Infused (Book 2 of The Pioneers Saga)

by William Stadler

  His hands sagged beside him, wilted. She slid on her hip across the icy ground and snagged her blade. On one knee, she turned towards another guard and sidearmed the blade into his throat. The man dropped, head thunking against the ice. Sarai ran over and rescued Caleb from the frozen barrier.

  The last man sealed himself in a hollow shell of ice. He turned around, looking at his attackers, trying to plan his escape.

  Shauna commanded the woman to move in closer to the hull. The woman raised her hands to the sky.

  The man screamed, pounding on the ice shell with the bottom of his fists. “Amanda! No!”

  “I can’t...stop…” the Polarist woman managed to say between her teeth.

  A layer of ice formed underneath the man. A mass of ice filled the shell, smashing him against the roof of his own enclosure. The cracking sound of breaking bones snapping made Caleb cringe.

  The ice barrier, that barricaded the cave, glistened behind them. Shauna released Amanda, and the woman entered The Deficit. Gardiv yanked her by the neck and pressed his blade against her throat.

  “Not this time,” he said. His bulking muscles expanded as he restrained her.

  Amanda fought against it, but Gardiv was too strong. The temperature remained unaffected as the woman slipped out of The Deficit.

  “Where’s Raylen!” Shauna yelled, rage bursting from her pores. Her fury burned against the woman. Spirits surfaced around her. Her blackened eyes disguised her pupils.

  “Shauna, you have to stop. Remember what Arthur said about the Hellstate,” Caleb said.

  Shauna pulled back. Her sari swung around her knees. She punched the cave wall, cutting her knuckles, unable to feel the pain numbed by the Hellstate.

  “Tell us what you know!” Sarai demanded.

  Amanda gritted her teeth, arching her back off the iced ground. “I won’t tell you anything.”

  Gardiv pressed his knee into her stomach. The pressure of his weight bent her ribs. “Oh I think you will.”

  She tried to move, but he kept her pinned into the ground.

  “Tell us what he’s planning to do, and we’ll let you up,” Caleb said.

  “Tell us!” Shauna yelled. She ran to Amanda, and stomped in her face. Amanda choked on her broken tooth.

  “Shauna, you have to stop!” Caleb hollered. “Sarai, get her back.”

  Sarai pushed Shauna away from the woman.

  The woman spat blood on the ground. With an evil grin she said, “The last thing that I would ever do is tell….”

  Her words quieted. She tried to fight up, but her life leaked from her. Gardiv had stabbed her in the heart. “Wrong...the last thing you will ever do, will be to wish you were still alive,” Gardiv said.

  “Gardiv!” Caleb pushed him. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “You’re out of line, soldier.” Gardiv balanced himself, stumbling backwards and bracing his hand against the ice barricade.

  Caleb was infuriated, but he nodded in Pioneers obedience. “Why did you kill her, Pioneer Baroq?”

  Gardiv stood up straight and wiped the blood from his knife on his pants. He spat to the side and pointed with his blade at the ice column above Caleb’s head. “Trying to save your life.”

  Caleb was stunned.

  “She was a slippery one, that Amanda. I could feel her body getting colder, and I looked up and saw it. Anyone willing to fight to the death will never give you anything that she doesn’t want to,” Gardiv said.

  Shauna’s eyes returned to their grayish-blue hue. The Hellstate slowly ebbed from her, but she could still feel the remnant of Amanda’s foul emotions.

  They headed out the cave, and Caleb felt exhausted from the battle. Coming close to death was something that he wanted to rid himself of. The moonlight dragged its way through the canopy, and the spirits made eerie appearances as they seeped in and out of the spiritual plane.

  “Shauna, you have to stay out of the Hellstate,” Caleb said.

  “You think I like doing that? You think I like losing control and hearing the amplified screeches of the spirits around me? You think I like forgetting whether it’s night or day? And you think I like being haunted at night?”

  Sarai put her hand gently on Shauna’s back. “That’s not what he’s saying. He just wants to make sure that you’re not going to lose yourself like the Triage or like Wex.”

  Shauna stood at the entrance of the cave with her arms crossed. “I hate every bit of this.” She pushed back her hair that the wind had blown across her face. “But my hatred of the Hellstate will not be the reason that I let…” she turned away, “….my people be killed.”

  They stepped farther away from the entrance of the cave, and Caleb shivered, not remembering the temperature being so low before. Perhaps the Polarists inside had lowered it with The Deficit. He looked up and small snowflakes dropped from the sky. Since his imprisonment, he had come to like snow again, somehow.

  Shauna stepped in front of them, holding her hand back to keep them from coming closer. “Something’s wrong.”

  “What is it?” Caleb asked.

  “It never snows here.”

  Caleb stood beside her, tossing his head to and fro, searching. “What do you think it could be?”

  “Run!” Shauna folded her arms across her chest. The arctic winds whipped her sari as the gusts snapped by. Blackness back seeped into her eyes. She pursed her lips together. Spirits roared around her. Menacing apparitions arose from the ground. She pulled herself back into the Hellstate.

  Crackling ice crawled across the ground and covered the entrance to the cave. The trees creaked under the weight of the ice. The snowfall scattered the moonlight in all directions. Several Polarists emerged through the darkness.

  “Shauna, no!” Caleb hollered, running back to her.

  “Pioneer Eaves, you fallback and let that mainlander take care of herself!” Gardiv ordered as he jerked Caleb’s arm, fleeing with Sarai.

  Caleb didn’t care what Gardiv said, he was going back. He broke from Gardiv, sprinting towards Shauna. Her body had already collapsed to the ground, as she controlled one of the Polarists.

  Caleb peeled off his bow. The moonlight beamed on his angered brow. He snatched two arrows from his quiver, turned his bow sideways, and released. The arrows shot off in two directions, cutting through the chests of two Polarists. They keeled over.

  A stocky-framed Polarist rushed at Caleb. Flakes of snow beset the man, and particles of ice pieced together in his hand forming an ice mace. He charged at Caleb, swinging and flailing. Caleb bolted another arrow which hit the top of the mace and spun off.

  The man closed in on Caleb, jamming his oversized boot into Caleb’s sternum. Caleb tumbled to the ground, clenching his scar. The pain flashed into his jaw. The man whipped the mace above his head and brought it down towards Caleb.

  Caleb rolled away, still gripping his scar. The mace smashed into the ground. The man grabbed Caleb by the shirt and flung him back down, mashing his foot into Caleb’s chest and leaning forward to crush him under his weight. Caleb couldn’t move, and he sucked in air to keep from suffocating. He twisted the man’s foot, but it wouldn’t budge.

  Caleb gritted his teeth and stared into the Polarist’s hate-drenched eyes. The man raised the mace high above his head. Caleb’s body surged with panic. His scar throbbed. Three arrows ripped through the man’s chest. A woman grunted, and a foot kicked the man to the ground. He toppled over, landing in a contorted position.

  Sarai picked Caleb up. Her hair swept over her face. “If you stay, I stay.”

  Caleb held his chest and ran towards Shauna.

  “Here comes more!” one Polarist screamed.

  “Forget them. Just get the one we came for!” said another man.

  The temperature plunged, and the cold ripped Shauna out of the Hellstate. The Polarists constructed an ice shell that trapped Caleb and Sarai, then the Polarists escaped.

  Caleb pounded on the ice. “Let her go! Let her go!” he yelle
d. But they couldn’t hear him. Sarai put her hands on his shoulders to calm him. He dropped his head, defeated. His bow scraped against the top of the shell.

  “Heads up!” Gardiv yelled from outside the enclosure.

  The smash cracked the ice, and Gardiv was holding the dead Polarist's frozen mace. Caleb and Sarai crawled out, as chunks of ice fell to the ground from the breached portion of the enclosure. The snow had turned to rain. The Polarists were gone, and they had taken Shauna with them.

  “I think we need to head to Juten,” Gardiv said.

  “We need to go after her!” Caleb yelled. He ran in the direction that the Polarists had left.

  Sarai chased him, grabbing his forearm. “Caleb! Listen to Gardiv! You could have gotten us killed!”

  His hair clung together from the raindrops. He clenched his bow and yelled back, pointing in the direction of Shauna. “Those savages are going to kill her!”

  He speeded off in her direction again. Gardiv raced after him and muscled him down. Caleb reached for his dagger but it wasn't there. Gardiv snatched his own knife from his hip and pressed the blade onto Caleb’s neck. “You listen to me, soldier. You let that mainlander go!”

  Caleb stopped fighting back and shifted his eyes from the knife back to Gardiv. “Go ahead and do it! Otherwise get off me!” He pushed up on Gardiv, but Gardiv pressed the knife even closer to Caleb’s neck.

  “You will obey...soldier.” Gardiv squeezed Caleb’s jaw, pinching his fingers into Caleb’s gums from outside of Caleb’s mouth.

  “Let me go!” Caleb said, trying not to struggle so that he wouldn’t get cut.

  “I’m going to let you up, but if you take off running again, an arrow will be right behind you.” He threw Caleb’s face to the side and stepped off of him.

  Caleb dragged himself backwards, resting on his elbows, not taking his eyes off of Gardiv. “You’d kill me for no reason? You’re as bad as the Polarists.”

  “That’s enough, Caleb!” Sarai said. “You’re thinking about yourself, and you almost got us killed!”

  “How is it selfish that I want save her?” He stood up and smacked the mud off his face and clothes.

  “If I let you go following after that mainlander, then what? Then you get killed?” Gardiv asked, pointing and yelling with his blade hand. “You think that you could take that many Polarists by yourself? I will not go back with a report that you died because I couldn’t keep you in line.”

  “So all I am is a name in a report?” Caleb asked. His tone was sharp.

  Gardiv put his blade-hand on his hip and stared at the ground, then he looked up at Caleb. “Far from it. You are one of my best soldiers. And a good man. I’m not going to let you go down that easily. We’ll go after her, but we must have a plan. If they wanted her dead, they would have killed her where she stood. Finding her will be our top priority, but you need to get it together.” Gardiv’s commander tone returned. “Now Pioneer Eaves, you best not make a habit of these insubordinations.”

  Caleb nodded. Loss and defeat covered his countenance. Gardiv was right. What was he going to do if he had to go after Shauna alone? He needed both of them to go with him if he wanted to live, but to have Shauna torn away from them so easily was unsettling. He felt anxious.

  =====

  Caleb couldn’t escape the confusion of what Raylen was planning, and more importantly, he didn’t know what happened to Shauna. They traveled back to Juten so that they could resupply and get some refreshing after their recent failures. This was the first time that Caleb had ever been on an Emblem Run, and it was not as successful as he had hoped. There would be no crowds gathering to reward him with applause when he entered over the stone gate.

  “Why didn’t you want to go back for her, Gardiv?” Caleb asked.

  Gardiv thought about the question for a few moments. “To go back for her puts us all in danger, and she ain’t one of us.”

  “That’s not how it’s supposed to be,” Caleb replied, withholding his frustration.

  “Then how is it supposed to be, Pioneer Eaves?” Gardiv asked, expecting compliance. “Our mission was the Emblem Run. Now what do I tell Arthur if one of you were to get killed running off doing things that are not within our scope?”

  “But Shauna is in our scope, especially because Arthur is her grandfather.”

  Sarai turned to Caleb. Her expression showed him that she didn’t agree. “Shauna, is not our mission. Our Emblem Runs are calculated assaults, and to run off like you did...it just isn’t the best practice.”

  “Says who?”

  “I do,” said Gardiv. “Arthur put me in charge, and I cannot have people getting killed under my command. If you want to run your own missions, then you will be responsible for those who go with you.”

  “When is the mission ever more important than the goal?”

  “The goal?” Sarai asked.

  “The goal of connecting with people, showing them that we are different than the people from the mainland,” he said.

  “My goal is to protect my own, and that’s what I’ve done,” Gardiv replied.

  Sarai turned to Caleb, and she didn’t agree with Gardiv this time, but she didn’t say.

  Caleb was quiet for a while, thinking of what he could say to smooth over the conversation. Gardiv had made his point, and he wasn’t backing down. “What was The Poison like?”

  Gardiv looked ahead. The horizon seemed too far off, unattainable. He massaged his slightly shaven beard. Gardiv’s reply was blank and stale. “I might not have ever survived if it weren't for the old man.”

  Caleb's brow wrinkled. “Old man?”

  CHAPTER 3

  THE OLD MAN

  THE PAST: TEN YEARS BEFORE EXTRACTION

  The unconsciousness from the wound was gone and so was the agony. The worse awaited him. Gardiv sat in his Materialist cell. The entire unit was made of rusted metal. The floor smelled of iron and urine. The pitiful voices of other extracted inmates wailed through the hallway.

  “Make it stop! Shahrach! Please! Make it stop!” A man in a cell beside him screamed in dreadful anguish. Gardiv couldn’t see the man. The metal walls separated him from the inmates to his sides. He pushed his face against the jagged iron bars, straining to peek around the corner.

  “I can’t take anymore...I just can’t it.” The man’s voice sounded weaker now. There was no end to his pain, nothing that could stop the onslaught.

  Gardiv heard the man choking and gurgling on his own blood. The man vomited, and then the sound of vibrating metal rattled the floor. Did this man just pass out? Was he dead? What happened to him? There were no more screams. The gargling ended. All that was left was an eerily misplaced peace that seemed to have arrived too soon.

  Gardiv paced back and forth in his cell, preparing himself for the inevitable. The Poison was no mystery, even though he had never seen anyone go through it. Many of his vagabond friends had been extracted. Few lived to tell about it, and the ones who did had changed so abruptly in their personalities that Gardiv couldn’t even recognize them.

  He had taught himself how to remove toxins from his body at an early age. All Materialists, whether they were a part of the Common or whether they were part of the military, were forced to learn this technique.

  If the cells emitted certain chemicals, then that meant that the cells were under attack. Gardiv would find the culprits within his body and pull them apart by concentrating with the power of his emblem. Nothing too difficult about that.

  Consequently, Gardiv had never been sick before. His kidneys had never had to do much work. Even food poisoning and alcohol poisoning were rarities with the Materialists. Gardiv only got drunk because he allowed himself to. He remembered when he used to win drinking games with people from other regions because they couldn’t hold their liquor like he could.

  The really good Materialists, like Gardiv, could drink contaminated, murky water without being harmed. He could feel all the life forms and pull their bodies apart by their
components.

  But now, without his emblem, he was afraid to swallow anything. Even breathing made him nervous. Every cough and every sneeze seemed to be a harbinger of a death that was coming too quickly. His body wasn’t prepared for it. He would either die from dehydration or contamination. He wasn’t sure which was worse.

  The Materialist guard came with his plate of food. The man’s lightweight metal armor jingled with each step. “Gardiv, you eating today?”

  Gardiv’s throat was dry, and the nausea twisted his vision as if his eyes were crossed. The pacing around had made him dizzy, and his chest was in immeasurable pain from the extraction. He shook his head, wincing from the sting of the wound. “Just water please.”

  The guard reached onto his mobile tray and poured a dirty liquid, that he referred to as water, into a wooden mug. Gardiv looked into the cup as the guard pushed the cart down the corridor. Small particles bounced around as the water sloshed back and forth. The thirst or The Poison. He chose the thirst for another day. Setting the cup on the floor, he sat near it with his knees up to his chest.

  “Hey! New kid!” Someone called from another cell. This half-naked, deteriorating old man wore jagged wrinkles connected to disgusting sag lines all over his body. The man’s scar was hidden within the bags of his skin, but Gardiv could still see where the hole in the man’s chest had healed.

  “What do you want?” Gardiv answered back.

  The old man’s shredded fingernail pointed to Gardiv’s cup. His voice sounded like someone had punched in him his throat. “The water. You’d better gets to drinking it.”

  “There’s no way that stuff is coming near my lips. I’m not trying to get sick. Especially not here.” He pulled his legs closer to himself and looked into the tattered, wooden mug.

  “Not the best idea,” the man said. His scraggly beard rustled against his chest as he shook his head. “The Poison is worse when there’s nothing in you to help with the vomiting.”

  Vomiting? Gardiv couldn’t remember the last time that he had puked or even had the urge to puke. But it seemed like the old man knew what he was talking about. The Poison would come on him no matter what.