Aren pushed her fear aside and tried to speak, her voice shaking, “Uhh…umm, hello?”
The man creature swept past without even acknowledging her. He came to the desk and ran his clawed hands over the smooth top. A hum filled the silent clearing. The sound reminded Aren of a television left on in another room, just perceptible, constant, and impossible to ignore once noticed. Then the creature opened his mouth and sang.
The song filled the clearing with sweet otherworldly music. For some reason it felt like rain to Aren. She swore she could smell the subtle scent of damp earth and feel roots gathering up the water. She could taste the minerals and hear the drumbeat of raindrops. The melody danced inside her, warm, damp, and alive.
Aren closed her eyes and basked in the images and sensations created in her head. Her fear dissolved away. She felt certain she was dreaming as the song’s warmth enveloped her like a blanket. I’m still in bed. Kaden, the trip down the rabbit hole, the furry little man, all of it will be gone when I open my eyes.
As her eyelids parted, she found the small man staring at her with one huge eyebrow lifted. Her dream had not ended and the man still sang, though very softly. Aren smiled and tried to hum along. The furry eyebrow lifted higher and the song ended, crashing reality back down on Aren.
This is no dream. Don’t let yourself think that again. She stared at the little man who still ran one hand absent-mindedly over the desk. She looked in his eyes and whispered all she could think to say, “That was beautiful.”
He stepped back as though surprised. He opened his mouth and spoke in a sing song of words she couldn’t understand while pointing emphatically at the desk. Aren shrugged and raised her hands to express she didn’t know what he wanted. He frowned, though it was difficult to read much behind all his facial hair. His huge eyebrows sank down lower and Aren thought this could only be a frown.
He rubbed his temple with one claw, matting the neat hair there horribly, and then attempted again. The sound that followed sounded painful and hollow after the beautiful songlike language. “Me kinga engarish net goud. I asking whet theesss?”
Aren stared at him for several moments. He repeated the same words again and again until realization dawned on her. The man was trying to speak English. It was somewhat distinguishable as the language she knew, though with the thickest accent she’d ever heard. The “k” sounded hard and guttural. He held the “s” too long. The “g” had a throaty coughing sound to it. She pieced each word together bit by bit.
“Oh, what is that? Yeah I suppose you’ve probably never seen a school desk before.” She smiled at the man creature, hoping to calm him down as well as herself. Her gift told her she had nothing to fear, and she’d listen to her gift until Kaden returned. If he returns…
The man stared at her with the same blank look she’d so recently given him. She tried to speak slower, using fewer words, and attempted to mimic his accent as best she could. “That desk…desk.”
He repeated the word several times and looked back and forth times between her and the desk. He pointed at it again. “Whet desk fur?”
Her fear hadn’t returned since the song had banished it, so she walked toward the man and sat down in the desk. “For sit. Learn. Write.” She grabbed a notebook from the ground and found a pencil. She wrote a couple lines. This is crazy. I’m talking to a rodent man.
“See?” Aren wondered for a moment if this man used chairs or even had a written language. I’m making a lot of assumptions.
He looked at her and then nodded like he understood. He tapped the top of the desk and ran a finger along the groove where a pencil could sit. “Whet desk meke?”
His voice pleaded with some note of sincerity that Aren couldn’t ignore, but she didn’t understand his question. She shrugged again. “Not understand. Desk not make anything.”
He walked away from the desk, scouring the ground. He bent down and picked something up and then returned with his find. He held up a twig. “Wooda.” Then he held up a small pebble. “Stoone.” He gestured toward the desk again. “Whet meke?”
Aren nodded. “Ah, what is the desk made of?” She put her finger on the top of the desk where she still sat. “Plastic…I think. Yeah, pretty sure it’s some form of plastic. Plastic.”
The man repeated this word to himself over and over again, interjecting bits of his own musical language. He seemed to be arguing with himself over the word. Aren sat still and continued to smile at the man. He wouldn’t hurt her; she had knowledge about things he wanted to know.
She felt calm, peaceful even. Kaden will come back. I’ll be fine here with my new friend. She looked up as another figure flew out of the trees and into the clearing. Tall, slim, ghostly, with long green hair flowing as it raced toward them. Aren thought for a moment it was a woman, but then caught his eyes.
Power, strength, inhuman patience, and more hate than Aren had ever felt emanated in waves from his almond eyes. Memories flowed into her.
Stories told to Evandrel as he lay in his bed, silk fluttering all around him as a yellow globe bobbed above a woman’s head, his mother. She told him of the wars. Humans and their fellstone weapons pushed the Keitane into hiding, butchering them by the thousands. So much lost knowledge as Keitane men and women never came home and their great cities burned. Aren could almost taste the fear and hatred in the memory as the young Evandrel clenched his fists and vowed vengeance.
Aren’s peace dissipated and her heart grew tight and cold. This man was not her friend. She saw death in his eyes, death for any human who stood in his path.
Kaden arrived back in the classroom he and Aren had left, without her. He didn’t have much chance to contemplate the lack of a feminine hand in his though.
He stood in the middle of a small crater where his desk had been, filled with chunks of ceiling tiles and loose papers. A group of kids huddled in a corner while others were screaming and running out of the room. A girl ran past him with blood running down her cheek from a deep gash.
The fluorescent lights flickered and a pop from sparking electrical brought his attention to the gaping hole above him, perfectly circular. He could smell smoke. What did we do? It looks like a bomb went off in here.
Kaden realized he and Aren must have created a vacuum, left behind when he’d dragged Aren, his desk, a chunk of the floor, and pieces of ceiling tiles, along with all the air within the area of his Egg into another universe.
The room had imploded where they’d been, pulling desks, people, and everything else toward the crater. The teacher stood by the doorway, helping usher the victims of Kaden’s implosion bomb out. At least no one looks seriously hurt. No time to make sure though. Need to go get Aren before anything else happens.
Kaden closed his eyes and prepared to open his Egg when a tearing sound made him open them again. The ceiling collapsed, crumbling down on him. He heard screams, pain blossomed in his head, and then all went black. Not again.
Chapter 14: Who is Penny?
These look encouraging. Vander flipped through the visuals while seated behind his desk, waving a finger to move to the next one. Bone remodeling at amazing pace, tissue regeneration, strong antibodies, scar disappearing rapidly. He rushed the pictures along in a blur similar to time lapse. Each picture was dated at the bottom revealing the most exciting news. Four days.
Vander grinned and rubbed his hands together. Real results, finally. A test subject showing accelerated healing properties and performing better than expected with the simulations. He’d been sharp before, but James Iverson’s intellect and ingenuity seemed to be growing rapidly along with his new healing powers.
“Give him another IQ test, Stephens. I want to see where he is. You can go now.” Dr. Stephens shrunk in on himself and bolted from the room.
Vander continued to skim through the pictures and files floating before him. Years of failure, incompetence, and very minor successes finally lead to something worthwhile. He was very happy with the progress the pretty Dr. Reed and her
team had been making these past few months. The addition of James Iverson had pushed her work to the next level too. He flipped open a video file of a triceratops cropping at the grass. The video hovered above the desk.
“Visualize file 1171.” The triceratops filled the room in front of him, turning a sleepy eye on Vander before returning to its grazing. Marvelous.
“Visualize Penelope.”
A woman hummed to life out of nothing next to Vander, young and beautiful with glowing red hair up in wavy curls, a hairstyle that fit well in the fifties, but not now. She ran her hands down to straighten her blue and white polka dotted dress. Her green eyes glinted with hidden smiles. She reached a hand out to touch the side of Vander’s face.
“Hello, Penny,” Vander whispered to the hologram. “We’re close, now. I’m so sorry you aren’t here to see it. Though I may be able to do something about that soon.”
The woman smiled and continued to stroke Vander’s cheek. “I’m here, Vander, always here when you need me. You know that.” She glanced at the triceratops. “That’s neat.”
Vander smiled. “It really is.” He rarely pulled her up any more. He pushed a button under his desk that bolted the door as tears swam before his eyes. “I’ve missed you, Penny.”
“I’ve missed you too.” She leaned forward and gave him a soft kiss on his cheek that Vander could only feel thanks to the chip in his own head.
Rho shifted its perceptions, altering the composition of its multitude of eyes to take in different wavelengths of light and energy, changing the nerves that carried this information, and even altering its brain to interpret and evaluate the new images. A simple task for a god.
Rho turned these eyes on the void and looked over its prized possessions, one dark, twisted ball of seething darkness and hundreds more shimmering blue lights.
Rho reached out to one of dots of light where it swam slowly in space. These portals were far more useful than anything Rho had found in his prison. Creation had scattered these holes throughout the void.
Rho caressed them, thread-like tentacles sliding along the perimeter, feeling for the weakness Rho knew did not exist. Rho had found no physical way into the reality beyond them, not since its last attempt a thousand years earlier. Anger boiled up in the god, seething as it looked over the ball of darkness that had once been its greatest hope of escape, now closed forever.
Rho had lost part of itself in that struggle. It had taken ages to recover. Even at full strength, hope for escape had been slim.
Rho turned its attention back to the points of light. The dark god did have a way to cheat the one-way nature of these portals.
Rho allowed its consciousness to flow out toward the holes, sending its mind out with millennia worth of practice and fine tuning. Rho became one with the energy streams, ladder climbing into reality. Cold icicles stabbed at Rho’s mind as it crawled farther and farther away from its physical self in hundreds of directions, but the journey was worth the pain.
Rho could sense tiny sparks of life all around him, disgusting things, flashing in and out of existence. The god of darkness hated them for their light. Rho’s life smoldered in the darkness, long lasting and as cold as the swirling gray around it. These flickers of life didn’t deserve the stars and endless matter they enjoyed. Rho squashed a grouping of them and laughed as they attempted to escape the dark god’s influence.
Beads of sweat poured down the monk’s face as he continued to push Rho back from Earth. He knew it wasn’t just this planet.
Cries of pain and terror echoed through the hall. Attendants raced around with moistened towels, water, food, and anything else the devotees might need.
He gritted his teeth and managed to save millions, though he knew many hundreds would pay with their lives. Gods, please don’t let Rho touch the three souls I must protect the most.
In answer to his silent prayer, the twin gods appeared at his side. Renewed hope and strength burned through his veins as one rested a hand on his shoulder.
“You are doing very well, Feustis, and they are still safe.”
The colors danced around him as though to music. James caught himself humming as he worked, snatches of made up songs with strange chords and harmonies. Despite his misgivings about the simsuit, he loved working again.
Pretty easy to ignore that I’m wearing a skin-tight, death-suit when all I can feel and see are cargo pants and a t-shirt. His stab wound had healed quickly. He spun around to look at a new section of code without any hint of pain in his thigh. Not too surprising that a pharmaceutical company that delves into computer simulated dinosaurs should have access to the best doctors, medicine, and care.
James stretched his leg as he thought about the cut. The scar looked like something he might’ve done twenty years ago. The muscle moved smooth and strong under his skin. James wondered for the hundredth time if they’d given him experimental drugs amidst all those vitamins, shots, and pain pills. I’m not complaining. I feel amazing.
It had been only two days since he’d been released from the medical center and not only could he walk without pain, but he felt better than he ever remembered. All his muscles felt fit and firm, warming under the light of the holo-sun overhead.
Angie’s noticed too. The mental picture of her face when he’d bumped into her while leaving the sauna was priceless.
James smiled. He felt good, he had a beautiful woman showing interest in him, he felt the same interest in her, and he now worked on genetically recreating a creature that had lived in his fantasies forever.
That thought brought him back to the letters swirling around his head. The breath of life swims around me. Genetic codes pulled from over a thousand species, piecing themselves together at my will. That never gets old. The task exhilarated him despite the long hours of painstaking testing and retesting.
Genes clicked into place around him, and the computer gave him a rough estimate of size, shape, and color in an ever-changing holoscreen display. The image on the display vaguely resembled a dragon, though James knew there would probably be weeks, if not months, of tweaking and polishing before it came anywhere near the image in his head.
Mike and Angie watched James at work from one of the observation rooms, his progress amazing them. Both looked on in awe at the ease with which he communicated his wishes to the computer.
Mike found himself jealous. With him, the computer always worked quickly and efficiently, did the equations, and gave him results. Nothing more, nothing less.
James brought out some desire to please him that no one else had expected from the programming. The computer spun the images around his head in a blur, but they froze instantly at the slightest move of his eyes. A twitch of his finger brought one section of code closer, larger, and into focus with speed and precision.
“Well, you were right. He was ready to get back in there.” Mike turned his head toward Angie, though his eyes stayed fixed on the dance of light around James.
Angie didn’t bother turning her head. She watched as the man she’d become fascinated with pulled two bonds out of the string of genetic coding and sent them spiraling into oblivion with a blink of his eyes.
She nodded. “He definitely has a way with the program. He can do what takes most of us a week in just a couple hours. I’m still not too comfortable with the suits’ software, but no one has had any other problems.” Her eyes tightened for a second. “If I ever see that weasel, Tim Fuller, again, I’ll strangle him.”
Mike sighed. They’d talked about nothing else for almost a week now, just repeating the same stuff back and forth. He couldn’t help it either. “Yeah, I would’ve never suspected the guy. And why target James here, instead of taking it out on Stephens or Carlson? Just plain weird if you ask me. Some people just lose it I guess. Damaged in some way.”
Angie closed her eyes and saw a field of white fabric stained red. “Plain dirty, twisted mind that could come up with such a thing. They tell me the new suits won’t be capable of doing that again
, even if the software tells them to. They’ve cut the strength of the fabric so it can’t break skin.”
Mike laughed. “Can’t believe they let us wear them all that time when they could. But I guess all companies have issues with new technology. I’m just glad James wasn’t really hurt.”
“Me too, me too,” Angie whispered as she remembered the horrified look in James’ eyes, certain that it was reflected in her own now.
James tossed in his bed, his brain filled with smoke and fire. Smooth, blue-green scales glistening in the dim light. Characters, symbols, and genetic code spun dizzily around him in the dark cavern.
He’d been obsessed for days now, but had been frustrated in his attempts to finalize his project. No matter how hard he tried, his dragon defied solidifying into a viable organism, flashing red at him with every adjustment.
Yes, he had an approximation of a dragon, but the weak wing structure made flight impossible. Breathing fire eluded him as well. Angie had been impressed, Mike had been astonished, Dr. Stephens had scribbled out detailed reports, but it all left James unsatisfied and unhappy.
His dreams continued to inspire him to do more. He pushed the limits of the BOCS’ capabilities, asking the poor computer to do things well outside of its current programming. James broke down the lungs to nothing and rebuilt them seven times, needing them to function at high altitudes even if the wings didn’t yet. Those lungs also needed to be able to handle some smoke even if his creation couldn’t light a candle at the moment. The heart needed to be stronger. He toyed with the idea of two hearts.
The blood cells needed to resist infection and disease while carrying more oxygen but not allowing free radicals to migrate through the system. All other cells needed to be able to reproduce consistently, but not break down so quickly with age. He lengthened telomeres to extend chromosomal life and allow for more cellular renewal, but that increased the potential for cancer.
The Crystal Bridge (The Lost Shards Book 1) Page 11