by Almney King
“How are you feeling?” he asked suddenly.
“I’m fine.”
“Are you?”
I sighed. “I want to know what happened to Fern. Mom told you, didn’t she?”
He stopped all of a sudden and faced me. He stood straight, completely militarized, his face stern and controlled. But still there was a wounded air about him that revealed itself in his speech.
“She was taken by the authorities. Your mother doesn’t know why. She tried to fight them, which led to her arrest. But I can only guess that they want with her the same thing they wanted with you.” His eyes narrowed. “And I’m sure you know what that is.”
I stared at him for a moment. What would ARTIKA want with Fern? I didn’t know. She was innocent, an Ardent, scared of the truth, blind to the grave. There was hardly anything similar between me and Fern. The only truth we shared was the truth of our mother and father. The truth of our blood.
Then it came to me, what ARTIKA wanted, what ARTIKA thought to recreate. They wanted me, another 2102 to control.
Another me.
“Are you alright?” my father asked. He reached up to touch me and for a moment, I let him.
“I’m fine,” I uttered.
“Corrine, I want to know what happened to you. Every detail.”
I swiped his hand away. There was less concern in his voice and more of a demand. I was used to it, being regarded this way. I was a soldier, after all. And no reclaimed memories or act of treason could change that fact. I had the will of a warrior. But being spoken to like that, so shamelessly by my father, infuriated me more than I ever thought.
“I meant what I said. I don’t have a thing to say to you.”
“Corrine.”
I turned just as he went to grab me. My arm swung, almost unconsciously, and bore deep into the wall. My father stilled, staring at the dent of metal, his eyes widening in fascination.
“Do not touch me again,” I growled.
He held my gaze. And that light of awe faded, replaced by a soft look of despair. It only angered me, the pity in his eyes. I had no use for his pity. Did he not know? Did he not understand my hatred, my rage towards him? Did he not even care to know? What was I to him? Was I truly his daughter, his child? I didn’t think so. His love was too little and too hideous. How could I have wanted such love? How could I have bled and tormented myself over such a soulless love?
“Corrine, listen to me...”
“Why should I?” I snapped.
“Because I’m your father.”
I took a breath, my chest heaving. “I had a father,” I told him, “and he’s as dead as the man standing before me now.”
The look in his eyes hardened, his breaths becoming as labored as my own. And I was glad to see it. I wanted him to hurt. I wanted him to know a pain of the heart that killed—my pain.
He opened his mouth to speak until someone from down the hall called out to him.
“Colonel, I’ve been searching for you. Lieutenant Dale needs you in the board room.”
The boy came to a stop before us. And when he saw me, he nearly jumped from the floor, his jaw going slack and a blush on his face.
“Who is this, colonel?”
“This is Corrine.”
“Corrine!’ the boy gasped. “You mean...”
“Yes, my daughter.”
“Your daughter?”
“Yes, sergeant, my daughter. Is that all?”
The boy shook his head. He blinked, fumbling with himself a little.
“Nice to meet you. Oliver Murdock, but I usually just go by Murdock around here.” He held out his hand with a smile. And his kindness reminded me too much of Ellis.
I turned away without a word.
“Man,” Murdock whistled.
“I know,” my father said, “she’s a handful.”
“Yeah, but she’s smoking hot.”
“What was that, Sergeant?”
“Uh, nothing Sir. Shall we go now? The lieutenant’s waiting.”
When I returned to the room, Mother was awake. She lay on her side, her eyes half opened in a daydream. She looked up at the sound of the door opening.
“Did you eat?” I asked softly.
She nodded. “Your father brought me something earlier. Did the two of you talk?”
I went and slid in bed beside her. “Hardly.”
“Corrine,” she sighed.
“I don’t want to talk about him.”
“He’s your father.”
“That’s just a word.”
“It’s more than a word, Corrine. It’s the truth.”
I brought her head down against my shoulder. “Mom,” I whispered.
“Hm?”
“I’m going to bring Fern back,” I said. “I swear it.”
Mother said nothing. I felt her body shake and the heat of her tears on my shoulder. Her cries were the saddest sound.
I looked down at Mother. She had fallen asleep in my arms. And I couldn’t forget perhaps how corrupt they were. Too corrupt to hold her, my mother, with all her righteous beauty. My hands were so sick with death I almost thought to throw her away from me, terrified that that ungodliness would latch onto her and destroy her.
For a long while, I traced the outline of her figure. I reminded myself that I had evolved from that body, from the cavern of love and patience that existed within her. I would cherish her forever, not because it was she who gave me life, but because it was she who taught me life. Even with all of my sins, I could not be without my mother. She was my stronghold and my sanctuary.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
SALVATION
I thought of vengeance. I thought of it for Fern and for my mother, but not for me. My vengeance was a different kind. It bore no offense and no ill towards injustice. It had no emotion. Blood and death, that’s all it was. It was in my design from the beginning, ever since the chamber, and I would always remember it, the night of my death and that forsaken eve of rebirth.
I had buried Corrine. She was of the past, dead in the tombs of my heart. At times I could hardly bear it, Mother calling me by that barren name. But how could I tell her that Corrine had died and some deranged stranger had possessed her body, had stolen her voice, and mimicked her touch? How could I tell her what ARTIKA had done without revealing myself down to every mark of sin? I couldn’t. I’d rather be back in the chamber, my flesh ripped from the bone. I would drown again, in the red of my very own blood, before the truth could come to her.
It would haunt her, I knew. The same way it had sought for me, it would try to reveal itself once again, and I have come to realize, from this world and from the other, that the truth is a living thing, with a voice louder than war, and perhaps more vicious than death. It lives in the spirit, with the fire of freedom or the heart of destruction.
As for ARTIKA, I would show them the grave. The very tomb they created, I would bury them there. Not for me, but for the children they had stolen, and mutated, and enslaved. I would do it for Corrine, for the lively child my mother had lost. I would do it for Ellis, as his friend and as his enemy, even if he was truly gone and forever beyond his memory.
I missed Ellis deeply. I loved him deeply, and the scar he had given me was only a testimony of that love. But the moment my heart had abandoned him, I knew that my love was weak and perhaps as selfish as any other pledge of human love.
“Love is patient,” Mother had said. “It never gives up and when the truth overcomes, it sings of freedom.” But my love was none of these things. I did not wait for Ellis. I had hid the truth and traded blood for blood. The Ellis who I knew, and loved, and had lost, I could not honor him. I could not honor his respect for life, because I had killed and would kill again. I would do so in rage and in vengeance. Not for justice. The human heart bears no justice I have seen. There was only God now, and His wrath and His judgment was without bias and without mistake.
I remembered how cruel my father’s leaving had been. Still, I dreamt of m
y father. I longed for him, and I now discovered that all of my hatred was nothing more than a grieving and tormented love.
I remembered the day I killed my final memories of him. It was the moment I stopped wondering why he had left. I thought I was numb to him, but a heart of hate is too full of passion for numbness. It never forgets, and so I can never forget. I cannot lie now and say that in the grave of my heart there exists no vengeance for him as well.
Mother and Fern were my duty to protect now. My father no longer had that privilege, and if he sought to reclaim it, I would not stand aside without a challenge.
It would be war with him, anger and contempt. We would never agree. We would never be at peace, because even in all of my shame, I could not ignore the truth. My father and I were the same. Our love was self-serving. We were reckless in our strength, and our hearts hardened by a strict and worldly wisdom.
He wanted to know of my suffering, but there would be no sympathy from him. The horror I survived was nothing but a fact to him, an impersonal report of the hidden truth.
I would tell him nothing of ARTIKA, nothing of Niaysia, and nothing of Uway Levíí. I could hardly confess it to anyone at all, the existence of a divine Earth, a war between two worlds that shared an ancient past.
The Ardent, charmed by plenty, and the Defiant, cursed with knowledge, would deny it in fear. All of the earth was in a dream, knowing nothing and happily oblivious. My father desired this truth, but it was a truth he could not endure.
ARTIKA was moving, strengthening. Their desires were no longer a concern for survival. It was for prestige, for human legacy, because the glory of man could not be outdone by any other nation, by any other creed in existence.
Again and again, war would come. ARTIKA would collect their slaves, the Defiant would resist, and the Meridian would kill, against their virtue, to guard their world of Eden.
We were far apart, but our worlds were destined to collide, and the Ardent, so beautifully ignorant were doomed to awaken. No one would dream through what was to come.
Uway Levíí, I felt, had already knew. The way he spoke of humanity with such intuition and disdain, I was sure he knew of ARTIKA’s greater ambitions.
I learned a great deal from Uway Levíí, but there was still much for him to reveal, and I felt that when I returned for Fern, we would meet again as enemies. The girl I had killed threatened his search for New Eden, yet he showed me mercy, but that mercy did not equal forgiveness.
In fact, perhaps he had cursed me instead. That night I was with him, he cursed me with something. I was never to ask, and I was never to know. I remembered the darkness within me then that holy blaze of light blasting through the blackness. I remembered the blade that cut his hand, the same blade he took to my flesh. He pressed our wounds together and summoned the power of light with a prayer, and I was healed. With his blood, he had healed me.
It was forbidden he had said, a great sacrifice to share his blood with me, with an igle. It was inside of me now, and it was no wonder why I could feel him, why the voice of Niaysia was so steadily with me. I knew now why that bullet to the neck had nearly killed me. It was umbarra, and I was weak to it now.
I couldn’t understand it, why Uway Levíí would risk honor for mercy. What was it that he saw in me? Pity? A potential greatness perhaps? I wasn’t sure, but he would sympathize with me no more.
Still, he was in need of a knowledge only I could give him, because only I knew the truth of ARTIKA. They wanted New Eden, a Niaysia on Earth. Those hills of white and great sands of sapphire, those trees of gold and those healing waters of blue, they would seek to claim it all, by blood and by death.
Before that day arrived, I thought to rescue Fern from it, return her to this dark world of dreams. I could not save her from ARTIKA, but perhaps I could save her from shame, from vengeance. It would be cruel of me to steal her away from that holy Niaysian sun, from those amber springs, and bring her back to Earth. But her innocence was mine to protect, and perhaps if I could, saving Fern could be my salvation.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
PROMISE
Weeks passed. The world around me seemed slow and silent. I thought of Fern every hour, with the shadows of her voice in my sleep and in my heart. It was misery. Because I knew what would happen to her. The horror of transformation. That bleak and tormenting emptiness of one with no name, no dignity, and no freewill. I knew it all.
And I could see her innocence and her ignorance drowned in the black of forgetfulness. I chased her often. My memories were a force of their own. They were flying loose, escaping from the grave, from the truth, and the lies, and all the insanity in between. I found myself swept away by my very own madness, wandering the dim of Jordan Starlight.
There were shadows, as there were so many nights before. The jungle surrounded us. A rhythm of drums beat through the trees. Laughter danced all around. It was a dream, the sun warm on my skin, bathing the forest in a crystal light. The laughter grew louder, rich as the morning star.
Then it was so hot my veins grew cold and stirred an animal hunger in my chest. I had never felt so starved for death. Then suddenly the sun turned to red and the laughter turned to screams.
I killed them.
At least I thought I had, because my hands were soaked in blood by the end of it. Then I stood alone, silently facing a dark wall in wait for my sanity to return.
Suddenly, out of the stillness, there was someone behind me. And we were but shadows in the tender glow of the light.
“Corrine?” he said.
It was Gwen. I turned to face him. He stood a safe distance away. I heard him inhale and it sounded as strong as the winds of the earth. His heart beat fast, but he wasn’t afraid. I knew fear when I heard it.
“What are you doing?” His voice was soft as it slipped between the dark.
“Nothing,” I said.
Gwen sighed. He knew I had lied, but he understood. I wasn’t the only one who wandered these halls chasing nightmares of the past.
“You look spooked,” he said.
“It’s the lack of sleep I suppose.”
Gwen nodded. “It happens to all of us.”
He stared at me a while longer. There were dark questions in his eyes he knew not to ask.
“Follow me for a second. I want you to see something.”
Gwen guided me down a labyrinth of halls until we reached a wide open hanger. All of the Defiants’ armaments and vehicles were stored here. He took me to one of the sky lifts that led to the surface. It felt like a long way up.
When the hatch slid open, a gray beam of light fell over us. And I felt the face of God turn from the earth. It was more like a grave than I remembered. Everything had turned to dust. Everything was death. The dark wind. The skeleton trees. The rotted hills. There was only rock and the broken buildings of an old nation. For miles there was nothing but the gray until a black and mighty city rose up from the ash. The buildings, sleek as ebony, stood high above the land. It was a throne almost. An immortal empire, unshaken in the wind of death.
“What do you see?” Gwen wondered.
My eyes roamed the hills, the bombshell craters, and the dusky skyline. Debris was everywhere. A man’s tie was knotted in stone. A child’s doll sunk in the mud. A grandfather’s watch shattered beneath the rubble. There were stories, the ghosts of yesteryear taking the shape of my imagination. I saw them all so clearly and how merry they were in life. Then they were gone, waning back into the grave.
I looked to Helix City again. “I hardly see anything,” I said. “But if you want to know, I see a city of mourning.”
Gwen knelt to the ground and scooped up a hand of dirt. “That’s not what I see.”
I sighed. “What do you see then?”
I watched the dirt run from his hand.
“Resistance... hope. A city without resistance is a city without hope. A land void of hope is a land of nothing. But as I stand here to the west, I see pillars, and lights, and movement. I see s
urvival... ”
“Which is sometimes worse than death,” I grumbled. “Having to endure pain and suffering is far worse. Survival is like lying in a tomb with all of your sins and regrets suffocating you to a point beyond death. It’s a curse.”
Gwen’s eyes were on me. He seemed shocked to hear the words I had spoken. He was silent for a while. My head began to ache all of a sudden, and it reminded me why I came to hate the quiet.
“I see a day when we finally rise from that grave, Corrine. I see a new beginning.”
The ache in my neck returned.
“I don’t believe it,” I hissed, “We’re passed new beginnings. We’ve destroyed ourselves. Our greed, and our blindness, and our pride. It killed everything. Everything innocent. Everything beautiful. And now, there is this. This life of death we must live. That’s all there is, Gwen. That’s all there will ever be.”
“I can’t believe that. What the hell kind of hopeless life is that?” Gwen said.
We were silent again and the head ache returned with a vengeance. The quiet was far too loud.
“Look around you, Gwen. The world is dead! You think you know, but you don’t know.”
“But I do, Corrine!”
“Do you? Do you really?”
“Yes!”
“So you know what happens to all your people they kidnap and hold hostage behind those God forsaken walls?”
He said nothing.
“Do you know what they did to me? They killed me, Gwen! They made me their slave! And I killed for them. I took lives, Gwen! The blood on my hands, I can’t be rid of it! You have no idea who I am. You have no idea what I am!”
Gwen gripped me by the shoulders. He was furious, with a painful look of rage on his face.
“So what about Fern then!? Do you plan to bring her back here to die!?”
He was right. There was no fortune in bringing Fern back to this dead end world. But there was something of hers I could never forsake. She wanted to see the sky, our sky. That was her pure and impossible dream, and that dream of hers still lived, still thrived even inside of me.