I made my way up towards Mandalay. It was there I rested for year spending a large amount of my time fishing. I could feel several side effects as the artifact had started to have a horrible effect on my body. My real vision had worsened and my body had become ragged and unhealthy. It was here a family of merchants took me in and nursed me back to health. When I left them I gave them the last of my earthly possessions.
I used what I had left to cross into Tibet and by the time I began climbing the first mountaintop into the Himalayas I had long grey hair and a beard that reached down past my neck. I wasn’t sure where I was going at first but somehow I knew was I had to go north.
Several small villages welcomed me with open arms. It must have been strange to them seeing an American like me more a vagrant then a tourist or soldier. They gave me food, shelter and several spared supplies and clothing. Not a single village had heard of the Archaeon. I spent ten years traveling through the various provinces before ascending what my body told me would be the last snow covered mountain I could climb. Sometimes the artifact seemed to show me exactly what I needed to see. The warmth of a woman, the smiles of children and families united in the aftermath of war. It showed me worlds beyond imagination with life forms so unlike anything on Earth. Planets were the sun shined purple rays of light and others planets were gravity was so weak anything light would float away and children would play games were they would jump hundreds of feet into the air over craters and canyons. It showed me worlds without war. Other times I saw the darkness of a ship. Children buried in ruins struggling for years to survive after a beast tore through their home. Even these moments were not without hope. The artifact seemed sentient as if it was speaking to me letting me know I was on the right path.
When I first saw the temple I was bewildered with joy. It stood above and below carved into the side of a mountain. Parts of it looked like the pyramids of Egypt smooth and angled like triangles while others resembled Aztec ruins and ancient Tibetan monasteries. I had fallen face down into the snow. I was ready to pass away and freeze. Already I could feel my limbs numb and my toes fell through the broken soles of my shoe had begun to turn black.
Several monks found me and carried me to their sanctuary. All along the walls I could see carvings, paintings, weapons and relics were on display. They spoke to me at first in their own language but within seconds they were speaking to me in perfect English. They welcomed me and gave me a home. They knew exactly who I was and never once did they try to take the artifact from me. They spoke to me many times about the various futures I had seen and praised me for the changes I had made through my subtle actions. Each and every relic or weapon in the monastery was at some time something that would have been used to rule over mankind. The sword or axe of a warlord who would have enslaved thousands, the wip and spear of a mad slaver, and the chains that were used to bind a man that would have assassinated a king.
The nexus had returned home to the Archaeon order. A place it would remain safe for years. This was my last vision of Joseph Everett. He was sitting not in a trench or jungle but in a chair. The room was dark and warm aside from a small fire burning to his right. He drank bitter kava, the hot water scolded his mouth. Years of fighting and running had taken its toll on his body. The Archaeon order did there best to help him mend some of his wounds with meditation, martial arts, and herbal medicine but the scars from knives and bullets that laid across his back and sides never healed. He was lucky nothing ever hit an artery though several were only inches away. All these scars were only the beginning. Inside he was more scared then any religion or medicine could fix. There are a few that say those scars are from the war. They say the person you go in as dies and somewhere inside the trenches or tall grass or behind buildings in the heat of a desert someone new is born. Mind body even soul transform into something else. Something remarkable and beautiful but sad and broken all at the same time; a sacrifice some make so that others may live.
A new war, a cold war looms over the horizon. The world is changing. Technology is making one giant leap after another and there is nothing left for an old man like Joseph to protect anymore. There is no longer a reason to run. He takes another sip of his kava. He is writing one last letter to Anna. He has so many letters now, hundreds, maybe thousands. None of them will ever be delivered. He writes to her having seen a future in which they were together. The two of them had bought a cabin and lived with a daughter he would never meet. It was a vision that only occurred once so long ago but it was real enough to him. That small vision of the past kept him going for so long. I could feel the tension in his muscles fade and his body relax. The running has stopped. The light of the fire fades into darkness. Something else seems to be happening. I can feel his fingers as if they are my own. I move on then the other stretching them out. In the dim lit room he stares at his hand wondering why it moved. In that moment I feel like I am a part of him. For so long I have been hooked, living vicariously through him and his life as if it where my very own. For one moment it seemed we were one in the same.
---------------“Where the hell am I? Aira? Cree? Are you here?” No one answered. I was surrounded by the dark, blindfolded with some kind of sac covering my face with my hands tied to my side with rope. I felt the thin suede sac against my mouth as I began to breath deeper and deeper. I had to stop myself from hyperventilating. How long had my vision knocked me out this time? I wiggled my way free in seconds and I pulled the black sack away. I lost Aira, I lost Cree, I lost my weapons – we thought we were going to be climbing up the elevator shaft but artificial gravity had other plans for us. The moment we stepped inside we were falling upwards. At the top were several tubes barely wide enough to fit through I curled into a ball and plunged inside and blacked out.
I was sitting on the floor in an operating room. Several bodies were laid out on tables that sat turned upwards. “Where are you now?” I asked myself smacking at my wrist PDA hoping it would show me something. It looked like I was inside a hospital. A hospital I had seen a few times in my visions of Joseph. It looked like a replica. I touched the wall closest to me and then knocked and listened for the hollow echo. My PDA had showed the Erebus in its entirety for a split second. The map had zoomed inside to a darkened corner and the entire thing shut down in the blink of an eye. I was lost in another room I wasn’t meant to be in. A place my eyes were never meant to see yet somehow this room seemed like a stage, a set built just for me.
I began to walk around. Faster and faster with every step as I made my way down an open hallway. One of the 'patients' I came across was covered in a small blanket. Everything smelt like death and the air was stale. I felt like I was in a morgue. I moved the blanket from top of the man’s head. There was nothing there. The body seemed to vanish into thin air. I thought for a moment I was inside a simulation. Did Balkava catch me and put me inside my own personal hell?
I ran towards the door. Locked. Figured. I kicked it with my leg and punched it with my fist. Somehow in real life there is ever very little good that comes from kicking or punching a door. My knuckles bled and the more I kicked the more I began to feel like I was going to break my foot.
I began to feel like I was moving. The air pressure changed and my ears popped vioelently. The room around me was shifting like some part of a large rubrics cube. Nausea, upset stomach, vertigo. I could feel my insides turning as if the gravity around me was heavy on one side and light on the side. Finally I kicked the wall sprained my foot and opened up a hole that seemed to pour out into darkness. It was better then being where I was. I crawled inside the dark hole and onto a cold flat metal surface. The floor was freezing. Around me I could see the tunnel bend. The walls were shaped for a sphere to pass through. It was strange. Spaced several feet apart circling the floor, walls, and ceiling were tentacles just like the ones that attacked earlier seemed stuck in place. I was afraid to touch one as they hung like webs around me but had no choice but to keep pressing forward.
I continued to crawl in t
he direction of a small light. It glowed with a blue haze that seemed to attract me like a moth. The closer I got the warmer I felt. When I reached the light there was another wall. The light transformed into a bright little button. With few other options I decided to push it. I wasn’t sure what I had expected to happen. The wall in front of me opened and I could see a large circular chamber with a small pedestal sitting several feet high in the center. The entire room was lit in various shades of black and gray. Several tunnels ran out from the center surrounded by grooves that looked like the bumps on a caterpillar. It felt very foreign. Only a few parts of the Erebus seemed to match this design but it seemed the deeper I went the more alien everything around me had become.
I could feel the room around me was at an incline. I was ascending with every step. Finally I reached another chamber full of massive rotors and gears. I could see small sparks of electricity surge in and around various pieces of machinery. I was standing in front of the immersion core. It seemed to extend up into the darkness. It was impossible to tell where it ended. In the center there was another door. It was situated below one of the massive rotors and side by side with two more on the left and right. I walked closer and closer I could feel bumps on my skin, as the room grew colder. I could see the fog from my breath. The closer I got the more afraid I became. I could feel a voice in my head telling me to run telling me I was too afraid of what was behind the door. I didn’t listen to it. My heart was beating faster and faster. I couldn’t listen to it now I had come so far and I was dead either way. There was nothing left but to push myself and move forward even if that meant walking into the unknown.
I walked inside the room and the first thing I noticed was the smell. The smell of flesh and decay so strong I vomited making my mouth even worst. I would kill for a way to clean my teeth. I could feel my throat sore from the cold air and now this. I was even more nauseated when my eyes finally adjusted to the dark.
I was standing in a large hallway similar to the stasis chambers all around me bodies stood standing straight up wired into the walls. Were there wasn’t a body there was a head and torso or pieces of a skull. It was like walking through catacombs. Each body was wired into the wall. The wires seemed to twist moving in and out of random parts of flesh encased them and binded them all together. Every set of eyes were wide open and they all looked like they were staring at me weeping.
I started to run. I couldn’t stand the sight of the room around me. The farther I ran the older the bodies looked. Some were coated in such thin layers of skin you could see their degraded muscle and bone intertwined together the small bits of flesh hung to bone rotting dissolving spaced across limbs stretched just enough to keep it all together. This was the heart of the Erebus. All around me staring were the skeletons of the closet of the human race. I finally slowed down. I was in hell. There was no end. I was going mad in this place. This was the end.
I had dropped to my knees crying. The room itself seemed to in flict emotional pain with every breath. In the distance I saw a guard moving forward. Another monster I thought; another nightmare coming to end me. It was one of Balkava’s death squad. They were wearing black armor just enough to cover the fragile parts of the human body. Its face was warped with cybernetics the lower part of its jaw had been removed and replaced. It was carrying a long sword with a rifle strapped around it’s back. It looked like the embodiment of death had finally come to claim its prey. I should have been dead a long time ago. I should have died on Errikus with my mother. I was ready. It finally stopped moving when it was above me. It held up its sword ready to slash the back of my neck severing my head and spine. I don’t know why but when it swung I moved. I was still crying. It swung again in frustration as if I was nothing more then an insect a small pest that needed to be wiped from existence. I moved again. All I could think about was Errikus. My mother buried under rubble screaming telling me “Run.” I didn’t want to die. I wanted to live.
I moved faster then I had thought possible grabbing the gun from the deathsquad soldier’s back and ripping the strap gunning him down from behind. I screamed. The faces around me seemed to be watching me in terror. I couldn’t stand it anymore. All around me were the souls of those trapped and tormented the dead and forgotten the bodies of the fallen each and every one of them weeping. I blasted the walls till there was nothing left. When the rifle was out of ammo I picked up the long sword with two hands and began hacking at the walls dragging it across the corpses that surrounded me. It was raining blood. The little bit of light there was around me seemed to flicker as if I was draining life from the ship itself. Was I? I had desecrated the remains of hundreds but it seemed like I had done so little. All around me they continued to stare. Soon I had killed another deathsquad member that came at me. I didn’t even realize it at first. I had gone berserk. My rage had gotten the best of me. It was only when I heard them injured unable to move begging to be left alive that I realized they were human.
I couldn’t take another life. He lay on the ground in front of me begging. The look in his eyes so afraid of what was to come. He was bleeding. There was probably little that could be done but he was numb to the pain. He just didn’t want to die. I looked at him and the dozens of bodies that lay around the hallway and walked away towards the end were I could see the center console where there stood one body in particular. I recognized it from visions, from history books. I recognized it because it was an image that had been engrained in my mind and the mind of every human survivor for the last three hundred years. It was old, fragile, and decrepit shriveled nothing but bones and a thin layer of skin kept alive in a cryotube that seemed to connect from top to bottom with wires that ran across the ceiling and floor. It held its arms against its chest in a fetal position. I could still see the cars from where he had slit his wrist with glass. S E V His last words. Had he known this moment would come? Was he alive now a younger version of himself witnessing this moment?
I smiled a crooked evil smile that came from years of abuse, horror, and war, all attributed to this man, Narville, the man that saved the human race from the first invasion, the man who commissioned the trinity and did nothing to stop the Skrav from destroying the sun. He was alive. His eyes followed me as I paced around his cryotube holding the long sword down at my side. Finally they shut. I had a choice. I could swing my sword and slay him or walk away. He had written my name in blood naming me; no one knew what it meant. Some thought it was to be the name of his successor, the name of a prophet, a ship, a planet, a random person in the future. Most dismissed it. My mother had given me the name telling me that it meant severity. She told me the weight of the human race was dependent on the children of the future that it was our burden, punishment that we would have to live with the mistakes our ancestors made that we would have to build a better tomorrow but we could only do that by remembering the past. My name was meant as a reminder for the rigor we had endured for hundreds of years but she had always said to think of it as being hope. Even in our darkest hour when life is its most severe we are free to hope. Our freedom, our hope it makes us human. Now I see it was more. My name was written on that floor because Narville was naming his killer. I was the harbinger, the bringer of death, and the final punishment for his sin against his own kind. There were other ways, other ways we could have fought against the Skrav. Other ways we could have saved billions of lives. I should have walked away. I should have shown him the future could be changed and nothing was certain. I stared at him and let him know my name. Narville’s blood covered the edge of my blade.
His body lay naked the cold air shriveling his skin on the broken glass his bones were so brittle they practically withered. I cut the wires that ran from the back of his head and spine. His eyes were still staring up at me as I planted the blade inside his chest leaving it there as I fell backwards. I shut my eyes and stretched my arms out to my side. The lights around the ship turned off. I was right. The bodies were the heart and mind of the ship. Each and every one of them had be
en linked together in a hive mind their brains used as processing centers.
The Erebus had been using the bodies of our dead to fly across the stars.
LIMBS I understood now. Narville saw the future he wanted just as Balkava had. During his time the process for uploading consciousness into an organic computer had just been developed but you still needed a part of the human body specifically the brain to survive. He must have thought once the journey was complete technology would have developed far enough that he could upload himself into a new body. Eventually he would have been a complete bioorganic cyborg the way Lore turned out or at the very least been able to copy his consciousness. This was what the Valkyrie program had been about; thousands of tests supported by the elders and those in control. Even the drones were controlled as avatars by the 'dead'. It took thousands to control the Erebus; the same was probably true for the Aelita and Tritan. Hundreds of human lives, human bodies used as processing units to control the ship. Balkava was the one that disagreed. She was power hungry, the war had driven her mad. She saw Narville when she became an elder and was led down here into the abyss of the ship. They thought she would fall in line but she had other plans. Narville and the Erebus were nothing more then tools for her to get what she wanted and now that she had control she had planted me down here to take care of the rest.
Aelia’s decision planting Mace onboard the Aelita had affected the future in a way Narville had never imagined. He thought he had everything under control. The ‘Sons of Sol’ were at his every command and he had planted the seeds that would become the future. He had seen and planned everything and had he not killed himself when he did he probably would have found a way around it instead he had created a fixed point. His pride had become his downfall. If Aira’s ancestor Mace hadn’t killed the captain of the Aelita and taken his place she never would have been born. She never would have saved my life on Errikus. I never would have been here or been Balkava’s pawn. I never would have killed Narville.
Pull (Deep Darkness Book 1) Page 32