Silence

by Tyler Vance

  Within that realm of thought, distinguished scientists had managed to discover the physics of light and radiation. From there, they’d harnessed the power of electricity and fueled the entire continent of Octasia with gigantic nuclear power plants that they kept in secluded, rural areas. Weapons had evolved from swords and knives into plasma guns and electroblades. Scientists discovered means to view the strange currents of energy that the Celestial were able to manipulate as well as frequencies of light invisible to the naked eye. They created a portable piece of machinery to study the Celestial’s actions. It wrapped around the ear with a plastic screen that extended over one eye. Scientists dubbed it monocle.

  The current Intrasentient Emperor had taken to wearing the monocle at all times, hoping to see something in the christened ‘Celestial Plane’ that the scientists had missed. The citizens of Intrasentient City had followed their ruler’s style, special ordering their own monocles from businesses. Companies everywhere took their most sophisticated cellpad designs and adapted them to the monocles that had become popular overnight. Few knew the device’s original function, the one that Ghost now tracked the Sycrarian with, even though most of the models possessed it.

  Sheikoh closed his eye for three seconds to pull up the radio channel that connected the three of their monocles.

  “Hey Ghost, how long until we get there?” Sheikoh asked. The suction cup on his throat translated his voice box’s vibrations into words.

  “Why don’t you just check for yourself, Silence?” Indigo taunted him gleefully.

  “About twenty minutes,” Ghost responded without inflection. “We’re going to have to take the Swifthooves through the trees though.”

  “Yippee. That sounds fun.” Sheikoh sighed. “By the way, when we get to hell, you guys like wanna meet around the lake of fire or the vault of screaming souls?”

  Neither of the two responded to his remark.

  Sheikoh shivered at the finality they rode towards. His emotions were beginning to catch up to him. To what they were about to attempt. He tried to push the stark fear aside, tried to stuff it into the bursting drawer holding all of his other unwanted feelings. But it didn’t work. Chest bubbling with apprehension, he searched the blurred woods for some means of distracting himself. That didn’t work either.

  He suddenly found himself talking.

  “Aww, Indigo, you aren’t still mad about that kick, mate? You know it was a love tap right? I could never hit a big, tough brotha like you.”

  “You’re an asshole, kid. You wanna feel a real love tap? I got one saved up just for you,” the static bound voice of Indigo reported in Sheikoh’s ear.

  Sheikoh could always count on Indigo for a good distraction.

  “It’s date. I’ll tap you all night, Loverboy,” Sheikoh giggled into the monocle.

  “You are one weird, little freak,” Indigo responded with disgust.

  “What are you talking about, Indie? I thought you and me had a thing going on? I thought you… I thought you loved me,” Sheikoh whispered in a hurt voice.

  “I love this Swifthooves more than I love you… and I wouldn’t care if I rode the animal till it died,” Indigo shot back.

  Sheikoh turned his helmeted head to look at Indigo and the big grey Swifthooves that the ganglord rode. The enormous helmeted man lifted his hand and shot an obscene gesture at Sheikoh. He just watched the ganglord silently for a few moments. Indigo laughed, under the rare impression that he’d had the last word. Finally, Sheikoh responded.

  “So you’ve loved that Swifthooves, huh?” He smirked. “Good choice, mate.” Sheikoh heard the ganglord draw in a breath for retort.

  “Shut up, you pair of infants,” Ghost suddenly cut in sharply. “We’re about to fight for our lives and all you want to do is spend what might be your last conversation pissing off the people that have your back? That’s a really well thought out idea. In the meantime, we’re going to go through the forest right… here.”

  They reined their Swifthooves to the side, wheeling the animals around and then plunged into the leaves and branches and hugging the backs of their jolting, jumping Swifthooves. Sheikoh hung on for dear life as the animals dodged and bounded through the dense foliage. He was content to let Ghost lead the three animals through the Schizn Canopy. They rode for what felt like hours.

  Suddenly, Ghost’s Swifthooves stopped, rearing up onto its hind legs. The android’s waist was perpendicular to the ground. Sheikoh and Indigo slowed their own beasts to a stop just before they overshot him. Silently, Ghost pointed two fingers at a solid hill of piled rocks just outside the clearing that the three of them were.

  Sheikoh instantly knew that his was it. They were there. He turned to Indigo, remembering Ghost’s words.

  “Hey, Indigo, sorry, mate. It’s just before a fight, I get all this nervous energy and that’s just what I do with it, dig?” Sheikoh confessed into the radio silence.

  The ganglord didn’t respond for a while, so Sheikoh mentally shrugged and turned back forward. Then Indigo answered him. The ganglord’s voice was a sinister crackle in the fuzzy channel.

  “You get nervous? That’s weird, I just get pissed.”

  “Well on that pleasant note, we’re here,” Ghost whispered sarcastically.

  Despite themselves, Indigo and Sheikoh exchanged a helmeted glance at Ghost’s proclamation. Neither of them had volunteered to go on this suicide expedition. Even though Sheikoh couldn’t make out Indigo’s expression, he had a feeling that the ganglord was probably about as nervous as he was.

  They dismounted and pulled their shiny black helmets off. Sheikoh tossed his into the dirt and then tied his Swifthooves to a tree branch with shaking fingers.

  “Well… we’re here then,” Sheikoh repeated, clapping his hands and rubbing them together.

  Indigo drew his assault rifle, and Ghost pulled a pair of sleek, metal pistols out from his grey suit jacket. Not wanting to be the only one unarmed, Sheikoh pulled out his electroblade and flipped it around his fingers with easy grace. Then he looked at Ghost’s weapons with interest. He could immediately tell that they both lethal and considerably expensive. Their silversteel sides were streaked with twin pulsating, green strips that flickered like snakes.

  “Anyone of you guys want to go over a plan?” Sheikoh asked. He didn’t wait for them to respond. “I’ll be the distraction. Uhh… you two distract it from the distraction and the distraction will run up and lasso the demon-

  Emili.

  -with this here amulet until it faints. You two do your thing with Vest and then we ride off into the sunset.”

  “Simplistic, but sound general ideas,” Ghost murmured. Indigo nodded, looking at Ghost with shiny eyes.

  The three of them stared at one another for a moment. Sheikoh tried to pretend that the demon the three planned on attacking wasn’t wearing the face of the girl he loved. He was riddled by shaking nerves, and he did his best to hide them from Indigo’s and Ghost’s sight. Sheikoh had never had to work so hard at repressing his feelings. Even the gut wrenching time long ago that he’d stood up to Skyrace and its leader, Chain.

  Sheikoh’s stomach lurched, shying away from the massive explosion of force that Emili- no Khryzt had punched him with. In all of Sheikoh’s cyborg life, the demon had been the only adversary to knock him unconscious. Even without its magic, Khryzt was inordinately strong and blindingly fast; Sheikoh knew that if he fought with anything less than every speck of his strength and determination he would die. At the hands of Emili, no less. The girl he loved. He wasn’t sure if he could fight a creature wearing Emili’s face with every speck of strength and determination.

  Ghost interrupted his thoughts. “Let’s do this.”

  Sheikoh glanced over at Indigo, half hoping that the ganglord wasn’t in agreement, but the ganglord was nodding. Indigo turned to look at him, as Sheikoh realized that Ghost was watching on with narrowed eyes. Sheikoh gulped down his fear, clenched his fist around the cold hilts of his ML5 and electro
blade. He nodded at the two of them. They turned and made their way towards the rocky mountain that jutted out of the endless forest like a knife.

  Sheikoh followed the two fingering the cold metal of the amulet around his neck. As they walked around a corner of the rocky, tree-speckled mountain, a dark hole in its side crept into view. Sheikoh flipped his hair out of his eyes, to better see the gaping maw of the cave. It seemed to have suddenly opened in the hill. Within its depths, Sheikoh could hear a tell-tale dripping. Stalactites and stalagmites jutted from the roof and ceiling like fangs.

  “After you,” Indigo smiled at Sheikoh. His voice was edged with sharp ice.

  Sheikoh took the giant’s queue and darted into the welcoming shadows of the cave. He heard a tiny gasp from Indigo as he crouched behind a giant stalagmite. Sheikoh knew that he’d disappeared from the ganglord’s sight. Grinning, he tried to pierce the heavy darkness around him. As far as he could tell, the demon wasn’t anywhere near here; they would have to go farther. Sheikoh waved Ghost and Indigo over and the three of them crept through the shadowy underground passage.

  Ghost stopped and pressed the buttons on his silver cuffs. The blue light of his projected keyboard flared, a blinding beacon in the cave’s dark. Sheikoh pulled Indigo over Ghost so their bodies blocked most of the light from traveling down the tunnel. Cursing under his breath, Ghost lowered the brightness. The man with a slashed face tapped at the projected keyboard for moment. When he finished, a loading bar appeared on the screen of Sheikoh’s monocle, and he could see a similar program loading on Indigo’s. Within seconds, both of the bars filled up. Sheikoh’s and Indigo’s monocles went into infrared vision.

  “Great, now I can see out of one of my eyes,” Indigo muttered under his breath.

  Ghost glared at the ganglord and jerked a finger up to his lips. Sheikoh’s own eyes tore into Indigo as sharp as daggers. As much as Sheikoh appreciated good conversation, he was totally with Robocop on this one. Time and place. A sheepish expression flashed across the ganglord’s face under their looks. Sheikoh turned away and led the two others quietly through the dark.

  It would have been silently, if not for Indigo. He and Ghost crept through the gloom like a pair of panthers. Compared to them, Indigo’s heavy footfalls and splashes were deafening. The ganglord blundered through puddles and kicked hidden pebbles, sending echoes skittering through the cave. Indigo’s clumsiness grated on Sheikoh’s nerves until they’d been stretched taunt, like a rubber bands just before they snapped. They weren’t going to sneak up on anyone with Indigo stumbling around behind them.

  Sheikoh stopped and pulled a mini keyboard out of his pocket. He used his thumbs to type out a message. Ghost and Indigo watched his shadow with the same question in their eyes. He finished and sent it to Ghost’s monocle.

  ‘u 2 wait. ill go ahead. dont let me die pls.’

  Ghost nodded his assent, looking at Indigo and back to Sheikoh in a way that told him that Ghost really did understand his message. Indigo looked between the two of them, confused and annoyed. But Sheikoh didn’t have time to soothe the ganglord.

  He went on through the shadows. Alone.

  Sheikoh faded into the darkness like he’d never been there in the first place. He flashed a glance behind him. Indigo’s head spun around, searching the dark and Ghost stared at a vaguely human-shaped stalagmite to Sheikoh’s left. He grinned.

  Still got it.

  Even with night vision, the gangsters couldn’t follow his imperceptible ripple of motion. Sheikoh’s hard life had taught him how to slip out of the eye’s grasp, like he was covered in visual oil. The brain just wasn’t good enough to follow his glide.

  Sheikoh glowed with quiet pride for a second and turned to face forward. He continued on in absolute silence. The cave appeared green to his monocle. Shadows crept in his scarred right eye, but unlike a normal eye, his right could more-or-less see. His grin hardened into a grimace of concentration as he made his way through the cave. He turned a corner and his two companions were lost to view. Now, he was really alone. Nonetheless, he felt oddly at home here in the dark, slinking through stone hallways. It was just Interium on a particularly dark night. This was his every night. Nobody was better at this than him.

  Sheikoh stayed as silent and as smooth as the shadows at his sides. He glided through the dank cavern like a wraith. He turned a corner and suddenly caught the sounds of breathing. He stopped and listened for a moment. There it was again, like a whisper of cold breeze. They were just around the next bend. Sheikoh sidled up to the cavern wall and fired a quick glance into the chamber, quickly turning back. His heart hammered like he’d just run a tri marathon.

  There she-

  There it was.

  The room beyond was gently illuminated by the cold light of the white fires that burned in Emili’s eyes. The demon-possessed Emili sat cross-legged, poring over an open book lying at her knees. Sheikoh knew that it was the codex. He also noticed that Emili’s body still wore her baggy, faded jeans and the collared mechanic shirt that she’d had on in his living memory.

  Sheikoh dragged his feet towards the cavernous room, forcing them to step around the corner that hid him. Huddled at the shadow’s edge of Khryzt’s white fire was the Centaurai, slumped unconscious on the floor. Sheikoh’s eyes flickered over him, before coming to land upon the reason that he was here - Emili.

  No, Khryzt.

  But if it wasn’t Emili too, he wouldn’t even be here.

  He shook himself. It wasn’t Emili until he took care of her little demon infestation. Sheikoh intentionally kicked at a pebble by his foot. It skittered across the stone floor, echoing off of the walls. He wasn’t about to fire on Emili. Not unless he had to.

  Emili’s head rose at the sound. Khryzt’s gaze of leaping flames focused on Sheikoh. The fires spat a flurry of red and purple sparks out to frame Emili’s now-tangled blonde hair. Flickers of alien recognition rippled in Sheikoh’s stomach, simultaneously cold and nauseous. He forced himself to stare into the Sycrarian’s burning eyes. For a long moment, their two impassive faces stared at one another in tense standoff.

  “Khryzt,” Sheikoh greeted with a cold nod. “You never told me that you were a demon. Anything else you forgot to mention?”

  “I am a Sycrarian, the most honorable of all of the gods’ creations,” Emili’s mouth retorted in the double-timbre of magic.

  The demon’s eerie voice was all the impetus he needed; instinct blurred his hand until his pistol was aimed at those flickering white eyes. His gun fired a barrage of blood-red plasma at the figure. The shots flashed straight at her face.

  Emili-

  -No, Khryzt-

  Khryzt just sat there, holding his gaze with supreme unconcern. His trigger finger suddenly stopped twitching shots off. His chest plummeted with despair. Emili was going to die. The demon was going to make him kill Emili. He was sure of it.

  His concern was unfounded.

  Khryzt didn’t make any perceptible movement. But upon reaching Emili’s body, the jets of plasma violently rebounded. They randomly flicked back through the air in every direction, smashing into rock. Sheikoh barely managed to dodge one headed for his leg. His plasmafire rained against the rock walls of the cave, burning smoldering black craters. Hissing steam and streams of dust trickled from shaking ceiling. Sheikoh and Khryzt were blanketed in a dense, fog. The only noticeable difference between them was the white flames burning over one pair of eyes.

  The harsh cry of plasmafire reverberated throughout the tunnels. Sheikoh needed to distract the Sycrarian until Indigo and Ghost made it. He could almost feel Indigo’s and Ghost’s footsteps pounding his way. His hand twitched to the amulet. The flaming, white eyes fizzled with amusement. Sheikoh somehow knew Khryzt had caught the motion.

  “So how much of what you told me was a lie?” Sheikoh demanded.

  The dust settled around the two of them. He watched Emili’s hand stretch out, pick up the codex. Khryzt dog-eared the page it was on and then, wi
th a cold glance at Sheikoh, it climbed to Emili’s feet. Sheikoh spun his useless pistol around a finger as he watched the creature. The bravado belied his terror.

  “I told you no lies,” Khryzt double-answered in that same, menacing voice.

  “Whoops. Silly me,” Sheikoh laughed lightly. “Always forget to make it a point to ask whether other people are planning to deliberately destroy everything that I care about.” His steadily raised his voice’s sarcasm, and, more importantly, volume, to cover any hints of approaching footsteps. “So sorry. Up until now it hasn’t really come up, mate.”

  “If you had any idea of the torment-

  “Try me, demon,” Sheikoh interrupted Khryzt loudly. “What is it that a coward like you considers torment, I wonder?”

  An explosion of glittering sparks erupted around Emili’s face. Khryzt had twisted her mouth with fury and lined Emili’s dimples with rage. Jagged bolts of white, plasma flickered around Emili’s gentle hands that had taken the shape of sharp talons. The shadowy cavern glowed with the power of the Sycrarian’s fury; in the center of Emili’s palms were two orbs, burning brilliant with repressed power. They grew to the size of baseballs with electrical light that chased away nearby shadows. Sheikoh fell back into a wary crouch, touching the amulet at his throat for comfort. Magic couldn’t hurt him, he told himself over and over.

  It didn’t do a lot to dispel his dread.

  Sheikoh waited for the explosion, tensed and ready. But for whatever reason Khryzt didn’t launch the attack. After a long moment, the fury slid from the girl’s face and the momentary infernos retreated from their leaping dances. The crackling energy flickered out, and the spheres in Emili’s hands faded, until all that was left was the afterglows in his eyes. The corners of the cavern fell back into shadow.