by M. R. Forbes
The soldiers were stunned. Then their aim shifted to the second creature.
“Shoot it in the head,” Abbey suggested.
They did, six soldiers all concentrating their fire on the creature’s head. It was enough to tear it apart, to leave it as a messy pulp in a matter of seconds. The monster dropped, and they stopped shooting.
“Not yet,” she said, ducking under an attack by the first creature and hitting it in the chest before using the Gift to throw it back against the wall. “It’ll heal.”
She swung the Uin, cutting the head off. The other creature was coming again, unsurprisingly resistant to the Gift. It slammed into Abbey’s side, knocking her into the opposite wall and then pouncing at her.
Bullets rained in, most of them hitting the monster, but enough of them hitting Abbey that she knew it was no accident. She cursed as she scrambled to get her head behind the creature, holding it in front of her like a shield. She felt when it went limp, its brain too damaged to keep it functioning. She reached up behind it, cutting its head off from the rear and dropping the corpse in front of the soldiers.
“I was trying to help you,” she said, looking at them.
They started shooting again, and she put up her hand, catching the bullets against an invisible wall.
Abbey was beyond furious. She had tried to save their miserable lives, and this was what she was getting in return?
“Thraven didn’t tell you what you were hunting here, did he?” she growled, stepping toward them. Their rifles clicked as the last rounds emptied from their magazines. They reached for fresh ones, suddenly finding their hands pinned to their sides. “I was trying to fragging help you.”
She let the Gift loose. A blast of flames escaped from her, washing over the huddled group.
They were dead before they could scream.
13
Abbey turned away from the charred soldiers, breathing heavily, still fuming. She closed her eyes tight, fighting to get her emotions under control. She was using the Gift too often and letting the excitement of the naniates get the best of her. Not that these soldiers hadn’t needed to die - they were attacking her while she was defending them, but she could have done it without so much force and effort.
And now she was getting hungry again.
She looked down at the two headless monsters. One was male. The other female. She could almost see herself in that one. It wasn’t too far from the form that Phlenel had shown her.
She backed away from the destruction, trying to find her way back to the stairs. She had gotten turned around by the chase. She could still hear gunfire in the distance. Howls and screams from the floor above. How many creatures were in here? How many soldiers?
She made her way through the complex, pausing as she passed one of the rooms. It was larger than the quarters upstairs and reminded her of a medical bay in a starship. A smaller room with a terminal and a few seats, and a larger room behind it where she could see raised beds surrounded by machines.
One of the beds was occupied.
She changed direction, entering the room and passing to the back. There was no telling how old the corpse was, but it had to be old. There was nothing left of it but bone, and even that looked as though it would fall apart at the slightest touch. It wasn’t interesting or worth examination on its own. What made it intriguing was the tube running away from it. It looked as though it had once been placed down the skeleton’s throat. She followed it back to the wall and around to the machine where it was connected. A thick fluid was pooled there.
Blood.
What had they been trying to do? Feed it to the corpse or drain it out? What had this place been?
She left the room, returning to the terminal. There was no power in the complex. No way to turn it on. That couldn’t be true. Jequn had said the naniates converted energy at a rate that betrayed their size and input. Humans like her were being used to power starships. She should be able to run a current to the terminal.
She leaned over it, putting her hand on the side of what she assumed was the base of the machine. She was still agitated from the fight, and the Gift flowed easily from her hand, warming it up as it leeched energy into the box. It clicked a few times, and then a projection appeared at eye level, though she couldn’t discern where it was originating.
Of course, the writing wasn’t in English. It was a series of dots and lines that appeared to compose characters. While she had studied linguistics extensively during her early Breaker training, she couldn’t draw any direct comparisons from it to any of the modern languages she had seen before. On the surface, it appeared deceptively simple, and her eyes tracked across it easily even though she didn’t know what it meant.
She was wasting time here, anyway. What answers could she get from the terminal of an old Seraphim sick bay? She could already piece some things together and create a mental picture of what had happened here.
She was going to remove her hand, but something stopped her. A sudden feeling from her neck. From the Hell brand. It spread in a tight line from the mark to the base of her spine, and up her spine into her head. It didn’t frighten her, but it did increase her curiosity.
She closed her eyes at a sudden pain behind her eyes. She blinked a few times after she opened them. She looked at the Seraphim text again.
Just like that, she understood it.
“How convenient,” she said.
She could still feel the cold line from the brand to her head, as though a thread of the Shard had reached up and connected with her brain there, acting as an intermediary to provide the translation. Was it alive then? Was it really the Shard?
It wanted her to see this, for whatever reason. Or maybe it wanted to see it for itself? If the Seraphim had come to this place after the Shard had died, perhaps it wanted to know what had become of them.
Was it helping her or using her?
For now, the relationship was symbiotic. She wanted to know the truth as much as it did. The text in the projection was a medical record for a young female Seraph named Casiel. According to the document, she was sixty-one revolutions of age, whatever those were, and in failing health.
The text scrolled as her eyes ran along it, always keeping the area she was focused on centered. As she neared the bottom of the main report, there was a list of what she assumed were timestamps. Each one had a short note attached to a feed.
She played the last one. It was taken in the back room, from the corner. A tall, male Seraph in a silvery suit stood over the naked Casiel, inserting the tube into her throat while two others held her down. She didn’t want the tube. She was struggling and crying. It didn’t stop them from inserting it. She kept fighting as the blood began to be pulled from her and into the machine.
“Naniate levels are off the charts,” the Seraph said. “Ten trillion per unit. I’ve never seen it so high.”
Someone spoke from outside the view of the screen.
“Suriel, we have to go. If we stay too long, we’ll be infected, too.”
“I can’t leave her like this. If this works -”
“It won’t work. It’s never worked. We should never have touched them. We should never have tried to change them. We didn’t learn from the others.”
“The Nephilim are going to destroy all of us if we don’t even the odds. Is that what you want?”
“It’s what the One wants. We failed him. We didn’t trust him.”
“Suriel,” a new voice said.
A woman appeared at the edge of the screen. Abbey recognized her immediately, even through the changes her body had undergone in the years since.
“What is it?” Suriel said.
“They’re sealing the complex.”
“On whose authority?” he shouted.
“Archchancellor Charmeine.”
“Suriel, we have to go,” the voice offscreen said again.
“I’m not leaving our daughter here. I have to save her.”
“It’s too late,” the second wo
man said. “They aren’t allowing any of us to leave. No one from below the fifth level.”
“What?” Suriel said.
“We’re all at risk of infection. None of the others from further up have shown any symptoms.”
“They’re going to leave us down here to become monsters?”
“You said you’re close to a cure. Maybe you can finish it?”
Casiel stopped moving beneath the hands of the other two Seraphs. Suriel looked down at her and began to howl.
Abbey closed her eyes, feeling the tears welling. She couldn’t help but see Hayley in the Seraphim girl. She could only imagine the pain Suriel was feeling at the sudden loss.
“No. My precious. My beautiful star.” Suriel cried over her. The other woman came onto the screen, also crying.
Abbey turned the feed off, looking back at the corpse on the bed. Why had they left her there like that? How quickly had they changed?
Were the out of control naniates that had infected them still active down here? Were any of them free of the monsters they had enslaved?
“They tried to alter them the way Lucifer did,” Abbey said. “They failed. Miserably. Charmeine knew. She didn’t say anything about it.” Did Kett know? Did Jequn? “I feel like I’m seeing this for a reason, but I don’t know what that reason is.”
She waited for the Light of the Shard to answer. It didn’t.
She removed her hand from the terminal. It immediately went dark. She was done with this place of death and loss. This hell.
She stood and headed out of the room. She noticed the sound of gunfire was gone. So was the howling from the infected Seraphim.
Was it over?
Or just beginning?
14
Venerant Elivee stared straight ahead as the shuttle dipped into the heavy storm clouds. She was still harboring the remains of her frustration at being reassigned to this place, pulled away from the more interesting developments on Earth to help babysit a military force that should have been more than adequate to kill one would-be Evolent.
That she was being joined in the mission by Venerant Koy only made her more annoyed. Didn’t Gloritant Thraven know the two had a history going back nearly four hundred years? She had done her best to avoid Koy over that long stretch of time, positioning herself as more of a cerebral asset than a physical one. She supposed that was the point. Thraven would be seeking to use their rivalry and their incongruence to motivate both of them to make quick work of the problem.
Former Lieutenant Abigail Cage of the Republic Division of Highly Specialized Operational Combatants. A Breaker turned prisoner turned pseudo-Evolent turned thorn in the Gloritant’s side. She smiled. Or rather, a pain in his neck.
There was great glory to be had in removing her from the picture. Evolent Ruche had warned her that Cage was a demon incarnated into a human body, but she was certain the Lesser was exaggerating her abilities. To hear Thraven tell it, Cage had caught him by surprise and had only survived because Charmeine had saved her, an event that bore its own curiosity. The Seraphim Archchancellor had been presumed dead for millennia.
Whatever. She would ensure Cage was destroyed, and then she would go back to Earth to witness the chaos that followed. Already, the Nephilim-controlled Council was drafting legislation that would allow the Nephilim-controlled Armed Services Committee greater autonomy, which would permit them to reposition the might of the Republic without question or scrutiny, making all of those maneuvers classified. That would allow them to secretly segregate the loyal from the disloyal, who would find themselves on the front lines of a war with the Outworlders of the same vein.
Now that was entertainment.
She smiled at the thought.
Her smile vanished a moment later, when her comm sounded, and Venerant Koy’s voice followed.
“Elivee,” he said lightly. Mockingly. “What’s a nice bitch like you doing in a place like this?”
“Koy,” she replied. “How you’ve managed to keep your head this long is beyond me. If it weren’t for Thraven’s orders, I would -”
“You would, what? I still remember what you did to me the last time we were together.”
She clenched her teeth. That had been a mistake even the centuries couldn’t diminish. Although, she would be lying to say she hadn’t enjoyed it.
“Where are you?” she said, shifting the topic. Take care of business and get out. That was the best thing she could do.
“In the clouds. It seems we’ll be arriving at nearly the same time.”
“What are the odds?” she grumbled.
The shuttle finally dropped beneath the clouds, the white fog lifting away. Elivee looked down to the field below. By the volume of heavy equipment, she would have guessed they were fighting an entire army down here, not looking for a single human with a knack for the Gift.
Then again, from the amount of activity below, it appeared Cage wasn’t making things easy.
Soldiers were scrambling out of an opening in the side of the crater, sprinting at full speed as though the Father himself was at their heels. One of them stumbled to the ground, and he rolled over and pointed his weapon at the doorway while trying to get back to his feet. Further afield, a pair of mechs were online and moving forward, approaching the same entry.
Mechs? That was ridiculous. What the hell was happening down there?
“Elivee, do you see this?” Koy said.
“I do,” she replied, forgetting her animosity for a moment. “I can’t believe Cage is causing this much chaos.”
Another soldier escaped from the side of the crater. Elivee watched in fascination as something large and dark escaped behind them, moving too fast to be human. It leaped on top of the soldier, dragging him to the ground, sharp claws slashing at him.
“What the?” Koy said.
A horde of the monsters followed behind the first, spreading out in the field, chasing after the soldiers. A line of fire opened up into them, bullets slamming hard into the creatures, sending a few of them to the ground. Elivee gasped when they got back up a few seconds later.
“A trap?” Koy said.
“It can’t be,” Elivee replied. She left her seat, going to the front of the shuttle and putting her hand on the pilot’s arm. “Bring us down over there.” She pointed to the area behind the mechs.
“Yes, Venerant,” he replied.
She watched the action from the viewport as the shuttle continued its descent. She caught a glimpse of Koy’s ride a moment later, taking a similar path. The monsters were digging into the front line of soldiers, crashing through them like a wave. The mechs began firing, heavy rounds cutting the creatures in half.
“Who’s in charge down there?” she said, switching her comm to the wide channel.
“Honorant Ibsen,” a gruff voice replied. “Please, Venerant, we need help.”
“Honorant, explain this.”
“We tracked Cage to an old underground complex. Seraphim, I think. It was sealed off, but she opened it up. Everything was quiet and then all of a sudden, these things started appearing everywhere. They’ve already killed half of my crew.”
The shuttle touched down, the hatch opening on the side. Elivee moved to it and jumped out.
“Where are you, Honorant?” she asked, scanning the field from the ground. The creatures the mechs had cut in half were back up on freshly regenerated legs, rejoining the massacre.
Koy’s shuttle landed a moment later, and he jumped out. She spared him a glance, trying to ignore the slightly faster beat of her heart at the sight of him. He was too handsome for his own good. Or hers.
“Inside the CIC,” he replied.
“Inside? Your soldiers need you with them, Honorant.”
“I’m organizing the resistance.”
“It doesn’t look to me like you’re organizing anything.”
Koy was coming over to her. She turned to face him, refusing to show any emotion.
“You look the same as you did the last time I
saw you,” Koy said. “If there weren't a horde of monsters attacking us, I’d ask you to come back to my shuttle with me.”
“Go frag yourself,” Elivee replied. “Help me clean up this mess.”
“I’m your humble servant,” Koy said. His voice had regained its mocking tone.
They advanced toward the soldiers. “Aim for the head,” Elivee said. “I repeat. All units. Aim for the head.”
Their aim shifted at once. Elivee put out her hand, feeling the Gift rise within her and extend toward one of the creatures. It was pushed back, away from a soldier. It should have been thrown.
“They’re resistant,” she said.
“That only makes it more fun,” Koy replied.
She didn’t think so. She reached to her lightsuit and removed the knives from it, taking one in each hand. Then she bounced forward on the power of the Gift, landing amidst the creatures. A few stray bullets struck her before the soldiers could react and stop firing, but she shrugged them off, focusing on the creature instead. She could see the Seraph it had once been beneath it. The Nephilim had once suffered a similar fate. She almost felt sorry for it.
It growled and reached for her. She slipped away from it, leaping up and slashing its neck, once, twice, three times. Its head fell back, its body collapsing. She turned for find another target, its face already a bloody pulp. She bounced to it and removed its head as well.
A loud boom sounded, one of the mechs firing a missile into the creatures. The explosion killed a couple of them and left a few more crawling while they healed. She bounced into their midst, cutting them down before they could stand again.
A roar from behind her, and she began to turn, feeling a warm heat as a claw raked across her back and threw her forward. She rolled over to face the monster as hit pounced at her, only to be thrown aside by the Gift. Koy followed behind the push, landing on the creature and removing its head with blades of his own.
“That one was mine,” she said.
“I saw,” he replied.