by Paul Tassi
He turned toward the woman. The black figure was in his cell now, stepping over the point where the barrier had been. She was dragging one of her feet, which was bent completely the wrong way. She was so emaciated that Lucas could count eleven rows of ribs. Soran.
“Stop!” he shouted. “Stop!” The woman stumbled closer.
“Stop!” Lucas bellowed. His brain felt like ice.
And the woman did.
She stood there, staring blankly past Lucas again, like she had after she stopped crying. She lowered her arms to her sides and kept them there.
Lucas breathed a sigh of relief. The woman had seen reason, even in her obviously shattered state.
But no. It wasn’t right. The woman’s face was completely vacant, like the rage that had been there moments ago was simply wiped from her entirely.
Her eye twitched. Then narrowed. Then turned toward Lucas again. The anger was coming back. She staggered three quick paces toward Lucas. She was only a few feet away now. The black edge of the knife was pointed squarely at Lucas with each new step.
Lucas kept yelling. “No, no! Stop! You don’t have to—”
Three feet away.
“Drop it, please!”
Two feet.
“Stop!”
One.
Die!
Lucas hadn’t said it, but he’d thought it. And that was enough.
The woman’s face went blank again. Without hesitation, she turned the knife away from Lucas and plunged it directly into her own throat. She died wordlessly on the floor in a messy black heap as dark blood pooled out onto the white surface around her. Lucas’s head was throbbing with cold pain.
“You have passed the trial,” the stinging voice said.
Lucas felt his arms and legs spring free, and he dropped to the ground in front of the dead woman. How had …? He hadn’t—
Before Lucas could process what had just happened, gas began to fill the room though unseen vents, like it was being filtered straight through the walls.
A figure strode in through the mist. Tall, dark, thin. As he drew closer, only one part of him was visible.
Eyes like galaxies.
No pupils, only a hundred thousand stars in a field of black.
“Who are you?” Lucas spat out in between coughs. His head fogged, his vision grew dark as he lay in the swirling smoke.
The voice spoke daggers in his head.
“I am the Archon. I am your destroyer. Your creator. Your god.”
Lucas blinked himself awake inside the medical bay. You know it’s true, an unseen voice said within him.
Not a nightmare, a memory.
Lucas swore he’d spent sixteen years stuck in that tank in Dubai. But now that he’d remembered, the scene was so clear to him. Like someone had just turned on a light in a dark corner of his brain. Even conscious now, he could see the twisted look of horror on the woman’s blackened face, another failed experiment by the Xalans. He could hear the voice that pierced like needles in his mind. Each command, each praise.
“Good.”
He’d killed the woman, but how? He’d been frozen, paralyzed completely. But he’d wanted her to die, and she had died. At her own hand.
Asha suddenly appeared in his field of view.
“Thank god,” she said, visibly relieved. “It’s been days.”
“W-What happened?” Lucas said weakly. She gave him some water through a straw.
“You had a seizure on my ship. You’ve been out since.”
Lucas hungrily gulped more water.
“The Archon …” he said.
Asha cocked her head.
“God of the Shadows? That’s the last thing you said before it happened. What was that about?”
And Lucas told her, every detail still fresh and vivid in his mind.
After his seizure, even though he’d regained consciousness, Lucas’s condition began to degrade. He was feverish, delirious, and barely acknowledged his visitors, and he couldn’t remember who had even been in to see him. He’d forget conversations immediately after they happened, while at the same time being seared with brief flashes of memories from his time as a Xalan experiment at the hands of the ever-mysterious Archon. Lucas could remember nothing else about him, and all the new memories he found were mere fragments, not extended scenes like the ashen woman with the knife. Theta said his mind was attempting to repair the damage that had been done to it, and more and more of his time spent in captivity was starting to make its way to the surface.
Lucas wished he could forget. It had been far better when he simply woke up from a haze sixteen years later with little recollection of what had happened. But the death of the blackened woman made him question what it was that had actually been done to him.
Die.
Not a shout. Not even a whisper. Just a thought.
And she had.
Between constant treatment by Theta and the SDI silvercoats, Lucas was finally feeling better a few days later. He’d managed to squeeze into a fiber undersuit instead of a flowing med bay robe, and he was now walking laps in his own private wing, which had been given to him specifically due to his unique condition. What few other sick and injured there had been moved.
Lucas paced and watched archived Stream feeds of what he’d missed when he was away. He watched Tannon Vale plead the case for his innocence after his sister’s assassination at the hands of Hex Tulwar. He watched his own statue erected on the Elyrian promenade across from Mars Maston’s. He saw Madric Stoller win a landslide election and crush resistance groups to “secure the homeworld.” He saw a virtual tour of Erik and Noah’s home of Colony One, and the multicultural menagerie that was the new generation of Earthborn, and the last humans in existence. Often he’d get overwhelmed; it was almost too much to take in.
Lucas tossed down the scroll he’d been using for the past few hours and lay back on his bed, holding his hands to his head. The feed played audio of an old news report broadcasting word of the Black Corsair’s decimation of an entire SDI dreadnought and the caravan of supply ships it was supposed to be escorting. Lucas saw the bright blue eye and the dead brown one of the burned woman in his head. Was there really another soul who had survived the process? Who had been granted all the abilities of the most powerful of the Chosen Shadows? Lucas muted the audio with a gesture and closed his eyes tightly as if it would cure his migraine.
When he opened them, the breath was sucked from his lungs. A figure stood in the doorway of the dimly lit med bay.
The man was large, too large. Larger than any man should be. He had long blond hair and a sprawling beard of a similar hue. His small blue eyes sparkled brightly underneath all the hair, and he wore scraps of metal armor mixed with cloth rags.
No. You’re dead.
The cannibal chief dwarfed the room around him. Lucas scrambled out of bed and crouched as the man made his way toward him. When he spoke, his voice boomed throughout the room. Lucas couldn’t understand what he was shouting.
“Lucas!” he bellowed. “Er du godt?”
What sort of ghost was this, haunting him from beyond the grave? While the last vision might have been a memory, this one was certainly a dream.
“Er du godt?” the chief asked again. Each step made the entire room shake.
“Get away from me!” Lucas said, scrambling backwards and tripping over a nearby chair.
What was he saying? Lucas didn’t speak Norwegian, and only Alpha had been able to translate the man’s dying words at Kvaløya.
“Hva er det du ser?” the man asked, continuing to march toward Lucas. He pointed at the scroll playing on the bed nearby. It had shifted to a new story, one that showed Noah at some state event.
Noah.
“No!” Lucas shouted. “You can’t have him. You can’t have Noah. He’s mine!”
“Lucas, roe ned,” the man growled.
“You were a monster,” Lucas spat at him. “A murderer, a rapist, a cannibal. The worst of us.”
&nb
sp; Lucas looked down and found that he was suddenly at the opposite end of the room. The chief look surprised, and lumbered around to face him. His arms were extended and he was crouched liked a wrestler about to pounce.
“He’s my son, not yours. You deserved to die in that desert, and he deserved to live,” Lucas continued.
The cannibal chief was finally close enough to Lucas to grab his arm. Lucas felt like every bone his in forearm was snapping. He wrenched his arm upward which, much to his surprise, lifted the chief from his feet and slammed him into the ceiling, shattering the lights and sending a shower of sparks down to dance on the metal floor.
The man landed on his knees, and Lucas thrust his palm forward into his chest. The chief soared across the room and crashed into a workstation. Electrical pops gave way to blue flames, and almost immediately water began to shower the room.
The chief picked himself up, and with a loud roar, sprinted toward Lucas, his wet, wild hair matted like a drenched lion. In an instant, Lucas inexplicably found himself on the other side of the man, and drove his elbow into his back. The giant flew forward thirty feet and dented the metal fire door, which had slammed shut. He lay still as water and blood pooled around him.
I won, Lucas thought. Time to wake up.
But he didn’t. Lucas plodded through the floor of water as more rained down from the rafters. When he reached the man, he found that the giant was smaller than he initially thought. Turning him over, his mane of hair and beard were gone. It wasn’t the chief. This wasn’t a dream.
Noah.
The room was suddenly illuminated by blue flashes of light. The stun rounds slammed into Lucas, and whirling around he saw the lights of a half dozen rifles in the doorway. The SDI soldiers moved in as he crumpled to the ground.
Noah wasn’t moving and soon, neither was Lucas.
13
A few hours later, a bandaged Noah sat in the observation deck of the SDI Horizon. There was nothing to see other than the wispy streams of space and time that made up the ethereal fabric of the wormhole, but it was hypnotizing.
It was hard to shake what had happened in the med bay, for many reasons.
Noah rubbed his head, the back of which was one giant lump. The way Lucas had moved was unreal. His strength was astonishing. The crew had marveled at the security loops of the incident, watching Lucas dash in and out of frame at blinding speeds and toss the sturdy Noah around like a doll. But it had been ten times as terrifying in person. Mercifully, Noah had escaped with only a quickly healed concussion and a smattering of bruises as large as dinner plates. The SDI had taken Lucas down, and even Asha had to agree that he needed to be kept unconscious for the remainder of the voyage home, which was only another month or so.
He’d long heard tales of the combat prowess of the Shadows, but it was surreal to think his own father had become one himself. What the hell had they rescued from Dubai? It sure didn’t seem like a man. Lucas was indeed a weapon, as Erik had tried to tell him, and Noah would be surprised if they ever woke him up again.
But somehow, that wasn’t what affected Noah the most. Rather, it was who Lucas had thought he was. After he peppered Asha with endless questions she eventually unleashed the entire story on him. Noah hadn’t simply been found in some ruined city and given to the pair of them by a dying mother. He was the son of a monstrous cannibal chief who had risen to power by murdering and raping anyone who opposed him. Truth was, Lucas and Asha never even met Noah’s mother; she’d died in a fire they caused that consumed a slave pen housed inside a church. Lucas had killed Noah’s father personally after escaping capture by his savage tribe. Asha ended the tale with the note that the chief had once been a schoolteacher before the war, as if that was supposed to help.
Despite having begged to know the truth, it was something Noah wished he could forget. He was furious at them for lying to him all these years. What else had they kept from him?
Noah didn’t know what to make of being the son of one of the last tyrannical warlords of Earth. It explained his size, certainly, but what else? Would he someday grow into a monster as well?
“You won’t,” Kyra said after he unloaded the foremost question he had been struggling with since the revelation.
“It doesn’t matter who you were born to,” she continued. “It matters how you were raised. Your real parents are Lucas and Asha, intergalactic heroes. You were raised by the finest minds of Sora with dozens of charming Earthborn.”
“But what if I go mad like him?” Noah asked.
“From what you’re telling me, this man was perfectly normal before your Xalan war. An intelligent teacher. The conflict and destruction drove him to insanity, as it did so many others on your planet. It was circumstance, not genetics.”
“They lied to me,” Noah said through gritted teeth.
“Would you not have done the same?” Kyra asked, putting a hand on his shoulder. Her touch was electric, and jolted Noah out of his fury.
She was right, and he hated it. Still, in a few mere sentences, she’d made him feel worlds better. An impressive talent.
Noah stayed in the observation deck for another hour or so before he found his chin dropping to his chest involuntarily. To avoid passing out on the floor from exhaustion, he stumbled to the lift, which brought him to the crew quarters level that had been reserved for the intrepid Earth explorers. The other four doors were closed; Erik and the others had likely gone to sleep long ago. Noah resisted the urge to tap on Kyra’s door, only a few down from his own. What did he want? To talk more? That’s not why, whispered a voice in his head.
Noah shook off the thought. He had Sakai. Gorgeous, loving, generous, kind Sakai. And he was lucky for it. But Kyra. There was a draw to her he couldn’t explain. She was magnetic, and he felt like he couldn’t pull himself away from her whenever they spoke. It was more than nostalgia for times spent together as children. It went far beyond that.
Still, Noah passed by her room, and drove such thoughts from his mind.
Until a scream. And a crash.
Noah jerked his hand away from his room’s door controls and turned down the hall. It was her room. Metal struck more metal. A muffled shout.
As Noah sprinted toward her door, a shirtless Erik spilled out of his room, obviously confused. He instinctively followed Noah another two doors over and mashed on the controls to her room. Angry red symbols flashed; the door was locked tight. There were sounds of a struggle inside.
Noah’s first instinct after finding the door locked was to kick it as hard as he possibly could with his metal-soled boot. The door scuffed, then bent, but wouldn’t budge further even after repeated strikes. It was meant to function as an airlock in an emergency, after all.
Meanwhile, Erik was sifting through the back-end system menu of the door’s controls and, by Noah’s fourth kick, the red light had turned green. The door rocketed upward but caught where Noah’s foot had dented it inward. The two ducked under the jammed door and stumbled inside.
Kyra lay prostrate on the ground, a short syringe sticking out of her bare shoulder. Above her stood a slim figure in a stealth suit with a faceless mask who turned when he heard them enter.
Noah lunged first, but he felt his whole body convulse when the figure’s forearm connected with his hand. An electrical jolt numbed his entire body and he crumpled to the ground as the figure sprinted by. The assailant ducked under a clothesline from Erik and jabbed him in the back of the leg with the electric weapon as he passed and fled out the half-open door.
Noah got to his feet and sprinted to Kyra. Erik turned and bolted out the door after the fleeing figure.
Cradling her head in his hands, Noah saw she was still conscious. A red mark on her temple indicated she’d likely struck her head. Noah looked nervously down at the vial in her arm and saw it was empty. Plucking it out, he turned it over in his hand. Whatever it had contained was already flowing through her bloodstream. Poison. It had to be. His heart hammered in his chest, but she wasn’t
convulsing, wasn’t foaming at the mouth. A straight shot of something like niacyne could have killed her instantaneously, but she wasn’t dead. Kyra started to speak.
“There was a noise,” she said, blinking. “I woke up. I screamed. I tried to fight him. He stabbed me with something.” She rubbed her arm and smeared a tiny bead of blood where the needle had been. She looked horrified when she saw the vial in Noah’s hand.
“What … what is that?” Noah could hear her breathing constrict and quicken. “What did they do to me?”
“Can you stand?” Noah asked, having no useful answers, trying to hide the fear in his voice. He was sweating profusely and felt sick. An assassin? On the ship? In the middle of a wormhole? It was impossible.
Kyra slowly rose to her feet, and Noah saw Theta poke her head in through the doorway.
“Is everything … oh my,” she said as she saw the destruction in the room.
Noah walked Kyra over to her and planted the empty vial in Theta’s claw.
“I need you to analyze what was in this, immediately,” he said as calmly as he could manage. “We have to get Kyra to the med bay as fast as possible.” Noah slammed his hand on the nearby alarm control on the wall, but the unit had been deactivated. He looked down to find he wasn’t wearing his communicator.
His attention was distracted by a scuffle at the end of the hall. From a distance, he could see that Erik had miraculously caught the assailant and was pummeling him on the ground through his armor with a nearby fire evaporator.
“Take her,” Noah shouted to Theta. “Now!”
If anyone knew what was in the vial, it was the would-be murderer. How had Erik caught him so easily? Theta took Kyra to the lift and Noah ran toward his brother and the downed black figure.
Erik was bleeding from some sort of wound buried in his scalp and was breathing hard. He was still bare-chested, wearing only a pair of cloth pants, and Noah couldn’t fathom how he’d managed to overpower a hitman in armor plating.
“Get him inside,” Noah hissed, and Erik rose and grabbed the unmoving figure by the collar. Noah took one of his arms and they dragged him into the closest room, Noah’s own. As soon as they were inside, Noah swirled his hand through the holographic lock, sealing them in. He pressed his own alarm panel, which began to broadcast a dull wail throughout the ship. The SDI would be there soon; there wasn’t any time to waste.