by J. A. Huss
Another shake pulls me back to reality.
The fucking end of the world is here. And I’ve been invited to the party.
I pull myself up and shuffle over to the bins I know contain clothes.
I’m not the same size as I was when I put these clothes here years back, but I’m not completely clueless either. I made sure to put a bunch of different sizes. Wearing this fucking Aves uniform is not gonna work for me anymore. I’m not Aves.
I sort through the tubs of clothes and come up with army-green cargo pants, a white long-sleeved thermal, an oversized jacket so I can stuff some guns in the pockets, and some old field boots. My hips might be curvier and my tits bigger—but my feet have not changed.
This makes me smile a little. Actually, for the first time since my wings were ripped off my back, I feel… normal. I like wearing my old clothes and if I still had wings, I’d never be able to do that.
Ah, whatever. I fucking miss my wings, but perspective is mine to command. I run this mind, not all those things locked away deep inside the dark place. Me. So I can choose to look on the bright side if I fucking feel like it.
Another rumble, this time not as jarring, shakes the room. I guess that’s my clue to hoof it up top. And then I remember I didn’t come here alone.
Fuck again. “Cora?”
Silence.
I guess she bailed. I don’t blame her, the world sounds like it’s falling apart up there and I’m trying to sleep through the entire thing. I’d stay here if I thought I could get away with it, but this is it. My Destiny will find me, whether I stay here or not, so I might as well meet it on my own terms—blah, blah, blah. Jasus fucking Christ, I’m sick of talking myself into doing stupid shit.
All my good weapons are gone. You know why? I already fucking took them the last fucking time I was here. Perfectly good weapons, my best knife set, all left somewhere. My dad’s mountain tunnel? I can’t remember if that stupid green bag made it all the way to Vegas with me or not. Regardless, it didn’t make it to the Pillar. I grab a TZi, load four mags, and stick it all in my pockets.
I look up at the closed hatch. Well, at least Cora’s not an idiot. She knows enough to close the barn door when she leaves. I climb up slowly. Lethargically, even. I have no end-of-the-world pep in me. I hope I don’t have to fight, because my game is gone. When I get to the top of the shaft I push the hatch up a little and peek out. It’s pretty quiet and there’s no fighting going on nearby, so I swing it all the way open and the white sun of midday blazes down on me. I scurry out, close the hatch as quietly as I can, flatten myself on the ground, and listen.
Peak City is fighting. All the commotion is far off and in that direction.
“Junco!” Cora whisper-shouts to me. I narrow my eyes and make her out, lying flat like me, along a long ridge. I sniper-crawl in that direction, since even she seems to feel a low profile is required, and take in the view as I go. Before my dad nuked the shit out of Council 3, this was all pine trees. We had no view at all from the cabin. But now that all the trees are gone, I can see pretty far. All the mountains in the west, and when I turn, the prairie stretching out in the east.
“What’s going on?” I whisper back when I get there.
“Those fucking avian friends of yours are attacking everything! I checked my comm earlier and the whole world is on fire. They’ve taken over like every city.” Then she nods down towards Peaks. “And all the important ones seem to be down there.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I came out here thinking I’d just walk back down the mountain and see if I could catch a ride with someone, and I got no farther than this fucking spot before I saw them land in that field over there. I heard them talking about a white house over that hill, they seemed pretty concerned with it.”
“White house?” My head jerks north, where she’s pointing. “My house is white. And my house is over there.”
“Then I guess that’s what they’re talking about.”
I shake my head. “My house was blown up, Cora. My house is gone.”
Her bloodshot gray eyes stare down at me. “I think we better go check it out, Junco. Do that teleport thing and get us closer. There’s something going on.”
“Yeah, the end of the world. I don’t wanna know, Cora, I just wanna—”
“Who gives a fuck what you want to do? I’m sure you’re some big important fuck in your own mind, but I’m sick of your whole the-end-of-the-world-will-wait-for-me attitude. No one gives a shit about you.” She absently rakes some hair out of her eyes. “Now, take our asses over there so we can figure out what’s happening.”
I just stare at her.
“Like, now, Junco.”
I port us to the red rock, still lying down. “Hey, I’m actually getting better at this. Or maybe it’s because I know this—”
“Yeah, that’s nice. Ya mind keeping your voice down so we don’t get caught?”
I glare at her. “Who made you captain? You’re not even military! I’m the captain here—” She slaps her hand over my mouth and nods her head. I lift up a little and realize there’s people down the hill near the house. Not winged people, just people.
“Caleb. I knew that fuck was in on this shit. I knew it.”
“Which one’s he?”
“The tall one with blondish hair wearing the cargo shorts. Who the hell wears cargo shorts to a war?”
“Someone who will not be fighting.”
I look over at Cora again. “Who are you?”
“I wish I had a scope, damn. How can you see that far?”
“I have all kinds of vision gifts.”
“Gifts?” she asks, surprised. “Like enhancements or something?”
“Yeah, like that.”
“What else you got?”
“Ummm…” I scroll down the menu on my vision screen. “I’ve never really looked before, let me check.”
“How could you not know what the fuck enhancements you have?”
I growl this time. “Look, I never asked for this shit, they forced it on me. And it was very fucking unpleasant, so excuse the fuck out of me for not wanting to know how they changed my body against my will.”
I continue scrolling looking for something to impress her with. “Invisibility is back!” I make a fist and say an internal, yes!
“OK, now we’re talking. Go invisible and get close to see what they’re talking about.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I’m not interested. I might go back up north to my dad’s mountain tunnel and look for my green purse. I had some good weapons in there and—”
Her hands are around my throat, throttling the life out of me. I punch her in the face, then swing around and kick her in the abdomen. She counters with an elbow to the neck and I back off choking. “What the hell?” I gasp.
“You’re not gonna go look for your stolen purse, Junco. What the fuck is wrong with you? We’re in a war! W-A-R!”
I lie back on the ground and look up at the sun. If it was dark I’d be counting right now. “I’m tired of fighting, Cora. I don’t want to do it anymore.”
“Too bad! You say you’re important, and I happen to believe that even if you are a little stuck up about it. So suck it up and just do your job, Junco.”
“I’m not going down there to that house. My house is gone. My stuff is gone. My friends are gone. My body is gone. My mind is gone and pretty soon this whole would will be gone.” I turn my head to look at her. “So who gives a shit? I’ve seen what those Angels look like, Cora. I know a little bit of what they’re capable of. And I don’t want to be a part of it. They can do it without me.” I touch her on the shoulder and port us back to the hatch. “I’m staying here. This is the only home I have left. I’m gonna sit inside my hatch and eat some bad field rations and just wait it out. You’re welcome to—”
The Angel is upon us before I can get any more words out.
He lunges at me, swipes his knives across Cora’s chest when I roll out of th
e way, and sends her careening across the rough scrub, bleeding and gasping.
I’m on my feet, spinning as my boot connects with his jaw. I hear the crack of bone as I reach in my pocket for a knife, and swipe it across his throat. The blood pours out in buckets and splashes on the ground like someone spilled a vat of maroon paint. Another Angel is right behind him and this time I whip out my SEAR and cut him in half before he can make a move.
I tap Cora and port us to my dad’s mountain tunnel. We come out of it in the mess, and I lean over her body, my hands pressing down hard on her breastbone, and scroll through my vision screen for a gift that said healing when I was looking earlier. Tier could heal, and I’m pretty sure I can do just about everything he can, so I just concentrate on her wound, picturing the bones inside, the molecular processes that make things heal.
The ticking of a clock on the wall makes me open my eyes. It’s not a tick, tick, tick like it’s supposed to be. It’s long. It’s stretched. Like each tick is several seconds long. It sounds like eeeeennnt, eeeeennnt, eeeeennnt.
I’ve slowed time. I look around and then down at Cora’s body. The blood is clotting, her wounds closing. Slowly. At least from my perspective. But I bet if I was on the other side of this time shift, it would look like it’s happening very quickly.
Like magic.
But it’s not magic. Or is it?
Time. Everything is about time.
The shift disappears when I stop concentrating but when I come out of it, her wound is gone.
She blinks her eyes at me and sits up, looking around wildly. “Where the hell—?”
“My dad’s mountain tunnel. I just need to get you somewhere safe so I could try to heal you.”
Her hands go to her chest and she looks back at me. “You?”
I nod. “Yeah. I’m like—not normal.”
“You’re like… like a god, Junco.”
“No, Cora. I’m like the Devil.”
She gets to her feet so I follow. “What should we do now?”
“I think you should go home. Tell me where you live. I’ll drop you off.”
“What about you?” She looks at me differently now. Like she sees something she never noticed before.
“I don’t have a home. Just that hatch. So—” I throw up my hands. “I have nowhere to go. I never had a home, not really. I had that white house, but it’s gone. That house that’s there now is fake. And I had the Stag, but Tier blew it up a long time ago. And I guess cadets was like a home while I was there, but that was a long time ago now.”
“Where are all your friends?”
“I have no idea. I’ve been avoiding them. I disappointed Tier, and Lucan, and Gideon, so I’m not sure they want to see me.”
“Well, I know that the Devil guy is not on Earth. They’ve been talking about his absence for a couple days now. And someone saw Tier in Peak City earlier, killing those new avians—”
“Those are Angels, not avians. They’re not with us. Where do you live?”
“Low Dallas.”
I laugh a little. “In John Hando’s territory? What are the chances?”
“Yeah, and you used to work for him. I know that because I had a boyfriend as a teenager who lived a few buildings down from Hand and I saw you there once. I was racking my brain after that boat ride back on Sargassum, ya know? Where I said you looked familiar. It wasn’t from the screens, although that was probably part of it. It was that day I saw you down in Low Dallas. I was across the street from the Hando complex, waiting on my boyfriend. John came out of the compound and was talking to me, you were lagging behind messing with a big-ass gun. He started walking towards a waiting military vehicle and you must’ve seen him talking to me and you asked me for a cigarette.”
I search for the memory. “I don’t have that memory. Sorry. They wiped my brain a few times since then.”
She shrugs. “I remember thinking you were awfully small and that gun was almost as long as you were. You looked like a little girl. But when you spoke to me it was very clear you were not a little girl.”
“Why?”
“Because you talked like you were in charge. One hundred percent in charge, Junco. And that’s how you still talk, only now you’re not walking towards the job, you’re walking away. And I’m not sure what you are. I’m sorry they fucked you up when you were young, and I’m not crazy about being involved either. But if you’ve got a part to play in this, you’d better do it. Because something really bad is happening. And you told me last week that even though millions of people were gonna die, you could still make things right for some of them. And I hope you’re not gonna chicken out, Junco. Because people are counting on someone to step up and take care of this shit.”
“Yeah, but I think that someone might be Tier.”
“I’m pretty sure it takes more than just one someone to save the world.”
“And I’m pretty sure that heroes only live through the end in fairy tales. In fact, most of the fairy tales I’ve been told, the hero always dies and the heroine gets stuck living for eternity all alone.”
She snorts, like literally snorts. “What fucking fairy tales did they tell you as a kid? Jasus! That’s not how it ends, Junco. Happily the fuck ever after, that’s how it ends!”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “There’s no such thing as a happily ever after, Cora.” I blow out a long breath. “There’s just an eternity of fuck you’s.”
She slaps me. Hard. Right across the face.
“What the hell?” I say, palming my cheek.
“Buck the fuck up, soldier.” And then she laughs, a crazy laugh that shocks a smile out of me. “My dad was in the military, admiral at the spaceport in the Desert Republic. And that was his automatic response to me whenever I was whining.”
“You were military?” I ask, my stinging cheek momentarily forgotten.
“Uh-huh,” she nods. “I moved to Low Dallas for the rock star shit. But I went to cadets at South Texas Military as a kid. And I can say with one hundred percent certainty, Junco, I’ve never met a better soldier than you. I might’ve come off as a bitch before, and I’m sorry. I was freaking out. But now the shit’s going down and we need people to do their jobs. If I was part of this fighting stuff, I’d go.”
She would too, I can see that in her. She’s not lying, she’s not afraid to die, and she’s not afraid to fight.
“But this one’s not my fight. It’s yours.”
And I have no excuse. Because not only have I been trained for this moment my whole life, but I’m not capable of dying and I have no fear of dissipation. It was sorta nice, actually. So maybe if I do end up dissipated again, I can go back to the virtual world in my head and spend eternity with my cheek on Isten’s chest counting his heartbeats.
“OK,” I whisper. “I’ll go find them and do my part.”
She pulls me into a hug and leans down to my ear. “You’re gonna be OK, Juncs. I have faith in you.”
But I don’t, I think as I port us to Low Dallas and drop her off a little bit away from the Hando complex. I don’t have faith in me at all. Because no one’s told me what the mission is, and they only ever have one reason to keep these secrets from me.
Because they know I might not want to follow this order once I know what it is.
Chapter Thirty-One—LUCAN
Tigris-Euphrates River Delta
5000 BC
Aesin returns from the mining operations in the Southern Hemisphere the day before the Harvest Festival. He ports into my overseer’s terrace and sits down on a lounger next to mine without saying a word. We sit like this for long minutes.
I’m not required to bow to him. I’m his son, I take orders if he gives them, but I’m not a servant. I’m not some simple house slave who must bend to his whims. There are only six High Order beings on this planet right now: Aesin, Inanna, that geneticist Gib, Rache, Crage, and myself. And we are all equals, no matter how much time one has over the other. I can command the other Archers just as
well as Aesin can. Rache can command them if he has a reason. Inanna commands them all the time, even without reason. But we cannot command each other.
High Order beings have free will. It’s a universal gift we receive at birth.
So we sit in silence, playing a game of who will break the stillness. It’s near time for my workers to go home for the evening and men start appearing from far off fields. One in front of the terrace stops to talk to a woman carrying a basket filled with food they will cook for dinner. He leans in and I sit up in my chair a little. “What’s he doing?”
“Playing coy for my benefit, Lucifer?”
I stand up to see this better, ignoring my father. The man kisses her on the cheek. I actually laugh as I turn. “He kissed her!”
Aesin raises his eyebrow. “You’re surprised by this development?”
“Well, yes, actually. I had no idea the natives partook in affection like that. It’s new to me. I’ve never seen it before.”
“The natives do not use affectionate gestures such as kissing. But the genetic stock you authorized your new workforce to be made from do.”
I keep my back to him, still staring down at the couple. They are laughing now. Joking, he’s teasing her. Flirting. It’s… a bit astonishing to me.
When I finally turn to Aesin he’s gone. And then I hear the screams from below. My head whips back to the fields and the couple are lying in a bloodied heap on the ground. My father raises his head and stares at me. “You will pay for this, son.”
And then he disappears.
“Everything OK?” Amelia asks, her soft hand fluttering against my bare shoulder.
“Fine, yes.” I turn to her, trying to hide my uneasiness over Aesin’s actions. I study her pale skin and her brilliant bronze eyes flecked with green. Her lashes are long and dark, her mouth has the perfect lift. Slightly upturned, giving off a soft smile even when she’s not smiling. Her face is heart-shaped and her auburn hair flows down her back, but not reaching all the way to her waist, like most goddesses like to wear it.