Primal Link 2

by L Bowers

  "That's—"

  Something bumped against me. It caused me to stumble sideways and cut off my words. I looked up to see a person in long, flowing, blue and gold robes. He brushed off his shoulder and looked back at me while mumbling something I couldn't understand. After glaring at me for a brief moment, he faced forward.

  “What the hell happened?” I asked.

  “That man bumped into you,” Aspen replied. “That should be self-evident.”

  “I know that.” I shook my head in irritation. “The question is, how could he bump into me when the other guys passed right through me?”

  "I don’t know. Maybe you should follow him."

  “You think?” I asked.

  “He is the only person to have noticed you, and he didn’t pass through you. I have a feeling our being here is tied to him, possibly.”

  “You have a feeling, or a possible feeling?”

  “Does it matter? Do you have another way for us to return to our time? Before you answer, you might want to hurry.”

  I looked over and realized she was right. The man was getting farther away with each passing second. The best course of action we had was to act on Aspen’s hunch. So I ran.

  I started my pursuit by dodging the people making up the thick crowd. My progress was slow, and my target was getting farther away. People moved aside to leave him a clear path. If only they would do the same for me.

  "I’m so stupid. I can pass right through them.”

  “I was beginning to wonder why you weren’t running through them. Now that you have your head in the game, let’s get a move on.”

  Instead of dodging back and forth, I ran in a straight line heading for his back. None of the people in my way proved to be an obstacle as we passed through them. Not one of them seemed to notice us. When we were ten feet away from our target, a small, furry head peeked over his shoulder and looked at me with large, round eyes. The sight caused me to stumble and almost fall. The creature’s head tilted to the side as it watched my near tumble.

  The animal looked familiar, almost like Jones’s Lenashal. Unlike the Lenashal, this thing was still flesh and blood. Its fur was brown with the exception of a tan-colored patch that ran around its neck like a collar. Its large gray eyes never wavered as it stared at me.

  "Focus." Aspen once again pulled me out of my thoughts.

  A moment later, I walked abreast with the man as his little pet vampire bunny creature cocked his head to the side to look at me. "Can you hear me?" I asked.

  No response came as the man continued walking and mumbling. I couldn’t understand his words, but I was curious, and I was there, so why not go along for the ride?

  We went on for another quarter of a mile with him mumbling to himself and occasionally reaching up to stroke his pet’s fur, then he stopped in front of a squat, one-story building. The man paced back and forth for a moment while still mumbling to himself before he stopped again to face the building. He shouted something and waited. After a moment he shouted again, which caused someone inside to fling open the door.

  The newcomer, a woman, marched toward us with purpose. She stopped in front of the man with her hands on her hips and scowled for a long moment before answering. When she finally spoke, her words came fast and clipped, and were accompanied by large hand gestures. I had no idea what she said, but I had a feeling he was about to sleep on the couch.

  "Do you think they're in a relationship?" I asked Aspen.

  "I have no idea, but I am curious about why you would think that. You will have to explain that to me."

  "Well, in the culture I come from, it's not uncommon…"

  The woman's eyes went wide and she froze with her hands in the air mid-gesture. She was no longer looking at the man. Instead, she looked over his left shoulder. I spun as instinct told me there was trouble and it was time to fight.

  I wasn't too far off. A woman in an orange robe with a blue sun embroidered on the chest charged at the man. She held a large knife in both hands at waist-level with the blade pointed at her target. I reacted. A jump took me to the man I had followed, and I slammed my shoulder into his back. He screamed, his woman screamed, and the attacker screamed.

  I was the last to scream as the attacking woman collided with me blade first, knocking me back on my ass and sending jolts of pain through my stomach.

  4

  UNKOWN

  Metal clinked on stone from each of my eight legs. I would never get used to their incessant clanking, but couldn’t remember a time before that. The fact that there had been a time before that was clear—it filled a spot in my mind like a heavy mist, one that when I attempted to enter, tore at my nerves and filled me with paralyzing pain.

  At the moment, the clanking was especially fast as I ran. From what, I wasn’t sure. Ever since the majority of my brothers and sisters had departed, I had run. They had gone up in their ship, but some inner voice had told me to stay—to escape. Even before that, I had been a traitor to my kind. Rooms with runes and code, screens that floated before us and told us what to do, tainted by my action. Why was I so bad at following orders? At simply being what I was meant to be? This aracnic, as I was called among the ranks of other animalistic beings. Some were pure metal. Others had bits of flesh to them like me.

  It was when one such fleshling hybrid went missing that my mind had transitioned, that the distant, indistinct voice started. Never once had it made sense on its own, but the feeling it gave me was clear—run, destroy, avoid the others.

  And so I had. And more than that, I moved about the world and tried to remember. Why were there blank spots in my mind? Why the pain? What had that fleshling hybrid meant to me?

  The strangest part about her was that, despite not being able to remember what she looked like exactly, there were other memories. For one, a vision of myself in a cave with her as rain poured down outside the entrance, and both of us with legs like the intruders. The Marines, some of the other fleshling hybrids called them. I didn’t stick around to find out more. The woman was the only one I had memories of, though, and I think it was one particular memory that the others latched onto—our bodies joined and flesh connected as emotions flowed, fighting to beat out the pain.

  What was her name?

  I paused and looked down at a small animal I had killed while thinking. So much of my action was instinct lately, as I reached down with one metal arm and tore at its head, then used the flesh hand to pick up the body and sink my teeth into it. Warm blood flowed, stringy flesh pulled apart, and I was on my way to being satisfied. All it took was enough to energize my next movement.

  Today, I had a new target in sight, and when I finished the meal, I moved up to the top of the nearby rocks to look. As I stood there in the cover of the mountain trees, I felt disgusted by the way these Marines came here to invade our land.

  My instincts told me these people needed to die. That strange voice within, though, tried to fight back. As if I had stomach poisoning, this gut feeling wanted to vomit up everything I was going through, to be rid of my desire to kill them. Or maybe that feeling was specific to what I was still in the process of eating.

  But I knew my role in this life. I knew my duty. The force that kept the heart of this planet beating was alive in me, and I owed it my life. As I watched them in their metal base, I wondered what their purpose here was. I wondered how they could look so similar to my brothers and sisters of the hybrid variety. Had we all started in a similar place, and over the years spread out to various planets?

  I was about to turn back when two of them came into view. Nothing was especially distinct about them, except that they were smiling. Laughing. The sound carried up to the rocks and echoed. Then, as I followed them, the male leaned in and pressed his lips to the female’s lips as the two kissed.

  Another memory of the lost one hit me, this time of her mouth on mine, and a sound coming from her lips…maybe a name? I couldn’t place it.

  Whatever these two were up to, I had to get c
loser, to know more about them. To understand why they triggered these memories. So I snuck down, as best a half-man spider can sneak. When I reached the bottom, I realized I had lost track of them and spun, searching, then spotted movement beyond the trees to my right. I quickly went that way and spotted them, when the strangest thing happened—they vanished!

  One second they had been there talking, when first the man took a step and vanished, then the woman. I blinked, and wondered if my eyes were playing tricks on me. Lately, I had suffered from incredibly realistic visions that might have been memories or hallucinations, but nothing like this. It wasn't like they were hiding, either, because there was nowhere for them to hide. Simply air.

  Then the ripple showed like a wave of energy, and I sensed it moving. Like it was something rotating around the planet, and if I didn't reach it in that exact spot, I would miss my chance. So I scurried across the ground and leaped for it. I landed and rolled on the ground. Nothing had changed.

  I pushed myself up, my strange robotic spider legs working to get me mobile again, then I turned and realized how wrong I had been—everything had changed. Laid out before me was a decline of the same hill with trees I had seen before. Only now at the bottom, where in my time there were more hills and more trees, in this time or dimension, it was a city! On the other side of the city, a mountain rose, one that in my time was more like a half-mountain. Perhaps it was a volcano, and I was in the past? My only way of understanding it was that, at some point between now and my time, that volcano would blow, destroy this city, and change some of the nearby landscape.

  People moved around. Some were in robes, and others in armor. I moved around through the trees and kept my distance as I observed them. Would they see me as a monster? From what I could tell, none of the army I had been with—the metal animals or cyborg hybrids like myself, were here. Where were they, then? Not yet created, or on some other part of this planet?

  A strange language sounded behind me, and I turned to see two kids staring at me. These were locals, with their blue skin and three eyes. One spoke fast and heatedly, then the other shouted and stood, and hurled a rock at me. It pinged off my metal base, and caused the other to shut up. Both stared at me for a moment, then turned and ran toward the city, screaming.

  Others started to turn, and a couple of men ran out to meet them. Somehow, I had been discovered. I turned and ran, fully expecting to find a hiding spot, but instead stumbled back out through that time slip or portal or whatever it was.

  My curiosity told me to try again, but it was too late—it was gone. I knew going back would be a mistake, anyway. What if they found me? Either they would kill me as the monster they would think I was, or my animal mind would take over and I would kill all of them. If that was the past, I had no idea what sort of damage that could end up doing in the present. Then again, they weren't around anyway, so maybe it wouldn't matter.

  At least for the moment, my curiosity had been piqued. That had to be enough, because as I slipped back into hiding, moving through the trees and rocks back up the hill, my animal mind kicked in. Images and signals like static played through my head, all of which would make sense when my animal mind took over, but at the moment were garbled nonsense.

  What it meant, I knew as my vision went black and my last bit of thoughts until I could take over again came out, was that some of my robot companions were nearby.

  5

  Goshawk

  Darkness surrounded me as I screamed. The sudden temperature drop caused me to shiver. More than one movie I’d seen depicted the dying losing the feeling of pain just before they expired. It was how I knew my time had come.

  “I’m sorry, Aspen,” I said. “I won’t be able to free all the Lenashal like I promised.”

  “What the shit are you talking about?” Standish barked at me.

  I looked up to see my entire team standing around me with an assortment of expressions plastered on their faces. Kopf was half a second away from laughing, while Standish looked annoyed. Jones was the only one to look concerned over my death.

  “Wait.” I looked down my torso. “I’m not hurt?”

  “What?” Standish’s look of annoyance persisted. “No, you’re not hurt. What are you talking about?”

  “And how the hell did you get in here?” Kopf asked. “One minute you’re walking around the corner, the next you’re lying on the floor in here screaming. If there’s another entrance, we need to post a guard.”

  “What?” I sat up. “No, this isn’t right.” I patted down my armor, not sure how the blade could have made it through anyway, but it certainly had… in the other place. Here, though, my armor was fine and I was unharmed. “I was stabbed.”

  “What?” my team asked in unison. “Standish, man, I don’t know how much longer I can do this,” Kopf said. “Dude has lost it, and he’s going to take us to crazy town with him.”

  “Shut up, Kopf,” Jones growled. She knelt beside me and put her hand on my shoulder. “Take it slowly and tell me what this is about.”

  I looked from Jones to Standish with his scowl, then to Kopf with his curious lopsided grin. I could already hear Kopf spouting nonsense about some B movie plot he thought we were stuck in if I told my tale. Standish most likely wouldn’t laugh, but his reaction wouldn’t be pleasant. “No,” I said. “I’m fine. Just need to lay down.”

  “I think you can tell Jones,” Aspen told me. “Why not inform her of your experience?”

  “It’s not her I’m worried about,” I thought back. “I’ll tell her later when we’re alone.”

  “I’m fine.” I pulled my legs under me. Jones lent me a hand as I rose. “I must have had a nightmare.”

  “That doesn’t explain how you got in here,” Kopf snapped. “I sure as heck wasn’t sleeping on my post.”

  “Look,” I placed my hand on Kopf’s shoulder. “I didn’t say you were. I don’t know how I ended up here, is all. I must have dozed, then sleepwalked.”

  “I don’t know, man.” Kopf eyed me skeptically.

  “Neither do I.” My hand dropped and I stepped back, ready to leave the conversation. “I’ve told you what I know. All of us need some rest. Tomorrow will be a busy day.”

  Without giving my team a chance to reply, I walked to my bunk and stripped off my gear. No one stopped me as I climbed into my sleeping bag and zipped it shut. I felt the eyes on me though, and not only those of my team. An entire two squads used the large chamber as a barracks. Everyone stared at me, or it felt like that was the case.

  “I don’t believe you should lie to them,” Aspen said. “You will need them to accomplish everything you have set before you. They need to trust you as much as you need to trust them.”

  “I know, but you don’t understand. My people don’t respond well to weird stuff like this. They’ll think I’ve lost it, and their trust in me will be gone. There’s a good chance I’ll be removed from the mission and sent back to the ship pending a psych evaluation. This is for the best, Aspen.”

  “I think I understand. I also think you underestimate your team. They aren’t the people they were before coming here. They all bear Lenashal. They have all undergone great changes. I feel they will be more understanding and willing to listen to you, Ray. But I will stand by you in this decision.”

  “Thank you, Aspen. I’ll talk to Jones when I can. Maybe she’ll have more insight about whether or not I should tell the rest.”

  Aspen went silent, and I let the matter die. She wasn’t wrong, but I didn’t think I was either. There was a chance that Kopf would have believed right away, but I wasn’t in the mood to find out. My biggest concern was what Jones would think.

  The next morning I woke to the sound of laughter. After unzipping my sleeping bag, I poked my head out. The commotion was a group of Marines crowded around something glowing blue. Every couple of seconds they laughed or cheered. “What the heck is going on?” I mumbled as I crawled out of my bag.

  After shouldering my way through the cro
wd, I rubbed my eyes to make sure I was seeing correctly. A small animal was the source of the glow. It had a sleek, long body with a round head and two large eyes. The Lenashal darted around so fast I could barely track it with my eyes. After a few seconds, it shot into a Marine. A few seconds later, the creature darted back out and wove between legs. This caused the gathered Marines to cheer and laugh.

  I looked away from the Lenashal to the Marine it had bonded to. It was one of the Marines we rescued the day before. He saw me watching him and waved at me. “Sorry, guys,” he said as he stood there. “I need to speak to the Corporal. Show’s over for now.”

  He took my arm and led me away from the crowd, which was already dispersing. “I understand you also have a Lenashal,” he said in a whisper. “The talk is that yours is no longer blue, and you’ve grown in ability because of it. I want to learn more about that. Will you teach me?”

  “Yeah, um…” I glanced at his rank for the first time. “Sergeant. I can do that. Are you the only one of the Marines from yesterday to have bonded with a Lenashal?” I hadn’t expected to see more, but I should have. My team came about ours rather easily. It made sense that others would have bonded with them as well. My gaze drifted to the others as I wondered if they hid a Lenashal.

  “All of us,” he replied. “From what I hear, we wouldn’t have been in that pickle if we had some of your skills. I need to get back to the guys on the ship, if I can. They were freaked out by the Lenashal. To be honest, I am as well. If it wasn’t for what I’ve heard here, I would be a lot more freaked than I am.”

  “I’m surprised you’re here and not up there.” I pointed up to indicate the ship in orbit. “Why didn’t they send you with the others?”

  “I’m still in top fighting shape. No reason to leave until we have everyone.”

  “I see. In that case, I can help you. First thing you need to know is that there’s no reason to freak out. The Lenashal are friendly, or have been up to this point. I trust mine to the fullest. Everyone on my team trusts theirs as well. The second thing is that you’ll need to meditate to build your bond, and make both of you stronger.” I manifested Aspen’s wings on my back. “The stronger the bond, the cooler the things you can do.”