Raining Fire

by Rajan Khanna

  Eventually, I couldn’t suppress the shaking, so strong that my teeth started to chatter, which I tried to still and which sent me into even greater shivers. I was rigid throughout, my eyes glued to the Feral’s form but unwilling to meet its eyes.

  That moment became eternity. It was like the instant right before a hammer meets the firing pin in a gun, that point at which the knife bends your skin before breaking it, only endless.

  Somehow I moved away from the Feral. Fear of being too close to it won out, and I inched away. When that didn’t elicit a reaction, I inched some more. But each movement brought on the fear again, that it would attract its attention.

  Eventually, I reached the corner of the cell and pressed as much of my body into that corner as I could, keeping my eyes fixed on the Feral.

  Hours passed. I don’t know how many. They were all the same. Except for when the Feral urinated in one corner of the cell, sending me into another spiral of panic. (I later discovered that I had wet myself sometime during all of this.) The more time went on, the more my body started to scream, under the onslaught of the stress and fear in my system. My body cried out in pain from all the shaking and the position in which I was frozen. My brain was a constant alarm. And when I ran out of adrenaline, and the yawning fatigue set in, I couldn’t relax or sleep. So I just lay there in a kind of fugue state.

  Imagine your body screaming at its highest volume, your mind matching it, and having no escape from that. Imagine that this goes on, until you almost can’t remember anything different.

  I might have been there for years. I was there for years, despite what non-relative time would say.

  Then, after eons of staying in that same position, depleting all of the resources and reserves my body and mind had to offer, a figure walked into the room, on the other side of the glass. Blaze.

  “Please,” I pleaded, in a whimper.

  She walked up to the glass.

  I raised my palms, pressed them against the glass as if I could somehow reach her. “Please. I’ll do anything.”

  Blaze cupped her hand around one ear, as if she couldn’t hear me.

  I raised my voice, all the while expecting the Feral to come alive and rip me to shreds.

  “Please,” I croaked. “I’ll do anything.”

  The next moment happened in a rush. Blaze opened the door, and I was scrambling through, and I collapsed at her feet as she shut the door behind me. I wrapped my arms around her legs. “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

  She bent down then, and tenderly stroked my hair. “You’re safe now,” she said. “You’re safe.”

  Then the energy did drain out of me. And I could barely stand, could barely walk. Blaze grabbed my elbow and helped me out of the room and back down to my cell. I don’t remember getting there, only that I woke up there in the morning, feeling like I hadn’t slept more than a few minutes, the stress of my time in the cage still singing in my system.

  The only thing I remember about that walk to my cell was what Blaze said to me. “We took it when it was young,” she said. “We trained it for years. Now it’s ours.” She curled an arm around my shoulder. “Now you’re ours, too.”

  * * *

  Blaze was true to her word about giving me some freedom and allowing me to try to develop a Maenad vaccine. After the first week of working on the vaccine, reviewing their data, trying to integrate it with what we had learned from the test we developed on Tamoanchan, Maya came to me to say that she would take me out into the city. “There’s a speech,” she said. “You should go see it.”

  I turned to her and was about to say, “Why?” but the lure of fresh air, and open sky, was in front of me. So I just said, “Okay.”

  She held out a jacket to me. “Take it,” she said. “The wind can be cold.”

  So I took it and shrugged it on.

  She led me out of the lab and outside, into the city proper. I had to squint my eyes against the glare, but I sucked in the fresh air. It smelled of cold and woodsmoke, and the faint smell of cooking meat. It made my stomach growl. They feed us very simply at the lab.

  I realized as I followed her through the street that it was just the two of us. No extra guards. Unlike Blaze, Maya was smaller than me. It’s possible that I could overpower her and run off. But where would I go, on a floating city surrounded by bloodthirsty brutes? No doubt they had people watching us, or Maya had some way of calling for help. That would have been the first thing they thought of.

  I followed her through the streets, past shops and what looked like barracks and places that served food and drink. I saw mostly Valhallans at all of these, but every so often there was someone dressed in a jumpsuit or just with a calmer demeanor who was clearly a member of the Helix.

  We arrived at last at a large theater, or at least something like it, with a large, raised stage at one end, and a large, open area for an audience at the other. The latter was filled with people already, mostly Valhallans, but with some Helix scientists scattered throughout.

  A man stood in the center of the stage, and all eyes were on him. He raised his hands in the air, jowls quivering, to the applause of the crowd. His age hung on him, not like Sergei, but lined and sagging. He wore a breastplate, and a kind of armor made up of metal and leather, that he must have been squeezed into. The pale skin bulged at his armpits and around his neck. His hair contorted into a ridiculous crest that seemed dyed. And his face . . . it was bloated and discolored.

  “Who is that?” I asked Maya.

  “Odin,” she said.

  I’d heard of him. He rules here, and has done for a long time. I’ve heard some of the Valhallans speak of him like he’s a war hero. Like he’s the strongest, most virile person here. But seeing him on that stage, he just seemed . . . sad.

  After the roars of the crowd died down, which took a while, he started to speak. The speech was a rambling, boasting mess. Half of it consisted of praising himself. The other half was telling people what I expect they wanted to hear—how Valhalla is the greatest city and culture left on Earth. How he will make a new world for his followers. How they can remake the continent, make it great again. The crowd loved it.

  At one point he praised his right-hand man, this mean brute called Surtr, after some old white-person legend. You’d probably know all about it, Ben, from something you read. Did I mention he’s mean? He looks mean, and the stories that they tell about him are mean. He does Odin’s dirty work (because I can’t imagine that bloated piece of pig’s bladder doing anything himself) whether that’s leading raiding parties or executing traitors or bringing him women to, well, you get the picture.

  The rest of it was about all the settlements that they had taken or destroyed. So many of them. I had to fight to keep the tears from my eyes, thinking of all those people, afraid. Thinking that I didn’t know about what had happened on Tamoanchan. This, I thought, was why Maya brought me here. To truly show me the scope of what we were up against.

  It made everything seem futile.

  After the speech, the whole crowd dispersed, the majority of the people moving to nearby bars and food stalls to celebrate. “We can have one drink,” Maya said, dragging me to a nearby bar. “After that, things get . . . dangerous.”

  She stood opposite me at a tall table and passed me mead, a popular drink here. It was slightly sweet, made with honey, and I tossed it back, still imagining all the damage the Valhallans were doing.

  “Blaze told me that you saw Herbie.”

  “I’m sorry?” I said.

  Maya smiled. “That’s just what I call him. We’re not supposed to give them names, but. Well. I couldn’t help myself.” Then when she saw my blank stare, she said, “Our Feral.”

  Immediately I was back in that cell. Pain shot up through my back and down my arms. My hands started shaking, and I had to curl them hard around the cup of mead just to keep still.

  Maya leaned in, the sweet honey smell on her breath. “What was it like? Up close?”
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  The memory started to return, and I tried to push it away, but it kept coming. Just the feeling of that moment. The pain and the fear. I was frozen there, in that time, in the past.

  Nearby, some Valhallans knocked over a table and men started pushing each other.

  “I’d like to go back now,” I said.

  Maya eyed the men, then looked back to me. “Yeah,” she said. “I think that’s a good idea.”

  That night, I lay awake on my sleeping mat, trying sleep, trying to stop shaking. Feeling unsafe despite the fact that I was alone in my cell. I ignored Dimitri’s attempts to talk and just lay there, alone, yet feeling like there was a monster just waiting, over my shoulder.

  * * *

  Two days later, Surtr visited the lab. I guessed it was a surprise inspection, from frantic air that hung around Maya and the Helix scientists. Even the Valhallan guards looked afraid. He came in flanked by his elite guards, draped in furs. He’s tall, one of the most enormous men I’ve ever seen, and that includes Diego. He’s bald, and everything about him seems hard. I tried not to make eye contact as he walked in, but he caught me once. He has a tattoo around one eye. A sword, wreathed in flames. But his dark eyes were hard and cold like asphalt. It sent a shiver through me.

  Maya went to talk to him, very conciliatory. I could see the fear in her posture. It was in everyone’s. Surtr talked to her as if she were beneath him, not even meeting her eyes. Instead, he scanned the room, a look of disgust on his face. Finally, he deigned to look at Maya and said something I couldn’t hear. Her eyes widened slightly, then she turned and pointed at me.

  I froze. I couldn’t move. I felt exposed. I felt like I was back in that cell with the Feral waiting to pounce.

  I just stood there as he walked over to me. I was forced to look up at him as he neared. He towers over me. He stopped in front of my station. “So you’re the one,” he said. His voice was dark gravel. I didn’t know what he meant. He reached out a massive hand and grabbed my chin, raised it as he looked down at me, his face hard. He shook his head ever so slightly. “You’re the one I lost men for.”

  I dimly realized that he was talking about the attack on Tamoanchan, but my mind was in a fog. I was too afraid to move. One twitch of his hand, and he could snap my neck. I was convinced of it.

  “Are you worth it?” he asked.

  I couldn’t answer. My voice wouldn’t work. I couldn’t make the words come. And I didn’t even know what I would say.

  Then, as if seeing the fear in my eyes, he smiled, the grin of a predator. Then he dropped my chin and walked back to Maya. “Take me to Blaze,” he said.

  I was useless for the rest of the day. None of the diagrams or test results meant anything to me as I stared at them. One of the most powerful and dangerous men in this city now knows who I am, and lays the deaths of his men at my feet.

  And I have this terrible feeling that, sooner or later, I’m going to have to pay for that.

  * * *

  I am afraid of forgetting. Afraid of losing things in all of this. Of losing myself.

  To help me, so that I’ll always remember, I marked myself. Small cuts, on the underside of my arm near the wrist, so that they’ll always be visible in the lab. I made three of them. The first for Ilaria, my mother, who I lost long ago to cancer, and who I will always be trying to emulate in one way or another. The second for Sergei, my second father, and one of the kindest people I knew. I failed him in the end when I couldn’t cure Enigma, but I need to always remember that it was the Helix who ultimately killed him. The last is for you, Ben, wherever you are, because you gave me hope that there was something more than the fight. A chance for love, of all things. We’ll never know if it would have worked, not now, but I need to remember that I felt that once. And even though it’s so hard to feel anything now, except the fear, even if I can’t remember the love, then at least I can remember that I once felt that. At least I can try.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The thing that I’m staring at is not actually my father in any sense. It is a Feral. An old Feral, which is rare to begin with. It’s moving across the grass slowly, but without any sense of illness or infirmity. Gray, curly hair, tangled into knots, falls to its bare shoulders. The Feral is lean, its skin tanned a deep brown. I can see curled gray hair on its chest and between its legs. But his height, his build, even the way he moves reminds me of my father. He would be the same age, roughly—his hair looks about the right length after all this time, taking into account the knotted, tangled mess it is. And it would be just like my father to become a Feral and still be dangerously hard to kill.

  It’s not him—it’s probably some other old Feral that has lived here forever, that knows the area well enough to have stayed alive all this time.

  And yet . . .

  What are you doing, Ben? the voice asks, but I brush it aside.

  I keep trying to get a closer glimpse of the Feral’s face, keep trying to look beyond the beard and the hair. It’s strange, because I spent a lot of my life inspecting my father’s skin, examining him for scratches or bites or blood or spit. I did it over and over and over again. But it was in patches, under very specific focus. There are things about him I would recognize—his walk, his gestures, his eyes—but his body . . . Would any of those gestures or idiosyncrasies still remain in that thing? That vehicle for the Bug?

  He moves out of sight, and I follow behind him. Keeping my distance, though. He seems more surefooted than me, even though his . . . its feet are bare. I follow it down and around the hill, keeping my distance, until it goes inside a building with the door hanging off of it. This structure is bigger than the others. Some kind of workshop or garage, maybe? I move closer, inching, crouching down so as not to be seen. I know it’s not a good idea, but I can’t seem to help myself. I feel driven to get a better look at this Feral. To see if it could really be my father. Or wanting to see that it isn’t.

  The building is large and dark. There are structures inside, haphazardly placed—furniture or machines long forgotten, or else things brought back by the Ferals, or collapsed bits of the building. It’s hard to tell. The Feral I’m following moves to one corner, where he sinks to the ground, his legs curling, his head coming to rest against the ground. I see two female Ferals nearby. They look up at his approach, but they don’t react much more than that.

  The smell hits me a second later, if only because I was holding my breath. Unwashed human flesh, rotting meat, shit and piss and every bad human smell you’ve ever experienced. I once asked Miranda why it was that with all the shit and dirt and blood and whatever that Ferals came into contact with—not to mention uncooked meat—that they didn’t just die off in droves from disease. She said that whatever it was that kicked their metabolism into overdrive helped to kill off infections before they could really take hold. She even once said that it was possible that the Bug kept them healthy by helping to kill off other viruses and bacterial infections so as to propagate itself and not them. It sounded perfectly ridiculous to me at the time. Now I’ve come to recognize that the Bug is far more nefarious than I had believed.

  But the stench hits me, and then I scan the rest of the building and I see all of them. Ferals. Male and female, young and old, filling the space. Maybe fifty of them. Maybe more.

  Ferals together is not an uncommon thing. They often hunt in packs. They get support from one another—warmth, for example, or the ability to take down armed prey. But it’s always seemed like a precarious arrangement. Old Ferals are often killed off when they get to be too much of a liability, and younger Ferals will eat them. Challenges among the group are common, and fights can quickly break out.

  But here’s a large group. Taking shelter in this building. I wonder if they once took shelter in that basement, before it was rendered inaccessible by whatever earth-shifting force closed it off.

  I continue surveying, to make sure I’m not spotted, but they all seem to be focused elsewhere, on the everyday lives of Ferals. Strangely
quiescent. I’ve never seen them like this. But it’s a blessing.

  My eyes move back to the old Feral that reminded me of my father. Now that it’s still, I can get a better look. It’s hard to make out the facial features through all the tangled hair and the dirt. The nose looks like it might be his. But it’s hard to say. The frame seems thinner, more wiry, but it would be.

  Then it does something. Lying there, dozing or resting or whatever, it reaches one arm up and bends it, resting the back of its head against its hand. I tell myself that it doesn’t mean anything, that it’s a common gesture. That lots of people, and Ferals, and probably even cats and dogs and monkeys and whatever, make it. But it reminds me so much of my father that I have to blink my eyes to see for a moment.

  You’re being sentimental. Tess got to you, and now you’re seeing what you want to see. But am I? Do I want to see my father alive? It would have been so much easier just to accept that he died after Fading. That somewhere along the way something or someone dealt with him. That he didn’t have to live long as one of those things.

  Because that, I know, is what has been haunting me all this time. That I didn’t do what I should have done and shot him, right then and there. That I didn’t stop the Bug from running around in his body. That I didn’t honor the memory of him and all that he stood for by killing one more Feral. One that was wearing his face. One that would go on to do unspeakable things, wearing him like an old set of clothes. Because I didn’t, who knows what that body did. Who knows what it killed and what atrocities it committed.

  Who knows what atrocities it might still commit.

  My hand reaches down to the revolver.

  I have a clean shot. From here, I could do it—shoot him, get off several shots to make sure he’s dead for good. It would be easy. Of course, it would alert all of the Ferals in the building. I could run, but I couldn’t escape them all for long.

  Don’t I owe it to him? Don’t I have to put this right? Finally? After all of these years?