old house’.”

  This didn’t shock Griffin.

  If the girls had been out of ARCDA for nearly a decade then they would likely have forgotten half of what they had experienced. IO didn’t even know what Hasekura was, so how could she know how to explain why they were made the way they were. However she suspected San was far more involved and aware of what was happening in Core in the present day than she liked IO to know. Maybe she thought she was protecting her sister that way.

  She sighed as she sat down again, stretching her legs out in front of the fire.

  Asher scratched his head, still with a sharp

  “But what I don’t get is- if you are like San, like IO, where are your wings?”

  Griffin went still, as did Turtle and Peyton, both fixing the ranger with a hard stare that had him shuddering. He didn’t need to be scolded aloud to know that he had asked the wrong question.

  ‘Back in your box, back in your box, not today. Not tonight.’ Griffin repeated to herself as she steadied her breathing and drove her short claws into the wood of the bench she was sat upon. Her chest and throat tightened, threatening to silence her. ‘You are not doing this to me tonight.’

  A few heartbeats of silence fell across their camp before Griffin drew in a deep breath and looked up at Asher.

  In the firelight with the shadows dancing across her face, Asher could see the resemblance to the Raptors in cold look in her eyes. A dark and haunted look that had him shrink away from her.

  “That one,” She said cagily, forcing her voice to remain level, “I would rather not explain.”

  She pretended to yawn and made her excuses of being tired, rolling over into the sleeping bag Asher had brought with him and wriggled down into it.

  She heard a hard thwack as Peyton smacked him for asking such a personal question, followed by Turtle’s own hushed lecture, but she didn’t smile.

  Her chest and throat still stung with the horrifying feeling of being powerless, of being less than others and so scared that she couldn’t even scream-

  No.

  No. She would not be that again.

  She would save IO from a fate that had once been hers, she would be reinstated as a Diamond, and she would not be powerless or silent ever again.

  Chapter 18

  For several hours Griffin had pretended to sleep, listening to the humans talk about them with confused and ponderous theories
until they tucked themselves up into their own sleeping bags.

  Griffin lay in the quiet for several hours, tormenting herself with imaginings of what IO must have been going through and how she could possibly save her on her own. She imagined each scenario with growing fear until she unable to lie still any longer, she got up and went for a walk which turned into a run across the landscape.

  She carried on a sprinting pace for ten minutes until she reached the highest point of the hills, roughly five kilometres from the camp.

  Standing at the very top of the ridge she turned to the east, closed her eyes, and drew a deep breath, holding it until her lungs burned with pain. As she exhaled, she opened her eyes and gazed at the panorama before her.

  Dawn was breaking on the horizon, brushing pale shades of turquoise and pink across the landscape, mirrored by the sea of wildflowers that flowed across the landscape in blues, reds, and yellows between cacti and mesquite bushes. They bobbed and danced in waves as a cool spring breeze brushed across them, rising up the ridges and scenting the air with a delicate fragrance. The night hadn’t yet faded, as stars still glittered with soft fading pulses, disappearing into the growing colours. A silent and peaceful moment in time.

  The tight knots of pain across her back released and she outstretched her arms either side of her. Closing her eyes, she felt the breeze flow through her fingers and hair, rustling the feathers on her shoulders.

  She smiled to herself, drinking up the early sunshine and sweet air. It was exactly what she needed.

  The sound of wings caught her ear and she looked skywards.

  San wasn’t sleeping either. High in the sky above her, she was pulling sharp turns and quick twists. Sitting down, Griffin watched her in what must have been a highly intensive workout.

  Deep powerful dives followed by the quickest rotation of her wings and tail to flip and spin in sharp, tight, rolls. There was no fun in it, just the need to burn the anxiety out by doing something in the face of being unable to do anything.

  Except that Griffin could do something, even if she couldn’t fly, she could make a few calls.

  After several more minutes of her rollercoaster wheeling through the sky, San noticed Griffin sitting below. With a gentle twist she gracefully and silently landed close by, alighting in the bones of a mesquite tree to listen.

  “That’s his name?” Griffin laughed loudly. “No wonder he changed it.”

  Her lieutenant on the other end of the phone, growled in uncertainty. Even from where she was sat, San could hear it.

  “I don’t see how it is integral to your plan. Your reports don’t specify that he is in anyway in charge of this operation.”

  “Not fully, but he has some control over the mercenaries they are using. He was at odds with the ranch manager and the representative, but he’s not in charge of the entire operation as far as I’m aware.”

  She had been doing her best to send the reports back, but it had been difficult, especially with San watching her like a hawk. Even as she spoke, she was aware that San was no more than six feet away with her head cocked to one side, listening in as subtly as she could manage as she preened her wings.

  However, Mykonos had been very good and had been very calm when she had explained how she had gone in using Turtle’s motorbike and scouted the place out in person. He wasn’t happy, but he was calm.

  “It’ll be useful. Trust me.”

  “If you can make it work, then get it done.”

  “So you’re giving me permission to engage?”

  “From the sounds of it, you’d engage regardless of if I agreed to it or not.” He sighed. Griffin smirked to herself. He knew her too well. “I’m just glad that you are asking for assistance and not rushing in all on your own.”

  “I will have some issues with the aftermath, but I think that if I can get in at just the right time then everything will be solved…so long as you can get someone reliable to be there to help.”

  “There’ll be someone. Griffin,” a tiny canid whine caught in his throat, “just…be careful with the Preter. If this is the correct person then he’s likely very unstable and will kill you without hesitation if you engage him.”

  “Aren’t all CETUS Preters off the rails to some degree?”

  “Yes, which is why all of those ones are gone, but this one won’t have had any of the software updates to fix the issues they had.” He said, referring to the various vaccinations and gene therapies that older generations of Preternaturals had to go through to keep them healthy. “The Major is happy for you to bring him in alive, but if he proves to be too dangerous for that to happen then you have permission to execute him immediately.”

  Her stomach knotted angrily, feathers bristling.

  What did the Major think she was? A Ruby? A Diamond? Of course the Major would rather she kill the Preter than arrest him. A fair trial and investigation would have been a lot of work that she would rather someone else deal with.

  Griffin scowled to herself.

  She was going to arrest that Preternatural and bring him in whether the Major liked it or not. It was fair, and it was the law of Core; if she had to keep to it then so must the Major.

  “I’ll do my best sir.”

  “And about the Avios-”

  Griffin tensed. This was the part she had hoped that they would leave alone until all was said and done.

  She swallowed nervously. Mykonos sounded as wary as she felt.

  “What about them?” She asked flatly.

  “They will need to be brought in as well as quickly as you can. Major’s orders. It is now a matter of urgency and importance.”

  “Bring them in? Like the Preter or alive?” She snorted. “They’re doing fine, doing better work than I’ve seen anyone in ARCDA do and are happy to carry on with the jobs they have been set. Leave them be.”

  Mykonos gave a warning growl. “Careful with your tone, Griffin. This is an additional assignment, not a debate.”

  She hadn’t meant to sound so annoyed and cagey. Tiredness, frustration, and an absolute lack of faith in her skill or understanding of her role as an Amethyst on Core’s part was wearing her patience thin. More than that, the Major’s chaotic management was frustrating and nonsensical.

  “I’m sorry. I just don’t see how this is more urgent than Hasekura.” Griffin coyly questioned. “Can’t it wait until later?”

  Of course she knew why it was now so important.

  They had likely gone through their old files and found that they had left IO and the other sisters out in the wilds and were now rushing to try and fix their mistake before word of it got back to whoever was the owner of the project. Typical.

  She just hoped that while she was out in Texas with IO and San that they hadn’t already started to try and round up the other girls. The very idea of it sent a horrified tremor down her spine.

  Mykonos heard the low hiss of anger in her throat and gave a mutual soft grumble. He was unhappy with it too.

  “The Major would rather that they be brought back into Core before any assaults upon the ranch take place, though I am aware that this is unlikely to happen, given that we are not fully aware of their locations. A full investigation needs to take place to find out what happened and why they haven’t been recorded as being missing.”

  “And then what? They’ll be processed in recovery and redistributed to whichever Ruby team needs a pair of wings?” She snarled. “Fuck what the Major wants.”

  “Griffin!”

  “No! If the Major wants them so badly then she can physically fight me for them.” She sniped spitefully. “I am not rescuing this girl from one cage just to throw her and her family into another just so the Major can pat herself on the back and say that she’s done a good job.”

  San’s wings made a sudden rustle behind her. Alert to the conversation. As was another person in the background of Mykonos’s end of the call. The furious tone of the Major herself, questioning loudly what she had heard, was unmistakable.

/>   Snapping her hand over her mouth Griffin realised what she said and the repercussions she would likely face from it. Her mind whirled with the good and the bad. A declaration like that would be taken seriously, and with her current situation, there was no doubt in her mind that the Major would leap at the chance to have have her up in a meeting with whoever ran their project just to watch her fail and be made a mockery of.

  On the other hand however, being made a handler was not what she intended to live as, yet if she did take responsibility for the Sirocco sisters, then maybe they wouldn’t transfer her as easily. Maybe she could even make herself valuable by defending them. She could save her skin as well as the girls’.

  If the Major didn’t have her shot first.

  There was the sound of angry hissing voices, a short argument before the Major herself took the phone.

  “Griffin.” She coldly snarled. “Are you claiming responsibility for them?”

  “I am.”

  “Why?”

  “Because clearly no one else in ARCDA is and I know exactly what you would do with them.” She clenched her jaw, stopping herself before she dug her grave any deeper and started an argument. “I’m sorry. I shall keep you posted upon my progress.”

  Hanging up before she could face any backlash, she groaned loudly and held her head in her hands.

  ‘I am so dead.’

  A gentle rustle behind her gave away San’s impatience. Rolling her eyes she turned to the bleached mesquite tree that San was sat in preening.

  “It’s rude to listen into other people’s conversations you know.” Griffin said firmly, though she herself would have done the same.

  “Who are you talking to?” San asked, testing the rotation of her wing-wrists and pretending to concentrate on the individual movements of each primary feather.

  “My lieutenant. He’s acting as my handler for this mission.”

  “What’s a Cetus Preter? It sounds like a fish.”

  “It’s a variant of Preternatural- wait do you know what a-.”

  “I know what a Preternatural is.” Her wings cracked the air with a scornful beat, and she hopped out of the tree. “But why was your handler worried about it?”