by Azalea Ellis
Chanelle was still alive, and had no injuries that I could sense.
“It would be idiotic of me to kill her,” Sam said calmly. “Even if it would be safer for all of us, it would be a blow to the other members’ sentiment, and I might be the one who ends up being tied up because the others can’t trust me not to go ‘crazy’ and attack.”
I watched him for a moment, noting how much more assertively he held himself while under the influence of this Skill. Dredged up by my fear, flashes of the dream were again grabbing at my attention, but I pushed them back. I couldn’t deal with that right now. I just…couldn’t. I would think about it later, when my hands had stopped their tremors, and the sun had risen again. Humans are not creatures of the dark. “I’ve been wanting to have a conversation with you for a while,” I said. I nodded toward the adjacent room, the one with a window looking out onto the city, and we quietly made our way there.
I leaned against the wall to one side of the window, and he did the same on the other side.
“She’s dangerous,” he said. “And in protecting her, the group is weakened. She may have the Sickness, but, as far as I can tell, she’s not going to be any help in finding the cure. The smartest thing for us to do would be to stash her in a safe place somewhere and come back for her once we’ve found the Champion. If we take her with us, we might even end up putting her in danger, since she can’t be trusted to look after herself.” His voice was still expressionless, but he tilted his head to the side as he said the last bit, as if curious whether his argument was persuading me.
I looked out into the street. Most of the lights were out, either from loss of power, or people being too afraid to make themselves a beacon in the dark. I heard faint screams in the distance, far enough away that the wind carrying them gave them an unreal quality. “All of those are logical arguments. But where is this ‘safe space’ we’re supposed to leave her in? And what about the morale of the team? We’re already struggling to deal with everything that’s happened. Spirits are low, tempers are high. She’s still capable of traveling with us for now. And truly, I just don’t want to imagine her when she wakes up lucid, abandoned and imprisoned somewhere, hoping we’ll come back for her before the Sickness completely eats her up from the inside. I don’t want to leave her behind.”
“At least you’re honest about your irrational decision. With this form of me, anyway. Would you have said the same to…” he trailed off, and gestured vaguely to his himself.
“The version of you not under the influence of Black Sun? I don’t know. Would you have suggested we leave her behind?”
“When I’m filled with those illogical, hobbling emotions, I think differently.” He tilted his head to the side, staring at me with those black orbs without blinking. “I don’t think Kilburn was right. You’re not a sociopath.”
It didn’t take much to follow that line of thought to its obvious conclusion. “But you are, when you turn the Skill up too high, right?”
The sides of his mouth quirked up in a startled smile. “Right. Does that bother you?” He leaned in, and would have come off as flirtatious if there were any real warmth in him.
“Are you planning to harm the team or yourself?”
He leaned back again, nodding as if satisfied. “No. Though to be honest, I might end up slipping. Like this, my restraints are all theoretical understanding of the consequences I’ll face, once the Skill reaches its limits and I go back to being normal. I’m not stupid or masochistic. That is what you want to ask me, right? You want to know if I can be controlled.”
Sam was so different like this. It was hard to think of him as the same person. But he was insightful in a way I couldn’t deny. “And if you could keep the Skill active forever?”
“It’s addictive,” he said simply, staring out into the night.
At least he was being honest. I could understand the lure of removing all the negative emotions, even if it meant not feeling much at all. “Why do you think Testimony and Lore gave you that Skill? This isn’t the first time they’ve tried the Seal of Nine. What’s the end goal, the ‘greater Trial’ we need to overcome that requires you to be able to manipulate and feed off emotions?”
He tilted his head to the side, turning those soul-sucking orbs in his face on me for a few endless seconds. “You’ve got everyone convinced that these Skills mean we’re going to stop the Sickness, but I’m not so sure. Not when I’m like this, at least.” He blinked, releasing me from the gravity of his gaze. “I don’t know anything normal Sam doesn’t. But I do understand things when I’m like this that I usually can’t bring myself to contemplate. I might say my reason for existence is to do the things I normally cannot or refuse to, but, in reality, what reason is there for existence at all? Perhaps this Skill exists to drag me down into ruin.” A small smile, the first real expression I’d seen on his face that evening, tilted up the edges of his lips.
I held back a shudder as emotional darkness rolled off him, tinged with black amusement. I looked away from Sam and out into the street, but kept Wraith focused and alert. There was ash on the air. I could taste it. In the distance, the screams grew louder. “Do you want to die?”
He stared at me, but didn’t respond.
“I don’t think you do.” My voice was smooth, calm, and unthreatening.
He stepped closer to me, and would have been looming if he weren’t shorter than me. “Then what do I want, Eve? Tell me. Entice me to your service and bend me to your will with words and the allure of power.” His voice was a murmur, and, despite his words, I heard the faint hint of amused camaraderie in his tone instead of a threat.
I turned to look into his eyes again, despite the effect I knew it would have, to search for meaning within them. Movement on the horizon drew my attention instead. I let my claws slip out and my vision sharpen predatorily, distance and darkness losing some of their obscuring power.
People were spilling over the rise of the street, a few outliers in front, and then the crowd behind them. They were screaming. The crowd surged forward, those in front desperate to get away, while those behind strove to overtake them. I watched as someone stiff-armed their way in front of someone else, shoving the other person back and making them trip and fall, only to be stomped under the careless feet of the crowd. The yells grew louder as they rushed closer.
Faint rustling came from the rooms where the others were sleeping as the sound woke them.
At the edge of the hill, a person sprang atop one of the pods parked alongside the road, then leapt forward like an animal. They landed on someone else’s shoulders and leaned down to bite, even as they fell down together. The two disappeared between the stomping limbs of other panicked, stumbling, screaming people.
I turned to share a glance with Sam as the others hurried into the room.
Jacky’s hair formed a halo of tangles around her head, but sleep hadn’t slowed her reactions any, and she was by my side in an instant.
Torliam moved to tower beside us.
Jacky’s eyes widened, and she gripped my elbow. “Wolves—the meningolycanosis,” she said simply. “It’s spreading.”
I watched as more people in the back of the crowd went down. “Do you think…? That commotion when we were escaping… I heard gunfire and screams down the hallway where they were keeping the infected. Maybe not all the panic was because of us.”
Jacky shrugged. “An infected person got out somehow.” She jerked her chin to the panicked horde. “And it found some people to attack. With that many, I hope it didn’t get into one of the emergency shelters.”
Zed’s voice was scratchy from sleep. “As an expert on horror films, I can tell you now that shit has hit the fan, and is going to spray everywhere.”
Torliam stared out at the panicking mass of people, probably picking out the military uniforms among the crowd. “If these ‘wolves’ have not only the meningolycanosis, but also the Sickness…”
Smoke and fog filled the night sky, almost obscuring the d
ark silhouette darting toward the mass of humans. Nothing could have disguised the beam of cleansing fire that poured down from the Estreyan ship, though. It wasn’t a destroyer, with the mountain-melting beam, but that just meant it would have to keep attacking for longer. The heat cut through the crowd like a scythe, razing a line three meters squared through the humans and cutting through a building beside the street where a few of the forerunners had escaped from the stampede. The building let out several rapid explosions as the fire swept back and forth. Instead of a building, there was now only a few feet of glowing slag.
I stepped back from the window. “Staying hidden here has just become counterproductive to our survival. Time to move.”
We were ready to go within moments, since most of our stuff was still packed from the night before. Luckily, Jacky and Torliam had already procured a few new rides for us from the building’s parking garage and Adam had gotten them running. We rushed back down to the ground level where the new bikes were stashed, loaded up our stuff, and rode off into the streets. Behind us surged the now even more terrified mob, pursued by the Estreyan death-beams.
We weren’t the only ones who’d noticed what was happening, and people who had been hiding out in the buildings around us rushed into the streets to avoid being killed when their cover was turned to rubble. Warning klaxons began blaring again.
We’d taken care to cover our faces in case NIX had the resources to spare looking for us in camera or satellite footage, but I knew it wouldn’t do much good.
Adam screamed to be heard over the wind, frantically manipulating the screen of his link. "There's a subway, up ahead. We'd need to go east a few blocks, but if we could make it into the tunnel, we might be able to hide all the way out of the city."
Thank god for Adam. “Lead the way,” I screamed back.
With a deep frown of concentration, he used my little mini-map trick, sending us the route through a shared Window.
It only took a few minutes to arrive, and we drove recklessly down the stairs and then jumped our bikes down onto the tracks. The first couple miles, we encountered a surprising number of people, either homeless or just seeking the protection of concrete and earth above their heads, but after that the tunnel was mostly empty of humans, even if the same couldn’t be said for rats. I kept circulating my awareness both behind us and in front of us through the long tunnel, but caught no signs of pursuit. It seemed none of the trains along this inter-city line were running anymore. I couldn’t keep my mind from turning to all the sick people we had saved from the park. Had we even saved as many as we had watched die?
We kept going till we passed the next two cities, then stopped to sate our boosted appetites in one of the small alcoves cut along the subway tunnel.
Kris’ puppet came and crawled into her lap, and she started to fiddle with it, using her free hand and both of its own hands to take apart its chest plate.
Jacky tended to both children, making sure they had enough to eat, someplace comfortable to rest, and then joking around with them to keep their spirits up.
Zed took the suitcase of nanite boosters out of his pack and removed one of the little tubes. “I guess the only way to know for sure that it’s going to work it to take it, right?”
“I’m not a scientist, but I couldn’t find anything wrong with it.” I didn’t say that he had no choice, since, without the nutrients for the nanites to repair themselves, they’d start to die off and eventually kill him. We all knew that already.
He used one of the vials, and after a few minutes with no reaction, we all relaxed.
Chanelle smiled when I handed her some food, despite the fact that we’d bound her hands.
I sat down next to her, heedless of the grime on the concrete floor. “This…is only temporary,” I said, motioning to her restraints.
“It’s okay,” she said, her lips trembling faintly as she widened her smile. “I know why you have to do this. I want you to. I couldn’t bear it if I did something I couldn’t take back during one of my episodes.”
I could tell she was trying not to cry, so, instead of forcing her to keep talking about it, I ran my fingers through her growing hair while she ate, slowly combing out the tangles and then braiding it into two short pigtails. “You look cute,” I said.
She grinned, and then frowned. “Wait. You meant cute like a little kid, didn’t you?”
I snorted. “If we were in an animated movie, you’d be the princess’ kid sister.”
Her eyes widened in outrage, and she puffed out her cheeks, then couldn’t hold it in and burst out laughing, spraying chewed-up food all over Adam.
Birch let out an almost human-like chortle of laughter at Adam’s look of astonished disgust, which set the rest of us off as well.
Chanelle laughed and played around with us for a while, for once fully a part of the team. She fell asleep still lucid, with a small smile on her face.
Sam needed the least sleep of anyone in the group, except for Torliam and me, because of his high Resilience and Life levels. So when everyone else fell asleep, he acted as the lookout while I took a walk down the tunnel with Torliam.
I wanted to talk with him without waking or worrying the others.
Sam’s Perception wasn’t high, so once we were far enough away that our conversation wouldn’t carry back to him, I spoke, soft echoes of my words spreading through the tunnel. “I don’t think the dream earlier was just a dream.” I explained the metallic granules and my speculation on the ways they could have appeared in both reality and the dream.
A furrow grew between his eyebrows. “Tell me about these dreams, from the beginning.”
“This is only the second one. They feel…incredibly realistic. If not for the fact that Chaos was so much easier to use and I don’t have any other Seed augmentations or any of the Skills I’ve gained, I might not be able to tell the difference between them and real life. The first time, I woke up in a stone room with no door. A cell, really…” I explained the dreams in detail.
As I spoke, his frown grew even deeper. “I see little likelihood of this being anything other than an attack,” he said. “Did you not mention this mental house to me previously? You created it with the help of Adam, using a warrior’s-technique. Though I do not know how they broke through the guardian wall, perhaps they are using a Skill to access it, and somehow affecting you in this way. In any case, we must not take the threat lightly.”
Torliam acknowledging the danger wasn’t unexpected, but I still sighed. Why couldn’t things ever be easy? I just wanted to find the lost god so he’d start helping the mortals again. A thought occurred to me. “Torliam, what if this person is actually trying to help?”
He stopped walking and turned to look at me, eyebrows raised as if I was crazy.
I waved my hand at him dismissively. “Obviously, they’re dangerous. But this person imitating me seems to want me to get stronger. Strong enough to beat them with Chaos specifically, seeing as it’s the only Skill I’m able to use. What if it’s one of the Remnants, and they have some clue about what I’ll need to get through the greater Trials? Well, who knows who they are, but what if they’re not attacking me just for kicks?”
Torliam rubbed at his beard. “This is a good point, though it does not explain how this person knows how to manipulate Chaos better than you yourself. In any case, I am not willing to take any risks with your life. You must grow strong enough to defeat them, or find a way to shield yourself from further attack. Are you able to enter your warrior’s-technique and examine this mansion and its defenses for weaknesses?”
I’d done so nearly every day, when I didn’t know how to bear Chaos safely, and it was still eating away at me. “Sure.” I stopped moving and closed my eyes, taking deep breaths of the musty air as I turned my focus inward. It took a little longer than it once had, because I was rusty, but before long I’d fallen into myself. The mental construct of the mansion, the grounds, and the stone wall with no gate bloomed in my mind. I looked aro
und. The place felt more ephemeral than it did within the dream world, and it also lacked that vague sense of dread I got when in one of the horror-dreams. I had six fingers on my left hand, and looked like an Estreyan warrior, not a squishy human.
With a sigh of relief, I set to exploring. I didn’t remember creating the dungeon cells or that room of mirrors, but, after a couple hours, I found both of them. They were innocuous, without any traces of what had happened in the dream or any residual sense of danger. The stone wall all around was intact and as imposing as ever.
Still, the most clearly defined place in my mental world was the room of serenity. The box of silence sat in the middle of it, and within that, the chest of stillness. I opened them, but Chaos had long been freed, and there was nothing within.
Frustrated by my lack of progress, I returned to the outer wall and planted a row of massive ash trees formed with the abstract memory of human forms all around, like what had grown after I burned the warriors who’d died fighting the God of Knowledge and reformed them into a small, glittering woodland. I pushed them to grow upward and outward with my mind, and set them the task of capturing any intruders.
After the others woke up from their nap, we exited the subway tunnel into a small town a few hundred miles north of the meningolycanosis outbreak. It was early morning, and we were almost alone on the roads. At the edge of town was a small diner with lit signs, surprisingly still open for business despite current world events.
Jacky reached over and grabbed my arm. “We should stop and have breakfast,” she said.
I stared at her blankly.
“Having breakfast with your family is normal, no?” She looked at the kids. “They haven’t gotten to try out normal stuff in a long time.”
“Ah.” I looked over to them, the two little faces serious and stoic behind their helmets as they rode behind Torliam and Zed. “That’s…actually a good idea.”