by Essa Hansen
He plunged it to the hilt. The nophek’s piercing squeal knocked the air from him. He gasped it back in and closed his eyes while he slid the blade back, fighting the nophek’s convulsions as it bucked. The blade crunched against bone. Hot breaths bellowed over his chest.
Caiden had to open his eyes for the second cut. The nophek’s round pupils rolled up at him. His hands were smeared vivid, primal red.
He clenched down a hot flurry of sick and made the second cut. It went smoother, and his augmented strength easily pried the skull apart. The dead beast’s body shook. The tongue lolled. Muscles twitched.
Caiden knew that feeling: something was dying in him but he was still kicking.
He reached into hot, silky fluid. His fingers teased around the smooth orb of the gloss until he fished it up in his palm.
“Cathartic, isn’t it? Destroying the thing that destroyed you. Çydanza’s future onslaught of killing memories will feel like this, far more real than mere nightmares. The more exposure you get, the better. Clean and box that gloss.” He moved to the last nophek in the line.
Caiden turned away to the basin but still heard the bone crack, the squelch, and the shrill whine of life leaving an innocent creature.
Shivering, he washed the gem, the thing more valuable than him. He wasn’t surprised, it was mesmerizing. When rotated, it paraded every color imaginable, condensing the energy to fuel starships, to power ancient technology, to unlock quantum potentials. Caiden was just Graven meat. An expensive soldier stuffed with bad memories and a volatile temper.
And a heart, still, he hoped. Even if bits of it were dying.
Caiden’s nightmares reoriented to reflect his deed. The following few nights, he had that blade in his hand, plunging it through bone, feeling the beast bucking against death. But dreams were milder than reality.
“Now for the real test,” Threi said when he came to gather Caiden again. “ Çydanza has assigned you an exceptionally special task.”
Caiden followed while thumbing the diamond knife sheathed against his thigh. “Just tell me what it is now. Your love of drama is boring.”
Threi laughed. His armored shoulders were all Caiden could make out in the dark corridor under spotlights. “We’ve kept a sire. An especially old, monstrous, and intelligent male nophek. It’s time to harvest the most developed gloss ever recorded.”
Silye was waiting for them at a six-meter-wide door. She had a mag-cart loaded with weaponry. Her hair whisked like a dress as she maneuvered power cells into a meter-long glave.
“I don’t need all this,” Caiden said. “I’ve fought them countless times, I know how they move. And you said this one was old?”
“Oh heavens, pup, you’ll need this and more.” Threi sorted through the armament and passed items to Caiden. “This isn’t a dream. You can really die in here.”
Caiden held a dangling harness, similar to the cloudsuit, but designed to emit a shield of dilatant air around vital points of the body. Threi handed him two small pinch-fire glaves. Silye tested then passed over a pair of bracelet glaves.
“What are these?” He tried them on; they wrapped around his knuckles like cages when he curled a fist.
Silye tapped her ear and made an explosive gesture with her fingers. Sonic.
Caiden shook his head. “Overkill.” He looped the harnessing over his armor, with the little power pack glowing in the center of his chest. One small glave at either thigh. Bracelets on. Silye passed him the long rail glave, an electric spear of sorts. Last, she rummaged in the cart and handed Caiden packs of analgesics, fast-restore gel, and performance enhancers.
Threi unlocked the door. His smile wavered. A lump bobbed in his throat. “Don’t die.”
Or Çydanza lives on forever.
Threi added, “I’ll stand by this door, so bail if it’s too much. Failing and getting a scolding from her is better than dying. Usually.”
Threi signaled the door open and shoved Caiden through a thick rind.
His insides squirmed with fire, throat parched instantly, tongue shriveled with spice. Hacking, he staggered, righted himself on all fours.
A jungle. Lush, wet plants crowded the darkness. Small floating lights or insects roamed, providing an eerie glow. Among rocks, decaying timbers, and hanging vines stretched some tattered film— resembling the holobia’s saliva— and patches of ground resembled muscle amidst the soil. As his brain fumbled familiar terms of strange flora and mist-adapted aquatic species, fear whittled his thoughts down to one sight.
Two luminous white pupils riveted on him in the dark, forty meters away.
One was half-lidded— something wrong with its eye?
Caiden crouched. The nophek waited in the gloom. An almost inaudibly deep drumming emanated from its throat.
“Crimes, Threi was right. This feels different.” Sweat trickled down his spine already. Adrenaline sparkled across his skin. He chugged a vial of performance enhancer and crept closer, keeping trees between them.
The reflective eyes tracked him. Roving lights drifted over the beast, illuminating contours of furred muscle and the glint of scaly skin. Its withers had to be as tall as Caiden’s shoulders, and its paws as big as his head, tipped in curved claws. Similar to the young nophek in the warehouse and the pup he’d seen in the Cartographers’ Den, this huge male’s body was scabbed in an extensive array of medical devices, chemical housings, and other life-support systems. While originally strapped or riveted on, the devices had embedded and grown over with scar tissue.
This universe wasn’t kind to it. The beast jingled as it shifted its weight to track him.
A pang of heartbreak struck Caiden. Maybe it would be merciful to put this creature down.
The nophek snarled and charged with incredible speed, its legs ripping up foliage. Caiden fired both the small glaves, emitting jagged energy tendrils. They skittered off the nophek’s hide, not stalling its charge a single beat.
Caiden dropped the useless glaves and vaulted up the tree trunk beside him. He clutched a high branch and hung, his diamond knife ready to plunge with all his weight.
The nophek coiled on its back legs and jumped. For all its bulk, it moved like fluid, twisting impossible joints. It grabbed Caiden’s branch. Its lower body curled around, weight snapping the bough.
Caiden fell gracelessly, dislocating a shoulder on landing. He scrabbled up. The nophek landed on its feet and clamped its huge jaws around his leg, biting into the instantly thickened air of his shield. It protected Caiden’s limb but the pressure still slammed him to the ground. The teeth bit slowly, inching through even the dense air, until it reached armor and crunched. Caiden screamed at the stress, but the Casthen armor he loathed was resilient against teeth.
He kicked the nophek’s boxy face to free his leg, and rolled away under the swipe of a paw. So much for the air shield.
The nophek’s guttural roar split through Caiden’s breast, tumbling his pulse as he ran for a higher position and swung the long spear glave off his back. Moss and membrane slipped beneath his boots as he tried to plant himself, using the spear as one would when fighting boar: skewered by their own force.
The nophek’s three-beat charge shook the ground. Caiden’s glave danced with electricity. The nophek plowed into it chest-first. Electric bands splintered against its hide. The glave tip gouged into muscle and hit a breastbone so solid the glave’s rail bent in the middle, digging Caiden into the ground. He yelped and held tight with his good arm. The butt end crumpled armor plates against his stomach, until the whole glave snapped in the center.
The nophek backed off, rolling its giant shoulders and kicking at its chest. Then in one whole-body riveting motion, its eyes and frame squared on Caiden in the dark.
“Shit!” He scrambled up and clutched the knife. A good, trusty knife.
The nophek snorted and charged. Caiden rolled down into a rocky gully, curling against the brunt of the fall. He scaled the other side slowly, one-armed, then bolted away. His panting r
atcheted in speed as he watched the nophek leap the chasm behind him.
Just need the gloss. Hit the skull.
He stalled to pop his dislocated shoulder back into place. The ground rumbled with the nophek’s pursuit. Caiden aimed for a vertical rock. He launched backward off it as the nophek plowed straight through, sending shards flying. Debris showered Caiden’s armor, pitching him midair, but he landed straddling the nophek’s shoulders among clustered vials and buckles. He grabbed a handful of mane and pinched his knees in as the monster bucked, eyes wild and brilliant in the dark.
Caiden primed a killing blow. His augmented muscles crackled with electricity. He yanked his body forward into a stab at the nophek’s skull.
The beast curled forward and pitched Caiden over its neck. He struck his bad shoulder and hissed swears. He rolled through dizziness in a tangle of fern.
The nophek bit his torso whole and shook him like a rag. A tooth shattered the power pack of the air shield. Dirt raked him; plants slapped his face. Within the whiplash and bursts of light, he stabbed his blade at a cheek, an ear, anything. A hundred nightmares blurred into the pain.
The nophek howled and dropped him. Shaking its head with a huff, it backed off, dazed and clawing wildly in front of it.
Caiden sprung up and instantly regretted the move. Familiar pain lanced his chest. The armor seams had let some teeth through. A punctured lung, maybe. One good arm.
The nophek limped badly on one foreleg where a medical canister had grown into the joint and cracked with each step. A loose pin skewered one eyelid. A cord chafed around its neck, cleaving a pit of scar tissue— that was why every other inhale came out a heaving wheeze.
Caiden swallowed blood and heartache. The nophek nightmares had snipped out his fear and grown a blossom of pity. He needed to beat the Casthen while retaining his sense of mercy, even if it killed him.
He could try to free this monster from suffering.
It charged and leapt at him. He dodged but was caught in the slap of its bony tail. With feline agility, the nophek whipped around and pinned Caiden beneath its front paws. Claws buckled through his armor. He held off its dripping maw with his augmented strength, and tried one swift punch of the sonic glaves, but the pressure glanced right off the nophek’s skull, little more than a flinch.
The beast levered its full weight. Caiden fumbled for the cord gouged into its neck and ripped it with a shaking hand, tearing scar tissue and rivets out as he screamed, pain whipping up and down his arm. The chain came free in a gush of blood. The beast yelped and jarred enough for Caiden to roll away. Armor plates wrenched free, stuck in claws. Caiden spun around its foreleg, holding on with his legs as he gripped the canister embedded in its knee. He crushed it in a fist until it was slender enough to yank out.
The beast roared and reared up, throwing Caiden several meters away. A rock slammed his hip and spun him flopping into a stalky plant.
He cursed in Andalvian, seven swears in one. The knife was gone.
The nophek’s eyes flashed fury. It charged, lopsided and half-blind.
Caiden stood on leaden legs. He spotted an intravenous knot of painkiller spores on the monster’s ridged back. Bright purple, not erupted yet. He held his ground, vision blurring.
The nophek bounded, raising a forearm for a swipe, claws splayed. Caiden rolled under its armpit then jumped at its side, smashing the spores before he was barreled over by hind legs and tail.
The nophek shrieked and gurgled as it collapsed, flooded with analgesics.
Caiden trembled on the ground, vision streaked with sparks, augmented arm twitching, other arm numb.
The monster shook from head to tail, mane flicking off lathered sweat. Its body was still mutilated by overgrown devices, but with the painkillers, it didn’t feel them anymore, and powered over to Caiden with fresh vigor.
“Damn!” he whimpered, and gathered rubbery legs beneath him. Too slow. Claws slammed into his fleshy shoulder, twisting him, snapping his lower leg. He shrieked and spun himself the opposite way, free of the claws.
He choked and crawled to a tree where vines latticed around a decayed trunk. He climbed up with one leg and his augmented arm, which spasmed, randomly losing grip. Curses streamed with his panting as he hauled himself up and clung at a safe height. The enraged nophek rammed the hollow trunk. It bent and creaked with each hit.
Caiden held on, less afraid and more disappointed.
After being chewed endlessly in nightmares, he’d be eaten one last time.
The ramming stopped and the nophek backed up, exhausted, wounded— pain soothing by the moment. It set down on its haunches and quivered there, watching Caiden with huge moon eyes.
The tree began to list sideways.
Caiden stabbed a painkiller into his side. “I’m not gonna make it back to the door, am I.”
CHAPTER 35
MERCY
The razor scent of nophek blood sluiced into Caiden’s nose as he waited. The beast watched. It began to lick the elbow joint where Caiden had torn out the chemical canister.
With the tree slowly tipping, and nowhere else to go, Caiden climbed gingerly to the ground, several meters from the beast. He kept his hand placating, his posture easy.
He moved a few inches closer.
The nophek continued watching and licking its wound. Past the haze of exhaustion and pain in its eyes lay a keen intelligence. The gloss in its massive head might allow it levels of reasoning or perception that Caiden couldn’t fathom.
His knowledge of phenotypes, animal communication and behavior, and body language across species all bobbed uselessly in vertigo. He emptied his mind of expectations and thoughts, focused on being as empty as the wind, summoned compassion, then took another step toward the beast.
This is real.
The nophek shifted, dark russet skin rippling with fur over fluted muscle. Caiden paused until the creature settled.
He ripped off the mangled armor on his mangled arm and had to lift his flesh-and-blood hand with his machine arm as he approached the monstrous nophek slowly. Its nostrils flared pink, smelling him. He was transported back under the rock crevice. The tang of blood. The beast’s bright eyes were pits like reflective white water, on which Caiden’s silhouette wriggled.
One more step, and his hand hovered before its muzzle.
The big male huffed a hot breath across Caiden’s bloody fingers, then lowered on his belly, exhausted. An opioid dullness spread in his eyes.
Caiden folded laboriously onto his knees and sat in front of the beast for a solid minute, his body unconvinced that the threat was really over. Agony radiated through his limbs. His breathing was mushy.
The nophek remained calm, his eyes weary-dull but intelligent. Caiden examined the needle in his eyelid. Part of a broken injection site? He stared into the nophek’s pupils for a long while and contemplated whether saying something first would make any difference or just make himself feel better. The nophek emitted a clicking rumble, which Caiden, exhausted and a little bit crazed, took as a go-ahead. He tenderly slid the needle out— the monster elicited a tiny snarl— then dabbed some fast-restore gel over the punctures.
“I’ll do some more?” Speaking did make him feel better. He held out his palm. The nophek puffed against it eagerly, then closed his eyes.
Caiden pressed to a standing position through a mountain of pain, and pulled out the rest of the analgesics. He used one on himself, the rest on the beast, then limped around the huge body, roaming for injuries to salve and medical devices to correct. He didn’t recognize most of the substances and tech: the Casthen had pulled out all the stops to keep this big guy alive for a cruelly long time.
“We’re a lot alike. The Casthen hurt us both.”
When the beast was all patched up, Caiden fell to his knees, swarmed in dizzy speckles, drenched in sweat. He set his dislocated shoulder better, splinted his leg, and collapsed on his side. Is killing the nophek merciful, since he lives in suffering?
&n
bsp; “ Çydanza will punish me if I fail to harvest your gloss,” he murmured. “But I don’t want to be this … murderer.”
A memory flashed: the nophek pup that had chased him into the Azura’s rind, in the Den, and died in a puff of red mist.
The blood on his hands from the earlier gloss harvest. So very scarlet.
Caiden whimpered and struggled to his feet in the dark. The roving lights glowed over the aftermath of their fight, which oriented Caiden to the door. He had a short window to leave before the beast regained the will to devour.
He limped along, and heard the nophek rise and lumber forward, crushing slippery plants.
Blips of fear rose through Caiden’s dizziness. He turned. The beast’s huge dilated pupils flashed light.
“Just how intelligent are you?”
The nophek made a sound between a purr and a growl, so deep it vibrated Caiden’s achy ribs.
“Well …” He wobbled in place, feeling more than a little crazed now. This was a dream gone on longer than usual, he wasn’t sure how it was supposed to play out. “Come with me to the lab, I can refresh some medicaments and you’ll feel better. I don’t think anyone’ll dare harass us two broken and angry things.”
The nophek lumbered after him as he navigated a grueling path to the door. At times the beast caught up, and Caiden was grateful to set a hand on his shoulder and hold himself up. The performance enhancers were wearing off, and the core of his spine itched, which was an alarmingly new and specific sensation.
The doors opened, and Caiden raised his hands for peace. Threi let out a hissing curse. For once the man’s eyes were bugged with fear. Towa stood behind him and bristled, raising a glave.
The nophek snarled through his whole body. Caiden laid a hand on the monster’s quivering muscles until he stilled.
Threi stepped back and exhaled forcefully, raising an arm for Towa to stand down. “I shouldn’t be surprised, should I. Safe to say you’re not afraid of them anymore?”
Caiden’s hand sank into downy fur. He smiled and looked over as the beast leaned into his palm. So much more connected beings beyond language: pheromones, hormones, vibration, electromagnetism, bloodstream, scent.