by J. A. Huss
This is how the whole thing started. With this man’s bad decisions. If he’d only taken her with him when he left, we’d be much better off right now. Junco would most likely not be insane. She admitted to enjoying many parts of her early childhood with Subjack. Even the parts out on the Stag, since they were only twice a year for training and biological adjustments. And they included Gideon.
He’s another one to blame, if you ask me. Leaving her there to fuck around with Inanna.
Everything bad happened to Junco after Subjack and Gideon left. She went off on her own, started killing people for money, for sport even. Got involved with boys, both in her own unit and the Mountain Republic.
Got herself pregnant by Charlie. And her baby was murdered without a second thought by the clone father. I’m not surprised that it was killed, I ordered the death of our own child just this afternoon. But Tessen talked me out of it. That was probably a mistake, but I can only imagine how sad and confused Junco would be if I made that decision for her, without asking for her input. The same way I felt when I thought the baby was dead because of Junco’s bad decisions back in the Runout valley.
Yes. Every issue she’s now struggling with is because of this man’s absence.
He sticks out his hand. I keep mine at my side.
Annun steps in and shakes Junco’s father’s hand, then John Hando does the same. Subjack glares at me. I glare back, my eyes betraying my feelings because the red light seeps out before I can stop it.
“Raubtier,” Subjack says in greeting.
“Tier,” I correct him. “Only one man calls me Raubtier, and you’re not him.”
“You have news of Junco?” he asks, ignoring my remark, my mood, and my light.
“No, it was a ploy to make the doors open. I need information about what’s going on up here and I’m gonna get it.” His face goes red with anger so I amend my statement. “I have news of HOUSE, though. Which could be helpful. Possibly.”
“HOUSE?” he asks, confused.
“Your AI? The one inside Junco’s head?” He’s still confused and this makes me feel a little better. Because that means he didn’t know about HOUSE’s condition. Just thinking about those clone tanks makes me want to vomit. The smell comes back to me as I think about it and I have to ask my vision screen to dampen down my olfactory receptors to make it go away. “The little girl Gideon saw me with back on Sargassum. It wasn’t a clone, it was your HOUSE AI, in some sort of makeshift body that Inanna provided for her.” I’m still not one hundred percent sure how this all came about with HOUSE, so that’s all I say about that.
“What news, then?”
“Is Caleb here?”
Subjack eyes me cautiously. “Why?”
“I’ll take that as a yes. How about Gideon?” His silence gives me another yes. “OK, then here’s the deal. I’ll tell you what I know about Inanna and HOUSE, you show me what you found in the ice. And then I’ll tell you if it relates to what Lucan and I are doing. Fair?”
He swallows and his eyes soften a little. “What about Junco?”
“I can’t help Junco, Subjack. We’re on opposite sides of the equation. I’ll do my best, but—” I look over to Gideon, who appears from a doorway in the side of the mountain. “It’s up to Gideon now. He’s the only one she’s interested in.”
“This way then,” Subjack says, waving us forward into the passageway. I walk, never taking my eyes off Gideon. He stands erect, very straight in order to emphasize the slight height advantage he has over me. I almost roll my eyes at him, but it’s not the time for games, so I control my irritation. He unfolds his arms across his chest as we approach and then turns and walks back through the door he came out of.
I follow them into a large conference room, compete with a strategy table with a holographic Earth where the Pillar coordinates are illuminated with a bright yellow light.
I take a seat somewhere in the middle of the large table, Annun stands behind me and John Hando sits on my right. Subjack sits up by the holotable and Gideon stands across the table from me. I don’t care if he sits, stand, or fucking lies down. I start what I have to say. I describe the clone tanks at the Sagitta Building down in Dallas and I’m actually glad John Hando is there because after the first few sentences, they only want to talk to him. He’s the one who knows, after all.
I fill in the part where HOUSE demonstrated her ability to take over our ships and Subjack laughs at this. “What’s funny?”
“It just figures. She and Junco are so much alike.”
Huh. “I’m failing to see the amusement in that, Subjack. Right now Junco is insane and unpredictable. Our entire existence depends on her carrying out her final orders. And we’re having serious doubts that she’s well-trained enough to pull that off.” I look over at Gideon for this part. “You’re her handler. Will she follow through?”
“What’s the order?” he asks like he deserves to know.
“No one knows that but Lucan and myself, sorry. You’ll just have to wait and see.”
Gideon sneers. “Then how the fuck am I supposed to get her to follow it?”
I stare at him hard and then stand up to meet him at eye level. “Either the girl’s a soldier or she’s not, Gideon. You trained her. You turned her into this thing for the sole purpose of being the Seventh Sibling. So I’ll ask ya one more time. If you give the order, will she carry it out?”
“Is it choose? Us or you? Human or avian?”
I consider this for a moment and decide what I’ll say isn’t a lie. “That’s one way to look at it. Human or avian. She will have to choose, that choice will not be clear, she will need to be given an order to complete her mission, and she must do as she’s told.”
“Or what?” Subjack asks.
Every head swings back to me, even John. Annun sits down on my left just so he can hear it straight for the first time as well. I let out a long breath. “Or the whole world will cease to exist. There’s no happy ending, let’s just get that straight now. There is no happy ending in this choice. Not for me, not for Junco, not for Earth, and not for the Band.”
“But you forgot Lucan. Does he get his happy ending?”
I smile at Subjack’s gruff question, the implications it contains, the disgust. “Lucan has no ending, he is eternal. It makes no difference to him if it ends well or not. None at all.”
“Then why’s he doing all this? If he doesn’t care about his punishment?”
“Why are any of us doing it?” I look over to John Hando. “Why are you here?”
He looks me straight in the eye. “To try to save my family.”
I look over at Subjack. “That’s the only reason to live, isn’t it? To create and protect, then leave behind something better than when you started. Lucan can’t help who he comes from any more than Junco can. Any more than I can. You don’t get to choose your Destiny, Subjack.”
We sit in silence for a few minutes. Thinking of the parts we will play.
Do they know their parts?
I look over at Gideon and he’s staring at me. “We found something in the ice,” he says softly.
“I figured,” I say back just as quietly. “What is it?”
“I think we better show you first before we try to talk about it.”
Everyone stands back up and exits the conference room, following Gideon single file back down the long corridor, back out into the main cavern near the door, then across it and into another tunnel. This one is narrow and short, short enough that everyone but John Hando needs to duck in order to pass through. Then we come to a door and when Gideon pulls it open the heat is intense.
“I thought ya said it was in the ice?”
Gideon shoots me a look like I’m an idiot. “There’s a volcanic hot spot nearby, it’s the only reason we made the discovery in the first place. They were contained in a layer of ice almost a mile thick.”
“So how’d ya find it?”
“We knew it was here—well, not me, but the other aliens that
share this facility with us now. They’ve always known.”
“Does Lucan know?” Annun asks.
“I’m not sure,” I answer honestly.
We pass some ventilation vents in the rock that pump in cool air to make the rising temperatures more tolerable, but it doesn’t take long to be sweating our asses off, especially Annun and I, who are in full tactical armor. My vision screen is flashing red when I scan the rock wall. The temperature is more than fifty Celsius on that surface, even with the environmental conditioning.
“Yeah, don’t touch the walls,” Gideon says to John as he catches him placing his palm a few inches above the surface to check the heat.
We end up at a cage lift that will take us even further down into the mountain and we all pile in. The cage jerks as it begins the descent, and we all settle in against the metal bars to think.
It’s a dangerous thing, this late in the game. Thinking. Sometimes it’s better if the shit just comes quick, so it makes you react out of training, habit, and instinct.
Thinking gives you time to doubt that what you’re doing is right.
Subjack looks down at his feet. Gideon has a comm he messes with. John Hando stuffs his hands into his pockets and gazes out at the rock wall as it passes. Even Annun is contemplative and quiet. When I look over at him he’s watching me. He raises his eyebrows and then shrugs.
Out of his control is what that all says.
When we reach the bottom of the line it’s cooler. Not because it’s naturally cooler, no. My vision screen says the surrounding rock walls are a searing sixty Celsius. It’s cooler because the environmental conditioning units are pumping out freezing cold air.
The cage door opens and once again Gideon leads the way. We’re led into a control room that is almost chilly, that’s how cool it is. My vision screen says fifteen C. Inside are two humans and a dog.
As soon as we enter the humans leave but the dog stays.
“What’s with the dog?” Annun asks.
“It can sense… activity inside the canisters.”
Annun is about to ask another question but Gideon puts up a hand. “Just wait, Annun. You’ll see.”
There’s a control pane facing a blacked-out window. Gideon takes a seat in the chair and John, Annun, and I hover over his shoulder trying to see what’s going on.
“The show’s on the other side of the glass, just give me a minute to open the blackout. They’re sensitive to light, even artificial light, so we have to black it out.”
“Or else, what?” Annun asks, impatient.
“They start to wake up.”
And then the black color on the glass begins to fade, until no color is left.
We lean in a little more.
On the other side of the glass is another control panel carved into the side of the wall of ice. There’s rivers of water flowing down the sides of the cavern and it takes me a minute to figure out what’s going on here. Gideon fills us in before I can clearly articulate my thoughts.
“The cylinders you see below the control panel are made out of ice. Just ice. No metal, not rock, no nothing. Just frozen water.”
“How’s that possible?” I ask. “It’s like hell down here.”
“It’s not possible. Without a cooling mechanism, which is built into whatever those containers are.”
“Containers?” This time it’s John.
“The ice is acting as a container, there are seven stations to hold them.” He says this as he points. “And each container holds some sort of biological life form.”
But one is missing. There is a station for the seventh container. It’s just sitting empty. I study the other six cylinders of ice that are nestled into the side of the wall. A wall that should be more than sixty C if my vision screen is correct. But even as the ice melts into a pool on the cavern floor, it vaporizes from the heat, rises into the surrounding air, and then condenses back into ice on the wall. It’s a miniature water cycle occurring right in front of us.
“It’s like a loop. A phase change loop that keeps the ice canisters continuously frozen.”
“Why?” I ask.
“It’s a generator, Tier. A geothermal generator that’s protecting those… those things inside the ice cylinders.”
“What’s inside?” Annun asks.
“Death and then life,” Gideon whispers, just as I say, “The Seven Siblings.”
Subjack turns to me with a long, sad face. “What do you know?”
It surprises me that they got this far and don’t know the truth. But it surprises me more that I never knew it was here and yet this truth has been drilled into my head almost since birth. “The Seven Siblings aren’t really Junco and the others. If it were that easy, well, we’d be done here, right? There’s more to them than what they are now. These are the Cylinder Seals.”
They just look at me.
“Surely, you, Subjack, know what I’m talking about. You’re from the RR for fuck’s sake. Tell me ya at least listened to the preachings yer priests yammered on about in church.”
“The End of Days,” he says softly.
“Yes.”
“And Junco’s one of them?”
“Junco is the Seventh Sibling. The Seventh Angel of the Apocalypse. These here are the Seals—inside they contain the Punishments meant for Lucan for his disobedience when he drove the Angels from Earth seven thousand years ago. When the Halo activates, one by one, as each of the Seven Pillars connect one to another, this corresponding Seal will be broken and the punishment inside will be released.”
“What are the Punishments?” Gideon asks.
The dog gets up and walks over to the window, growling and hair bristling on edge, signaling it’s time to black out the windows again.
I repeat Gideon’s guess. “Death. Not Lucan’s death because like I said, that’s impossible. But these things will bring death, in some form or another. Death that will inhibit Lucan’s assault against the High Order. And they will be released very soon. And then…” I stop to consider what Caleb said to me on Sargassum. Everything, Tier. “And then after death, they contain life.”
Chapter Seven—JUNCO
Pillar Seven
You can’t ever trust the mind-reading skills of these aliens.
Why this is the recurring thought in my brain as I shoot out towards my scattered destiny, I have no idea. It’s like a cruel joke, right? Rubbing it in. Rubbing in the fact that I’m naive and dumb. That I believed them and did their bidding. Hell, I proved it myself. I proved my stupidity to them in a game of Fledge. I killed my friend. Two of them, actually. Even if Kush was an accident, I still killed him.
My weapon is gone now. Lost, or left in the Pillar where it struck Inanna and shattered her.
I like how it feels. The drifting. Well, shooting is a better word. I was shot into the sky like Jupiter’s arrow. Once I reached free-G my velocity remained constant. I’m like light right now. I’m a fucking photon. I’m a wave. And a particle.
I sigh mentally. I’m insane, that’s all. I don’t even make sense. I don’t even make sense to me. And I know this, so that just makes me more insane.
You can’t ever trust the mind-reading skills of these aliens.
Nope. And I didn’t, either. I got all my secrets hidden so deep inside even I forgot them.
I laugh mentally. It’s not quite as satisfying as laughing verbally, but it’s all I got right now. And that’s just the story of my life, right? Make do with what you got.
I look around with my non-existent eyes and take the shit in.
Well, that didn’t take long. Because it’s pretty much nothing. You’d think shooting out into space would give you a great view of the stars, like when Lucan takes me to space. But this isn’t like that at all. It’s just… black. There’s no light, really. Unless you count me, because I’m light, right?
I look down at myself mentally. I’m not sure why I still have a body, it must be some kind of self-image that’s burned into my brain. I see my
body even though it’s not there.
You can’t ever trust the mind-reading skills of these aliens.
I lied to pretty much all of them once Isten and my wings were gone. Everything that came out of my mouth since that moment Lucan lifted me out of that tank of goo was either a lie or a half-truth. Because that was it for me. That was the end of my passive participation in this fucked-up deal I got handed when they made me.
I am not Junco and Tier is just the biggest liar on the planet. Because all the way back in the RR, when we were bathing in that hot spring, after he told me that first story about Inanna’s trip to the Underworld, he was lying. He said I wasn’t a slave. But he lied.
I am a slave.
I’m Lucan’s slave.
I’m Inanna’s slave.
I’m Subjack’s slave.
I’m Gideon’s slave.
I’m… well, everyone’s slave.
I have no free will, not really. I don’t even make sense. Why can I still see my body? I think it’s a trick. Who would trick me?
I mentally laugh at that. Who wouldn’t trick me?
Back to the mind readers. They’re not very good at it. Especially if someone as fucked up as me can pull one over on them.
Unless…
No.
They didn’t know. I saw Tier’s face, he was appalled with me. He looked at me like I was rot and filth.
And I saw Lucan. He crossed his arms over his chest and searched me for truth.
And I made sure he found the lie instead. The lie that said I was choosing Inanna.
What the hell are you talking about?
Huh? Was that a voice?
I look around and try to figure this out.
But that makes no sense. How am I able to look around, and see myself, and have these thoughts, and notice that there’s no light, just blackness? How? When I’m just a mist of scattered Junco shooting out into the galactic wind?
Think about it, Junco.
Think about what?
But there’s no more thoughts. Just me. Shooting up and out in my own constant velocity…
That’s slowing down.