by A. R. Crebs
“Don’t worry; it’s just nerves. It has a very sensitive nervous system, much like ours.” The doctor walked around the head of the table, facing the two soldiers who had their weapons ready.
“How hot?” Aria asked, covering her nose.
“About 1,300 degrees…Celsius.” The doctor turned off the torch. “Hotter than the upper mantle.”
“So, basically this thing had to come from Mars or Venus…” Troy suggested.
“I would have to say no.” He looked over his shoulder at the thing.
“No?”
“This is something that could very easily live on our planet,” the doctor informed. “Or rather, inside our plant…underneath Earth’s crust.”
Staring at the creature behind the doctor, Aria’s eyes widened as she asked, “How about killing it?”
“What do you mean?” the professor replied. “Its weaknesses?”
“Yeah, how can we kill it?” Troy repeated, aiming his weapon at the professor. Aria followed his actions. The scientist raised both hands, wondering what exactly he had done to make the two so suddenly upset.
“I-I’m not sure what’s going on.”
“Professor, just get your ass down!” Aria ordered.
Behind Dr. Camery, the creature had sat upright and crawled to its feet. A low growl sounded from its wide, mangled mouth. It didn’t seem too bothered by the fact that it had been through an autopsy, its internal organs revealed for all to see. The doctor, hearing the vibrating noise emitting from the table behind him, immediately dropped to the floor. Bullets fired, exploding into the creature’s insides. It screamed something terrible as Aria and Troy unloaded their weapons into its fragile organs. The rotting smell of sulfur filled the room as the beast dropped heavily against the tabletop; hot blood plopping onto the floor in steaming piles. Gurgling, the creature twitched and hissed, its body drying out and turning a dark shade of grey. Only then did the barrage of ammunition cease. The room fell into a dead silence as the three waited in anticipation.
“Look.” Troy slowly approached the carcass. Aria didn’t dare lower her weapon.
“What’s it doing?” she asked.
Camery remained on the floor, covering his head. He trembled slightly at Aria’s voice and opened his eyes. “I don’t know; what is it doing?” he asked in an anxious tone.
The creature appeared to be scorched with its grey tint and cracked, dried out body.
Aria replied, “Turning to ash.”
“It has to be dead now.” Troy gawked at the burnt creature.
“Turning to ash?!” Dr. Camery was on his feet in an instant. He swiped his finger across his digital viewer, writing against the screen. “Turning to ash once it dies. It’s like combustion!”
“I don’t like this thing,” Aria murmured.
“This is what I was going to tell you. I honestly thought it was dead; the thing had no pulse! As I was looking, the heart seemed to be made of pure iron, leaking liquid iron and taking sulfur from the secondary lung and placing it into the bloodstream. You see the steam?” He poked a small puddle of the creature’s blood with his pen; it melted slowly into the pool. “These things have an amazingly high body temperature! The previous wounds had nearly cauterized instantaneously. See, its skin is much like ours—easy to penetrate, but its high resistance to heat and extremely high body temperature keeps bullets from burying too deep and prevents the creature from bleeding out. It’s a defense mechanism. This is why I believe it could possibly live under the mantle below Earth’s crust.”
“Why have we never seen these things before? And how did they suddenly get onto our surface?” Aria asked.
“Who knows?” Dr. Camery shrugged. “We’d have to go back to the location they first appeared and study the area.”
“The I.R.B.?” Troy scoffed. “There’s no way in hell I’m goin’ back there.”
“No, not the base.” Aria pointed. “They first appeared about 1,500 meters from the base in the desert.”
“You must take me there! I need to further investigate!” The doctor seemed overly excited about going to the I.R.B. despite Troy and Aria barely surviving the base’s new inhabitants.
“It’s too dangerous,” the woman disagreed.
“But you must! We could learn so much!” the doctor pleaded with her as she headed for the door.
“We’ll send you the video feed we have on file. Ask Mr. Clarke about investigating the Intelligence Base. You can go if you want; I’m not going out there again…at least not without another military.” Aria slid her wrist across the ID reader’s laser light and pressed her thumb against the tiny blue screen next to the security device of the door.
“Perhaps we can gather a live specimen,” the doctor thought aloud.
“Live?” Troy stared at the man in disbelief. “If we hadn’t been in here when we were, you’d be dead right now. These things aren’t simple animals. They’re damned monsters!”
“Oh.” Aria reached into her military dress coat’s pocket. “This was given to us by one of the personnel that worked there. He said that they were afraid of it.” She handed over the Bible and silver crucifix from the tiny black bag.
“Interesting. I haven’t seen one of these in years.” Camery gave a condescending chuckle. “Funny how they always try to turn science into religion.” He handed the items back to Aria.
“You think nothing of it?” she questioned. The door clicked; the security device had timed out.
“We’ve already had our apocalypse. According to the mythology, God has already sat on his thrown. He had his rule and left us long ago, forsaken.” The scientist smiled. “It’s just paranoia and superstition. People, especially those caught in the middle of death and fear, tend to go to a creator for answers. If it’s something you’ve never seen before, it must be a sign from God or, the other solution, aliens.” He eyeballed Troy. “It’s more probable to have a simpler solution.”
“Science?” Aria asked him, her tone a little bitter. She didn’t quite appreciate him calling the text ‘mythology’ in such a dismissive tone.
“Precisely.” He nodded. “Just another animal that has gone through adaptation or has somehow managed to stay out of sight until now.” The man turned and headed back toward the creature. “Happens all the time.”
“Yeah, it’s everyday you find a humanoid, molten-lava creature with the evil tendency to kill.” Troy rolled his eyes. He saw that Aria’s jaw was clenched. He knew what she thought about the mythology. There was something that always interested her in religion and ancient stories. Troy couldn’t quite say the same about himself, but he at least respected her feelings on the subject. “Come on.” He patted her on the shoulder, swiping his wrist and pressing his finger into the slot.
“We’ll get some security down here for you, Dr. Camery. Wouldn’t want that thing to come back from the dead again,” she sourly spat out as Troy led her through the door. It slid shut heavily behind her. She suddenly didn’t feel welcome in that lab.
“Well, for being a scientist, he’s kind of close-minded.” Troy frowned.
“He’s a jerk,” Aria grumbled.
The two walked quietly together down the hall, taking the elevator up to housing on the 60th floor of the military corporation’s 333-story building. Aria folded her arms, staring blankly at the lit-up keypad beside the elevator door. She moved her tired gaze to the window, looking out onto the dark streets of the buzzing city below. Giant skyscrapers crowded one another, most used for military purposes. Vehicles sped to and fro, making their stops at nearby extravagant hotels and the bustling, noisy clubs. The woman’s eyes dropped to the tiny bodies that quickly disappeared from view as the elevator rose higher and higher. The city only showed its beauty at night, electric-blues and reds mixing with the spiraling colors of traffic like millions of lightning bugs in a black meadow. It almost made her dizzy. Then a grey haze fogged her view; low clouds ate away the scenery high on the landscape. She frowned, turning her gaze back
to the door as the bell dinged, welcoming them to their homely floor. The entire level housed a few dozen people, but Troy and Aria’s apartments alone took up over a fourth of the story, a gift from the President. The heavy doors slid open, and Troy yawned, removing his black military trench coat.
“I’ll see you tomorrow?” he asked.
“Sure.” She fiddled with the pocket of her similar trench, feeling the grooves of the silver crucifix.
“Man, I’m crashing as soon as I get…back.” He groaned after his sentence.
Aria looked down the hall. In front of Troy’s living quarters was a slender young woman wearing her best nightwear of leather and lace. Her lavender hair swirled with shades of royal blue in a loose braid that hung between her bare shoulder blades.
“You have fun with that,” Aria mumbled.
“I totally forgot about her,” he whispered.
“Tell her you’re beat, had a run-in with aliens. I’m sure she’d understand.” Aria smirked, seeing the disapproving frown on the other woman’s face. It looked as though she had been waiting a long time for Troy to come home.
“Yeah, I bet,” he growled. “If you hear me scream, will you come save me?” he asked as he trudged down the hall, clicking his wrist so the door would unlock for the woman.
“Come bursting in and announce that I think I’m pregnant?” Aria suggested as she clicked her own wrist; the soft beep sounded from her door as it slowly slid open.
“Ha!” Troy stifled a laugh a few doors down. He looked at her from over his shoulder, grinning. “If you could get them to believe it.”
“I’ll just say I was drunk!” Aria shouted.
“And I’ll say you tied me to the bed and forced me!” This comment earned him a nasty glower from the fake-tanned beauty, her skin shimmering in glitter and neon tattoos down her lower back. “Uh, jes an inside joke,” he reassured the young woman.
Aria smiled as she heard the irritated “Yeah, whatever” from the woman.
After watching the couple enter Troy’s apartment, Aria slid herself into her own, quickly closing the door behind her. It was silent and dark. She waved her hand, turning on the lamp beside the sofa; the soft glow was relaxing after a rough day. Undoing the long military coat, she draped it over a chair.
“Troy,” she sighed and shook her head in disapproval as she slid between the coffee table and her large, cushy red couch. Aria heavily dropped onto the sofa, letting out a long, slow breath. “What a day,” she moaned.
In the dead silence, the woman reflected on the day’s events. The morning had started out just fine. As usual, she’d practiced with Troy and kicked his butt. Then there was the bimbo with her friends, and Aria thought that she was peeved then. Going out to the bar, things were looking up, and then all hell broke loose. With the Intelligence Reconnaissance Base being attacked, she, Troy, and Gavin were shipped out to the desert immediately; the three-hour flight had felt like twenty. Then, after expecting just some foul play from another military, she and Troy found out that things had gotten much more sinister. They barely got themselves out of that place, and she would have killed Troy if it weren't for her running out of grenades. Aria closed her eyes, groaning.
‘What a disaster.’ She pushed the thought aside, not even wanting to think about what would have happened if she had actually killed her partner. ‘What was I even thinking?’ She had let the creatures get the best of her and made a horrible rookie mistake. The gruesome image of a dead Troy on the ground flashed through her brain. ‘God! Just stop it!’ she lectured herself—as if she hadn’t seen enough violence for the day.
To top it all off, the damn creature had been alive the whole time, only unconscious from the wounds, and could have killed Camery. But now she didn’t think that would have been such a bad thing. Dr. Camery wanting to go out to the desert and get a live specimen seemed like an overall terrible idea.
“Only going to get more people killed,” she muttered to herself.
The tiny holographic clock on the wall flickered in blue light, humming in the quiet apartment. It was already long past two in the morning, which meant Troy’s friend had been, “A booty call…ugh.” Aria rolled her eyes. She tried really hard to keep herself out of Troy’s personal life, but it seemed that it always found her–phone calls from Troy asking for her help, dating advice, and even the occasional glare from the girls on the training grounds. Troy got around, and he got around too much. It made her nervous. He was very irresponsible, and she wondered how many of his illegitimate children were running around. And then there was the typical example of this evening.
“Who makes a date for a booty call?!” Aria wondered aloud to herself. She tossed the thought to the side, leaning forward on the couch and rubbing her face. “I don’t care. I don’t care what Troy does…or who he does. Ugh.” She dropped her arms. “Drink….”
Rising from the couch, she bee-lined to the kitchen across her large parlor. She snatched up a glass bottle from the marble countertop and poured a drink of golden-brown liquid. One, two ice cubes dropped in with a plop. Aria slowly sipped from the glass, looking at the massive painting hanging over her couch. She analyzed it a moment and nodded, affirming that it was a good decision to hang it there. When asked, she told everyone it was a piece done by some hot new trendsetter from the outer city. She’d listen to the critiques and ‘oohs and ahs’ from her guests and pretend to tell some story behind it. What they didn’t know was Aria had painted the blasted thing herself and was too embarrassed to tell anyone. The only person who gave their true opinion of the piece was Troy. He usually didn’t like what she had painted, especially the fine stuff. It was the colors and squiggles. There never was much of a meaning behind the pieces as they were just something meditative for her–this color over this color; this line over that line. It was a soothing way to make a mess and not care. Art was Aria’s small piece of disorganization in her otherwise organized world. She looked over the squiggles on the painting, loving the small blood-red details crossing over the tans of the background. The red traced over the canvas and seemed to fall off the painting. She imagined where the lines would continue and followed her gaze to the chair by the hall. Her military jacket hung from the back, and inside the pocket she saw the silver crucifix pointing out the top.
Aria made her way across the living room to the coat, picking up the cross and Bible from inside the jacket. “Mythology, huh?” She ran her thumb over the textured cross. The thought of the religion being only mythology bothered her. Why couldn’t the creatures be more than just animals living beneath Earth’s crust?
Aria strode down the hall, waving on a light to her office. Momentarily glancing at two small burgundy and silver urns on a shelf, she placed the artifacts on her desk. The woman then turned and wandered to the bookcase which housed a collection of over one hundred books. While Troy watched TV, Aria read books. She fingered through the stack, her lips moving silently as she read the titles to herself. Finally, she plucked one from its place and hurried to her chair. The book was titled Ancient Mythology and Prophecy: A Better Understanding of Religion. The item was an antique, printed on actual pages. It also had been her father’s. Being a bibliophile, he was always good at finding rare books that were created before the end of the printing age five hundred years ago. Aria flipped through the worn pages, finding the section dedicated to the Bible. She skimmed the readings.
‘The Bible is a canonical collection of writings considered sacred to the Christian and Jewish religions containing both the Old Testament (also known as the Hebrew Scriptures) and the New Testament (not followed in the Jewish faith). Being one of the oldest surviving texts, the book’s origin and creation dates are unknown. Despite its age and decreased numbers due to the Great Biblioclasm of 17,100 S.F. (see Great Biblioclasm, pg. 207), a small number of religious groups still exist who follow the book’s teachings of morals and sin and the story of the Son of God, Jesus Christ (see Jesus Christ, pg. 316). Few churches stand today. Those tha
t do are protected by private militaries whose owners still believe in the religion. Because of the diminishing number of books and unknown origins, there is no evidence as to which version is accurate.
It is known that over twenty-thousand years ago the world’s economies and governments failed. Worldwide hardships such as environmental disasters, famine, and war destroyed nearly 75% of all life on the planet. This event was known to Christians as Tribulation. The following thousand years are nearly lost to history. Christians believe it was the time of the Final Judgment, but evidence is lacking as humanity’s population fell to staggering numbers during this period. This event marks the date 0 S.F. (Second Fall). The first evidence of any humanity existing around the time of 0 S.F. was found off the coast of Ives (see Ives, pg. 245) in a Bible written entirely in the ancient language known as Legacy. Inside the Bible were additional books not found in most early history versions called Second Fall and Golden Prophecy. Thought to be written by the early settled Sorcēarian (see Sorcēarian, pg. 579), Gaius, this version of the Bible was met with both acceptance and contempt as some believed it to be a fake.
According to the book Second Fall, humanity was granted a second chance as the angels pled to God to spare those that were thrown into Hell. Believing that they could lead those who had previously been damned, the angels sacrificed their place in Heaven to live on Earth with those that were reborn. The Sorcēarian’s role was to rule over the humans, teaching them of scripture, but by being brought to Earth, they had also become sinful like the humans and had succumbed to their own evils.
The Golden Prophecy leaves the Bible with no definitive answer as to how humanity will end. Scholars believe that this is due to God leaving the world behind to only the Sorcēarian rule. A Sorcēarian, though divine, still is not a replacement for God and thus cannot give all the answers. In this instance, humanity’s fate will be decided by their actions and by the judgment of one who is a servant of God. This servant is unclear, given no name but only labeled as the Arbitrator.’