No. I had a choice. I made my decision to play along with their game. I finally stood up. The lights flickered on. I guess since we were no longer in space they found a way to divert the life support and navigation to more important essentials. If I don’t find a way out of the core I would probably run out of air before long. I could already see the small scattered pieces of biomass like moss that produced oxygen beginning to wither and die without nutrients from the ship. The long sword was sticking straight out of Narville’s corpse like a grave marker. I was too sick to pull it out. I had to continue to find my way out. Too much time had passed now. Trevor, Meddix, they would already be dead the bridge would be destroyed and the Skrav would be making their way here.
I chose a random hallway and began walking. The other hallways were connected to different rooms in the Erebus so I knew I was at least walking away from the core. I would either end up walking into one of the two rooms that housed the ion drives or I would end up in the bunker or some other hell. It didn’t matter at this point. There was nothing worst I could find. I just needed to move. If I could eventually reach the surface I could find my way back around.
Several hours past before I reached the veranda that stood above another control room. Inside I could see holos showing the views from several drones. Some of them had crashed probably when I severed the connection between Narville and the ship but others preprogrammed flew in cycles over the ruins of the bridge. There was nothing left but charred bodies. Hundreds of humans must have died and from the way it looked the Skrav were just as scattered - enough they would no longer be a threat. Instead of sending dropships or help to secure the site and creating a truce between her army and the resistance she used one of the weapons onboard the Erebus, the grid to create a devastating attack that wiped out both groups. Should have known. We never should have turned to her for help. We should have taken our forces and attacked. The resistance was over. Soon Balkava would have the last of us captured or killed. She already had Hera. There was no difference we could make now.
I couldn’t cry. I had no more tears left. This was war and there was too much to be done; mourning would have to come later. From the control room I made my way to an armory. I was able to re-equip with a Drok sword and a new rifle. I saw my naked flesh covered in blood in the mirror. I wiped away the blood from my body using a small rag and some water. My face looked worn, I was no longer the child of Errikus afraid and full of rage. I was no longer motivated by my goals to kill all the Skrav. I was had become reborn in battle. I was Sev, the inhuman, the God-killer.
For an instant I thought I could see my mothers eyes in the mirror. They were my own. I had never realized how much I had grown to look like her. The parts of me that I had considered my best features all inherited from her. I wish more then anything now that I could go back and be with her again. Relive my childhood on Errikus with Dom, Hayden, and Aira, even the others before them that had picked on me and called me names. I just wanted to forget all this death, fighting, and feel free one more time. Everything seemed so simple then. The Skrav were the bad guys, the elders and humans were good, the trinity was our salvation and Eden was the land promised to us in our early days. How many have died now because of lies? How many have suffered for our survival? I could feel my adrenaline as my heart rate sped up. Out of the armory I walked into a mess hall. Several deathsquad were sitting with tubes attached to their faces into jugs of green fluid. They didn’t see me coming. In seconds the jugs toppled to the ground followed by bodies. I was heading in the right direction and I was on the warpath.
Eventually I stumbled into the ruins of what was once the hangar and home to ‘First Descent’. Along the walls were the bodies of Brecca and several others I had fought with against the Antliods, against the Skrav, or trained with in simulations. Their severed heads had been placed on pikes.
I screamed in a fit of rage. All of this was done to break me down. Balkava wasn’t just enforcing her rule with fists she was destroying us emotionally. Through another corridor I killed several more members of her deathsquad. I wasn’t sure why but I was heading towards her room. How many nights had I spent there covered by sheets my flesh next to hers. I could still remember a time when she had talked about children. Along the walls I could see the crest of the Erebus the black paint still dripped. It was once a symbol of pride worn by the first crew of this ship on their uniform. Back then it depicted the bright silhouette of the Erebus and two stars behind it representing not just the Aelita and Tritan but also the sun and new world we were destined to discover. It had been designed by an artist under the impression the Erebus was going to bring in a new age of deep space exploration. It had since become twisted abstract now compared to what it was then. It was no longer a symbol associated with pride but rather a symbol that represented power meant to instill fear in our enemies.
I passed my room. It was almost completely untouched. I looked in for a moment. I could still remember the last time Hera and I lay together in my bed. The hours we spent talking. It was one of the few times we had said we loved each other.
Balkava’s quarters were a mess. Diagram after diagram of Lethe tech covered her walls printed on sheets of paper. Holos overlaid most of the diagrams showing notes and details handwritten by various people. I only caught a glimpse of it all. The moment I walked into the room I had walked into a trap.
At the far end of the room I could see Hera lying on the floor in a fetal position. They had shaven the hair on the side of her head. I could see several scars were they had done surgery cutting her open. She was barely clothed and the clothes she had on were ripped and ragged. Black and purple marks covered the side of her ribcage.
I ran up to Hera only to see Balkava. She had been cloaked hiding beside the door. I was in such a rage I couldn’t see the small shimmer and wave that would have made it obvious she was there. She hit me upside the head with the butt of a rifle I had never seen before. It sent a shock through my entire body rendering me unconscious.
When I woke up I was in the bunker. It was another part of the ship I had never seen before. At first I was staring at nothing but the floor then I looked up. The room was bright. It looked like a cathedral. I was being carried by two of her deathsquad with my feet dragging behind me. I had been stripped of my armor and weapons and was wearing nothing but white ragged trousers and a black muscle shirt. I had cuffs on my hands but they weren’t fastened to anything. They must have been earlier though because my wrist was black as if I had been hanging. Had they tortured me just for fun while I was unconscious?
Ahead of me I could see several steps and what looked like an altar. All around I could see civilians and armed guard. There at the top of the altar was a throne. It had been made from the bones of a fetal leviathan. It was by no means small and rose off the ground ten maybe twenty feet. The bone was still sharp. It was ancient carved from the ribcage of a monster hunted inside the immer. I could still make out its skull and teeth at the top of the throne. A throne made from a monster for a monster.
Behind the throne hung Hera. She was strung up on a cruci fix behind her the wings of a hellbeast. They were depicting her as a symbol, some kind of fallen angel. I could see the look on the faces of the civilians around me. Families that clung to each other with despair and fear in their eyes. Next to the throne on their knees sat Aira, Cree, and Talon.
I could see Balkava standing there. She looked so different. She was no longer the commanding officer and friend I had known. She was no longer anything like the person I saw when I left the Erebus to fight the Skrav. Her hair was short, her face covered in red paint and deep scars. She was wearing a black dress that seemed fringed and hung down to one side. In her hand she was holding a curved sword. It was a weapon she had found in the ruins of the Lethe world. It was longer then my arm but not as long as a two handed long sword. It seemed to glow with an iridescent blue light as if it was omitting its own energy field. All around the room I could see various bits and pieces of L
ethe technology they were integrating with the ship.
The two deathsquad brought me in front of her. I wanted to scream at her. I wanted to remind her of the things she had said to me when we first met about the Skrav, how could she do this after everything she had gone through in this war how could she do this to her own kind? I didn’t have the strength for any of it instead I simply muttered, “Why?” She answered without words. Instead she took the Lethe sword and shoved it into my side. I could feel her twisting it as I looked up at Hera on the cross. I was a sacrifice. It began to make sense. I could see the wires extruding from Hera and the white in her eyes. I had seen that look before - she was having a vision. “Genetically altered, subject-77 you will be our seer, our oracle with your death we begin a new era, a new future. You like the other will be integrated into the ship, your body will be a vessel, hope for our future, your death will bring about our destiny,” Balkava spoke the words loud enough everyone could hear them. She ripped the sword out of my side and I grabbed the wound. The body can lose 1 pint of blood before any harmful effects occur, at 2 pints shock would occur. I had lost at least 3. Suddenly maybe because I was so close to death everything seemed to stop were it was stuck between eternity and an instant it all began to make sense.
I had already figured out so much on my own. Users, genetically engineered, never once did I suffer the side effects other users had. Never once did I lose my mind or control of my body. Never once did I get sick the way Joseph Everett had. Aira, Cree, Hera, all of us were just the same. We were humans that had been altered so we could use the nexus constantly; each alteration better then the last. Even in death our bodies would be hooked into the ship and used as tools plugged into the matrix just like Narville had been. I was number 77 more or less just another cog in the machine.
I looked up at Hera one more time before I closed my eyes. I could feel the shards of nexus inside me rip open as if I was falling backwards into a pool of water. I expected to die outside my body. I expected to become one with the machine playing vision after vision as my mind ran around itself over and over trapped inside a prison muttering futures like I was high on drugs.
Instead of the darkness I saw light. The body of a little girl hiding inside an air vent. I am covering my ears but I can still hear the screaming all around me mixed with the sound of gunfire and what can only be the loud screech made by Skrav weaponry. She wants to shut her eyes but she doesn’t. She is too afraid. Afraid of the darkness will overtake her and she will never be able to open her eyes again. She stares as her family and friends die around her until finally she begins to crawl away as fast as she can as fast as her limbs can carry her…
Hours pass and the screaming halts. She crawls and crawls into the underbelly of the Erebus. Into parts of the ship she doesn’t recognize until finally she finds an opening. She emerges into a prison. All around her she sees the monsters that use to be men remade into chimeras and horrors. Horrors that if I had not seen with my own eyes I wouldn’t be able to comprehend. It becomes too much for the little girl. She runs screaming. A group of scientists wearing lab coats see her and call for help via a small intercom they have attached to their suits. What more can they do? This is no place for a little girl. She wants to run up to one of them and beg for help but in her mind she knows they aren’t really human either. They are just as monstrous as the creatures they create…
She continues to run through the ship terri fied and alone. From the driveshaft she stumbles into the core. All around her the bodies of the Erebus stare at the child until she reaches Narville. She stops staring at the body of the man she recognizes from her history books. In her mind she feels like a monster is chasing her. She can hear its two massive legs beat against the ground as its long tail swings back and forth and its skeletal arms reaching forward with claws ready to tear her apart. She gives up hope closes her eyes and falls to her knees. Behind her she can feel the breath of the monster, she imagines its reptile like neck and face with sharp jagged teeth. She can feel the gaze of its murderous eyes upon her flesh. She feels it wrap its arms around her. She feels its body fall upon and there is silence.
She wakes up from the rattle of chains. The entire room is dark except for a small light in front of her from a large white crystal that rises from the ground like the bud of a rose. She hears a voice in her head, “I am the voice of Crius, primordial God of chaos. I have embodied your kind, as have my brothers and sisters throughout the passage of time. I am Lethe, I am demon, I am destruction. Millions have been sacrificed for my return to the ‘real’ and millions more will die as I reshape your world.” She begs the voice to stop to let her go and then another whisper another voice cries out in the back of her skull screaming in tongues, the same voice though kinder speaks to her like a father, “I am here to save you soon you will be free.”
She sits in front of the body of Ren, the body of the prophet Narville. She sits covered in the blood of a Skrav. Several elders surround her surprised staring at the little girl and the dead alien corpse in front of her…
Nothing is more real then our instinct to survive. They were waiting watching wondering what the Skrav was going to do. They saw it chasing the girl and rather then kill it on the spot they let it go. She had wandered into a part of the ship that was off limits by everyone except the elders. They were ready to let her die before finishing off the Skrav. Their curiosity was their downfall they had given birth to a new demon.
I could see her standing there surrounded by the elders. She was interrogated and she told them everything she saw. The demon that chased after her and the voice she had heard. No one could say for sure whether it real or if it was something she had made up in her mind, perhaps it was a type of natural defense to block out the events that occurred scarring her for life. It didn’t matter anyway. When they realized she had no recollection of what she had truly seen she was allowed back into the general population. They had no idea she would grow up and kill them all. She wanted vengeance. The elders had destroyed her life with their curiosity. They watched as a little girl was hunted by a Skrav and did nothing. The world Balkava sees is so wrong and corrupt that it can’t be saved. That moment had changed her life and because of it she believes that she has to destroy every part of the old world. She can’t even see that she is no different - blinded by her own hate and lust for power. Balkava has always been alone… And this is why she was killing me.
MANY WORLDS I never believed in destiny. Even though I saw the future I knew it wasn’t set in stone. My gift as a ‘user’ as a ‘seer’. If fate had been a living breathing being I would have been her worst enemy. I saw her world thousands of years into the future. Balkava ruled as an empress over the imperium, the human empire. Users were bred, sacrificed daily rigged to machines that stabbed at them with shards of nexus until they saw whatever it was she wanted them to see. Shards taken from my blood. She captured and slaved various species in the universe using their bodies to power her
massive space fleets. Warships powered by the dead. By the 41st century the human empire was the most feared in the universe. The Skrav stood united with several others among them: the Arr7, the Eek, and several exots whom I did not recognize. No resistance or rebellion was enough. Nothing they did, nothing anyone did was ever enough. She had an unlimited supply of users and the human population had bred to the point that soon we had become the most dominant species in the galaxy spanning across multiple worlds. Infecting worlds like we were some kind of disease. We were a parasite. All those that defied her empire perished. She won war after war using users to plan her strategies so that she always won. She had become a living God. Among those that tried to defy her were living worlds, beings and entities we had no idea existed. They used powers capable of destroying star systems to against her and even they lost. The loss of one star system meant nothing to her. She saw everything and countered. She stayed alive and controlled everything the same way Narville had. As time passed her body was no longer needed. She adapted.
Her mind lived on through copies as she directed her battles from a warships several miles long called the Olethros.
The rest of her armada were war factories producing massive amounts of
drones mining material from planets and asteroids. By the 51st century the human race had split into thousands of sub-species adapted to live on different worlds and genetically altered for whatever scenario she saw fit. We had become an unstoppable force.
By the 81st Century the human race had evolved into something else. Her ships had become organic. She became more then one mind. The Olethros were more a creature then man made shells. The Olethros had massive spiderlike limbs that could devour entire worlds. One Olethros was a planet destroyer while another a sun-eater, immortal as it constantly regenerated every part of itself constantly adapting and evolving until it became as close as it could to a perfect being. It could flow in and out of the immer eventually even developing a taste for leviathans.
When there were no humans left only the spider like species Olethros remained. The Skrav and the few surviving species both old and new in the galaxy launched their final assault from the M33 galaxy. Swarms of Olethros retaliated conquering the last of their worlds. There in the shadows was something else. Another force that came from inside the immer. When a group of aliens emerged from another universe they too became swallowed by the Olethros. Eden-3 was where it all began. The Lethe had been developing technology on this orbital hoping to cross from our universe into the next. When they tested it they created the first gateway into the immer. At first it seemed great. They began studying it planting markers and admiring the creatures they discovered. Then they wanted more. It wasn’t enough. Inside they punched another hole. Pieces of the two dimensions intersected and rubbed together creating a spark that ignited across the entire universe.
Pull (Deep Darkness Book 1) Page 33