by E. J. Mellow
Though my thoughts remain loopy and skittish, I strain to see into the inky blackness beyond my small orb of illumination, listening for any sound of the devil’s return. But so far I hear only the occasional howl of wind and the muffled, eerie clicks from Metus talking to one another. They must share the same cavern we hide in. Why they don’t make their way toward me, attacking, I have no idea. Maybe the belt I wear not only suppresses my power but also hides my energy, camouflaging me. Which, if I were in the right state of mind, would fascinate me. But I’m not, so it doesn’t.
After another indistinguishable amount of time, I finally hear what I’ve feared and strangely anticipated—the familiar footsteps of Aaron treading along the ground. I keep from visibly flinching when his tall form seeps out of the dark, his dirty-blond hair hanging in stringy waves around his gaunt face, a black mask pushed down around his neck and blending into the standard Nocturna uniform he wears. His strides are purposeful as he walks to the opposite corner, dropping a small duffel on the floor. I curl into a ball, trying to make myself as small as possible, unnoticeable, as my teeth chatter, my muscles tensing in panic despite their soreness.
A hot flash of loathing rushes through me, directed at the Vigil and myself. I’m so cowered by him, puny when he’s near.
I hate it.
I hate myself and what I’ve become, what he’s made me.
The Navitas in me cries out to be used, the thought of revenge never tasting so sweet. It hits up against my internal walls to be freed, but it can’t. It’s stuck firmly inside.
I want to sob.
Suddenly Aaron stops in the arranging of objects from his bag, and crinkles his nose, glancing to the corner, which I’ve been forced to use as a toilet. “By the stars, you’ve created quite the stench in here,” he says, turning my way with a curled lip. “And I’ve hardly fed you anything too.”
My face grows hot with shame and anger.
“But I guess it’s better than you having another accident in your pants. I still don’t know why you won’t let me change them for you. I brought you that perfectly good pair.”
My body trembles more, but from a completely different reason than fear. Red tinges the side of my vision.
“I’m sure your current pair aren’t very comfortable,” he muses before adding with mocking sweetness, “and you know how much I care for your comfort, Molly.”
My chest heaves with each one of my breaths, working hard not lash out with words, which has been my only weapon against him. He’s goading me. I’ve learned this about him now. He likes to provoke me into saying something hateful, mean, so he has an excuse to start his sick games. So far he’s won in doing so every time.
And he’s about to win again.
“I wonder,” I say through gritted teeth, my voice hoarse from all my screaming, “what would a sick bastard like you ever do with your time if you didn’t have me around to make suffer?”
He barks a laugh at that before approaching. Shit. I press back into the wall, my body searing in pain. “You call what you’ve experienced here suffering?” He leans over me, his hazel eyes narrowing in disgust. “You naïve girl. You’ve been coming here for a total of what? Nine months, almost a year now? You haven’t seen half of the nightmares lurking in Terra.”
“I’m staring at you, aren’t I?”
The slap is so sudden that I don’t feel the sting until my head is done twisting sideways. The iron taste of blood coats my tongue. Slowly I bring my face to him again, my hands pulling on the binds, the chain clanking behind me, with my desire to cradle my tender skin and most definitely wanting to hit back. Aaron’s gaze is wild and sickly pleased as he regards me. My blood runs cold with a new terror. This is the first time he’s personally harmed me, touched me with his bare hands. While my injuries are vast, none are from his actual physical contact. He prefers the use of a third party. If it wasn’t the tiny fireballs, it was mechanical spiders that climbed in between my clothes, stinging me raw, or shocks of electricity from a sleek black rod. All weapons I can only assume he procured from the black market.
Aaron and I stare at one another. Somehow I find the strength to hold his gaze even when my throat bobs with a dread-filled swallow. Whatever this is, it isn’t good, and with his smile sharpening, he knows I realize it.
But before he can strike again, a red-orange glow lights up the rounded doorway in the distance, the entrance to the cave. Aaron turns, resuming his full height, but doesn’t grab a weapon. The telling sounds of a Metus approaching echoes forward, its liquid sludge moving closer as the air fills with an even more acute stench of rot.
My eyes widen. Instead of grabbing the Navitas-filled knife I know Aaron has stashed somewhere on his person, he turns off the lamp by our feet. Once again the cave is filled with the single glow of my belt. Glancing over his shoulder to me, he puts his finger to his lips, indicating that I should remain quiet, just as the beast comes into view. It fills the entrance, its lava skin churning and climbing along its globular body as it illuminates the space in crimson. Its eyes are two bright flames of white as it peers around the cave, which is now overflowing with its depressed energy, of the horror it holds within. While I barely breathe, fearing it will hear the sound, I notice Aaron’s relaxed stance in front of me. He seems almost unconcerned by the monster’s presence, and a part of me fights the idea of yelling out and giving away our location. Surely it would be better to end this all now. But before I can do much of anything, I watch in utter amazement as the beast sniffs the air, once, twice, before turning and slinking away, its orange glow growing softer and softer until it’s no longer painting the cave walls. Everything is thrown back into the flap of a raven’s wing, indicating the monster’s presence is gone.
Aaron turns the lamp back on and faces me, seeing the astonishment in my features. “Interesting, yes?”
“How…why did it not know we were here?”
His mouth curls smugly. “That thing around you is a doll of a device. Not even an Energy Sensor would be able to detect you.”
So what I surmised earlier was true. Still, I frown. “But what about you?”
His eyes glow from whatever secret he holds. “Yes, Molly, what about me?”
Despite hating looking at him for longer than a few seconds, I study him intently, the way his skin is almost translucent in its paleness, his dark veins snaking just under the surface easily traceable. And his pupils…his pupils seem larger than normal, blacker, almost covering his whole eye. Without meaning to, a vision of the black tar that snaked through Aurora whirls before me. Oh God, could it be possible? Could Aaron’s soul have turned so dark, so full of his hate, that he now blends in with the enemy?
“What are you?” I whisper.
His cool gaze seeps into mine. “I would have thought that was obvious by now.” He leans over, gripping my chin painfully. “I’m your nightmare.” And then he steps back, returning to his bag and pulling out a small silver object that looks like a remote. “Now, where were we before we were so very rudely interrupted?”
I stay silent, not about to remind him that he was about to hit me again.
“Oh yes.” He presses one of the buttons on the remote, and the belt around me instantly coils out to wrap around my whole body, just like it did when he first trapped me in the hover car. I fall to my side with a grunt, my legs now secured together, the long rope traveling up to pinch my arms to my sides and wrap around my neck.
My panic explodes.
“There’s been a change in plans,” he says as he stands over me. “I’ve realized your knowledge is of little use to me. What I wanted from you, well, besides the pleasure of your company, of course”—he smiles syrupy—“would take much too long to acquire.”
So there was a reason to this besides his mere thrill of torturing me? For some reason that fills me with the slightest sense of relief. Which is sick, I know, but is it so wrong to need my pain be for a purpose?
“Yes, it would have taken at least a
nother month Earth cycle,” Aaron continues, “and Terra only knows what this place would smell like if you were kept here for that long.”
My curiosity gets the better of me. “What were you looking for?” I ask as I stare up at him from my awkward position on the ground.
He tilts his head to the side. “Normally I’d punish you for asking such a thing, but seeing as this day is a celebration of sorts, I’ll give you a gift by answering.” He crouches down, his finger gently rubbing along my cheek and pushing back a greasy lock of my hair. His touch brings bile to my throat, and I resist recoiling away as my heart pumps wildly. “I was going to become you,” he says softly.
I blink. “What?”
“A Dreamer,” he clarifies, removing his hand. “Or at least gain your powers.”
I knew Aaron was crazy, but… “What are you talking about?”
His eyes search mine. “You don’t remember, do you?” He shakes his head, an amused gesture. “You were under quite a bit of…stress at the time, so I guess you wouldn’t. The transfer chamber,” he says, and my skin turns to ice. “You and Rae’s nice little swap. Who knew it was possible, but I guess I should have wondered more about this blonde piece of yours.” He touches the strip in my hair that is the color of Rae’s.
My mind spins in circles. I’d crumbled, just as I feared. How long did I last before I sang like a bird? I remember none of it—it’s all just a muddle of pain and fire and nightmares. All darkness mixed with blazes of hate brought on by this man. Oh God. And I’m supposed to protect a world, two worlds, and yet I can barely protect myself. I’m weak, pathetic. Dev would never have broken. Dev would have rather died than give in to this man. It’s this thought, of the man I purposefully kept buried deep in my heart, refusing to think about while stuck with this monster, that breaks me further. But oddly it’s not tears that mark my unhinging. It’s laughter. I laugh, big, racking guffaws that strain my chest against my binds, burning my lungs with each breath.
What’s the purpose of any of this?
Of me?
Everyone thinks I’m someone special, someone unlike the other humans of Earth, someone who can make a difference. I laugh even harder at that, and Aaron watches, confusion bringing his brows together, but not without the slightest bit of mirth. He seems to enjoy my trip into his world of insanity.
“You…you thought you could be me,” I pant out. “You want to be a Dreamer.” Laughter erupts from me again. “Do it! Take it! Please, take it all. Take my power!” I yell out. “You want it? It’s yours.” I roll to my back, giggling all the while. “It’s all yours.”
Aaron stands, his gaze no longer amused. “You find what I had planned to be funny?”
“Oh no, no. On the contrary. It’s possibly the most brilliant idea you’ve ever had.” I’m smiling. I’m actually fucking smiling. I’ve definitely lost it.
“I see.” He pulls the remote from his pocket again. “Well, I’ll enjoy seeing what you think of my new plan. If it will amuse you as much as now.”
This sobers me a bit, my chuckles dying down to heavy breaths, and Aaron arcs a superior brow.
“But I think it will be more beautiful than funny,” he says. “Yes, quite gorgeous actually, and maybe a bit poetic, like our interludes often are.” He grins. “I’m going to end it, Molly. I’m going to end this sin-filled world right where it begins. And you’re to be my guest of honor, and perhaps a certain blue-eyed man too. What do you think of that? Would you like to see him one last time? It would be rather gracious of me, I think,” he muses as he twirls the remote between his two fingers. “Yes, let’s bring you two together to watch it all burn. It’s what I was given, after all, to look into her eyes as she died, as I died.” He’s quiet for a moment before he lets out a gentle sigh, bringing his hands to his hips. “And if I were to be honest, I’ve grown rather tired of all this. Aren’t you tired?” he asks rhetorically, glancing down at me. “Of course you are. You look positively exhausted. Yes, I think you’ll appreciate my new plan. After all, it will end the war. Ah, I see you like that,” he says as my eyes widen slightly. “That’s right, Molly. I’ll be doing your job, for I’ve come to the decision that if she can’t exist, none of us should.”
And then with a flourish, he points the remote at me while pressing a button. Instantly the rope tightens like a vice, and I cry out in agony, the telling pop of one of my shoulders coming out of its socket filling the cave. If I had food in my stomach, it would be all over the ground.
“But you—” I pant against the searing pain. “But you haven’t asked me anything!”
“Oh, I’m not doing this to get answers anymore.”
My voice comes out small and fragile as I ask, “Then why?”
His smile is the very curve of evil. “Because I can.”
As the lasso tightens and cuts off my air supply, my vision explodes with white dots. And the oddest thing enters my mind as I lie on the cold cave floor, slowly dying. I think how crazy it is that out of all the amazing things the human body does, the way we can think and feel and grow and learn and create—something as simple as blocking one’s air supply for a mere moment, a few seconds, can stop all that. How something as complicated as a life can so easily be taken by another.
Because he can.
— 40 —
I learned how I can get back today.
What needs to be done.
And while I hate to ask it, I must.
Is such a sacrifice worth being together again?
—Part of a letter from Molly to Dev
The air was stale and humid, the darkness like spilled ink against the rocky walls, the only offset the low blue-white halo of their Glowers. A sheen of sweat ran across Dev’s brow, and he blinked against the salty burn when droplets slipped into his eyes. It was the last tunnel his squad would search today, as another Metus attack had been reported along Terra’s wall, which needed reinforcement. But as Dev waited for Aveline to scan one of the two tunnel openings they stood in front of, he wondered how it would look if he stayed behind. If they ended up empty handed after this, he was pretty certain he’d be useless on a battlefield. He felt useless a lot lately.
Minka shifted beside him, her cropped blonde head bent over as she checked the map readout. The hologram floated above the tablet, painting a twisted, circular web. They had found new pockets of caverns hidden a few clicks to the east of the Nursery and quickly set out to find an entrance. Minka glanced at Dev as the hologram flickered in and out, a sure sign they stood near an energy concentration, even though nothing was picked up on the scanner. Dev nodded once, his nerves instantly set to vibrate. Please, by the elders, let her be down here.
“We should split up,” he said as he raised his Glower higher, illuminating the carved-out space where his team of eight stood in the bowels of a thin shaft. “Marcus, what’s your sensor reading?”
A burly man with almond-shaped eyes and jet-black hair turned from the other opening, his radar machine gripped tight. “There’s definitely something here.”
“Yeah, I’m getting something too,” Aveline agreed, not taking her eyes off the black hole in front of her. “I don’t think it’s a hive though. Maybe a pack. From the smell, I think we all can agree that there’s a fair share.”
“Can we tell which one they are down?” Dev asked.
Aveline glanced at Marcus. “My numbers are all around thirty.”
“Same,” Marcus said, frowning.
Collö, Dev silently cursed. “We’ll split evenly then.”
Divvying his team, Dev turned down the left bank, Aveline in tow, while the rest traveled the right.
“Minka, you hear me okay?” Dev asked, checking their communication.
“Loud and clear, Boss,” came her raspy voice.
Careful to stay clear of the walls, despite wearing their protective gear, Dev and his squad kept an even pace as they maneuvered through the tunnel. Their way could only be lit a few yards ahead at a time, the black shadows figh
ting back against their illumination as they moved forward.
They might have traveled ten minutes or thirty. Dev wasn’t sure, his mind too preoccupied with his racing thoughts to keep much hold on a detail like time. Which was funny, since that was all he’d been aware of lately. A pinprick of orange seeped out of the space in front of them, the stench growing richer. The Metus.
Dev turned off his light, his team following suit until they stood in utter darkness.
“Slowly now,” he whispered as they crept forward, using the steady light of the enemy to guide them until they could hear the sounds of the monsters’ movements, wet liquid steps flopping along a dirt floor, a slug sliding. Dev’s stomach turned over.
He snapped out his Arcus, and there was a small echo of the rest of his men and women preparing their weapons as they came to stand just beyond the entrance of a giant cavern, the stalactite ceiling five floors high. Remaining in the shadows, he took in the five monsters that were almost lounging in their hovel, abnormally bloated in size. A sticky tar lined the entire space, a putrid energy of sorrows swimming in the air and burning the back of Dev’s throat as he breathed in. He spotted piles of blue-white glowing balls spread around the floor. And he watched in horror as one Metus scooped one up with its talons, its mouth opening to a sickeningly wide degree, and threw it back. Smoke sizzled out as he chomped, the creature’s mewl of pleasure echoing in the cavern as its size grew just barely plumper.
By the stars… How did they get energy orbs? Dev stole a glance at Aveline, who shared a similar look of dismay. Somehow the Metus obtained an absurd amount of the Navitas used to power the vehicles in Terra. And then it dawned on him. Aaron. Aaron would do something like this. But why? What was he using them for? And did the monsters understand such a trade? His people still didn’t exactly know how intelligent they were, but given their recent behavior, especially now, Dev was beginning to think Terra’s soldiers grossly underestimated them. As these thoughts spun, a new one zipped to the forefront. Molly. She was here. She had to be. He felt it in the very marrow of his bones. Why else would he keep these creatures here, sedated, but here nonetheless, if not for a diversion? Guards against something he wanted to be kept hidden? Dev’s gaze zeroed in on another opening on the far side of the cave. Two Metus slumped along the wall beside it. His heart beat so loudly in his chest he feared the monsters would hear it, but as he looked around at each of their docile and lazy forms, he realized that if this was Aaron’s doing, he’d made a grave mistake. The creatures were so well fed on the Navitas that they seemed almost drunk, languid and apathetic to their surroundings.