“God dammit!!!” he screams punching the display.
His fist goes right through it. It sparks off. He removes his fist and sits back down. His eyes are bloodshot red, his cheeks slick with tears. He puts his head back into his hands.
What the fuck is the use of this power, if he can’t even protect the ones he loves.
Jahum lied to him.
This power is useless. This is all a fucking joke, he’s going to end it, and with this power he finally can. Jahum made a mistake by saying he was going to be the one to change everything.
The stars won’t protect him.
They don’t protect a damn thing.
A ding comes from the screen, the display crunches and morphs into liquid glass and fills in the hole. It fixes itself.
This technology is just an excuse to fill the emptiness of these so called gods. He hits a button. The display turns back on. Human casualties counter appears on it. Then a zero below it. It counts up.
“Don’t cry…They’re one with the stars now.”
He’s not thinking right, he just needs to—
His thoughts pause. To think on what he’s going to do next. But his memories are rushing fast into his head. He feels weird, like he’s not really here, before he ascended he never had so many thoughts in his head, never had so many clear and vibrant memories of his past.
Is this what it’s like to be an ascended? Because he doesn’t think he can take it anymore.
Living.
The counter speeds past one hundred thousand and continues to speed up. Cole just stares at the numbers, he can follow every single increase. Which helps him clear his head. It blows past five billion until it comes to a sudden stop.
6,152,637,917 confirmed human casualties.
It continues again, but this time a lot more slowly but fast enough to watch the extinction of the human race. Going up ten every second. A tear rolls down Cole’s cheek. His watch beeps, he forgot he still had the damned thing.
A map pops up, it’s of the thing that was forming over D.C., it’s shaped like an oval. A single red dot blinks in the middle of it. The dot pulsates, letting out a beep each time. The map zooms in and—
Thora’s name shows up next to the dot.
She’s the dot.
She’s alive.
The beeping sound echoes out in the room.
…
A white square room sits empty, sterile as a hospital, a conveyor belt stands still at the end of it. Thora lies on it, impaled on thin black pillars, body sprawled out like a starfish. Her eyelids fly open. She inhales deeply. She turns her head and looks up, bright white lights shine in her eyes. It feels like she’s just woke from a long dream.
Where is she? She tries to remember where she was last.
“Ahh!” she screams, noticing the black bars impaling her through her clothes. She tries to move her arms but can’t.
Her whole body is numb.
“Nononono!” she panics.
She starts to hyperventilate. Her head flings around, looking for anything, anybody, but the room is empty, oddly sterile looking.
Then she remembers, the attack, the Eliite, everything. Then she remembers the stories of what aliens do when they abduct people.
Dissect them.
“HELP!!” she screams but it’s useless.
“Help!!!” she screams herself hearse.
She doesn’t want to die like this, not on some freaking metal table getting her organs pulled out. She manages to glance past the pillars and sees where the conveyor belt leads. It goes into another room, but it’s too dark to see what’s in it. But something else is on the conveyor belt in that room, it’s too dark but it looks…human.
“Hey!!”
He doesn’t respond, she tries to look back, but she can’t because of how the pillars irregularly holds her up.
Shouldn’t she be dead? She’s getting an ominous feeling that later she’s going to wish the pillars killed her.
A metallic sound whizzes in the room. The wall in front of her breaks open and goes into the perpendicular walls. She can finally see what’s in the other room, or rooms. The walls open in ten rooms in front of her, making a long corridor. The conveyor leading into a black square hole in the white wall.
Oh god.
She sees thirty other people on the conveyor belt, all impaled with pillars in various ways like her. Tall, short, black, brown, white, all kinds of people, she even sees a few children. None of them are awake though.
The conveyor shifts and moves. It maneuvers to the middle in between the two walls. Two metal tongs come from the ceiling and grabs her and pulls up.
Suddenly parts of the pillars sticking out of her falls off, the rest –
“AHHHHHHH!” Thora screams.
The rest is painfully absorbed into her, not leaving a mark. Thora’s eyes fling open and she hurls down below, it splatters onto the conveyer.
That was the most pain she has ever experienced, she tries to clutch her hands to null the pain but it’s useless. She labors her breathes, she sees a wet spot on her pants, but she’s not sure if that was from the throw up or piss from the pain.
She can feel the tongs on her skin, barely, the numbness starts to wear off. She scantily moves her finger. Just a little while longer and she’ll have control back over her body. The same thing happens to the people in front of her. Hung up like sheep, yet she’s still the only one awake. Why?
The line moves forward, inching toward the black square hole. Her heart beats as she moves toward it. She’s suddenly sprayed with a thick water like liquid, she flails like a hog at the slaughter. It comes from holes that appeared in the walls. It drenches the entire line.
Her clothes start to dissolve. She stops struggling. The fear of the situation setting in, she’s too scared to react. She knows it’s useless to struggle, if she can’t even move her hands. Her clothes drips onto the floor, she’s completely naked, and so is every sleeping person in the line.
The line stops, her body still swings from the momentum. Then it moves up again.
By one person.
Followed by a scream, then it moves again, up by one person and another kind of scream.
One tick a different flavored scream.
She has to wait her turn. She starts to tremble as she gets closer. Why god did she have to be the one to wake up?
She ticks closer.
She starts to cry.
“Why…”
It ticks again, she’s gets close, only a few more ahead of her. She hears what sounds like a chain saw as the next scream vibrates in her head.
“Whywhywhywhywhy…” She repeats over and over, tears slicking her face.
Tick.
This is it.
Cole.
She forgot about him, her own husband, she’s been selfish. She didn’t even have time to think about him. To go over her goodbyes and regrets in her head. She finally moves into the room, the silent man in front of her next. The walls covered in not only blood but splattered guts.
A giant mechanical chain saw hooked to a metal arm comes from the ceiling. It’s clean, refreshed. It dives into the man’s chest without warning.
Blood splatters on Thora’s screaming face. He howls as it rips down and out of him. His insides fall into a hole below, the hole closes.
The belt moves up.
“No! No! NO!” Thora screams, the saw moves toward her.
“NOOOOOAAAHH!”
It stops.
It just observes her, and stops spinning.
It beeps.
A hole opens below and Thora drops in. She falls into a spiraling tube, like a water slide, she slides down for a few seconds and—
She slides out and slams into a tan wall. She hits the ground hard.
“Ow,” she mutters. She just lies still head in her hands. She doesn’t think she can take any more of this.
“Another lucky one,” a man’s voice says.
Thora looks up. There are ten
other people with her. All naked and very much human. A diverse group with a little boy hiding behind what looks like his mother.
In what looks like a small rectangular tan room. It almost feels like a cage of some sort. The hole she fell from is gone.
“Wait, I can move,” she says. She squeezes her hands, she can move again.
“The numbness wears off almost immediately,” a man says. She looks at a man who leans against a wall with his arms crossed, he looks Mediterranean and in his early 30s. It’s the same guy who told her how lucky she was.
She touches the walls, it feels like pale leather almost as if it’s. “Human skin!?” Thora yelps
“No not human but some kind of animal,” the Mediterranean man says. She rubs her hand against it.
“Where are we?”
“We have no idea, but we came to the conclusion that we were the ones who were ‘awake’ when we shouldn’t have been,” the man says. He’s the only one talking to her, the rest stare down into the ground, defeated.
The room jolts, Thora clutches hard on the wall as the rest slip and fall as the room jumbles around, like rocks getting shaken in a jar. A turbine like sound is heard outside, lights sheen through the cloth like wall. There moving, but where?
Thora wants to find out. While everyone else struggles to stand, Thora peers into the cloth, trying to see past the thin material.
But they come to a quick stop.
They can’t be heading to their deaths since the Eliite had a chance. Thora thinks on it. But maybe they’re going to experiment on them since whatever was supposed to keep them asleep didn’t work. Thora frantically looks around, the idea of them cutting her open while she’s still alive becoming a bigger and bigger possibility in her head. That’s the only reason they would keep them alive.
“We have to get out of here!!” Thora screams.
The floor suddenly gives out. They all scream as they fall into a glass windowed room. Thora lands hard on the hay covered floor. She looks up, it was actually a short drop. She struggles to her feet. She wiggles her toes on the hay, it’s actually not hay but it looks like it, it’s covered in a soft hair like material.
She’s in what looks like a giant hamster cage, plush like chairs are littered around the hay like floor, there’s two giant bowls with what looks like food and an exercise area with a giant wheel and dumbbells. The floor outside is filled with other cages, with other ‘things’ in them.
“Hey guys,” she says. Nobody replies.
“Hey!” She finally looks toward the front. The rest just stare out the window.
She finally looks up.
It all hit her at once. Her mouth falls open.
“Oh, my god…”
Past their glass cage and out the giant window out of the large building their in. They’re in a giant city, a city much like theirs, like New York City, except everything is much much larger and oddly alien. Tall skyscrapers pierce into the sky, dark ruby red and sapphire blue buildings shine in the sky. A miniature star shimmers bright making the skyscrapers cast a shadow down on the building she’s in. There is hundreds of them spreading out she doesn’t know how long.
They’re caged in a pet shop, Eliite Pet Wonders, cooped up like animals to be sold off to some Serephin couple.
Out the window, Serephins walk on the sidewalks and streets like it is a regular day. Business men rush to their office jobs, parents hasten their kids so they can make it to school on time, Cleaners pick up trash off the odd vehicle less street and regular Serephins just going about their day.
An entire advance society in a ship. Thora moves closer to the front and presses her hands into the glass. She gets a better view. There’s another side, another city floating upside down above them. She squints to look closer. The other side has less sky scrapers and has more residential like buildings, houses, she guesses. And parks and schools. It’s a suburb. A stark contrast to the city on her side.
The star floats between both sides, a yellow force field protects it. Small wisp of clouds float carelessly in the sky as hundreds of ships populate it, personal ships for Serephins who could afford it, business ships for booming businesses, and with this economy, business is booming, and a few faires doing their rounds. All going about their normal day as if they’ve never even invaded another planet.
Thora falls back onto the ground, the wonder of it all crashing down on her. This is amazing, it’s another alien civilization. And she’s nothing but a prisoner of war to them.
“No,” she mutters.
She brings up her knees and put her head in them. This isn’t a war to them.
It never was.
Deconstruction – The price to pierce the sky
A young Kabus sits at a white ceramic desk. It lies against a wall in his room. He’s only seventeen human years old. A toddler in Serephin years. He leans back in his chair and stares at a display tablet in front of him.
Complex equations and quotations fill the screen. Complex for a human, but child’s play for a young Serephin.
He’s nervous, not about the written test he’s about to take, he’s got that one in the bag, but of the test itself. The test to become a god.
The television is on, he zones out, lost in his thoughts of what could possibly go wrong. A siren echoes through the room. An emergency warning comes on the television.
“This is a red level warning. General Ical and the Numenwolfe suggest staying in your households and activating your automatic security measures. If you leave your homes, stay near emergency shelters. Our intelligence officers have intercepted a message from the Jour race. A raiding fleet is coming within the next few days. Expect contact any time before then”
The warning turns off, his regularly scheduled cartoons comes back on.
The Jours. A rather powerful race, they were the second strongest in the SE6 council. The Serephins were first.
But that was before the betrayal and before the powers in play were shifted. They match the Eliite in the number of ascended. He looks out his window.
In a four-passenger ship flying over the ground, Kabus stares outside the window. It’s a small craft, only as large as a minivan, but it only supports four passengers. Kabus’s mom is in the driver seat. She doesn’t look too happy. But besides that she’s a stunning Serephin woman. It’s where Kabus gets his good looks from.
“So it didn’t get canceled?” Kabus asks her.
“No, it’s not canceled,” she says, there is a coldness in her voice. No invasion is going to stop it, it’s far too important. No matter if the Jour are trying to stop what they’re trying to do and no matter that they were a council member.
She’s worried.
He is, too. In the back of his head he kind of wanted it to be canceled too, even if he wants to do this. Because the price of failure is pretty high and so are the chances.
He stares into the clear blue sky. Numenwolfe floats in the middle, giving off his heat.
“Are you sure you don’t want to become a Damon? Being an alpha isn’t as great as it sounds,” she says, worry on her face. Becoming a Damon is easier.
“No.”
It’s all or nothing, if his life is useless he wants to ascend to be the greatest, if not, why live at all. He stares out the window as his mother just stares ahead.
Kabus and his mother walk into a large waiting room. They're at the Eliite military research base. The place where the newest of the Eliite technology comes from.
The room is a giant open space filled with chairs, there are a hundred other Serephin kids with their parents. All are handpicked, based on their genes just like Kabus, the most practical candidates.
They walk farther into the room and find seats. Before they can sit down a women in a lab coat runs up to them.
“Kabus?” she asks. She has his photo on a tablet she’s holding.
“Yes.” Kabus replies.
“You can sit over here.” She points to a small closed off section over in the corner. There�
��s a sign that says Alpha candidates. There’s only twenty of them.
“The other seats are for Damon candidates unless you’ve changed you mind?” she asks. She looks at his mother, who just looks at her son.
“No.”
The woman leaves to greet another person entering, Kabus and his mother sit in their designated area. He looks at the Damon wannabes. Cowards, all of them. The same candidates can attempt to become an alpha, a true ascended, a god. But they all fear failure.
The Alpha candidates are shuttled through a hallway. Kabus stops when he sees a large metal circular door. ‘DO NOT ENTER UNLESS AUTHORIZED’ is printed on it in large red letters. The rest of the candidates are going into a room right next to it. Two Damon guard the door.
Inside of the room there are twenty desks with computers laid out like a school room. The women who greeted him stands at the front.
“Chose a desk and we’ll begin the test, once completed we’ll chose at random who will go first.” She waves to a single door to her side.
Kabus chooses a desk near the back and sits. The others fill the seats.
“You may now begin and good luck.”
It’s an hour after the test. Kabus still sits at his desk. There’s only two of them left. The women at the front looks grim while she flips through her tablet.
“Linus,” she announces.
A boy at the front stands up, the door in the front opens, there’s only darkness behind it. The boy walks slowly through it. The door slams shut behind him.
Kabus is now alone.
Nobody has come out of that room. They all ‘failed’. He suddenly gets nervous. He is going to survive. He’s going to be the first to ascend using this method. He keeps telling himself that to calm himself.
Maybe he should’ve became a Damon after all. Over five-hundred candidates since this program has started and none have survived, while the Damon program has a forty-five percent success ratio. And they don’t die if they fail. He should’ve just waited to ascend naturally. Maybe somebody did pass it and the door is somewhere else.
“Kabus.”
It’s his turn. He walks up to the door. The door opens, there is only darkness. The room of deconstruction. He’s lying to himself, he is afraid of death, looking into the blackness of the room he’s starting to realize it. Nobody survives this.
In A Universe Without Stars 1: Skyeater Page 25